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Lies You Will Hear As The Economic Collapse Progresses
It is undeniable; the final collapse triggers are upon us, triggers alternative economists have been warning about since the initial implosion of 2008. In the years since the derivatives disaster, there has been no end to the absurd and ludicrous propaganda coming out of mainstream financial outlets and as the situation in markets becomes worse, the propaganda will only increase. This might seem counter-intuitive to many. You would think that the more obvious the economic collapse becomes, the more alternative analysts will be vindicated and the more awake and aware the average person will be. Not necessarily…
In fact, the mainstream spin machine is going into high speed the more negative data is exposed and absorbed into the markets. If you know your history, then you know that this is a common tactic by the establishment elite to string the public along with false hopes so that they do not prepare or take alternative measures while the system crumbles around their ears. At the onset of the Great Depression the same strategies were used. Consider if you’ve heard similar quotes to these in the mainstream news over the past couple months:
John Maynard Keynes in 1927: “We will not have any more crashes in our time.”
H.H. Simmons, president of the New York Stock Exchange, Jan. 12, 1928: “I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool’s paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future.”
Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist, The New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929: “There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.” And on 17, 1929: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months.”
W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 30, 1929: “This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan… that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years.”
Harvard Economic Society, Nov. 10, 1929: “… a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall.”
Here is the issue – as I have ALWAYS said, economic collapse is not a singular event, it is a process. The global economy has been in the process of collapse since 2008 and it never left that path. Those who were ignorant took government statistics at face value and the manipulated bull market as legitimate and refused to acknowledge the fundamentals. Now, with markets recently suffering one of the greatest freefalls since the 2008/2009 crash, they are witnessing the folly of their assumptions, but that does not mean they will accept them or apologize for them outright. If there is one lesson I have learned well during my time in the Liberty Movement, it is to never underestimate the power of normalcy bias.
There were plenty of “up days” in the markets during the Great Depression, and this kept the false dream of a quick recovery alive for a large percentage of the American population for many years. Expect numerous “stunning stock reversals” as the collapse of our era progresses, but always remember that it is the overall TREND that matters far more than any one positive or negative trading day (unless you open down 1000 points as we did on Monday), and even more important than the trends are the economic fundamentals.
The establishment has made every effort to hide the fundamentals from the public through far reaching misrepresentations of economic stats. However, the days of effective disinformation in terms of the financial system are coming to an end. As investors and the general public begin to absorb the reality that the global economy is indeed witnessing a vast crisis scenario and acknowledges real numbers over fraudulent numbers, the only recourse of central bankers and the governments they control is to convince the public that the crisis they are witnessing is not really a crisis. That is to say, the establishment will attempt to marginalize the collapse signals they can no longer hide as if such signals are of “minimal” importance.
Just as occurred during the onset of the Great Depression, the lies will be legion the closer we come to zero hour. Here are some of the lies you will likely hear as the collapse accelerates…
The Crisis Was Caused By Chinese Contagion
The hypocrisy inherent in this lie is truly astounding, to say the least, considering it is now being uttered by the same mainstream dirtbags who only months ago were claiming that China’s financial turmoil and stock market upset were inconsequential and would have “little to no effect” on Western markets.
I specifically recall these hilarious quotes from Barbara Rockefeller in July:
“Something else that doesn’t matter much is the Chinese equity meltdown—again. China may be big and powerful, but it lacks a retail base and fund managers experienced in price variations, never mind a true rout…”
“Doom-and-gloom types have been saying for a long time that we will get a stock market rout when the Fed finally does move to raise rates. But as we wrote last week, history doesn’t bear out the thesis, not that you can really count on history when the sample size is one or two data points…”
Yes, that is a bit embarrassing. One or two data points? There have been many central bank interventions in history. When has ANY central bank or any government ever used stimulus to manipulate markets through fiat infusion and zero interest fueled stock buybacks or given government the ability to monetize its own debt, and actually been successful in the endeavor? When has addicting markets to stimulus like a heroin dealer ever led to “recovery”? When has this kind of behavior ever NOT created massive fiscal bubbles, a steady degradation of the host society, or outright calamity?
Suddenly, according to the MSM, China’s economy does affect us. Not only that, but China is to blame for all the ills of the globally interdependent economic structure. And, the mere mention that the Fed might delay the end of near zero interest rates in September by a Federal Reserve stooge recently sent markets up 600 points after a week-long bloodbath; meaning, the potential for any interest rate increase no mater how small also has wider implications for markets.
The truth is, the crash in global stocks which will undoubtedly continue over the next several months despite any delays on ZIRP by the Fed is a product of universal decay in fiscal infrastructure. Nearly every single nation on this planet, every sovereign economy, has allowed central and international banks to poison every aspect of their respective systems with debt and manipulation. This is not a “contagion” problem, it is a systemic problem to every economy across the world.
China’s crash matters not because it is causing all other economies to crash. It matters because China is the largest importer/exporter in the world and it is a litmus test for the financial health of every other country. If China is failing, it means we are not consuming, and if we are not consuming, then we must be broke. China’s crash portends our own far worse economic conditions. THAT is why western markets have been crumbling along with China’s despite the assumptions of the mainstream.
China’s Rate Cuts Will Stop The Crash
No they won’t. China has cut rates five times since last November and this has done nothing to stem the tide of their market collapse. I’m not sure why anyone would think that a new rate cut would accomplish anything besides perhaps a brief respite from the continuing avalanche.
It’s Not A Crash, It’s Just The End Of A “Market Cycle”
This is the most ignorant non-explanation I think I have ever heard. There is no such thing as a “market cycle” when your markets are supported partially or fully by fiat manipulation. Our market is in no way a free market, thus, it cannot behave like a free market, and thus, it is a stunted market with no identifiable cycles.
Swings in markets of up to 5%-6% to the downside or upside (sometimes both in a single day) are not part of a normal cycle. They are a sign of cancerous volatility that comes from an economy on the brink of disaster.
The last few years have been seemingly endless market bliss in which any idiot day trader could not go wrong as long as he “bought the dip” while Fed monetary intervention stayed the course. This is also not normal, even in the so-called “new normal”. Yes, the current equities turmoil is an inevitable result of manipulated markets, false statistics, and misplaced hopes, but it is indeed a tangible crash in the making. It is in no way an example of a predictable and non-threatening “market cycle”, and the fact that mainstream talking heads and the people who parrot them had absolutely no clue it was coming is only further evidence of this.
The Fed Will Never Raise Rates
Don’t count on it. Public statements by globalist entities like the IMF on China, for example, have argued that their current crisis is merely part of the “new normal”; a future in which stagnant growth and reduced living standards is the way things are supposed to be. I expect the Fed will use the same exact argument to support the end of zero interest rates in the U.S., claiming that the decline of American wealth and living standards is a natural part of the new economic world order we are entering.
That’s right, mark my words, one day soon the Fed, the IMF, the BIS and others will attempt to convince the American people that the erosion of the economy and the loss of world reserve status is actually a “good thing”. They will claim that a strong dollar is the cause of all our economic pain and that a loss in value is necessary. In the meantime they will, of course, downplay the tragedies that will result as the shift toward dollar devaluation smashes down on the heads of the populace.
A rate hike may not occur in September. In fact, as I predicted in my last article, the Fed is already hinting at a delay in order to boost markets, or at least slow down the current carnage to a more manageable level. But, they WILL raise rates in the near term, likely before the end of this year after a few high tension meetings in which the financial world will sit anxiously waiting for the word on high. Why would they raise rates? Some people just don’t seem to grasp the fact that the job of the Federal Reserve is to destroy the American economic system, not protect it. Once you understand this dynamic then everything the central bank does makes perfect sense.
A rate increase will occur exactly because that is what is needed to further destabilize U.S. market psychology to make way for the “great economic reset” that the IMF and Christine Lagarde are so fond of promoting. Beyond this, many people seem to be forgetting that ZIRP is still operating, yet, volatility is trending negative anyway. Remember when everyone was ready to put on their ‘Dow 20,000’ hat, certain in the omnipotence of central bank stimulus and QE infinity? Yeah…clearly that was a pipe dream.
ZIRP has run it’s course. It is no longer feeding the markets as it once did and the fundamentals are too obvious to deny.
The globalists at the Bank for International Settlements in spring openly deemed the existence of low interest rate policies a potential trigger for crisis. Their statements correlate with the BIS tendency to “predict” terrible market events they helped to create while at the same time misrepresenting the reasons behind them.
The point is, ZIRP has done the job it was meant to do. There is no longer any reason for the Fed to leave it in place.
Get Ready For QE4
Again, don’t count on it. Or at the very least, don’t expect renewed QE to have any lasting effect on the market if it is initiated.
There is truly no point to the launch of a fourth QE program, but do expect that the Fed will plant the possibility in the media every once in a while to mislead investors. First, the Fed knows that it would be an open admission that the last three QE’s were an utter failure, and while their job is to dismantle the U.S. economy, I don’t think they are looking to take immediate blame for the whole mess. QE4 would be as much a disaster as the ECB’s last stimulus program was in Europe, not to mention the past several stimulus actions by the PBOC in China. I’ll say it one more time – fiat stimulus has a shelf life, and that shelf life is over for the entire globe. The days of artificially supported markets are nearly done and they are never coming back again.
I see little advantage for the Fed to bring QE4 into the picture. If the goal is to derail the dollar, that action is already well underway as the IMF carefully sets the stage for the Yuan to enter the SDR global currency basket next year, threatening the dollar’s world reserve status. China also continues to dump hundreds of billions in U.S. treasuries inevitably leading to a rush to a dump of treasuries by other nations. The dollar is a dead currency walking, and the Fed won’t even have to print Weimar Germany-style in order to kill it.
It’s Not As Bad As It Seems
Yes, it is exactly as bad as it seems if not worse. When the Dow can open 1000 points down on a Monday and China can lose all of its gains for 2015 in the span of a few weeks despite institutionalized stimulus measures lasting years, then something is very wrong. This is not a “hiccup”. This is not a correction which has already hit bottom. This is only the beginning of the end.
Stocks are not a predictive indicator. They do not follow positive or negative fundamentals. Stocks do not crash before or during the development of an ailing economy. Stocks crash after the economy has already gone comatose. Stocks crash when the system is no longer salvageable. Since 2008, nothing in the global financial structure has been salvaged and now the central banking edifice is either unable or unwilling (I believe both) to supply the tools to allow us even to pretend that it can be salvaged. We’re going to feel the hurt now, all while the establishment tells us the whole thing is in our heads.
90 Comments on "Lies You Will Hear As The Economic Collapse Progresses"
GregT on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 1:44 am
“The bailout wasn’t a loan, but an investment on which taxpayers are now being compensated.”
Your ignorance has passed the point of being unbelievable Boat. You are either a complete fucking idiot, or you are a shill.
What is your motive? Clearly it is not the truth.
apneaman on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 2:52 am
The U.S. Economy Sucks, So Don’t Raise Interest Rates
“There’s been an interesting development these last few weeks. The Fed has threatened to start normalizing monetary policy, hinting that they might raise short-term rates by 25 basis points (1/4 of 1%). Some normalization!
But normalizing monetary policy in our abnormal “new normal” scares the bejesus out of lots of people who have benefited from the current arrangement, or those who believe Fed policy has provided substantial benefits to the broader U.S. economy (i.e., the official jobless rate). Among the latter, a contradiction arises because these people are now forced to argue that the U.S. economy actually sucks, meaning that if the Fed “tightens” now, our lousy economy will be put at further risk. But if Fed policy has actually substantially benefited the broader economy, why does the U.S. economy still suck?
I assume you see the contradiction, although with so many humans being so utterly incompetent to understand anything about themselves or others, I should not assume anything.”
“How does the U.S. achieve a 5.3% unemployment rate?
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site:
People are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey reference week…
Garrett is 16 years old, and he has no job from which he receives any pay or profit. However, Garrett does help with the regular chores around his parents’ farm and spends about 20 hours each week doing so.
Lisa spends most of her time taking care of her home and children, but she helps in her husband’s computer software business all day Friday and Saturday.
Both Garrett and Lisa are considered employed. They fall into a group called unpaid family workers, which includes any person who worked without pay for 15 hours or more per week in a business or farm operated by a family member with whom they live. Unpaid family workers comprise a small proportion of total employment. Most of the employed are either wage and salary workers (paid employees) or self-employed (working in their own business, profession, or farm)….”
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/08/the-us-economy-sucks-so-dont-raise-interest-rates.html
apneaman on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 2:55 am
Archimedes’ Lever
“When I got up this morning, reluctantly, I saw that the Yale economist Robert Shiller had an interesting piece in the Times about humans telling themselves self-serving stories. It’s called Rising Anxiety That Stocks Are Overpriced.
The average CAPE ratio [in the U.S. stock market] between 1881 and 2015 in the United States is 17; in July, it reached 27. Levels higher than that have occurred very few times, including the years surrounding the stock market peaks of 1929, 2000 and 2007. In all three of these instances, the stock market eventually collapsed.
Yes, there’s a bubble in the stock market. In previous instances, which are rare, the stock market eventually collapsed. Two of those collapses occurred within the last 15 years. And yet, Americans have convinced themselves that this Fed-created “new normal” is a really good idea.”
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/08/archimedes-lever.html
SILENTTODD on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 3:53 am
Dormers gotta Doom. Like the late Dan Dorfman predicted 30 of the 4 down turns of his lifetime.
Plantagenet on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 4:09 am
@hello
Sorry I couldn’t comment sooner—-I’m in India and only have occasional access to the Internet
As far as your question about Obama —he seems to be in the pro growth camp. He’s been boasting about how great the economy is for years now
Cheers!
robm on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 4:15 am
“the job of the Federal Reserve is to destroy the American economic system”
Destroying the economy may be the eventual outcome, but I tend to lean more toward Hanlon’s razor on the above:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” – Hanlon’s razor
The Fed’s actions seem to be more representative of ignorance and denial of reality and hubris that reality can be thwarted simply by fiat and decree, rather than deliberate malice to intentionally destroy the economy. I think they may even actually believe they are “doing good”. But as the saying goes, the road to heck is paved with good intentions.
Davy on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:20 am
Boat, your popular here because you are an outspoken cornucopian with typical views of those in our global world that has allowed for excess and extremes in the pursuit of more. The majority of board regulars are doomers so you are in our crosshairs. Your cornucopianism is simply a case of feelings of exceptionalism and entitlement gone awry. Our reality is limits, declining marginal returns on investments, and efficiency decline. That human systematic reality along with a planetary destruction because of it. The tools of this awry system are technology and a financial system based upon debt, false confidence, and deception.
Technology has allowed us to dig our hole of predicaments and problems deeper. We are now in a consumption and population trap that is a simply a monkey trap we cannot extricate ourselves from. We have problems and predicaments we solve with technologies that create other problems and predicaments. We have no choice entropy is nipping at our feet. This is now irreversible except to stop the insanity and pay the piper with a rebalance of population and consumption.
The financial system has facilitated this awry system with the systematic growth narratives and resources of confidence, liquidity, and finite resources. Its primarily achievement is a huge malinvestment in a society without a sustainable future. Everything hinges on something new to substitute for the current depletion of finite resources. Everything I hear from you cornucopians is on the come. Next year, 5 year, 10 years some wondrous technology will save us.
Finance sponsors this insanity with debt allowing massive malinvestment and consumption increases with resources that are finite and vital. The financial system based on confidence can do this because this society of cornucopians has sold the idea of continuous growth and progress willing and wishing the transcendence of obstacles of a finite world. It is nothing more than a continuation of a dysfunctional species myth of manifest destiny of our desire for immortality. There is also just plain and simple greed and individual profit at the expense of our commons and our species as a whole. This is most true with the environment and climate and on the human side with poverty and wealth transfer.
We are exploiting our very support system because of our desire for more and our mistaken belief in an exceptionalism. You can accuse the doomers here on multiple levels. You can discount our message but you cannot dismiss it. The realities of entropy, ecological systems, and resource depletion are basics of our planetary system. This has always been true. Doomers are keyed into this corns are in denial.
The issue that allows corn the ability to discount the doomers message is timeframe. You have the element of immediacy on your side. You have the habituation of the here and now of something that has been for generations. Growth and progress for generations of economic and technological growth is on your side. Myth and the societal narrative is with you. We doomers are a minority that chooses skepticism because of what nature and our own human discipline of science is tells us. We are seeing a train wreck ahead. If we doomers have failures it is of premature predictions. We have our own issues but we are keyed into the truth. Cornucopians are keyed into a false human created myth and narrative not the realities of a finite world.
We are a species that has built its future on malinvestment at all levels. At every level we see unsustainable consumption and lifestyles. We see unrealistic expectations and development based upon these false narrative. We see the end of growth of a growth based system. We doomers are honest and we are sober. Cornucopians are wildly optimistic and in denial of limits and our place in nature. We can see this denial most fully with a planet being destroyed with the cultural narrative of optimism intact.
We see population in overshoot. Population growth is the most basic manifestation on a species with unrealistic optimism. You don’t have kids if there is no future. We are breeding for many reasons but one chief reason is a belief in a future. There is no future Boat. Your life is a fake. Your life is over soon as it is with all of us. How and when this occurs is the question. That is all you have Boat is a little time to remain in your fantasy. You are a dead man walking as most of us here are but we doomers are honest about this you are just one of the majority of our species in a cultural insanity and denial.
shortonoil on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 9:02 am
50% of US college graduates in 2014 could not find a job. China is liquidating its US Treasuries to keep its monetary, financial system alive; the richest oil nation on earth is borrowing money to pay its bills. As previously stated, the world’s economies are in the cannibalization stage. The world is converting its asset base into consumables to feed its populous. That process is resulting in the creation of a huge amount of debt!
When the world’s economies are founded on one extracted commodity, and depletion has decimated its value, there is little choice remaining but to feed on the now dying carcass of that system. Like a snake eating its own tail, it will feed until some vital organ is reached. What is being debated so vigorously is which vital organ will be the first that it comes to; the heart, or the liver? We’ll excuse ourselves from that question!
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/
BC on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 12:51 pm
marmico in good form: “Read carefully moron. Stick to your Jekyll Island conspiracy theories. 100 years of bull shit. For $90,000 USD per year you could get your limp dick sucked 24/7/365 in Quito.”
Inspiring. 😀
BC on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 1:07 pm
short, some info on this year’s college grad hiring:
https://www.umuc.edu/upload/NACE-Job-Outlook-2015.pdf
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/06/more-jobs-for-college-grads-but-most-are-filled-by-now.html
http://www.epi.org/publication/the-class-of-2015/
http://insights.collegefactual.com/too-many-college-graduates-or-not-enough/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/30/5-facts-about-todays-college-graduates/
Incremental improvement, but there is a surplus of grads for jobs requiring degrees, and the quality of jobs held by a majority of grads is low and will not provide an upwardly mobile occupational or “career” trajectory and breadwinner income as experienced by Boomers and the GI Generation.
ghung on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 1:27 pm
BC, I always thought the idea of graduating college and going straight into a well-paying career with upward mobility was a bit ludicrous. There are plenty of important things to be learned – not just skills – from starting low in the pecking order. I’ve worked with plenty of young college grads who simply didn’t have a clue because they never had to compete beyond academics, and sports, perhaps. That’s one reason I worked through college (besides that I generally had to). I was far ahead of the graduates that didn’t have previous experience in the real world. I remember telling a snooty MBS manager that it was glaringly obvious he’d been nowhere/done nothing beyond go to school. I suggested he dig ditches for a few years; may actually learn something. His response was that if I had had my shit together in college, I “wouldn’t have had to join the Navy”. He was demoted in short order for “failure to accomplish his job requirements”. No real-world skills.
George Mobus over at the “Question Everything” blog has written extensively on his thoughts about declining higher education and the quality of kids being graduated. Me? I think every kid should do something/anything productive/hard/as a grunt for a few years before going to college. Society would be better off.
BC on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 3:18 pm
ghung, I fully agree. Most urban/suburban secondary schools in the US have become college preparatory girls schools to prepare females for work in gov’t, “education”, “health” care, financial services, and retail.
Males are largely a necessary nuisance, and a growing large minority or plurality are increasingly alienated, “on strike”, or dropping out.
But it’s not an accident.
Boat on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 3:27 pm
BC,
Not an accident. It’s called efficiency. Machines do it better and faster and cheaper. Another reason for no immigration. The age of grunt work is evolving. Extreme productivity with much less physical energy spent.
shortonoil on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 3:28 pm
“Me? I think every kid should do something/anything productive/hard/as a grunt for a few years before going to college.”
I had a math professor who used to say: “no one should be college before the age of 25, it’s a waste of their time, and mine”. He was right.
shortonoil on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 3:39 pm
“BC,
Not an accident…..”
Your comment has zero relevancy to what he said. BC was talking about the disenfranchisement of young males. You would have to be living under a rock not to be aware of it?
BC on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 4:22 pm
Right, short. Thanks. Feminization of the labor force and the economy (not a criticism but an observation) has coincided with deindustrialization and financialization since the 1970s-80s, along with record high for debt to wages and GDP and a record low for wages and salaries (labor share) as a share of GDP.
Boat, I agree about immigration and accelerating machine productivity. Also, interconnected, always-on, intelligent systems’ (robotics, Big Data analytics, biometrics, nano-electronic sensors, bioinformatics, telepresence, 24/7 monitoring and surveillance, etc.) capabilities are now accelerating so rapidly that a growing share of high-skill, well-paid analytical jobs are at risk of being eliminated without net replacement, including accounting, finance, logistics, order administration, educational instruction, and eventually computer programming and medical professionals, e.g., nurses and doctors.
But the machine or intelligent-systems productivity gains are not translating into growth of paid employment per capita or wage gains for the bottom 90%, as labor share of GDP is at a record low.
Apart from the elite, well-funded research institutions, most other institutions of “higher education” are at least a decade behind the accelerating needs of the market and evolution of the intelligent-systems economy/society, if not a generation behind. Technological advancements and applications are accelerating so fast as to render irrelevant most of what young people learn, even for most scitech students.
As real GDP per capita stagnates indefinitely hereafter, we are likely to see a further mass consolidation of the largest cash-rich firms that will then garner a growing share of markets and resources per capita, including fossil fuels, utility capacity, arable land, forests, water, etc.
As the long-term constraints from Peak Oil, overshoot, and resource depletion bears down, households in the bottom 90%+ will likely pay more for low- or no-multiplier items such as food, utilities, and “health” care per capita as a share of the composition of household spending, while spending less on high-multiplier outlays for housing and autos per capita and per household.
Anyway, “secular stagnation”, Peak Oil, overshoot, resource depletion, and climate change will require very different policies that were enacted during the peak-Oil Age epoch of inflationary and reflationary growth and growth of population, household formations, and productivity, employment, GDP per capita, etc.
But few, if any, Establishment intellectuals, mass-media influentials, CEOs, Silly-Con/Social Mania Valley gazillionaires, or politicians are discussing any of this, and they have zero incentive to do so.
apneaman on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 5:35 pm
Air Pollution At Home Linked To Lower Grades For Children
“Researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso found that fourth and fifth graders who were exposed to high levels of motor vehicle emissions from cars, trucks and buses on roads and highways were found to have significantly lower GPAs, even when accounting for other factors known to influence school performance.
“There are two pathways that can help us to explain this association,” Sara E. Grineski, co-author of the study, said in a statement. “Some evidence suggests that this association might exist because of illnesses, such as respiratory infections or asthma. Air pollution makes children sick, which leads to absenteeism and poor performance in school. The other hypothesis is that chronic exposure to air toxics can negatively affect children’s neurological and brain development.”
http://www.universityherald.com/articles/22948/20150829/air-pollution-at-home-linked-to-lower-grades-for-children.htm
Boat on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 6:41 pm
BC,
Any time a business can eliminate an employee with a machine they will save money. Any time they can replace building infrastructure they will same money. Any time industry can consolidate they create savings and make money. Same as the world has been from the beginning.
I assumed in the 80’s banks would be gone along with insurance buildings because of digital efficiency and the cost of infrastructure including the cost to maintain it. I am still surprised that I was wrong.
The solution is degrowth in population.
My high school taught me almost nothing but a brain that has learned how to learn will always be in need. Most of that came with work experience. Experience in jobs will still be at a premium. Now experience is still not as respected as a collage degree but I think that will turn because that type of education is no guarantee of comprehension for the tasks. I will get to why.
Women after WWII started working in droves and family incomes rose as a result. A big part of that was health infrastructure, old folks homes and the like. Entire new industries, but because women worked there was a lot more money floating around.
Times have changed, homes can last indefinably, cars are lasting much longer, The need for workers is simply going away for all the reasons you mentioned.
Starving industry with smaller populations will work in my mind. On the job experience with upgrades in education related to their field will become smarter and cheaper than trading in for a younger human model with new education but no experience. The future is valuing the human once more in a shrinking populated world.
Davy on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 6:52 pm
Boat, degrowth is not compatible with a growth based system. It is a matter of incompatibilities of systematic dynamics. China is trying to do this now with disastrous consequences.
Our system can barely handle a modest slowdown in global economic activity now without people freeking out. What will it do with actual degrowth policies like you speak of. Sounds good Boat but it will mean negative consequences. There are no good choices. We are facing a situation of what choices hurt less not what choices will make things better.
Boat on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:15 pm
Davy,
If there is less business and less people that does not mean a company cannot do a better job with a product and capture larger market share. If employers cannot find enough workers they will raise salary or go out of business. Consumers will decide what they spend their money on. Which companies survive and which don’t.
apneaman on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:19 pm
Boat, today’s glue-lam, OSB homes are shit. Non-stop maintenance. Starting in the mid 1970’s. Complete racket. Tree forts I built in the 1970’s will still be standing long after suburbia has delaminated and gone to mold.
GregT on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:26 pm
You make absolutely zero sense Boat. Are you doing this on purpose? If not, what is your agenda?
Boat on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:26 pm
Davy,
Depending on what chart you look at unemployment is 8-12 million including what they call missing workers. So if we had no immigration for the last 8 years and there were 16 million less potential workers, this would cause more pain? Seems to me there would be a severe shortage of workers and wages would be rising. So if landscapers and barbers decided to do construction or work for a utility because it paid more, I think we could survive with shaggy hair and shaggy lawns.
Boat on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:28 pm
Greg-T,
You are being introduced to real world thinking. Being angry because it is foreign to you won’t help.
GregT on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:52 pm
Boat,
I am very well aware of ‘real world’ thinking. I grew out of it a very long time ago.
You are cherry picking to support an agenda, and you continue to ignore the big picture. You have been presented with mountains of evidence that completely contradict your ‘real world thinking’. Why is that Boat? What is your agenda, and why do you feel the need to continue to post here, if you have no desire to make any attempt at all to further your understanding?
apneaman on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 7:59 pm
boat is a fake Greg. It’s why so many of its comments are nonsensical. Responses just seem a little odd or off sometimes – software is imperfect, but can fool many people or it’s a paid shill with a work sheet of cut and paste responses. One person managing 50 sock puppets gets confused and who ever said they only hire the smartest? I actually saw an ad on craigslist once (Ontario) looking for a shill. Who knows how deep that rabbit hole goes. Heres an article from 2011 of just one example of how it works. One can only imagine that it has increased along with the desperation as the great unraveling picks up speed. There is absolutely nothing that power will not do to maintain itself. History is pretty clear on that.
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military’s ‘sock puppet’ software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
Boat on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 9:23 pm
Love it, I am a spy for the military now. Heck I have posted many times the need for 300 billion per year cut in the military. It would be a better bet that a hair dresser in Greece will get retirement before I will from the military. Lol
Let’s see, I was anti war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia. Disown both political parties for their war tendencies. My generation should sacrifice and take responsibility for the deficit even though other generations helped drive it up. I wanna support solar and electric cars by the hundreds of billions even though that is against capitalism principals and unfair to other business. No more flaring for nat gas. I would give $50 thousand for every semi that went to nat gas. Let gas stations use 10 years to use tax breaks to put the tanks and infrastructure in. We would be putting in more wind triple the pace. Free office visits and generics for healthcare. Cost ya $3,000 for baby one, no immigration of any kind. Yep I am sure I would be hired by the government.
GregT on Sat, 29th Aug 2015 11:50 pm
Oh my, how you do go on, and on, and on.
JuanP on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 6:28 am
Boat, Your idea that stopping immigration would solve our problems is simplistic, to say the least. But, then again, I am a biased immigrant with absolutely no understanding of “real world” thinking. 😉
Davy on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 7:13 am
Boat, you have a tendency to offer options for the status quo using the existing fossil fuel complex, AltE complex and tweaks to the economic system. I will acknowledge some of the fossil fuel changes might work around the edges like the ideas on gas if the shale gas from the east coast really has a future. Considering the scale of time and resources, both not good, I will be liberal and give you 5% transition away from oil from NatGas transition efforts. An unintended consequence of this is a depleting resource that is vital for homes and industry but we will dismiss that for the sake of this argument.
Let’s give the greenies some input with AltE and EV cars. Let’s assume they can greatly increase the buildout from its dismal current contribution to the grid. I will give you 5% transition. Yet again a consequence is AltE that is being used for transport not being used to phase out coal fired plants. Most new AltE will have to cover transport.
We could give another 5% for changes in attitudes and lifestyle by promoting efficiency, conservation, and relative sacrifice. The unintended consequence of this is this is a degrowth policy at a time of clear economic deflation. I am pulling these number out of my butt with my point being they are single digit results and with optimistic assumptions.
It is of course not clear but we can argue we are entering a deflationary cycle with demand and supply destruction of commodities from the end of a commodity super cycle. China’s bank stopping global growth along with the assistance of the Fed is over. China is clearly in dire straits as are all the other emerging markets especially the other brics. Without China and the emerging markets in full health the remaining developed world will find it extremely difficult to maintain growth at a level needed to support your proposed buildout.
The developed economies will struggle just as the emerging markets are now. I am again discounting the truth that currently the developed markets are already in decline. Developed countries current growth rates are just cannibalization and wealth transfer that gives the appearance of growth IMHO. Huge global instabilities of risk and deflation remain with bad debt from the years of extend and pretend and repression of normal price discovery to maintain liquidity and confidence. The global world has had an orgy of malinvestment especially from China to prevent the global economy from a dangerous descent into the deflationary abyss. This malinvestment was a short term boast but a long term cost because it has no future. These are not productive investments just overcapacity.
Boat, That is only one segment of the problems and predicaments we face. We have climate instability that can only be approached by degrowth and degrowth will not allow an economy to do the changes you mentioned above. Personally I feel climate change is a runaway predicament with destabilizing abrupt climate change occurring now. We have the ongoing droughts and ecosystem declines and localized failures clearly visible. These are sad from the point of view of beauty but more dangerously it represents our food supply. Significant amounts of protein is harvested form the oceans and we are killing the oceans as one point in a laundry list of other areas we are destroying the food chain. Water stress is increasingly reaching dangerous proportions.
Boat all this with the addition of 80MIL people a year and the pressure of significant amounts of the current population entering the middle class. Consumption pressures further destabilize our production and distribution instabilities. If food and fuel are under pressure and the population is growing in size and consumptive tendencies we are inching closer to shortages which further stress an already stressed system. It appears food supplies are good again this year but that is an illusion of the commodity super cycle. If we continue this descent we are seeing with China and the EM economies we will surely at some point see supply pressures on food and fuel.
Demand and supply destruction can turn out no other way. Forget the oil glut now. That is an economic illusion of malinvestment of the commodity super cycle and central bank QE and rate repression. Both are at limits and declining marginal utility to global growth. As soon as the capex dries up and rates are forced up by market forces beyond the control of the central banks we will have decreased productive capacity of the global economic system at a time when you want to build out NatGas infrastructure, AltE/EV infrastructure, and degrowth conservation policies.
My issues is the math and the logic. It does not add up in my head. I see little being done as we enter a bumpy decent of decay and cannibalization until at some point the bottom drops out to God help us some soft landing equivalent to the great depression then we can await the next fall that will likely be worse. This is what we can look forward to over the next 15 years IMHO.
Davy on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 7:58 am
Juan, my wife is an Italian with a green card. My daughter is Spanish with dual nationality. I have an international background and was an adherent to globalism in the 80’s. I am well-traveled. I lived and worked in Germany in 85 as an internship when I left college. After Germany I traveled the US selling pipeline equipment and the world selling the same for 2 years.
I felt back then growth and education along with a coming together of cultures would solve the profound problems we see today I thought back then were many years away. I am now a localist against globalism. I am a doomer and prepper preaching a lifeboat mentality. I believe we are entering a dark age of collapse and a likely bottleneck of epic proportions.
I am against immigration in principal just as I am against population growth. Both are problematic and beyond solutions. I realize I am a hypocrite having an immigrant for a wife that is an incongruity of modern life. Overpopulation and immigration are predicaments that nature will have to settle. We can maybe do some problem solving around the edges but that is it.
A global economy must be free and open or it is not global as we know it. I do not want my local to grow in population because we are already in overshoot. Thank God few want to live in central Missouri but bible thumpers and hoosiers.
Immigration is not going to last as we know it. It will decrease and increase as collapse takes hold. Places where states fail and regions become uninhabitable will have migrations. That is the nature of the beast. Economic immigration of the wealthier will dry up because the economy will decay and collapse at some point. Immigration is a symptom of the economic collapse process and out of control population growth which are both symptoms of species overshoot.
marmico on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 8:42 am
50% of US college graduates in 2014 could not find a job.
What a crock of shit.
http://newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci20-1.pdf
The quart shy of oil is a buffoon.
joe on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 9:18 am
The first victim of collapse will be justice. Then you’ll know what anger is, but by then you’ll be too hungry and scared to care.
JuanP on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 10:35 am
Davy, I am against immigration to the US in practice, but a believer that people should be able to move freely all over the world in theory. In a better world there would be space and resources for everyone to move freely and settle where they like; in this overpopulated, resource depleted, and polluted world it’s a different story. Most migration today is a consequence of overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental degradation, political conflicts, social disadvantage, and economic inequality.
JuanP on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 10:37 am
Link to an article titled “Why we need to lie to ourselves about the state of the economy” http://www.smh.com.au/comment/satyajit-das-column-20150825-gj7bcy.html
Davy on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 10:56 am
Good article Juan. I find it interesting people talk about extend and pretend policies. When I finally move up in the family business after doing my management training in a variety of areas I ended up in finance. We would try to extend and pretend certain customers whose notes became past due. The auditors of course were on the watch for this activity. This was in the late 90’s when the finacialization of the economy was set to exploded.
At our company I was responsible for changing our policy on financing despite allot of reservations from the old-timers. We were holding paper internally with all the risk. I pushed to give everything we could to the manufacturer’s financial arm. In doing so we got cash and passed on the risk. I also offered the manufacture’s financial people to participate in the risk. I did anything and everything I could to push sales through financing. I succeeded in tripling financed based sales. It was amazing what we could do with creative financing. Of course that same mentality culminated in the crash of 08. I started with extend and pretend then graduated to unload and walk away. This was not much different from the CDS instruments in the subprime market. It was a fascinating and exciting time to be in business but it was not real.
apneaman on Sun, 30th Aug 2015 7:24 pm
Central banks can’t save the markets from a crash. They shouldn’t even try
Alarming data from China was met with a soothing hint about monetary policy. But treasuries cannot keep pumping cheap credit into a series of asset bubbles
“Like children clinging to their parents, stock market traders turned to their central banks last week as they sought protection from the frightening economic figures coming out of China. Surely, they asked, the central banks would ward off the approaching bogeymen, as they had so many times since the 2008 crash.”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/30/central-banks-cant-save-markets-crash-shouldnt-try
apneaman on Mon, 31st Aug 2015 12:40 pm
Economic Undertow – Early Warning
http://www.economic-undertow.com/2015/08/30/early-warning/
onlooker on Mon, 31st Aug 2015 1:17 pm
Economics at this point is at best a useful distraction and at worst a dangerous misconception. The real fundamentals are about the State of the Earth and it is not good and getting worse. So my advice to me esteemed erudite posters to do let yourself get dragged down by deniers with false economic arguments. Remember, the old Indian saying ” When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money”
onlooker on Mon, 31st Aug 2015 1:18 pm
Sorry in the first line meant to say useless