Tag: enough

Here’s The Problem: The Pie Is Shrinking

Scrape away the churn and distraction and the problem is simple: the pie of prosperity is shrinking, and the “fixes” are failing. The status quo arrangement is based on the endless expansion of “growth” and debt, which is the monetary fuel of more, more, more of everything: money, energy, resources, goods, services, jobs, wealth and income, all of which make up the elixir of prosperity.

Prosperity is shorthand for a positive return on investment (ROI), a.k.a. primary surplus. Prosperity is the result of there being a surplus which can be distributed after capital, resources and labor are put to work.

The higher the return on investment, the more surplus there is to distribute.When the surplus is bountiful, there’s enough to go around for everyone to feel that life is getting better.

But all systems eventually track an S-Curve of rapid growth, maturation and depletion/decline, and surpluses diminish: the pie stops expanding and starts shrinking. There’s less to go around, and suddenly the political squabbling intensifies as every elite and every constituency seeks to preserve their slice of the pie at the expense of others.

This means shifting the losses of purchasing power and prosperity onto others without appearing to do so. Openly ripping a slice from the grasping hands of another elite or constituency will launch a protracted political battle, as every group will fight to the death to keep its share untouched.

By far the best ways to shift the losses to others are 1) inflation (reducing the purchasing power of their income) and 2) creating phantom wealth that can be used to buy up all the income-producing assets. Unsurprisingly, this is precisely what we see happening globally.

Even as inflation eats away at the purchasing power of wages, the governments of the world carefully mask this reality behind bogus statistics of near-zero inflation. While real-world inflation is between 7% and 10% in category after category, official inflation is logged at 2% or less.

Wage earners are getting less for their money, and thus their prosperity is diminishing. This reality is further masked by bogus GDP statistics that are deployed as “proof” the pie is still expanding, when in fact only the slices of the few are still expanding at the expense of the many.

Meanwhile, the elites benefiting from financialization and leverage are reaping the immense rewards of inflating phantom wealth via credit/asset bubbles.Since the return on investment economy-wide is stagnating, the trick here is to create money out of thin air and use that money to buy up income-producing assets. This inflates asset bubbles which further expand the financial elites’ phantom wealth and allows them to keep buying more income streams.

The trickery of creating phantom wealth enables the elites to increase their income and wealth well ahead of what’s lost to inflation.

Creating money out of thin air doesn’t actually increase surplus or prosperity, it just shifts the losses to non-elites. Wealth and unearned income are concentrated in the hands of the financial elites, and the bottom 95% of those with earned income are slowly boiled frogs, only dimly aware that the purchasing power of their wages is declining but at a pace just leisurely enough to avoid triggering a political rebellion.

Depending on expanding debt to fuel expanding prosperity has this funny feature called interest: since earned income is stagnating or declining when adjusted for real-world inflation for the bottom 95%, interest payments reduce disposable income–every dollar devoted to paying interest on rising debt is a dollar that can’t be spent or invested.

You see the irony: depending on expanding debt for “growth” eventually chokes future borrowing, spending and investing, causing “growth” to collapse in a broken heap. Without more debt, “growth” is not possible in a world of stagnant earned income and credit-asset bubbles.

Central banks have played a game of reducing interest as a means of enabling debt to expand even as the purchasing power of earned income declines, but the game ends at zero. At some point borrowers can’t even afford to make payments of principal, and then default becomes inevitable.

At that point, the only way to enable debt-serfs to service their debts is to give them free money, i.e. Universal Basic Income (UBI). Don’t kid yourself that the proponents of UBI are wunnerful folks just trying to be generous; the only purpose of UBI is to enable debt-serfs to keep servicing their debts and stave off the day of reckoning when the debt bubble bursts and everyone wakes up to the reality that prosperity stopped expanding long ago.

 

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“Gimme Some Truth”. John Lennon’s Message Resonates

Gimme Some Truth

John Lennon, The Plastic Ono Band

I’m sick and tired of hearing things from
Uptight short sided narrow minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth, just give me some truth
I’ve had enough of reading …

The post “Gimme Some Truth”. John Lennon’s Message Resonates appeared first on Global Research.

Why magnesium may be the single most important nutrient you need to take for heart health

(Natural News) Magnesium can make a good cause for being the most vital nutrient for supporting cardiovascular health — making it worrisome that almost half of all Americans are deficient when it comes to getting their daily dose of the nutrient. If you do not have enough magnesium in your body, you can become more prone to various…

Morgan Stanley: Ignore Goldilocks; The Right Fairy Tale Is Hansel And Gretel

Authored by Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s Chief US Equity Strategist

No doubt the past six months has been a wild ride, with one of the worst fourth quarters on record followed by one of the best starts to a new year. It’s also been across all asset classes and regions, a true beta event. The popular explanation going around is that the fourth quarter sell-off was just a technical event, the result of an unnecessarily aggressive Fed and trade tensions between the US and China. With both of those problems now ‘fixed’, markets can go back to where we were before these were concerns. As such, new highs for equity indices and tighter spreads for credit can’t be far away.

To take it a step further, many are even using a formerly popular narrative of ‘Goldilocks’ to describe the current situation, which goes something like this: China’s fiscal stimulus, which is finally showing signs of gaining traction, and the resolution of US-China trade tensions should be enough to stop and modestly reverse the rollover in growth in the global and US economies. Meanwhile, the Fed’s aggressive pivot on monetary policy means financial conditions and interest rates are under control. In many ways, it’s just a repeat of early 2016 which puts us back into the not too hot, not too cold environment that dominated the 2013-17 period during which a barbell of growth and defensive stocks dominated. But, what if growth isn’t ‘just right’ and Goldilocks is the wrong fairy tale?

I see other reasons for the growth slowdown that have been underappreciated by most market analysts, especially in the US. First, as we’ve noted since the day it was passed, the timing of the fiscal stimulus was highly questionable. While corporate tax cuts is perhaps a good supply-side policy that could lead to much-needed investment and subsequent productivity gains, enacting it at a time when you are already at full employment is typically not a great idea. Sure enough, the US economy ran too hot in 2018 with GDP peaking at 4.2% growth in 2Q, well above potential GDP of just 1.5%. We’ve argued since last summer that such overheating was bound to lead to some excesses and the absorption of spare capacity faster than what would have happened in the absence of this fiscal stimulus. Corporate capex and buybacks also got a significant boost from the corporate tax cuts and repatriation of overseas cash, and that is unrepeatable.

When we published our margin risk note for US equities last October we were particularly focused on labor costs and logistics as two areas that were seeing tightness and would likely squeeze corporate profitability. Based on 4Q earnings results and forward guidance, the impact from higher costs is definitely starting to bite. Specifically, consensus EBIT margin expectations for 2019 have fallen by 70bp since October, which is the biggest decline since the last earnings recession in 2015. While it’s difficult to measure the contribution from each source of incremental cost, we are confident it’s not all due to supply chain disruption from US tariffs on Chinese goods. Instead, our contention continues to be that the majority of the cost pressure is the result of the economy running too hot last year which has led to higher labor costs among other things (see Exhibit). This essentially tipped over the profits cycle. Furthermore, the de-escalation of trade tensions with China and a pausing Fed will not alleviate those pressures, in our view. It’s also very different than in early 2016 when goldilocks was alive and well.

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Indeed, corporations seem to agree as we are now seeing the inevitable reaction from managers to the margin squeeze. Last Thursday, private outsourcing firm Challenger Gray & Christmas reported job cut announcements spiked last month to the highest monthly total since July 2015. This was followed up on Friday with one of the weakest payrolls numbers and the highest wage cost reading since the economic recovery began in 2009. The profits recession is more a function of the business cycle overheating than most appreciate, which means labor markets may soften further along with capital spending until the profits recession ends which is unlikely after just one quarter of modestly negative growth. It also means there probably isn’t as much slack in the economy as many investors think and as depicted by the cost pressures now evident. Rather than Goldilocks, perhaps we should be talking about Hansel and Gretel – a fairy tale about the dangers of an unwholesome appetite as a means of survival – i.e., chasing prices higher and justifying it with the wrong narrative.

Pound Slides On Report Cabinet Has Turned On May Ahead Of Critical Votes

Ahead of what are expected to be a string of disastrous votes in Parliament this week, the British press is already ratcheting up the pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May, who has reportedly lost the support of all but two of her cabinet ministers.

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The news sent the pound sliding, a portent of what’s likely to be a rocky week for cable traders.

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May is widely expected to lose a Tuesday vote on a slightly modified version of the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with the EU, which was voted down by a historic margin of 230 votes late last year. Assuming that vote fails, May is expected to call a vote on whether Parliament would support a ‘no deal’ Brexit (also expected to fail). Finally, MPs will have the opportunity to vote on whether they would support delaying Brexit by a few months.

If that vote passes, May will be forced to go to the EU27, hat in hand, and ask their permission for a delay at an upcoming summit. Critics say they worry doing so would essentially amount to May giving up any leverage she still had, only to wind up in the exact same place they are now (which is effectively where they have been since the EU signed off on the withdrawal agreement last year). May has already promised that she wouldn’t lead her party in the next round of elections, and speculation has been mounting that she could be effectively ousted by her cabinet before the summit.

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Courtesy of the Telegraph

Though, if all three votes fail, there’s a chance that May could be out by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England is doing its part to make sure the British people and their banks don’t lose sight of what a sh*tshow a ‘no deal’ exit could be. The FT reported Sunday that the BoE has told some UK banks to triple their holdings of easy-to-sell assets, enough to withstand a ‘severe stress’ under the UK’s macroprudential guidelines. These banks were told they must have enough cash on hand to prepare for a scenario where the market for interbank credit freezes up for 100 days – up from the 30 under BoE rules adopted late last year – and to also prepare for the possibility that banks would be shut out of foreign exchange markets, leaving them unable to swap sterling for dollars, something that persisted for a few days during the financial crisis, according to the FT.

Though the BoE is expected to relent if a deal looks likely, this is what passes for “sensible prudential management” in the age of Brexit. Perhaps the central bank wants to ensure is call for “severe market volatility” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if kicking the can fails and the UK crashes out of the EU.

U.S. pressing India to stop buying Venezuelan oil: envoy

March 10, 2019

By Lesley Wroughton, Luc Cohen and Marianna Parraga

(Reuters) – The United States is pressing India to stop buying Venezuelan oil that is a major source of revenue for President Nicolas Maduro’s government, Washington’s top envoy for Venezuela said, as the Trump administration this week threatened more U.S. sanctions to cut off Maduro’s financial lifelines.

“We say you should not be helping this regime, you should be on the side of the Venezuelan people,” Elliott Abrams told Reuters in an interview.

The Trump administration has given the same message to other governments, Abrams said, and has made a similar argument to foreign banks and private companies doing business with the Maduro government.

Abrams described the U.S. approach as “arguing, cajoling, urging.”

The pressure on India comes as the United States and its regional allies, who back Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, threaten more sanctions to cut off revenue streams to Maduro’s government and force him to step down.

Washington views Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and has imposed sanctions on the country’s oil sector and announced asset freezes and travel bans targeting top government officials.

The Indian market is crucial for Venezuela’s economy because it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the OPEC country’s crude, behind the United States, which through sanctions against Maduro has handed control of much of that revenue to Guaido.

Oil shipments to China, Venezuela’s other major importer, do not generate cash because they go to pay off billions of dollars in loans made to Caracas by Beijing.

The talks over Venezuela come as trade tensions rise between Washington and New Delhi, and when the United States is also pushing India to cease buying Iranian oil.

The United States is planning to end preferential trade treatment for India that allows duty-free entry for up to $5.6 billion worth of its exports to the United States.

SECONDARY SANCTIONS?

U.S. sanctions typically block American firms from doing business with specific foreign governments or companies.

Seeking to prevent Indian purchases of Venezuelan crude would be part of a strategy known as “secondary sanctions,” in which Washington applies penalties to companies not based in the United States.

That strategy, and even the threat of using it, was vital in Washington’s pressure campaign to cut off revenue to Iran, which eventually helped force Tehran to negotiate a nuclear deal with six world powers in 2015.

But it has drawn criticism from some foreign governments who argue that the United States should not be able to force its policy decisions on firms in other countries.

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton this week put foreign banks “on notice” that they risked U.S. sanctions for hiding Venezuelan assets.

    “If that leads to people to cooperate voluntarily, we’re glad,” Abrams said.

Asked whether India had agreed to stop buying Venezuelan oil, Abrams said: “I don’t want to characterize the discussions, which continue.”

The issue will be discussed next week during U.S.-India diplomatic consultations in Washington, an Indian official said, adding that India “was very cognizant of the U.S. position” on Venezuela.

VITAL MARKET

Manuel Quevedo, Venezuela’s oil minister, attended a conference in New Delhi in mid-February seeking to “double” the country’s crude exports to India while boosting Venezuelan imports of Indian refined products. He also said he was open to barter payments.

    But Venezuela’s exports to India remained relatively stable in the month since the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA, meaning shipments were not nearly enough to make up for the fall in U.S. sales.

Venezuela directly exported 297,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude to India in February, according to Refinitiv Eikon data, which does not include barrels first shipped to other ports such as Singapore or Rotterdam. India imported 342,000 bpd of Venezuelan crude in January, and an average of 340,000 bpd last year.

That was well off the more than 400,000 bpd India used to import, on average, and not nearly enough to make up for the drop in U.S. imports to 104,800 bpd in February from more than 500,000 bpd before the sanctions hit.

    India is also being pressured by lawmakers from both major U.S. parties. Republican Senator Marco Rubio tweeted on Feb. 13 that Indian refiner Reliance Petroleum’s purchases of Venezuelan oil would undermine Guaido’s “legitimate government” and “lead to calls for secondary sanctions on Reliance”.

    Albio Sires, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, wrote to India’s ambassador in Washington on Feb. 12 expressing concern about what Sires called Venezuela’s “attempts to work around U.S. efforts to hold Maduro accountable and approach one of our strongest partners in the process.”

    “We’re going to start doing some lobbying to see if we can get India not to buy oil from Venezuela,” Sires, a Democrat, said in a late February interview.

    Venezuelan oil made up just 4.2 percent of India’s total imports in January, data show. Venezuela is also not a top foreign policy priority for India, as it is for other major buyers like Russia, said Moises Rendon of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

    “The U.S. has enough leverage to get India to pull away the relationship with Venezuela,” Rendon said. “That’s why the U.S. role here is key.”

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Marianna Parraga in Mexico City and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Another Failed Coup in Venezuela?

If you repeat your own lies enough—so goes the apocryphal Goebbels quote—you start to believe them yourself. For two decades, the Venezuelan opposition and its supporters in Washington have smeared Hugo Chávez and now his successor, Nicolás Maduro, as …

The post Another Failed Coup in Venezuela? appeared first on Global Research.

Another Failed Coup in Venezuela?

If you repeat your own lies enough—so goes the apocryphal Goebbels quote—you start to believe them yourself. For two decades, the Venezuelan opposition and its supporters in Washington have smeared Hugo Chávez and now his successor, Nicolás Maduro, as …

The post Another Failed Coup in Venezuela? appeared first on Global Research.

Social Justice Warriors Causing Havoc – When The Raving Lunatics Get Their Way And The Victims End Up Being Those They Claimed They Wanted To Help

by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline: Social justice warriors never seem to understand that many of their positions lead to contradictory statements, hypocritical actions, an inability to “explain” their positions because many do not even know enough about the topic and are simply mimicking talking points, and a very serious problem of resulting hardships for […]

The post Social Justice Warriors Causing Havoc – When The Raving Lunatics Get Their Way And The Victims End Up Being Those They Claimed They Wanted To Help appeared first on SGT Report.

Conservative EU Parties Joining Together into Anti-Globalist Powerhouse

from Russia Insider: Italy’s ethno-populist party Fratelli d’Italia is the latest to join the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE). The aim of the growing political alliance is to form a lobby powerful enough to decimate the globalist liberal-left following the May elections. The aim of Fratelli d’Italia is also to convince the […]

The post Conservative EU Parties Joining Together into Anti-Globalist Powerhouse appeared first on SGT Report.

First lady Melania Trump rips into the media, and then issues this challenge to them

Melania is following in the president’s footsteps

Source: Carlos Garcia

First lady Melania Trump criticized the mainstream media and issued a challenge to them about their cheap and shallow coverage.

“I challenge the press to devote as much time to the lives lost and the potential lives that could be saved by dedicating the same amount of coverage that you do to idle gossip or trivial stories,” the first lady said.

She was speaking at an event in Las Vegas, Nevada, for her “Be Best” campaign against the opioid epidemic.

“When we see breaking news on TV or the front pages of newspapers,” she added, “it is my hope that it can be about how many lives we were able to save through education and honest dialogue.”

The first lady reiterated her challenge in a question and answer period with Eric Bolling.

“I wish the media would talk about more and educate more children, also adults, parents, about the opioid crisis that we have in the United States,” she said. “They do it already, but I think not enough.”

This is just the latest in a series of critiques from the first lady against the media. In November she was speaking about her anti-cyberbullying campaign at a conference in Washington D.C. when the issue arose.

“As I have said before,” the first lady said during her speech, “it is not news or surprising to me that critics and the media have chosen to ridicule me for speaking out on this issue, and that’s okay.”

“I hope,” she continued, “you will consider using their negative words as motivation to do all you can to bring awareness and understanding about responsible online behavior.”

Here’s local video from her event on Tuesday:

Pence Urged Germany To Provoke Russian Navy

Bloomberg dropped a bombshell on Thursday, citing three high level sources familiar with US-German talks at last month’s Munich Security Conference who revealed US Vice President Mike Pence tried to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to directly provoke Russia by sending German ships through the Kerch Strait, the two mile wide flashpoint off Crimea which saw Russia seize Ukrainian vessels and their crew members on November 25. 

Merkel reportedly rebuffed the efforts which Bloomberg described as “a naval maneuver in Russia’s backyard aimed at provoking President Vladimir Putin.” Merkel declined Pence’s urging while citing reservations voiced by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who viewed such an act as “not enough” to ensure Russia opens the strait permanently, according to the sources. Sources said Pence’s plan was designed “to show Putin that Western powers won’t surrender their access to those waters.”

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Image source: Reuters

Interestingly, Merkel’s stance wasn’t based on any principled desire to promoted peace or prevent needless provocations which could potentially spark regional war between Ukraine and Russia and western allies, but out of concern it essentially “wasn’t enough”. 

According to Bloomberg: 

Merkel had indicated she was willing, in coordination with the French, to send a convoy through the waterway as a one-time maneuver but Poroshenko said that wasn’t enough to solve his problem — he wants to ensure the strait is open permanently, the people said. France also refused to take part, judging the idea as an unnecessary provocation, according to another official who declined to be identified.

Following the controversial 2014 Crimean status referendum, which resulted in the peninsula coming under Russian suzerainty, Russia has been accused of choking off Ukrainian naval access to its ports on the Sea of Azov to the north of the Kerch Strait. 

When Ukrainian naval entry through the now disputed waterway came to a head in November of last year, the Russian navy fired on three Ukrainian vessels attempting to traverse the passageway before seizing the vessels and 24 Ukrainian sailors, which Moscow has refused to release, despite personal attempts by France’s Emmanuel Macron and other western leaders to intervene in the standoff. 

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Mike Pence and Angela Merkel in Munich last month, via the AFP

Further, as Bloomberg notes, Russia completed a road bridge across the Kerch Strait in order to solidify Crimean links to the mainland and is reportedly in process of adding a rail link. Meanwhile, Kiev has attempted to rally international allies to mount a pressure campaign which would force Russia to open the strait to Ukrainian and other allied vessels. 

But not only does this latest revelation of German and European reluctance to start a fight with Moscow over the strait reveal that Ukraine has a weak hand, a 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine deemed the Sea of Azov is an “internal” body of water, for which any outside military vessel must have the consent of both Moscow and Kiev to pass through. 

Ukraine has recently said that the Russian seizure of Ukrainian vessels and crew violated the treaty’s terms, to which Moscow has said the Ukrainian vessels were aggressors against Russian ships in the first place. 

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Over the past two months both UK and US military ships have entered the Black Sea to the south of the Kerch Strait, but no others have made a move further north since the Kerch Strait incident, which had the potential of bringing Russia and Ukraine into more direct conflict, with western allies backing Kiev. 

“They, frankly, don’t like us in the Black Sea,” General Curtis Scaparrotti of the U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme Europe commander told the Senate Armed Services Committee while referencing Russia this week. 

Scaparrotti further called for more deterrent firepower, specifically citing the “Russian threat” as something the United States remains underprepared for: “I am not comfortable yet with the deterrent posture that we have in Europe,” he said. 

“While the US maintains a global military superiority over Russia, evolving Russian capabilities threaten to erode our competitive military advantage,” he explained.

Thus even by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s own admission, neither the US nor its European allies like Germany or France are ready to initiate a major confrontation with Moscow in its own backyard, as it appears Pence was ready and willing to do.

Ever wonder why your steak is served with a salad? The nutrients in the salad help you digest the nutrients in the meat

(Natural News) Would you believe that a simple change in your food intake could be enough to help you prevent cancer and other diseases? Many studies have shown that diet does indeed play a huge part in causing or preventing certain diseases from occurring in the human body. But experts are still a ways from…

Food GOLD: Turmeric is just as effective as 14 pharma drugs but suffers from NONE of the side effects

(Natural News) What if you could replace all the pills in your medicine cabinet with just one herb? Depending on what you take and why, that may be possible with turmeric. Its main component, curcumin, boasts enough health-enhancing properties to keep pharmaceutical execs up at night. In fact, this herb is so powerful that it…

Food GOLD: Turmeric is just as effective as 14 pharma drugs but suffers from NONE of the side effects

(Natural News) What if you could replace all the pills in your medicine cabinet with just one herb? Depending on what you take and why, that may be possible with turmeric. Its main component, curcumin, boasts enough health-enhancing properties to keep pharmaceutical execs up at night. In fact, this herb is so powerful that it…

“What A Crock Of Shit”: Sam Zell Summarizes Democrats’ Amazon Fiasco

Having listened for 5 minutes to New York Democrat Gregory Meeks deflect blame for Jeff Bezos’ decision to pull out of the HQ2 build in Long Island City, billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell had had enough and was caught expressing his frustration in a ‘hot mic’ moment – much to the shock of the CNBC anchor.

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Three weeks ago, Greg Meeks told CNBC that he was disappointed that Amazon refused to negotiate with him and the other NY Dems who had demanded more from Bezos…

And today, Meeks was back, expressing his disappointment again but refusing to shoulder any blame for the decision that took 25,000 potential jobs (and all that yummy tax money) away from the city.

Billionaire investor Sam Zell was guest hosting CNBC during this interview – in which admittedly the CNBC anchor did press Meeks on his blatant flip-flopping – and right as the interview was concluding, Zell told Meeks that “this decision may be one of the worst by a self-serving politician ever.”

The interview ended and panned back to the anchor, but in the background on a hot mic, Zell exclaimed “what a crock of shit.”

British PM May’s top lawyer struggles for Brexit deal in Brussels

March 5, 2019

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Talks between British Prime Minister Theresa May’s top government lawyer and European Union negotiators to win concessions from the bloc on Brexit ended with no agreement in Brussels on Tuesday.

May has sent Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to seek changes to her deal in a last-ditch bid to get it through parliament and smooth Britain’s departure from the European Union.

The talks between Cox, Britain’s Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier ended with no agreement after more than three hours on Tuesday. Sources from both sides said negotiations among lower-ranking officials would continue on Wednesday.

An EU official said Tuesday’s talks did not go well.

Britain is due to leave the EU in 24 days, but parliament’s rejection of May’s deal in January has put in doubt how, when or possibly even if Britain’s biggest foreign and trade policy shift in more than 40 years will take place.

May has charged Cox and Barclay with securing changes to the so-called Irish backstop, an insurance policy to prevent a “hard border” between the UK province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland if a future trading relationship falls short.

Time is of the essence, with some businesses increasingly concerned over the risk of a disorderly Brexit, which BMW said on Tuesday could mean it would move some production of engines and its Mini model out of Britain.

Earlier, foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said the government still wanted “to leave at the end of this month and it depends how quickly we can get a deal through”.

“Our ask of the EU is an important ask … but it is one ask and it’s a simple one. We need substantive changes that will allow the attorney general to change his advice to the government that says that, at the moment, theoretically, we could be trapped in the backstop indefinitely.”

FLEXING MUSCLES

May has struggled to convince the EU that she can get the deal through a deeply divided parliament in London, where lawmakers are increasingly flexing their muscles to try to influence Britain’s departure from the bloc.

She has offered lawmakers the chance to seek to prevent a no-deal departure and to delay Brexit if parliament rejects the deal in a vote she has promised to hold by March 12. Both British and EU officials have said any delay would probably be just for a few months.

Ministers are hoping Cox can convince eurosceptic lawmakers he has done enough to remove the threat of Britain ending up in the EU’s customs union indefinitely, something Brexit supporters say would make a mockery of the 2016 vote to leave the bloc.

The British government had been looking at either an end date on the provision or some way of London being able to stop the arrangement unilaterally, but have in recent days been less specific about what the changes would amount to.

Both options have long been rejected by the EU.

Asked after a meeting of senior ministers whether May had set out specific details of what Cox was seeking, her spokesman said: “No … you can expect them (Cox and Barclay) to be having detailed discussions around the legally binding changes we’re seeking to the backstop, but it wasn’t discussed at cabinet.”

British and EU officials said the change could come in an addendum to the agreement – something the government hopes will be enough to change minds in parliament, where deep divisions over Brexit have become increasingly entrenched.

“How we get there is something we’re prepared to be flexible about,” Hunt said. “But the crucial thing that we are looking for is to see whether Geoffrey Cox is going to be able to change his advice to the government.”

(Writing by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Gareth Jones and Rosalba O’Brien)

Progressive Magazine Asks: “Are Pedophiles Too Sick For Punishment?”

In recent months there has been a push, especially on social media platforms, to make pedophilia an acceptable activity in American society.

Rather than considering the molestation and sexual assault of children a crime, some are suggesting that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, like being straight or gay.

And though that may sound completely ridiculous to the casual observer, California Democrats actually introduced a bill in their State legislature ensuring that convicted pedophiles and those who commit sexual crimes against children do not have to register on the sex offenders registry so long as the child in question is within 10 years of age of the perpetrator.

Slowly and methodically, those who want to decriminalize the predatory sexual abuse committed by pedophiles are tacitly doing so one state government bill at a time.

[TWP Editor | The Washington Pundit] State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton) introduced recent legislation “to end blatant discrimination against LGBT young people regarding California’s sex offender registry.”

However, under their bill, SB 145, the offenders would not have to automatically register as sex offenders if the offenders are within 10 years of age of the minor.

Full report via Pulpit And Pen

As if that isn’t bad enough, we now have one of the nation’s most well known online publications asking what is perhaps one of the most ludicrous questions we’ve ever heard asked: Is Pedophilia a Crime or an Illness?

We’d like to think that the answer to this question is, “both.”

But Slate takes takes this even further, asking whether pedophiles should be punished for their mental illness.

That’s like asking whether a deranged serial killer should be punished for his or her actions. A serial killer has a mental illness, but does that mean it’s okay to let them walk among us so long as they seek treatment for their crimes?

Protections for children are slowly being eroded and if the extreme Left’s “progressive” agenda continues chances are that claiming pedophilia is an evil crime could one day become grounds for censorship and accusations of “hate speech.”

That this is even a conversation to be had is ridiculous on its face.

Editor’s Note: Please note that we believe the vast majority of Democrats AND Republicans are against the idea of legalizing pedophilia. This appears to be originating from a very small but vocal group on the extreme Left of the political spectrum. 

Effective herbal remedies to fight the flu when SHTF

(Natural News) Getting the flu when you are in the comfort of your own home can be bad enough, but what if you came down with the illness in the middle of a SHTF situation? How can you treat a flu infection while living off the grid? Here are a few effective herbal remedies for treating…

S&P downgrades debt-laden Mexican state oil firm Pemex

March 4, 2019

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Monday slashed the stand-alone credit profile of Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex, piling more pressure on the government to tighten up the debt-laden state oil firm’s finances.

S&P cut its stand-alone assessment of Petroleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is formally known, to ‘B-‘ from ‘BB-‘, reflecting growing concern that support pledged by the government to shore up the firm and its slowing production will not be enough.

The agency also cut Pemex’s outlook to negative from stable, just as it did for the Mexican government late on Friday.

The agency kept Pemex’s global investment grade rating at ‘BBB+’, in line with the government.

The peso currency was slightly weaker on Monday after the S&P moves, which followed a string of warnings about Pemex’s financial health. At 2:32 p.m. EST (1932 GMT), the peso was trading down by 0.41 percent against the dollar.

The bleaker outlook reflects concern that the government’s plan to clean up Pemex’s finances is insufficient, S&P said, adding that the company is exposed to political decisions that could conflict with its financial objectives.

“The government’s financial support, in order to restore credit fundamentals, falls well short of the company’s multi-annual capital investment needs,” S&P said in a statement.

S&P later also lowered the outlook to “negative” from “stable” for Mexican telecoms giant America Movil, Coke bottler Coca-Cola Femsa, and retailer El Puerto de Liverpool, keeping their ratings unchanged.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged to revive Pemex, which had financial debt of nearly $106 billion at the end of 2018, and is struggling with declining production.

Crude output slipped to 1.62 million barrels per day in January, the lowest since public records began in 1990.

Last month, Lopez Obrador said his government would inject $3.9 billion into Pemex to strengthen its finances and prevent a further credit downgrade, shortly after rating agency Fitch cut its rating to just one level above junk status.

S&P said on Monday that Pemex could require at least $20 billion over multiple years to avoid “further deterioration.”

Mexico’s finance ministry said it would not offer any reaction on Monday to the S&P move. Pemex declined to comment.

S&P said the three-notch drop in PEMEX’s stand-alone credit profile was in part due to the fact that the company’s core businesses are underperforming its previous expectations.

“Also, the continued loss in operating efficiencies has the national refining system running at less than 40 percent of installed capacity,” S&P said.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Dave Graham; editing by Grant McCool and Sandra Maler)

A February to remembrrr in L.A.: It never even reached 70 degrees

A February to remembrrr in L.A.: It never even reached 70 degrees

Source: , and

Home restaurant’s sprawling outdoor patio in Los Feliz, set under a canopy of large trees, was designed to take advantage of California’s temperate climate and typically sunny skies.

But this February has been so cold that the restaurant scrambled to set up extra heaters outside the Craftsman-style house to keep diners and workers warm during the record-setting cold winter.

“We had three heaters going for a while and this month it just hasn’t been enough,” said Sam Yoo, a manager at the restaurant. “I’m trying to have the waiters and hostesses wear warmer clothing, but I have one heater set up right by the host stand so they don’t catch colds.”

For the first time since forecasters began recording data — at least 132 years — the mercury did not reach 70 degrees in downtown Los Angeles for the entire month of February.

FULL STORY

Miracle food: Are you eating enough cruciferous vegetables?

(Natural News) Vegetables are one of the keys to good nutrition and overall well-being; just about everyone knows that they need to eat their veggies if they want to preserve their health. But not all vegetables are created equal. To a degree, every vegetable, or at least every type of vegetable, comes with its own…

Here’s How You’ll Die When the SHTF (and How to Prevent Your Untimely Demise)

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

When it hits the fan…I mean REALLY hits the fan in a permanent kind of way, the most likely outcome is death.

That’s not pretty, and I’m well aware of it. I always try to be positive and optimistic, because for me, preparedness is the ultimate act of optimism, but sometimes we have to look at the numbers and face some things that are pretty terrifying. The first reality check is that some research says that only 3 million Americans are preppers.  That means that 315 million Americans are not preppers. Some experts predict that within 30 days of the power going out, 50% of Americans will be dead. Within a year, an astounding 90% of the population will be dead.

Do you want to survive such a scenario? Do you want your children to survive? When you read this information, you have to realize that it’s very unlikely that you and your family would live through a grid failure of a year or more unless you are proactive and develop a preparedness plan that takes all of these causes of death into consideration.

The Top 10 Ways to Die in a Long-term Disaster

So here are the cold hard facts. One of these is the way that you are most likely to die when the SHTF, particularly in the event of a long-term grid failure. The good news is, now that you know this, you can take steps to prevent your untimely demise.

  1. You die of thirst or waterborne illness.  Most people have a case of water bottles kicking around, and perhaps a 5 gallon jug for the water cooler. What they don’t have is a gallon a day per person for a long-term emergency. Most people also don’t own a gravity fed, no-power necessary water filtration device with spare parts and extra filters. Most people do not have the skills and knowledge necessary to purify their water without these devices either.  Waterborne illness is the number one cause of death after a natural disaster. If just one person handles water and waste incorrectly, this can cause an epidemic of such deadly illnesses as Hepatitis A, viral gastroenteritis, cholera, Shigellosis, typhoid, Diphtheria and polio.  The other worry is dehydration. It only takes 3 days for a person to die of thirst.  Learn more about the importance of water preparedness HERE. If you’d like information on water preparedness in a print version, check out my book on the subject.
  2. You die from fantasy-world planning. So many preppers have poorly thought out plans for survival. They think they’ll “live off the land” and hunt, forage, and farm their way through the apocalypse, but they’ve never milked a goat or planted the contents of their seed banks. They don’t understand that gardens and crops can fail for innumerable reasons. They think they’re still in the same physical condition that they were 25 years ago and overestimate their ability to perform physical labor, like chopping wood for the fire. There are hundreds of bad strategies that will get preppers killed (in fact, here are 12 of them), and mostly it boils down to one crucial fact: it’s all a fantasy. They’ve never done ANY of the things that they think they will do for survival, or if they have done them, it was decades ago, when they were younger, fitter, and more resilient. I can tell you right now, if we had to live off of the contents of this year’s drought-stricken, deer-and-gopher-raided garden, we’d last about a week, enjoying salsa by the jarful, but little else.
  3. You freeze to death. Depending on where you live, you may freeze to death when the power goes out.  When temperatures plummet, people will become desperate to get warm, and this will lead to other modes of death such as carbon monoxide poison from improperly vented heat sources and house fires when people use fireplaces or wood stoves that have not been maintained for years. Learn about staying warm during a winter power outage HERE and begin to develop a plan that will keep your family cozy during a long-term scenario.
  4. You starve to death. Most people only have enough food to see them through until the next grocery trip.  Most people go to the grocery store more than once per week. In urban centers, it’s customary to buy your food fresh from the market each day.  If disaster strikes and you only have a few days’ worth of food, you are going to be one of those people standing in line for hours, begging FEMA for a bottle of water and an MRE to split amongst your family.  Even worse, in an extremely widespread disaster, FEMA won’t be coming at all, and you’ll be on your own, left with only what you have in your home…before it spoils and if you can figure out a way to cook it with no power.  Food poisoning, starvation, and malnutrition will be common causes of death. Learn about building a pantry on a budget HERE. To start yourself out with a speedy supply, go HERE for a variety of high quality, non-GMO kits.
  5. You have an accident involving major trauma. This is something that is difficult to prevent – that’s why they call it an accident. To up your chances of survival, always where the proper protective gear, such as safety goggles and gloves. Secondly, spend some time learning to deal with medical situations. Many communities offer free First Aid courses to get you started. Stock up on books that provide information for times when medical care is not available (this one is the very best in my opinion), and have advanced supplies on hand to deal with injuries.
  6. You get murdered when raiders or looters come to steal your stuff.  Remember the 315 million unprepared Americans? They’re going to be hungry. And the hungrier and more desperate people become, the more dangerous the world is going to be. It’s imperative that you be prepared to defend your home and family from them. If you’re one of those people who says, “I don’t want to live in a world where I have to shoot someone because they’re hungry” you just might get your wish. Because they won’t have a problem shooting you. This is one of the major reasons that preppers must be armed. The danger isn’t just from mobs of strangers.  If you tend to talk too much, your friends, extended family, and neighbors just might be the ones to kill you for your supplies.
  7. You get sick. Without our normal standards of cleanliness and the access to medical care, the likelihood of getting sick increases. Without the access to medical care, the likelihood of that sickness spiraling out of control is exponentially greater. Learn how to treat and manage sickness naturally so that you can get a handle on an illness before it kills you. This book is a fantastic reference, written with the prepper in mind.
  8. You get an infection. A silly little cut or splinter that we take for granted now could be a death sentence after the SHTF. With the possibility that your hygiene standards may drop and that you’ll be getting a lot dirtier doing physical labor, infection is fairly likely. It’s vital to immediately treat even the most trivial-seeming wound. For treating a wound, I can’t recommend this spray enough. I have used it on all sorts of animal infections that I thought would prove fatal, with 100% positive results. Because of this, we use it on our own wounds as soon as possible, too. That may not always be enough to prevent an infection however, so having the right antibiotics on hand could mean the difference between life and death. (Check out this antibiotic primer by Joe Alton of Dr. Bones fame) Many veterinary antibiotics are identical to those made for humans. You can find them on Amazon and add them to your stockpile.
  9. You die because you are fat and/or out of shape. If the Zombies approached and you found yourself outnumbered, are you fit enough to run away?  What if you had to bug out across the mountains? Would your heart hold up to the steep climb? Would your knees hold up to the descent? What if you add a 50 pound backpack? Now is the time to get yourself in shape. Most Americans lead fairly sedentary lives, sitting down to a desk all day for work. It’s not something you can fix overnight, so now is the time to increase your fitness. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for the family members who will have to wait for you while you huff and puff. They’ll be killed when you slow them down. The road to fitness can start easily. If you can walk, you can improve your fitness level dramatically. This article discusses how to start out slowly and then build up your endurance and this PDF book will help you to reach a healthy body weight.
  10. You die when you daily medication runs out. This one is tougher to prevent. You can extend life expectancy by stockpiling medication but if the crisis outlasts your supply, there is a limit to what you can do. Who can forget the heartbreaking story of the diabetic girl in the book One Second After?  Don’t underestimate the difficulty for some of going without psychiatric drugs. Depending on the drug, withdrawal can be horrific, particularly if they have not been able to slowly wean themselves off. Some conditions,when untreated, can cause the sufferer to lose touch with reality and suffer a psychotic break, making them dangerous to themselves and others. Depending on the medication you require, there are sometimes natural alternatives and dietary tweaks that can help. Some existing conditions can be managed better now through lifestyle changes, which will increase your chances for survival later. For example, if you suffer from Type 2 Diabetes and are significantly overweight, improving your diet and losing weight now can reduce your dependence on daily medication in many cases. Keep in mind that some medications are okay after the expiration dates, while others can be deadly. (Learn more about pharmaceutical expiration dates HERE.) Learn everything you can about your medical condition and figure out a plan ahead of time.

Good news: nearly all of these deaths will be preventable

Now that you know how you’ll die, you can take the necessary steps to prevent it. Almost every cause of death mentioned here is entirely preventable.

What will save you when an epic disaster strikes is what you do now to prepare for it. Make education and good health your mission now and you’ll not only survive the SHTF, you’ll thrive against the odds.

What do you think are the most likely ways people will die? What are the best preventative steps we can take ahead of time?

Note: This article was written with the unprepared or the beginner in mind.

The Pantry Primer

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.

Now that Housing Bubble #2 Is Bursting…How Low Will It Go?

There are two generalities that can be applied to all asset bubbles:

1. Bubbles inflate for longer and reach higher levels than most pre-bubble analysts expected

2. All bubbles burst, despite mantra-like claims that “this time it’s different”

The bubble burst tends to follow a symmetrical reversal of very similar time durations and magnitudes as the initial rise. If the bubble took four years to inflate and rose by X, the retrace tends to take about the same length of time and tends to retrace much or all of X.

If we look at the chart of the Case-Shiller Housing Index below, this symmetry is visible in Housing Bubble #1 which skyrocketed from 2003-2007 and burst from 2008-2012.

Housing Bubble #1 wasn’t allowed to fully retrace the bubble, as the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to near-zero in 2009 and bought $1+ trillion in sketchy mortgage-backed securities (MBS), essentially turning America’s mortgage market into a branch of the central bank and federal agency guarantors of mortgages (Fannie and Freddie, VA, FHA).

These unprecedented measures stopped the bubble decline by instantly making millions of people who previously could not qualify for a privately originated mortgage qualified buyers. This vast expansion of the pool of buyers (expanded by a flood of buyers from China and other hot-money locales) drove sales and prices higher for six years (2012-2018).

As noted on the chart below, this suggests the bubble burst will likely run from 2019-2025, give or take a few quarters.

The question is: what’s the likely magnitude of the decline? Scenario 1 (blue line) is a symmetrical repeat of Housing Bubble #2: a retrace of the majority of the bubble’s rise but not 100%, which reverses off this somewhat higher base to start Housing Bubble #3.

Since the mainstream consensus denies the possibility that Housing Bubble #2 even exists (perish the thought that real estate prices could ever–gasp–drop), they most certainly deny the possibility that prices could retrace much of the gains since 2012.

More realistic analysts would probably agree that if the current slowdown (never say recession, it might cost you your job) gathers momentum, some decline in housing prices is possible. They would likely agree with Scenario 1 that any such decline would be modest and would simply set the stage for an even grander housing bubble #3.

But there is a good case for Scenario 2, in which price plummets below the 2012 lows and keeps on going, ultimately retracing the entire housing bubble gains from 2003.

Why is Scenario 2 not just possible but likely? There are no more “saves” in the Fed’s locker. Dropping interest rates to zero and buying another trillion in MBS won’t have the same positive effects they had in 2009-2018. Those policies have run their course.

Among independent analysts, Chris Hamilton is a must-read for his integration of demographics and economics. Please read (via Zero Hedge) Demographics, Debt, & Debasement: A Picture Of American Insolvency if you want to understand why near-zero interest rates and buying mortgage-backed securities isn’t going to spark Housing Bubble #3.

Millennials are burdened with $1 trillion in student loans and most don’t earn enough to afford a home at today’s nosebleed prices. When the Fed drops the Fed Funds Rate to zero, it doesn’t follow that mortgage rates drop to zero. They drop a bit, but not enough to transform an unaffordable house into an affordable one.

Buying up $1 trillion in sketchy mortgages worked in 2009 because it bailed out everyone who was at risk of absorbing huge losses as a percentage of those mortgages defaulted. The problem now isn’t one of liquidity or iffy mortgages: it’s the generation that would like to buy homes finds they don’t earn enough, and their incomes are not secure enough, to gamble everything on an overpriced house that chains them to a local economy they might want to leave if opportunities arise elsewhere.

In other words, the economy has changed, and the sacrifices required to buy a house in hot markets at today’s prices make no sense. The picture changes, of course, in areas where 2X or 3X a typical income will buy a house, and 1X a pretty good income will buy a house.

Unless the Fed is going to start buying millions of homes outright, prices are going to fall to what buyers can afford. As China’s debt bubble implodes, the Chinese buyers with cash (probably not even cash, just money borrowed in China’s vast unregulated Shadow Banking System) who have propped up dozens of markets from France to Vancouver will vanish, leaving only the unwealthy as buyers.

The only question of any real interest is how low prices will drop by 2025.We’re so accustomed to being surprised on the upside that we’ve forgotten we can surprised on the downside as well. 

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format.

My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. 

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

The Bull Market and Today’s Financial Crisis. “The Great Crash of 1929”. Will History Repeat Itself?

Last December the Dow Jones dropped slightly, 1,788 points down to 23,327 points, that’s about 7% and the business press reported as if the sky was falling. It has since recovered.

But that was enough to get me thinking. We’ve …

The post The Bull Market and Today’s Financial Crisis. “The Great Crash of 1929”. Will History Repeat Itself? appeared first on Global Research.

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