Bits Bucket for January 28, 2016
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How low can the Baltic Dry Index go? Are negative numbers feasible?
FINANCIAL REVIEW
Jan 27 2016 at 12:15 AM Updated Jan 27 2016 at 12:15 AM
‘Zombie ships’ clutter ports and coastlines
by John Ficenec
They sit there empty, chewing up money, the ships that signal what’s happened to global trade.
The Baltic Dry Index has fallen more than 20 per cent in the past 12 months, to its lowest level since records began in 1985.
Oliver Bunic
The shipping industry is facing its worst crisis in living memory, as years of rapid expansion fuelled by cheap debt have coincided with an economic slowdown in China.
“People are struggling to remember an era when it was this difficult. We’ve gone through what it was like in the 1990s, the 80s and the 70s, so expressions like ‘living memory’ start to apply,” Jeremy Penn, the chief executive of the Baltic Exchange in London, says.
The exchange has set shipping rates for more than two and a half centuries but the situation its members face is grim. “Ship owners are facing the tough decision of whether to just drop anchor and hope it gets better,” Penn says.
Fears about the global economy have caused the Baltic Dry Index to fall more than 20 per cent in 2016, to its lowest level since records began in 1985. The Baltic Dry, compiled by the exchange, is an indicator of the cost of shipping dry bulk goods such as coal, iron ore and grain and finished goods such as steel. It is renowned for predicting the world’s financial fortunes.
The immediate problem has been the slowing of the Chinese economy. But much of the pain is self-inflicted. Shipping has undergone massive growth, fuelled by cheap debt and steady demand.
…
“The Baltic Dry, compiled by the exchange, is an indicator of the cost of shipping dry bulk goods such as coal, iron ore and grain and finished goods such as steel.”
So …?
“It is renowned for predicting the world’s financial fortunes.”
Oh.
I thought the entire point of this blog was that the world’s financial fortunes had become totally decoupled from tangible goods and services, in favor of accounting tricks, money-printing, and central planning by the Bilderburgs and the Rothschilds et al. So the Baltic Dry should have no significance.
Right?
[/ facetious]
“What is damaging shipping is a zombie fleet, which accepts freight at maverick prices just to keep going,” Kidwell says. A zombie ship is one that can make some contribution to interest payments on its debts, but has no hope of repaying the capital.
Oh yeah… the debt squeeze.
BUSINESS INSIDER
A ‘canary down the coal mine’ that predicted the 2008 crisis is signalling another crash
Will Martin
Jan. 20, 2016, 8:55 AM 23,271 10
AP Photo/New Zealand Herald, Alan Gibson
Salvage workers preparing to begin removing some of the 1,280 containers that remained aboard the MV Rena off the coast from Tauranga, New Zealand.
A measure of international trade often seen as a bellwether for the global economy has crashed to its lowest level ever, fueling fears we could be heading for another 2008-style crash.
Back in November, the Baltic Dry Index dropped below 500 for the first time in recorded history, and it has kept falling ever since. On Wednesday morning it fell to a low of 369.
To put that into perspective, the index was as high as 1,222 in August, and it has fallen 84% from a recent peak of 2,330 in late 2013.
The Baltic Dry Index measures how much it costs to ship “dry” commodities around the world — raw materials like grain and steel.
The index is frequently used as a “canary in the mine” for the state of the global economy and how well international trade is performing. If the price is low, it suggests trade is slowing. This graph from Capital Economics shows just how closely the index tracks world trade volumes.
…
It sounds like the Chinese junk is living up to its name!
Baltic Dry Index falls to 337, down 8 points.
in Dry Bulk Market 27/01/2016
Today, Wednesday, January 27 2016, the Baltic Dry Index decreased by 8 points, reaching 337 points.
Baltic Dry Index is compiled by the London-based Baltic Exchange and covers prices for transported cargo such as coal, grain and iron ore. The index is based on a daily survey of agents all over the world. Baltic Dry hit a temporary peak on May 20, 2008, when the index hit 11,793. The lowest level ever reached was on Wednesday, January 27 2016, when the index dropped to 337 points.
Source: Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
They’d just fiddle the figures Bear, -300 would be the new zero.
Seasonal adjustment, figures revised, GAAP and FASB suspended and on and on…
Here’s a chart that shows the number of ships at sea by type …
http://www.statista.com/statistics/264024/number-of-merchant-ships-worldwide-by-type/
As of Jan 1, 2015 there were 16,916 bulk carriers at sea.
I suspect there are plenty of ship owners looking for a storm to hide them in; how sad another sinking.
My bad, they’d never do that.
“how sad another sinking.”
“Never underestimate the power of incentives.” - Charlie Munger
“at sea” should probably read “operational”.
I’m not a sailor but I don’t think “at sea” and “operational” are quite the same thing.
An appropriately titled narrative:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/27/slouching-toward-hillary/
The ranting rambling of a delusional Lola?
Stuff like this “The Black Lives Matter movement emerged spontaneously as seemingly ceaseless police violence against African Americans invigorated local communities.”
We all know it was Soros who paid those cops to shoot those black people, so the BLM people could harass Hillary and Bernie, so Trump, Soros’ true secret partner, could claim the presidency.
More mad ramblings of a delusional Lola.
How much does Soros pay you per lola post?
Lola Post. Has a nice ring to it Lola.
Is there a Miss in front of your name?
cha-ching!
Sweden is preparing to deport up to 80,000 of last year’s record number of asylum seekers, interior minister Anders Ygeman said in an interview with business daily Dagens Industri on Thursday.
Ygeman said he estimated about 60,000 to 80,000 of the 163,000 people who sought asylum last year would be expelled and either leave voluntarily or be forcibly deported.
The government fears many of those will go into hiding, Dagens Industri reported, and police are increasing their work to find and expel those.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/sweden-to-expel-up-to-80-000-asylum-seekers-reports-1.2513686
Hide and seek the new Swedish national sport.
Have China stocks finally stopped falling?
China Stocks Cap Worst Losing Streak in Three Weeks on Economy
Bloomberg News
January 27, 2016 — 6:16 PM PST
Updated on January 28, 2016 — 1:12 AM PST
Investors shrug off biggest cash injection since 2013
UBS has warning for those seeing China stock respite at 2,500
Chinese stocks fell for a third day as concern slumping commodity prices and a weakening economy will reduce corporate profits overshadowed the biggest cash injection into the financial markets in three years.
The Shanghai Composite Index slumped 2.9 percent to 2,655.66 at the close. Shippers led declines among industrial shares. China Shipbuilding Industry Co. and China CSSC Holdings Ltd. dropped by the maximum daily limit after a measure of commodity shipping costs slid to a 30-year low. China Southern Airlines Co. extended losses to 17 percent in a four-day rout as Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong Ltd. said the carrier likely swung to a fourth-quarter loss because of a weaker yuan.
Chinese stocks capped their longest losing streak in three weeks amid concern slowing growth and yuan volatility will spur capital outflows. …
“The correction isn’t over and stocks will fall to an even lower level as pressure for yuan depreciation, capital outflows and slowing growth is still quite big,” said Zhang Haidong, chief strategist at Jinkuang Investment Management in Shanghai, who’s now on the sidelines after cutting his stock holdings to less than 50 percent of total assets. All these factors “will weigh on the market,” he said.
…
“Investors shrug off biggest cash injection since 2013″
Massive plunge protection failure…
China stocks end off for third day as markets on track to record worst monthly loss since 1996
Shanghai shares close at 14-month low in month when botched circuit breaker causes trading to be suspended twice in first week of 2016
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 28 January, 2016, 9:04am
UPDATED : Thursday, 28 January, 2016, 6:12pm
Laura He
An investor uses a computer terminal to check stock prices at a brokerage house in Beijing. Photo: AP
Chinese stocks reeled in a volatile session to close down for the third day in a row on Thursday, with the major index in Shanghai ending at a 14-month low as the country’s equity markets are on track to post their worst monthly loss since 1996.
Worries for growing risks in Chinese banks’ bill-financing business overshadowed the central bank’s biggest cash injection in three years in a bid to ease the liquidity crunch.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index declined 2.9 per cent or 79.9 points to end at 2,655,66, the lowest closing level since late November 2014. The index had fallen for three days in a row.
So far, the Shanghai benchmark is down 25 per cent in January, seemingly a lock to post its worst monthly loss since records began in January 1996, according to data compiled by Reuters.
…
The State could have saved more than €9 billion by imposing losses on senior debt holders at the six Irish banks, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) told the Government in March 2011.
Written evidence supplied to the Oireachtas banking inquiry shows the NTMA, which manages Ireland’s national debt, advised the Government that “immediate steps” could be taken to enable this burden sharing, adding that markets had already priced this haircut into the bonds.
But it also warned that there could be potential implications with “external authorities”, a reference to the European Central Bank, which had warned Dublin a “bomb” would go off if it was to do so.
The failure to impose losses on senior bondholders to recoup some of the cost of the €64 billion bank bailout has been a source of political controversy since Fine Gael and Labour entered Government.
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/burning-bondholders-could-have-saved-the-state-9bn-1.2513067
Thought for the day
“The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself”
Which just about sums up any statistics you get from official sources.
Another globalist narrative:
http://www.infowars.com/top-bilderberger-global-super-elite-must-stop-donald-trump/
“Regular Bilderberg attendee and associate editor of the Financial Times Martin Wolf insists that the “global super elite” must stop Donald Trump from winning the presidency.
“According to a New Republic profile, Wolf is “staggeringly well-connected within the elite circles he is writing for” and counts amongst his close friends many influential central bankers.
In an editorial entitled The economic losers are in revolt against the elites, Wolf writes that economic “losers” have rejected “the elites that dominate the economic and cultural lives of their countries” and that “the potential consequences are frightening.”
“Asserting that “it may already be too late” to stop the wave of populism that Trump has spearheaded, Wolf notes that elites have become, ‘detached from domestic loyalties and concerns, forming instead a global super-elite.’
“This in turn has left ordinary Americans “alienated” and “abused,” with discord over high levels of immigration that only benefits big business leading to the view that elites are “incompetent and predatory.”
An interesting read from Wikipedia about Martin Wolf …
“In 1971, Wolf joined the World Bank’s young professionals programme, becoming a senior economist in 1974. By the start of the eighties, Wolf was deeply disillusioned with the Bank’s policies undertaken under the direction of Robert McNamara – the Bank had been strongly pushing for increased capital flows to developing countries, which had resulted in many of them suffering debt crises by the early 1980s. Seeing the results of misjudged intervention by global authorities and also influenced from the early 1970s by various works critical of government intervention, such as Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Wolf shifted his views towards the right and the free market.[1][2] Wolf left the World Bank in 1981, to become Director of Studies at the Trade Policy Research Centre, in London. He joined the Financial Times in 1987, where he has been associate editor since 1990 and chief economics commentator since 1996. Up until the late 2000s, Wolf was an influential advocate of globalisation and the free market.
“In addition to his journalism and participation in various international forums, Wolf had also attempted to influence opinion with his books; he has stated his 2004 book Why Globalization Works was intended to be a persuasive work rather than an academic study.[2] By 2008, Wolf had become disillusioned with theories promoting what he came to see as excessive reliance on the private sector. While remaining a pragmatist free of binding commitments to any one ideology, Wolf’s views partially shifted away from free market thinking back to the Keynesian ideas he had been taught as a youth. He became one of the more influential drivers of the 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence, where in late 2008 and early 2009 he used his platform on the Financial Times to advocate a massive fiscal and monetary response to the financial crisis of 2007–2010. According to Julia Loffe writing in 2009 for The New Republic, he was “arguably the most widely trusted pundit” of the crisis.[1] Wolf is a supporter of a land value tax.[4]
“Between 2010 and 2011, Wolf served on the Independent Commission on Banking.
“In 2012, Wolf stated in remarks for the Financial Times that public goods are building blocks of civilisation: security and safety, knowledge and science, a sustainable environment, trust, the Rechtsstaat, and economic and financial stability.[5]“
“…must stop Donald Trump from winning the presidency.”
Unless the Davos jet set can somehow rig the election, isn’t this a nonsensical suggestion?
You never know when you might have a heart attack or die in a car accident. Or a helicopter accident, for that matter.
I don’t wish that fate on any politician, regardless of whether I agree with their platform.
However, given that certain world leaders operate under 007 status, it is hard to assume away the potential.
LOL, yesterday the meerkat’s WaPo had some article about the Fox News dust-up being Trump’s “first” misstep. Except WaPo has been writing about Trump’s “first” missteps ever since he declared for the presidency.
This was just Trump’s latest master stroke and the fallout is amazing: Fox News ad rates for the “debate” are dropping like a rock, O’Reilly was pleading with him to re-consider withdrawing from the “debate”, Cruz and Fiorina have each pledged over a million dollars to veterans’ charities if Trump will debate them one on one, and according to Trump’s Twitter feed, two candidates have requested to go to his event at Drake University (my guess is they’re undercard candidates, but still…)
And as to Megyn “he doesn’t get to tell the media what to do” Kelly, her own cheesecake shots are making the rounds on the internet, along with her criticism of Trump for “objectifying” women. Ouchie!
Yeah, Megyn with a “y”, maybe he doesn’t get to tell the media what to do, but the advertisers sure do.
After he becomes prez, I sure hope the Don continues his Twitter feed. I look forward to seeing things like this:
“Mitch McConnell is a loser who sounds like he has a mouth full of marbles. He handed everything over to Obama”
That wouldn’t be very sensible. He would need to work with Senator McConnell to get things done. Trump takes pride in his negotiating and deal-making skills.
Have you ever negotiated a day in your life? Doubtful. Play hardball milky.
If my comment was taken seriously, Mike is not totally off base.
But he took it a little too literally. I was sort of joking. OTOH, I wouldn’t be surprised if President Don actually did a thing or two like that.
Trump’s problem would be he won’t get much if any support from the Dems, so if he pisses Mitch off, he’ll be a lame duck from the start.
What’s the matter with you guys, taking that statement literally? IT WAS MEANT AS A JOKE! Jeebus.
OTOH, it works both ways, too. If Mitch pisses off the Don, he gets the Twitter treatment, but good.
I read something about McConnell’s career once. From what I recall, he changes his positions to fit the times. If Trump was president, he’d probably find a way to work well with Trump, who would be Republican president after all. I could imagine nasty Trump tweets directed at people like Nancy Pelosi.
On the other hand, it’s possible Trump’s negotiating skills won’t translate well from business to politics. It’s also possible that his claims about himself are made up. Maybe he’s not that good at making deals.
Have you ever negotiated a day in your life?
We all have. Negotiation is part of life.
Backpedalling is your life Snowflake.
After he becomes prez ??
LOL….
Yep he will out by Labor day 2015.
’sounds like he has a mouth full of marbles’
You know, he does. And Harry Reid has the most effeminate voice.
I’ve always thought that Harry Reid looks like an old West undertaker. Apparently, I’m not the only one: The Undertaker
Mitch McConnell is a loser
If Trump is smart, he will avoid debating Cruz one-on-one, as Cruz could readily show Trump to be a policy know-nothing.
Glad to see you’ve come out supporting Cruz.
All this sophisticated policy is the problem. Stop illegals. Not complicated. Close borders until vetting fixed. Not complicated. Quit trying to take guns. Not complicated.
The voters may be interested in issues other than those two.
More black-and-white thinking…par for the course.
Three issues Mikey.
Professor Pompous denies taking a position again. What me make a prediction, no I just ask questions.
Me make an intelligent statement? No, I just make dumb statements and pretend to be a blue collar guy.
Cruz most likely can’t read a simple financial statement and has NO clue whatsoever on declaring bankruptcy, which is the skill Amerikka is in severe short supply.
Will not be a help for the democrats in the election.
Quick - Can they blame Bush for this?
————————
Outlook 2016: Why economists are starting to use the ‘R’ word again
Financial Post | January 25, 2016 | John Shmuel
Big stock market declines are often lead indicators for recession, and global markets are heading into their last week of trading for the month with the risk of seeing one of their biggest ever January declines.
Despite a big bounce in markets Friday, which saw the S&P 500 rise two per cent, fear is in the air. Bank of America Merrill Lynch economists said in an update Friday that they now see a 20 per cent chance that the U.S. economy will slip into a recession this year, up from the 15 per cent chance they predicted in December.
The rising chance of recession is due to three indicators that have turned negative in recent months: Industrial production, corporate profits and the U.S. stock market are all sharply down, and in past decades, a uniform drop among all three have tended to signal economic contraction.
To add to concerns, spreads have widened considerably in credit markets, which usually themselves are lead indicators of recession.
It has certainly been a brutal reset. Global stock markets have seen nearly US$8 trillion of wealth wiped out this month alone, while investors last week poured more into government bonds — a traditional safe haven investment — than at any time in the past year.
What is also spooking investors is the fact that if the U.S does slip into recession again, the Fed is very limited in what it can do to help the economy. Policymakers have already ballooned the central bank’s balance sheet with a trillion dollar quantitative easing program and interest rates continue to remain near record lows, even following a 25-basis-point rate hike in December.
Yesterday’s bits shows the Lolas and Pineapples can blame Bush for anything. Hillary had to store classified email on a home brew server because Bush.
Bernie v. Trump.
A Cuban, a Canadian, a Goldman Sachs lackey, and a white supremacist walk into a bar, the bartender says ‘what are you having Senator Cruz?’
Cruz is a white supremacist??? New one on me, but the rest of it is funny.
1. Most of the Hillary/Bernie voters don’t pay taxes. The FSA and the ultra-rich.
2. Anyone remember Mondale promising to raise taxes in his debates? He went on to win two states.
——————————
Tax Sells? Sanders, Clinton both pitching tax hikes in Dem primary
Fox News | January 28, 2016 | Doug McKelway
Bernie Sanders would probably agree, and then some. In an election season marked by populist anger, his plan to raise at least $19.58 trillion in higher taxes over 10 years — almost 20 times the tax hikes Hillary Clinton proposes — has not dulled his rise.
And, despite the anti-tax fervor of the Tea Party wave a few years ago, neither Democratic candidate seems shy about pushing an aggressive tax plan in their presidential primary battle.
“Raising taxes in the Democratic primary is a vote winner,” said Grover Norquist, of the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform.
That message especially rings true for young Democrats, a demographic group burdened with college debt and poor job prospects, and heavily represented in the public sector.
Among Sanders’ tax proposals, many meant to help pay for a government-run health care system that replaces ObamaCare:
Business health care premium tax: $6.3 trillion over 10 years
Ending tax-free status of employer health insurance: $3.1 trillion
Wall Street speculation tax: $3 trillion
Individual health care premium tax: $2.1 trillion
Social Security tax hike: $1.2 trillion
Marginal income tax rate increase: $1.1 trillion
Corporate offshore income tax: $1 trillion
Capital gains tax hike: $920 billion
Payroll tax hike: $319 billion
Estate tax: $243 billion
Ending tax deductions: $150 billion
Energy tax: $135 billion
Carried interest tax: $15.6 billion
Sanders’ home state of Vermont also had such a plan for a state-run, single-payer system, but Gov. Peter Shumlin shelved it in late 2014 after learning how much it would cost in new taxes.
Most of the Hillary/Bernie voters don’t pay taxes. The FSA and the ultra-rich.
Poor people tend to vote at much lower rate than the non-poor. On the other hand, senior citizens vote a high rate and many of them pay no federal income tax. Perhaps they’re the people you refer to as the FSA.
“Poor people tend to vote at much lower rate than the non-poor.”
Did the meeting let out early this morning?
I state a fact and you counter with a nonsense. That’s who you are.
The meeting is still going on. Mike is a junior member so he has to watch the front desk, giving him time to post.
“The HBB and ZH are a real problem. We can’t get any traction with our talking points. We’ve done everything we can to divert the discussion from falling prices but that @sshole MafiaBlocks keeps hitting the reset button on that topic. We must intimidate and threaten him and his minions.”
Looks like we’ve run Lola off though.
1. Most of the Hillary/Bernie voters don’t pay taxes.
Most of the GOP voters do pay taxes, yet they are the ones who end up grabbing their ankles, even when the GOP runs the store.
Hillaryous is unelectable.
“The world’s largest construction and mining equipment maker’s total sales and revenue fell to $11.03 billion in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, from $14.24 billion a year earlier.
Caterpillar reported a quarterly loss attributable to common stockholders of $87 million, or 15 cents per share, compared with a profit of $757 million, or $1.23 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding restructuring costs, Caterpillar earned 74 cents per share, compared with $1.35 per share.
Analysts had expected Caterpillar to report earnings of about 69 cents a share on $11.45 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. ”
cnbc article
Revenues crater 23% and the company still manages to be wall streets estimates? yeah right total bs numbers as usual.
Seems like everyone has restructuring costs every quarter. This is a terrible quarter and the stock is up in premarket? What a bunch of muppets!
CAT used to be like Dr Copper.
If CAT is doing well, the world economy is doing well.
Of all the things that depress me about the current state of affairs with our country, there are three major ones:
1.) Barack Obama, an anti-American, marxist, socialist, Alinskyite racist has been elected TWICE.
2.) Bernie Sanders, an open socialist and uber-liberal, is a viable candidate in a presidential election.
3.) Hillary Clinton, one of the demonstrably most corrupt public figures in the history of this country, an openly corrosive and destructive, inept and incompetent Secretary of State, who should be in jail, is a viable candidate in a presidential election.
—————–
Bernie Sanders, The Bum Who Wants Your Money
Investors Business Daily - 1/26/2016
He explained his family couldn’t imagine his “success,” because “my brother and I and Mom and Dad grew up in a three-and-a-half-room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, and we never had a whole lot of money.”
It wasn’t as bad as he says. His family managed to send him to the University of Chicago. Despite a prestigious degree, however, Sanders failed to earn a living, even as an adult. It took him 40 years to collect his first steady paycheck — and it was a government check.
“I never had any money my entire life,” Sanders told Vermont public TV in 1985, after settling into his first real job as mayor of Burlington.
Sanders spent most of his life as an angry radical and agitator who never accomplished much of anything. And yet now he thinks he deserves the power to run your life and your finances — “We will raise taxes;” he confirmed Monday, “yes, we will.”
One of his first jobs was registering people for food stamps, and it was all downhill from there.
Sanders took his first bride to live in a maple sugar shack with a dirt floor, and she soon left him. Penniless, he went on unemployment. Then he had a child out of wedlock. Desperate, he tried carpentry but could barely sink a nail. “He was a shi**y carpenter,” a friend told Politico Magazine. “His carpentry was not going to support him, and didn’t.”
Then he tried his hand freelancing for leftist rags, writing about “masturbation and rape” and other crudities for $50 a story. He drove around in a rusted-out, Bondo-covered VW bug with no working windshield wipers. Friends said he was “always poor” and his “electricity was turned off a lot.” They described him as a slob who kept a messy apartment — and this is what his friends had to say about him.
The only thing he was good at was talking … non-stop … about socialism and how the rich were ripping everybody off. “The whole quality of life in America is based on greed,” the bitter layabout said. “I believe in the redistribution of wealth in this nation.”
The choice in this election is shaping up to be a very clear one. It will likely boil down to a battle between those who create and produce wealth, and those who take it and redistribute it.
This is standard. Let’s discuss shacks with dirt floors and ignore health care, education and the other things that voters say that they care about.
Do you want everyone to be as poor, unfortunate and unproductive as Bernie?
It’s irrelevant. Voting for Trump is not going to make everyone as rich as he is.
It is extremely relevant. Not socialist is richer than socialist. Bernie is a socialist. Socialism is not the hammer I want to use to bust up the NY/DC mafia.
Do you want everyone to be as poor, unfortunate and unproductive as Bernie?
Bernie’s probably doing quite well. He’s the senatorial salary and the best health care in the world, provided by the government. He’s probably got a very nice office with lovely views of the capital. If everyone in America had that standard of living, things would be great.
Precisely the point SnowFlake.
Barney Saunders is a welfare case.
who should be in jail ??
Do you mean the person living in Crawford Texas or the person living in Jackson Hole Wyoming or both ??
Richard Perle lives in a villa in the South of France.
And he is laughing at you, all of you. Suckers!
I’m happy, smell the Jasmine, go fishing…..
Obama did fine, considering the shetstorm he inherited. America = look at our GDP!!
You should have stayed in school Lola.
Funny how countries that let in no illegals figure things out.
Do the leftist in Japan know that illegals could be a voting block for them for generations?
—————–
The world’s first robot-run farm will harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce daily
Tech Insider | January 27, 2016 | Leanna Garfield
The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots.
So much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on human farmers, the indoor Vegetable Factory will employ robots that can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day.
“The use of machines and technology has been improving agriculture in this way throughout human history,” J.J. Price, a spokesperson at Spread, tells Tech Insider. “With the introduction of plant factories and their controlled environment, we are now able to provide the ideal environment for the crops.”
believes the farmers of the future will be robots ??
Kaplan begins by offering the non scientific reader (me) a clear overview of the advances that are poised to make human workers obsolete–offering eye popping examples explaining how the pace of technology is destined to overwhelm the human landscape of life and work.
http://www.amazon.com/Humans-Need-Not-Apply-Intelligence/dp/0300213557/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453998195&sr=1-1&keywords=humans+need+not+apply
really
So tell us capitalists when labor can’t earn any money what will happen to the producers and the economy.
Hint it’s happening right now and technology is making bigger and bigger in roads.
Did Obama and Barney have the Tom Hagen and Frank Pantangele talk from the Godfather?
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/01/27/nation_s_two_leading_socialists_meet_at_the_white_house_conclude_everything_is_bush_s_fault
The IMF and the World Bank are moving to forestall oil debt defaults.
Translation: Money that belongs to everyone but the banks is going to be used to bail out the banks. Just as God intended.
Bahahahahahahahahahahaha …
http://www.afr.com/news/world/imf-world-bank-move-to-forestall-oilled-defaults-20160127-gmfmvl
For you pukes who are slow at catching on here’s a tidbit from the article that gets to the heart of the whole matter …
“These are bad times for oil producers and their creditors.”
Allow me to shorted this a bit for clarity …
“These are bad times for creditors.”
There.
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/world/imf-world-bank-move-to-forestall-oilled-defaults-20160127-gmfmvl#ixzz3yXxc7j3T
Follow us: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook
How do the “little people” bail out the banking clan when they don’t have any money to begin with?
Debt for you and money for them.
We’re all on the reservation now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IUnFq3U0Y
‘Murican taxpayers get to rebuild Iraq. The neocons broke it; now we have to buy it and keep pumping billions into it with no end in sight.
http://news.yahoo.com/iraqs-mosul-dam-could-face-catastrophic-collapse-top-121320504.html
Murican taxpayers get to rebuild Iraq. The neocons broke it; now we have to buy it ??
The “decider” would not have any of it…The Cowboy was going to do it his way, because, well, because he’s the decider that listens to a higher father;
The famous expression, if you break it you own it—which is not a Pottery Barn expression, by the way—was a simple statement of the fact that when you take out a regime and you bring down a government, you become the government…
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/04/a-conversation-with-colin-powell/305873/
Who controls the Southern Poverty Law Center?
NPR just hosted Mark Potok of the SPLC this morning with a globalist narrative on the bird sanctuary goons, skyrocketing gun sales since the coronation of King Obama, smeared any and all resistance to globalists as sympathetic to Timothy McVeigh, and took some cheap shots at Alex Jones’ Infowars.
Southern Poverty Law Center is the policy wing of the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards. What’s happening in Europe now is what the SPLC dreams of for the United States.
HuffPo and Salon link clickers believe that SPLC is a legitimate civil rights organization.
Thank you for that quick and accurate summary.
Speaking of skyrocking gun sales, once Obama - gun salesman of the millenium - passes the baton to Hillary, sales of EVIL assault rifles are really going to explode as millions of Americans are preparing for a collapse scenario and civil disorder. Obama slapped sanctions on Russia’s Kalishnikov Concern, but they did an end run around them by building their rifles here in the good ole US of A.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/news/companies/kalashnikov-florida-factory/
Just like the GOP needs abortion as a perennial bogeyman and hence will never fully ban it; so it is with Dems with guns and mass shootings. Both sides will verbally attack their bogeyman but neither will do anything significant about it.
Morris Dees.
https://www.splcenter.org/about/staff/morris-dees
This all reminds me of the new X-Files, which was a disappointment. The whole global conspiracy thing makes no sense to me. What’s the end game? The illuminati already have things good and can do whatever.
The end game is not about money; it’s about power and control.
That’s what the wealthy would like you to believe, that there are ideologues whose desire for power is somehow a stronger force in politics than the need for big business to make as much profit as they possibly can.
This might not be good for housing in mosquito-infested parts of the country. Stand by for a new wave of Central American women looking for a safe place to get pregnant and have their babies.
Speculation on the HBB that the Pineapples are Zika Babies remains unsubstantiated but highly plausible.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35425731
First of all, let me apologize for my tasteless comment about popping out pinheads.
Zika is no joke, and all of a sudden there are warnings from WHO and orders being issued from the White House to “do something” about it. Just who are the order being issued to and who is responsible or is this just some vague directive?
Anyhoo, it appears that there is a very. simple. answer. to Zika. DDT.
A few weeks ago, a buddy of mine rented some documentary about DDT and its suppression, for 99 cents on the internet. I want to say it was on Vudu, but not sure. Anyway, he came away from that documentary raving and cursing Nixon’s EPA chief Ruckelshaus, who was for DDT before he was against it. And according to this documentary, Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring was apparently a huge piece of propaganda against it, which I guess benefited DuPont.
Google the info on DDT both for and against and draw your own conclusions. I am beginning to think the EPA and other such agencies are truly Orwellian, like the Ministry of Truth. Either instituted for the benefit of multi-national corporations so as to suppress competition, or they start out with good goals and get co-opted.
Feminists don’t seem to age very well.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/12127067/woman-says-she-is-a-cat-trapped-in-the-wrong-body.html
Wrong narrative.
Close your browser window and pull up some links to Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti narratives, crack a tub of Haagen-Daz and tell yourself you can “have it all.”
To be fair, I had lunch with a friend in her early fifties yesterday, divorced, no kids, former competitive cross country ski racer and avid ice climber who is training for an expedition to Peru.
Some single womyn do more with their lives than Netflix and boxed wine.
At least she doesn’t think she’s a man trapped in the wrong body.
More pathological do-gooders and multiculturalists are seeing the light.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-prepares-to-expel-up-to-80000-asylum-seekers-a6838421.html
I hear a giant flushing sound from the east…
Kurt Nimmo always speaks the truth.
Always!
Hillary Clinton: I’d Appoint Obama to the Supreme Court
Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com - January 27, 2016 356 Comments
During a campaign stop in Deocorah, Iowa on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton said she likes the idea of Barack Obama sitting on the Supreme Court.
Clinton’s claim regarding Obama’s professorship is as phony as everything else about her campaign. Obama was never a professor. He wasn’t even an adjunct.
According to Doug Ross, who spent some time with the facility members who worked with Barack Obama in Chicago, the University of Chicago “law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put him on the payroll, and give him a class to teach. The Board told him he didn’t have to be a member of the faculty, but they needed to give him a temporary position. He was never a professor and was hardly an adjunct.”
Obama, according to Ross, was “lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings” and “it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool.”
Furthermore, Ross doubts Obama edited the Harvard Law Review “because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).”
Obama taught two courses at the University of Chicago, “Racism and the Law” and “Constitutional Law III.” Both concentrated on race and other trendy social issues such as “gay rights” and in vitro fertilization.
“Obama appears to have never taught the structure of the Constitution nor the history behind it, nor any of the other areas of doctrine that constitutional scholars must master—standing, justiciability, Commerce Clause, Tax-and-Spending Clause, Contracts Clause, separation of powers, international relations, First Amendment (a huge area by itself), the rest of the Bill of Rights, etc. etc.,” writes Rob Natelson, the Independence Institute’s Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence.
Obama would make a great Supreme Court appointee for the progressives. He is not only an avowed enemy of the Constitution. Radical progressives hate the Constitution and are eager to undermine it.
In 2012 Louis Michael Seidman, remarkably a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, wrote a scathing piece for that great liberal bastion, The New York Times.
“As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken,” Seidman writes. “But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.”
Obama touched on these “evil provisions” during an interview with NPR in 2012. He said the Constitution places “essential constraints” on the government’s ability to provide positive economic rights.
I told you yesterday that he’s a liar.
4 minutes later and you’re countering with nonsense. How quickly you show your hypocrisy. Hey Mike, just because you said something, it doesn’t make it a fact.
P.S. Thanks for the quote. I’ll be using it again and again.
No, it’s not just because I said it. I explained it. What is your philosophy, that everyone’s entitled to his own facts? I suppose the next time that phony or banana or Raymond implies that the president thinks that there are 57 states, the response to that should be, well, he’s entitled to his opinion. Just because someone says that the number is 50 doesn’t make it true.
implies that the president thinks that there are 57 states
How do you mean “implies”? ’cause he said it. Even the liberal snopes agrees he said it. You can watch the video yourself. He’s also pronounced corpsman as “corpse-man” several times. If Palin, or Quayle or Bush or Trump or one of your other bugbears said these things you’d shite your pants. Unfortunately your brain is so warped that you can only see one side.
Open your eyes and your mind.
Look at at who I said implies what the president thinks. It wasn’t me or the president.
Regarding Snopes, this is their judgment:
The actual intent behind Senator Obama’s misstatement is easy to discern without the need to invoke an obscure international organization. He was trying to express the thought that in all the time he had spent on the campaign trail so far in 2007-08, he had visited all (48) of the states in the continental U.S. save for one (i.e., “one left to go,” excluding Alaska and Hawaii), but in his weariness he slipped up and started off with “fifty” instead of “forty.” (Note the long pause in the video clip between the words “fifty” and “seven.”)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/57states.asp
BlackRock warns of a wave of energy bankruptcies. Of course, as a recipient of free Fed gambling money, BlackRock can buy up these distressed assets for a song, like they did with housing.
http://www.businessinsider.com/blackrock-bankruptcies-across-the-global-energy-sector-2016-1
Jeb Bush: Can’t buy me love as the Republican base rejects the crony capitalist status quo with the same ferver that their Democrat counterparts embrace it with their votes for Hillary.
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-campaigning-in-style-how-jeb-bush-blew-through-his-warchest-2016-1
Jeb Bush: Can’t buy me love as the base rejects the crony capitalist status quo ??
Its their way of saying they are sorry that they “F*&^-up electing Jr. without coming out and actually saying they F*&^-up….
“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”
– President Barak Obama, 2016 SOTU address.
Once again…
Kurt Nimmo always speaks the truth.
Always!
This message has not been brought to you by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The good thing about definitive predictions is that eventually there is a resolution. Many here will be in the AQDan position in the next few weeks and through November, having predicted wrong about Trump. This will be especially funny for those who have for years poked fun at AQDan.
having predicted wrong about Trump ??
Well put me at the front of the friggen line because if he were to win you can expect economic turmoil in this country the likes of which makes September 2008 look like a Sunday picnic…This guy is a lose cannon and we are going to put him in charge with our nuclear weapons ?? Yeah right…
Dave,
Remember…… Falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels accelerates the economy and cures poverty like nothing else.
I actually wasn’t even talking about you. I’d forgotten you. Thanks for reminding me.
“This guy is a lose cannon and we are going to put him in charge with our nuclear weapons ??”
It’s pretty unbelievable how many posters here seem to have fallen in love with The Donald. It’s almost like the angry old scared white guys are gay or something.
Just another day in De Blasio’s Alinskyite utopia:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/nyregion/spate-of-slashings-puts-new-yorkers-on-edge.html
7 years of Obama and this is what you get.
Forward.
Slashers and flashers. It’s LolaLand. A true Lieberal dreamdate.
Don’t forget the public urination and defecation. If you like your urban dystopia, you can keep your urban dystopia….
Repost of a golden oldie from the land of Pelosi and Feinstein:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART-escalators-3735981.php
I’d like to piss on the third rail too. Not quite in the same way though.
Legalizing public masturbation will solve this
I thought the candidate debates validated the legality of said activity.
It’s not just New York City, there’s a Lola on the loose in my neighborhood:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/3rd-forcible-fondling-reported-near-university-of-denver-in-just-over-a-week
“If you like your forcible fondling, you can keep your forcible fondling.”
Forward.
King Obama remarks on a historical conflict of Sky Wizardry:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/world/middleeast/obama-honor-americans-effort-to-save-jews-the-holocaust.html
Decades from now, will anyone remark on the American efforts to save Americans from globalists? Or will they all be dead and forgotten then, eclipsed by a fundamentally transformed and disarmed population too weak and stupid to resist?
Know your globalist.
Decades from now, maybe nobody will remember our last best hope for avoiding the abyss, Dr. Ron Paul, and his Quixotic but doomed bid to save the republic in 2008. The thinking 5% supported him, but the bovine stupidity of the herd creatures comprising 95% of the electorate enabled the corrupt, crony capitalist status quo to carry the day. Now each year a new generation of NEA-indocrinated snowflakes and SJWs joins the Obama Zombies, McCain Mutants, and Romney Retards as lifetime residents of Stoopidville, bending over for Wall Street on demand by blindly voting for its Republicrat puppets. So yeah, Goon, we’re pretty much over and done as a nation.
Trump is the best choice for any anti establishment type. He actually has a realistic chance. Paul had none. Zero. Trump is kicking in the teeth of the same people that hamstrung Paul. That alone should buy him your vote.
^ Kinda. yeah. At least the teeth kicking part.
Trump cleaning the teeth out of all these empty skulls is a real spectacle to behold.
“At least the teeth kicking part.”
That sounds like something a Nazi storm trooper would do.
Why not vote for the anti-establishment type merely for the sake of satisfying your anti-establishment compulsion? Who gives a rat’s arse what he is for; it is all about what he is against.
we’re pretty much over and done as a nation
When you understand and accept this, and renounce any perceived obligation to humanoids beyond your own lifetime, life is pretty good. That’s why I can’t do TradCon shaming narratives. My Bill in Los Angeles stack of cheddar grows larger each and every day. And recognizing you can’t take it with you, it’s time to pull a few Shekels from that pile and ski three days this weekend. Region VIII is getting one to two feet of new snow.
People with mortgages can never live like this.
They live in the hope that they will have actual money when they are 70. Seems an unfortunate plan.
Kick ass and raise hell while you can renter!
Biggest risks of a Trump presidency:
1) The real president would be a man behind the curtain, OR
2 ) Trump takes control, only to discover he has no idea how to drive the bus, and accidentally sends it over a cliff.
How would that be any different from what we have now?
The bus ain’t so hard to drive. It’s more a question of will and setting your goals and priorities. Yours align with SJWs so you don’t like him. All your predictions keep proving false though. Meet the new Dan, same as the old Dan.
“The bus ain’t so hard to drive.”
Take it from a BlueCollarMale who ain’t.
3) Americans get tired of winning so much!!
#2….
You sound like it’s a bad thing.
Did the US economy contract in Q4?
Inconceivable!
“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”
– President Barak Obama, 2016 SOTU address.
Marketwatch dot com
These earnings suggest we may be headed for recession
By Ciara Linnane and Tomi Kilgore
Published: Jan 28, 2016 12:53 p.m. ET
Slowdown in China and falling oil prices lead to corporate sales recession
Are these weak earnings the canary in the coal mine?
Another day, another flurry of gloomy earnings reports.
Thursday was the busiest of the current season so far, and while there were some bright spots, it mostly continued the trend of widespread sales misses and lowered guidance for the rest of the year.
…
A falling dollar and surging oil are flip sides of the same coin.
7:54 pm ET
Jan 28, 2016
Asia
Morning MoneyBeat Asia: Oil Surges, and Stocks Go Along for the Ride
By Paul Vigna
CONNECT
Capital goods orders fell sharply in December in the U.S., signaling a weak end to the year.
Bloomberg News
Market Snap: At the New York close: S&P 500 up 0.55% at 1893.36. DJIA up 0.8% at 16069.64. Nasdaq Comp up 0.9% at 4506.68. Treasury yields declined; 10-year fell 0.019 percentage points to 1.984%. Nymex crude oil up 2.85% at $33.22. Gold down 0.02% at $1,115.60/ounce. WSJ Dollar Index down 0.5% at 90.93.
How We Got Here: U.S. stocks rose on Thursday, one day after the Fed ever-so-slightly altered its outlook. The gains also came after key economic data painted an even bleaker picture of the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter, and after a couple of headlines sparked a wild rally in the oil market.
The U.S. durable-goods report for December – orders for items expected to last more than three years – was very weak. Overall orders were down 5.1%, far worse than the 0.2% decrease expected. Worse, a key measurement of business spending fell sharply as well, an indication that capex plans are flagging. That’s not a good sign for economic growth, and this report sent a few observers to lower their already low fourth-quarter GDP reports. That data point arrives tomorrow, incidentally.
The oil market had a wild ride on Thursday. Both benchmarks spiked up nearly 6% after a Russian official said the nation wanted to meet with OPEC in February to talk about the collapsing prices of oil. That could lead to production cuts or some kind of coordinated response, or it could lead to nothing. Either way, it sparked a surge of buying, which spent the rest of the session slowly dissipating.
Friday brings a big number on the economy: the fourth-quarter GDP report, which is expected to come in at under 1%, signaling that the economy exited 2015 on a weak note.
…
Washington Post real journalists provide a narrative on the bird sanctuary goons:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-oregon-siege-troubling-signs-of-a-movement-on-the-offensive/2016/01/27/316f8c9e-c514-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html
On the offensive? A better directed “offensive” would be against Davos and Aspen. A federal government perceived as oppressive can be replaced via democratic means. But as these globalist pigs recognize no national sovereignty, they shall receive no protection under the laws of any nation.
Time to turn some globalist pigs into bacon
But as these globalist pigs recognize no national sovereignty, they shall receive no protection under the laws of any nation.
I’m certain that when in town they are protected by the best elite forces money can buy. If some dipsh!t like Bundy tried to occupy Aspen or Davos during one of the elite’s circle jerks that he and his posse would be the ones turned into bacon.
Always such a buzzkill, Rockstar. Such a buzzkill.
What you overlook is that people who rightly oppose these globalist pigmen are incalculably more intelligent and devious than those don’t tread on me flag waving Bundys.
Strictly hypothetical, but imagine were a vial of polonium to crack open in the middle of a closed conclave of globalists. I read in detail about how Alexander Litvinenko died. Globalists deserve just that, or even worse if possible.
I read in detail about how Alexander Litvinenko died.
Did you get to the part about how you get a vial of polonium?
What a cloud-talker you are. Go-time just came and went at the bird sanctuary, and you stayed home to watch the football games.
Better, your ardent defense of globalists is noted.
Perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking one for the team the next time there is some “collateral damage” from a Chris Dorner style manhunt in Southern California?
It takes a village to raise a child, poison him with tainted water, then lie about it. Who’d have thought electing corrupt, incompetent Democrat officials would ever lead to this outcome?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-28/another-town-just-got-caught-covering-lead-contamination-its-water-supply
Thr good news is that not one insane public union pension was touched.
No money for safe water for children.
Pleny of money for the public unions who keep democrats in power.
who raided soc sec??
neo-cons !!!
I want to win and we will win.
Only if you slow down the antics.
On second thought, maybe the antics are needed as we all know Amerika is in fact a banana republic.
The cultural Marxists running our university system are really pushing the snowflakes to get with the program. Forward!
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/communist-manifesto-among-top-three-books-assigned-in-college-2016-01-27
I remember this kind of cr@p in the early 1980’s. Heck, there was even a student co-op restaurant called the Che Cafe at my school.
It could be possibly just plain old Marxists who are responsible. I tried to Google cultural Marxism the other day. I could really find a good definition of it.
Are many on this blog clueless and out of touch? Someone commented the other day that they had never tried an egg mcmuffin. Seriously?
3 egg mcmuffins and a bag of Cheetos at 9am is just a mere after-breakfast snack.
This…
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a201/mister2wrx/crow_zpsg9ocrkrz.jpg
It wasn’t the bass player narrative from Firesign theater that I posted - it was the next guy, honest.
A reprise for your benefit this morning……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6×5HUXFxmo
wimpy, wambly, wombly thang
Then there are those who claim to not own a television and spell it as TeeVee instead of TV for some reason.
Better, it’s a reference to the character Mike Teevee from Willy Wonka.
Lola’s an Agustus Gloop fan.
Favorite breakfast of the giant babyman!
Four of the five top articles on the Weekly Standard are Trump narratives. I do not endorse The Donald, but William Kristol needs to be identified for the neocon that he is.
Neocons gonna neocon.
The fact that he lives rent free in the empty skulls of neo-cons, Retardicans and CollapsoCrats all at the same time is admirable.
Anti-establishment does not necessarily mean anti thug.
This-> http://goo.gl/gd8dNu
plus this -> http://goo.gl/ku9CRP
equal this -> http://goo.gl/Spp5yl
every.single.time.
Is this a preview of the next false flag operation?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/27/hundreds-dhs-badges-guns-cell-phones-lost-or-stolen-since-2012.html?intcmp=hplnws
Adam Lanza was disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean and the Sandy Hook massacre was conducted by goons in DHS uniforms, who may or may not have been actual DHS agents.
King Obama picked up a phone, and said “kill the kids.” This is who Obama is. This is what Obama does.
Grabbers gonna grab.
It’s aliens goon. Relax. They have a plan.
The next U.S. president will be far more of a tyrant than the current one.
Physical precious metals, crypto currency, ammo, firearms.
You forgot the most important one.
CRATER
No wine and car parts today, Bill?
My gun toting friends certainly have the ammo covered. One of them has made (”reloaded”) and stockpiled thousands of rounds. His reasoning: “I’m reloading for my grandchildren.”
“wine and car parts”
Those too
They could have used that cash…
The next U.S. president will be far more of a tyrant than the current one.
The greatest tyranny of all is the tyranny of the majority. When 95% of the population have become stupid and amoral, we not only end up with presidents like Hillary Clinton, tens of millions of orcs will cheer her on as she rips off and oppresses the productive to “redisribute the wealth.”
Noam Chomsky says “the GOP wants to destroy the world”.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/noam-chomsky-why-republican-party-threat-human-survival
Stupid party for no reason.
Since it can’t deliver on any other promise it has made to the voters, it double downs on wars and more wars.
the GOP does choose profits and pollution over people…..so, he is not far off. ( see Flint)
Nope. You can’t have decades of failed democratic leadership, and then try to blame the republicans.
It is idiotic.
You might as well blame Michael Moore - he’s from that area and has millions of dollars. Why didn’t he do something?
haha, dems as potus -see history for scorecard
This is an important part of Chomsky’s views:
But Chomsky made it clear that his conviction that “the Republican Party has drifted off the rails” and must be stopped by no means amounts to an endorsement of Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton—who he has previously criticized as hawkish and opportunistic.
In fact, he told The Huffington Post that the United States has what amounts to a one-party system—with both Democrats and Republicans united by business interests. Yet, within those parameters, he argued, small differences do matter, given the immense power of the American political system.
“I believe is that both parties are taking us down the road to serfdom, creating this two-tiered system and heading us toward a financial crisis but the Democrats are doing it at 100 miles an hour, and the Republicans are only doing it 70 miles an hour.”
-Charles Koch
I Googled that and I couldn’t find what the heck he means by serfdom. It makes me wonder if he could explain it. He probably just wants an economy that works mainly for people like him - wealthy families who inherited lots of dough.
http://www.marketplace.org/2015/10/21/business/corner-office/full-interview-charles-koch
Don’t make assumptions. Read the interview. He is against corporate welfare.
“Ryssdal: OK, so what’s the difference? Arbitrage that for me, that 30 miles an hour difference. What’s in there that makes it different?
Koch: Well I think the Republicans are not, they’re almost as big as, on corporate welfare, that would be very close. Each one, like a congressman has a plant in his or her district who’s going to be obsolete, so they try to get subsidies or protections to keep it going. And so they’re both pretty much that way, but on some issues, on free trade and some of these things, the Republicans are somewhat better.”
And
“Ryssdal: I need to back you up to that whole corporate welfare, and the state of society today, ’cause that’s in essence what you’re talking about with people who are advantaged and disadvantaged. It’s not possible that you don’t see that Koch Industries has benefited from some of those policies that the government has in place today?
Koch: Oh, terrific. I mean you can’t help, I mean you’re hurt by some, and benefit others. I mean look at all the ways, all the forms of corporate welfare. I mean there are cash subsidies, there are loan guarantees, there are import tariffs, there are regulations on your competitors-
Ryssdal: Right, and my point is that Koch Industries benefits from all of those.
Koch: Well, I mean some cases we benefit, some we’re hurt, but we’re opposed to all of them whether we benefit or whether we’re hurt by them.”
And
“Koch: And so we contributed to a bunch of the congress people’s campaigns, and so we wrote a letter to every congress person, “Please vote this down. This is a whole series of subsidies to things like making moves in an area, just one boondoggle after the other.”
Ryssdal: Mm-hm (affirmative)
Koch: “Please vote against this.” After all the Republicans, close to 250, only 46 voted against it. OK, so this is an experiment, so we’re going to be looking harder at which Republicans we support, or Democrats, I’m happy to support d- We work with the white house on criminal justice reform.”
And
“Koch: So I follow that, and I’ve followed it too long, because for a long time people didn’t know who we are, and I’ve been working in this arena for over 50 years, and for the first 40 we didn’t get into politics, so we didn’t have this. Then in 2003, because of what the Bush administration was doing, we said, “Gosh, we’ve got to get involved in politics.”
Ryssdal: So let’s be clear, that’s George W. Bush, a Republican president, who’s doing things you didn’t like. Growing government, and all of that.
Koch: Increasing destructive regulations which led to the great recession.
Ryssdal: Mm-hm (affirmative)
Koch: Uh, getting us in wars that were counter-productive, and so on. So I mean, because in his campaign he said a lot of things we could agree with, but then the actual practice was so different, and that’s what we find with politician after politician.
Ryssdal: Can you trust any of ‘em?
Koch: Well yeah, I think there’s a few percent.”
And from a “inherited wealth” standpoint. Yes, the Koch brothers inherited about $20MM, but grew it into $100 Billion. They appear to be workaholics, and pretty damn shrewd.
They grew the company at an average annual growth rate of 17% per year over more than 50 years…I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty impressive.
Well, he mentions corporate welfare and opposition to free trade as things that have set us on the road to serfdom. So all of the increase in international trade over the past few decades (it’s not accurate to call it free trade) must have moved us in the opposite direction, away from serfdom, according to him.
Also, when a billionaire talks about serfdom in that way, I would expect him to also talk about family welfare, things like food stamps. The fact that he didn’t mention anything like that is interesting. Interviews like this are probably part of a PR campaign. A new book called Dark Money supposedly details how the Koch brothers spend many millions of their fortune during elections through many PACs and other organizations. It’s quite likely that he’s only discussing part of the agenda that he tries to promote with his campaign contributions and related efforts.
The Koch’s fortune came from their daddy building major military-related infrastructure for both Hitler and Stalin.
Where’s the selective outrage about that?
Bingo
Same reason they sponsor PBS.
They want the gov to prevent people from using solar panels.
Remember before John Corzine bankrupted
Reuters described the billions of dollars of client accounts that were withdrawn from MF Global in the last few weeks before their collapse, including 8 accounts from Koch industries engaged in oil trade that were transferred to Mizuho Securities after years of a steady and profitable relationship with MF.
These guys use connections and bribery to make their money.
So, the Census released their data today regarding homeownership rates, vacancy rates, etc.
I noticed some new available data.
http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtabs.html
The spreadsheet provided as Table 18 breaks down the “Other Vacant” category by type going back to 2012. This shows what percent of the “Other Vacant” are from each category.
The options are:
Personal/Family Reasons
Needs Repairs
Foreclosure
Being Repaired
Storage
Legal Proceedings
Extended Absence
Preparing to Rent/Sell
To be Demolished/Condemned
Specific Use
Other
The Foreclosure item is what I was curious about.
Q4 2012: 458,000 (12.2%)
Q4 2013: 465,000 (12.4%)
Q4 2014: 347,000 (9.2%)
Q4 2015: 275,000 (7.1%)
I’d be very curious what the numbers were in, say 1995 or 2002, or 1977. The number is always going to be greater than 0, I just don’t know what a “normal” number/percentage should be.
Record vacancy rates, massive excess empty housing inventory and growing by the day, foreclosure moratoriums in every state, record low population growth and collapsing housing demand.
That’s the reality of it Rental_Fraud.
“I just don’t know what a “normal” number…should be”
What it takes to get to Normal from here will look like a tsunami.
“What it takes to get to Normal from here will look like a tsunami.”
How long do we need to wait for this tsunami of defaults? Is your bet within 5 years? 10? 20? Any day now?
I personally don’t think conditions currently exist for this tsunami to occur. If we start lending again like we did in 2004-2007, then we will create the conditions for the next default tsunami, but that hasn’t happened yet.
They’ve already happened and they currently ramping up. Worse yet, 90% of the market is subprime and has been since 2008.
Nice try.
Did anyone short the Bakken oil cos? OAS is down from $55 to $5, i think it goes belly up. Might short even at $5 if I can. ND is becoming a ghost town. They planned on a 20 yr run, got 8
Facebook Reports Soaring Revenue, Buoyed by Mobile Ads
After taking off two months to spend time with his newborn daughter, Mark Zuckerberg is back to business. And business is very, very good.
On Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg’s social-networking company, Facebook, reported another quarter of soaring revenue. The company said sales in the fourth quarter rose 52 percent from a year ago, to $5.84 billion, while profit increased to $1.56 billion, more than doubling from $701 million a year ago. For the full year, the company reported $3.69 billion in profit on $17.93 billion in revenue, an increase of 44 percent from 2014.
The numbers far surpassed Wall Street’s fourth-quarter expectations of $1.2 billion in profit on $5.37 billion in revenue. Investors welcomed the performance by pushing up Facebook’s stock more than 12 percent in after-hours trading.
The results were largely a result of Facebook’s enormous success in selling advertising on mobile devices, a business that the company was not even in just a few years ago. Mobile ads made up 80 percent of the company’s total ad business in the fourth quarter, compared with 23 percent in the same quarter of 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/technology/facebook-earnings-zuckerberg.html
bubble
way OT
tiny homes
why don’t they buy a used travel trailer for 1/2 the $
or 1/3 the $
I always think the same thing, these tiny homes are nothing new just better insulated trailers for 4x the price. You can always stucco your 34′ fifth wheel and put it on blocks.
when u say u live in a trailer u are automatically stereotyped as being poor.
It sounds better when u say tiny home.
A diet of catfood living in an RV is no way to live Poet.
Pull yourself up my friend. Pull yourself up.
Why buy now what you can buy later for 60% less and help the economy at the same time?
How can anyone call Trump a Republican? They hate him and Trump rips them for their failures. Trump is more like Obama than Bush.
He’s the Daddy that the wet diaper crowd has bee dreaming of since retirement.
Trump mocks Cruz debate challenge: ‘Can we do it in Canada?’
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at rival Ted Cruz for challenging him to a one-on-one debate.
“Even though I beat him in the first six debates, especially the last one, Ted Cruz wants to debate me again,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “Can we do it in Canada?”
Trump has repeatedly attacked Cruz for being born in Canada, suggesting it makes him unqualified to be president. Trump has also referred to him as “the Canadian.”
Cruz on Tuesday night challenged Trump to a one-on-one debate, hours after Trump said he would not participate in Thursday’s GOP debate on Fox News.
“If Donald is afraid of Megyn Kelly, I would like to invite him on your show to participate in a one-on-one debate between me and Donald, mano y mano,” Cruz said during an interview on “The Mark Levin Show,” adding that Trump could choose the moderator.
Trump had said he would not participate in a Fox debate that Kelly moderated because he does not believe she could treat him fairly. Trump on Tuesday called Kelly a “lightweight” and “not a reporter.”
The two rivals have been ratcheting up their attacks on each other with polls showing that they’re neck-and-neck for first place in Iowa less than a week out from the state’s caucuses.
Trump has repeatedly brought up Cruz’s Canadian birthplace and his reputation of being divisive during his time in the Senate, calling him a “nasty guy” that “nobody likes.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/267215-trump-mocks-cruz-debate-challenge-can-we-do-it-in-canada
Beating Cruz/Carly/Jeb/Carlson/Rubio is like first place at the special Olympics.
A Canadian, a Cuban, and a Goldman Sachs puppet walk into the bar. Bartender says, “What’ll it be, Senator Cruz?”
who are the morons buying CAT stock?
yellon the fellon?
goldman sachs after bankruptcy using money borrowed from the FED at 0% for 100 years
Seen Local H live twice, in Cleveland in 1998 and 2001:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8_qdQQNFcw
Remember your Region.
For the olds, this is how 1990s sounded. Jesus & Mary Chain - Honey’s Dead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mcV5_d1p68
the Newtown Neurotics - Living With Unemployment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_90f9OcWhE
Donald Trump. A supreme statesman with a squad of sexy strumpets.
DJ Danger Mouse (stop being so f*ing white) narratives, narrated by?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge4-Kb3J-Eg
They suck,but they suck in new and original ways that no band has ever sucked before, so in a sense they’re groundbreaking.
The average income for the richest 1 percent of Americans, excluding capital gains, rose from $871,100 in 2009 to $968,000 from 2012-13, he wrote. The 99 percent, on the other hand, experienced a drop in average incomes from $44,000 to $43,900, Wolfers said. The calculation excludes government benefits in the form of Social Security, welfare, tax credits, food stamps and so on.
“That is, so far all of the gains of the recovery have gone to the top 1 percent,” Wolfers wrote for the New York Times post.
Sanders spokesman Jeff Frank said his office double-checked the statistic with Wolfers, who double-checked his own work with Saez.
Saez told PolitiFact that the key to understanding the statistic is knowing that it’s measuring pre-tax, pre-government benefit income.
“That’s the key stat to think about how the market allocates incomes in the first place,” Saez said. “Anybody should be worried that the recovery from the Great Recession has been so skewed in terms of market incomes.”
Let go of your jealousy of the wealthy Lola.
Where were you living in 1989?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1ZzDhbdFjw
Are the happy dreamhost customers happy tonite?
Here’s one for Mighty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXMWNhCmLUg - 225k -