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KoyaanisqatsiThe film Koyaanisqatsi was released in 1982. The title means ‘life out of balance’ in the language of the Hopi, a Native American tribe who live(d) mainly in what is now north-east Arizona. It is directed by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. There are no actors, and no dialogue. Philip Glass’s music underlies a series of film fragments that contrast the beauty of American nature with the noise and pollution mankind has added to it. Wikipedia:

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating “it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.”

Due to its initial success, Reggio and Glass made two sequels to the film, Powaqqatsi (1988), meaning “parasitic way of life” or “life in transition”, and Naqoyqatsi (2002) which means “life as war”, “civilized violence” and “a life of killing each other”. If you haven’t seen them, they come highly recommended.

Koyaanisqatsi is an fitting term to describe not only our world in general, but also our economies. They are severely out of balance, and getting more so every day. But economies, like nature, need at least a minimum in balance. If that disappears, this lack of balance will tip them over. It is somewhat strange that this is not being recognized, and not even discussed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Is Real Wealth?

September 19, 2017

What Is Real Wealth?

As for acquiring capital–the most important types of capital don’t require much money.

What is real wealth? Money, right? Currency, gold, quatloos, you name it.Money is real wealth because you can use it to buy whatever you want.

I would argue money in any form is only the means to acquire real wealth, which is the agency, opportunity and time to pursue your life’s work.

The conventional view that wealth is money and leisure has it all wrong. Let’s imagine the owner of a vault of conventional treasure: jewels, gold coins, etc.

If the “wealth” stays in the vault, what’s the point of owning this “wealth”? The secret satisfaction of being “wealthy”?

If “wealth” is only an internal state, then let’s measure friendship and being needed/wanted as the metrics of “wealth.” You see the point; if “wealth” is merely an internal state of satisfaction, then a vault full of “money” is a poor metric.

What money buys that is real wealth is freedom and control of one’s life. This control over one’s life is called agency. Agency is defined as “the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment.” This may not seem like a profound concept, but another way to describe agency is that agency is the opposite of powerlessness.

People with agency define themselves and their identity; they shape the world they inhabit rather than passively await whatever circumstances deliver up.

In the real world, people with agency move on when things no longer work for them in a particular situation. Agency is not just the opposite of feeling powerless; it’s also the opposite of victimhood, i.e. the state of being in which others are held responsible for all of one’s travails and difficulties.

Agency and responsibility are two sides of the same coin: each manifests the other.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Need A Social Revolution

August 18, 2017

wikimedia

We Need A Social Revolution

Our future depends on our willingness to fight for it

In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare.

In this view, the engines of revolution are the state—government in all its layers and manifestations—and the corporate economy.

In a political revolution, a new political party or faction gains converts to its narrative, and this new force replaces the existing political order, either via peaceful means or violent revolution.

Technological revolutions arise from many sources but end up being managed by the state and private sector, which each influence and control the other in varying degrees.

Conventional history focuses on top-down political revolutions of the violent “regime change” variety: the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolution (1917), the Chinese Revolution (1949), and so on.

Technology has its own revolutionary hierarchy; the advances of the Industrial Revolutions I, II, III and now IV, have typically originated with inventors and proto-industrialists who relied on private capital and banking to fund large-scale buildouts of new industries: rail, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, the Internet, etc.

The state may direct and fund technological revolutions as politically motivated projects, for example the Manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons and the Space race to the Moon in the 1960s.

These revolutions share a similar structure: a small cadre leads a large-scale project based on a strict hierarchy in which the revolution is pushed down the social pyramid by the few at the top to the many below. Even when political and industrial advances are accepted voluntarily by the masses, the leadership and structure of the controlling mechanisms are hierarchical: political power, elected or not, is concentrated in the hands of a few at the top.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Correction To Commenter Matt Damon

March 12, 2017

A Correction To Commenter Matt Damon

Dear Mr. Damon (I like you: can I call you Matt? You’ll never read this anyway, so I’ll call you by your first name).

So, dear Matt,

The cause of liberty needs people with your spirit. However, I’m sorry, but your recent defense of liberty and independence is so much inconsistent that it weakens that spirit.

Yes, the world is upside-down. But not because, as you say, “the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power”, but because the idea of law has been subverted.

The law intended as non-arbitrary limit to all coercive power (that is as non-aggression principle) has been replaced with the law intended as instrument of arbitrary coercive power.

In other words, the world is upside down not because the power is held by the wrong people, but because the prevailing idea of law makes political power (i.e. coercive power), whoever holds it, unlimited. And the nature of an unlimited power is to expand.

When you say that the problem is that “the wealth is distributed in this country and in the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth” you embrace the same idea of law that makes political power unlimited. That is the same abstract idea of law that produced Nazism, communism and the contemporary democratic totalitarianism: that idea of law is called legal positivism.

The problem is not that wealth is allocated in the wrong way. The problem is that wealth is allocated. That there is the power to legally allocate wealth. The very possibility of coercive resource allocation implies the unlimited power to coerce people.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Coming Great Wealth Transfer

March 4, 2017

WakingTimes.com

The Coming Great Wealth Transfer

Spoiler alert! It’s already here.

In the past, I’ve warned about the coming Great Wealth Transfer. But now we need to talk about it in the present tense, because it’s here.

And it will only accelerate from here on out. The Rich will get richer at the expense of everybody else.

This isn’t personal. It’s simply a feature of what happens near the end of a debt-based monetary system run by corruptible humans.

Of course, those in charge don’t think of themselves as corrupted or villainous. I’m sure that Federal Reserve Chairs Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen all think of themselves as good and decent people doing “God’s work”. But the truth is they’ve irrevocably harmed millions — if not billions — of innocent people.

They and other central bankers have become the standard bearers of a system that can best be described as a reverse Robin Hood scheme, one that takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. It’s just that in this tale, the ‘poor’ means everybody not in the top 1%.

So you need to understand this wealth transfer process — how it works, who’s perpetrating it, and what dangers to watch for. If not, you’ll be a victim of it. And you’ll probably live in confusion and shock by how hard just ‘getting by’ becomes going forward.

Realizing that you’re being specifically targeted by a system determined to separate you from your wealth is the essential first step towards figuring out how to evade the predators and protect yourself.

The Great Wealth Transfer

What do we mean by a Wealth Transfer?

It isn’t just some academic concept. It’s a playbook that’s been used many times in the past by governments to forcibly extract wealth from the public and use it for the benefit of those in power.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Gold Is Now Effectively Illegal” In India – The Consequences Of Creating A Cashless Society

December 19, 2016

“Gold Is Now Effectively Illegal” In India – The Consequences Of Creating A Cashless Society

Jayant Bhandari warns “there are clear signs that in a very convoluted way, possession of gold for investment purposes will be made illegal” as he discusses India’s attempts to create a cashless society (and consequences of it) and why precious metals and geographical diversification are the most viable options investors around the world, not just India, should be taking.

“The situation is getting worse by the day… people are desperate”

Jayant provides the clearest explanation of where India is (and where it is going) in the brief interview with ProvenAndProbable.com’s Maurice Jackson …

As Jayant detailed previously, expect a continuation of new social engineering notifications, each sabotaging wealth-creation, confiscating people’s wealth, and tyrannizing those who refuse to be a part of the herd, in the process destroying the very backbone of the economy and civilization.

There are clear signs that in a very convoluted way, possession of gold for investment purposes will be made illegal. Expect capital controls to follow.

Gold Bullion Is Now Effectively Illegal

Assaults on people’s private property and the integrity of their homes through tax-raids continue. In a recent notification, government has made it clear that any ownership of jewelry above 500 grams of gold per married woman will be put under the microscopic scrutiny of tax authorities.

Steep taxes and penalties will be imposed on those who cannot prove the source of their gold. In India’s Orwellian new-speak this means that because bullion has not been explicitly mentioned, its ownership will be deemed to be illegal. Courts will do what Modi wants. Huge bribes will have to be paid.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hell To Pay

September 24, 2016

SkillUp/Shutterstock

Hell To Pay

The final condition for a market crash is falling into place

Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to run out of new things to say about the economy. Nothing interesting has happened in a long time.

Our liquidity-drunk “markets” remain over-priced due to the chronic intervention of the global central banking cartel, which has demonstrated over and over again that it won’t tolerate even the slightest drop in asset prices.

Those familiar with my writing know I put the word “markets” in quotes because we no longer have a financial system where legitimate price discovery is a regular — or even recognizable — feature.

It’s destined to fail. What more can be said about such a flawed system?

Well, a lot as it turns out.

And failure to pay attention at this stage of economic and ecological history will prove to be exceptionally painful.

The Beginning of the End

It’s been a long 7 years for those of us who believe fundamentals matter. For quite some time they have not.

So we reality-based fundamentalists have largely been reduced to pointing at the parade of policy failures and ham-fisted market manipulations and saying, essentially, That’s just dumb.

But ‘dumb’ mistakes have become ‘stupid’, and ‘stupid’ became ‘idiotic’, and now ‘idiotic’ mistakes are piling up, accumulating into a mountain of stored potential energy that will someday topple destructively across the global markets. We’ve all known, deep down, that money printing is not the same as capital formation, and that prosperity never truly results from redistributing wealth from one group to another. And yet, far too many have been willing to play along and place their trust in the central banks.

Well, we’ve finally reached the beginning of the end.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Importance Of Perseverance

September 17, 2016

The Importance Of Perseverance

Without training to overcome adversity, wealth is soon lost

Most of us work hard at earning our income, and on figuring how best to save and invest it.

We all want a better future, for ourselves and our families — and especially for our children. Achieving financial security is an important milestone on the path to making this ambition a reality.

And so, day after day, we head off to work and put in another day’s labor, hoping we’re one step closer to the moment when we finally have “enough” money socked away.

There are literally thousands and thousands of books that have been written on how to amass wealth. Some excellent, some less so; and too many not worth the paper they’re printed on. Each posits its own special strategy, promising a future of riches to the reader. Of course, were there a sure-fire recipe for making millions, it’s a safe bet that the last thing the guy who figured it out would do is share it with the world.

But as mentioned, some of these books have real value. One whose lessons have stuck with me in the decades since I first read it is The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy, first published in 1996 by two PhD researchers, Thomas Stanley and William Danko.

Unlike most personal finance books that pitch a particular model for “becoming rich”, this book is the summary of a scientific profiling of people who have successfully amassed wealth. Rather than push an ideology, it simply reveals: These are, statistically, the factors wealth-accumulators have in common.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When Government Controls All Wealth

July 3, 2016

When Government Controls All Wealth

Sliding Into Absurdity

BALTIMORE – Stock markets continued their rebound on Wednesday. The Dow rose 284 points… or just over 1.5%. London’s FTSE 100 Index was up 3.6%. And Europe’s equivalent of the Dow, the Euro Stoxx 50, was up 2.7%.

brexit-2 No wonder the Dragon and his partners in crime flooded the EU banking system with “money” this past week…

Investors have realized Brexit isn’t the end of the world. First, because they think it won’t really happen. After all, elites can fix elections, buy politicians, and control public policy… surely, they can fix this!

A letter in the Financial Times reminds us that Swedish voters cast their ballots against nuclear power in 1980. The government just ignored them, doubling nuclear power generation over the next 36 years.

Second, because investors see the panic over Brexit leading to more spirited intervention by central banks! The EZ money floodgates – already wide open – are to be opened wider.

The U.S. has its QE program on hold, but Europe’s scheme is gushing like Niagara. Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank buys $90 billion a month in bonds. And he’s not only buying government bonds; he’s buying corporates, too.

Less Than Zero

In Japan, always a trendsetter, the Bank of Japan has bought so many bonds it has pushed Japanese government bond yields below zero – out to more than 45 years on the yield curve!

In other words, you can now lend to the bankrupt Japanese government until 2051 with no hope of making a single yen, nominally, on your investment. Now, with bonds stacking up in their vaults, the Japanese feds are diversifying. They’re buying exchange-traded funds (ETFs), too.

JGB weekly over the past 5 years….still a widow-maker! – click to enlarge.

Via its ETF purchases, the BoJ buys about $30 billion of Japanese stocks a year. This has made it a top 10 shareholder in about 90% of the companies listed on the country’s Nikkei 225 Index.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Preserving And Creating ‘Wealth’

May 18, 2016

Preserving And Creating ‘Wealth’

Avoiding loss of one’s ‘wealth’ from whatever crises may befall you and/or your family seems paramount to helping avoid or at least mitigate the negative consequences that accompany emergencies and disasters, or even the general decline of civilisation. With currency devaluation, government overreach, civil unrest, bank bail-in legislation, labour strife, market corrections, negative interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty, economic decline (perhaps even collapse), it seems almost impossible to protect one’s wealth completely without even worrying about everyday calamities that can place financial stress upon an individual and/or family. The following suggestions seem the most likely way to prepare for an uncertain world, and avoid some of the more dire consequences of increasing volatility and possible confiscation by the-powers-that-be (a concern that must be considered as governments become increasingly insolvent).

It also seems prudent to reduce dependency on complex systems that are prone to disruptions over which you have no control, such as distant supply chains or infrastructure frailties–that is why I believe at the base of your thinking should be a desire for yourself/family/community to become more resilient and self-sufficient. (Note: I have included links to articles found on The Survivalist Blog only to keep the discussion ‘in-house’; and, the information that follows is not meant to be investment ‘advice’ but one person’s thoughts on how to prioritise ‘investments’.)

A common question that arises when contemplating emergency/disaster planning is where to start?

First, focus on yourself and basic survival gear.

Skills and knowledge you acquire are the most difficult to be taken from you. First Aid courses. Fitness/healthcare-oriented activities. Hunting courses. Archery/gun use. Gardening/food production knowledge. Survival training. ‘Handyman’ skills. Building a ‘survival’ library. Activities, training, and literature that can help you and your family cope with unexpected crises are perhaps the wisest ‘investment’ and can’t be confiscated by the-powers-that-be. These should likely be a priority.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Will Be Largest Evaporation of Wealth in Modern History

April 14, 2016

This Will Be Largest Evaporation of Wealth in Modern History

It’ll devastate China’s economy and reverberate around the world

Only a handful of countries have a higher savings rate than the Chinese do. For a still relatively poor emerging country with GDP per capita about a fifth of that in the U.S., the Chinese get an A+ in this area.

But if diversification and asset allocation are the key to preserving wealth, then the Chinese get an F!

The reason: 75% of their wealth is in real estate. They’ve overinvested in one illiquid and bubbly asset that they wrongly believe can only go higher. Relative to income, China has seven of the 10 most expensive cities in the world.

In other words, it has the greatest real estate bubble in modern history!

Price to income ratios in the top cities are off the charts. Beijing is 33.5 times income, Shanghai is 30.2 and Shenzhen is 30.0. The average condo in such tier I cities is only 650 square feet and would go for $460 per square foot, or $300,000. In a tier II city, we’re talking $100,000.

That may not sound like a lot, but the average Chinese are only making about $10,000 per year! That begs the question: how do they even do it on their incomes!?

Wade Shepard went after this question in a recent Forbes article. In China, owning your home is paramount. If you’re a man, you have zero chance of getting a date if you don’t. But with home prices running at exorbitant rates, what are their chances?

It all comes back to China’s phenomenally high savings rate. Compared with about 2% in the U.S., the Chinese on average save about 30% of their income. And for the most affluent, it’s more than double that!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold: Still Misunderstood

April 10, 2016

Gold: Still Misunderstood

Myths That Just Won’t Die

Gold just had its best quarter in 30 years. Not surprisingly, gold bears are coming out of the woodwork en masse in the mainstream media and the analyst community (see e.g. this recent write-up by Mish on the Goldman Sachs analyst who has been screaming “short gold” since right before it started rocketing higher in early February). Below we will discuss a specific assertion that tends to be repeated over and over again.

Gold had a very strong quarter, but skepticism over the durability of the advance remains quite pronounced – click to enlarge.

If there is anything in this world that definitely has more lives than a cat, it is bad economics. Just think about it: Here we are, nearly 300 years after John Law drove France and most of continental Europe into utter ruin, and our central bankers are still doing the exact same things Law did. The only difference between John Law and the trifecta of Draghi, Kuroda and Yellen is really the modern-day level of obfuscation and the fact that there is far more wealth that can be destroyed, so it is taking a lot longer.

In terms of economic principles and the goals allegedly achievable by their policies, the difference between Law and today’s central bankers is precisely zero. It is astonishing that after 300 years of supposed scientific progress, atrociously bad economics has shown such persistence in surviving. We were reminded of this agan when reading a recent comment on gold in the Wall Street Journal. No matter how often and how convincingly they are refuted, unsound economic ideas keep being resurrected with unwavering regularity, as if they were a horde of zombies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Panama Papers only a glimpse into ‘astonishing’ wealth stashed offshore

April 6, 2016

Panama Papers only a glimpse into ‘astonishing’ wealth stashed offshore

Some estimates suggest between 8 and 14 per cent of global wealth is kept in tax havens

It's estimated that at least $7 trillion and up to $32 trillion is currently kept in holdings in tax havens.

It’s estimated that at least $7 trillion and up to $32 trillion is currently kept in holdings in tax havens. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

The provocative revelations coming out of the so-called Panama Papers are just a glimpse into the murky global network that’s keeping “absolutely astonishing” amounts of money out of public coffers.

The 11.5 million files taken from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca show how the financial elite exploit a secretive system to manoeuvre wealth anonymously and ensure the taxman doesn’t take his cut.

The firm is “the world’s fourth biggest provider of offshore services,” according to the Guardian, with about $42 million in yearly revenue. The documents contain information about more than 214,000 shell companies, trusts and foundations — usually used to hold or transfer financial assets while obfuscating the identity of their real owner — that were registered with the firm.

“That gives a sense of the tremendous scope of this in terms of the flows of money into these largely mysterious companies, and this is only one firm,” says Nicholas Shaxson, an investigative journalist and author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World.

It’s difficult to delineate what constitutes a tax haven but it’s generally agreed that, depending on the criteria, there are between 70 and 92 states serving as such worldwide. And there’s an estimated two million shell companies registered with offshore firms in these states.

Panama Papers shell company graphic

(CBC)

“For a long time, people thought of tax havens as an exotic sideshow of the world economy. Now it’s clear they are absolutely central to it. We’re talking about absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money,” Shaxson says.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rotten to the Core

April 6, 2016

Rotten to the Core

Poison Money

BALTIMORE – We live in a world of sin and sorrow, infected by a fraudulent democracy, Facebook, and a corrupt money system. Wheezing, weak, and weary from the exertion of trying to appear “normal,” the economy staggers on.

David-Simonds-zombie-high-011 Staggering on…. Image credit: David Sidmond

Last week, we gained some insight into the ailment. Something in the diagnosis has puzzled us for years: How is it possible for the most advanced economy in the history of the world to make such a mess of its most basic bodily functions – getting and spending?

By our calculations – backed by studies, hunches, and deep research – the typical American man (it is less true for women) earns less in real, disposable income per hour today than he did 30 years ago.

He goes to buy a car or a house, and he finds he must work longer to pay the bill than he would have in the last years of the Reagan administration. How is that possible? What kind of economic quackery do you need to stop capitalism from increasing the value of workers’ time?

What kind of policies and circumstances are required to stiffen its joints… clog up its innards… and rot its brain? Globalization? Financialization? Bad trade deals? Too much red tape? Too many cronies? Too many zombies?

nonsequitor_cartoon_comic_first-economist We can identify at least one source of the quackery…

All of those things played a role. But our answer is simpler: poison money. The bigger the dose… the sicker it got. When you say you “have some money,” you usually believe that there is, somewhere, an electronic database in which it is recorded that you are the owner of some amount of currency.

You have $100,000 in your account, right? Does it mean that there is a little cubbyhole somewhere, with your name on it, in which you will find a stack of 1,000 Ben Franklins? Nope. Not even close. No cubbyhole. No stack of money. No nothing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Two Worlds of Precious Metals: East and West – Jeff Nielson

March 17, 2016

The Two Worlds of Precious Metals: East and West – Jeff Nielson

For five thousand years, gold and silver have been humanity’s premier form of money; real money, not the faux-money manufactured by our central banks. During that same period of time, these metals have been our premier instruments of wealth preservation and therefore our “safe havens.”

There is nothing accidental about this phenomenon. Gold and silver have obvious aesthetic appeal. Indeed, silver is actually the more brilliant of the two metals. It is their aesthetic appeal that makes these metals “precious.” But more than simply their aesthetic appeal, they are also (relatively) rare.

If diamonds were as common as pebbles, it would be impossible to impress one’s potential bride-to-be with such stones, even in a setting of gold. Diamonds have their value, both real and sentimental, not only because of their aesthetic qualities but also because of their perceived scarcity.

The situation is the same for gold and silver. If gold and silver were as common as iron, zinc, or even copper, they would not be coveted as greatly, regardless of their aesthetic appeal, because of their abundance. It is the qualities of being “rare” and “precious” which are essential in order for any commodity to be considered a suitable currency. It is these properties that make a commodity a source of value. There will always be demand for these metals; therefore, they will always have value. For these reasons, gold and silver preserve and protect wealth.

Gold and silver are both precious and rare, but they are more than that. As metals, they also exhibit uniformity. Once refined, any gold or silver coin is indistinguishable from any other. Conversely, diamonds lack uniformity, therefore they are not a good candidate to be used as “money.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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