Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The U.S.’s 40 Year Depression, The Massive M&A Bubble And The Zillow-Trulia Merger Of The Walking Dead

We are again in a mergers & acquisitions mania.   The amount of mergers in the last 20 years is literally unbelievable.   I don’t have the data at my fingertips but a quick mental note has to put the number around $20 trillion or possibly much more.   Think about numbers that large.   What could this nation have done with $20 trillion?  M&A doesn’t create any wealth.  Frankly, it destroys it.  Nor does it create any net new jobs.  Instead, this is an industry that essentially used to be illegal.   We now pretend that it is legal and that has enabled financial criminals to mint untold amounts of profit while contributing greatly to the destruction of our nation’s economy.

The Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, the Celler-Kefauver Act, the Wallace Act, the Hart-Scott-Rudino Act, the enforcement agencies of the SEC, DoJ, various worker rights and protection acts and on and on made what we see today in M&A a literal impossibility.   If you were able to traverse this maze that was created to stop corporate control from becoming a tyranny, then you might be able to acquire a company.   Good luck with that. 

So, why are we then witnessing two decades of what is effectively an illegal M&A boom?  The same reason Obama now unconstitutionally legislates from the Oval Office.  Because the laws of our nation mean nothing anymore.  We are living under the tyranny of the rule of man.  We are past having a constitutional crisis.  This nation is a constitutional crisis.  We are now witnessing what it was like to live under the British crown in 1776.   Or under Nazi Germany.  Or any other nation where predators made up rules to allow them to dominate, control and loot with impunity. 

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.  -- Bastiat

Our masters have shredded our laws and make it up as they go along.  Whether that is Al Gore, Bill Clinton, George Bush I or II, Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, the Congress, the courts or the bureaucrats running our enforcement agencies, both political parties and their adherents have contributed to the wholesale destruction of our nation’s laws under the duress of megalomania’s power, greed, money and all of the corruption the rule of man can muster. 

There is a fair amount of ignorance in our society surrounding the topic of mergers & acquisitions just as there is about anything finance-related.  That is because our masters wish this to be so.  In one past post excoriating M&A, I received feedback that M&A allowed economies of scale.   You mean like massive, Soviet-run corporations?  That is nonsense, goes against economic facts and fails to take into account one hundred years of laws that were placed on the books through experiences.  If a corporate business model is not viable, then it should fail.   Failure is one of the most necessary dynamics to rebirth and renewal.  Nature’s laws are founded on this principle and we see it everywhere.  If we are to have an economic system based on merit, failure must be part of that system. 

Instead, M&A has created massive, state-owned monopolies in our nation.  Just like the Soviet Union.   Mind you, our corporations are also state owned.   Too big to fail is no different than Soviet Union state-owned businesses.  They only survive through the force of the state.   They are propped up bureaucracies that only survive through girth used to dominate society.  They have lost the ability to effectively service markets or society long ago. 

These massive bureaucracies  cannot be managed no matter how many Harvard MBAs are grinding the company into the dirt.   Mind you, with the gibberish they are taught, they do try.  Do you think Jamie Dimon actually runs JP Morgan with a quarter of a million employees?   What he has created is a personal empire to sooth his inner demons and power-mad megalomania.  And he did it via the destruction of the rule of law that is M&A. 

Our economy is very much akin to the centrally-planned Soviet Union as I have written in very detailed posts. 

Long ago companies used to be held to very tight controls in their charter.  Often those charters were only temporary to serve a specific purpose like building a bridge or such.  Our founders knew the evils of permanent corporations through experience with the king’s private for-profit bankers and corporations.     Corporations were not allowed to deviate from that charter.  Permanent corporations can only exist by extracting rent.  If a company cannot survive within the framework of its original charter, then under this system, it should fail.  Then, new citizens could be allowed to bid on any remaining intellectual and physical assets to organize for new purposes.   Existing corporations should not be allowed to buy another company for their own personal interests of survival created by their own mismanagement, incompetence or because society deems their products and services of no value.  If a company wants to buy goods or services from another company, that is fine.  But buying the company should be verboten.  New citizens only.  New ideas only.   

As noted on here in past posts, that we are witnessing the largest M&A bubble in the history of the world is a very telling dynamic.  It portends future doom.  Because these corporate bureaucracies have hit the wall in their ability to grow and even survive.  A dynamic that is so inherently necessary for corporate capitalism to survive is growth at all cost.  So, instead, they threaten the natural cycle of birth, death and renewal by buying up everything they can to diworsify (diversify) and take out their competition for their own self-interested survival.   That we are in an M&A boom of incredible proportions is a sign that the U.S. economy is and has been in systemic failure.   That there is not enough intrinsic demand remaining and really hasn’t been for decades.   When it comes to economics, there are very few rules that can be proven as fact.  I will prove the decades-long depression I have been writing about for years (four decades to be exact) that the U.S. has been in beyond any doubts in future posts.   And that it means future doom for these massive corporations.

This has all been talked about on here for nine years.  It was a major contributor to the Great Depression as noted in one of my first posts.   If Jamie Dimon or any other bumbling and bungling too-big-to-fail firm cannot manage their own business today, (and they can’t) how exactly are they going to manage a larger business created through M&A?   They aren’t.   They won’t.  And, they can’t.  They are simply pushing the inevitable down the road of their ultimate failure.   That is what M&A is doing.  Large companies often buy literally thousands of smaller firms.  Cisco, as one example of a bumbling and bungling bureaucracy, has bought well in excess of ten thousand companies in the last decade.  They have essentially retired ten thousand competitors while stifling innovation, economic vibrancy and employment growth that drives demand for higher wages.

As an aside, for those who believe the Koch Brothers are out to destroy America, they are another too big to fail, state-owned bureaucracy probably headed for failure.   So too is the Russian economy that is still dominated by the massive, state-run bureaucracies that have simply transferred hands to oligarchy capitalists.  

This dynamic is a major contributor to the coming demise of the corporate state.  Enforcing the M&A laws would have meant the past forty years of union busting and associated wage and benefit collapse would have not been possible.  At least to the degree we see.  Offshoring of democracy’s capital by private interests would not have been possible.   Yes, democracy owns that capital.  Not some corporate bureaucrat that believes they can move intellectual capital, jobs or even the company to another place on earth.  Unemployment would likely be a small fraction of what it is today.  And, localization would still be in play.  Just a few of many dynamics that would be different if the rule of law had not been destroyed by politicians and public officials from both parties.

So, let’s look at Zillow and Trulia.   Two companies that have merit in some attempt to break the monopoly and its subversion of the free flow of information of the bumbling, incompetence realtor industry.  But neither one is actually making any money and never has.   Additionally, the results of both firms are inflated substantially in what is clearly a massive real estate bubble.    So, we can expect their future results to be even more unprofitable.  And, in actuality, both firms may eventually go bankrupt as that bubble is deflated.   This ties in directly with the forty year depression dynamics.  If this system completely unwinds, I have noted in prior posts we could see both real estate and stocks return to forty year ago levels.  

Both Zillow and Trulia report large numbers of unique visitors to their site yet they are unable to turn these numbers into profit.  With nearly 90 million unique visitors to Trulia in one month, this is almost certainly a sign of the real estate bubble.  There are only about 150 million households in this nation.  People are actively looking to acquire real estate as investments, second homes and such.  Foreigners who have built up trade surpluses with the U.S. have massive amounts of dollars and nothing else to do with them other than buy U.S. real estate, Treasuries or weapons of mass destruction created by the military-industrial complex.  

Japan was in this situation in the early 1990s and now it is China.  Japanese companies, firms and their wealthy, also considered invincible, ended up selling U.S. real estate back to us at extremely distressed prices.  China will too as they ignorantly pile in at the peak.  As I have noted time and again, there will come a day when China, as just one example, is starved for dollars.  That will precipitate an unwinding of their dollar purchases be that Treasuries or U.S. real estate.  Don’t bet on the yuan taking out the dollar either.  Signing deals with Brazil and Russia to settle trade in their respective currencies doesn’t recognize that most exports in their nation are by American and European companies that report their profits in dollars and euros.  They won’t be using rubles and yuan for that trade settlement.   They will be using dollars and euros.  I was a first to write this trade settlement system will fail and so too will likely be the failure of U.S. empire.  But as noted on here in the past, the U.S. is probably responsible for at least $50 trillion in annual global trade.  Signing swaps deals with New Zealand or South Korea isn’t even on the radar.   People just don’t understand how massive the U.S. empire is.   Empire is likely to fail from within.  But I will give you a greater glimpse into that at some point.

Wall Street investment banks (that’s an oxymoron for banks to bill themselves as investment since they only make money by rent extraction)  pump firms like Zillow and Trulia to make these acquisitions.  They create models and push economic promises that are no different than the models that destroyed Wall Street in 2008.   And they do so for one reason; to create massive fees of M&A.   

Additionally, the stock market bubble encourages M&A booms.  Companies that have no earnings like Zillow and Trulia, all of a sudden have a wealth of stock bubble they can use to buy other companies.   Both of these companies have only a few hundred million dollars in sales and no earnings.  Yet, they are merging for the issuance of $3.5 billion in stock.  Or, monopoly money created out of thin air.  

These two companies couldn’t dream of merging with the exchange of even a nickel without stratospheric stock bubble prices.  They don’t literally have a nickel of profit between the two of them.  So, are you going to buy something with revenue?  Umm, all of the revenue in the world won’t buy you a cup of coffee.   Try it sometime.  Walk into Starbucks and tell them you want a tall coffee for $1.60.  Tell them you don’t have any earnings to pay for it, but you will pay with revenue.  You know, like Whimpy who always wanted a hamburger today in return for some mythical future payment when he did have earnings.

So, for the price Zillow is paying Trulia, what would be the payback period just to get the original money used in this deal?  Well, they have no earnings so we can’t use any measure of profit unless we make it up like Whimpy.   But if we take a quick and dirty of Trulia’s enterprise value to free cash flow, and then take the reciprocal of that number, we get a free cash flow yield.   Taking this yield, we see that it would take one thousand years for this deal to pay for itself.  Of course, both firms are “betting” on a better future.   I’m not a betting man so I would have to say their future expectations are probably well too optimistic given the real estate bubble we are in.  But, regardless, in a system where capitalism doles out money to society and not the other way around, the money is available to do an asinine deal like this while Americans rot.  While 25% of Americans don’t have a job.  And, 50% literally own nothing.   Where is their money to piss away on completely useless endeavors like Wall Street does?   That’s a good question for our king. 

Private, for-profit capital does not serve the fundamental human  needs of society.  It never has and it never will.  Wall Street criminals and corporate bureaucrats have stolen so much of our money that they can piss it away on corrupt, worthless deals like this, well, and encouraging the unlawful illegal immigration scandal, waging war and spying on Americans while many American worry how they are going to survive till tomorrow. 

Karma is indeed a bitch.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:51 PM

Sunday, July 27, 2014

What If Democracy Is A Fraud

This system provides the perfect form of control.  Anyone who resists it is immediately removed from their seat at the table of gluttony, corruption, fraud, looting and power.  So, it demands and receives nearly total conformity.  Certainly those who are in the system are, almost to a tee, willfully ignorant of this reality.

That Anthony Napolitano exists within the mainstream by telling the truth is very, very profound because it is a sign of the awakening that exists within this nation.  Awakening from lies, deceit, corruption, fraud and outright evil that creates it.   We are all institutionalized to our beliefs.  Which, frankly, is why we should have no strongly held beliefs.  Only, human values that allow us to live presently, and, thus appreciate without any ego-motive what each experience is meant to teach us.  We are witnessing the collapse of the disconnected ego on a universal scale.  This has never happened on a universal scale anytime in human history.

Certainly there are people who have no idea what is going on.  They don’t appreciate the power of this moment.  Their beliefs keep them from experiencing reality as it is unfolding.  By the way, this is not a bullish or bearish statement on finance or investments.  Both, the bulls and the bears share the same belief system.  That is, the future will unfold as it has in the past.  And, so they “believe” that they can protect themselves from what the future has yet to come.  Don’t bet on it.

One of the long-time theses on here is that both political parties are going to fail in this nation.  And the Democratic Party will likely be first.  I have not explained what lies behind this position but I have repeated it time and again.  Even when Obama’s approval rating was 75% and people who think with their eyes looked upon such a statement with disdain. 

Obama was not elected to ensure the will of the people.  He was elected by money, power, greed and evil to do their bidding.  It certainly appears to be that bidding is to destroy the national sovereignty of the United States.  We see that in the immigration scandal, the involvement of the United Nations in our sovereignty, the massively corrupt trade agreements that would further destroy our nation and on and on.  Obama is clearly empowering the corporatized borderless world of global capitalist tyranny.  What are his motives?  Who knows.  But, as I have noted before, the only explanation I can see that fits with his childhood is that of a communist who views capitalism as his method to achieve his beliefs of what the world should look like.  That is, a borderless world of corporate-controlled       equality enforced by a ruling class of incompetent, ignorant, statist thugs.  It’s certainly just a guess based on the small amount of evidence we are privy to.  Certainly this is not the objective of everyone in American politics.   Republicans would certainly agree with this statement to its limits.  That is, a nation of corporate control enforced by a ruling class of incompetent, ignorant, statist thugs.

Regardless, electing political parties in this nation means that the winner gets to impose their will on society.  They get to pass laws that loot, steal, pillage,impoverish and control everyone else.  We don’t elect politicians to keep us free.  That is patently absurd.  A free people is a people empowered to make life choices they wish to make without being forced to do so by a ruling class of political asshats.  That means my decisions in life are my own and I voluntarily make them of my own free will.  Whether those are negative or positive decisions is irrelevant.  It does not mean being forced into welfare as an only choice of survival or forced into Obamacare or forced to pay for violent state programs I don’t support or forced into serving in the war machine because there are no other economic options. 

This nation was founded on ethical and moral ideals.  Not perfectly so, but at that time, profoundly so.  Ever since that time evil has been trying to destroy this nation because of what it stood for.  Yet, more importantly, what it had the possibility of becoming.  That is, a first in nations that frees people from the rule of man.  And, so far, they have succeeded. 

What if democracy is a fraud.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:30 AM

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Obama Caught Lying Again About Obamacare

I think by now we can consider this type of behavior pathological.  This while Obama enjoys a life of leisure while others clean up his messes.  Racking up massive expenses on the American taxpayer’s back.  Are we still blaming everything on Republicans?

I must admit that I’m going to enjoy watching parts of this system fail because they are so corrupt.  One of them will be that former presidents get to live like kings off of the taxpayer’s back.   I would doubt Obama will be collecting his presidential retirement for very long.  But what will really create a sense of satisfaction is when Bill Clinton is dropped from the public dole.

posted by TimingLogic at 3:55 PM

Friday, July 25, 2014

NASA: Humans Will Prove We Are Not Alone Bahahaha!

This is another example of anti-scientific nonsense that has, unfortunately, become the norm rather than the exception of science.  It is an unscientific statement founded only in ego, its perceptions of reality and its endless rationalizations.  This is a belief founded on one defining ego rationalization.  That is, the physical universe is nearly infinite so there must be something out there that closely resembles me.   Well, first of all, there is some reason to believe the ego and its perceptions are nothing more than illusions.  Secondly, there has never been any scientific evidence other intelligent life exists anywhere in the universe. 

If you want to believe otherwise, it is your prerogative.  But it is just that.  It is nothing more than a belief.   Six billion people in this world all have different beliefs.   Which belief system is the definitive source of truth?  How about none of them?  Beliefs don’t belong in science.   By the way, that includes unproven and unprovable “scientific” theories that are nothing more than unsubstantiated beliefs.  That NASA’s top administrator is quoting his beliefs rather than any foundational scientific principles in support of finding little green men shows the levels to which science is being destroyed by institutionalization, bureaucracy and ego. 

“Do we believe there is life beyond Earth?” asked former astronaut and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “I would venture to say that most of my colleagues here today say it is improbable that in the limitless vastness of the universe we humans stand alone.”

Now, I am not stating there is not intelligent life out there somewhere.  But when you institutionalize those beliefs as NASA is doing, then you are driven by ideology rather than scientific principles of discovery and the search for truth.  More importantly, you end up uselessly chasing your tail and directing untold resources to do it.

If one appreciates that time, space and matter may not be real, and many of humanity’s greatest minds intuitively  appreciate this distinct possibility, and that the universe may simply be a “hallucinogenic” creation of the mind, then one would realize that there certainly is no such thing as the universe.   That physical reality is indeed just The Matrix.  (As some readers already appreciate, the movie is a loose interpretation of matrix mechanics first hypothesized earlier in the twentieth century.)

posted by TimingLogic at 1:25 PM

Amazon Reports Substantial Loss And Warns Of Upcoming Massive Loss

A Ponzi scheme written of on here many times.  But we reward incompetence in our centrally-planned financial system and society.

Finally, someone publicly quoted as stating it’s pretty hard to lose money on $20 billion in sales.  Well, that’s not actually true.   It would be like me selling cars for $5,000 that cost $10,000 to make.  Obviously, I’m going to report massive revenue growth as I am successful at selling those cars.  

If Amazon can string together three or four of these big losses, it will be teetering on the precipice.  As noted on here in the past, another too big to fail dinosaur likely headed for extinction.  And, like all of the others, they’ll probably be standing in line for a bailout soon enough.  But no bailout for you.  Just for crony capitalism.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:36 PM

Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Warriors Of The Rainbow

“When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them.” – Chief Seattle

I’m dubious of many quotes of people who are long gone unless they are documented in their original writings.  But, I quote them anyway.   Smile  Chief Seattle, which the English translation that everyone will recognize, was actually a quite profound thinker and accomplished mystic.  (As an aside, according to an anthropologist I know, American Indians were the tallest people on earth two hundred years ago, towering a full head height above Europeans.  Seattle, born well over two hundred years ago, was over 6’ tall.  It was all of that meat they ate.  Maybe it’s also why their mysticism was so well developed.  Just a little friendly poke at vegans.)  One must appreciate the context under which this statement was made.  It was made in reference to the behavior of European states and their often wholesale destruction of the natural world.

Now, back to the present day, 130 environmental groups have called for the end of capitalism.   Their reasons are because of global warming, which long time readers will appreciate that I see nothing but baseless, unscientific claims behind any such conclusion.  The models created by the IPCC have failed completely in their predictions and, as such, are a mockery to  anyone who actually appreciates what science is.   The science deniers are the liberals themselves who spout the marginalizing nonsense that the science is settled yet cannot explain the first thing about the work of the IPCC or its supporters. 

I find it ironic that the Sierra Club is at the forefront of this effort and they have taken nearly $30 million dollars from natural gas corporations.   This isn’t some wild claim.  It is documented in the mainstream media and the Sierra Club, caught with their pants down, then was forced to distance themselves from natural gas corporations but never gave that money back.  In other words, the Sierra Club wouldn’t actually be able to press its message without capitalism.  But, then maybe they wouldn’t need to.   Ditto with the United Nations hosting this event.  The UN is a non-democratic institution of unelected bureaucrats that should never, ever be granted any enforceable power over a free people.   Just like all other big, bureaucratic, centrally-planned institutions of the ego, I wouldn’t be betting on the successful fate of the UN. 

Now, why did I type that last paragraph?  Because I want to make a point that marginalizing liberal idiots often use to destroy other legitimate dissenting points of reason.   The Sierra Club may take money from the natural gas industry, and they may be wrong about the roots of climate change, but does that make all of their concerns about the planet illegitimate?  Of course not.   But, the tactic of fanatic liberals is to lump everything into the same bucket and call everyone of a dissenting view a racist, a science denier, a baby killer, a Republican or whatever else they know will shut down or substantially marginalize dissent.  Liberalism as defined in this nation is truly a mental disorder.  By the way, the Republican Party is a bastion of “neo”liberalism using these same ploys to shut down people like Ron Paul.

There is a reality that is being presented before us.  Our air, land, waterways, places of work, our homes, our bodies and our minds are being turned into toxic shitholes.   The earth is indeed sick as Chief Seattle noted.   The toxic sickness of humanity’s cumulative minds and our bodies has never been greater.  Just 50 years ago, look at the movies or magazines and see how morbidly obese and sick we have become.  Look at the acting out, addictions and uncentered minds that are so common in the modern corporate capitalist society.  And the rise of chronic diseases and instability of so many.   The corporate state is already in a permanent state of systemic failure for more than half of the population.

This system has also devastated much of the biodiversity of the natural world.  Maybe more importantly for the future, what remains of the natural world is viewed as the next parking lot for Wal-mart or the next tract housing development for corporate wage slave drones.   This system of privatizing gains and socializing losses as it has always worked is simply not sustainable.   Privatizing gains and socializing losses is corporate capitalism.  It’s no great secret on here that I think a substantial probability exists that corporate capitalism will not survive.   And, even the concept of states may not survive much longer than capitalism.   That said, I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water as many fanatics wish.  I’m not ready to live in a cave without air conditioning or the Internet either.  If you wish to live that way, have at it.  Ted Kaczynski’s shack is probably still available.  As written ad nauseam on here, I support all of the ideals that corporate capitalists rave about but have never delivered for all of humanity.  That is, personal empowerment, personal responsibility, property rights, human individualism, emotional freedom from the Borg, the ability to “monetize” scientific and social advances for the benefit of humanity, etc. 

If the quote from Chief Seattle is accurate, the people of the rainbow are almost certainly the people of today.  The people of all colors from all corners of the globe who are now connected and united into a single family for the first time in history.  And who are now responsible for banding together to save our planet, and in the process, save ourselves from this exploitative and violent system.   And, the only way that is going to happen is to change this socioeconomic system.  As I have noted on here ad nauseam, there is nothing wrong with humanity.  It’s this system that makes people ignorant.   It’s the system that disconnects people from their own divinity, from their own self-reinforcing feedback of emotional and spiritual growth, from each other and from the cycle of all life.  We are the people the world has been waiting for. 

If we were unencumbered, we would make incremental,  positive changes that push power to the people from the systematized power.   That includes a process of unwinding all of the useless and corrupt laws that define this system.  And, do so over time.  Then monitor and continue to incrementally refine the feedback of its effects.   The first step was missed in 2008 when we should have started breaking up large corporations and prosecuting systemic political and corporate fraud.   But, that isn’t going to happen because the status quo would lose their power and control over our lives.   The United States, as just one example, needs large corporations with large reach to project its hegemony globally.  When empire ends, so will the mass of corporations.   I have noted that I expect the empire to effectively be finished by 2022.   If that happens, the world is going to change very, very rapidly in coming years.  Even more rapidly than the last five since the 2008 collapse.

So, it seems apparent there are at least two possible outcomes intertwined in our fate-filled future.  One is complete collapse of everything where the pieces are then picked back up rather rapidly as happened in 1929.  The other is a combination of partial and complete collapse of pieces that will happen around the world in waves.   The factors determining this are too broad to identity.  Globalization could end because the world’s consumers are tapped out or it could end because of a pandemic or countless other outcomes in between.   But, what is likely to develop in this system’s place is what is needed to develop to meet the immediate needs of people.  Thus, driven mostly at a local level.   And, much of that that will likely involve re-use of what already exists.   So, parts of capitalism that work will possibly be kept or repurposed.  We will possibly see a hodge podge of ideas throughout the world that develop through fits and starts.  Some destined to fail, others with possibilities tweaked towards improvements and yet others to survive.   But, we have an ability to replicate successes rapidly given the global connection that now exists through the advancement of the Internet.    And, part of those successes will almost certainly involve Warriors of the Rainbow and their attempts to respectfully reconnect humanity with the natural world as it always was before the advent of what we now call modern society. 

posted by TimingLogic at 12:44 PM

Monday, July 21, 2014

Update On Geopolitical Economic Shifts Between China, The U.S. And The BRICs

I have written of the coming collapse of China since well before the 2008 collapse.    It was preordained long ago.   Actually Bill Clinton and Al Gore’s corrupt presidency and their policies preordained it.  It’s coming regardless of what the central planners, including Chinese communists, U.S. economists, western corporate capitalists and Wall Street believe or wish us to believe.  

It’s prescient to note that Chinese communist party leader and premiere Li has adamantly stated recently that China will not experience a hard economic landing.  How many times have we heard the horrid predications of central planning buffoons in the west work out exactly opposite of their exclamations?  The arrogance of exclaiming some grand power over the lives of  hundred of millions or billions of people and an economic system with untold trillions of moving parts is a sign of their megalomania.

One of the web crawlers I have is on specific news involving China.  I mentally monitor the type and frequency of that particular news.   As noted in some of the recent news links below, the rhetoric appears to be picking up between the west and China.  Regardless, the mainstream media tone has indeed changed over that of the last dozen years or so.   There used to be an endless stream of drivel on the China miracle, the Asian century and countless other examples of journalistic nonsense.  Now the same bobbleheaded journalists are reporting a much different picture.  One that has always existed but didn’t fit the memes our masters were pumping as media talking points regurgitated by a willfully ignorant journalist community.   

This is very important to appreciate because the mood of western capitalist state power has made a massive sea change towards China.  China is now viewed as a threat rather than a profit opportunity.  Forget any political pulpit rhetoric about wishing a happy and cooperative relationship with China.  The reflection of reality are the memes that are now planted in the press.   Mind you, China’s corrupt, repressive, controlling, centrally-planned statist society was always a threat to freedom, as all violent statist systems are, but the power of greed and profit far outweighed that threat.   With a change in mood from greed to fear,  we can expect responses, both overt and covert to be in accordance with this reality.  This is right inline with anticipated outcomes written of on here. 

Most everyone who is reading this is probably aware that the BRICs nations have recently created their own development bank to challenge the U.S. controlled IMF and World Bank.  And, as a result their trade settlement will surpass the use of dollars.  Many people see this as impending doom for the dollar.  Don’t bet on it.    These countries have no other choice than to watch their economies implode with the massive pool of dollar outflows leaving their nations.  This new development bank is not driven by rising strength in these nations but rather exposes their weakness and reliance on dollars now fleeing their borders.  And this is their statist answer.   I am dubious of their abilities to accomplish anything, even if it may be a symbolic gesture in the right direction.

What exactly do any of these countries make other than cheap labor to be exploited by western economies?  What will this bank actually fund?  90% of China’s exports are by western (western includes Japanese) companies to serve the needs of western or Japanese consumers.  Those companies are not going to settle their trade in yuan, rubles , rupees or real.  They are going to settle their trade in dollars and euros.   The amount of trade between these nations not involving western capital or western companies is negligible.  So, the impact of this new development bank is likely to remain negligible. 

If these countries attempt to mandate a new settlement system to western capital and corporations operating in their nations, they will simply experience foreign capital flight and associated implosion of their already corrupt and useless currencies.  What the hell do any of these countries produce that western companies or consumers want?   Almost nothing without western company-funded jobs, science and economic development.  Brazil, India and China kiss western capitalist asses every day and thank them for the jobs, science, technology, development and economic growth they brought with them.  Because these nations were well too corrupt to create those dynamics on their own.  And will remain well too corrupt in the future without transformative economic and political change. 

I have also been writing for the last eight years that the global trade settlement system is in for some major changes, collapse or  crisis.  All of these moves away from the dollar and all of this new direct trade settlement was predicted as a macro theme on here.  In other words, that we would see a move towards what would likely be direct trade settlement in lieu of dollars.  A change in the global trade settlement system or a crisis in the global trade settlement system doesn’t mean the dollar is preordained to collapse as so many believe.   To the contrary, as written on here many times, the dollar will likely rise violently as this cycle ends.  The beliefs behind dollar collapse are generally wishful thinking driven by emotions and associated faulty analysis.  Who exactly is going to run away from dollars or repudiate dollars?  The very dollar-based interests that dominate the world today?  Bulloney.

If you ask people in Russia, India, China or Brazil if they would rather have dollars or their own local currencies, to a person, the answer would clearly be dollars.   Dollars have been the most sought after black market item everywhere in the world for a long time.  If you don’t understand that, then you don’t have a deep enough appreciation of how wildly corrupt the entire world is and how useless most currencies have always been.  As noted on here many times over the last nine years, China’s currency is worthless.  They just don’t realize it yet. 

The mainstream media’s mood towards China has definitely seen a sea change as noted in the links below.  And, it has changed because the mood of the power structure in western capitalist societies has changed.  Soon, policies will change to reflect that mood. 

It is ignorant to believe the U.S., Europe, Japan or any other western capitalist nations are going to simply sit back and do nothing as the world shifts beneath their feet.  They will respond with policies of violence to protect their interests.  That is the only reason the state exists.  To perpetuate violence on behalf of state actors.  If China doesn’t want to use dollars as trade settlement, the U.S. has clear cover to default in some manner on China’s Treasury holdings or flash up trade barriers.   ie, If you don’t accept our currency, I’m sorry but we cannot pay our bills or trade with you freely.  That’s just one possibility.  And don’t believe the U.S. hasn’t planned for these contingencies either.  Most certainly someone in the bowels of secrecy has. 

Private, for-profit capital has become dominant in this moment of time.  But, remember, the force of the state is even more powerful.  Private, for-profit capital only exists to serve the state.  And the state will exert its violent authority when necessary.   Empire is headed for the trash heap but then so too are the powers it created around the globe.  That includes the BRICs.

Australia will stand up to China to defend liberal values

China increases communist re-education to ensure its control goes unchallenged

China wants more clout through the world’s use of the yuan

China warns officials against aping western morality.  The communist state’s version of corruption is far preferred.

China tells the U.S. to stay out of South China Sea dispute
Is China reneging on its Hong Kong promises?

China’s corruption crackdown won’t end soon because every aspect of communist culture is corrupt

China sends spy ship to U.S. naval exercises

Denial in China about the property collapse

China implodes while central planners fiddle

China plans sale of mortgage-backed securities

China and Japan rivalry heats up

China’s premiere makes absolutely clear that China will not have a hard landing

China’s rise and Asian tensions send U.S. relationship into spiral

China thinks it can beat the U.S. in battle

How fracking helps American beat German industry (And China)

Energy: the indispensable country

China’s top paper warns of slippery slope of conflict with the U.S.

Pentagon plans new tactics to deter China in South China Sea

Juggling act for China as inflows slow

U.S. owned factories selling rotted meat in China (Not related directly but simply shows how western firms own vast tracts of even Chinese-branded factories in China.  Think Mitt Romney and his band of exploitative renter capitalist hooligans.  Don’t believe those barbed wire fences and guard towers are to keep people out of his factory.  That is what a badge reader is for.  Not barbed wire fences and guard towers.  If Romney is too ignorant to realize this, then it would simply be par for the course.  This system operates from ignorance starting at the very top.)

posted by TimingLogic at 1:58 PM

Monetary Fungibility Part Deaux: Auto Loan Crisis Dead Ahead

As I noted in my last post on Janet Yellen’s asshat remarks, money is fungible.   That means all assets impacted by Federal Reserve policy are impacted equally.   There is no bubble in small caps or junk bonds or other discrete examples.  The bubble is everything.  The bubble is everywhere.  It’s our entire perceptions of reality are a bubble.  The bubble of Washington power is as large as the housing bubble.  The bubble in stocks is as large as the bubble in health care.  The bubble in auto loans is as big as the bubble in consumer debt.  The bubble in industrial farming is as big as the bubble in the military-industrial complex.  The bubble in tyranny and subjugation against the American people is as big as the oil price bubble.  And on and on and on. 

What one really must take away from this New York Times post is not that car loans are the new housing market bubble.  What one must understand is that there is no place left to create new credit.  So, the only way to keep this Ponzi scheme going is to extend credit wherever banking crooks can create demand.   If they can find a sucker to take a car loan for six years at $500 a month, they must do it or watch the system freeze up due to a collapse in the money supply.  

All we are doing is rounding out the size and scope of all bubbles touched by Washington politicians, corporations, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve.   Anything they touch, they will ultimately destroy by squirting money in every orifice impacted by their policy.   That is fungibility.   Hence the reality is all bubbles are equally comparable bubbles.  That includes liar loans on cars, houses, home improvement loans, company loans, margin debt, government debt, credit cards debt, student loan debt, equity margin debt, debt market margin debt, mergers & acquisitions debt, private equity debt, military spending debt and on and on and on.    They are all liar loans because that is the only way they can keep this system from collapsing. 

The ignorance and arrogance of central planners is truly obscene.   I must say that I have never, ever seen anything like this in my life.  We say that over and over again throughout generations but this time it truly is different.  Through no qualified ability or corrective feedback loop, Washington, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, massive corporations and countless other centralize bureaucracies around the world develop this belief system of their omniscience.  But their perceptions of omniscience are only achieved through policies of violence.  That includes ripping people off anyway they can.  Car loans?  War loans?  Housing loans?  Student loans?  What is the difference?  

We are literally witnessing what is must have been like to like under the Soviet Union or under King George or King Louis XVI.   The buffoonery is so surreal it’s almost hard to believe I’m not watching this in a Mel Brooks’ comedy.

Title link here

posted by TimingLogic at 12:14 AM

Friday, July 18, 2014

Earth’s Magnetic Field Collapsing Much Faster Than Predicted

If this is accurate, and it probably is, true science should have predicted this.   In other words, the magnetic field’s strength is likely proportional to solar activity.  If there is a weak sun, there is a weak magnetic field needed by the earth.  There are scientists who did actually predict this.  Just not institutionalized, mainstream science manipulated by politicians, fanatics, corporations and Wall Street.

For years I have made note of the changes to our sun that are happening.  And, given some sound scientific theories on what is happening.  That includes a long Jupiter astrological/astronomical cycle that affects solar activity through barycenter physics dynamics. 

There certainly are larger forces than Jupiter involved but we just don’t know concretely what those are.  After experiencing the most active sun in the last 8,000 years solar activity is now weaker than at any time in the last century.  And it is almost certainly going to get weaker yet.   The only question is how long this will last.  Will we be in another extended minimum of cooler temperatures?  Or will this simply last a solar cycle or two?  Regardless, according to IPCC data, the earth has not warmed in nearly 18 years.

By the way, the last two days saw solar activity readings lower than at any time since the 2008 financial collapse comparing  data posted at the NOAA space weather center and my own records. 

Interestingly, with the collapse of the earth’s magnetic field comes the rise in measured gamma ray blasts hitting the earth from deep space.  As noted on here over the years, gamma rays are the most powerful energy source known to man.  And they are also the best cellular mutators; something else talked about on here.  Climate change, the rise in bacteria resistance, the rise of new superbugs, the rise of treatment resistant mosquitos, the rise of Roundup resistant weeds, the awakening of the human mind and much more are almost certainly interrelated in ways we simply have yet to consider.  If the universe is a creation of the human mind, and humanity has held this mystical and intuitive possibility for thousands of years, (although institutionalized, mainstream science completely rejects this even as a possibility except for a very few mainstream scientists not fully institutionalized to this system)  then the rise in gamma ray sources from deep space and the failure of the sun may be reflections of the reality we are creating rather than the other way around. 

When I first wrote cold and dry was coming, I noted that democracy loves cold, dry weather.  At the time, the world was experiencing Pax Globalia.  The only supposed crisis in the world was the United States “housing bubble”.   Meh.  Maybe I should have said that we might consider the divine life force of the universe has heard the cries of suffering from all life and it too loves freedom.  Freedom for all life.   Or, that all life cannot be controlled or denied its existence or worthiness.  Just something to consider in a dumbed-down existence where the disconnected ego thinks it has everything figured out with the dumbed-down god of manipulated, institutionalized, hierarchical science that subverts our mind’s higher power and the purity of its intents of discovery and truth.  

Title link Earth’s magnetic field is imploding

posted by TimingLogic at 11:11 AM

Stocks Are 80% Overvalued In The Third Biggest Bubble In History?

This is a nice article.  But, this is not the third biggest bubble.  It is the largest bubble by far.  I have noted on here in the past that traditional measurements do not capture the scale of horror that defines asset prices.  PE, Tobin’s Q, market value to GDP, Multi-year PEs made famous by Shiller, any intrinsic value measurement like book value, cash flow, enterprise value to free cash flow, etc do not capture the scale of this bubble.  This bubble is so massive that it defines everything we believe economically and has defined our reality for all but the oldest people in this world.  Obviously, I will be talking more specifically about this.  But as noted on here for the last half dozen years my downside target for the S&P is 200-450.  That is, if the stock market survives. 

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:48 AM

Thursday, July 17, 2014

The State’s “Book Burnings, Its Suppression Of Dissent And How The CIA Terrorizes The Entire World Including American Citizens

I remember back in 2008 during the midst of the collapse, I got a mid-day call from a friend.  I had told some time beforehand that if I were him I would consider liquidating all of my financial investments into cash.   I told him that there was a mass awakening underway and that the entire system was going to unwind.   He said that he didn’t see any type of awakening inferring that I was smoking something.   But that awakening has been a long time theme on here.  How do you like that awakening now?   It’s incredible in just a few short years how informed the world has become on how massively corrupt our economic and political systems are.   We have actually seen entire country governments be sacked or close to being sacked in the last handful of years.  Even in developed countries.   The only people who are still in the bubble of ignorance are its useful idiots and the predators who control their belief systems.

The excellent discussion in this video (with a 98% thumbs up rating) interview is very consistent with past writings on here.   This system exists through deception, distortion and propaganda.  These figurative book burnings extend far beyond social censorship to social deceits, distortions and propaganda in our media, our corporations, our political process, our religious institutions and our educational and university systems.   Social value systems are transient and not a source of truth.  Only human values are innate and a source of timeless truths.  Only compassion, kindness, mercy, equality, justice, respect, forgiveness, trust, love, community, dignity, selflessness and the like are sources of truth. 

As I have noted on here in the past, universities used to be bastions of small L liberalism where new ideas on freedom and human rights were discussed, debated and developed.  The original universities were comprised of the liberal arts that society believed were necessary for its citizens to become great defenders of liberty and freedom.    The Greeks saw the liberal arts as subjects or skills that were considered essential for a free person to know in order to take an active part in civic life.   Liberal arts taught people how to think rather than what to think.   It’s no coincidence good capitalists in the corporate state mock liberal arts as a useless degree that provides no foundation for a “career” serving our masters.  Now that schools are beginning to include curriculum on human-caused global warming is equally as sinister. 

Remember, a long time thesis on here is that we could see extra-judicial Nuremburg-type trials in our nation.   As heinous as the allegations of CIA activity in this interview is, I suspect you ain’t seen nothin yet.  Our government is so secretive not because it is trying to protect us, but because it is protecting itself from prosecution for the crimes against humanity it is perpetuating.   That includes Americans.

On that note, I seriously doubt this system can be reformed in its current configuration.  Ever.  Even after the global economy  seizes or fails on some level and humanity is completely exposed to its untold evils.  As noted for many years, this cycle could be termed the end of big.  I suspect this very well could be the end of  large states as we know them.  States like China, Russia, India, Brazil, the E.U., the U.S., etc. 

Now, if this happens, it could take years or decades.  There could be fits and starts or violent and rapid busts or attempts at reorganization as we have seen happen repeatedly in Egypt.   It may happened differently around the world or it may not happen at all.  But, in some way, we are almost certainly going to see a return to Enlightenment Principles; essentially creation of a system of self-rule that empowers humanity or leaves humanity alone.   The end result will be that self-determined people  will do what they do best.  That is, create, invent, solve, prosper, produce, etc.    The vast amount of suffering around the world today is because China, Russia, the E.U., the U.S. and the local states they control are constantly destabilizing humanity. 

And, that means if our nation doesn’t crumble into pieces as I have noted it may, that we will likely see a future government structure more in line with Enlightenment Principles.  ie,  A structure that pushes power down to the daily lives of citizens to solve their problems within the construct of individualism and community.  This while neutering a wildly corrupt  central state authority in some far off land that is reminiscent of the British crown in 1776 London.   That is, some semblance of Jeffersonian democracy be that State’s Rights or the Articles of Confederation or something similar.    And that system will be founded on a substantial awareness and distrust of concentrated power be that politicians or corporations or the military-industrial complex.   That means an existence substantially more decentralized (localization and communities),  substantially more determined from the local will of We The People and possibly even much more agrarian, skilled-trades and craft-based in scope.  ie, Regardless, a system that aligns more closely with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs and associated self-actualization.  Again, something talked about on here many times.

Mind you, this has all happened substantially because of the re-emergence of the virtual coffeehouse “penny university”.  The  penny universities that now engulfs the world.   That is, the virtual community of the Internet.   A place where education, learning, sharing of ideas and expansion of knowledge has created a new classless method of inclusive, community universities.   This is what going to university used to be before capitalism hijacked our universities and turned them into farm systems for wage slaves.  

The common man is now much more informed than the ignorant state actors who attempt to control, manipulate and deceive us for the benefit of state actors like Wall Street, the political parties, politically-aligned religious fanatics, the Chamber of Commerce, mainstream media, corporations, the aristocratic predators, the investor class, etc..  The Internet has become the great equalizer and we can never go back.  There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.  It’s also why people like Obama, ignorant mainstream journalists, Congresspersons like Diane Feinstein and corporations are always whining about chat boards, bloggers, Youtubers, online whistleblowers, online journalists, etc and Congress continues to try to pass laws to shut them up.   

Here is a link to Crispin’s remarks of the Forbidden Bookshelf.  That includes The Lords of Creation.  A secret history of corporate capitalism and its endless predation, victimization and tyranny on our society.  And, of course, The Phoenix Program that is certainly being used against the American people.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:41 AM

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Breaking News From The Kremlin: Janet “Central Planner” Yellen Warns Of Excessive Asset Valuations

I wasn’t planning any posts today but I can’t pass up this hilarity.  Another example of the arrogance of central planners to believe they can tamp down what they believe to be a problem is while maintaining what they believe is not a problem.  It isn't small caps or biotech that are bubbles, the entire Wall Street, Washington, Federal Reserve-created monster that is both the U.S. and global economy (empire) are bubbles.

Janet needs to learn a new word.  Fungible.  Money is fungible.  That means her statements today are ludicrous, bureaucratic mumbo jumbo that clearly don’t endear confidence.  Instead it reaffirms that the Federal Reserve is wearing an asshat.   First they deny they created any bubbles and now they admit they may have created a few.

Fungible simply means the universal “indistinguishability” of money guarantees that all assets impacted by central planners at the Federal Reserve are valued relatively equally.   The Fed can’t fix a problem created by political corruption and treason.  It is Washington politicians from both parties that have primary blame for destroying the U.S. economy.  I’m no big fan of the Fed in its current form but they are simply one of many tools used by Wall Street and Washington to destroy our liberty and enslave us to state violence. 

Yellen sees what she believes is a problem in small caps or biotech stocks.   But the reality is the Fed, other central banks, private banking crooks, the investor class (renter capitalist) and politicians around the world have induced a global asset bubble of unprecedented proportions.  All valuations of all assets are stratospheric.  That anyone believes the S&P 500 or Dow is any less a bubble because the PE ratio is lower, doesn’t appreciate the enormity of this global bubble. 

As written on here probably more than one hundred times in the last nine years, we are in the biggest financial bubble the world has ever seen.   Everything people who support this system believe to be true about economics, society, employment, money, etc is likely to be exposed as nothing more than a self-created tyranny of beliefs.  And Janet “Kremlin” Yellen isn’t going to bring parts of that bubble down while maintaining the lofty valuations of others through rhetoric or central planning or monetary policy (because of the fungibility of money).  That she believes she can or is even willing to try reeks of systemic incompetence so typical of central planning bureaucrats.  

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.” -- John Adams

posted by TimingLogic at 1:43 PM

Monday, July 14, 2014

The Mythical Service (Servant) Economy Appears To Be Starting Its Disintegration

One of the major themes on here is that a job is not a job is not a job.  There are capital-producing activities or employment and capital-consuming activities and employment.   The first makes society richer and the latter simply derives its existence through the consumption of wealth created by the former.  In other words, capital-consuming jobs are really nothing more than a tax.  Some examples of capital-consuming jobs or activities are politicians, lobbyists, retailing, merchant businesses, hedge funds, financial advisors, MBAs, banking, insurance, real estate agents, lawyers, professional sports, entertainment, etc.   

Some people have a hard time understanding this simple concept but as noted on here before, it would have the same impact on the wealth of society if we paid people in capital-consuming employment to stay home and watch TV.   Now, because the only way we are able to survive in modern corporate capitalist society is via money (employment, work or demeaning state handouts) we have some capital-consuming activities that people are actually paid to perform that may create a higher quality of life for our citizens and society as a whole.  And, thus, society may wish to pay the tax of enjoying these activities.  A few examples may be the arts or entertainment or your favorite local restaurant. 

So, a major point in this theme discussed on here is that the post-capitalist service economy is a myth.    And I can assure you 100% that it is.  And I will explain this in excruciating detail this year.   But as noted many times on here, about 85% of all jobs in our economy create zero wealth.   Many are do-nothing, doing-each-other’s-laundry service (servant) economy jobs.  These jobs and the service economy as a while have grown to be so large that they are literally reliant on most citizens spending every single dollar they make to prop up this mythical meme.   Once society begins to save (not possible for most Americans) or run out of money, people will cut back on much of the service economy and start doing their  own proverbial laundry.  So, one method of actually measuring the early phases of coming liquidity shocks to this segment of the economy would be to watch the BLS or some reliable source for the number of, say, retail restaurant or bartender jobs created.   That’s just one example.  I’m sure you can think of many but PCE (personal consumption expenditures) itself is well too distorted.  By the way, there will  be more horrifying penning on this topic soon enough.  

Another long-time theme is that the sports/entertainment industry and casinos, a segment of this broader measurement,  examples of doing-each-other’s-laundry or capital-consuming economy, are headed for massive hard landings.   As noted on here a few times over the years, we can expect salary haircuts as much as 90% for many of the the amusement industries amongst us.   An example might be that we would see the ultra-high paid sports athletes and entertainers eventually see their wages plunge drastically.   Instead of making $20 million per movie, maybe a top actor makes $2 million.  Who know, maybe substantially less.  Ditto with athletes.   That is, if money doesn’t actually become useless first.   Which, by the way, would produce the same outcome but simply more severe.   I can assure you without any doubt that this is coming and will explain the whys of this dynamic in detail. 

Hmm…  Without money or without an outsized doing-each-other’s-laundry service economy, how does someone like Mitt Romney, Jamie Dimon, Al Gore or LeBron James, four examples of people who create zero wealth in our nation, afford to keep multiple residences and convince a plethora of service economy lackeys to maintain their garish lifestyles?  They don’t.  And, they won’t.  It’s coming.

Atlantic City’s gambling-addicted doing-each-other’s-laundry casino economy is already starting its implosion(Trump’s owners now just confirmed it too is closing this fall.).    As noted on here in the past, I suspect we are going to see casinos fall like dominos in coming years.  Atlantic City consumers are either running out of money (another data point of liquidity draining out of the service economy as wealth-creating employment continues its collapse) or Gambler’s Anonymous must be doing a more brisk business or the nationwide casino bubble is saturated and reversing trend.

Another long-time thesis is that the capitalist and empire-necessary hyper-consumerism are headed for the dung heap.  Remember, hyper-consumerism goes hand in hand with the mythical bloated post-capitalist service economy.   In other words, the service economy requires you to fork out a regular weekly or monthly payment on often useless and frivolous spending aka a tax on society in order to prop up useless job creation and sustainability.    So, go buy a new car you can’t afford - record high monthly payments and record long monthly terms as we see today.  Both payments and the length of payments required to buy a car have hit record highs. 

Self-sufficiency of any kind is a threat to the mythical post-capitalist service economy.   Be that making or growing your own food, learning to maintain your health in lieu of endless reliance on the sickcare complex, learning your own crafts and skills to make or fix more of what you need or whatnot.   The service economy cannot exist if you are self-sufficient in any way.  It requires you to simply be an ignorant consumer reliant on everyone else for every aspect of your existence.  Americans and people in general are more reliant on the state than at any time in history.  I am quite confident that trend is changing and we see this already in many self-sufficiency dynamics, including barter, developing critical mass.  (A future of barter, including between nations, is also a long-time theme on here.  And if you watch intently, you have seen many nations setting up direct trade settlement and barter arrangements in the last year or two.  Just as I anticipated they would.  Btw, barter is a rejection of state authority including the violence of centrally-controlled creation and distribution of money.)

This past few weeks it appears Shopaholics Anonymous must be picking up quite a few new members.   Retailers are reporting unusually weak behavior with the American consumer.  Of course, turning sentient beings into dumbed-down drones whose favorite pastime is shopping is another example of state violence and part and parcel to the ignorance that is so necessary for corporate capitalism and the service economy to succeed.  The corporate capitalist Idiocracy (the dumbed-down corporate state) is starting to show new signs of stress.   “Waking up” must naturally result in the failure of hyper-consumerism.  Of course, so must the end state of a system that doesn’t create wealth but only shifts it from the weak (oftentimes the honest, the just and those exploited) to those backed by the force of the state. (Predators, victimizers, exploiters or as Ayn Rand noted, moochers and parasites.)

On that note, as discussed on here many times, per capital retail space in this nation has swelled 500% in the last 35 years.   Additionally, casino space and overall gambling in the economy has gone from nearly nothing during that period of time to a massive bubble.   And, mind you, being a capital-consuming tax on society, it certainly is a bubble used to extract massive rent out of American hyper-consumerism.   These two trends are simply not sustainable and they will revert back to trend or possibly even overshoot to the downside before normalizing.  Whatever that means.  And no one knows exactly what a normalized future does mean. 

Our economy has grown through capital consumption rather than capital formation for a long, long time.   At least since the times of Reagan. 

A job is not a job is not a job.  Capital-consuming jobs are a massive wealth-shifting tax on society.  It’s a tax on an economy that doesn’t create the vast majority of its own wealth we cannot afford.  So, instead these wealth-shifting schemes have been funded through massive debt.   And, that means these types of employment are in serious trouble.  By the way, we can thank supply-side economic policies for this.  I’ll be writing more of this in a rather unique look what I am talking about. (Because what is now on the verge of failing is that very economic ideology.)

Remember-

But, it is not money itself that allows the type of inflation we have seen in the last forty years.   There are other factors involved including empire and debt.  Whether that is through a debt-based monetary system or not is irrelevant.  Debt is a primary driver for that inflation.  Debt allows prices to artificially rise substantially beyond what otherwise could ever occur without systemic failure.  So, the price of your house, the stock market and food are all a function of the same dynamics.  Enslaving people to debt has allowed corporate capitalism to raise prices (rent-seeking profit), often indiscriminately, without any concern as to sustainable supply or demand.   And to do so for decades beyond that which fundamentals ever would have allowed.  It has created the illusion of prosperity to mask the economic blight that defines the U.S. economy for most Americans.

In other words, effectively a function of debt is the ability to raise prices beyond which otherwise would be possible.  On that note, I have noted many times that debt deflation is a myth.  The Federal Reserve is afraid that a debt unwinding will cause deflation.  I have noted that even if all of the debt in this nation or the world was wiped away, we are going to see deflation.   It’s not the debt itself that is the source of deflation.  It’s the dynamics that debt creates through the artificial ability to raise prices beyond that which economic fundamentals support.

There is no way most people in our nation could afford anything without the debt or rent extraction dynamics of the monthly payment.  We are all slaves to a monthly payment and debt.  That includes our government.  Food, cars, education and houses should be cheaper to produce than ever.  But they aren’t.  Why is that?    The same reason the Dow Transports are up 64x in the last forty years.

As written on these pages before, because corporations, not just banks,  control the money supply in our nation, the only way any modicum of economic recovery can ever happen is for corporate capitalism to fail on a grand scale.   Globally.  That can happen through many dynamics.  It could be the collapse of globalization, the end of money in some form, the end of private banking in some form, the end of American empire, the end of the state that props up this system through its violence or some other example that subverts corporate control.   This is one of the inherent contradictions of corporate capitalism that will likely result in the permanent demise of  the state-created corporate matrix.   And possibly the eventual demise of the state itself.

posted by TimingLogic at 5:58 PM

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Dispatches From Freedom Summer: Ghosts Of Greenwood …. And Capitalism’s Past Horrors.

I have to laugh at the endless nonsense of people who write and say the most ignorant things.  Like we haven’t had free markets in a long time.  And free markets would solve this current global depression.  Or, this isn’t capitalism, it’s corporatism.  Or, let the free market determine a minimum wage.   Frankly, these are all lies of the mind.   The delusions, denial and logical rationalizations of the ego are literally endless.  To sit and try to rationalize why someone should be paid $8 an hour or, oftentimes, even less is pure evil.    It truly is.   You will never find someone making $8 an hour advocating for such inhumane wage slavery.  And more, importantly, the meaningless life it creates.  It’s only the evil of disconnected ego and its perceptions of superiority that would ever deny anyone a living wage and the human worthiness that comes with it.  It’s no different than people who glorify war and and talk of it romantically with some kind of twisted affection for battle, violence and, really what war is- state sponsored murder.  These are all signs of a mind operating purely on the ego’s rationalism.  And, the disconnected ego can and does rationalize every evil it can conjure up.    

Anyone who is able to connect to the place inside of them where kindness, compassion and love reside, may have a few questions for the corporate capitalist apologists.    When exactly did we have free markets?  Was that during the time of slavery?  The free market certainly did decide the paltry value of a human life just as today’s disposable society where people are thrown away like the trash.  Or maybe we had free markets during the time of the Robber Barons?  Or murdering Pinkerton Guards?  Or, company-owned towns?  Or maybe the 20 year depression of the late 1800s?  Or, maybe around the time of World War I and the Ludlow Massacre?  Or, maybe during the Great Depression?  Or, maybe it was the mass violence against labor and race in the middle of the twentieth century that literally led to an unprecedented national revolt against this system?  Which then the state responded to by taking away our liberties and capitalism responded to by ultimately breaking the back of labor aka society.  Because it certainly hasn’t been since the mid 1970s, when as a child, I witnessed adult family members and friend’s parents suffer extreme and unnecessary anxiety, pain and loss due to mass economic dislocation and injustice.  And it hasn’t been any time since with wages for all but a very few  stagnant and, at the same time the state used its violence to literally steal everything on behalf of a very small number of state actors.  

So, when did we have free-market corporate capitalism?  Please, I really want to hear a plausible explanation.  I’m all ears.  Send me an email.  The reality is humanity has fought to keep from drowning under this system since its inception four hundred-odd years ago.  Every once in a while humanity appears on the verge of breaking through but the state and its invention of corporate capitalism, always use state violence to beat back and ultimately overturn those gains. 

All states have dark histories that are often rewritten and suppressed.   Because all states exist for one reason; violence.  ProPublica has an excellent personal account of a history often suppressed or sanitized in this nation; Ghosts of Greenwood.  It is hard to read this vivid account and not appreciate a substantial sense of total injustice and  pure brutality that Nikole and her family and relatives lived under.  Good useful idiots for capitalism and capitalists themselves often affectionately refer to these times as the good ole days.  Good for whom?  Women?  Minorities?  Poor whites?  Immigrants?  “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”  Capitalism relies on state-enforced class to exploit people to survive.  So, there are always the exploiters and the exploited.   It’s the good ole days for the exploiters.  Not so much for the exploited. 

Anyone looking for some type of grounding in reality of why we are seeing so much unlawful immigration and so many refugees around the world only need this piece to get a context of how corrupt capitalism, private capital and this economic system have always been.   There may have been a small window of dynamics when corporate capitalists weren’t bringing in boatloads of immigrants to fill their factories, and that created a mass movement of black and impoverished white labor in this nation.  For black Americans, this meant instead of being exploited as sharecroppers, they were exploited as wage slaves.  For a short period of time black labor and impoverished white labor was finally allowed a small piece of the pie.  That didn’t last long.   Because soon the endless labor arbitraging of the corporate state was again in full swing through either cheap immigrant labor or corporate slave labor colonies around the world. 

This is the real dynamic behind the diaspora our nation is experiencing.  And once again it is both black and white Americans who are being exploited with immigrant labor.  And, interestingly, it is now a president with both a black and white heritage taking that exploitation to a new level.  Now asking for billions to deal with an immigration crisis he is largely responsible for while Americans on the receiving end continue to rot.  We are simply lathering, rinsing and repeating the same corrupt, unlawful process over and over and over again.  A process created by the corporate state.  Who wins?  The corporate state.  Who loses?  All labor, be that white collar, blue collar.   It doesn’t matter.  All labor is exploited whether it is physical labor or intellectual labor.  And now the repression is so great that white collar labor is getting a major dose of reality as doctors are told by capitalists they are allowed seven minutes to see a patient as just one of countless examples.   What decent human being wants to practice medicine under such violence?

I have written extensively of the how and why but this story is a prime example of why we need public capital in a democracy.  Because wage slavery, economic slavery and the associated subjugation to social injustice and human suffering are and always have been part of this system.   What does it matter that outright slavery was abolished if economic and wage slavery still exist?    What does it matter if you have basic human rights if they are not applicable to your place of work or the economic system that sets the tone for every aspect of your existence?   This is a prime reminder of why public capital is needed to actually stimulate private investment, public investment, human investment and investment in free communities.   And why Jefferson’s desire for government to literally give every American their own property (public capital) was and remains so important.  And, by public capital, no I don’t mean anything controlled by politicians as noted on here repeatedly.  Politics is going to disappear some day forever because it is an institution of the ego aka control that subverts truth and freedom.  

We have never, in the history of capitalism, had a free society or a free market.  What we should seek are fair markets that work on behalf of society and individuals rather than private, for-profit corporate interests, state actors or private individual interests stripping people of the vast majority of their fruitful labor for exploited surplus value.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:14 AM

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Joke Of The Day: Mainstream Media Reports Computer Passes Turing Test (Passes As Being Human) And Computers Will Be The Dominant Intelligence By 2045

A month or so ago it was reported by the brilliant mainstream press that a computer passed a Turing Test and, thus it is implied has somehow reaching some level of human ability.   Additionally, just some days ago a physicist, with a profit-driven intent of selling books, noted that humanity would no longer be the top species by 2045.  Instead, it will be computers.  

Bullshit.  I’m constantly amazed by what passes as knowledge in modern corporate capitalist society.

The accepted absurdity that has become so much a part of our lives is truly surreal.  Humanity doesn’t even know what the brain is, let alone what the mind is.   In fact, science views them as one and the same.   That is a very dubious assumption.   Many in science interchangeably use the term mind and brain.  Who said the mind had anything to do with the brain or vice versa?  How do we know that the mind resides in the brain?   There is no truly good evidence of this.   There are assumptions but those assumptions provide no compelling evidence that the mind has any physical shape or physical form.  There is actually some  scientific evidence that the mind may not reside in the brain but rather simply controls it.

One proof point that we know little about the mind or the brain is that modern science has a cure rate of less than 5% for chronic or serious mental illnesses or what we believe is improper functioning of the brain and/or mind.   Allopathic medicine is occasionally and often temporarily able to ameliorate mental illness symptoms, often at a substantial cost,  through pharmacological agents.  But the reality is the cure rates for mental illness is essentially not much better than statistical zero.   What does that tell us?  Maybe our entire foundations of brain and mind science are completely wrong.  Or that we still know almost nothing about either.  

Mainstream medicine and associated science has become reasonably knowledgeable in dealing with sensory abilities of the brain.  That is, the physical interfaces from the brain to our world.  And, thus physical abnormalities associated with the connections to the brain such as the possibility of restoring sight, hearing or motor function.   If we get beyond these simplistic views of our brain and mind then our knowledge becomes more precarious.  Beyond both of these, science still can’t even define what consciousness is.  Does consciousness even have anything remotely to do with the brain?  When I hear neuroscientists claim that self-awareness is consciousness, as is very often the case in the mainstream, it reinforces how little we actually know.   Self-awareness is self-awareness.  That’s why it’s called self-awareness.  If self-awareness was consciousness it would be called consciousness.  Consciousness is something we don’t really understand except at an intuitive level.  And that is why it really has escaped proper and consistent definition.  How can we define of explain what we really don’t understand?  It’s akin to defining or explaining the life force of the universe.  Another related topic we know nothing about. 

Through scientific experiments, some believe there is evidence consciousness does not reside in the brain but rather in the pineal gland or what is often literally seen as a third eye in some species, and thus is often called humanity’s third eye or eye into the soul.  There certainly is much to consider on this topic as our  view of reality may actually be created through the pineal gland and its possible release of compounds creating that illusory experience.  My point?   We really have no idea what the human experience really is. 

That doesn’t mean there aren’t many good and decent people trying to make a positive difference in the mental health or medical sciences industry.  Or that scientific progress should be abandoned.  Not is not what I am saying at all.  They certainly do make a difference.  And some of the motor and sensory discoveries made in the last handful of years have been quite profound.  Science is a never-ending journey.  But as it pertains to the human mind and brain, the road is long, hard, and without a seeming end.  

Much of today’s brain “science” was stumbled upon accidently decades ago.  And much of it is now collapsing like a lot of other allopathic medical “science” or other science that is now catching up to itself and its dubious assertions and conclusions.  I suspect that is because our basic assumptions about what the mind and the brain actually are could both be very wrong.    If that is so, it means institutionalized brain and mind science reinforces wrongness and stifles innovative and new research ideas.   In other words, what we call mainstream, institutionalized science, education and associated  knowledge might be better labeled as indoctrination. 

I know a little bit about artificial intelligence re the supposed Turing Test results and the ludicrous claims of some coming singularity; a topic I have mocked on here in the past.  I’m not on the cutting edge of AI nor am I going to sit down and write any code or design circuits anymore but then the fundamentals of that science really haven’t changed.   They haven’t changed because our knowledge of the human experience, the human brain and the human mind really haven’t changed.  And, in fact, as noted above, much of it is regressing.  Bigger, faster, easier to program and marginally better programming techniques is all science has to offer in its extremely weak, ignorant and unknowing understanding of the human human experience.  That’s about it in layman’s terms.  

It’s been a while since I have talked about this on here but it’s a combination of ego, ignorance and propaganda when anyone claims that we are close to copying the human brain or mind through computer technology or human invention.   Or that we can create computers capable of being human.  Or as some blowhards spout for highly profitable, self-interested purposes, like selling books and themselves, that we are nearing some kind of singularity.  Frankly, these people are either deceitful or ignorant or ignorantly deceitful or deceitfully ignorant.  They do a disservice to wonderment, creativity, invention, science, humanity and discovery by blatant misrepresentation of science that simply does not exist. 

Without digging up scientific citations and references, of which there are many, (because this is a stream of conscious blog post and not a dissertation) there is ample evidence that much of the human experience may actually operate from outside of the brain.  Especially when it comes to many higher order abilities and higher order intelligence.  As noted on here some years ago, there is more evidence that the human brain evolved to meet the demands of the expanded human mind and/or consciousness rather than vice versa as is believed by all of institutionalized science.  In other words, in some way human consciousness or the mind’s ability took a gigantic leap forward and that expansion of power and ability drove rapid and radical brain development needed to take advantage of it within our perceptions of physical reality.   Do Newton’s Laws not state that energy is required to create change?  What energy created that rapid expansion of the human brain?   Well, that could certainly have been the eternal light of the human mind.

In other words, for many functions and abilities, the brain may simply be some kind of receptor that processes information and translates that into something our bodies and this world can understand or act upon in our perceptions of physical reality.  On that note, I have already posted that the human mind actually grows biological magnetic material or magnetite within it.   In other words, magnetic material that our body produces organically.  And we have absolutely no clue what it is for.   Simplistic interpretations try to link it to some lost receptor ability to navigate direction through the earth’s magnetosphere.  Most certainly this is wildly simplistic and erroneous because we are, in fact, so scientifically-ignorant.  

Turing’s original questions were founded around a concept of whether computers could actually think.   That’s obviously a valid question.  Albeit, not in the sense that Turing believed.  This recent test isn’t proving that at all.   The fundamental question is what actually is thinking?   Again, we are at another assumption science makes that clearly could be another dead end or false assumption that keeps institutionalized science heading down the wrong path. 

Do we really know what thinking actually is?  To take this further, there is also some evidence, although certainly far from conclusive, as just about nothing regarding the mind ever is, that thinking isn’t thinking at all as institutionalize science believes.  Rather, it’s listening.  That the brain is listening to the mind or the universe or consciousness in some way we don’t understand.  And that the human gift of discovery, invention, creativity and innate human values may arise from listening to the divine higher power of our mind rather than any particular “stuff” found in our brain.  And that expression is then interpreted based on our unique experiences.  Does the brain light up when we are “thinking”?  Sure it does.  But does that mean the source of our thinking resides in that part of the brain?  Meh.  Mimicry?  Possibly.   Discovery, creativity, invention and innate human values?  A very dubious assumption. 

If thinking is really often listening, then each human being has within his or her ability to be incredibly creative and wonderfully brilliant if able to connect to and refine the ability to listen to the knowledge of the universe or the human mind or whatever we are able to tap into.  We often see this with people who are nothing more than average, if not, mentally-challenged in some or even all aspects of life but are gifted beyond words in other aspects.   I’m not just talking about savants, Einsteins, Michelangelos, clairvoyants, mystics or whatnot.  I’m talking about craft, art, literature, cooking, comedy, music, raising children, love, kindness, empathy and other gifts and forms of human expression that we see in people of all walks of life.  Everyone has a gift that makes them unique.  It’s simply a matter whether it has been tapped and refined.   Mind you, the greatest gift is one of unconditional acceptance and love.  Something that is clearly lost in our Godless, primitive, corporate state existence that disconnects us from our mind’s higher power.

Frankly, were it up to state actors, the human mind would be suppressed to the point of emotional and spiritual  meaninglessness.  Because that is what is required to subjugate humanity to a world of state power and control.   And, that is exactly the problem in the world today.  The human spirit has been tyrannically subjugated to unbridled state power and the thugs who wield it.  How many Albert Einsteins are we missing because our voices have been repressed through state tyranny?  Frankly, there is ample reason to believe any Albert Einsteins born into poverty or the mass of humanity simply trying to stay alive in this state-dominated world may not make it out of poverty or a life of meaninglessness in today’s controlled society.   Einstein wasn’t exactly a child prodigy and thus easily identified and exploited by the corporate state.   In today’s world he might be selling crack on the street corner to stay alive.  Or how many compassionate and merciful people who have a gift to change the world are brutally subjugated to a life of state-created and enforced poverty, repression and nothingness?

The greatest inhibitor to acquiring new knowledge, new scientific discovery and human expression is definitely the ego’s intent of control.   Control driven by subconscious and conscious fear.  Control and fear are the definition of the state.  The state exists for one reason; to perpetuate violence on behalf of class-based state actors.  To control you for their own self-interest.  And, thus by conclusion to inhibit the discovery of new knowledge and truth.

This fear/control dynamic literally shuts down normal functioning and connection of the mind and brain as we enter a primitive state of survival.  This is something science can actually measure.   And given how primitive of an existence we all lead under corporate and state control, propagandized consumerism, competition with each other over economic success/employment/survival, debt slavery and corporate wage chattel, humanity certainly is living through a substantial dark ages in science, art, literature, creativity, music and innovation.  Instead, we live in a world of conformity to corporate state approved science, literature, music, innovation, etc.   We are subjugated to a system where the state and its invention of private, class-based capital only glorify what they can use and abuse to exploit humanity for profit rather than progress or truly human individualism and associated expression.  Umm, this won’t last because there is almost certainly some magic juju and secret sauce courtesy of the human mind we don’t understand that will correct this regressive, unstable, primitive state of being.   

If any of our perceptions of the mind and brain are in any way, shape or form wrong, it would explain why science literally knows almost nothing of substantial relevance about the mind and brain.  Why our mind science is literally stuck in neutral and, in many regards, has been since the time of the ancient yogis.

Regardless, the propagandists, cultists and soothsayers who are trying to sell us on nonsense like singularity or computers that exhibit human qualities and values are simply bamboozling people purely for their own self-interested, profit-motive being the good exploitative, predatory capitalists they are.  You know, just like the capitalist medicinal tonic salesmen of a century ago who sold people the same faux medicine.  And just as a century ago, the people who don’t know any better lap it up courtesy of predatory exploitation.  Should we not be protecting each other from this type of victimization rather than allowing it to happen continually?   Using our abilities to progress humanity and our cumulative experiences rather than exploit each other for profit as this system does? 

Regardless, it’s dangerous and reckless for people to make the claims that humanity has created a computer or a program that can mimic humanity.  It’s also an outright lie. 

When wonderment ceases to exist and junk science, theories and beliefs that sell textbooks replaces it, science, discovery and the search for truth suffers tremendously.  And all new discoveries are then pigeonholed, shoehorned and forced into ideological dogma and institutionalized junk science, theories and beliefs to protect the self-interest of hierarchical institutions housing its keepers of the faith.  There is ample evidence this is where we are with mind science.  That hierarchical, state institutionalization of mind science is repressing our ability of discovery.

We have a whole lot more data to collect aka wonderment and science before we could even make a crudely rudimentary theoretical model of the mind or brain.   Quite frankly, without some major leap forward in human evolution and, thus understanding, it’s akin to the same question of life after death or of some universal intelligence.   In other words, without some new abilities the universe is going to gift us, I am actually quite confident the day of singularity or computers becoming human-like in any way other than through mimicry of logic and rationalism (the elusive and possible apparition that is the ego) will ever come to pass.  Frankly, the paradox creates an impossibility that this will ever happen.  How can we create that which we do not understand?

Is there some agenda involved in telling us a computer passed the Turing Test or other equally demeaning, ignorant bullshit?   I often wonder.  If there is, it would likely be that pseudo-science is simply a manifestation of the continual beat down of humanity’s natural state of spirituality courtesy of state actors and the faux liberal intelligentsia who tell us that we are nothing more than random blobs without any reason for existence except to be exploited by them courtesy of natural selection and survival of the most pathological and predatory.   That our place in this world is to be nothing more than chattel owned by the state and told what to think and do.  Including the mindless consumption of capitalism’s necessary overproduction.  In order to be this kind of mind slave, one must accept your fate as being nothing more than randomness to be exploited by those who believe they are better than you. 

But, in fact, some days later, some in science rightly refuted the claim of passing the Turing Test.  There is yet hope that the search for truth will prevail.   If this is to be so, the state will collapse.  And, possibly much of its mind and brain science with it.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:14 PM