Financial topics

[aedens]

The role of the interest rate in allocating resources over time becomes an increasingly critical one. Still, if the interest rate is right, that is, if the
interplay between lenders and borrowers is allowed to establish the natural rate, then the market works right. However,
if the interest rate is wrong, possibly because of central bank policies aimed at "growing the economy;" then the
market goes wrong.

Price clearing and market saturation just as the consumer is ruthless Selfish Consumers and Ruthless Competition.

Tellingly; the two later essays (1969 and 1970) are as much about Keynesianism as about Austrianism.
Rothbard and Hayek are trying anew to call attention to a theory that had been buried for decades under the Keynesian avalanche.
Rothbard deals with the Phillips curve, which purports to offer a choice to political leaders between inflation and unemployment;
Hayek deals with the wage-price spiral.

We already know the true inflation indicators well enough and second derivative tax revenue amounts.

This term is not employed to suggest that these aspects of the depression are negligible or second order
in importance. "It may very well be," Haberler explains, "that this secondary wave of depression, which is induced by
the more fundamental maladjustment, will grow to an overwhelming importance"

I think we may find out soon enough

Nominal rigidity, also known as price-stickiness or wage-stickiness, ...
Economists have also looked at sticky wages as an explanation for why there is unemployment.

California will relearn that lesson very soon on fungible capital movements.

[aedens]

Mar. 30, 2016 - Four unidentified translators, who worked secretly for Wycliffe Associates, a Florida non-profit dedicated to bringing the gospel to hundreds of obscure languages, were killed by suspected Islamist militants at an undisclosed location, Wycliffe officials said in a statement.

The attackers shot and destroyed all the equipment, books and translation materials in the office. Survivors of the attack are committed to finishing the projects.

[aedens]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/sus ... abor-force

https://mobile.twitter.com/0Hour1/statu ... 7153753088

[aedens]

Quick, name a war started by a nation with a BIS central bank against another nation with a BIS central back... No, take your time.

Ok, I will take some time....
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar ... 00285-g001

If your a SNP M269 maybe we can opine on whats new under His sun.

http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=con ... discovered

I find the irony of each pointing dangerous tools at each other just as voting matters to the four different types of psychopaths
looking for that special place. Three fifth of the eligible smart ones sentenced Socrates.

The comment as Americans have had about all they can take is saying 145 years ago they had a idea that it survived.

More to the point it was deliberately undertaken by certain governments to approach or to restore the post-war parity of
their currencies may convey some clarity.

thread: Moses Mordecai Marx Levy, 1818-83) was born of wealthy parents (his father was a lawyer), and much of his personal life has never been revealed. Professor M. Mtchedlov, Vice-Director of the Marx Institute, said that there were 100 volumes in his collection, but only thirteen have ever been reprinted for the public. When he was six, his family converted to Christianity, and although he was once a believer in God, after attending the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, Marx wrote that he wanted to avenge himself "against the One who rules above." He joined the Satanist Church run by Joana Southcott, who was said to be in contact with the demon Shiloh. His early writings mentioned the name "Oulanem," which was a ritualistic name for Satan. A friend of Marx wrote in 1841, that "Marx calls the Christian religion one of the most immoral of religions." His published attacks against the German government caused him to be ejected from the country.

He received a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1841, but was turned down for a teaching position, because of his revolutionary activities. In 1843, he studied Economics in Paris, where he learned about French communism. Again he was expelled for revolutionary activities. In 1844, he wrote the book A World Without Jews even though he was Jewish. In 1845, he moved to Brussels, where, with German philosopher, Friedrich Engels (the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, 1820-95), who he met in Paris in 1844, they reorganized the Communist League.
Engels had joined the 'Young Germany' group (which had been established by Giuseppe Mazzini) in Switzerland in 1835.


The rabbit runs for his life as the fox runs for its dinner. Aesop

http://www.roguemoney.net/stories/2016/3/23/germanjihad The irony we already discussed back in the notes.
Who says he does not have a dire sense of humor who created all.
Some would digress to a obvious deadpan sentiment.

As before FDR opined no accidents exist in politics.

thread parity:

[John]

S&P Intrinsic Value Rises to 2,048

By valueplays on April 1, 2016 1:41 pm in Value Investing

“Davidson” submits:

There is nothing from my perspective to argue about our economic
trends since 2009. The trends continue higher with employment hitting
new highs, 246,000 added to the March Household Survey, vehicle sales
continue at record levels, 17.1 March SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annual
Rate) and the Dallas Fed 12mo Trimmed Mean PCE for Feb reported at
1.8%. The SP500 Value Investor Index at $1,978 vs SP500 at $2,048
remain within 5% of each other which historically indicates that, even
with the wild swings we have encountered the past several years,
market speculation remains at muted levels.

While current economic activity reflects decent uptrends, pessimism
remains, but there are signs that some may be turning more positive. A
psychological swoon found its low early February 2016, as I pointed
out in a recent note. One can see in the employment trend that one of
the most fundamental measures of the direction of economic activity
ignored February’s swoon. This is how one separates out false market
psychology fears of recession vs those which are driven by economic
activity. There remain several prominent investors still forecasting
economic collapse in 2016 with more than 30% declines in market
prices. Some even forecast a Dow Jones at 5,000, a huge decline from
the 17,600 level today. One can never say that these forecasts will
not occur. One can only say that, when this level of pessimism differs
so much from economic fundamentals, it is the fundamentals which have
always forced psychology to follow. Market psychology never leads long
term economic fundamentals even though it certainly impacts prices
short term.

The swings in market psychology make investing a confusing process
because so many who seem so successful provide their advice in the
media. Almost every forecast has urgency to ‘…take action now’ and of
course to give your portfolio to them and pay their fees. Had you
actually followed these calls, you would have traded your portfolio at
least a dozen times since 2009. Your timing would have been
exceptionally poor with similar returns.

Economic trends, if watched closely, provide plenty of warning of
pending economic cycle tops and cycle bottoms in my experience. Market
psychology as you should have learned by now, certainly by what you
have experienced since 2009 and even the past 18mos, can be wild, is
often wrong and certainly unpredictable. Market psychology has always
turned back to being more positive if economic fundamentals remain
so. It is not market psychology which drives the economy, even if many
believe it to be true. These investors are price-trend followers,
Momentum Investors. They control a lot of capital. Momentum Investors
do not drive their decisions with economic fundamentals. They only use
price trends. They do not see the correlation between fundamentals and
prices because their time frames are short term. They do drive their
investing with ‘Headlines’ of ‘Good News’ vs ‘Bad News’. Their pattern
longer term is that news that is better than expected triggers
Momentum Investors to invest. They believe better news than expected
justifies higher prices and vice versa. Fundamental trends drive
whether the news will be better or worse than many anticipate. This is
why following economic fundamentals which trend at a relative ‘snails
pace’ lets long term investors anticipate whether the ‘news’ is going
to be better or worse than that anticipated by Momentum
Investors. Using economic fundamentals is the Value Investor
approach. I anticipate higher market prices because pessimism
continues to dominate the news even in the face of decent economic
growth.

I continue to recommend that investors focus on LgCap Domestic and
Intl equities and have exposure to Natural Resources. As the US$ Trade
Weighted Index continues to fall towards its historical levels, we
should experience decent returns in these categories.

http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/04/sp-int ... ises-2048/

[aedens]

Thank you for the update.

But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/0 ... orm-LR.pdf

The energy margin cluster groups will simply attempt to weather the actual mal investments we noted some time back.
The consolations to update condition in safe standards continues we hope for the better.
The indication warranted the view then we where less than ten percent incorrect on conditions anticipated.
In many cases a decade was lost to indulgences and avarice of position.

NYSE - GAB Pr J CUSIP - 362397853 some could be migrating to greener pastures.

review: Just remember the following, mean: regular meaning of "average" median: middle value mode: most often

[aedens]

NATO is not obsolete. In the fight against terrorism it can help the countries that share in common the values of democracy, free speech, and the rule of law. President Barack Obama, explaining his policy of restraint, may have been mathematically accurate in his assertion that terrorism has taken fewer lives than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs. But it is the task of both the U.S. president and NATO to ensure that the number of fatalities does not increase.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... z44hULdf8j

The strongest expression of disapproval was by French president Charles de Gaulle. In a letter of March 7, 1966, he told President Lyndon B. Johnson that France expected to remain a party to the NATO treaty. However, because changes had occurred in international affairs since 1949, France could not agree to the existing military arrangements. Therefore, France intended to recover in her territory the full exercise of her sovereignty, presently impaired by the presence of “Allied military elements,” and the use made of French airspace. France would terminate its participation in “integrated” commands and would not place forces at the disposal of NATO.
SE Asia that were colonized by France and held mostly until 1954: included Cochin China, Annam, and Tonkin (now largely Vietnam), Cambodia, Laos, and Kuang-Chou Wan (returned to China in 1945, now Zhanjiang)
Nevertheless, in spite of differences with NATO and withdrawal in June 1959 of French naval forces from NATO, France did not leave NATO.

We all know what happened on that leakage event.
Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008.

By the 1980s, the Warsaw Treaty Organization was beset by problems related to the economic slowdown in all Eastern European countries. By the late 1980s political changes in most of the member states made the Pact virtually ineffectual. In September 1990, East Germany left the Pact in preparation for reunification with West Germany. By October, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had withdrawn from all Warsaw Pact military exercises. The Warsaw Pact officially disbanded in March and July of 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The rabbit runs for his life as the fox runs for its dinner. Aesop

http://www.roguemoney.net/stories/2016/3/23/germanjihad The irony we already discussed back in the notes.
Who says he does not have a dire sense of humor who created all.
Some would digress to an obvious deadpan sentiment.

I consider Moscow and Washington already considered the middle ground already seen long ago.

Alas, you who are longing for the day of the LORD, For what purpose will the day of the LORD be to you? It will be darkness and not light; As when a man flees from a lion And a bear meets him, Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall And a snake bites him. Will not the day of the LORD be darkness instead of light, Even gloom with no brightness in it?…

http://gdxforum.com/forum/search.php?ke ... sf=msgonly

[aedens]

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah took place in historical times, according to my scheme in a catastrophe which caused also the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The geologists refer the upheaval which tore Syria in two to the end of the Tertiary period—long before human history began.

Now the question is legitimate: how old is the Dead Sea?

References
1. Genesis 13:10. Tacitus wrote that the plain was “fruitful and supported great and populous cities.” (Histories V. 7). According to Strabo (Geography XVI. 2. 44) there were “thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis.”
2. Genesis 19: 23-25, 27-28.
3. J. Penrose Harland, “Sodom and Gomorrah,” The Biblical Archaeologist Reader (New York, 1961), p. 61.
4.M. Blanckenhorn, “Entstehung und Geschichte des Todten Meeres,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina-Vereins, 19 (1896), p. 16.
5. Idem, Naturwissenschaftliche Studien am Todten Meer und im tal (Berlin, 1912); cf. R. Freund et al., “The Shear along the Dead Sea Rift,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, A, Vol. 267 (1970), pp. 107-130.
6. Blanckenhorn, “Entstehung und Geschichte des Todten Meeres,” p. 26.


Immanuel Velikovsky

Come, weigh me the weight of the fire or measure me the measure of the wind
or recall me the day that is past. IV Ezra

[Higgenbotham]

Thank you for the update.

But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/0 ... orm-LR.pdf

From the above-linked article,

In an excellent discussion published in
2010, analyst Andrew Lees suggests
that the overall EROEI, having declined
from 40:1 in 1990 to 20:1 in 2010,
might fall to as little as 5:1 by 2020.
Though Mr Lees does not cite sources
for these numbers, his figures for 1990
and 2010 accord pretty closely with our
own estimates.
Policymakers must hope that he is
very wrong indeed, however, about the
global average EROEI in 2020 because,
if this ratio does indeed decline to just
5:1 over the coming seven years, the
economy as we know it is finished. It is
as simple as that.

I'm still expecting stocks to go to zero this year.

[Higgenbotham]

This is the point that so many have gotten wrong about EROEI: it doesn’t take much oil production to replace the diesel burned during drilling including all the transport fuel.

As I’ve pointed out many times most wells fail to reach economic muster at an EROEI of around 5 or 6. The rule of thumb that reservoir engineers use is a WOR (water oil ratio) of 40 – 45: 1 where a well is no longer economical to operate, and is shut in. That is for a water cut (Sw) of 97.5 to 97.8%. A WOR of 45:1 gives an EROEI of 6.9:1. That is also the theoretical limit established for oil production as determined by the Etp Model. Those calculations are shown in Section 7, page 38 of our report “Depletion: A determination for the world’s petroleum reserves”. The Etp Model has derived from thermodynamic considerations the “dead state” for petroleum production at the same point that reserve engineers, through trail and error, have determined the point where a well is to be shut in. It is a straight forward confirmation of the Model’s validity.

This is the point that so many have gotten wrong about EROEI: it doesn’t take much oil production to replace the diesel burned during drilling including all the transport fuel.

Dollar fuel cost can not be used to determine EROEI. EROEI is an energy relationship, and dollars will usually not accurately represent that relationship. The energy to produce the fuel must be taken into consideration. All the energy costs of producing a fuel are not borne by the producer. The producer does not pay for much of the infrastructure, and services used to produce the product. They do not pay for the roads, military, regulatory agencies, education of their employees, health care services, and etc. The producer is but a very tiny fraction of the society that must operate in the background to make production possible. It is only through a thermodynamic analysis that EROEI can be determined. Economic analysis is almost completely useless in this situation. It can not ascertain all the inputs that go into the production of petroleum and its products.

Re: Today's Blog - High Oil prices caused by China's growth
Post by Higgenbotham » Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:26 pm

There's another point in the discussion about marginal barrels, and that is the net energy extracted from the barrels on the margin. What I mean by that is those marginal barrels may have cost $80 to produce at the peak of the boom but since our accounting system is money based rather than energy based, there is no telling whether those marginal barrels were even produced at positive net BTUs. That's why I've thought for a long time that peak oil isn't actually needed to limit the economy--it can be limited before peak is ever reached.

I'm sure there are people out there who have thought about his more than I have, but I really haven't seen the concept laid out in a big picture manner. Not to say it hasn't. Look hard enough on the Internet and you'll find most anything. The way I think of it is there is a marginal energy producing "system", say the Canadian Tar Sands projects. It would be represented by drawing a boundary around the system and accounting for all the energy flows in and all the energy flows out. For example, if equipment is moved into the system to extract energy, then the energy used to produce and move that equipment would be an energy expenditure of the project. Likewise, any workers who travel to Alberta to work on the project. And so on. I don't know, but it may be that even though the project produces money profits, it may operate at an overall energy loss, in the sense that more overall energy flows into the project than flows out. Since the economy runs on energy, operating projects that operate at an overall energy loss would begin to grind down the economy without anybody realizing why. And I suppose there could be some threshold above loss where that would be the case too. Certainly, at constant production rates over time, replacing a barrel of easy to extract oil with a barrel produced in a marginal tar sands project is a net negative.

Re: Today's Blog - High Oil prices caused by China's growth
Post by Higgenbotham » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:11 am

John wrote:
This is a very interesting insight, and I've never seen it expressed
before.

I speculated last summer that the world economy had reached some kind
of tipping point, perhaps a structural limit in the markets that can't
be cured in the short run.

Maybe what had happened was some interlock involving energy.

Sincerely,

John


It's probable that the problem has not been fully expressed because it requires a rudimentary knowledge of systems theory to express it, and it requires an advanced knowledge of systems theory to model it. The world is not at the point of accurately modeling these kinds of problems.

Modeling would probably require that the modeler construct 2 worlds--the actual one in which the marginal energy project took place and one in which it did not take place. The world energy production and expenditures would need to be compared under the 2 scenarios and netted out to determine if the marginal project had net energy benefit. There are all kinds of complications in that. For example, if a single man is unemployed and living in Alabama, finds employment in Alberta, expends energy to travel there, lives in a housing unit that was built because the project came into existence, marries and has a family because he now has a decent wage, etc., how does his energy expenditure compare to the alternate world in which the marginal energy project did not take place? As I've generally implied before, this in my opinion is the kind of thinking/technology that will be required to move into a "real" information age and we may be several decades or centuries away from it. Doing a project because it has political appeal ("creates jobs"), money profits, and/or because the losses can be socialized will eventually move humanity backwards and that is what seems to be starting to occur across the board.

In this way, peak oil can be predicted as a complex system breakdown which has nothing to do with how much oil has been pumped out of the ground or how much is left to extract (in other words, the magical halfway point that the peak oilers point to), but instead whether systems theory predicts a net energy benefit to the project vis-a-vis an alternate world in which the project is not undertaken.

PS Modeling this problem also has a time dependency associated with it because the energy expenditures to do a project are done up front before any energy flows are obtained from it. Therefore, in theory, a project that grows slowly in the absence of a credit boom, and does not generate huge expenditures of energy up front before any is produced, is less likely to generate system lockup. For example, in the simple extreme that can be easily visualized, if Keppel is building 5 million rigs and using a lot of energy to do it, the energy expenditures to build the rigs could lock up the economy before the rigs are utilized to produce the energy.