Approaching Britain’s Final Hour of Independence


FIC-Y 6-19-2016

The FTSE share market index for London has long reflected the problem with the EU. Despite the lies and propaganda that the EU has been some great miracle for Britain, the low in the FTSE took place in 1974. There was a fierce bear market in the FTSE which fell into a sharp low AFTER joining the EU reflecting more regulation and an oppressive external government imposed upon the British. It was actually Margaret Thatcher who reversed the fortunes for Britain and we see the share market exploded with her economic reforms, but that would be stopped by Tony Blair. The rally which unfolded in the FTSE lasted for 25 years until 1999. That is when Gordon Brown sold the British gold reserves. Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 until 2007. That shift to Labour resulted in the stagnation of the British economy reflected within the price action of the FTSE which has never been able to close higher than 1999 ever since.

British GDP Growth since 1949The FTSE made a new intraday high in 2015, however, it has not been able to close above the 1999 high for the past 17 years. This is two 8.6 year cycle durations warning that we should now begin to breakout to the upside during this next cycle, but why is the real question. The answer brings into focus the primary mover behind such a rally. This implies that the pound will FALL sharply. That may indeed be the result of Britain surrendering its independence to be ruled by the EU where it has lost 72 objections every time so far. The FTSE will rally as the only domestic means of a hedge against the government. The stock market will rise simply because people will park money in equity rather than banks or trust the currency. If Britain does not leave the EU, its currency will collapse as will the euro.

The EU even stole the British waters away from their fisherman. Britain has always been looked down upon from Continental Europe in private meeting I have ever had for decades. Britain has also been seen as an outsider and resentment has run rather deep simply because the English language became the main language in world commerce. Even in air traffic control, pilots flying internationally must speak English.

We can see the technical resistance stands at 65330 and technical support lies at 49751. This pattern is a holding pattern of stagnation. It has reflected the overall economic decline Britain has endured ever since joining the EU back in 1973.

There is little hope that Britain can be save from the EU. The vote is likely to be fixed because if Britain left, the EU would collapse. There is far too much at stake for career politicians. In such conditions, there is no limit to their machinations behind the curtain. I will reveal some of that this week as we approach Britain’s final hour of independence.

Tariffs – Labor – Consumer


Union Strike - r


QUESTION: If Donald trump issues a tariff on countries like china will that cause the price of goods from china to go up in price?? Also is he correct by saying it will bring jobs back to the united states by doing this? Would overall implementing a tariff a good thing or is it a bad thing.

ANSWER: It would not work and it would have a negative impact. Most people do not realize that China deals with Europe more than the U.S. does. For 2015, the U.S. sold 116,186.3 billion to China and bought 481,880.8 billion from China. People complain about sending jobs overseas, but no one ever talks about the fact that it reduces costs for consumers. To subsidize jobs, consumers need to pay higher prices. The better model is to improve one’s skills to rise in value for employment. It is a national’s comparative advantage. Yes, we have lost the low-level manual labor jobs to countries overseas that were not unionized or overvalued for the skill they presented. The key to advancing is to keep pace with changes. As a programmer, if you refused to learn new skills, you would be obsolete and only able to code in DOS, which is not even in any Windows platform. Who would hire you?

Added Note from Centinel2012: In principle Marty is correct but Trump is also correct as one must also consider the money flows and China is buying the US (Treasuries) with cheap goods; at some point they will own the federal government and we will then be as colony of China.

A Reader’s Comment on the Problems with Safe-Deposit Boxes


Safe Deposit Box

COMMENT:

I am an attorney in Texas. We have been advising clients NOT to use safe deposit boxes for years. Examples are:

We had a client involved in a multiparty suit. I got a court order and sent somebody over to a decedent’s safe deposit box with witnesses and a video camera. The bottom of the box was covered in diamonds. It was closed and locked. When the suit settled, an attorney for the lead clients didn’t think to repeat this process when an opposing party, the sole holder of a key and legal access to the box, turned over the key. This individual was an international jewelry company employee who retired early, the week of the settlement.

The box had no diamonds. Not one. The bank’s log book was missing pages for the relevant dates. The bank was immune from suit under federal law. The key holder walked after expensive litigation. Insufficient evidence. So you are largely out of luck, if your box turns up empty.

Then there was the S&L crisis. One closed branch had a security guard, by bankruptcy court order, who let people into their boxes 5 days a week. But the security alarm company had turned off the alarms. One Monday, the guard showed up and there was water trickling out of the vault door. Sprinklers had been running all weekend, filling the vault and the boxes. Again, the box holders were out of luck. Gold and jewels were fine, but legal documents, paintings, photos, watches, electronics, collectables made of paper or other water sensitive materials, etc. were damaged or destroyed. No recourse. I hope nobody had an original copy of the Declaration of Independence there.

In the 1930s, boxes were systematically drilled by government officials looking for illegal gold. No warrants, as we understand them. Countless claims of government agent looted boxes were ignored. How do you prove what was in it? Recall, we had a video of the contents of a box, and only one person could legally access it, and there was always a security guard to stop unlawful access and the lead litigants still lost.

Finally there is a splendid movie called the Bank Job. It portrays a true story about a bank in London which had its safe deposit vault breached. Really incredible, true story, but one takeaway was that hundreds of box holders refused to identify what had been stolen from their boxes, or reclaim their treasures that were recovered.

So the government suspicions about illegal storage of ill gotten gains are obviously often true. We tell our clients not to use storage controlled by government regulated financial institutions and instead to find private, secure, fireproof and waterproof means of storing things of value. This is probably the same story as the buried Roman coin stories. Every government becomes organized crime, eventually, if they didn’t start that way in the first place.

BTW, a fireproof safe is of little value if it has perishable items and fire suppression, or flood, or plumbing leak water gets into it. And a second safe with some valuables is useful for home invasion purposes. Faux jewelry, some cash, gold coins and convincing some copies of things like wills and insurance policies are good. If they hold a gun to your family’s head and demand that you open your safe, having an offsite second one is handy. BTW, the Russians are returning to typewriters without computers for their most sensitive operations. Stealing filing cabinets full of paper is much harder than filling a flash drive, as Snowden has demonstrated

Wayne Swan Rewrites History to Support Living Off of Other People’s Money


USA GDP 1960 - 2012

It is truly amazing how biased socialists are to the point that they just want to rob anyone who has more than they do and rewrite history to further their political agenda. Wayne Swan, former deputy prime minister of Australia, wrote a political piece for the Guardian that is total rubbish with the heading: “Cutting corporate tax won’t create jobs. It’s yesterday’s solution to our problems.” Swan boldly proclaims that the tax reductions of Reagan and Thatcher did nothing.

Here is the real economic growth of the USA since 1960. You will notice a sharp rally when Reagan cut the taxes. In fact, Reagan created more jobs and revenue by lowering taxes. The pretend “trickle-down economics” these people hate so much actually worked. Obama raised taxes, and he will go down in history for having the lowest economic growth rate of any American president.

Facts and evidence do not matter to socialists. They always support their ideas with fiction to justify robbing other people’s money

Is the Fed Losing Credibility?


Indecisive

The Federal Reserve pushed back its plans to raise its benchmark short-term interest rate, which was widely expected following the jobs report previously. Yet this was not a credible day for the Fed in the least as they are starting to appear to be confused and skitzofrantic. Fed credibility is beginning to create a crisis behind the scenes generating doubts about monetary policy moving forward. The Fed’s monetary policy appears ai9mlessly wondering trying to figure out what to do with conflicting problems on both side of the dividing line. It’s not clear that the Fed has a grip on any theory and is revealing that those at the top perceived with so much power, are helplessly a drift in a ship without sails, rigging, a rudder, or an engine.

Fed Velocity of Money May 1 2016

Fed Excess ReservesConsequently, after a two-day policy meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee emerged unanimously voting to hold the federal funds rate between 0.25% and 0.50%, that they are paying banks to hoard cash in excessive reserves. They are in bed with the bankers who tell them then need a place to park money without risk. The entire idea of quantitative easing was to inject cash to “stimulate” the economy. But that policy never achieved its goal and the US economy bounced back, but it was a dead-cat bounce. This has been the worse recovery in Post-Depression history because they have paid bankers not to lend money. Paying bankers .50% to hoard money has caused the velocity of money to collapse altogether. European banks are shipping cash to that States and parking it at the Fed to achieve that same riskless trade.

The Fed cannot break free of the bankers to see what they are actually doing is not stimulating the economy, but causing it to contract.

Here we have the Dow electing our Daily Bearish Reversal and Gold electing a Daily Bullish Reversal all because they FAILED to show the world they have this under control. Yet this reaction from the markets is terribly interesting. The Dow declines because the Fed DID NOT RAISE RATES, and gold rallies for the same reason. This is counter-trend to the general “fundamental” expectations.  The Dow was doing well with the prospect of a rate hike until the jobs report and it rallied but stopped dead with the Weekly Bullish Reversal at 17800. Gold crashed but held our critical Bearish Reversal at 1206 and bounced. While the gold crowd thinks a rally is good because the market will crash, at the same time we have the Dow declining with lower rates instead of higher rates. These trends are showing extreme stress in the financial markets overall.

Department of Labor Changes Interpretation of Act to Raise Minimum Wages


Dept-Labor
The U.S. Department of Labor, acting on a directive of President Obama issued back in March 2014, has announced changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Beginning this fall, the act will basically double the amount of money workers must make to be exempt from federal overtime pay requirements. Essentially, employees with gross salaries under $45,000 who work more than 40 hours a week must be paid overtime.

Obama could not increase the minimum wage rate through Congress, so he instructed the Labor Department to do it through the backdoor. This will definitely kill jobs and cut hours to ensure employees do not exceed 40 hours. A $15 an hour job for 40 hours comes in at $31,200 annually. By raising the threshold, Obama has more likely than not created an incentive not to hire full-time workers. This is what we get when someone has no idea of how the real world works.

BREXIT Polls at 55% – Will the Euro Crash & Burn?


British GDP Growth since 1949

Euro HangingWe provided this chart in our BREXIT Report which says it all. For all the scare mongering how Britain will be worse off if it leaves the EU, this chart demonstrates how the politicians are lying. Britain has seen only declining economic growth since it joined the EU and these are the British government’s own numbers.

Caution will be necessary. If Britain leaves and they cannot cover up that much against the EU, then the pound will survive and the Euro will witness a contagion begin as other states will be driven to hold referendums.

What nobody wants to talk about in the press is how Merkel’s decision to let in the refugees was unilateral. She has fought for the federalization of Europe, but went and made a decides that binds everyone. Girls are being raped in Sweden and Germany. This whole this is a real crisis. Calling those against it racists just demonstrates how abusive these politicians are to defend their mistakes. The refugees are not a race, it is a religion.

Saudi Arabia Banning Short Selling Against the Currency Peg


Saudi Arabia Flag

Saudi Arabia has banned financial products that amount to a short-position against the rial. The measure indicates high degree to which the peg is starting to come under attack. The government has announced a wave of layoffs in the public sector. This is an absolute first. The Middle East was considered beyond economics because of oil. Everything is changing.

We will see the same situation with respect to the Euro. If Britain does not leave the EU, it will stand in silence and what its financial standing in the world collapse. Brussels will adopt the same type of policies and just make it illegal to disagree with their policies.

Innovation — Unemployment — Business Cycle


CAPITALISM

QUESTION:

Hi Martin,

Thank you for everything that you do.

Comments have been made – to which you yourself have been alluding to for some time – that technology is replacing jobs at such a rapid rate, unemployment will be a major issue in the very near future.  However, these commentators conclude that this proves that capitalism has failed.

Obviously, since capitalism has been interfered with for decades, it can’t have failed since it has not been allowed to be practiced unfettered.

My question is, if we were living in a capitalist system without intervention, how would the system correct itself?  What I mean is since corporate profits depend upon consumption, and consumption depends upon wages from the masses, then how would capitalism prevent very high unemployment?  (This goes back to your example of Henry Ford providing higher wages to his employees, so they could buy the cars he was producing.)

Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide on this very critical issue.

Danny

ANSWER: People who claim that capitalism has failed are seriously burdened with propaganda. Capitalism is freedom, and socialism is effectively the lack of freedom. True, we have done nothing but interfere with the economy since the theories of Marx and Keynes were adopted. Yet, Paul Volcker admitted that this “New Economics” has failed. This whole theory was based on the idea that government could manipulate society to produce utopia, but they have never been able to achieve that. Larry Summers has admitted that publicly, but the socialists do not listen because they want to rob their neighbors.

Innovation comes in waves and technological advancements always displace jobs. The problem has been that people do not improve their worth, yet they demand pay hikes just because they want more money. If you go to Miami, the number one language is Spanish. They want to raise the minimum wage to $15 instead of encouraging people to learn English to broaden their worth. Anyone who has computer skills starts at $15+. So why should people without employable skills earn the same as a person with technology skills?

I had a friend who was a pilot during the Korean War. He told me that many of the old pilots could not make the transition when the new jets came in because they were unable to respond as quickly to the increased speed. Every field moves through the same advancement curve. Unions attempt to freeze skills by demanding more money rather than teaching people to adapt and move with the cycle.

The system will always correct itself as it has done throughout history, long before Marx/Keynes. It is always subject to the business cycle, which is influenced by many factors including weather. Capitalism began with the Black Death. Before then, it was a highly socialistic world or serfs. You worked the land and kept 20% of the food in return for a house to live in, and you could run into the castle when danger came. The Black Death killed about 50% of the workforce and the scarcity of labor resulted in landlords being willing to pay wages. The shortage of labor gave birth to capitalism. So, there will always be cycles to the economy.

Romans invented corporations. They bought and sold shares in the marketplace, and that freedom of capital created Rome (not centralized planning). The system has always been self-correcting. Technology will advance, which will displace jobs and cause unemployment to rise. In turn, corporate profits will be brought down and war will typically emerge to thin the herd. Eventually, the next generation becomes better equipped to ride the next wave of innovation.

Claude Frédéric Bastiat – The Father of Libertarianism


Bastiat Claude Frédéric (1801 – 1850)

Claude Frédéric Bastiat (b. 1801-1850) was a French, classical liberal theorist, political economist, Freemason, and member of the French National Assembly whose fundamental ideas have provided a foundation for libertarianism. In economics, Bastiat is remembered for his concept of opportunity cost and for introducing the parable of the broken window or the “glazier’s fallacy.” Essentially, a boy breaks a pane of glass in a shopkeeper’s store. The owner gets angry for it will cost him six francs. The argument is that this is good for the economy, for now the glazier profits by installing a new pane of glass, thereby increasing the flow of money within the system. Thus, the linear conclusion is to go around and break all the windows in town to stimulate the economy. But what if the glazier paid the boy to go break windows in town? Then it becomes fraud.

Hiroshima, 1945

Bastiat argued that there was an opportunity cost that was not being viewed. The six francs the shopkeeper must spend on the pane of glass may have been spent in a completely different sector to stimulate that part of the economy. Some have taken the “glazier’s fallacy” and applied it to war. Granted, war is seen as good for the economy for it reduces unemployment (and population) and compels defense spending.

The Invisible Hand entered and compelled developments in weaponry, such as the creation of nuclear weapons. True, nuclear blasts ended the war in the Pacific. However, it is also true that further development led to nuclear energy for power. The opportunity cost cannot be determined so easily because the question of nuclear energy could have taken perhaps 10 to 20 more years to develop, yet it would have been possible to do so without war.

Bastiat proposition of the “glazier’s fallacy” showed that we could create all sorts of innovation, reduce population excess, and create full employment by just going to war with everyone, everywhere, just like the glazier who hires the boy to break all the windows in town. Does this really produce economic stimulus or is it merely diverting resources and destroying opportunity in other areas?

Tractor

Governments create public works as their first move to stimulate the economy, but that is the mirror image of destroying everything. Fine, we can create bridges and roads few people travel on, but this comes at the price of diverting resources that would have created better economic stimulus through other, more permanent economic areas. Once the building, bridge, or road is finished, the workers have no permanent job. Such stimulation rarely stimulates the economy.

Roosevelt’s WPA worked, not for stimulation reasons, but because there was a shift in employment with the combustion engine displacing people from jobs in agriculture. Moving from horses to tractors in 1925 set in motion a major decline in employment, which the dust bowl took to a whole new level.

terminator-R

What will technology shifts do today? Unemployment is rising in the lower job markets where robots can replace such tasks. With robots, there are no pensions, health benefits, or people like Hillary yelling to raise the minimum wage to $15, which would only hasten the shift by raising unemployment sharply. As for war, government is already working hard to replace soldiers with robots.

The danger of this advancement to robots is that governments will use them as police and they need not worry about the loyalty of the troops. Revolution typically unfolds when the military turns against their master. The best way to prevent that is to eliminate humanity in the police force.

Bastiat’s “glazier’s fallacy” is still relevant today. The reason why is rather simple. We live and function according to a bell curve. Anything to excess destroys the host. Yes, breaking one pane of glass does not alter the entire economy. However, if the glazier paid the boy to go break all the windows in town, all other segments within the economy would suffer.

Everything within reason, yet government is never reasonable.