A Little More Pepé Le Pew

I want to add a few more comments about the China situation.    One of the long time themes on here is that China is in a Nash Equilibrium with the United States.   And that equilibrium was based on the self-interests of each party in a non-cooperative mathematical game.    For many years I have noted that equilibrium would eventually be broken.  China is the first to break it due to their evolving economic crisis.    China is far worse than anything being reported anywhere.   Time will prove that statement accurate.   Their capital economy has been in collapse since 2008; something noted on here in past posts.    I noted the uptick in consumption in China since 2008, rather than being a positive as was reported in the mainstream financial and economics news, was a sign of coming doom.    China’s monetary stimulus post-2008 was the largest in recorded history comparative to GDP.   All it did was lead to massive debt-fueled consumption as their capital sector was deflating.    This was predicted on here and now we clearly know this without any equivocation because China’s debt, which was meaningless in 2008 has skyrocketed about 500% since.   What this tells us clearly is that capitalism in China started collapsing seven years ago and they have been on a spending binge ever since trying to prop up their economy.  (Sound familiar?)    I’ll be writing more about this in some detail so that you understand this statement very clearly.   But, just some intrigue for now.   Some people will put my statements together to understand what I am talking about but very few people in today’s world actually understand economics or capitalism so much of what I will write will be new and disturbing.  

In the last week I have seen some really ludicrous reports that China is moving away from the dollar, that this global collapse is contrived and that there is a conspiracy of the Federal Reserve buying Treasuries that China was dumping.   Because otherwise the U.S. Treasury market would have had some degree of crisis with that much supply being “dumped”.  

Let me delve a little further into all of these.   First, they are all inaccurate.   China is not moving away from the dollar.   Period.   It is, in fact, raising dollars through the sale of Treasuries because of their liquidity crisis.   It’s part of the global unwinding I have been talking about for ten years.   They sold Treasuries because they need cash.  It’s no different than why we saw on unwinding in U.S. financial markets in 2008.   It’s a forced march to raise cash in liquidity crises.   There’s no conspiracy.   Just people that don’t know what they are talking about so they blame everything on conspiracy.    Buying yuan decreases supply and, therefore, increase its value.   Selling dollars against the yuan weakens the dollar by increasing its supply.  Both operate together to achieve China’s goals of propping up the yuan in the foreign exchange markets.  This is how China maintains the value of its currency.   This is a losing strategy that will ultimately fail.   The yuan is going much, much lower.   And the lower it goes, the less purchasing power China will have in the international market.   So, the greater metastasis we will see in their crisis.  

Eventually it is quite plausible as noted on here many times that China may be forced into liquidating their gold positions.    No one in international markets wants yuan right now.  Or rubles or countless other currencies.   Mind you, currencies of just, transparent and democratic nations don’t collapse.   Currencies collapse under fraud and corruption.    There is no virtue in China.   Not even in a currency backed by gold.   No one is going to want yuan even if it is backed by gold.   And soon, China will be forced to deliver more yuan in exchange for dollars.   That is, if anyone will exchange for yuan at all.   I wouldn’t give you a nickel for a yuan, let alone the existing rate of $6 because I know how utterly massive their crisis really is.   I would take gold in exchange for dollars if the Chinese want to offer it to settle trade.   Not yuan backed by gold but gold itself.   The potential promise of delivering gold to a yuan backed by gold would be a hilarity.    China is in no position to make any promises about anything let alone a worthless currency with a limited supply of gold.  How many times has the state defaulted on its promise to deliver gold for gold-backed currency?   Too often.   They can’t deliver on those promises and the world is now waking up to that fact.   Gold bugs should be worried.   Very, very worried.  

Additionally, China cannot back free of the dollar because they rely so heavily on U.S. investment and U.S. consumption of their mercantilist economic model.   That’s the reason why they own so many U.S. Treasuries.    Because they essentially pay us through loans (the purchases of Treasuries) to overconsume everything they make.   Otherwise we literally can’t afford anything they make for us.    They finance the United States’ purchase of their own overproduction.   And that has been a key point talked of on here regularly.    China is now trying to take this same economic model and spread it to all of Asia with the announcement of their Asian development bank.   And, as very uniquely noted on here, it is a Hail Mary that will fail.   You know it’s bad for any manufacturer when the only credit a consumer can get is from the manufacturer itself; that being China.    

Now, how does any of this big mess serve the average Chinese citizen?   It doesn’t.   It all serves the state.   It enriches the Chinese state and corporations who have enslaved China to capitalism’s overproduction schemes.    Do you actually believe people in China enjoy making your cell phones, clothes, car parts, electronics, furniture and everything else for you and me at $2 a day?   And then spending that $2 to live in the company housing and shop at the company store?   Why wouldn’t everyone on this earth be working first for their own economic benefit and that of their communities?  Why wouldn’t they be making these things for themselves rather than for you and I?   If the people in China  or elsewhere were free, they would be making those things for their own consumption and that of their local communities to consume or trade rather than making them for Americans.   But they aren’t free.   They are enslaved to the tyrannical dictate of China’s communist party and the pathological autocracy of both its and America’s corporate and state elite aka class & hierarchy.

Another long-time theme on here is that the U.S. and its allies are headed for confrontation with China.    Whether that is economic, military or both.   That call has been working out very nicely in the past few years with China’s belligerence in the South China Sea, endless hacking attacks between the two nations, endless theft of America’s economic and intellectual capital, China’s recent devaluation, tiffs with Japan, Vietnam, India, the Phillipines, etc,  rising nationalism (which I noted a decade ago was coming) etc.   Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both banging the drums of nationalism and just yesterday it was reported with little fanfare that Obama is readying unprecedented economic sanctions against China.  The rise of political rhetoric of who will stand up to China that has become so common in this country is patently absurd.   Why do we need to stand up against China?   As a free society shouldn’t we determine who we wish to trade with?   Why are we trading with a communist country that murders millions of its people?   The reality is the United States and western capitalism created China.   Now, they are threatened by its rise.   A regime that cannot be controlled and has its own designs on spreading its economic and military violence around the world.   It’s the exact same dynamic as Nazi Germany as I wrote many years ago.   Capitalism has no moral compass.   It is driven by all of the foibles of self-interest such as greed, megalomania, narcissism, violence, covetousness, vanity, hypocrisy, ignorance and on and on.   The capitalist class has no problem selling your soul or mine for a nickel.   And that is what they did with Nazi Germany.  They invested heavily in Nazi Germany and made huge profits.   They may have actually helped Hitler get elected.   They shared western technology that allowed Nazi Germany to wage war, and then democracy and humanity had to step in and sacrifice 50 million dead to stop the f*cking mess they created. (World War II)  And as noted on here many years ago, they have done the exact same thing today with China.   Now, who will be left dealing with the consequences of a belligerent, paranoid, repressive, dictatorial communist China?

Let me make some final comments about China being forced to liquidate U.S. Treasuries.   And who could possibly be the buyer for hundreds of billions of dollars of those Treasuries.  A lot of people have posited that the Federal Reserve was secretly buying these Treasuries.   While nothing is impossible, this is highly improbable and flat out unlikely.   The U.S. Treasury market is the most liquid market in the world.    Every major financial firm and nation trades in Treasuries daily.   While a few hundred billion dollars may be a large block trade, this could have easily been transacted with a private placement.   Or, it could have been done “at the market”.   In either case, this is a distress sale.   So, there is just about no doubt that the counterparty who bought those Treasuries made a killing at the expense of China.   If this sale was done openly, there were probably firms slobbering at the opportunity to pick up China’s holdings of Treasuries at discounted prices.   When you are a distressed and forced seller, you always get taken to the wood shed.   Always.  So, why would the Federal Reserve need to step in and buy anything when buyers were probably lining up around the proverbial block to get in line to buy from the bag holders in China?  

I’ve also seen conspiratorial and paranoid remarks in the last week about this global crisis being manufactured.   I’ve written about dozens of outcomes that came to pass in 2008 and have come to pass since.   I didn’t do that using paranoia and conspiracy.    I did that through understanding complex systems, causational variable inputs and associated outputs, and how the global economy works.   The only true conspiracy theory about this crisis that probably exists is the conspiracy theory in our minds.   There doesn’t need to be any conspiracy theory provided for any of what is happening around the world.   We willingly submit to corporate capitalism, private banking, debt-based money and the politicians who enforce this endless violence; all forms of anti-democratic control systems enforced through massive violence.  What conspiracy theory is needed to explain this?   We have given away all of our individual and democratic rights and our power to class and hierarchy or the state.   And we willfully submit to a system of economic slavery and massive emotional, spiritual and social violence because state propaganda tells us that is what free people do.    There needn’t be any conspiracy theory to explain anything.   We willfully accept our slavery and even play the role of useful idiots supporting it.   And the state didn’t even need to fire a single gunshot for that to happen.   But, now we are waking up.   And they can’t put the genie back in the bottle or put us back to sleep.

The Plague, The Pope And Pepé Le Pew (China, Yuan, Empire & Central Banks)

The world is changing so rapidly that I don’t have the time to put up half of what I would like.   But as I have noted before, the vast majority of what is happening on a daily basis are just tremors of the macro outcomes I have been writing would eventually hit us.   You could shut everything out and wake up some time in the future and most of this stuff simply doesn’t matter.   The end state is set to some substantial degree.   It was decided by decades of actions undertaken by the state and supported by the people of the world either through acceptance and the benefits of ego it provided to them or through the lack of individual or organized resistance against the state.    But I do want  to insert a timely update on here about three items discussed in the past.  Hence the plague, the  Pope and Le Pew.  If you are concerned about the global economy and you read anything in this post, read Le Pew.

The Plague-

I try to put up as many unique posts as possible.   This is not generally a mainstream financial or economics blog.   Many of the positions taken or talked about are very unique and well beyond the drivel of what often happens on the Internet or in the press.   That is, everyone copying what everyone else is writing.    That’s really a sign of the times and another example of the lack of original thought and clarity that social conformity and groupthink of this world creates.   It is a sign of humanity being run off the cliff by a socioeconomic system that is in the midst of massive failure because of this very fact.    One topic I hit pretty hard on here many years ago was gamma ray radiation and cellular mutation.   In some regards, I noted that much of what is happening today with new viruses, outbreaks and pathogenic resistance was on its way.    To polish that off a few cliff notes from over the years, gamma ray radiation is the most powerful known energy source in the universe.   And gamma ray radiation is the only known cause of cellular mutation.    And science has been noting for probably a decade or so that the earth is being bombarded with never before measures of intensity of gamma ray radiation from deep space.    That includes  NASAs discovery that an unknown source in the constellation Orion was blasting earth with gamma ray radiation.  Ancient mystics understood that Orion was the seat of the soul.    And that ancient references to the return of the Son of Man were possibly in reference to a generally lost interpretation of the constellation of Orion.   What could the return of the Son of Man be?   Maybe gamma ray radiation from Orion explains what ever “it” is.    I have commented on many aspects of all of this over the years.   These are just cliff notes.   Since first writing about this we have seen upticks in outbreaks of Chikungunya, Ebola, swine flu, bird flu, enterovirus EV-D69, MERS and more.  We now see mutated organisms that are now eating plastic in the ocean and elsewhere, Roundup resistant weeds and a crisis in antibiotic resistant bacteria.   And who knows what else.   Well, and we see massive changes to humanity.   Some good and some not so good.   Humanity is both devolving and awakening.   I’ll be writing more on that topic in my upcoming astrological post.    But I suspect we must consider some of these changes in this world could possibly be created by these energy sources impacting our psyche.  Or by changes to the human ecosystem which includes building blocks of bacteria, viruses, etc.    The existing standard model of the universe is an utter farce.   The universe is connected.   All life is connected.   The universe is alive.   And, the universe may simply be the mind of God or the Divine or however you are comfortable naming it. 

Interestingly, I also noted that astrology too foretold of the Black Death plague of centuries ago.   Actually, the plague hit with the onset of the same  astrological cycle we are in entering today, although that cycle was much, much less powerful.   As discussed, this cycle is likely to turn out as the most profound time for humanity in thousands of years.   That cycle ushered in the Dark Ages.  What will this cycle usher in?    It should be no surprise that some pretty smart people are talking about the possibility of a Dark Ages today.    Although I doubt this will happen for any appreciable period time unless this existing system maintains its grip on humanity.   That seems highly unlikely.    More accurately, as discussed before, we are currently in the midst of a dark ages created by the state and humanity is now revolting against it.  Although many people can’t see this dark ages because of the all-consuming self-delusion (eg0), brainwashing and propaganda we have been living under.   But in a world of plenty, with billions of people living on scraps and a few dollars a day, this is a dark ages.   Ones own self-deceit may deny that, but the ego is capable of rationalizing anything.   

Because astrology foretold the Black Death or the plague, people of that time period thought that it was a Divine wrath for the evil of their world.    And many people believe a similar fate awaits humanity today.   Even though we obviously don’t have any measurements, that period of time too would have almost certainly involved massive gamma radiation blasts because of how solar output is tied to these events.   As the sun’s heliosphere or protective umbrella for the solar system weakens, its shielding effects weakens enough to allows these deep space blasts to reach earth.   Are these events coincidence?   Or is the sun’s behavior impacted by the human mind or the universal mind?   The sun is almost certainly not as it is portrayed by mainstream science.    The concept of its fusion core is under hot debate right now and with good reason.   And what are these invisible radiation events?   Just plain old random energy?   Intelligent events with an intent to restore life’s balance or to destroy the evil that controls this world?   Is it the return of the dead?  Or is it the return of the Son of Man?    One must be forever vigilant to  keep an open mind to that which we do not understand.   The knowledge of science is enough to fill up a thimble in a vast ocean.    Institutionalized science’s views on the universe are almost certainly preposterous and really an affront to true science.    Here is where I am going; we see  the CDC is reporting an unusually high number of outbreaks of the plague.    Is this just a blip?  Or like the rise of all of the other pathogens in this world, somehow a sign of the times?   Could this be the something as simple as result of the influx of immigrants into the U.S. as some propose?   Or is it something else?    Now, to really twist your mind a little, if this is from a massive influx of immigrants who may have brought disease with them, was this the will of the universe?    What again did Martin Luther King, whom I consider to be America’s foremost prophet of future karmic fate, say?  

The Pope-

The Vatican is reporting that the next wave of attacks against The Vatican could be for financial irregularities.   Let’s be honest.   Fraud and corruption.   A couple of years ago I wrote about a series of about ten posts I was going to put up.  In those posts I said I would share everything on how I was able to predict so much of what is happening in the world today.   That includes some very unique perspectives of monetary economics and economics.   Well, one of the posts I promised in that outline was “The Coming Collapse (And Possible Demise) Of The Vatican State”.   In the past I have used words like crimes against humanity and a criminal organization to describe The Vatican.   I know that probably upsets many belief systems but there is no emotion and no prejudice in my statements.   One has to get beyond the tyranny of the ego’s belief systems aka self-delusions to see the truth.   Now, I’m still going to get those posts up.   They are just delayed for one particular reason.   But this newly released story is very timely and worthy of being noted right now.   If one understands what is going on, and I’ll eventually explain it in that upcoming post if you don’t, then this news story could be a tremor in confirming the coming collapse of The Vatican.   

Let me close my remarks on The Vatican by stating as I have in the past that I have absolutely no problems with religion.   They are an original form of community and fellowship.   They bring with them the necessary aspects of community like redemption and equality.   But that’s not what The Vatican is.   And it’s not what political Islam is.   Those are control systems or institutions of the ego.   And an overarching theme on here for the last decade is the coming collapse of institutions of the ego.    Again, a very unique perspective written of on here that may now be exposing itself.

Pepé Le Pew-

I dug up an old interview of Ben Bernanke that I wanted to post in a timely manner.  (Click on the link to watch.)  In it Bernanke talks about the 2008 crisis and extending half a trillion dollars in swap lines (simply a fancy term for central bank to central bank loans) to other central banks around the world for purposes of liquidity to restart the global economy.   Now, most people don’t understand much of how the world financial system actually works (Including most idiotic economists and Wall Street & financial bozos.  That’s my Trump imitation.)  but there is a reason for that.   It certainly isn’t that complicated.   It’s that way because a system of class must keep us ignorant to control us.  How else could a few thousand politicians, economic elites and corporate CEOs dominate and suppress the divine light of every human mind in this country and around the world?   It’s the same reason our educations system sucks, why we have unnecessary poverty and on and on….……..   Class and hierarchy have to waive their hands and talk a lot to entrance us to their stupidity.

If humanity knew how the economic world and financial system actually worked to rip off the citizens of the world on behalf of the state, we may bring back the guillotine used in the Reign of Terror.  In other words, turn the tables of the state’s endless reign of terror against us that keeps us under their jack boot. 

Anyhoo, I noted many times over the years that there would be a day when China would need a bailout from the United States.   So far, China still has plenty of dollars.   But the day will almost certainly come when they don’t.    The recent small devaluation in their currency points to China’s need to now start expending its dollar reserves.  In fact, a month or two ago when China sold a large amount of Treasuries (and it was ignorantly reported as dumping by many web sites, journalists and people who make this crisis worse because they perpetuate in accurate misinformation to people looking for some truthful answers) I told a friend that the crisis in China had likely begun.  That they had entered the forced selling of Treasuries phase.  There are a lot of ignoramuses out there who are now reporting that China is “dumping” Treasuries.  It’s even reported that on the the cover of Drudge, the most popular news site within Washington DC.   That completely inaccurate position will be proven wrong just like most everything else.   That’s how incompetent and clueless the world is.   I just can’t believe the general level of commentary or reporting that exists in this world.  Especially in finance and economics.   It’s pretty much impossible to get any facts about anything in this world because there aren’t competent journalists or experts sharing them.  Likely because competence has been replaced by credentials in a dumbed-down, corporate-dominated world.    There isn’t anything dumping in this situation but the yuan.   China is forced to sell Treasuries because they are in the early phases of what will be a massive liquidity crisis and they are forced to raise cash they need to keep their economy afloat and the yuan from collapsing.  (This link accurately reports what I have uniquely been writing about for the last half dozen years on this topic. )   The only reason China is selling, not dumping, Treasuries is because the yuan is collapsing.   And they need to raise dollars to support the yuan and their economy.   The only thing that is being dumped is the yuan in the foreign exchange markets.     The ‘hope” of those who often report that China was going to dump Treasuries in some emotional position that involves wishing to see the U.S. taken down a few notches is not based on sound scientific analysis.   Just like the position that gold pushers took that China and Russia buying gold meant their future was full of milk and honey.    Those views are nothing more than ignorant, emotional Schadenfreude to support their ego’s desires.   I’m not stating the U.S. is going to escape massive crisis but facts are facts and emotions and ignorance don’t make for effective, scientific analysis.   China is unfolding to a tee in everything that has been reported on here for the last decade.   

All of this means the Federal Reserve will eventually have to extend swap lines to communist China’s central bank.   With the belligerence between China and the U.S. ramping up, China trying to devalue their currency to steal as many jobs from the U.S. and elsewhere, with geopolitical tensions rising, with the U.S. citizens waking up to how China stole our wealth and our jobs with the help of our political and corporate masters, how likely do you think the Federal Reserve is to going to be able to extend that swap line?  The American people are angry and awake.   Or,I  should say awakening.    And if those swap lines can’t be created, what will China do without them?

On a broader level, countries all around the world are burning through their foreign exchange reserves at a staggering clip.  Their currencies are now crashing against a violently rising dollar.   Which is the exact wording I have used for the last decade to describe what is going to happen as this system unwinds.    For anyone that actually understands anything, this fact should have been a massive warning sign leading into recent financial crisis.   When I wrote last year that I had sold every financial asset and that liquidity was draining out of the global economy at a pace far worse than 2008, what we should expect from that is a collapse in the global economy and a rising dollar.    But, yet no one in the U.S. economics or financial community, at least that I am aware of, actually even understood any of these most rudimentary facts.   Of course, the average joe doesn’t generally understand this because they expect the experts to.    The bad news is there aren’t any experts in charge of this system.   Only dunces, dolts and donkeys.  

The rest of the world appeared economically stable back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve extended swap lines to what was essentially most of the world.   So, the Federal Reserve could be reasonably guaranteed it would be given all of those dollar loans back.   Country’s economies seemed to be doing well so that risk of extending swap lines was marginal.   Today, the entire world is collapsing.   Every nation is in chaos.   Just as I have been uniquely writing would be the case for the last decade.   So, when those foreign exchange reserves are again depleted and all of the world’s central bankers try to again extend these swap lines for their currencies, but this time it will require trillions upon trillions of dollars, what is the chance that they will either 1) be inclined to do so  or allowed to do so by politicians or citizens of that nation because the counterparty central banks have a high probability of not being able to pay that loan back because of massive economic crisis in the nations they which to swap with? or 2) if the swap lines are actually extended, what is the chance that central banks or the banks they serve will default on those swap lines given their own financial and economic crises?  And, if this happens, how will trade be conducted between nations with no money to trade?  And what will central banks do with trillions in these losses?   For the umpteenth time, globalization is dead.  Corporate, banking and political dunces have created a monster of ego-driven control out of their own massive ignorance.

I have talked about this concept more broadly since the  2008 collapse in how money could lose its value even with the dollar skyrocketing.    To rehash those points in a short summary, that is what actually happened in 2008.   We had a small number of financial firms that held the vast majority of mortgage instruments (essentially some degree of money equivalents) and no one wanted to trade with anyone else because no one knew who was holding the bag.    That’s where we are now in this world.   No nation or central banks knows what other nation is capable of paying it back.   No counterparties can be trusted because the entire world is on fire.    So central bank swap lines or loans involve incredible risk.  Or, as noted some years ago, those who have stolen all of the money have no one to trade with so money becomes effectively useless.   This not only applies to countries but all economic entities including people as well.   And if this happens, then what comes next is what I have posited could happen – all contract law becomes useless and the concept of property rights collapses.

No one in the world is talking about any of this.   Literally no one.    The world is run by idiots.   Don’t expect them to save you.   Contrarily, they are driving us off of a cliff.    In fact, our Treasury Secretary, the leader of the world’s supposedly most powerful and sophisticated financial system, confidently told us just a few months ago that China’s markets would not affect the U.S.    Can you say dunce?   This guy is a dunce and a clown.   It’s time we quit coddling class-based assholes, evildoers and morons because it’s not presidential or politically-correct or doesn’t fit into the decorum of a  gentlemanly behavior.   More social conformity, made-up useless horseshit and  class-based nonsense.   These people treat humanity and the planet like shit (chattel) to use and abuse as they see fit in their policies and corrupt acts.   Obama’s comical financial reform bill was more red tape meant to protect the Wall Street criminal racket.    And our financial government leadership are the bozos put in place to ensure the racket continues.    There is no recovery, there never has been a recovery and there never will be a recovery until this global system of massive fraud is replaced.    It’s time to call it like it is.   As the great American philosopher Forrest Gump once famously said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”.  The world is run by corporate and political idiots.   We can’t get past this crisis until we get rid of the system of economic and political rot that has its jack boot on the neck of humanity.  And that will only happen if humanity takes back all of its individual power from class and hierarchy aka the state.  This crisis will not be fixed by any politician no matter how popular.   Period.  Unless that politician disassembles this system and restores the power to humanity.

I put this up this last section on China, swap lines and central banks for a reason.   To give you a glimpse into some of what I have been anticipating in three long time themes on here that central banks were likely to collapse this cycle, and that the dollar empire was likely to disappear by 2022 and that we are headed for a global trade settlement crisis.    There are many other implications tied to this but let’s stick to these three.   This coming dynamic could easily be the mechanism through which all three happen.   In fact, these central banking shenanigans of bailing each other out in a major Ponzi Scheme itself (You bail me out and I’ll bail you out although both of us have already collapsed.) are what I used to predict some bizarre outcomes that no one else was anticipating into the 2008 collapse.   Do you think Obama, our Treasury Secretary, the CEO of Goldman Sachs or, China’s communist party dunces understands any of this or anything else in the consequences of their actions?   Dunces.   They have created this complicated web of deceit for their own greed and avarice.   But they have no idea what they are doing or the unintended consequences of their arrogant ignorance.  It’s just all about looting, power, domination and corruption.  It’s pure ego and all of the ignorance, hypocrisy and evil it can muster.   All of this complication is completely unnecessary.   It is simply more and more rules and rigging of the economy and financial systems by politicians to keep the fraud and corruption going .  

It’s Not Good Not To Be The King: Slavery’s Division Of Labor And A Look Back To An Investigative Series On Amazon’s Anti-Democratic, Inhumane, Sweatshop Warehouse Environment

I want to do a follow up on the last story before getting back to my money and markets update posts on gold and black gold.   But, first it’s worthwhile to note that markets around the world are in the midst of imploding with oil leading the way.    My downside low on oil remains $10 a barrel.   I may be the only person on earth who was writing this would happen when oil was nearly $150 and Goldman Sachs and other state actors were calling for $200 and $300 oil.   Oil is now down to under $40 from nearly $150.    It’s going much lower.  But we are nearing its 2008 crash low, which I also predicted within a few dollars, so how oil acts at the 2008 low will be very interesting to watch.   Will it bounce or slice right through it?   By the way, my long time downside on the S&P remains 200-450.    That is, if the stock market doesn’t disappear completely, which has been discussed on here as a possibility.   If capitalism disappears, so will its funding mechanisms like stock markets.   We have a long, long way to go if that is anywhere near accurate..

At the bottom of this post are links to a series of investigative stories that ran in 2011 on Amazon’s inhumane, anti-democratic warehouse practices.  This is corporate capitalism and it always has been.   People who wax poetic about the good ole days or free markets close their eyes to the nothingness of an existence to vanquished hope, the cruelties in plain sight that their ego’s rationalize and the exploitation that is so necessary for a class-based system to exist.   Division of labor is necessary for any class-based socioeconomic system to exist and it is a central tenet of corporate capitalism.   This division of labor was exalted by Adam Smith’s Wealth of  Nations in 1776.  That shouldn’t be surprising since Smith worked for a class-based corporation that addicted countless Chinese to opium in return for stealing all of their silver.   Well, and enslaving all of India to produce the opium amongst other forms of economic exploitation that served the British Empire.    The British crown knew exactly what was going on and didn’t have any problems peddling dope because it was its most profitable corporate enterprise.   This at a time when the colonies were declaring war on the king’s corporations and private banks that Adam Smith waxed poetic about.    People fled corporate-dominated and class-dominated European societies to come to this nation.   

The division of labor was invented under class-based systems of human ownership (chattel) and human slavery to increase the human property’s efficiency or slave’s work efficiency for his or her master’s economic benefit.   The division of labor wasn’t some profound invention of corporate capitalism.    It was created out of a system where class could dominate the masses of people into forced slave labor camps through exploitation, predation and victimization.   It’s the same concept used in Auschwitz or gulags or Southern plantation owners.   There is no doubt who owns whom in this world.   Corporations own you!   That’s why we do what our corporate master tells us to do when he or she tells us to do it.   Britain, the foundations of the world’s modern economic system, is and always has been a system of indescribable wealth disparity and ignorance created by class and human ownership.    (Interestingly, Paul Krugman uses Britain’s government being in debt to private banks for hundreds of years as a positive in his recent ignorant rationalizations that more government debt to private corporations is good.  What a f*cked up world we live in when private-banking created debt using anti-democratic class-based money, which are both forms of social violence, are rationalized to be good in Krugman’s ignorant musings of Orwellian doublespeak – debt is good - and newspeak in the highest circulated print news source in a nation that is supposed to be a bastion for freedom from the state, dictators and overlords.  How amazing and jaw-dropping this kind of dystopian horror is printed in a country that is supposed to be free.)   

As unmindful consumers, that corporate capitalism needs to survive, we are willfully ignorant to the conditions under which goods and services we purchase are made and delivered to us.   That is, the human-ownership-based division of labor that obliterates any democratic economic rights in often brutal, slavery work environments.   As citizens of the world, as stewards of the planet, as sentient beings who recognize the worthiness of all life and all people, we eschew the brutality of these cruel, subhuman working conditions that class, hierarchy and state privilege creates.   So, are we a world and society ruled by democracy, self-awareness, self-actualization and resultant love and compassion or the violence, ignorance and hypocrisy of class-based corporate capitalism?

Every single day any of us spends a single dollar in this system, we are perpetuating violence against our fellow man.  Every dollar earned is earned through violence.   It doesn’t matter if you work for a hierarchical organization like the state or a corporation or if you spend Social Security payments or you work for yourself.   In some way that money was generated by violence and the act of accepting it is accepting the “mark of the beast”.  All class-based systems are inherently violent, contradictory and Godless.   So, you buy a book from Amazon, a class based economic construct, and you are perpetuating violence.   You buy food handled by any corporation or class-based system that exploits labor for the benefit of landed gentry, you commit violence.   You serve a beer to a corporate worker, he pays you in money that was earned through violence.    You serve a beer to someone who works for himself but received that dollar from a corporate worker, the result is the same.    There is no way to escape the violence of this system.   Class=violence.   It is not a natural state of the human experience.   Class-based systems rely on violence for survival which is why the entire world is experiencing such massive misery.    Most people have a hard time coming to grips with this because they either don’t understand the concept of emotional, spiritual or social violence or that thought doesn’t fit with their ego’s belief systems of itself.    ie, I get up, kiss my spouse and hug my kids and go to work every day so I’m a good person.   Well, you are certainly a person.   But the decisions you make every day are not your own.   And as a result, the violence we perpetuate on behalf of class that we serve goes far beyond our line of sight in actions the corporation or the state that ripples far beyond our small world of ignorance.   And class could never perpetuate that violence unless we all conformed to violent social norms created by the state. 

“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque. ”― U.G. Krishnamurti

We have all become wildly ignorant hypocrites courtesy of the state.   The state, and its required conformity and resultant control of humanity, ensures that the natural process of self-regulation, responsibility for our own emotions and self-correction of our actions and behaviors based on their effects on the world around us has no consequence.    And, mind you, we live in a world of unbelievable and unprecedented conformity resulting in unprecedented ignorance and hypocrisy.   That conformity is driving humanity off of a cliff.   There is just about zero individual thought or action in this world if it has anything to do with social constructs.   Everything is based on brainwashing and propaganda of the type of life we are told to lead from cradle to grave.  We live in the Borg.   The Soviet Union and communism had nothing on corporate capitalism.  Both are guaranteed to fail for this very reason.

Is this the kind of world we really want to live in?   For 90% of humanity, there is ample evidence the answer is unequivocally no.   Many of us conform simply out of survival.   We are forced, through violence to participate in a system of massive injustices and cruelties.    For the top 10% of the house slaves who have enriched themselves by enforcing their master’s violence on the field slaves, sure.   They are living large.   Or, should I say their disconnected egos believes they are living large as measured by its attachment to worldly possessions but they are really leading vacuous, meaningless lives of incredible ignorance.   And for our corporate and political masters, aka the state, this is the world they have dreamed of creating.   That is all it is.   It is nothing but a dream.   And when humanity wakes up, which it is in the process of doing, we can create a new dream.   Hopefully, a dream based on nonviolence, voluntary participation, community, dignity, compassion and justice.

(Again, talking about the beast is not an end of the world prophetic statement but rather exposing the systemic willful ignorance of the disconnected ego and cruelties of the state and this world.   I find many historical parallels, parables and lessons to be very profound in this moment.   For, if the prophetic beast was the Roman Empire or some future empire or the concept of the state itself, it’s mark was likely money and its forced use that enriched the state off of the backs of an enslaved humanity.  A forced use of money that keeps humanity from leading a Godly - loving and hence nonviolent existence.  And, to reject the mark of the beast likely means that a system of barter, which is inherently based on nonviolence in its purest form, will likely arise in its place as has happened in the past.  It should be no surprise that I have noted for many years that we will likely see the rise of barter in trade settlement.   It’s already starting as a method of getting out from under the state and its enforced use of state money, which is and always has been a control system created by and enforced by the state.  I’m sort of curious, what skills do parasitic state actors have to trade in a system of barter?   What do they produce, create and invent other than violence and human slavery itself?  Without violence, the state has lost all control.)       

It’s not good not to be the king.

Inside Amazon’s Warehouse

Amazon workers left out in the cold

Amazon workers fight for unemployment benefits

Amazon workers cool after company took heat

13,000 boycott Amazon for sweatshop working conditions

13,000 join boycott follow up

It’s Good To Be The King - A More Sinister Take On The New York Times Exposé Of Amazon’s “Bruising Workplace”

In case you missed it, the New York Times wrote a widely read story on Amazon’s potentially abusive workplace environment and it has received a lot of attention over the past few days.  (Company orientation or indoctrination looks a little like Third Reich brainwashing to me.)    It’s a very good read whether you take it at face value or not.   And, I generally do.   There are a lot of Amazon workers interviewed for this story.  Is it possible to find 100 disgruntled workers?   Sure.  Did the New York Times seek to use only disgruntled workers in these interviews?   Um, even for what the New York Times has become, that is a wild stretch.   If one takes context into consideration, as I am going to do on here, this story is probably quite accurate.     After that story ran, Amazon’s CEO and some workers joined the discussion here.  And then Amazon strutted out its ministry of propaganda talking mouthpiece here.   And finally, the New York Times editor essentially retracted the story, the journalism and the testimony of a lot of Amazon employees and says the story lacks credibility here.   What a surprise.   Actually, it is a surprise because it shows how dystopian the world actually is.    In reference to the editor’s doublespeak retraction, I can imagine that the political, Wall Street, Chamber of Commerce, corporate lobbyists and corporate peer pressure to water down that exposé was unbelievable because this story isn’t just about Amazon.   It’s a reflection of how Korporate Amerika treats its wage slaves and the state of corporate work conditions not just in the U.S. but around the world.   ==>>  “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”   Was this story about Amazon so truthful that it was a revolutionary act that had to be squelched?

I have some very unique experiences that have allowed me to peer inside of a lot of companies.  Maybe over one hundred.   And I have associates that I talk to that have peered into many more.  The corporate capitalist takeover of our country that Reagan, Clinton, Obama and both Bushes have engineered through incredible degrees of deregulation of class-based private capital, globalization, union busting, pension busting, corporate raiding, cheap immigrant labor and labor arbitrage, Keynesian supply-side economics and other lunacy has created has resulted in a hugely hypercompetitive, incredibly dysfunctional and oftentimes brutal workplace in many companies.  The issue is not Amazon.   It’s the New York Times, Amazon and countless other examples of the corporate state.    And the doublespeak New York Times retraction by an editor reeks of the ruling class trying to close ranks on the truth.

Some time ago I had already highlighted how Amazon treats its warehouse labor force and pays them McDonald’s wages while firing thousands after seasonal demand wanes.   So, why is it so hard to believe they treat white collar workers any differently?   I can imagine there is a retention list, as there is with most large companies, where certain employees are labeled as critical and are therefore granted some degree of privilege.  Sometimes even exceptional privilege.  Some of these employees spoke out on behalf of Amazon’s culture after this exposé.   You know, like Malcolm X noted, these are the house slaves that love their corporate masters because they get better clothes, some degree of education or indoctrination, the same food as the master and a decent place to sleep.     Giving someone a million dollar salary and stock options can do wonders for their perspectives and, thus, the ego’s ability to rationalize away the truth.    To those people I ask, you don’t think you are the house slave?  Then why do you uproot your lives, do whatever corporate CEOs tell you to do when they tell you to and as often as they tell you to?   Oftentimes compromising personal integrity and personal relationships in the process.   This type of self-deceit is so systemic that most people don’t even see how we created our own mess by conforming to a class-based system of control.  Especially the professional class or the house slaves that enrich themselves through carrying out state violence like corporate capitalism and communism aka class-based control systems.

Amazon’s hypercompetitive workplace makes complete sense when one takes a broader look at context.   Because, as noted on here in the past, it doesn’t have a sustainable business model.   It has a working capital scheme.   Some people say Ponzi Scheme.    You say potato, I say….. err, political dimwit and private equity quadrillionaire Dan Quayle says potatoe.    So, Amazon is driven by growth at all costs to ensure continued magically-created accounting wizardry that is consistent with the financialization of our world.   That is why Amazon must have this brutally-Darwinistic work environment to stay alive.   They need a constant new stream of ideas that are vetted as much as possible to continue to grow at all costs.   Because if they stop growing or see growth come to a substantial slowdown, then Amazon, in my estimation, is headed for collapse as their working capital scheme comes undone.   And, in fact, I am highly confident we will live to see that day happen.   Not just for this reason but for other macro reasons I have yet to disclose on here.   Many of which will astonish readers about the state of the global economy and why, mathematically, it must collapse.  (By the way, as I have noted in the past, this mythical voodoo is not just an Amazon issue.   This is a capitalism issue.  One could also characterize all of capitalism or China or Russia or the U.S. as similar working capital schemes. )   To summarize these Amazon points from a prior post -

This is a company (Amazon) that doesn’t know how to make a profit.  And it never has.   But they make it up on volume.   What can you buy with $80 billion in revenue but no profit?  Not even a cup of coffee.   That is Amazon.  This is a company that has gone from no sales to $80 billion sales in less than two decades.  Never have they created a measurable and consistent profit.  Let alone enough of a profit to fund its growth.    So, how does Amazon stay in business?  As noted on here in prior posts, Amazon’s business in many ways is very similar to the Boston Chicken scheme that created working capital out of thin air by floating their payables.  Rapid growth is what hides the fact that Amazon’s business model isn’t a business model at all.   Rather, it’s a scheme that sustains itself only through growth at all costs.   Amazon and Boston Chicken both used high growth rates to magically-create ever-greater needs of working capital to fuel their growth.   Diversification, or as I have called it on here before, diworsification, is Amazon’s answer to keep this scheme going.   As long as they sell more and more different types of items, they are able to continue to grow their payables float and, thus, grow working capital.  This is then used to expand the business with rapid growth void of profit.   This is exactly what Boston Chicken did.  This dynamic has allowed Amazon to push the issue of profitability into some far off mystical Garden of Eden where profits will automagically flow like milk and honey.  So far, they have used this scheme for nearly 20 years.  And, in the process, they have become too-big-to-fail with 120,000 employees.   (Boston Chicken ended up in bankruptcy after massive growth fueled by accounting “irregularities”.   lol)

Wall Street still doesn’t get it.   And they never will.   Because they are the bubble.  They actually are ground zero for this mess.   That’s why Amazon’s PE hovers somewhere between 1500 or so, going back to the fall of the Roman Empire, and no PE because they have never actually produced any sustainable profit.  Hey, I love Amazon.   They pay me to buy items.   ie, They sell most everything for a loss.   Moody’s credit rating services has started to catch on after 20 years of a larger and larger scheme.    But they are still too optimistic and don’t actually seem to understand what is going on.   One business that has shone recently for Amazon is the IT services business.   That alone is allowing them to post a recent profit.   But that is a very small and very competitive business that is tied very, very, very substantially to the current unsustainable global economy and massive, bureaucratic companies that are too large to manage, hence outsource large parts of their operations to companies like Amazon, IBM, HP, CSC and others.   Can you say Timberrrrrr?

So, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, and many sycophantic corporate king courtiers, have come out and said they would quit if Amazon was such a bad place to work.    Does that surprise anyone?   It’s all a matter of perspective.    If you are the CEO and the 4th richest man in the world, well, then you love Amazon and the culture you have created.  It has made you rich beyond anything describable.   You are the king.    (How can someone who has never been able to turn a profit become the 4th richest man in the world?    Because that is a sign of the times.   The financialization of our economy is much, much more severe and the implications are much, much more profound than anyone is reporting.  And resultant accounting and financial “irregularities” that have created incredible paper wealth are now the norm.) 

But, if you are the corporate serfs or not members of the corporate court, how’s life treating you?   It’s good to be the king.    Do you think McDonald’s CEO likes the corporate culture he has created?   He’s the king.   Of course he does.   Do you think his perspective is different than the 50 year old guy making $9 an hour in his stores because he can’t find a decent job?    Ditto with Starbucks CEO?   Or, how about Washington politicians?   Do you think their perspectives are aligned with the mess they have made of our lives?    Their lives are wonderful.   Money rolls into Washington coffers at a rate that would make the Roman Empire’s tribute system of looting look like paupers.   How about the communist ruling class in China comparative to the mess they are creating for the countless people on the other end of their schemes?   It has been exposed that the head of the Chinese communist party has offshored billions in syphoned funds.  Or Vladimir Putin who is worth upwards of $70 billion in a country with the largest wealth disparity of any nation on earth?   Or how about the Saudi royal family?   Need I continue?   It’s good to be the king.   Always.   No matter the consequences of the king’s actions upon the little people.   Bezos is almost certainly so consumed by his own narcissism and a sycophantic court that he has no idea what the culture of Amazon is really like.

Bezos is going to find some supporters within Amazon because look at how many people’s lives and wealth are reliant on kissing the king’s ass.   If the king is toppled, how many sycophants that have parasitically attached themselves to the king for their own benefit of plunder are going to lose?    If these people speak out or are honest with themselves, they lose that illusion of power and wealth they kissed so much ass (Conformed to the corporate state Borg and sold their souls in the process.) to create, so they rush to the defense of the king.   It’s good to be the king.   It all depends on perspective.   The world from the perspective of the top always looks wonderful.   Because it is class throughout history that has always stolen everything.   Obama has told us quite a few times how wonderful the world is.   And how he is largely responsible for that.   But ask the billions of people living in abject poverty and misery created by corporate CEOs, Obama, political parties, bankers and the like. (the state)

It’s pretty clear we live in a world created by lunacy of a ruling class.   It’s not just politics that is a mess.  Corporate America is run more and more like a gulag.   And there are other data points to consider in this Amazon story.   More than half of all American adults are either on prescription mind/mood altering drugs or self-medicating with “illegal” drugs or other forms of addiction because of the massive violence this system perpetuates.   Why is that?   To deal with the society corporations have created.    To deal with the work environment corporations have created.   Additionally, one of those addictions is a process-based addiction we call corporate work.   People working 70+ hours a week at Amazon or anywhere else while they abandon their spouses and children are not “dedicated” employees but rather acting out to a dysfunctional process-based addiction.  How f*cked up do you think little Johnny is gonna be with mom and dad never at home?   He never received the love and nurturing he needed in his emotionally-developmental years because mommy and daddy were too busy making their capitalist masters rich at Amazon et al.      And, instead of love, all Johnny got were guilt-based bribes of a new car or a Christmas tree with large numbers of unloving, inanimate objects for him to attach himself to to make up for the lack of time and love he received from parents who were in absentia.  Then these same parents shove Johnny into cram schools and teach him that if he only works harder to please mommy and daddy, as they did to please their corporate masters, Johnny will finally get the love he deserves.   Johnny is going to be one f*cked up adult.   Just like his parents.   And just like their parents.   And just like the corporatocracy’s dystopian society.    Or, put another way, this is how generationally, dysfunction builds until we see collapse of a wholesale class-based, socioeconomic control system.   

You know, hundred of years ago, and still in Amish communities today, the father and husband in Christian cultures was often forbidden from taking a corporate “job” or any job that would take the father and husband away from the needs of the family for these very reasons.   Although even the Amish are bending their rules in the world of the corporate state.   Not that the Amish’ closed society doesn’t have its own problems but I’m making a point rather than defending closed societies.  But we have gone so far down the rabbit hole that we exalt abandoning our children, families, connections and communities for “careers” that enrich corporations and the state.   The most important experience or job we can ever have is raising our children.    How’s that working out for us?    What the f*ck did you have kids for if you don’t want to love them and do everything you can to ensure their emotional and spiritual success in life?   That’s not a judgment from my hypocritical finger but rather a rhetorical observation from someone who sees the endlessly deceitful rationalizations and contradictions within himself.    I would argue that, in some large percentage of the population, that we don’t actually know how to love our children.   Because we don’t know how to love ourselves in such a Godless, primitive, dumbed-down existence. 

The people who do actually love their children, and don’t view them simply as ego-amusing  attachments, like their new BMW or their careers, often find themselves falling farther and farther behind economically forcing both parents to work, or the stress and strain so severe that parents split up, or lead to addictions, complete loss of self confidence or countless other destructive outcomes.  This is the only possible outcome of class-based and hierarchical control systems and I will write definitively on this in my upcoming astrological post.  In other words, we are exactly where we are supposed to be.   Humanity has created this moment for ourselves.   And the universe is about to share one hell of a learning experience with all of us.

Do you think these people who want to be president in this nation are any different?  Do you think the CEO of Amazon, who probably spends nearly every waking moment addicted to work at Amazon, is any different?  Or Starbucks’ CEO?  Or any other CEO or person who has clearly shown an addiction to work or, more pointedly, an addiction to control often including an addiction to controlling others better known as pathology?    Do you really believe they care about you or me and are following a calling to serve humanity?   Or is it more likely that they are stealing your time, your livelihood and your individual freedoms for their own self-interested pathology rather than serving humanity out of virtue?  Are they doing what they are doing to enrich themselves and using you to do it?   

Where are all of the corporate and political masters calling for a 20 hour work week or to change the cruelties of the system they created?   Silence……………….

Because the reality is they are pathological or conform out of fear because speaking up will take away their place at the table of gluttony, greed and evil that is afforded to class privilege. 

David Graeber: Corporate Work As A Contrivance

Let me interrupt my money and markets updates for a short post on an article that was just published.   My next money and markets update will be about gold and black gold.  

The topic of contrived work is something I have covered in substantial detail over the years.   I’ve noted many times that upwards of 80% of all corporate work in this nation is contrived.    That less than 20% of people are in capital producing or wealth producing jobs in this nation.   The rest are in capital consuming jobs (Digging holes and then filling them back in or if you prefer a more dystopian characterization, make-work.)   that actually consume society’s capital or wealth.    And because of that we could see a collapse or disappearance of a contrivance of that dynamic called a “career” which is really an ego-created mythology that is a result of the dumbed-down culture of work that corporate capitalism, like communism, requires to survive.   There’s no way not to conform to an ignorant culture of corporate work because work is the method through which wealth is distributed in the world.  Incredibly cruelly and viciously distributed might I add, as all hierarchical and class-based systems are.  

People thousands of years ago worked substantially less than we do today.     We work because that is what our masters want.  Forced corporate work enriches the state.   Not humanity or the human experience.   And, of course, we mindlessly oblige without asking any questions of whatever happened to the 35 hour work week or the advances in science and production methods that were supposed to free up our lives for more meaningful, higher level emotional and spiritual  experiences.    I’m not going to rehash this topic any more but rather point you to two articles by anthropologist David Graeber linked to below.  First let me make one final remark.   The reason why corporate work has not vanished, but rather enslaved us to the longest work week in the world by many measures, is much more sinister than Graeber postulates.   It’s because class and hierarchy (the state) would collapse without forced corporate work.  Corporate capitalism is an economic control system.  I know that probably upsets a lot of brainwashed, career corporate workers who love serving their masters and exploiting the working poor in the process, but it is not about freedom or free markets or democracy.   That is purely pathological bullshit.   So if corporate work was moderated and we only produced what we needed and did away with these make-work jobs,  that means wealth would normalize and redistribute itself naturally to a more egalitarian system.  That compares to the state violence used today to prop up wealth created by forced corporate work.   Which, by the way, is going to happen anyway.   Because a systemic failure of corporate capitalism, communism or any socioeconomic control system would have the same normalizing effect as people being able to work for what they cumulatively need rather than being forced to participate in make-work to please and enrich our masters.  That is coming because of the massive overcapacity in the global capitalist system.  That slack is going to disappear and that means corporations are likely to fall like dominoes or see their footprints shrink dramatically.  Again, all written of time and again on here.  It’s coming.  

The first article is how many British people find their work to be meaningless.   And, the second is Graeber’s remarks about the mind-numbing ignorance of bureaucracy.     I obviously share not only these perspectives but these experiences.   Working in large, bureaucratic corporations is really no different than working in large, bureaucratic government.   Both are systemically incompetent.  The universe has clearly shown us in history that when any ecosystem become dominated by a monoculture or overbearing species, (like globalization, massive corporations and centrally-planned societies) that it causes ecosystem collapse.    That collapse has already happened.   We are just waiting on the smoke to clear.   ie, For the various forms of violence (control) propping up these pigs to give way to the truth.

Money And Markets Update - China (Yawn. Or Is That Yuan?)

Let’s head back to China for the umpteenth time.    Anyone following the financial press in the last few days knows that China just devalued its currency.    For the last ten years we have been told time and again that China’s currency would go higher.   Or, that China could not devalue their currency because they would experience capital flight.   Ahem.   All I can say is I told you so.  Over and over and over and over.   China is unfolding exactly as I said it would for the last decade.  

What is happening in China now reminds me of the ignorance that is so prevalent in this world.   For the last decade I have written very detailed posts over and again about what was coming in China, I remember cover newspaper and magazine journalism, Wall Street, corporate CEOs and the like raving about the brilliance of China’s commie leadership for much of that time.  Did any CEO, politician, military leader, economist, journalist or Harvard-educated Wall Street banker foresee any of what is happening in China today?   I mean, for God’s sake, was there a single one?   Not a single one that I am aware of.   Hell, supposed investment genius Jim Rogers moved to China back in 2006 because he was so sure the U.S. was headed for collapse and the world was moving east to China.    I mocked him at that time…. which was right about the time I was calling for a collapse in the Shanghai Index.   Soon thereafter it fell 70% and so did the fortunes of Jim Rogers.    In fact, as I noted on here years ago, I had a meeting with one of the most prominent hedge funds about that time as well.   The arrogance of their chief economist and model builder, a PhD in bullshit, was only surpassed by his ignorance.    When I told him what was about to happen in China, to oil, to gold, to U.S. stocks, etc, he literally treated me like a child and mocked me.   I politely let him treat me like a dog.   I even barked a little bit and licked his boots.   Soon thereafter everything I said would happen did and they were on the wrong side of every trade.  

My point?   We all need to quit listening to the supposed “experts” who are really nothing more than state actors who use their special privilege or rigged rules created by the state to plunder the rest of us.    They know how to plunder.   They don’t know anything about your journey or what is best for you.   Only you or those helping you on your journey know that.   Just about everyone who is near the top of this system is wildly incompetent, pathological and even more ignorant.   Not stupid.   Ignorant.   And most often, willfully so.   The universe loves ignorance.   Because ignorance gives the universe something to do.   You know, other than to just expand or whatever mainstream science says it is doing.   It gives the universe a chance to teach us lessons.  And a big one is coming. 

This is why I haven’t watched a single episode of TV news in literally twenty years.   The “news” is nothing more than hindsight’s 20-20 vision.   None of the supposed experts are really experts at anything.   They are rolled out after the fact to give us explanations, almost always wrong, of what just happened.   That is, even though none of them ever saw anything coming.   Mind you, what is yet to come in China is a terminal failure the likes of which I cannot even comprehend.   But even now, after this small devaluation that rocked global markets, we hear the experts giving all of their wrong reasons.    But people still believe that these self-interested, pathological corporate, political and banking assholes are gods whether they are in China, Europe, Russia, the U.S. or elsewhere.    And that they will steer us through what is yet to come or fix our economy or fix our democracy or fix our social ills or whatnot.   Good luck with that.   They created this class-based, anti-democratic statist system that f*cked everything up.   There is no one coming to save you.   You are the person you have been waiting for.

The headlines everywhere are that China is starting a currency war.   I’ve beaten this like a rented mule as well.   A common false meme perpetuated by useful idiots.  Any economic system that relies on class, forced competition and social Darwinism, to name a few wonderful features, is a control system that perpetuates itself through violence.   Ditto with any monetary system that forces humanity to effectively wage war against each other to capture enough money to stay alive.  Ever since Bretton Woods fell apart under Nixon’s war mongering, wildly corrupt administration, the world has been in one big currency war.   China devalued its currency a few percentage points in the last few days.   Twenty years ago it devalued its currency by almost half to lure away American and European capital and jobs.   And our capitalist masters squealed with glee as they told democracy to f*ck off.   (Reagan deregulated private, for-profit capital but Clinton deregulated its national borders.  Well, and our current communist president continues those efforts through his global corporate governance agreements.)   Currency wars are a part of capitalism.   Always.   Forever.  Period.   There is nothing new to what China is doing.   Every nation uses its currency to wage war for its own benefit under this system.    Or, is a catastrophe as a result of another nation waging war against its currency.   Other Asian nations are seeing their currencies weaken considerably so China needed to do the same thing or lose exports.   Lost exports mean big juju.   This is all consistent with one of the major themes on here that we are going to have a trade settlement crisis.   That doesn’t necessarily mean a collapsing dollar as so many people have inaccurately squawked about.   The dollar is and has been roaring and will likely continue to do so.   Again, all noted on here for ages.

China’s currency is effectively worthless.    We are going to experience far larger devaluations than the few percent over the last few days.   The disaster is so large that capital leaving the country is never coming back.    Even its communist party leaders (class and hierarchy) have smuggled out billions to leave its citizens holding the bag for the mess the state has created.    China is finished.   I’m curious what happens to Mitt Romney’s private equity-owned factories when China’s currency collapses?   Umm, huge unrecoverable losses?   Will Apple be able to actually fulfill product out of China if their currency collapses?   Because after that comes social unrest.   Again.   A long time theme on here.   Bet those pinheads who have shoved Apple’s stock into the stratosphere never thought of that.    What about all of those people who told you China was going to become the reserve currency and replace the dollar?  Hahaha.    Then there is China’s Asian development bank that every single financial source and blogger noted was doom for the dollar or the U.S. financial empire.   But on here, I noted that it spelled doom for the yuan and China.   Just months later from the announcement of their development bank, they are devaluing their currency.    The Asian development bank is a Hail Mary by China to pay nations to take their massive excess production capacity so that they don’t experience an employment collapse.  Which would tank the Chinese communist system and likely lead to revolution or China slamming the door shut on the rest of the world and possibly lashing out through war to maintain its power.  Debt schmet.   Debt has never been the issue on this blog.   Contrarily, debt is an illusion.   It’s a control construct that humanity allows to live only in their minds.   Vanquishing all of the world’s debt would solve none of the economic problems.   Because the problems are the state and capitalism’s endless overproduction and overconsumption cycles that lead to crisis.   Then ultimately when that crisis develops, as it has today, no state wants to give up the economic power they have created for themselves by taking out that massive global production slack.   So, instead we have a ratcheting up in economic violence and economic warfare that  often spills over into military wars.    All wars are wars created by the state (class and hierarchy).    Taking out production capacity will destroy the state’s ability to control their citizens as chattel so they can exploit them.    Taking out production is the real issue because it is going to lead to massive global unemployment.   It’s coming.   There’s no way around it.  But the universe is going to do it for us as the state clings to its intent of control over truth.

Corporate work is how the state controls humanity.   If it can no longer provide work, then the state will collapse.    Corporate work is not democracy.   It’s the state.   Hitler provided corporate work.   Stalin provided corporate work.   The British Empire provided corporate work.   So long as it provided enough work, regardless of whether it was exterminating Jews or intellectuals or other innocent people, or sending people to the Gulag to die by the tens of millions, or addicting all of China to opium while murdering untold numbers of people in India, they were able to maintain control over their populations.   And that dynamic is still at work in the world today.   The United States is no different.   Nor is any other state.  Clausewitz brilliantly stated long ago that politics is war by another name.   Let’s be honest  with ourselves.   Corporate capitalism is war by another name.   And those of us enslaved to corporate work are waging war against our fellow man.  Ignorantly, might I add.

I want to again reiterate a point I have made on here over the years.   China is embracing capitalism as it is possibly in the midst of terminal failure.   That’s the brilliance of communism, the state and central planners.   China is in a very unique situation but make no mistake this is a global phenomena.   Hundreds of millions of China’s citizens led a generally rural and agrarian existence.   The state and its inventions of communism, capitalism and the like really had little control over these people’s daily lives.   At least comparatively.  These people were in some ways self-sufficient to some degree or created local economies, some of which was certainly underground and barter-based, that benefitted the localities and people rather than the state.   But China has now “lifted” hundreds of millions of people out of this “poverty”.   What really has happened is that taking someone out of a generally rural setting and stuffing them into a high-rise apartment (or in this country, into Section 8 housing) now means they are completely reliant on the state.   They have little to no ability to fend for themselves other than to serve the state, corporations, bankers, etc.   Or to serve those who serve the state.   The question now becomes, with the state under massive pressure around the world, will it be able to continue to loot, steal and pilfer (in the case of corporations – extract enough rent)  from enough people or enough other nations to be able to continue to provide corporate/state work or “employment” to those that are now completely reliant on it for their survival?  Don’t bet on it.   That is possibly the biggest crisis of our times.    

==>>World War III may very well be that humanity is now at war with the state to rid itself of that virus.  And a part of that is states warring with each other, whether it is politically, economically or militarily, to continue to loot and pillage in an effort to maintain that control over their own chattel by providing them corporate/state work.

So, as China’s mess becomes more and more apparent, how much money do you think the United States, as one example, is going to exchange China for its yuan as their crisis metastasizes?   The current rate?  ie, about six yuan to a dollar?   Maybe they will eventually require China to hand over 5, 10 or 20x what the current exchange rate is.   One hundred yuan for a dollar instead of six yuan for a dollar?   Maybe.  Would you give China six yuan for a dollar if you knew that their currency was effectively worthless and their economy was teetering on the precipice?   Hell no.   In fact, maybe you would refuse to even give them any exchange rate.   Maybe any price is too risky.   Maybe the United States will instead start to demand that China pays them in dollars or gold or they won’t accept any exchange rate.  Then what?   Oh, yeah.   All of China’s Treasuries will need to be cashed in or it will be forced to start selling gold.  Oh, well, what a surprise.  They have already started to do that because they are in the early stages of a liquidity crisis.    That’s why they are devaluing.    Because they need cash.   Specifically dollars.   So they need to keep their exports attractive in dollar terms.   What comes next?   Maybe China’s national investment fund that has been going around buying dollar-based assets (and other denominated assets) will have to start liquidating those assets.    Look, all of this has been anticipated and written of ad nauseam on here.    China is an unprecedented mess.   It always has been.   There was no brilliance seven or eight years ago that turned into incompetence and fraud today.   It always was incompetence and fraud.  

There are three recent stories regarding China that are worth mentioning.   One is that China is seeking to “rewrite” the internet in order for the state to maintain a degree of ignorance needed for the communist grip on Chinese citizens aka people are chattel of the state.  This is consistent with western state efforts to “regulate” the internet.   That includes manipulating public opinion by even hiring online trolls to sway opinion as was exposed primarily by the British press in the last year.  But was also exposed by Sharyl Attkisson.   The second is that China is now cracking down hard on freedoms as the mess communist central planners have created destabilizes just as I wrote they would many years ago.   And the last is the communist party in China feared that the CIA may have been trying to bribe its officials through the assistance of American corporations.   I find this unusual report very interesting because it’s clear this is a standard method through which the U.S. dominates other nations.   The United States clearly puts officials in other countries in compromising positions then exploits that to their benefit.   Everyone has a price and the U.S. finds a way to exploit that dynamic.   Not that China, Russia or other states don’t do the same thing.   They certainly do.    

Shanghai Composite with potential support lines drawn.

Let’s look at the Shanghai Composite.    This chart is some days old but it really hasn’t changed considerably.   We have had waterfall declines numerous times in numerous parts of the world since 2008.   And those waterfall declines have been followed by massive rallies again and again.    That is a symptom of a collapsed global economy.  ie, In a functioning economy of any sort, money is first created to produce something.  And it must flow through the economy until it eventually becomes some type of excess that can be used by some economic entity to buy assets.    Do you think that is what is happening today?   Money is created out of thin air to magically buy assets and create an illusion of wealth not just in the U.S. but around the world.  Yet, no wealth is actually being created with that money.    This is how corporations and class privilege steals democracy’s wealth or steals from the poor and working class.    It’s what is happening today in Greece with the debt for equity swaps that grant foreign corporations, under the direction of foreign states, the rights to steal public and democratic resources in return for some degree of debt relief or whatnot.    (The United States and its corporations have perfected this technique and has made it an art form.)    So we have seen these massive rallies and declines over and again in financial assets around the world.   Is this time in China different?    Well, China’s bubble is unprecedented on many levels.    I noted a few posts ago that China’s stock markets could go much higher before it collapses.  Or not.   We just don’t know.  There is no precedence for this type of Rube Goldberg machine that is in China.  Specifically, a generally closed society with a nonconvertible currency.   But the interventions and attempts at stabilizing their exchange looks a lot like the United States in 1929 and so far they are not having any different effect than 1929 either.  At least not yet.    It should look a lot like 1929 because as noted on here many times, China, like the U.S. in 1929, is the biggest turd in the pool.    And the biggest problem in China is that they own all of the world’s gold just like the U.S. in 1929.   But, while it was physical gold for the U.S. in 1929 when gold was money, it’s proverbial gold or the dominant money today which is the dollar. (As well as gold itself)  China has the biggest hoard of dollars because of their mercantilist, looting economic structure.   That statement has been written on here time and again over the years and it’s far different than the infatuation with the gold bugs who believe China is their savior.   Or the people who thought China was going to take over the U.S. economic mantle.   Both of which are absurd and are now starting to expose themselves as such.      

We really have two major possibilities in China as I see it.   One is that the Shanghai market will push to substantially new highs.   That is looking dubious given the continued instability and loss of liquidity that has been developing for quite some time.   China may have to start the printing presses again for this to happen.  But there is a gargantuan amount of yuan savings already in the country that cannot leave so, again, this is really unprecedented.   Or, the other  possiblity is that this  waterfall decline will be followed by a failed attempt at stabilization for some time and the market will break.   It could break to the highlighted areas in the above chart and then attempt to rally again or it could be a break similar to 1929.    In 1929, there was an initial waterfall decline in the U.S. that is shown by the arrow on the chart below, followed by a lot of rhetoric from “the system” that big buyers were stepping in to restore confidence and there was nothing to worry about.   Then, within a reasonably short period of time the market cracked and fell 95%.   If that is where China is headed, you can see from the 1929 fall in the Dow below how much further China may have to yet fall.     Many of the responses from Chinese officials and financial industry clowns are similar to the responses made by U.S.counterparts after the first waterfall decline in 1929. 

Regardless of what happens next in China, it is now setting up for a currency crisis or outright currency collapse.  Remember when the world was universally calling for China to unpeg its currency so that it would rise?   That included U.S. politicians who were responding to the economic threat of a cheap yuan.   What do you think the U.S. will do if the yuan craters from here?   They will do what I have been stating they will do.   Slap import tariffs on Chinese goods or witness their own economic collapse.   As the dollar rises violently, the flip side of that most of the world’s currencies are now collapsing to record lows.  Again, another long term call on here.   Their currency is pegged to the dollar for now but they will be forced to abandon that peg just as Russia did.   And when Russia finally abandoned its peg, the ruble collapsed and so did the economy.   Russia is now literally in a depression.    And that is where China is headed.

 

100 year chart of the Dow with 1929’s initial break highlighted.

I noted about half way through last year that liquidity was draining out of the global economy at a far faster pace than leading into 2008’s collapse and now we are starting to see some of the early consequences with China, Puerto Rico, Greece, emerging market currencies, the miserable economic data in the BRICs, etc.   This is a much more dangerous moment than leading into 2008.   While I don’t involve myself in shorter term market moves any more, I will say that total financial system collapse could start at any time this year or into next year.  We shall see.    I still subscribe to a commodities pricing service and prices of steel in parts of Asia have recently collapsed to the lowest levels on record.  Ever.  That Asian “miracle” too is a farce whether it is India, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea or anyone else.  

Money And Markets Update–An Introduction

This is the second part of a money and markets update.  The first post was April 23rd of this year.   I would encourage you to consider reading that post first, if you have not done so.   I summarized a lot of points made on here over the years re China.   Especially if you are interested in what is happening right now in China.   There has been a lot of misrepresentation of what is happening in China.  Specifically by many mainstream bloggers and the financial press.   The Asian development bank, as just one example, is a sign of impending doom for China rather than a threat to the United States and dollar hegemony.  Something I noted in that prior post.

The first topic I want to repeat is that everything we see happening today was set in motion long ago.   Political, economic, monetary or legal decisions made decades ago.   It’s very common for the mainstream media and political pundits, who really don’t understand anything they talk about, to misrepresent the complexities and nuances of intricate and complicated systems.   Because they are so ignorant, they simply make completely buffoonish statements like the economy was great under Clinton.   Or, Bush caused all of this.    Clinton was, in fact, destroying the United States economy as president.   Just about every major outcome I have been anticipating for the last five or ten years on here, and even longer elsewhere, is coming to pass or revealing itself.  The world is unfolding on a macro level exactly as I have been saying it would long before there were any cracks in the global economy.   My point in this isn’t to beat my chest but to point out with clarity that the world is experiencing systemic ignorance and systemic incompetence due to institutionalization.    Obama, Pelosi, Boehner, Wall Street CEOs, Corporate CEOs, the mainstream media, the financial media, the Chinese communist party, the EU, central bankers, politicians in nearly every nation and the like have all underestimated the scope and scale of what is happening.   That they and their kind have created.   They have called this crisis over time and again.   Yet, everything continues to get worse.    Donald Trump is completely right.   Politicians are idiots.  All of them.  So are the dunces that control political parties.   So are all of the mega corporation CEOs.    A few good eggs may slip through every so often but that is an anomaly in The Matrix.   This system guarantees incompetence and pathology rises to the top and is richly rewarded.   And so are all of us who serve that incompetence and pathology.   It has always been this way.   Always.   The intent of control that must exist for hierarchical and class-based control systems to exist requires that dipshits, morons, cretins, crooks, personality disorders, psychopaths and dunces rise to the top.    If you still think Obama is brilliant because he went to Harvard, you need to wake up.  The only thing Obama was brilliant at was deceiving his voters.    

Anyway, leadership’s most redeeming quality is not about brilliance.   It’s about a loving intent.   A true desire to serve humanity or to serve the common good out of real selflessness.   That is not a politician.   It never has been and never will be.   Ever.   Politics is an institution of the ego and will disappear from this earth forever at some point.    It serves no purpose to humanity.   It serves a purpose to the state that seeks to control humanity.    Any system driven by control constructs like profit and money guarantees that those who are best at maintaining that control system or subverting truth, will be the most successful.    That dynamic is what allows outright evil to flourish.   People who foresaw a dystopian future like Huxley and Orwell understood that humanity is enslaved to control systems like the state, corporate capitalism, communism, etc.   If you are still reading nonsense about the virtues of free market corporate capitalism and the like, I would suggest you consider emotionally backing up quite substantially because you are so brainwashed that you will never be able to see reality until it’s well too late.   Frankly, understanding that state and socioeconomic constructs are control systems is one of the major reasons, along with a strong understanding of complex systems, along with a dash of planetary & mundane astrology, that has allowed me to anticipate so much of what is happening today.   But finally after centuries, if not thousands of years, of deceit, humanity all across the world is waking up to the systemic ignorance, hypocrisy and incompetence that we have been enslaved to.   And, that is the most profound element of this crisis.    This has been brewing for decades but it’s now forming critical mass.    There is no going back.   Once someone starts to become enlightened, they can never go back to being ignorant.  They can never be re-inserted into The Matrix.   This system has already failed on many levels.   Anyone who thinks politicians or Wall Street or corporate leadership is going to save them still has some waking up to do.   They are the ones driving humanity over the cliff.   The fate of this system has already been set.   There is nothing that is going to stop it.   Our fate was sealed long ago.  In fact, as I have noted on here in the past, many systems are already in terminal failure but they are being propped up by violence and force.   Some of that is money printing, some of that is rigged rules to the game that benefit specific actors, politicians and corporations, some of that is pretending that reality doesn’t exist by suspending accounting rules or whatnot, some of that is the ego’s intent of control that is more clearly understood as cranial-anal inversion.  When the liquidity recedes, we are likely to see institutions of the ego or of control fall like dominos all across the globe.  This has been a major theme on here for a long, long time.  

Now onto the post.  I’m going to break this update into chunks rather than dump a long post up at once.   So every few days there will be another money and markets update until I get through everything I want to say.    Let me start the financial and market update with an overarching comment I have posted before.   Some people have the belief system that market participants are going to wake up and sell out of rational choice.    And that will start the back end of this crisis.   How rational do you think participants are if I am correct and we are in the biggest financial bubble the world has ever seen and that the U.S. economy peaked forty-odd years ago?   (By the way, I am completely certain of the qualitative voracity of the data analysis behind that statement.  The Roman Empire did not collapse at its peak.   It started its decline long before with internal corruption and self-interest of class.)    Not very rational,  And not very rational for forty years-odd.   Markets reflect no semblance of rationality nor do they represent any semblance of value.   They haven’t for a very, very long time.   Finance has been unhinged from the economy since at least Ronald Reagan’s corporatocracy and military-industrial complex focused economic policies that we are still suffering under today.     The U.S. government policy is still supply-side and trickle-down economics.   My point is there will be no awakening and selloff by rational minds.   It will be a forced unwinding just like 2008.   But this time it will be global and likely terminal.   Market participants, central banks, Wall Street, politicians, corporate CEOs, hedge funds and the like are all deluded as to what reality truly is.    Their arrogance is only exceeded by their ignorance.   If they understood reality as it truly exists, they would be panicked and doing anything and everything in their power to try to unwind the systemic economic, corporate, social, monetary and financial ignorance they have created before the universe does it for them.  Instead, they believe their power is omniscient and their actions lead to endless milk and honey.   They are true believers in their own pathological megalomania.  The incredible arrogance and ignorance of class truly is astonishing and without precedence on such a global scale.   In reality, class has created an incredibly unstable control system whose lipstick gives the appearance of brilliance through constant rigging and manipulating the economy, monetary and financial markets. But each new action or attempt at controlling the economy, results in greater and greater unintended consequences and future shocks they are too ignorant to appreciate.    That means the spring keeps being wound tighter and tighter.   When this pig sinks, it will be far worse than anyone in the system could ever imagine.  And when it happens, it will be far too late to react.    The rapidity at which this system will expose its instabilities and contradictions is far too overwhelming for anyone to deal with.   That was another theme I noted leading up to the 2008 collapse.     

Anything that money has touched has become dystopian because of the profit motive (exploitation, victimization and predation) and self-interest of class and hierarchy that is private, for-profit corporate capitalism.   I’ve noted on here in past posts that everything is equally distorted.  If one truly understands complex systems, you get that statement.   Politicians, central banks and Wall Street don’t.   We look at small caps and see they are discounting over 100 years of earnings and hear from Janet Yellen that small caps may be overheated.  (Anymore, even the Wall Street Journal reports only operating earnings aka made up bullshit and many sites don’t include companies reporting losses in index earnings.   That and the gaming of non-GAAP results hides a massive crisis in corporate balance sheets and financial results.  By the way, Barrons pulled a similar stunt right before the collapse in 2000 as well.  I distinctly remember it.  This con game has been going on for a long time.)    Or the posts I have put up highlighting the Dow Transports in the last 80 years, with the first forty up 1x and the next forty up 70x as nothing more than a monetary illusion that shows the level of distortion since Reagan’s economic voodoo.  

Money is fungible.   That means when you open the spigot to a profit-driven, class-based private banking and corporate syndicate system, everything they seek to exploit or profit from will become equally f*cked up and aberrated.   And so will the contradictions on the opposite side of their exploitation and profit.    Everything.   I mean everything.  Not just markets.  I mean every social dynamic in this nation and globally.   Everything has become an aberrated illusion papered over by money.  This has been going on for at least 40 years.    Now, mind you, that isn’t just stocks, bonds, art, real estate, collectibles, etc.   It’s also the negative social manifestations that monetary fungibility has created within the state (class & hierarchy).   That is, one percent owning almost all wealth, corporations dominating humanity and owning all of democracy’s resources,  the ownership of political parties by the economic aristocracy, debt slavery, wage slavery, prescription drug addiction, humanity as corporate state chattel and property, the military-industrial complex bubble, growing welfare roles, exponential growth of Social Security Disability roles, unfunded pension liabilities, endless wars, massive state debt, unprecedented overreliance on the state for every aspect of our lives, record poverty and whatnot.   All of this was necessary for class & hierarchy to survive.   Capitalism, as a social control system with incredibly powerful contradictions, requires force and violence to survive.  These are the manifestations of that violence.    Morons who make trite and meaningless statements about free markets and corporate capitalism being synonymous with freedom who are so prevalent on the political right are wildly ignorant to what they clearly don’t want to see.    Willful ignorance of the perfectly deceptive ego.     The force necessary to keep this system going must be consistently increased in order to paper over the massive inherent and ever-increasing volatility and contradictions it creates.    So, the greater and greater power granted to “market forces” (corporations) that every U.S. president and Congress has created, essentially since Roosevelt’s thin reforms, was required to keep this system from collapsing.    The illusion or delusion, depending on which side of this false reality you are on, is unprecedented.  Nothing is real anymore.  I mean that literally.   Even simple and esoteric data points like the size of homes is unsustainable.   And I’ll break that statement about a completely false reality down at some point.   Everything is a manifestation of the ego’s endless self-deceits.  And all of that deceit has been institutionalized by the state through what we are told is law but is really nothing more than contrived bullshit meant to benefit the state.   

A friend of mine said something to me the other day that stuck.   He said that everything is a rich man’s trick.    I thought to myself how incredibly profound that simple statement was.   This is the world of the glorified self or, if you will, a world that glorifies the rich man’s ego and all of its  tricks and deceits.    This is a world where class has almost perfectly and universally waged war on the rest of humanity and used countless billions of us to wage that war on their behalf.   That is, through the state and its control constructs of capitalism, socialism, communism, feudalism, mercantilism, colonialism, neoliberalism and every other ism it can dream up.  

Next up, another look at China.