Similar Threads
Whats your best money management method? 52 replies
How to flow with the order flow? 26 replies
Money Management / Risk Management 24 replies
Money management model for multiple strategy trading method 16 replies
Most popular money management method. 7 replies
- Post #8,481
- Quote
- Jun 3, 2020 7:20pm Jun 3, 2020 7:20pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
- Post #8,482
- Quote
- Jun 3, 2020 7:28pm Jun 3, 2020 7:28pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
I have a bedtime story for you.
Once upon a time a brave nation liberated itself from the tyranny of the British empire and birthed freedom and democracy into the world. With the help of heroes like the abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X it overcame systemic racial inequality, and now it is a shining exemplar of human rights, the respected friend of free democracies around the world and the hated foe of all tyrannical regimes. It is not without its faults and its past mistakes, but it is the best leader and protector of the liberal world order that we could possibly hope to have.
I also have a waking up story for you.
Once upon a time a nation rose to prominence after emerging unscathed from two world wars which damaged the infrastructure of its competitors. The world’s major power players quickly coalesced around this new superpower and began manoeuvring other nations into a tight empire-like alliance with it. After a long and gruelling cold war, this empire succeeded in toppling the world’s only other superpower and began working to absorb all other nations into alliance with it. If nations resisted, they were subverted, sabotaged and attacked until they either collapsed or allowed themselves to be absorbed into the imperial blob.
World-spanning power structures are now centralized around this nation, which is home to the largest population of billionaires on the planet and the mightiest military force in the history of civilization. An unfathomable amount of power revolves around this nation, so mechanisms have been put in place to ensure the stability of its status quo. These mechanisms include the most sophisticated system of propaganda ever devised, an Orwellian network of domestic espionage, increasing internet censorship, and, above all, a highly militarized police force.
The operators of this globe-spanning empire have always been acutely aware that the weakest point in their machine is the possibility that the hundreds of millions of people who live in this nation may one day decide that the imperial status quo is not serving them, and that they do not want to be ruled anymore. They know that the last line of defence against this happening is their ability to use extreme violence upon the population until they stop revolting, so they have no intention of ever giving up this ability. An entire planetary empire depends on it.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...Wn_Myjyegw.png
Now, if you’d been hearing the bedtime story your whole life but not the waking up story, you would naturally assume that demanding an end to police brutality was the most reasonable thing in the world.
You would naturally expect that if a police officer was caught on video deliberately strangling a man to death and then was not immediately arrested and prosecuted for murder, people would be understandably outraged and drastic systemic changes would be swiftly implemented to appease their anger. You would naturally expect the shining city on the hill to side with the people over a police force’s murderous tendencies.
If you’ve heard the waking up story, you would expect no such thing.
You would understand that racial disparities never left the nation in question, and that the establishment which still keeps J Edgar Hoover’s name on the FBI building has no intention of doing anything about the police force’s role in it. You would understand that the role of the police is not to protect and serve the people but to protect and serve the empire, in the exact same way that this is the role of the military.
You would understand that the empire is no more likely to voluntarily dispense with the violent tactics of its increasingly militarized police force than it is to dispense with its air force or nuclear warheads.
They’ll supply all the empty words and take-a-knee photo ops you like, but actually voluntarily disarming themselves against their subjects is not something they’re planning on doing.
This does not mean that those demanding these changes are being silly or unreasonable; demanding that the police not murder you is the most sane and reasonable thing in the world, per what the police force purports to be and per what America purports to be. It’s just that neither the police force nor America are what they purport to be. The bedtime story and the waking up story could not possibly be more different.
That is what we are witnessing here. We are witnessing the head-on collision between the story America’s political, media and educational institutions tell Americans about what their country is, and the reality of what their country actually is. The disparity between the bedtime story and the waking up story has finally been stretched to a breaking point, and now the mask of free liberal democracy is coming off in front of everyone.
We are watching a population besieged by institutional racism, economic hardship and a pandemic virus finally pushed past the breaking point, and finding themselves crashing headlong into the most unyielding part of a planet-sprawling empire. The stories are slowly clearing from the air like tear gas, and the cold, hard reality is becoming exposed to a greater and greater segment of mainstream America.
And now the leader of this nation is openly threatening martial law and trying to designate black bloc protesters as “terrorists”. Video footage of police brutality is saturating social media faster than people can watch it, First Amendment violations are sweeping from coast to coast as police chiefs, mayors and governors try to see how far they down can squeeze freedom of assembly laws, and mysterious armed men in fatigues who refuse to say who they’re with are patrolling the nation’s capital.
Prison riot specialists are being recruited as expert consultants because, in the eyes of the empire, the prisoners are rioting.
We are all watching from around the world as the citizens of the hub of the empire confront their oppressors in an increasingly violent battle of wills. The violence rips apart the thin veneer of narrative that was keeping the bedtime story intact all this time. We all watch as the tattered ribbons slowly fall to the floor.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The empire is losing control of the narrative. In the long run, this can only be a good thing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and truth is always superior to fiction.
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
- Post #8,483
- Quote
- Edited 11:21pm Jun 3, 2020 10:46pm | Edited 11:21pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
There's a lot of confused traders out there.
That's the conclusion from reading some of the trader quotes in Bloomberg's article about how "The Things That Used to Matter to Stock Investors Don’t Anymore" and which, as the title suggests, explains that "neither rising earnings, nor economic growth, nor bargains matter" in the rally that has swept markets since March.
We find all of that surprising, because while Bloomberg is right and neither earnings, nor economics, nor valuation matter, what does matter is what Bill Dudley finally admitted to today, namely that the Fed is "basically creating a little bit of moral hazard" and since moral hazard is a binary condition - it is either there or it isn't - what happened is that as Scott Minerd said, the Fed "sent the world a buy signal" and the world responded as requested.
But don't take our word for it - look at what the companies themselves are doing. Having drastically slashed buybacks and takeovers to just $12 billion last month, the second-lowest level in the past decade, according to TrimTabs, corporations have unleashed a record stock selling spree, pushing the total to a record $94 billion.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%20actions.jpg
Cash-strapped, some would say insolvent, firms from airlines to cruise lines rushed to take advantage of the euphoria and sell shares to shore up their balance sheets. Companies including Warner Music Group and ZoomInfo Technologies launched IPOs, seeking to raise money and take advantage of a market multiple that’s expanded to a record high. As a result, equity sales in May more than tripled the 12-month average, according to TrimTabs.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...multiple_0.jpg
Yet this clearest sign of a top - after all who knows their own stock prospects better than the companies themselves and they are dumping to sell - has been completely ignored, as retail daytraders and systematic funds have continued to chase momentum in a market where according to Bloomberg calculations, $9 trillion was added to equity values in 10 weeks, with the Nasdaq 100 surging 38% since its March low and briefly eclipsed its all-time closing high on Wednesday.
Yet while it all makes sense if one just accepts that only the Fed matters, some traders still seek strands of logic and reason in a market that disconnected with underlying data a decade ago:
"All those things are telling you everything is not OK, and then you look at the S&P 500 - it keeps going up,” said Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer of First American Trust in Santa Ana, California. "The market doesn’t care about valuations. With the Fed continuing to step in, the right bet has been to bet with the Fed. The trends are your friends right now, just keep riding it higher and it’s almost a little bit like, stick your head in the sand."
Yes Jerry, that's right, just stick your head in the sand and buy: the Fed's got your back, so what can possibly go wrong?
Well, for one, the euphoria eventually dry up and companies may no longer be able to "distribute" their shares to gullible momentum chasers.
"The staggering volume of new offerings should be of concern to market participants,” said Winston Chua, an analyst with TrimTabs. “The more shares in the marketplace, the harder it is for existing shares to move higher, all else being equal.”
The risk, as we laid out two weeks ago in "Companies Call The Market Top With Most Stock Sales In Eight Years", is that sooner or later, investors will reverse their stance to join corporations in unloading stocks, as Goldman warned recently when it said that with buybacks fizzling, the market is vulnerable to shocks, unlike years past when companies helped keep equity losses from snowballing by launching massive buybacks at inflection points. To wit, the market’s bottom in February 2018 came in a week when Goldman Sachs’s corporate-trading desk saw the busiest buyback orders ever.
And while a top is certain, the question is when.
For now, it's just the opposite as investors appear to have run out of "safe" megacaps and are chasing increasingly riskier exposure, snapping up banks and small caps, companies seen benefiting most from an economic rebound (how ironic, considering that an economic rebound is the worst possible outcome for traders as it would mean an end to the Fed's massive stimulus). No surprise that Citigroup’s sentiment model, which tracks factors such as fund flows and options trading, is pointing to a state of euphoria among investors.
Why? The answer is simple: the Fed has created the biggest legalized casino in the world, and with everyone winning who would want to leave when the fun is just starting.
"The talks from Federal Reserve officials and other government officials that basically they’re willing to take whatever it takes to make sure the economy can get back on track gives investors the feeling that there is really no significant risk in stocks," said Michael Ball, managing director of Denver-based Weatherstone Capital Management. "Things like fundamentals and buybacks don’t matter until they matter, and people over-correct for that."
* * *
Yet while everyone is confused as to why the Fed can continue doing what it does (as Eric Peters said over the weekend, "Stocks Are Going Parabolic For All The Wrong Reasons: The Fed Made A Massive Mistake"), including professional investors, there do occasionally emerge nuggets of clear insight such as the following excerpt from Benjamin Bowler:
"Perception can become reality, as investors heavily trained since the GFC to not fight the trend, feel forced to chase. A risk then is succumbing to reflexivity - that is inferring fundamentals from prices and believing markets are correctly forecasting a rosy future, despite much needing to go right for that to be the case... Hence, the key in our view is appreciating the more likely drivers of markets here (a feedback loop fuelled by the perception of quant + promise of policy + the fear of missing out) rather than letting buoyant prices seed overconfidence that markets can truly shrug off the worst recession since the great depression (something not seen in 90yrs)."
- Post #8,484
- Quote
- Jun 4, 2020 12:04pm Jun 4, 2020 12:04pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
June 4, 2020
Communist China Throws Full Support Behind “Prairie Fire” Riots Destroying America They Call “Beautiful”
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A disturbing new Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) report circulating in the Kremlin today noting its 28 December 2019 dire warning that the socialist stronghold Commonwealth of Virginia was preparing to unleash “Red Guard Forces” that are similar to those deployed in China by communist leader Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966, who unleashed his angry and violent fist raising mass student-led paramilitary social movement called the “Red Guards” to kill up to 20-million Chinese peoples not bowing to socialist ideology—grimly reveals that Virginia socialist Democrat Party tyrant Governor Ralph Northam rejected a call by the White House to deploy National Guard forces to protect innocent lives—a rejection coming at the exact same time Richmond-Virginia Police Chief Chief William Smith broke down in tears on live television while describing how these “Red Guard Forces” set ablaze an apartment building with children inside, and then kept fire officials from being able to reach the scene and save them—a tragedy totally ignored by socialist leader former President Barack Obama, who yesterday used his time to hold a virtual roundtable where he said he's “encouraged by mass protests” and stated: “We have seen in the last several weeks, the last few months, the kinds of epic changes and events in our country that are as profound as anything I’ve seen in my lifetime”—which most remarkable about saw Obama quoting verbatim from the socialist war manual titled “Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism”—that’s called “the magnum opus written by Obama friend Bill Ayers”—and wherein it demands that ordinary American people be forced to bow down and pledge their allegiance to socialist revolutionaries—which is now happening as young white women are being stopped in the streets of America and ordered to kneel before these socialists and beg forgiveness for their “crimes”—as well as large crowds of white citizens being rounded up in America and forced to kneel in socialist servitude, too—acts of subservience to these socialist revolutionaries also being exhibited by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who knelt before these socialists then vowed to vowed to cripple the Los Angeles Police Department by taking $150-million of their budget and giving it to socialist revolutionary groups—all of which Communist China has just declared “Is A Beautiful Sight” and “Retribution” for a US political system they say is “declining at an accelerating rate”—and is why they’re suggesting they are going to support these riots tearing America apart. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg23.jpg
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg22.jpg
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg21.jpg
American people get front row seat to see what an actual socialist revolution looks like—and Communist China couldn’t be happier.
According to this report, predictably the radical anti-Trump leftist cable news outlet CNN raved about Obama’s quoting from the Prairie Fire socialist revolutionary handbook, calling his vile words ‘Confident, Hopeful and Strong”—but to be noted about, is a part of a leftist US mainstream media establishment whose glaring hypocrisy has now taken on breathtaking proportions—best exampled by leftist writer Amanda Mull, who just a month ago penned an apocalyptic editorial over Georgia’s phased reopening because too many people would be near each other—but is now taking issue with New York City curfews being implemented to curb pandemic riots torching businesses and terrorizing communities—with her exactly screaming “I’m sorry but 8 p.m. is an absolutely insane curfew for a city in which much of the population famously does not even eat dinner until like 9”—which aside from failing to notice that these New York City riots put more people close to each other than Georgia has citizens—overlooks the fact that every restaurant in New York City that’s not yet been burned downed and looted, are all still closed, no matter when someone wants to eat in them.
With shocking evidence growing indicating that an internal uprising is being orchestrated in the United States, while one former ANTIFA leader admits this terrorist groups acts “Are The Very Definition Of Domestic Terrorism”, this report continues, the leftist US mainstream media is now resorting to telling the American people outright lies—the latest example being they’re saying President Trump ordered protesters near the White House be shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed, none of which was true—and should be expected of a leftist media that lied about the Russia collusion hoax, about the Mueller probe, about impeachment, about the coronavirus—and now they’re lying about the riots, too—but whose biggest lie destroying America today is that US police forces are shooting unarmed black people at will—though the facts prove that in 2019 alone, just 10 unarmed black people were killed by US police forces—8 of which were ruled justified, and 2 of which saw the police officers being criminally charged.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg24.jpg
Though the death of any unarmed black person killed by US police forces is a tragedy, this report concludes, the hysterical fear mongering of one by the leftist US mainstream media and socialist Democrat Party leaders to incite riots causing billions-of-dollars worth of damage, along with needless other deaths, mass carnage and human suffering needs serious and sane examination—an examination that would show that US police kill twice as many white people as black people in a given year—deaths that include unarmed 19-year-old white teenager Samantha Ramsey, who police shot 4-times because they thought she might run over them—a young white man white man named Daniel Shaver, who was gunned down by US police while on his knees in the hallway of a hotel, crying and begging for his life, and it’s all on video—a young white man named Tony Timpa, whom US police suffocated to death during an arrest while these murdering police officers laughed and cracked jokes as he lay dead on the pavement—just a few of the countess number of unarmed white people murdered by US police officers every year in numbers greater than those black peoples have ever experienced—and most critically to note about, are all actual murders the US police officers committing them were never criminally charged for—thus making it logical to conclude that if anyone in America has the right to riot and destroy their nation because police are murdering them, it’s their white citizens---a true fact it’s now supposedly “racist” to point out, and the leftist US mainstream media ignores—thus explaining why the United States is in the predicament it’s now in—as those who don’t face and acknowledge truth can never solve anything.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg25.gif
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg29.jpg
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/rgg28.jpeg
June 4, 2020 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Global Battlefields Littered With Coronavirus Dead—But Who’s Winning War?
All That's Left Now Is War—What Kind And How Long Are The Questions To Ask
Return To Main Page
- Post #8,485
- Quote
- Jun 4, 2020 12:46pm Jun 4, 2020 12:46pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
May Employment Preview
by Calculated Risk on 6/04/2020 11:21:00 AM
On Friday at 8:30 AM ET, the BLS will release the employment report for May. The consensus is for a decrease of 8,250,000 non-farm payroll jobs, and for the unemployment rate to increase to 19.7%.
Last month, the BLS reported 20,500,000 jobs lost in April and the unemployment rate increased to 14.7%.
The job losses in April were the worst on record (series started in 1939), and the losses in March were the ninth worst on record. The previous worst jobs report was after WWII.
The job losses in May will be the 2nd worst on record, but there is a wide range of estimates.
Worst Monthly Job Losses Since 1939
RankDateJobs Lost (000s)
1Apr-2020-20,500
2Sep-1945-1,959
3Oct-1949-838
4Mar-2009-800
5Jan-2009-784
6Feb-2009-743
7Nov-2008-727
8Dec-2008-706
9Mar-2020-701
10Apr-2009-695
Merrill Lynch economists wrote: "We expect -8mn in May nonfarm payrolls and the unemployment rate to jump to 19% from 14.7%. "
However, the ADP report only showed 2.76 million private sector jobs lost in May.
The usual indicators are somewhat useless again this month. They are signaling significant jobs losses, but we've never seen anything remotely close to the job losses that happened in April and May.
For example, the ISM manufacturing employment index increased in May to 32.1% from 27.5% in April (both readings are very low). And the ISM non-manufacturing employment index increased in May to 31.8% from a record low 31.0% in April. Combined, these surveys suggests significant job losses, but fewer than in April.
• Conclusion: The number of jobs lost in May will be huge, and this will be the 2nd worst jobs report on record. But the number of jobs lost could be anywhere from a few million to 8 or 9 million. My guess is the number of jobs lost will be lower than the consensus.
- Post #8,486
- Quote
- Jun 4, 2020 12:54pm Jun 4, 2020 12:54pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
- Post #8,487
- Quote
- Jun 4, 2020 2:55pm Jun 4, 2020 2:55pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
- Post #8,488
- Quote
- Jun 4, 2020 4:08pm Jun 4, 2020 4:08pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
With three in four finance professionals convinced that Fed is behind the current rally thanks to an unprecedented firehose of liquidity which is anywhere between $8 and $12 trillion based on asset purchases, backstops, and guarantees, there is no denying that what we are experiencing now is a continuation of the bubble spawned by Bernanke in 2008, nursed by Yellen and now desperately defended by the same Powell who back on October 23, 2012 said "I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking... investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses."
So how does one quantify or visualize just how big the "Powell Bubble" is? While there are many ways to represent the bubble spawned by the Fed across all asset classes which have become the receptacle of the Fed's unlimited liquidity torrent, but a fascinating one was proposed today by Bloomberg's Eddie van der Walt who writes that "raw material and equity prices have become severely disconnected" adding that "a correction will probably entail both lower stocks and higher commodity prices."
As the Bloomberg commodity analyst notes, the Nasdaq is trading at a 152x multiple of the Bloomberg Commodity Index, surpassing the highs seen during the Dot Com bubble by almost a factor of two!
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ommodities.jpg
In other words, the bulk of newly created liquidity has flooded into stocks even as commodities - which tend to be a far better representation of the overall economic state - languish. The average ratio since the end of 2001 has been nearer 37. That divergence stems from the Nasdaq approaching record highs set earlier this year while commodities languish near pandemic-crisis lows.
As van der Walt concludes, "And while the tech-heavy shares in the Nasdaq aren’t big consumers of industrial metals and oil, this matters because it shows just how disconnected stock prices have become from the real economy. Something has got to give."
He's absolutely right, but that "something" won't give without an existential fight from the Fed's Powell: while we excerpted from his comments above, below is all one needs to know courtesy of the Oct 2012 FOMC Minutes, in which Powell explained precisely what is going on:
The market in most cases will cheer us for doing more. It will never be enough for the market. Our models will always tell us that we are helping the economy, and I will probably always feel that those benefits are overestimated. And we will be able to tell ourselves that market function is not impaired and that inflation expectations are under control. What is to stop us, other than much faster economic growth, which it is probably not in our power to produce?
I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause. Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so.
Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.
Incidentally, for those who want to fight the Fed, well there's your pair trade: short the Nasdaq and go long the Bloomberg commodity index.
- Post #8,489
- Quote
- Jun 4, 2020 4:15pm Jun 4, 2020 4:15pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
When Institutions Fail, Fragmentation and Decentralization Become Solutions
June 4, 2020
That which has failed is unsustainable, no matter how many trillions the Federal Reserve tosses against the tides of history.
The chapter titles of Michael Grant's excellent account of The Fall of the Roman Empire identify the core dynamics of decline:
The Gulfs Between the Classes
The Credibility Gap
The Partnerships That Failed
The Groups That Opted Out
The Undermining of Effort
Every one of these is a manifestation of institutional failure. The Gulfs Between the Classes (see chart of soaring inequality below) manifests a completely broken economic and social order, and the abject failure of core institutions (for example, the source of wealth inequality, the Federal Reserve).
The Gulfs Between the Classes also reflects our pay-to-play political system, in which wealth buys political power and everyone else gets to watch a pantomime of democracy.
The Credibility Gap is as wide as the Grand Canyon, as unaccountable insiders comfortably secure in institutions do what serves their interests, which can be summarized as: Truth Is What We Hide, Cover Stories Are What We Sell.
Government agencies widen The Credibility Gap with bogus, rigged statistics and complexity thickets ("We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.") designed to make accountability and transparency effectively impossible.
The Partnerships That Failed include the alliances of various warring elites and the pantomime partnerships of elites and constituencies ("We pretend to obey and you pretend to listen to us.")
The Groups That Opted Out are as yet largely invisible because all the small business owners who closed down and stopped being Tax Donkeys are under the radar, and all the debt-serfs who have renounced their debts are carefully hidden by the appropriate bureaucracies, lest the enormity of the debt-serf opt-outs becomes visible.
The Groups That Opted Out include those who have lost trust in the corporate media, the government's statistical claims and the leadership of failing institutions.
The Undermining of Effort manifests as the impossibility of reforming the institutions that have lost their legitimacy due to self-serving looting, incompetence and the disavowal of accountability, a topic I addressed in my books Why Things Are Falling Apart and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform.
When institutions have lost public trust and thus their legitimacy, the solution is fragmentation and decentralization so the unit size is reduced to the point where accountability and transparency can be enforced by the citizenry and/or members.
Management author Peter Drucker (Post-Capitalist Society) noted that in the transition to a post-capital economy, legacy institutions in everything from higher education to healthcare are the wrong unit size, meaning that they are too large to be effective, accountable and transparent, as their sheer mass encourages processes and thickets insiders can use to avoid accountability and transparency.
When fiat currencies fail, fragmentation and competition between transparently priced currencies will be the solution. The ideal solution is a spectrum of currencies ranging from bitcoin and other mined cryptocurrencies to privately issued gold-backed currencies, state-issued gold-backed currencies, local currencies intended for use in local economies, and my proposed labor-backed currency which I outlined in my book A Radically Beneficial World.
Politically, city-states on the model of the Hanseatic League may prove to be the appropriate unit size, a topic Mark, Jesse and I discuss in our latest podcast AxisOfEasy Salon #6: The Hanseatic League of Decentralized Crypto-States (55:44).
That which has failed is unsustainable, no matter how many trillions the Federal Reserve tosses against the tides of history. The current travesty of a mockery of a sham system will fragment no matter how desperate the looters, parasites and predators are to maintain their swag.
https://www.oftwominds.com/photos201...y-NYT8-17a.png
https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2017/rome-fire.jpg
Recent Podcasts:
Meeting the Challenges of the "New Normal" World -- FRA podcast (44:21)
AxisOfEasy Salon #6: The Hanseatic League of Decentralized Crypto-States (55:44)
The Pandemic Has Revealed The Structural Fragilities Of America -- X22 Spotlight (31:55)
My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts
When Institutions Fail, Fragmentation and Decentralization Become Solutions June 4, 2020
The Post-Covid Economy Will Be Very Different From the Pre-Pandemic Bubble Economy June 3, 2020
Truth Is What We Hide, Cover Stories Are What We Sell June 2, 2020
We're Living the Founding Fathers' Nightmare: America Is Corrupt to the Core June 1, 2020
This Is How Systems Collapse May 30, 2020
First the Deflationary Deluge of Assets Crashing, Then the Tsunami of Inflation May 29, 2020
Social Media's Plantation of the Mind May 28, 2020
Re-Opening the Economy Won't Fix What's Broken May 27, 2020
An Economy That Cannot Allow Stocks to Decline Is Too Fragile To Survive May 26, 2020
TINA's Orgy: Anything Goes, Winners Take All May 25, 2020
January 2020 entries February 2020 entries March 2020 entries April 2020 entries May 2020 entries
Archives 2005-2019
https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2016/BV468-60-1.gif
- Post #8,490
- Quote
- Edited Jun 5, 2020 8:21am Jun 4, 2020 10:25pm | Edited Jun 5, 2020 8:21am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
With retail investors taking over the extremely illiquid market, resulting in crazy intraday swings where the horde of robinhood retail traders alone can send a stock soaring (and tumbling)...
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ges/GNUS_0.jpg
... many veteran investors are throwing in the towel on what is emerging as the most furiously ridiculous rally in history in what is now better known as "Jay's market" (with 73% of Wall Street claiming that the market is only up due to the artificial gimmick of the Fed's balance sheet explosion and not due to fundamental factors). And with one after another investing legend such as Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller, David Tepper boycotting the artificial rally, and either selling or pulling out, today GMO's Jeremy Grantham became the latest to bail on what Bank of America recently called a "fake market."
In a letter to GMO investors, Grantham writes that "we have never lived in a period where the future was so uncertain" and yet "the market is 10% below its previous high in January when, superficially at least, everything seemed fine in economics and finance. And if not “fine,” well, good enough. The future paths include many that could change corporate profitability, growth, and many aspects of capitalism, society, and the global political scene."
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...teaser%202.jpg
Jeremy Grantham.
In short, the veteran value investor known for calling several of the biggest market turns of recent decades admits he has lost his faith in an upside case - unlike the retail daytrading army - and his sense of direction in a world of record uncertainty "which in some ways seems the highest in my experience" and as a result "in terms of risk and return – particularly of the worst possible outcomes compared to the best – the current market seems lost in one-sided optimism when prudence and patience seem much more appropriate."
Grantham also highlights the obvious: that the market and the economy have never been more disconnected, and points out that while "the current P/E on the U.S. market is in the top 10% of its history... the U.S. economy in contrast is in its worst 10%, perhaps even the worst 1%.... This is apparently one of the most impressive mismatches in history."
As a result of this total loss of coherence driven by trillions in central bank liquidity that have propelled a massive wedge between fundamentals and stock prices, GMO, the Boston fund manager Mr Grantham co-founded in 1977, cut its net exposure to global equities in its biggest fund from 55% to just 25%, near the lowest levels it reported during the global financial crisis, according to a separate update from GMO's head of asset allocation, Ben Inker.
That decision, according to the FT, slashed GMO's Benchmark-Free Allocation Fund exposure to US equities from a net 3-4% to a net short position worth about 5% of the $7.5bn portfolio, said Inker, perhaps the first time the fund has turned net short US stocks since the crisis. This, after GMO loaded up on stocks during the sell-off but has since cut offloaded its exposure to the US market following the unprecedented 40% rally in the past 2 months.
"The Covid-19 pandemic “should have generated enhanced respect for risk and it hasn’t. It has caused quite the reverse,” Grantham told the Financial Times. He noted that trailing price-earnings multiples in the US stock market were “in the top 10 per cent of its history” while the US economy “is in its worst 10 per cent, perhaps even the worst 1 per cent”, echoing what he said in his quarterly letter.
And while markets seem to be taking all the negative news in stride, Grantham is worried that the wave of devastation that is coming is unlike anything experienced before:
At GMO we dealt with three major events prior to this crisis, and rightly or wrongly, we felt “nearly certain” that sooner or later we would be right. We exited Japan 100% in 1987 at 45x and watched it go to 65x (for a second, bigger than the U.S.) before a downward readjustment of 30 years and counting.
In early 1998 we fought the Tech bubble from 21x (equal to the previous record high in 1929) to 35x before a 50% decline, losing many clients and then regaining even more on the round trip.
In 2007 we led our clients relatively painlessly through the housing bust. In all three we felt we were nearly certain to be right. Japan, the Tech bubbles, and 1929, which sadly I missed, were not new types of events. They were merely extreme cases akin to South Sea Bubble investor euphoria and madness. The 2008 event also was easier if you focused on the U.S. housing euphoria, which was a 3-sigma, 100-year event or, simply, unique. We calculated that a return trip to the old price trend and a typical overrun in those extreme house prices would remove $10 trillion of perceived wealth from U.S. consumers and guarantee the worst recession for decades.All these events echoed historical precedents. And from these precedents we drew confidence.
But this event is unlike all those. It is totally new and there can be no near certainties, merely strong possibilities. This is why Ben Inker, our Head of Asset Allocation, is nervous and this is why you are nervous, or should be.
While the uncertainties are indeed large, one can triangulate a sufficiently material dose of "certainty" about what is coming, and as Grantham explains further, it is not pretty, especially with the US economy already on the back foot heading into the crisis:
We had U.S. and global problems looming before the virus: an increasingly disturbed climate causing global floods, droughts, and farming problems; slowing population growth, in the developed world, soon to be negative; and steadily slowing productivity gains, especially in the developed world, and therefore a slowing GDP trend. In the U.S., our 3%+ a year trend is down to, at best, 1.5% in my opinion. It is closer to a 1% maximum in Europe. We had, as mentioned, top 10% historical P/Es in the U.S. and much the highest debt level ever in the U.S. for both corporations and peacetime government. So, after a 10-year economic recovery, this would have been a perfectly normal time historically for a setback.
And then the virus hit.
Simultaneously, it is causing supply and demand shocks unlike anything before. Ever. It is generating a much faster economic contraction than that of the Great Depression. And unlike 1989 Japan, 2000 Tech (U.S.), and 2008 (U.S. and Europe), it is truly global. The drop in GDP and rise in unemployment in four weeks have equaled what took one to four years to reach in the Great Depression and were never reached in the other events.
Rogoff & Reinhart, Harvard Professors who wrote the definitive analysis of the 2008 bust, agree that this event is indeed completely different and suggest it will take at least 5 years to regain 2019 levels of activity. But this is a guess. We really don’t know how long it will take. Nearly certain is that a V-shaped recovery looks like a lost hope. The best possible outcome would be that there will be, almost miraculously, billions of doses of effective vaccine by year-end. But most viruses have never had a useful vaccine and most useful vaccines have taken well over five years to develop and when developed have been only partially successful.
Yes, this time there will be an enormous effort with unprecedented spending. But still, a leading vaccine expert says quick success would be like “drawing successfully to several inside straights in a row.” And even if all works out well with a vaccine there will remain deep economic wounds.
Meanwhile, as the world waits for a vaccine, and buys stocks confident one is imminent, the "bankruptcies have already started (Hertz on May 22nd) and by year-end thousands of them will arrive into a peak of already existing corporate debt. It will need spectacular management, which it may get. But it may not. Throwing money – paper and electronic impulses – at the problem can help psychology and, particularly, the stock market, where extra stimulus money can end up but does not necessarily put people back to work; there will be up to 20% unemployment for at least a moment."
In response to this historic economic collapse, central banks' unprecedented stimulus efforts have "temporarily overwhelmed" underlying economic realities but "it’s hard to believe that will continue."
And when it stops, watch out below: Grantham told the FT in an interview that after seeing markets price in “total recovery” over recent weeks, "my confidence that this will end badly is increasing."
Speaking as protests against police brutality and racism filled the streets of US cities, Grantham said previous outbreaks of social instability had had few lasting effects on the US economy, but "there are more things going wrong than normal".
However, the value investing legend's most dire prediction was that "if you look back in two to three years and this market turns around and drops 50%, the history books will say ‘That looked like one of the great warnings of all time. It was pretty obvious it was destined to end badly," Grantham said, adding: "If it does end badly the history books are going to be very unkind to the bulls." For the sake of an entire generation of Robinhooders who will lose everything if there is a 50% crash, one hopes Grantham is wrong.
Finally, Grantham also chimed in on the "most important question in finance right now", revealing that he was proud of not having "made a fuss about inflation" in 20 years of writing his widely followed letters, but said that record amounts of monetary easing from central banks had now created the possibility of inflationary pressures.
"With a generous stimulus program in many countries you can just about daydream about inflation for the first time in 30 years."
To this, all we can add is that in the very near future that daydream will become a nightmare.
- Post #8,491
- Quote
- Jun 5, 2020 10:44am Jun 5, 2020 10:44am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
Comments on May Employment Report
by Calculated Risk on 6/05/2020 10:27:00 AM
The May employment report was surprising. Every key indicator - ISM surveys, ADP employment report, unemployment claims and more - suggested further job losses in May. Instead the BLS reported job gains of 2.5 million (about 10 million better than consensus forecasts), and the unemployment rate decreased to 13.3%.
The reference week in May (includes the 12th) was too soon to be impacted by most areas "reopening". One possibility is that many companies brought back employees to qualify for the PPP (Payroll Protection Plan).
Earlier: May Employment Report: 2,500,000 Jobs Added, 13.3% Unemployment Rate
In April, the year-over-year employment change was minus 17.7 million jobs.
One of the keys to follow will be the number of workers on temporary layoff. This increased from 801 thousand in February, to 1.848 million in March, and to 18.063 million in April. This decreased by 2.7 million in May to 15.343 million. It could be that companies let too many workers go in April and brought some back - or this might be related to PPP adjustments.
Prime (25 to 54 Years Old) Participation
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CCKAbmH1T...554May2020.PNG
Click on graph for larger image.
Since the overall participation rate has declined due to cyclical (recession) and demographic (aging population, younger people staying in school) reasons, here is the employment-population ratio for the key working age group: 25 to 54 years old.
The prime working age will be key in the eventual recovery.
The 25 to 54 participation rate increased in May to 80.7%, and the 25 to 54 employment population ratio increased to 71.4%.
Part Time for Economic Reasons
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MnvgxrShc...imeMay2020.PNG
From the BLS report:
"The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 10.6 million, changed little in May, but is up by 6.3 million since February. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. This group includes persons who usually work full time and persons who usually work part time."
The number of persons working part time for economic reasons decreased in May to 10.633 million from 10.887 million in April.
These workers are included in the alternate measure of labor underutilization (U-6) that decreased to 21.2% in May. This is down slightly from the record high last month for this measure (since 1994). The previous peak was 17.2% during the Great Recession.
Unemployed over 26 Weeks
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QimTQxrGB...y26May2020.PNG
This graph shows the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more.
According to the BLS, there are 1.164 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job. This will increase sharply in 4 or 5 months, and will be a key measure to follow during the eventual recovery.
Summary:
The headline monthly jobs number was surprising, and well above expectations. However, the previous two months were revised down significantly. The headline unemployment rate decreased to 13.3% (probably closer to 16% according to the BLS).
Since the reference week included the 12th of May, this was too soon to be impacted by "reopenings" in most areas. That will be more of a June story.
Instead this increase in employment was likely due to companies rehiring because they let too many people go in April, and because some companies needed to rehire to qualify for PPP forgiveness.
As a reminder, the course of the economy will be determined by the course of the pandemic.
- Post #8,492
- Quote
- Jun 5, 2020 10:53am Jun 5, 2020 10:53am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
As people dig deeper in the entrails of the most bizarre - and most politicized - jobs report in history, they keep finding more and more irregularities.
Consider this: according to the BLS report, which was based on a survey week from May 10th through May 16th when virtually all of the US was still shut down, the government decided that a record number of new businesses were formed. According to the BLS's Birth/Death model which is used to adjust the raw payrolls data for estimated new business openings and closures, a record 345K new jobs were created due to new businesses opening in a month when - we will repeat again - the US was largely shut down!
This also means that over 60% of the business closures from the month of April (April Birth/Death -553K) were somehow undone in a month when the US was still mostly closed down.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...may%202020.jpg
Needless to say, this was entirely a statistical adjustment in the "eye of the beholder", one which even the BLS felt ashamed of, because in a little noticed addendum to the jobs report, the BLS announced it had made "changes" to its net birth-death model due to the coronavirus pandemic, changes which apparently included the modeling of massive business reopenings when millions of small businesses were shutting down. From the BLS:
These two methodological changes are the following:
- A portion of both reported zeros and returns from zero in the current month from the sample were used in estimation to better account for the fact that business births and deaths will not offset.
- Current sample growth rates were included in the net birth-death forecasting model to better account for the changing relationships between business openings and closings.
Firstly, BLS included a proportion of reports that fell to zero employment and reports that returned from zero employment in the current month in the over-the-month change of the sample-based estimates. Typically, reports with zero employment in either the previous or current month are not included in estimation. To account for an excess amount of reports going to zero employment as well as reports returning from zero employment, CES calculated the probabilities that either a reported zero or a return from zero exceeded what would be expected for the month. These "excess zeroes" and "excess returns from zero" partially account for drops in employment (when more business deaths than are usually observed in historical population data occur) and for increases in employment (when there are more business births than normal). More specifically, and due to time limitations for implementation, "excess zeroes" were used in our March final, April first and second preliminary, and May first preliminary estimates; "excess returns from zero" were used in our March final, April second preliminary, and May first preliminary estimates.
\
Secondly, BLS adjusted the portion of business births and deaths that cannot be accounted for using our sample data by including more recent information. Net birth-death forecasts are normally modeled using an auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) based on 5 years of historical birth-death residual values that end 9 months before the forecast of the current month. Instead of using only historical data—data that would not accurately account for how the labor market has changed due to COVID-19—a regression variable that includes data up to the current month was included in the model. The regression variable is the CES sample-based ratio of over-the-month change, known as the sample link, for each of the major industry sectors. Each major industry sector sample link was used for the basic-level industries only within that sector. Using additional regression variables in the net birth-death forecasts accounted for 345,000 in employment for May at the total private level .
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...h%20deatrh.jpg
The punchline from the above: "Using additional regression variables in the net birth-death forecasts accounted for 345,000 in employment for May at the total private level." In short instead of another 553K drop in jobs due to massive shutterings as was the case in April, the BLS decided to "add" 375K jobs because, well... it felt like it. And that is how you get an almost 1 million swing in monthly payrolls based on nothing more than a statistical revision.
But wait, there's more.
According to the American Dental Association, there are just over 200,000 dentists in the US. So how surprising it must be that at a time (as a reminder the survey week was from May 10th through May 16th) when most dental offices across the US were still shuttered (and in places like California they still are), a record 245K dentist office jobs were added, effectively undoing half of all the April job losses in this job category.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ice%20jobs.jpg
Finally there was this, from the report:
... there was also a large number of workers who were classified as employed but absent from work. As was the case in March and April, household survey interviewers were instructed to classify employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-related business closures as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all such workers were so classified. BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address the issue.
If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons" (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis).
How can one explain any of this? The only possible explanation is that after decades of China stealing US technology, the BLS finally reverse-engineered China's own economic model spreadsheet where any "data" can be goal seeked to be exactly what one wants it to be.
- Post #8,493
- Quote
- Jun 5, 2020 12:18pm Jun 5, 2020 12:18pm
- | Joined Mar 2020 | Status: Member | 96 Posts
- Post #8,494
- Quote
- Edited 1:33pm Jun 5, 2020 1:20pm | Edited 1:33pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
DislikedJust face the facts. The V shape recovery is REAL , businesses are opening up, the economy is starting to roll. Stop with the negativity and conspiracies. You’re losing money shorting, good luck.Ignored
June 5, 2020
President Trump Now Protected By Powerful US Army Force Capable Of Leveling Washington D.C.
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
An astonishing new Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today noting a McClatchy News Service article from 4 June claiming: “The nation’s capital is bracing for the largest protest yet on Saturday since the death of George Floyd, expanding a massive fenced perimeter around the White House, even as the Pentagon sent home hundreds of active duty troops positioned outside the city”, says the blatant lies told in this article about Pentagon troop movements in the Washington D.C. region strongly suggest military censorship activities have now been put into place in the United States—an assessment based on the fact that when President Donald Trump walked from the White House to the historic St. John’s Church during the early evening of Monday 1 June, photographed walking behind him were two supposed Secret Service agent snipers, one of whom was carrying a unique US Army desert camouflaged sniper rifle based on Accuracy International's bolt-action AX chassis system—which was immediately followed by US news reports saying: “Completely unmarked officers in riot gear holding protesters blocks away from the White House. No badges. No insignias. No name tags. Nothing. Refused to tell us who they’re with”—the identification of whom, though, MoD intelligence analysts quickly identified as them all belonging to the Intelligence Production Section (IPS) and Military Intelligence Company (MI) of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment—a US Army military regiment known as the “Tennessee Cavalry”, which is the only armored cavalry regiment in the Army National Guard and headquartered in Knoxville-Tennessee—whose only other counterpart in the US Army is the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment garrisoned at Fort Irwin-California—and most important to know about is a “Tennessee Cavalry” armored regiment comprised of up to 2,000 combat forces, though with logistical support from other US Army units (medical, transportation, food service, etc.) its numbers can rapidly rise to over 10,000—whose combat capability designated by the MoD is rated as “City Levelers” due to them being able to quickly surround and pound into submission the enemy forces they’re deployed against with their fast moving and overwhelming heavy armored tank, combat vehicles and artillery firepower expertise—and though not having any training in civilian crowd control, nevertheless saw President Trump activating them to full combat status on the afternoon of Monday 1 June and ordering them to immediately deploy to Washington D.C. for reasons still unknown. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng25.jpg
On 1 June 2020, President Donald Trump (above) makes defiant walk from White House to historic St. John’s Church that was attacked the night before by socialist revolutionaries…
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng24.jpg
…followed by supposed Secret Service snipers, one of whom was carrying a desert camouflaged US Army sniper rifle (above, red arrow pointing at)…
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng23.jpg
…that was followed by unmarked military forces (above) surrounding the White House…
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng21.jpg
…whom Russian military experts identified as being elite intelligence and scout soliders belonging to the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment (stock photo above)…
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng22.jpg
…otherwise known as the Tennessee Cavalry (unit patch above) that President Trump ordered deployed to Washington D.C. just prior to his making his defiant walk.
According to this report, based on the widely used “Threat Matrix” database system developed by Pakistani government and military scientists to evaluate perceived external and internal threats, critical information inputs to assess the current conflict environment status currently existing in the United States now include President Trump having yesterday posted a letter written by his former White House attorney John Dowd “directly calling protesters terrorists”—that was followed by United States Attorney General William Barr holding a press conference where he stated “We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity”, who then ominously elevated this threat by adding the words: “We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence”—an elevation of this crisis to that of one taking on international national security war time dimensions, whose immediate preceding events include:
On 29 May 2020—around 7:00 pm local Washington D.C. time—President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and their son Barron were rushed to a secure bunker after protesters breached barricades near the White House.
On 31 May 2020- the US Justice Department began deploying members of the US Marshals Service and agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration to supplement National Guard troops outside the White House.
On 1 June 2020—around 3:30 pm local Washington D.C. time—the 82nd Airborne Division Immediate Reaction Force leaves Ft. Bragg-North Carolina for Washington D.C.
On 1 June 2020—around 4:00 pm local Washington D.C. time—President Trump ordered the immediate deployment to Washington D.C. of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment.
On 1 June 2020—around 5:30 pm local Washington D.C. time—President Trump makes defiant walk from White House to historic St. John’s Church attacked the previous night
by socialist revolutionaries.
On 1 June 2020—around 11:00 pm local Washington D.C. time—US military helicopters begin low-level flights over Washington D.C.
On 2 June 2020—early morning hours before dawn local Washington D.C. time—a US Air Force C-17 cargo warplane from Fort Bragg-North Carolina lands at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington D.C.
On 2 June 2020—early morning hours before dawn local Washington D.C. time—five more US Air Force C-17 cargo warplanes from Fort Bragg-North Carolina and McGuire Air Base-New Jersey are inbound to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington D.C.
On 2 June 2020—early morning house before dawn local Washington D.C. time—multiple US Air Force C-130J and C-17A cargo warplanes from Fort Riley-Kansas, Fort Drum-New York and Fort Bragg-North Carolina begin arriving at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington D.C.
On 2 June 2020—early morning hours after dawn local Washington D.C. time—Nuclear Detection Helicopter designed to map radiation levels after an accident, disaster, or dirty bomb attack begins flying missions over Washington D.C.
On 2 June 2020—throughout the day—other assets involved in overwatch missions over Washington D.C., to include US Customs and Border Protection Dash-8 turboprops, which are heavily modified with advanced sensors, begin flying missions out of Reagan National Airport—with a Cessna Citation registered to the National Aircraft Leasing Corporation, but linked to the FBI, also begins orbiting over the D.C. area—with other fixed-wing aircraft seen flying high overhead, as well, some of which did not have their transponders on.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng26.jpg
Not being aware of these grave preparations being made for war, this report notes, are the American people—none of whom know the significance of the Executive Order signed by President Trump just days before this crisis accelerated, on 28 May 2020, titled “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship”—the most significant part of which stated:
At the same time online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans’ speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China.
One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for “human rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance.
It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military.
Other companies have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities, thereby enabling these abuses of human rights.
They have also amplified China’s propaganda abroad, including by allowing Chinese government officials to use their platforms to spread misinformation regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng27.png
For one to grasp the full significance of this Executive Order, this report explains, they should known that “online platforms” include every mainstream media outlet in the United States, not just those run by social media tech giants—and by asserting that they “are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments”, specifically to “provide direct benefits to the Chinese military”—and when joined by Attorney General Barr now asserting that “We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence”—places this extraordinary action made by President Trump firmly within the confines of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual—an over 1,200-page legal document that says “journalists may not directly participate in hostilities without also losing civilian status”—states: “A person may only be considered a spy when, (1) acting clandestinely or under false pretenses, (2) in the zone of operations of a belligerent, (3) he or she obtains, or endeavors to obtain, information, (4) with the intention of communicating it to the hostile party”—and strictly forbids under penalty of treason anyone from “providing or relaying information of immediate use in combat operations”.
With “combat operations” currently underway in the United States itself, this report details, any American journalist deciding to “participate in hostilities” by reporting on US military troop movements and/or actions risks “losing civilian status”—and who would further be considered as spies whose treasonous crime would be “communicating it to the hostile party”—most particularly because “the zone of operations of a belligerent” is in America itself, where socialist revolutionaries are attempting to overthrow the government—with the truth and reality of this being known to many top former US military leaders, who are now crying out alarms of what they know is about to happen, though being very circumspect in what they say, lest they be branded as traitors, too—and whom include:
Former Obama-Clinton Regime top military official Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullins—who in his just published screed titled “I Cannot Remain Silent” says: “Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so”.
Former Defense Secretary of President Trump, and top Obama Clinton Regime endless war military leader General James Mattis openly denouncing Trump and describing him as a threat to the constitution.
Former White House chief of staff for President Trump, and another top Obama Clinton Regime endless war military leader, General John Kelly calling Trump “nasty” and “confused”.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng28.png
To fully evaluate the worthiness of the attacks being made on President Trump by Obama-Clinton Regime endless war leaders Admiral Mullins, General Mattis and General Kelly, this report concludes, all one needs to know is that all three of them willingly took their marching orders to wage war on the world’s Muslim peoples from top Obama-Clinton Regime Department of Defense intelligence official Salmah Rizvi—the same Salmah Rizvi that this week posted the $250,000 bail for her “best friend” Urooj Rahman, who was arrested for throwing a lit Molotov cocktail through the window of a New York City police vehicle—with further evidence presented by prosecutors including images of Rahman holding a Molotov cocktail in the passenger seat of a van that was later found to be full of the necessary materials for making the explosive devices—making it no wonder why top Republican Party US Senator Tom Cotton exploded in righteous anger against all of these socialist elites in an article he wrote for the New York Times titled “Send In the Troops” begging President Trump to use the military to restore order in America—and also makes it no wonder why the New York Times, after publishing this article, then caved in and bowed down to these elite socialists while crying “it did not meet our standards”—but are “standards” no one in the world knows, because the only places in America needing to be saved from chaos and rioting are the Democrat Party stronghold States and cities these socialists have ruled over for decades—where when one really notices the thousands of protestors marching through them, none of them are carrying protest signs saying anything bad about President Trump—which makes perfect sense when noticing a few hours ago that Trump’s amazing economy, that refuses to die, just posted the largest jobs gain ever seen in American history.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng29.jpg
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng30.jpg
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tng31.jpg
June 5, 2020 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Global Battlefields Littered With Coronavirus Dead—But Who’s Winning War?
All That's Left Now Is War—What Kind And How Long Are The Questions To Ask
Return To Main Page
- Post #8,495
- Quote
- Jun 5, 2020 1:34pm Jun 5, 2020 1:34pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
DislikedJust face the facts. The V shape recovery is REAL , businesses are opening up, the economy is starting to roll. Stop with the negativity and conspiracies. You’re losing money shorting, good luck.Ignored
PLEASE READ IF YOU ARE ABLE TO READ AND UNDERSTAND !!!
FACTS JUST THE FACTS !!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/it...ops+to+zero%29
With retail investors taking over the extremely illiquid market, resulting in crazy intraday swings where the horde of robinhood retail traders alone can send a stock soaring (and tumbling)...
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ges/GNUS_0.jpg
... many veteran investors are throwing in the towel on what is emerging as the most furiously ridiculous rally in history in what is now better known as "Jay's market" (with 73% of Wall Street claiming that the market is only up due to the artificial gimmick of the Fed's balance sheet explosion and not due to fundamental factors). And with one after another investing legend such as Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller, David Tepper boycotting the artificial rally, and either selling or pulling out, today GMO's Jeremy Grantham became the latest to bail on what Bank of America recently called a "fake market."
In a letter to GMO investors, Grantham writes that "we have never lived in a period where the future was so uncertain" and yet "the market is 10% below its previous high in January when, superficially at least, everything seemed fine in economics and finance. And if not “fine,” well, good enough. The future paths include many that could change corporate profitability, growth, and many aspects of capitalism, society, and the global political scene."
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...teaser%202.jpg
Jeremy Grantham.
In short, the veteran value investor known for calling several of the biggest market turns of recent decades admits he has lost his faith in an upside case - unlike the retail daytrading army - and his sense of direction in a world of record uncertainty "which in some ways seems the highest in my experience" and as a result "in terms of risk and return – particularly of the worst possible outcomes compared to the best – the current market seems lost in one-sided optimism when prudence and patience seem much more appropriate."
Grantham also highlights the obvious: that the market and the economy have never been more disconnected, and points out that while "the current P/E on the U.S. market is in the top 10% of its history... the U.S. economy in contrast is in its worst 10%, perhaps even the worst 1%.... This is apparently one of the most impressive mismatches in history."
As a result of this total loss of coherence driven by trillions in central bank liquidity that have propelled a massive wedge between fundamentals and stock prices, GMO, the Boston fund manager Mr Grantham co-founded in 1977, cut its net exposure to global equities in its biggest fund from 55% to just 25%, near the lowest levels it reported during the global financial crisis, according to a separate update from GMO's head of asset allocation, Ben Inker.
That decision, according to the FT, slashed GMO's Benchmark-Free Allocation Fund exposure to US equities from a net 3-4% to a net short position worth about 5% of the $7.5bn portfolio, said Inker, perhaps the first time the fund has turned net short US stocks since the crisis. This, after GMO loaded up on stocks during the sell-off but has since cut offloaded its exposure to the US market following the unprecedented 40% rally in the past 2 months.
"The Covid-19 pandemic “should have generated enhanced respect for risk and it hasn’t. It has caused quite the reverse,” Grantham told the Financial Times. He noted that trailing price-earnings multiples in the US stock market were “in the top 10 per cent of its history” while the US economy “is in its worst 10 per cent, perhaps even the worst 1 per cent”, echoing what he said in his quarterly letter.
And while markets seem to be taking all the negative news in stride, Grantham is worried that the wave of devastation that is coming is unlike anything experienced before:
At GMO we dealt with three major events prior to this crisis, and rightly or wrongly, we felt “nearly certain” that sooner or later we would be right. We exited Japan 100% in 1987 at 45x and watched it go to 65x (for a second, bigger than the U.S.) before a downward readjustment of 30 years and counting.
In early 1998 we fought the Tech bubble from 21x (equal to the previous record high in 1929) to 35x before a 50% decline, losing many clients and then regaining even more on the round trip.
In 2007 we led our clients relatively painlessly through the housing bust. In all three we felt we were nearly certain to be right. Japan, the Tech bubbles, and 1929, which sadly I missed, were not new types of events. They were merely extreme cases akin to South Sea Bubble investor euphoria and madness. The 2008 event also was easier if you focused on the U.S. housing euphoria, which was a 3-sigma, 100-year event or, simply, unique. We calculated that a return trip to the old price trend and a typical overrun in those extreme house prices would remove $10 trillion of perceived wealth from U.S. consumers and guarantee the worst recession for decades.All these events echoed historical precedents. And from these precedents we drew confidence.
But this event is unlike all those. It is totally new and there can be no near certainties, merely strong possibilities. This is why Ben Inker, our Head of Asset Allocation, is nervous and this is why you are nervous, or should be.
While the uncertainties are indeed large, one can triangulate a sufficiently material dose of "certainty" about what is coming, and as Grantham explains further, it is not pretty, especially with the US economy already on the back foot heading into the crisis:
We had U.S. and global problems looming before the virus: an increasingly disturbed climate causing global floods, droughts, and farming problems; slowing population growth, in the developed world, soon to be negative; and steadily slowing productivity gains, especially in the developed world, and therefore a slowing GDP trend. In the U.S., our 3%+ a year trend is down to, at best, 1.5% in my opinion. It is closer to a 1% maximum in Europe. We had, as mentioned, top 10% historical P/Es in the U.S. and much the highest debt level ever in the U.S. for both corporations and peacetime government. So, after a 10-year economic recovery, this would have been a perfectly normal time historically for a setback.
And then the virus hit.
Simultaneously, it is causing supply and demand shocks unlike anything before. Ever. It is generating a much faster economic contraction than that of the Great Depression. And unlike 1989 Japan, 2000 Tech (U.S.), and 2008 (U.S. and Europe), it is truly global. The drop in GDP and rise in unemployment in four weeks have equaled what took one to four years to reach in the Great Depression and were never reached in the other events.
Rogoff & Reinhart, Harvard Professors who wrote the definitive analysis of the 2008 bust, agree that this event is indeed completely different and suggest it will take at least 5 years to regain 2019 levels of activity. But this is a guess. We really don’t know how long it will take. Nearly certain is that a V-shaped recovery looks like a lost hope. The best possible outcome would be that there will be, almost miraculously, billions of doses of effective vaccine by year-end. But most viruses have never had a useful vaccine and most useful vaccines have taken well over five years to develop and when developed have been only partially successful.
Yes, this time there will be an enormous effort with unprecedented spending. But still, a leading vaccine expert says quick success would be like “drawing successfully to several inside straights in a row.” And even if all works out well with a vaccine there will remain deep economic wounds.
Meanwhile, as the world waits for a vaccine, and buys stocks confident one is imminent, the "bankruptcies have already started (Hertz on May 22nd) and by year-end thousands of them will arrive into a peak of already existing corporate debt. It will need spectacular management, which it may get. But it may not. Throwing money – paper and electronic impulses – at the problem can help psychology and, particularly, the stock market, where extra stimulus money can end up but does not necessarily put people back to work; there will be up to 20% unemployment for at least a moment."
In response to this historic economic collapse, central banks' unprecedented stimulus efforts have "temporarily overwhelmed" underlying economic realities but "it’s hard to believe that will continue."
And when it stops, watch out below: Grantham told the FT in an interview that after seeing markets price in “total recovery” over recent weeks, "my confidence that this will end badly is increasing."
Speaking as protests against police brutality and racism filled the streets of US cities, Grantham said previous outbreaks of social instability had had few lasting effects on the US economy, but "there are more things going wrong than normal".
However, the value investing legend's most dire prediction was that "if you look back in two to three years and this market turns around and drops 50%, the history books will say ‘That looked like one of the great warnings of all time. It was pretty obvious it was destined to end badly," Grantham said, adding: "If it does end badly the history books are going to be very unkind to the bulls." For the sake of an entire generation of Robinhooders who will lose everything if there is a 50% crash, one hopes Grantham is wrong.
Finally, Grantham also chimed in on the "most important question in finance right now", revealing that he was proud of not having "made a fuss about inflation" in 20 years of writing his widely followed letters, but said that record amounts of monetary easing from central banks had now created the possibility of inflationary pressures.
"With a generous stimulus program in many countries you can just about daydream about inflation for the first time in 30 years."
To this, all we can add is that in the very near future that daydream will become a nightmare.
- Post #8,496
- Quote
- Jun 5, 2020 1:37pm Jun 5, 2020 1:37pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
FRIDAY, JUNE 05, 2020
AAR: May Rail Carloads down 27.7% YoY, Intermodal Down 13.0% YoY
by Calculated Risk on 6/05/2020 01:27:00 PM
From the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Rail Time Indicators. Graphs and excerpts reprinted with permission.
Huge swaths of the U.S. and global economies remained shut in May and the impact on rail traffic was predictable. Total U.S. carloads fell 27.7% in May 2020 from May 2019, the biggest year-over- year decline for any month on record (our year-over-year comparisons begin in 1989) and worse than the 25.2% decline in April. For intermodal, things were bad but not as bad: originations were down 13.0% in May, better than the 17.2% decline in April.
emphasis added
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vxamd3lxt...adsMay2020.PNG
Click on graph for larger image.
This graph from the Rail Time Indicators report shows the six week average of U.S. Carloads in 2018, 2019 and 2020:
Average weekly total carloads in May 2020 of 185,043 were also the lowest on record. Of the 20 commodity categories we track, just one (farm products excluding grain) had carload gains over last May.
In 2020 through May, total U.S. carloads were down 14.7%, or 815,413 carloads, from last year.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LfspFYZCr...dalMay2020.PNG
The second graph shows the six week average of U.S. intermodal in 2018, 2019 and 2020: (using intermodal or shipping containers):
U.S. intermodal originations were down 13.0% in May 2020, an improvement from the 17.2% decline in April 2020 but still the 16th straight year-over-year monthly decline for intermodal. Prior to the pandemic, the average monthly decline was around 6%, which is clearly much less than the declines of the past two months. Intermodal is suffering from, among other things, weak consumer demand and fewer cargo ships calling on U.S. ports.
Note that rail traffic was weak prior to the pandemic.
Weekly Schedule
Posted by Calculated Riskon 6/05/2020 01:27:00 PM
- Post #8,497
- Quote
- Jun 6, 2020 3:31am Jun 6, 2020 3:31am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
- Post #8,498
- Quote
- Jun 6, 2020 3:41am Jun 6, 2020 3:41am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,
I am what the general population, politicians and the mainstream media (MSM) would call a conspiracy theorist. While I don’t agree with their definition of the term, there’s not much point in me denying it. It is applied to me, and millions like me, whether we like it or not.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...igns-still.jpg
For those who deem conspiracy theorists to be some sort of threat to society, we are the social and political malcontents who lack reason and hate our democratic way of life. We are trolls, bots and disinformation agents on social media, probably employed by the Russians, the Chinese or Iranians.
We are supposedly hellbent on sewing the seeds of discontent and can be found protesting against every government policy and decision. Alternatively, we are arrogant fools, both anti-science and evidence averse, who trot out crazy theories based upon little knowledge and no evidence. Apparently this is a very dangerous thing.
Thus we come to the glaring contradiction at the heart of the concept of the loony conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists are both imbeciles, who don’t have any proof to back up anything they say, while simultaneously being dangerous subversives who threaten to destabilize democracy and foment chaos.
Which is it? It can’t be both. Unless society is so fragile it cannot withstand the opinions of idiots.
So where does the idea that fools present a threat to “our way of life,” come from? What is it that the conspiracy theorists say that is so dangerous? Why do their opinions seemingly need to be censored? What are governments so worried about?
WHAT IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY?
Some definitions are required here. From the Cambridge online English dictionary we have:
Misinformation: [noun] wrong information, or the fact that people are misinformed.
Disinformation: [noun] false information spread in order to deceive people.
Fake News: [noun] false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.
Conspiracy: [noun’] the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal.
Theory: [noun] a formal statement of the rules on which a subject of study is based or of ideas that are suggested to explain a fact or event.
Conspiracy Theory: [noun] a belief that an event or situation is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people
It is notable that Cambridge University Press have introduced the concept of “secret” into their definition. By describing something as secret you are suggesting that it is impossible to know what it is. This added notion of secrecy is not commonly found in other dictionaries.
Nor is it present in the legal definition of conspiracy. Blacks Law Dictionary defines conspiracy as:
Conspiracy: In criminal law. A combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purpose of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act.
Obviously conspirators would like to keep their plans hidden. But that doesn’t mean they always remain so. If all conspiracies were “secrets” nobody would ever discover any of them.
Known conspiracies, such as Operation Gladio, Iran Contra, the Lavon Affair, the 2001 anthrax letter hoax and so on, would not have been exposed had people not highlighted the evidence which proved their existence.
The notion of the “secret conspiracy” is not one most people called conspiracy theorists would recognise. Often the whole point of our argument is that the conspiracies can be quite plainly evidenced. Most of that evidence is in the public domain and freely available.
More often conspiracy theorists are concerned with the denial or obfuscation of the evidence. It is not that the evidence doesn’t exist, rather that it either isn’t reported at all or is hidden by labelling those who do report it conspiracy theorists.
We can define “conspiracy theory” simply to mean: the reporting of evidence indicating a plan between two or more people to commit an illegal or nefarious act.
We can add that a conspiracy theory is an opinion or an argument. The merit of which is solely defined by the strength or weakness of the evidence.
However, if you read Wikipedia a very different definition is suggested. Suddenly conspiracy theory means an attempt to ignore other more plausible explanations. It is a theory based upon prejudice or insufficient evidence, it resists falsification and suffers from circular reasoning. It has left the realms of logical deduction and become a matter of faith.
This rationale is some distance away from the dictionary and legal definitions. It relies heavily upon opinion and is highly subjective. It is a pejorative definition which claims to be based in science, though the scientific evidence is feeble to non existent.
This depiction of the delusional conspiracy theorist, as described by Wikipedia, is the popularly accepted meaning. Perhaps we can agree, the narrative we are given about alleged conspiracy theorists broadly runs like this:
Conspiracy theorists forward arguments that are unfounded. These are based upon limited knowledge and lack substantiating evidence. Most conspiracy theorists are simply wrong and unwittingly spread misinformation. However, prominent conspiracy theorists spread disinformation and have used their large followings on the Internet to create a dangerous phenomenon called ‘fake news.’
Many of those with the largest followings are agents for foreign powers. They use a global network of trolls and bots to advance their dangerous political agenda. This is designed to undermine our democratic way of life and valued political institutions. Therefore all conspiracy theory is anti-democratic and must be stopped.
It is difficult to understand how democracies, which supposedly value freedom of thought, speech and expression, can be threatened by diversity of opinion. Yet it appears many people are willing to ignore this contradiction and support government attempts to censor information and silence the voices of those it labels conspiracy theorist. Which is genuinely anti-democratic.
Consequently it has become relatively straightforward for politicians and the media to refute evidence and undermine arguments. As long as they can get the label of conspiracy theory or theorist to stick, most people will discount their arguments without ever looking at the evidence.
The label of conspiracy theorist is an umbrella term for a huge array of ideas and beliefs. Some are more plausible than others. However, by calling everyone who challenges accepted norms a “conspiracy theorist” it is possible to avoid addressing the evidence some offer by exploiting guilt by association.
For example, many people labelled as conspiracy theorists, myself included, believe even the most senior elected politicians are relatively low down the pecking order when it comes to decision making. We suggest powerful global corporations, globalist think tanks and international financial institutions often have far more control over policy development than politicians. We can cite academic research to back up this identification of “Biased Pluralism.”
We do not believe the Earth is flat or the Queen is a lizard. However, because we believe the former, politicians, mainstream academia and the media insist that we must also believe the latter.
Psychology is often cited as evidence to prove conspiracy theorists are deranged, or at least emotionally disturbed in some way. Having looked at some of this claimed science I found it to be rather silly and anti-scientific. But that is just my opinion.
However, unlike many of the psychologists who earn a living by writing junk science, I do not think they should be censored nor stopped from expressing their unscientific opinions. However, governments across the world are seemingly desperate to exploit the psychologist’s ‘work’ to justify the silencing of the conspiracy theorists.
This desire to silence people who ask the wrong questions, by labelling all as conspiracy theorists, has been a common theme from our elected political leaders during the first two decades of the 21st century. But where did this idea come from?
THE HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST LABEL
Conspiracy theory is nothing new. Nearly every single significant world event had at least one contemporary conspiracy theory attached to it. These alternative interpretations of events, which lie outside the accepted or official narratives, are found throughout history.
In 117 CE, the Roman Emperor Trajan died only two days after adopting his successor Hadrian. All his symptoms indicated a stroke brought on by cardio vascular disease.
Yet by the 4th century, in the questionable historical text Historia Augusta, a number of conspiracy theories surrounding Trajan’s death had emerged. These included claims that Trajan had been poisoned by Hadrian, the praetorian prefect Attianus and Trajan’s wife, Plotina.
While we would call this a conspiracy theory today, the term was not commonly used until the late 1960’s. The earliest written reference to something approaching the modern concept of conspiracy theory appeared in the 1870’s in the Journal of Mental Science vol 16.
“The theory of Dr Sankey as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr Charles Beade”
This is the first time we see an association made between “conspiracy theory” and implausibility. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th century, if used at all, it usually denoted little more than a rationale to expose a criminal plot or malevolent act by a group.
After the Second World War colloquial use of “conspiracy theory” was rare. However, academics were beginning to lay the foundations for the interpretation which has produced the label we are familiar with today.
The burgeoning idea was that the large numbers of people who questioned official accounts of events, or orthodox historical interpretations, were all delusional to some degree. Questioning authority, and certainly alleging that authority was responsible for criminal acts, was deemed to be an aberration of the mind.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...5_14-31-00.jpg
Karl Popper
In 1945 The philosopher Karl Popper alluded to this in his political work The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper was essentially criticising historicism. He stated that historical events were vulnerable to misinterpretation by those who were predisposed to see a conspiracy behind them.
He argued this was because historians suffered from cognitive dissonance (the uncomfortable psychological sensation of holding two opposing views simultaneously.) They could not accept that tumultuous events could just happen through the combination of error and unrelated circumstances.
In Popper’s view, these historians were too quick to reject the possibility of random, chaotic events influencing history, preferring unsubstantiated conspiratorial explanations. Usually because they made better stories, thereby garnering more attention for their work.
Popper identified what he called the conspiracy theory of society. This reflected Popper’s belief that social sciences should concern themselves with the study of the unintended consequences of intentional human behaviour. Speaking of the conspiracy theory perspective, he wrote:
It is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be revealed), and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.”
Popper also believed that increasing secularism had led people to ascribe power to secretive groups rather than the gods:
The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups – sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from – such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.”
Popper’s theory illustrates the fundamental difference between those labelled conspiracy theorists and those who, on the whole, defend the official narrative and the establishment. For conspiracy theorists the evidence shows that powerful forces have frequently conspired to shape events, control the flow of information and manipulate society. The deliberate engineering of society, suggested by the conspiracy theorists, is rejected by their opponents and critics.
For them the conspiratorial view has some minor, limited merit, but the suggested scale and prevalence of these plots is grossly exaggerated. They see nearly all world events as the result of the unintentional collision between disparate forces and the random influence of fate.
In general, they consider the powerful incapable of malice. Where disastrous national and global events have clearly been caused by the decisions of governments, influential groups and immensely wealthy individuals, these are invariably seen as mistakes.
Any suggestion that the power hierarchy’s destructive decisions may have achieved their intended objectives receives blanket rejection. Even asking the question is considered “unthinkable.”
For many people called conspiracy theorists this is a hopelessly naive world view. History is full of examples of the powerful using their influence to further their own interests at others expense. Often costing people their lives.
For their opponents, like Popper, to reject this possibility outright, demonstrates their cognitive dissonance. They seem unable even to contemplate the possibility that the political and economic power structures they believe in could ever deliberately harm anyone. They have faith in authority and it is not shared by people they label conspiracy theorists.
Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 alternative explanations proliferated, not least of all due to the apparent implausibility of the official account. Many U.S. citizens were concerned that elements within their own government had effectively staged a coup. Others, such as the prominent American historian Richard Hoftsadter, were more concerned that people doubted their government.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...5_14-50-27.jpg
Richard Hofstadter
Building on the work of Popper, partly as a critique of McCarthyism but also in response to the Republican nomination loss of Nelson A. Rockefeller, American historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that people’s inability to believe what they are told by government was not based upon their grasp of the evidence. Rather it was rooted in psychological need.
He claimed much of this stemmed from their lack of education (knowledge), political disenfranchisement and an unjustified sense of self importance. He also suggested these dangerous opinions threatened to pollute the body politic.
Like Popper, Hofstadter did not identify conspiracy theorists directly. But he did formulate the narrative underpinning the modern, widely accepted, definition. He wrote:
I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind…It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant
[…]
Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.”….he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions.
Going to great lengths to focus on the “paranoid’s” tendency to highlight the evidence, as if that were a failing, like most critics of so-called conspiracy theorists, Hofstadter chose neither to address nor even mention what that evidence was. He merely asserted that it was unbelievable. The reader just had to take his word for it.
The Warren Commission Report into the JFK assassination drew considerable criticism. The finding that Oswald acted alone contradicted numerous eye witness accounts, film, autopsy and ballistic evidence.
Four of the seven commissioners harshly criticized the report issued in their name. Widely seen as quite ridiculous, in the absence of any sensible official account of the assassination, numerous explanatory theories inevitably sprang up.
In response to the mounting criticism, in 1967 the CIA sent an internal dispatch to all field offices called Document 1035-960: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report.
Revealed by a New York Times Freedom of Information Request in 1976, the dispatch is the first written record we have of the combination of Popper’s “conspiracy theory of society” with Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” militant. It defined the modern concept of the conspiracy theorist.
The document states:
Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists.”
It can be considered as the origin of the weaponised term “conspiracy theory.” It recommends a set of techniques to be used to discredit all critics of the Warren Commission Report. Once you are familiar with them, it is obvious that these strategies are commonly deployed today to dismiss all who question official statements as “conspiracy theorists.” We can paraphrase these as follows:
- Deny any new evidence offered and cite only official reports stating ‘no new evidence has emerged.’
- Dismiss contradictory eyewitness statements and focus upon the existing, primary, official evidence such as ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence.
- Do not initiate any discussion of the evidence and suggest that large scale conspiracies are impossible to cover up in an open and free democracy.
- Accuse the conspiracy theorists of having an intellectual superiority complex.
- Suggest that theorists refuse to acknowledge their own errors.
- Refute any suggestion of witness assassinations by pointing out they were all deaths by natural causes.
- Question the quality of conspiracy research and point out that official sources are better.
The report recommended making good use of “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and to “employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics.”
The CIA advocated using mainstream media feature articles to discredit people labelled conspiracy theorists.
While the use of these methods has been refined over the years, the essential process of labelling someone a conspiracy theorist, while studiously avoiding any discussion of the evidence they highlight, is extremely common in the mainstream media today. We only need look at the reports about academics who questioned the government’s narrative about COVID19 to see the techniques in operation.
The drive to convince the public to use only “official sources” for information has seen the rise of the fact checker.
These organisations, invariably with the support of government and corporate funding, are offered as the reliable sources which provide real facts. The facts they provide are frequently wrong and the fact checking industry has settled legal claims from those who challenged their disinformation.
People have been directed by the mainstream media to abandon all critical thinking. They just need to go to their government-approved fact-checker in order be told the truth.
Providing the public believe the people labelled conspiracy theorists are crazy, ill informed or agents for a foreign powers, the mainstream media, politicians and other commentators can undermine any and all evidence they present. In keeping with the CIA’s initial recommendations, it is extremely unlikely that the evidence will ever be openly discussed but, if it is, it can be written off as “conspiracy theory.”
However, it isn’t just the mainstream media who use the conspiracy theorist label to avoid discussing evidence. Politicians, speaking on the worlds biggest political stage, have seized the opportunity to deploy the CIA’s strategy.
THREE SPEECHES ONE AGENDA
Even for Prime Ministers and Presidents, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations is a big deal. These tend to be big thematic speeches as the leader impresses their vision upon the gathered dignitaries and global media.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...hn-500x301.jpg
Yet, despite the fact that conspiracy theorists are supposed to be idiots who don’t know the time of day, global “leaders” have repeatedly used this auspicious occasion to single them out as one of the greatest threats to global security.
In November 2001 George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly with the following words:
We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror.”
Even if you accept the official account of 9/11, and there are numerous reasons why you wouldn’t, how does questioning it suggest that you support terrorism or mark you out as a racist?
The suggestion appears absurd but it does illustrate that the U.S. president wanted both to silence all criticism of the government account and link those questioning it to extremism and even terrorism.
This theme was reiterated by the UK Prime Minister David Cameron in his 2014 address. He said:
To defeat ISIL – and organisations like it we must defeat this ideology in all its forms…..it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by preachers who claim not to encourage violence, but whose world view can be used as a justification for it. We know this world view. The peddling of lies: that 9/11 was a Jewish plot or that the 7/7 London attacks were staged […] We must be clear: to defeat the ideology of extremism we need to deal with all forms of extremism – not just violent extremism. We must work together to take down illegal online material […] we must stop the so called non-violent extremists from inciting hatred and intolerance.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...5_14-52-31.jpg
This season we will mostly be wearing anti-fear glasses
Like Bush before him, Cameron was at pains to identify what he called non violent extremists (commonly called conspiracy theorists). According to him, all who question government accounts of major geopolitical events are, once again, tantamount to terrorists.
Calling for online censorship to stop any questions ever being asked, it is this authoritarian need to avoid addressing evidence that led his successor, Prime Minister Theresa May, to propose wide-sweeping censorship of the Internet.
At the time of writing, the UK is among the many nations still in so called “lockdown” following the outbreak of COVID19. When UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the U.N General Assembly in September 2019 he delivered a speech which seemed weirdly out of context. With Brexit and possible conflict with Iran high on the agenda his address, which barely touched on those issues, was received with considerable bewilderment.
Six months later his predictive powers appear to be remarkable. It transpires that Johnson’s comments were extremely relevant. Just six months too early.
There are today people today who are actually still anti-science […] A whole movement called the anti-Vaxxers, who refuse to acknowledge the evidence that vaccinations have eradicated smallpox […] And who by their prejudices are actually endangering the very children they want to protect […] I am profoundly optimistic about the ability of new technology to serve as a liberator and remake the world wondrously and benignly […] Together, we can vanquish killer diseases.”
Despite the wealth of scientific evidence which justifies scepticism about some vaccines, anti-vaxxer (a variant of conspiracy theorist), is another label used to convince people not to consider evidence. The assertion is that those who question vaccines all fundamentally reject the concept of artificially inducing an immune response against a disease.
This isn’t true but how would you know? The anti-vaxxer label alone is sufficient to convince most to turn away.
Johnson’s speech rambled across so many seemingly irrelevant subjects there is little reason to suspect any COVID 19 foreknowledge. But given the global pandemic that would occur just a few months later, it was certainly prescient. Johnson was sufficiently concerned about the supposedly baseless questions of so called conspiracy theorists (or anti-vaxxers) to allege they killed children. A ludicrous suggestion the mainstream media strongly promoted.
It doesn’t matter that academic research has proven that the official account of 9/11 cannot possibly be true; it makes no difference that Mossad agents admitted that they had gone to New York on the morning of 9/11 to “document the event;” studies showing that approximately 90% of the total 20th Century disease reduction in the U.S. occurred prior to the widespread use of vaccines are irrelevant.
None of these facts need to be known by anyone and governments are going to censor all who try to tell others about them. All questions that reference them are crazy conspiracy theories. They are both stupid questions and a huge threat to both national security and the safety of the little children.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...Censorship.jpg
One of the recurring themes the people labelled conspiracy theorists discuss is that policy is made behind the closed doors of corporate boardrooms and policy think tanks. It doesn’t matter who you elect or what party you choose to rule over you, they are only capable of tinkering at the edges of the policy platform.
The policy agenda is set at a globalist level. So the fact that, over two decades, one U.S president and two British Prime Minsters were delivering essentially the same message doesn’t surprise the conspiracy theorists.
As we move toward a world where certain ideas are forbidden and only officially approved questions can be asked, where governments and corporations have a monopoly on the truth and everything else is a conspiracy theory, only one thing really matters. The evidence.
Hofstadter’s believed that his paranoid style militants constant citation of evidence was merely an attempt to “protect his cherished convictions.” This could be true, but the only way to find out is to look at that evidence. The label of the conspiracy theorist has been deliberately created in order to convince you not to look at it.
Regardless of whether or not you think someone’s opinion is a conspiracy theory, you owe it to yourself and your children to consider the evidence they cite. Perhaps you will reject it. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But to reject it, without knowing what it is, really is crazy. Your only other option is to unquestioningly accept whatever you are told by the government, globalist think tanks, multinational corporations and their mainstream media partners.
If you choose to believe that everyone who claims to have identified the malfeasance of officials, the crimes of government or the corruption of powerful global institutions, are all conspiracy theorists, then you have accepted that the establishment is beyond reproach.
If you also agree the same established hierarchy can not only determine what you can or cannot know, but can also set all the policies and legislation which dictates your behaviour and defines the limits of your freedom, you have elected to be a slave and don’t value democracy in the slightest.
- Post #8,499
- Quote
- Jun 6, 2020 9:57am Jun 6, 2020 9:57am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
- Post #8,500
- Quote
- Jun 6, 2020 10:08am Jun 6, 2020 10:08am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,485 Posts | Online Now
Posted Jun 6, 2020 by Martin Armstrong
https://d33wjekvz3zs1a.cloudfront.ne...ts-300x200.jpg
The US has long had the distinction of being the “world police” who would protect citizens of other nations against human rights abuses. Now, countries like Iran and North Korea are pointing their finger back at the US for its alleged double standard.
Russian Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “It’s time for the US to drop the mentor’s tone and look in the mirror.” Russia previously issued a series of statements to the US after Russian reporters covering the protests were injured by the police. Putin himself said he would not tolerate an uprising in Russia.
North Korea, the hermit country notorious for controlling every action of its citizens, also condemned the US’ actions. The Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) accused US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of being “deeply engrossed in espionage and plot-breeding against other countries, [and] has become too ignorant to discern where the sun rises and where it sets.” Pompeo has been an outspoken proponent of Hong Kong’s independence and advocated eliminating their special trading status.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam accused the US of using a “double standard.” “They value very much their own national security, but are biased in viewing ours,” Lam said earlier in the week. “There are riots in the United States and we see how local governments reacted. And then in Hong Kong, when we had similar riots, we saw what position they adopted,” Lam observed.
China, who gathered the Muslim Uighur population into detention camps, insisted that the US “safeguard and guarantee the legal rights of ethnic minorities.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, exposed the double standard by https://d33wjekvz3zs1a.cloudfront.ne...if-273x300.jpg
Secretary Pompeo fired back at Zarif, “You hang homosexuals, stone women and exterminate Jews.” Although the level of control and human rights abuses cannot be compared to other nations, it is hard for the US to maintain a moral high ground when it deploys the military against its own citizens.
Categories: Human Rights, Police State
Tags: Civil Unrest, Human Rights, world police