31 Jul 2012
Have you noticed this very deceptive form of inflation? "You will when your stomach starts growling" - Sovereign Man
Simon Black: Bergen, Norway.
Every summer, my colleagues and I invite young people from all over
the world for an intensive 4-day workshop about freedom and
entrepreneurship.
This year’s workshop just concluded yesterday afternoon, and it was, without doubt, the best one ever.
58 students attended from countries as diverse as Tajikistan,
Bangladesh, Japan, Venezuela, Singapore, Russia, the Philippines,
Greece, Malaysia, Turkey, Australia, China, Belarus, Switzerland,
England, Poland, Canada, the US, and many more.
These are highly motivated young people. They get it. They know that
the system has completely failed them. They know that the old path of
‘study hard, get into a good school, get a good job, work your way up
the ladder, and retire’ is no longer valid for their generation.
They understand that they will not be able to count on their
governments for anything. They realize that they only have themselves to
rely on. They’re eager to learn, and to execute.
The experience of helping shape these sharp young minds is truly
invigorating. And for many of the students, it can be life changing.
Something interesting happened this year, though.
For the past several years, we have been conducting this event at a
lovely resort in the Lithuanian countryside. It’s a pretty place– a
nice, comfortable, relaxing environment away from all the noise and
distraction of daily life.
Now, I pay for the whole thing myself. I rent out the entire resort
and pick up the total cost of food, lodging, entertainment, etc. For
this year’s event, my staff was able to negotiate the same price as last
year, and I was happy about this.
But after the first two days, we began to notice something different: the resort was actually skimping out on our food portions!
Hydrino? Electrical Power from Water Vapor Fuel
Blacklight Power, Summery: BlackLight has achieved a proprietary breakthrough power-producing
system continuously operating that converts ubiquitous H2O vapor
directly into electricity as confirmed by six separate independent
individual or groups of leading scientists from academia and industry
with Ph.D.s from prestigious universities including the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology [validation reports].
Specifically, BlackLight has developed a commercially competitive,
nonpolluting source of energy that forms a predicted, previously
undiscovered, more stable form of hydrogen called “Hydrino” that
releases two hundred times more energy than burning hydrogen enabling
ubiquitous H2O vapor to serve as the source of H2 fuel [Hydrino characterization/Hydrino spectrum].
(Left: 1999 Dr. Randell Mills says he can change the face of physics. The Scientfic Establishment thinks he's nuts.)
The Catalyst Induced Hydrino Transition (CIHT) electrochemical cell invented to harness this fundamentally new primary energy source as electrical output uses a catalyst to cause hydrogen atoms of water molecules to transition to lower-energy, Hydrino states by allowing their electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus, resulting in a release of energy that is intermediate between chemical and nuclear energies [CIHT cell].
Petition to put bankers behind bars. More than 687,000 signed
Petition to put Bank(st)ers behind bars - link.
banzai7
Virtual Virtual Economy - Max Keiser with Teri Buhl + "Post Capitalist Central Bank Command and Control Cronyism i.e. Theft." Eurozone "make or break" - Max Keiser, Simon Dixon and Paul Barrow
Bill Gross: "The Cult Of Equity May Be Dying, But The Cult Of Inflation May Only Have Just Begun"
Submitted by Tyler Durden: Want to buy stocks on anything than a greater
fool theory, or hope and prayer that someone with "other people's money"
will bail you out of a losing position when the market goes bidless?
That may change after reading the latest monthly letter from Pimco's
Bill Gross whose crusade against risk hits a crescendo. Yes, he is
talking his book (and talking down his equity asset allocation), but his
reasons are all too valid: "The cult of equity is dying. Like a once
bright green aspen turning to subtle shades of yellow then red in the
Colorado fall, investors’ impressions of “stocks for the long run” or
any run have mellowed as well. I “tweeted” last month that the souring
attitude might be a generational thing: “Boomers can’t take risk. Gen X
and Y believe in Facebook but not its stock. Gen Z has no money.”....
Now in 2012, however, an investor can periodically compare the return of
stocks for the past 10, 20 and 30 years, and find that long-term
Treasury bonds have been the higher returning and obviously “safer”
investment than a diversified portfolio of equities. In turn it would
show that higher risk is usually, but not always, rewarded with excess
return."
So what is a cult chasing figure supposed to do? Well, the cult of
equities may be over. But the cult of reflating inflation is just
beginning: "The primary magic potion that policymakers have
always applied in such a predicament is to inflate their way out of the
corner. The easiest way to produce 7–8% yields for bonds over the next
30 years is to inflate them as quickly as possible to 7–8%! Woe to the
holder of long-term bonds in the process! Similarly for stocks
because they fare poorly as well in inflationary periods. Yet if profits
can be reflated to 5–10% annual growth rates, if the U.S. economy can
grow nominally at 6–7% as it did in the 70s and 80s, then America’s and
indeed the global economy’s liabilities can be “reflated” away. The
problem with all of that of course is that inflation doesn’t create real
wealth and it doesn’t fairly distribute its pain and benefits to
labor/government/or corporate interests. Unfair though it may
be, an investor should continue to expect an attempted inflationary
solution in almost all developed economies over the next few years and
even decades.
Oregon Man Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail - for Collecting Rainwater on His Property???
By Kendra Alleyne: A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and
over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to
collect and use rainwater.
Gary Harrington of Eagle Point, Ore., says he plans to appeal his
conviction in Jackson County (Ore.) Circuit Court on nine misdemeanor
charges under a 1925 law for having what state water managers called
“three illegal reservoirs” on his property – and for filling the
reservoirs with rainwater and snow runoff.
“The government is bullying,” Harrington told CNSNews.com in an interview Thursday.
“They’ve just gotten to be big bullies and if you just lay over and
die and give up, that just makes them bigger bullies. So, we as
Americans, we need to stand on our constitutional rights, on our
rights as citizens and hang tough. This is a good country, we’ll
prevail,” he said.
The court has given Harrington two weeks to report to the Jackson County Jail to begin serving his sentence. (audio interview>)
Escape From Economics - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Readers ask me from time to time to recommend a book from which they can learn about economics.
The problem with reading a book to learn economics that is taught in
the universities and practiced in Washington is that economics is now a
highly formalized subject based on abstract models and assumptions and
has been mathematized. It is not that the subject is totally useless and
without any applicability to real world problems. Rather, the problem
is that the discipline both lags an ever-changing world and got some
things wrong at the beginning. Consequently, learning economics places
one inside a box where some of the tools and understanding provided are
outdated and incorrect.
For example, every textbook will draw a picture of agriculture as the
perfect example of competitive markets in which “no producer’s output
is large enough to affect price.” This made sense when one-third of the
US work force was on family farms. Today, American agriculture is
dominated by corporations and agribusiness. Additionally, part of the
disastrous financial deregulation pushed by no-think economists and
special interests was the removal of position limits on speculators.
Formerly, speculators smoothed agricultural and commodity markets by
buying and selling in order to stabilize price over periods when supply
and demand were out of balance. Now speculators can dominate markets
and rig prices to the benefit of their profits.
There are many such examples where economics no longer speaks to the real world.
The age of inequality: The 1 per cent and the rest - New Scientist
An appeal for fairness in society
ANYONE who has children - or, for that matter, anyone
who's ever been a child - will testify that we appreciate the importance
of fairness from an early age, or at least its usefulness when
appealing to authority. "But that's not fair!" is one of the earliest
indications that a child is developing a moral sense - even if their
conception of fairness doesn't always accord with their parents' view.
We know that this commitment to
fairness persists into adulthood. Experiments in behavioural economics
demonstrate that we will punish "free riders" - those who benefit from
others' efforts without contributing equally themselves - even if that
means we end up worse off ourselves. To put it another way, our
cognitive biases mean that we punish perceived unfairness even when that
conflicts with our narrow economic interests.
And narrow is the operative word.
Considered within the context of isolated transactions, such apparently
self-defeating behaviour is hard to rationalise. Set within a social context, however, it makes more sense.
Societies which prize fairness and egalitarianism may actually be more
stable; these values appear to have been held dear by our distant
ancestors (see "Inequality: Why egalitarian societies died out").
But we seem to have abandoned this emphasis on equality when it comes to the design of modern civilisation (see "Inequality: Who are the 1 per cent?").
Inequality is rife both within and between modern societies. Western
societies, in particular, are profoundly skewed, by almost any measure
you care to name.
And yet for much of the past 40 years,
inequality has remained a topic of serious discussion for just a small
cadre of academics. Only recently has the Occupy movement, among other
developments (e.g. Fathers 4 Justice), brought it to the forefront of public attention.
Troops to fill Thousands of supposedly 'sold out' seats vacant across events in the 'UK Orwellian Nightmare Olympics'
The Fed On Gold Price Manipulation
Submitted by Tyler Durden: Lately various media outlets have been swamped
with stories and allegations of precious metal manipulation ranging
from the arcane, to the bizarre to the outright ridiculous. At issue is
not that these claims of price fraud are unfounded - they very well
may be completely true - but without a notarized facsimile of an actual trade ticket signed
by Brian Sack, or his replacement Simon Potter, or any of the BIS
traders confirming they are indeed selling gold on behalf of the Fed,
BOE, ECB, SNB or BOJ simply to keep the price of the metal down, what
such constant factless accusations (and no, sorry, a chart
showing that the price of gold may go up or go down sharply indicates
merely that and nothing about the underlying factors for such a move) do
is to habituate the broader public to the real issues surrounding
precious metal, and other asset class, manipulation. So instead of
searching for circumstantial evidence which one can easily find
everywhere, we decided to go straight to the source. To do that we go
back to a post we wrote back in September of 2009, based on an internal
previously confidential Fed document, which conveniently enough
explains everything vis-a-vis gold manipulation and leaves nothing to
speculation or misinterpretation. 
Zero Hedge presents the smoking gun
that may provide responses to all the various open questions regarding
the Fed's Modus Operandi in the gold arena which answer the core question - motive -
courtesy of a declassified memorandum, written by none other than the
then Fed Chairman, and addressed to the president of the United
States.