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June 29, 2024 Readings

Attempting a new format (that I will probably fiddle with for a week or so) for sharing articles of interest. Below you will find a number of links to those articles. Note that I may add a few before the day ends so check back. Hope this works for everyone…

First-Responder Trauma: A New Framework for Activists

The Future We Deserve

Climate Disaster Preparation Guide | by Climate Survivor | Jun, 2024 | Medium

The World Lost Two-Thirds Of Its Wildlife In 50 Years. We Are to Blame

How Does Anyone Still Care About This Bullshit?

Julian Assange Is Free. Washington Crafter ‘A Face Saving Deal’. Massive Violation of Habeas Corpus as a Favour to Washington. Paul C. Roberts

Health Prepping: Microbiome Maintenance is Key to…Everything

The Coming US Budget Disaster Will Impoverish Americans | Mises Institute

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: 10 Geopolitical / Financial Risks to the Global Economy

Welsh Police Pay Home Visit To Man For Displaying Reform UK Political Sign

American Pravda: JFK, LBJ, and Our Great National Shame, by Ron Unz

The Spread of Artificial Intelligence. The Emergence of ‘Deep Fakes’, Masterful Distortions. ‘Who Controls the Past Controls the Future’

Fact-Checking Network Says Online Face Checks Aren’t Censorship

US Readies To Evacuate Americans From Lebanon If War Erupts, Marines En Route | ZeroHedge

The UN: “We must all work to eradicate (hate speech) completely.

UN food chief: Poorest areas have zero harvests left

Where is the Sense of Urgency? – by Matt Orsagh

A water war is looming between Mexico and the US. Neither side will win | CNN

 

Scary Stat Alert: The Government Liquidity Index

Scary Stat Alert: The Government Liquidity Index

Obscure but historically accurate crash signal

Not that we need any more scary statistics, but here’s one that might be worth watching. From the Brave browser’s AI summarizer:

Government liquidity index

The government liquidity index is a metric that measures the ease or difficulty of trading in government securities, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. It is a gauge of deviations in yields from a fair-value model, indicating the level of liquidity in the market.

Measures of liquidity in the Treasury market are near crisis levels, raising concerns about underlying fragility in the functioning of the market. This can lead to historically large daily swings in yields, making it difficult for traders to carry out trades.

Government Intervention

In response to these concerns, the U.S. Treasury has announced that it will begin regularly buying back its bonds starting May 29, for the first time in over two decades. This move is aimed at improving liquidity in the market and reducing the risk of market mayhem.

In a recent tweet, market analyst Tavi Costa explains what this means:

The liquidity index for US government securities is deteriorating significantly, now at its worst levels since the European debt crisis in 2011.

Notably, it’s already more severe than the environment during the Covid crash in 2020.

What is even more alarming today is that this is all happening while the US currently has one of the largest interest rate differentials compared to other developed economies in history, yet liquidity appears to be eroding.

This situation is setting the stage for the US to experience its own “Bank of England moment” as we approach elections.

In September 2022, UK yields saw one of the steepest increases in history after the announcement of £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts, which raised concerns over increased borrowing needs and debt sustainability.

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

Carol Roth: The Death of Property Rights

Carol Roth: The Death of Property Rights

And the end of the US as we know it

Property rights are the bedrock of a free society.

Wealthy people become wealthy because they own assets that can appreciate.

A society of renters is not a society of free individuals.

The New World Order idea isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a case of shared interests among the people who own all the assets.

The 2030 World Economic Forum roadmap begins with “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” Note the “you’ll” rather than “we’ll.” They don’t include themselves in the group who will become renters.

Throughout history, people without property rights have been neither happy nor wealthy, and in many cases they’ve starved or otherwise lost their lives.

“If you want to destroy the foundation of the US, bring in a central bank digital currency.”

Gold Hit With One-Two Punch

Gold Hit With One-Two Punch

Read on for the good news

On Friday, two announcements combined to hit gold and silver about as hard as they’ve ever been hit.

First, the US jobs report, as usual, came in far hotter than expected, which led credulous headline readers to conclude that the economy is booming and interest rates will have to stay higher for longer. If true, that’s bad for gold and silver, which don’t do well in a high-real-interest-rate environment.

But it’s not true. The US government is all about narrative management, especially in an election year. And the jobs report is where it runs its biggest scam.

Zero Hedge does a public service by dissecting each monthly jobs report to show, basically, the following: The number of full-time jobs is shrinking and all net jobs growth is in part-time work. And the number of jobs held by workers born in the US is shrinking while net new jobs are going to people who were born elsewhere. These are not signs of a healthy economy and definitely don’t point towards monetary tightening. Read the full analysis here: Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Years.

The other announcement was that China’s central bank, the biggest buyer of gold for the past few years, didn’t buy any in May.

Gold Price Sinks to 1-Month Low as China Stops Buying

(BullionVault) – Gold prices sank in all major currencies on Friday, dropping $80 an ounce in 6 hours on the news that the People’s Bank of China didn’t buy any bullion for its official reserves last month.

That snapped 18 months of continuous gold buying by Beijing as May set a new record-high gold price for the 3rd month running in US Dollar terms.

Now For The Good News

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

Where You (Shouldn’t) Store It: Nine Places

Where You (Shouldn’t) Store It: Nine Places

Think like a thief…

A marketing email just came from Michael Major, author of a book called No Grid Survival Projects, on where NOT to hide your valuables. His ideas are sometimes counterintuitive, which makes them potentially useful:

9 Hiding Spots In Your House Where Looters Always Look First

You may think you already have it figured out for how you can keep your stockpile a secret and hidden from any thieves or looters who may break in.

Unfortunately, thieves and looters can be a bit smarter than you may think. They’re already taking a major risk by breaking into any home, and they won’t want to leave empty-handed in exchange for taking that risk.

Furthermore, many thieves and looters will already be experienced and know exactly where to look in your home for your valuables or stockpiles.

That’s why it’s critical to be extra creative with where you hide your stockpiles and avoid hiding them in areas where looters are likely to look first.

Here are the nine hiding spots in your house that looters will always look for first:

Attics And Basements
It’s common practice for preppers to stockpile their food, water, and other supplies either in the attics or the basements of their homes.

The logic for doing so certainly makes sense. This way their stockpiles are out of the way and out of sight of any guests who come to visit. It’s important to keep your stockpiles as much of a secret as you can.

Just because your neighbors and regular guests are friendly now doesn’t mean that they won’t come knocking on your door demanding supplies later.

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

Creeping Fascism, Part 1: Just The Beginning

Creeping Fascism, Part 1: Just The Beginning

“Way crueler than any dictatorship”

I keep a “creeping fascism” file with the intention of tracking governments’ erosion of their citizens’ rights and freedoms. But the file is filling up so fast that the first few articles in this series will have to be “data-dump” cut-and-past jobs rather than in-depth analyses of any specific depredation. So here goes:

JK Rowling Could Be Imprisoned For “Misgendering” Trans People Under New Law

(Modernity) – Author JK Rowling could be prosecuted for “misgendering” trans people under Scotland’s new hate crime law that comes into force today, an SNP minister has admitted.

A person could now be imprisoned for up to seven years if they engage in “insulting” behaviour towards ‘protected’ groups, and the prosecution only needs to prove that the hatred was “likely” rather than “intended”.

Siobhian Brown, the SNP’s community safety minister, stated that calling a “trans woman” (a man) “he” “could be reported and it could be investigated. Whether or not the police would think it was criminal is up to Police Scotland for that.”

During their training program on enforcing the new law, police officers were taught that even the content of plays and comedy gigs should be considered as potential hate crimes.

Rowling has vowed to continue calling biological males men and says she will now be targeted for telling the truth.


Blame Canada? Justin Trudeau Creates Blueprint for Dystopia in Horrific Speech Bill

(Racket) – Life sentences for speech? Pre-crime detention? Ex post facto law? Anonymous accusers? It’s all in Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms Bill,” a true “threat to democracy”

On February 21st, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a press conference in Edmonton, announcing his government’s decision to introduce the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63…

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

Wall Street Journal Boosts Gold FOMO

Wall Street Journal Boosts Gold FOMO

They hate that everyone suddenly wants physical metal

The Wall Street Journal just published a long article (reposted via MSN) lamenting the fact that everyone suddenly wants gold. So thanks, WSJ, for the FOMO boost:

Inside the 21st Century Gold Rush

(MSN) – Eric Vazquez, a lineman for a power company in southwest Florida, says he’s holding a lot more gold than most financial advisers would recommend. Not just in his portfolio, but also in bars and coins spread between several secret locations.

It is a strategy for a world that he worries is growing more chaotic. The government keeps spending beyond its means. Stock prices can crash from a tweet. Ensuring his wife and children go to bed at night in peace, Vazquez said, requires owning tangible assets, not just a claim on them through some exchange-traded fund.

“At least in my adult life, nothing’s gotten better,” said Vazquez, who is 33. “And I just feel like I want to take as much of my own livelihood, my own safety, my own family’s safety, into my own hands.”

Worries about war, discord and mounting government debt have fueled a worldwide rush by individuals and institutions into what Wall Street calls “physical gold”— bars, coins, jewelry and nuggets. Widespread stockpiling has helped lift prices more than 40% since October 2022, to $2,367 a troy ounce.

The climb has at times perplexed analysts, because it didn’t coincide with a typical feature of prior rallies: mounting bullish bets in futures, options and ETF markets. Also, gold pays no income, and generally becomes less attractive to investors when rising interest rates drive up the payouts from other relatively safe assets, like bonds. Yet the metal’s sharpest ascent occurred between this past February and April, just when the Fed started signaling that rates might stay higher for longer then Wall Street expected.

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

 

Because We’re Still Not Sufficiently Indebted…

Because We’re Still Not Sufficiently Indebted…

Now the government wants your home equity

Zero Hedge just posted a long look at how the “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) industry now accounts for about $700 billion of largely unreported “phantom debt”. This, speculates ZH, is why the economy hasn’t fallen into recession.

Now come the unintended consequences:

Pernicious effects of BNPL credit are piling up: the Harris Poll survey conducted last month, provides some crucial clues about how Americans use BNPL. For one, splitting payments into smaller chunks encourages more spending, obviously.

More than half of respondents who use BNPL said it allowed them to purchase more than they could afford, while nearly a quarter agreed with the statement that their BNPL spending was “out of control.” Harris also found that 23% of users said they couldn’t afford the majority of what they bought without splitting payments, while more than a third turned to the services after maxing out credit cards…

…In other words, not only do we not know just how big the BNPL problem is, it is actively masked by credit agencies which can’t accurately calculate the FICO score of tens of millions of Americans, and as a result their credit capacity is artificially boosted with far more debt than they can handle… and that’s why the US consumer has been so “strong” in recent years, defying all conventional credit metrics.

BNPL is obviously dangerous and stupid because the last thing working people need is another way to wrack up more unpayable debt. But it’s not the worst thing the US is considering:

Enter…Government-Funded Home Equity Loans

$3 trillion could be injected into the U.S. economy without any federal spending by tweaking this corner of the mortgage market, ‘Oracle of Wall Street’ says

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

It’s Not Just Gold. This Is A Full-On Commodities Bull Market

It’s Not Just Gold. This Is A Full-On Commodities Bull Market

Which, ironically, is a good reason to be careful

First, uranium had a nice run. But it was all alone for a depressingly long time.

That changed a couple of months ago as gold, silver, and copper began runs of their own:

Nickel, meanwhile, has staged a nice recovery from its brutal late 2023 flash crash:

The point? This isn’t just gold breaking out of its trading range. We’re witnessing the launch of a broad-based commodities bull market. And history says that once such a thing gets started, it can persist for a very long time (on the following chart, CAGR stands for “compound annual growth rate”).

Another way of analyzing this trend is to compare commodities to equities. The next chart is a bit outdated but its point remains valid: Commodities are dirt cheap relative to the S&P 500, and if history repeats, gold, copper, etc., should outperform tech and financial stocks for another decade or two.

Keep a Cool Head

This is potentially a once-in-a-generation cycle, with “real” replacing “financial” in the esteem of momentum traders. But don’t jump in with both feet. The charts on this page contain multiple bull market corrections. And after the nice recent run, a double-digit percentage loss for many commodities won’t be surprising.

So continue to buy high-quality commodities stocks gradually via low-ball bids, dollar cost averaging, or put writing.

Why The Gold Rush Is Just Beginning, In Six Charts

Why The Gold Rush Is Just Beginning, In Six Charts

A lot of embarrassed investment advisors out there…

Gold blew through $2400/oz this morning:


And the world’s central banks continue to add gold to their monetary reserves. Note that the real action coincided with the outbreak of the Ukraine war, when the US started slapping sanctions on everyone in sight. De-dollarization is a trend with legs.


A case can be made that China alone is driving the current gold bull market. Note how the metal’s price tracks the increase in People’s Bank of China gold reserves.


Silver just pierced its 5-year resistance. If it holds above $30/oz, $35 becomes the next big test.


One of the problems with gold miner stocks has been the fact that mining costs are rising, which offsets some of the benefits of a higher gold price. But that’s changing, as gold rises faster than mining costs, widening miners’ margins and lighting a fire under their stocks. See Finally, Some Good-Looking Gold/Silver Miner Charts.


The Next Price Driver

Is the gold rush played out? Well, 98% of mainstream investment advisors currently have less than 5% of their clients’ money in precious metals. Imagine all the tense upcoming meetings in which clients demand to know why they don’t own the year’s best-performing assets — and advisors apologize and promise to add gold to their mix. Just 1% of global investible capital flowing into gold would send it to the moon.

Art of the Collapse, May 2024

Art of the Collapse, May 2024

Let’s play “match the satire to the atrocity”

There are so many wars (and related civil unrest) these days, that it’s hard to keep track of which meme/satire/diatribe is aimed at which crisis.

But April included April Fools’ Day, so at least we have a logical place to start:

CNN Publishes Real News Story For April Fools’ Day

(Babylon Bee) – Fooling thousands of readers in a prank that the cable news organization said was “just for fun,” CNN published a real news story for April Fools’ Day this year.

The story simply contained a list of facts, with no embellishment, editorializing, or invented details. The story also didn’t cite shaky “anonymous sources” and only quoted firsthand witnesses to the event. It was completely factual without any errors whatsoever.

Baffled CNN fans immediately knew something was up.

“I was reading this story, and I was like, ‘Wait, what is this?'” said one man in New York who relies on CNN for his fake news every morning. “They really got me good. Then I looked up at the calendar and I realized I’d been duped. A classic gag!”

And Scotland passed a hilariously draconian censorship law, which resulted in the police being swamped by prank complaints and the First Minister resigning.

Meanwhile, “squatters” became a thing:

As for the rest, I’ll just toss them out and you can play “match the satire to the atrocity”:

Recession Watch: Why isn’t “inevitable” becoming “imminent”?

Recession Watch: Why isn’t “inevitable” becoming “imminent”?

Because “fiscal dominance”…

So that recession I keep whining about still hasn’t arrived. What’s going on out there to keep “inevitable” from becoming “imminent”?

It might be as simple as a government borrowing insane amounts of money and giving it to arms makers, banks, and AI companies.

This “fiscal dominance” strategy invokes some serious unintended consequences, including stubborn inflation and rising interest rates. New car loans, for instance, are now more expensive than they were prior to the 2008-2009 crash:

While bank credit is falling into pre-crash territory:

Offices are emptying out:

But unemployment is ridiculously low. With everyone working, how can growth possibly turn negative? Well, if everyone is working multiple part-time jobs and still unable to make ends meet, that might do it:

Meanwhile, lots of under-the-surface stats support the gloom-and-doom thesis. The next chart compares the stock prices of a major shipper and a major pawn shop chain:

According to financial analyst Danielle DiMartino Booth, we might already be in a recession:

The Day We Stopped Trusting Media

The Day We Stopped Trusting Media

Imagine future election campaigns

One of the first posts in this newsletter’s Shrinking Trust Horizon series was about how “deep fake” technology will make fake images, videos, and audio recordings almost indistinguishable from the real thing. This will kill millions of modeling and acting jobs, while weaponizing audio and video in all kinds of disturbing ways.

That day has apparently arrived:

Baltimore high school teacher arrested over deepfake audio of principal

A Maryland high school teacher has been arrested for allegedly using AI to deepfake a bogus recording of his principal making racist comments.

Dazhon Darien, 31, is accused of creating the hoax audio of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert.

Mr Eiswert was placed on leave and had police outside his home amid death threats he received over the fake clip.

Mr Darien was held at an airport after a security check over a gun in his bag found an arrest warrant against him.

He faces charges of stalking, theft, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness.

Baltimore County Schools Superintendent Myriam Rogers said the school, as well as the Baltimore County Police Department, launched an investigation on 17 January when they were made aware of the voice recording.

Detectives requested a forensic analysis of the audio, which found it was not authentic.

In the recording, Mr Eiswert’s deepfaked voice is heard making disparaging comments about black students’ test scores, black teachers and Jews.

Police believe Mr Darien, the Baltimore-area school’s athletic director, made the recording to retaliate against Mr Eiswert because he was pursuing an investigation into potential mishandling of district funds.

Mr Darien had authorised a payment of nearly $2,000 (£1,600) to his roommate, falsely claiming the roommate was an assistant coach for the Pikesville girls’ soccer team, reports the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

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

How Far Can The Yen Fall Before Japan Goes Bankrupt?

How Far Can The Yen Fall Before Japan Goes Bankrupt?

We may be about to find out

Japan’s ongoing march to national bankruptcy has been a recurring theme here. See:

Japan Is In That Box
Japan Takes Another Step Towards the Cliff
How a Country Goes Bankrupt, In 10 Steps

Now the death spiral has entered a new phase, with the yen/dollar exchange rate heading straight down:

To restate the “Japan collapse” thesis, soaring government debt will eventually cause the yen to crater and/or interest rates to spike. The Bank of Japan will then face an impossible choice: Support the yen with even higher interest rates and watch government interest expense rise to national bankruptcy levels. Or push interest rates down to keep a lid on debt costs and cause the yen to collapse.

As the above chart illustrates, the “cause the yen to collapse” part of the story seems to be happening. Interest rates, meanwhile, are now spiking in a mirror image of the yen’s collapse.

Decision Time

So it’s decision time for Japan’s leaders. What will they choose? And — more importantly — what happens when the global financial system realizes that it no longer matters?

Japan is a big country, so its impending crisis creates risks for the global economy. But it’s more important as a signal to the US, Europe, and China that we’re heading in exactly the same direction.

In other words, the Fed is in the same box as the Bank of Japan, and that box is shrinking with every new trillion dollars of debt.

Eventual Financial Death Spiral Now Imminent – John Rubino

Eventual Financial Death Spiral Now Imminent – John Rubino

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino warned nearly four months ago of a “U.S. Financial Death Spiral.”  This past week, Bank of America caught up to Rubino and issued a warning about a “US dollar death spiral” because the federal government was going deeper in the red by creating “$1 trillion in new debt every 100 days.”  Maybe this is why gold and Bitcoin have been hitting new all-time highs day after day.  Rubino says, “When a building was worth $200 million and someone sells it for $48 million, that means there is a loss that someone has to take.  Those losses are mostly on the books of regional and local banks.  So, they are in big trouble financially. . . . You will get these massive bank runs that the government will have to step in and bail out.  This is one of many things that will happen in the not-so-distant future.  This will impact government finances in a scary way that will send people’s attention to the currency.  In other words, if we have another $3 trillion bailout on top of everything else that’s going on . . .what is that going to do to the dollar? . . . . Currencies are being inflated away with all these bailouts, deficits, wars and all these things that are going on that are bad for the currency.  So, people start selling government bonds, which push up interest rates and blows up even more bad real estate and paper . . . until you get a debt spiral, a real live financial death spiral than cannot be fixed. . . . I was talking to a real estate guy the other day, and he said this is not just inevitable, it is imminent.  It is happening now.  It is happening quickly, and it is going to hit the headlines. . . . In this case, what is inevitable in commercial real estate is also looking imminent.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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