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Source: 5 of America’s fastest growing jobs pay less than $25K
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Fiat Money Fairytales
By Gold Money
The full article can be downloaded as PDF here.
Introduction
The financial media are beginning to entertain the viewpoint that the recent policies of the Federal Reserve, ranging from zero-rates to quantitative easing to bank bailouts, are an important cause of rising inequality not only in the US but around the world. This past week, multiple media sources published an op-ed by eminent scholar George Gilder to this effect. Yet articles such as these are the exceptions that prove the rule that the financial media remains strongly biased against the monetary discipline that could be restored by returning to a gold standard. By way of example, in a typically biased article previously published by Reuters back in 2013, Professor Charles Postel misreads history, misapplies economic theory, and employs not only rhetorical but also logical tricks to argue that a return to a gold standard would favor the wealthy, when in fact the opposite is demonstrably true. As this article is so typical of what we seek to rebut, we publish it here, and now.
Frequently one can tell by the title of an opinion piece whether it is going to consist of quality arguments or just meretricious mudslinging. Professor Charles Postel of San Francisco State University boldly announces the latter in choosing to title his recent tirade against sound money, Why Conservatives Spin Fairytales About the Gold Standard.
Indeed, right from the start, the reader is presented with the following rhetorical feint:
At few points since the Fed’s founding in 1913 has it taken such sustained fire. It’s taking fire from the left, because its policies favor Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the other financial corporations that are most responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and the Great Recession. But it is also taking fire from the right.
While acknowledging that the Fed is under attack from the left, he then proceeds to focus exclusively on debunking hard-money Fed criticism from the right, which is supposedly based on ‘fairytales’. While politics is largely if not entirely about fairytales, history shouldn’t be. As a historian, Mr Postel should know the difference. But as one reads further into the article it becomes clear either that he doesn’t, or that his anti-gold-standard agenda is best advanced by spinning fairytales of his own. For a start, he completely ignores the fact that elastic, fiat money is both what facilitated the bubble that caused the 2008 meltdown and what enabled the subsequent bank bailouts, neither of which would or could have occurred had the Fed been constrained by a fixed money supply.
REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT
Moving farther back into history, Mr Postel writes the following fairytale about how the American public felt about the creation and early years of the Federal Reserve System:
In the years after 1913, the need for a flexible and regulated money supply was widely accepted across the political spectrum.
This is complete poppycock. First of all, the Federal Reserve Act was initially drafted in secrecy by a small group …read more
Source: Fiat Money Fairytales
China Ocean Freight Index Collapses to Record Low
Wolf Richter wolfstreet.com
The amount it costs to ship containers from China to ports around the world, a function of the quantity of goods to be shipped and the supply of vessels to ship them, just dropped to a new historic low.
The China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI) tracks contractual and spot-market rates for shipping containers from major ports in China to 14 regions around the world. It reflects the unpolished and ugly reality of the shipping industry in an environment of deteriorating global trade.
For the latest reporting week, the index dropped 0.6% to 636.14, its lowest level ever. It has plunged 41% from the already low levels in February last year, and 36% since its inception in 1998 when it was set at 1,000. This chart shows the continuing collapse of containerized freight rates from China to the rest of the world:
The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI), which tracks spot-market rates (not contractual rates) of shipping containers from Shanghai to 15 destinations around the world, dropped 3.6% for the latest reporting week to 472, after another failed price recovery. It’s down 58% from February last year.
Rates to Europe plunged $20 per twenty-foot equivalent unit container (TEU) to $271; to the Mediterranean, rates plunged $29 to $409 per TEU. To the US West Coast, rates plunged 9.3% or $79 to $770 per forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU).
A year ago, the spot rates to the West Coast had already fallen 10% year-over-year, and there had been a lot of hand-wringing about them. At the time, they were $1,932 per FEU. Now they’re at $770 per FEU. In one year, these spot rates have collapsed by 60%!
During the big plunge last year and earlier this year, the saving grace was the price of bunker fuel, which was plunging along with the price of oil. For example, according to Platts, bunker of the grade IFO380 in Los Angeles had hit a low of $118 per metric ton in mid-January. But it has since soared 91% to $225!
Bunker prices differ, depending on grade and location around the world, and not all made this sort of break-neck snap-back price reversal. For example, IFO380 in Rotterdam soared “only” 61% from $109/mt in mid-January to $176/mt. Other locations and grades experienced lower price increases. But all bunker prices everywhere have risen sharply.
So the ballyhooed notion that carriers, under pressure from competition, are simply passing on their fuel savings to their customers has now died an ignominious death. Instead, their margins are getting crushed.
But there are some real reasons for the collapse in freight rates from China to destinations around the world: China’s exports have plunged. For the January through March period – to iron out the monthly volatility associated with the Lunar New Year holiday – exports are down 9.6% year-over year. Specifically:
- To the US -8.8%
- To Hong Kong -6.5%
- To Japan -5.5%
- To South Korea -11.2%
- To Taiwan -3.7%
- To the countries in the ASEAN -13.7%
- To the EU -6.9%
- To South Africa -29.6% (!)
- To Brazil -47.2% (!!)
- To …read more
Source: China Ocean Freight Index Collapses to Record Low
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Brazil’s lower house votes to impeach president
A motion to impeach Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff secured enough support to pass the lower house and will now go to the country’s Senate. …read more
Source: Brazil’s lower house votes to impeach president
What If Nobody Showed Up To Vote?
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Dan Sanchez via AntiWar.com,
What if a presidential candidate threw a political rally, and nobody came? What if a government held an election, and nobody voted? What if that same government started a war, and nobody participated, whether in body or in spirit?
These questions are related.
Election season is trudging on, as are the wars. Many fans of peace hold out hope that if the former turns out a certain way, the latter may at last be mitigated.
Some are terrified of Hillary Clinton. And who can blame them? As Secretary of State, “Dick Cheney in a pantsuit” was midwife to so many of the disasters that wrack the world with bloodshed and chaos to this day. Many anti-war folk of a left-leaning persuasion are flocking to Bernie Sanders.
Others are more concerned with finally toppling the neocons from their perches of power. And who can blame them? The roots of our geopolitical plight reach back to before Clinton’s executive tenure, when the Bush administration neocons were launching their plans to remake the Greater Middle East. Many anti-war folk of the right-leaning persuasion are looking to Donald Trump to be their neocon-slayer.
But is this really the best we can do?
At the end of the day, Sanders is a moderate foreign interventionist who isn’t all too interested in foreign policy in the first place. Must anti-interventionists really settle for that in order to oppose hyper-interventionist Clinton?
And Trump actually out-hawks many Republicans when it comes to torture, the security state, civilian casualties, and blood-for-oil. Is such a man really to be the anti-war movement’s appointed champion against the neocons?
Thankfully, there is no need to support lesser warmongers in order to oppose greater ones.
Imagine if all the anti-war progressives now supporting Sanders, plus all the America-firsters now supporting Trump, were to stop flooding the internet and social media with electoral polemics. What if all that passion and digital ink was redirected to the message of peace.
Imagine “Stop the War on Yemeni Babies!” blazoned across the web instead of “Stop Hillary!” Or “Don’t Let the CIA Arm Al Qaeda in Syria” instead of “Don’t Let the Establishment Steal the Nomination from Trump.”
An intense focus on policies over personas could really turn public sentiment against the actual combat of war, and divert public attention away from its obsession with the theatrical combat of political Wrestlemania.
You may wonder, what about the consequences of the peace camp abandoning its stations in the electoral battle against the worst war hawks? What if as a result Hillary or Ted Cruz’s neocon allies sweep to victory?
A clique may seize office, but the new administration will not govern in a vacuum. All regimes must strive to preserve public legitimacy. And no regime can afford to flout too blatantly the prevailing spirit of the times. The new president may have won a majority of votes. But if only a small proportion of the country actually voted in the first place, that translates into a rather shrunken mandate.
And if the non-voting …read more
Source: What If Nobody Showed Up To Vote?
Absurdity: When The Con Believes The Con
By Tyler Durden
There are many infamous con games that have been foisted upon the public for millennia. Probably none more enduring than that of Charles Ponzi which bears his name as its moniker. Yet, there’s also been another who was also just as “daring” when it came to finding ways as to extract monetary gains by ill-gotten means: Victor Lustig.
Lustig is best known as “The man who sold the Eiffel Tower.” However, it was one of his other cons that came to mind as I was thinking about the current state of monetary policy we now find ourselves in.
Lustig’s other con was a device he slated would print $100 bills. But it had a problem.
Unbeknown to his mark, this problem was also part of the deception. The problem was (as stated by Lustig) – it could only print 1 bill every 6 hours. The genius was; located within the machine it contained two genuine $100 bills. After that – blanks. You could be long gone, and quite far with that kind of head start back then. Yet, it’s once the con, ruse, or scam is finally exposed one thing is certain: You don’t want to still be around or found.
As with any con game the perpetrator knows it’s all a con. In other words, “Duh!” Yet, if you listen closely to both past as well as present Fed. members you can’t help but notice by way of their current arguments, as well as, proposals for future monetary policy. The one’s who’ve truly bought into “the con” is: themselves!
Nowhere has this been on display more than the current public writings and musings of former Fed. Chair Ben Bernanke.
If you read his latest (which I’ve tried but can’t bear that much comedy in one sitting) he lays out what he thinks (or believes) should now take place involving Congress, the Administration, and the Fed. His great idea? Create and “fill” some arbitrary account which only the Fed. or its appointed designates have control of as to “empty” or “fill” as “Congress and Administration” see fit. But here’s the punchline, ready?
“Importantly, the Congress and Administration would have the option to leave the funds unspent. If the funds were not used within a specified time, the Fed would be empowered to withdraw them.” (Insert laugh track here)
Remember, this is coming not only from the former Chair, but also, one who is quite possibly the most emblematic of current thought residing throughout central bank policy makers with an additional caveat: He’s no longer bound by the position where his thoughts need to be guarded as a voting member of such policy lunacy. In other words: he can now speak his mind openly. To which I’ll muse – that’s no laughing matter when you consider how prevalent Keynesian economics now dominate.
The latest from Bernanke exposes just how far down this “rabbit hole” central bankers have gone. So far I’ll contend – its frightful. e.g., They actually believe this subterfuge.
When I’m giving a talk, …read more
Source: Absurdity: When The Con Believes The Con
"This Will All Blow Up In The Fed’s Face," Schiff Warns "Trump’s Right, America Is Broke"
By Tyler Durden
Euro Pacific Capital's Peter Schiff sat down with Alex Jones last week to discuss the state of the economy, and where he sees everything going from here.
Here are some notable moments from the interview.
Regarding how bad things are, and what's really going on in the economy, Schiff lays out all of the horrible economic data that has come out recently, as well as making sure to take away the crutch everyone uses to explain any and all data misses, which is weather.
“It's no way to know exactly the timetable, but obviously this economy is already back in recession, and if it's not in a recession it's certainly on the cusp of one”
“We could be in a negative GDP quarter right now, and I think that if the first quarter is bad the second quarter is going to be worse”
“The last couple years we had a rebound in the second quarter because we've had very cold winters. Well this winter was the warmest in 120 years so there is nothing to rebound from.“
On the Fed, and current policies, he very bluntly points out that nothing is working, nor has it worked, but of course the central planners will try it all anyway. He also takes a moment to agree with Donald Trump regarding the fact that the U.S. is flat out, undeniably broke.
“The problem for the fed is how do they launch a new round of stimulus and still pretend the economy is in good shape.”
“Negative interest rates are a disaster. It's not working in Japan, it's not working in Europe, it's not going to work here. Just because it doesn't work doesn't mean we're not going to do it, because everything we do doesn't work and we do it anyway. It shows desperation, that you've had all these central bankers lowering interest rates and expecting it to revive the economy. And then when they get down to zero, rather than admit that it didn't work, because clearly if you go to zero and you still haven't achieved your objective, maybe it doesn't work. Instead of admitting that they were wrong, they're now going negative.”
“The United States, no matter how high inflation gets, we'll do our best to pretend it doesn't exist or rationalize it away because we have a lot more debt. America is broke, if you look at Europe and Japan even though there is some debt there, overall those are still creditor nations. The world still owes Europe money, the world still owes Japan money, but America owes more money than all of the other debtor nations combined. Trump is right about that, we are broke, we're flat broke, and we're living off this credit bubble and we can't prick it. Other central banks may be able to raise their rates, but the Fed can't.”
On how he sees everything unfolding from this point, Peter again points out that the economy is weak and it's only a matter of time before this entire centrally planned …read more
Source: "This Will All Blow Up In The Fed’s Face," Schiff Warns "Trump’s Right, America Is Broke"
Trump doesn’t believe Facebook would try to derail his campaign
Donald Trump doesn’t think Facebook would do anything to stop him from winning the election, he said Saturday, responding to claims that Facebook employees wanted to ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s ‘responsibility’ to stop Trump. …read more
Source: Trump doesn’t believe Facebook would try to derail his campaign
Trump doesn’t buy idea that Facebook would try to derail his campaign
Donald Trump doesn’t think Facebook would do anything to stop him from winning the election, he said Saturday, responding to claims that Facebook employees wanted to ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s ‘responsibility’ to stop Trump. …read more
Source: Trump doesn’t buy idea that Facebook would try to derail his campaign
Saudi King And Princes Blackmail The U.S. Government: What Happens Next
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Eric Zuesse, author of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Saudi King & Princes Blackmail U.S. Government
Saudi Arabia, owned by the Saud family, are telling the U.S. Government, they’ll wreck the U.S. economy, if a bill in the U.S. Congress that would remove the unique and exclusive immunity the royal owners of that country enjoy in the United States, against their being prosecuted for their having financed the 9/11 attacks, passes in Congress, and becomes U.S. law.
As has been well documented even in sworn U.S. court testimony, and as even the pro-Saudi former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged privately, “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” She didn’t name any of those “donors” names, but the former bagman for Osama bin Laden, who had personally collected all of the million-dollar+ donations (all in cash) to Al Qaeda, did, and he named all of the senior Saud princes and their major business-associates; and, he said, “without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.” So, both before 9/11, and (according to Hillary Clinton) since, those were the people who were paying virtually all of the salaries of the 19 hijackers — even of the four who weren’t Saudi citizens. Here’s that part of the bagman’s testimony about how crucial those donations were:
Q: To clarify, you’re saying that the al-Qaeda members received salaries?
A: They do, absolutely.
So: being a jihadist isn’t merely a calling; it’s also a job, as is the case for the average mercenary (for whom it doesn’t also have to be a calling). The payoff for that job, during the jihadist’s life, is the pay. The bagman explained that the Saud family’s royals pay well for this service to their fundamentalist-Sunni faith. Another lifetime-payoff to the jihadists is that, in their fundamentalist-Sunni culture, the killing of ‘infidels’ is a holy duty, and they die as martyrs. Thus, the jihadist’s payoff in the (mythological) afterlife is plenty of virgins to deflower etc. But, the payers (the people who organize it, and who make it all possible) are the Saud family princes, and their business associates — and, in the case of the other jihadist organizations, is also those other Arabic royal families (the owners of Qater, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman). However, 9/11 was virtually entirely a Saudi affair, according to Al Qaeda’s bagman (who ought to know).
The report of the threat by the Saud family comes in veiled form in an April 15th news-story in The New York Times, headlined, “Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.” It says that the Saud family’s Foreign Minister is “telling [U.S.] lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in [U.S.] treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could …read more
Source: Saudi King And Princes Blackmail The U.S. Government: What Happens Next
