Brunson – the Alleged Pastor


 

 

The Turkish court has rejected the appeal to release Andrew Brunson, who is the alleged US pastor at the center of a dispute between Ankara and Washington. While he has been there for 23 years, his new Church of the Resurrection has existed for less than a year and it had only 25 members. From the photo, it appears that the prayer room consists of about 40 seats. There is no professional pulpit, but drums and a lectern with speakers. Nobody even knows about the financing of the church.

Following the Turkey coup of July 15th, 2016, Brunson was arrested by the Turkish security authorities in October 2016. He was charged with espionage and the attempt to overthrow the Turkish government. According to the newspaper Sözcü , Brunson wrote in an e-mail to a friend five days after the coup: “The Turkish people have not taken sides as usual for the Turkish military. Everything is going badly, but in the end, we will be the winners. “ This one of the statements of Brunson that forms the charges in his indictment.

According to the indictment, Brunson also met with the head of the Gülen movement for the Aegean, Bekir Baz, on several occasions before the coup. Brunson apparently told the prosecutor that he did not know a person named Bekir Baz and had never met a member of the Gülen movement knowingly. He has also been charged with being involved with members of the PKK. Brunson also denies trying to help Syrian refugees.

The indictment against Brunson also alleged that Brunson was kicked out of the Church of the New Birth between 2008 and 2009 because it did not support terror. He then went abroad for about one and a half months. Brunson then returned to Turkey, and he opened a new church in Alsancak in Bornova Street. 

Trump demands Brunson back and Erdogan refuses. The question remains if Trump even does know the real story of Brunson and in fact does anyone? It some seem obsessive that Erdogan just does not deport him, send him back to the states, and deny him any right to return. That would end the upfront issue and then the real build-up of tension might pass and relieve Turkey as a nation.

Who is the Fool? The Borrower or the Lender?


Many people worry about over-indebtedness and point to a default of borrowers. It is interesting how the view of debt is always the low-life borrower. In reality, the real stupidity rests with the lender. Many are pointing to US corporate debt and stating that it has grown to an estimated US $ 7 trillion and they paint this as high-risk bonds and corporate loans which have been issued over the past decade. Of course, there were some who were foolish to issue variable interest rate bonds. Those companies are likely to find themselves in trouble. But there are others who issued long-term fixed bonds at low rates. Our advise to corporate clients was to borrow as much as possible at fixed rates for 50 to 100 years while the fools were willing to buy. Other major corps issued 100-year bonds including Walt Disney Company (DIS) and Coca-Cola (KO). The loser will be the BUYER, not the ISSUER.  It was a fool’s market to buy such fixed rate bonds for 100 years.

When Greece got in trouble, what is the first solution economists ALWAYS recommend? A debt haircut!. , which in most cases is based on the Libor benchmark interest rate, which has increased significantly in recent months. The first thing they did was extend the Greek debt by 10 years to avoid a default and the ECB agreed that any profits made by central banks in the Eurozone on Greek bonds would be returned to Athens in two equal tranches every year, between 2018 and 2022. You always extend maturity to avoid a default and you take a haircut in the value of the bonds you bought.

We are also witnessing this at the municipal level in Germany where about 50% of municipal governments are effectively bankrupt. The President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher, came out and called for fundamental reforms where the holders of their debt would take a haircut. He has made it clear that a reduction in more than half of the state investments was made by the municipalities. The German grand coalition was supposed to organize a haircut to reduce the value of outstanding debt from the federal states on down to the municipalities. In reality, they are hopelessly over-indebted not unlike Illinois and California in the USA.

Even when we look at the war loans from the USA to Europe, it was not until 2015 that Britain finally repaid it war loans. There were still 38,000 holders of UK war bonds with amounts less than £100 as well. They actually cut the 5% coupon in 1932 reducing it by agreement to 3.5%. So you see, taking 100 years to repay a debt meant that the value of the pound when the money was lent was $4.86 and when it was paid off less than $2. Actually, the French never even paid interest on the $4 billion they owed the USA after World War I and the only country to pay the United States back during the 1930s was Finland.

So when we look at the indebtedness of even Emerging Markets, keep in mind that the loser will be the lender – not the borrower. It seems that no matter how many times a government defaults like Spain, seven times, the fools rush right back in and buy again. The famous bank of the Medici had a rule “to deal as little as possible with the court of the Duke of Burgundy and of other princes and lords, especially in granting credit and accommodating them with money, because it involves more risk than profit” (Raymond de Roover Professor of History at Brooklyn College: The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank was first published in 1966. id/ p 343). The Medici failed because later generations did not follow that rule

Merkel Objects to France’s Vision of a EU Finance Minister


Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected France’s Macron’s proposal for the establishment of a euro finance minister. Merkel has also stated that she wants a planned EU budget for the Eurozone area as part of the EU budget. She does not want an independent budget for the 19 countries of the monetary union. Merkel is still adhering to her view that the quantity of money causes inflation and it has been that policy which has suppressed the European economy for the last decade. A Euro finance minister she argues would lack both a budget as well as there would be no parliamentary control.

Global Temperatures Changes July, 2018, Man Made or Not?


We have been schooled over the past 40 years that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is rising to levels never seen before on this planet and as a result the world’s average temperature is rising to levels that will, if nothing else, destroy large areas of the planet. The latest UN predictions indicate a major Catastrophe will happen by 2040 unless we do something drastic right now. This destruction will be from two factors; one, ocean levels raising and flooding all worlds coastal areas forcing the world population to higher ground; and two, even if those moves are accomplished the increased temperatures will bring massive storms that will ravage the areas not flooded. The only solution to prevent this from happening is, stop using carbon based fuels; petroleum, natural gas, and coal which, all, generate large amount of water and carbon dioxide and replacing them with wind or solar energy.

These dire projections are based on the belief that CO2 is the “primary” driver of global temperature changes; i.e. more CO2 in the atmosphere is very bad. This view is severally distorted and more likely entirely false.  One can argue the reasons for these lies but it really doesn’t matter whether they are innocent or malicious in their construct; either way promoting something that is tearing up the worlds civilizations by misallocation of resources is very misguided.

Basic facts:

  • The planets global temperature is directly related to the energy arriving here from our sun
  • That energy manifests itself in a form which we call temperature
  • Temperature is a measure of the amount of heat (energy) that an object holds
  • The planets temperature is directly related to the amount of water in the atmosphere
  • Without water in the atmosphere the earth would be 330 Celsius colder and frozen solid
  • Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a requirement for life to exist on this planet
  • More Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is better as planets grow faster, less Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is bad
  • Carbon Dioxide (CO2) only indirectly affects temperature probably less than 5% that of water
  • Climate is a measure of the average of all the factors that produce a stable environment
  • Weather is a measure of local factors that may make large changes in daily or seasonal conditions
  • The planets temperature in geological times ranged from170 Celsius +/- 60 Celsius
  • 12,000 or so years ago the last ice age ended for no reason we can determine

 

The first thing that needs to be done when developing a theory is to identify and define the issue or problem. The issue was that after WW II there was a large buildup of industry required to rebuild the devastated planet and that rapid uncontrolled growth created real environmental problems. Much good resulted from the original environmental emphasis such as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, however, others in the 90’s saw a way to gain power and wealth by exaggerating aspects of the movement. During the 80’s and the 90’s global temperatures were going up so these people saw a way to increase the size and scope of government to their advantage with a carbon tax.  They picked increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as the strawman argument and funneled large amounts of research money into universities to study how bad the increases were.

Unfortunately, federal grant money is “directed” money so it was given to find out how bad the issue was, not to find out if it was even bad or even real. Therein was the problem as this is a very complex math and physics study in a subject that had not been previously studied in detail such that 30 years later the key variables and relationship are still not known with specify. The mistake that was made in the attempt to quantify the apparent increase in global temperatures was that increased CO2 in the planet’s atmosphere was that CO2 was the ONLY REASON the global temperatures were increasing.  Unfortunately this assumption was not true as there had been several warm and cold periods in history going back thousands of years. The previous little ice age in the seventeenth century was one of these and the warming we now have, about 10 Celsius, is partly from the northern hemisphere still coming out from that cold period.

Next we’ll review some important information on temperatures and how it’s measured. We need to understand the details before we can draw conclusions. The problem, intentional or not, goes back to physics and how we show information. It’s critical that when we talk to nonscientists that information is properly displayed. And nowhere is this more important than when we are discussing global temperature in relationship to anthropogenic climate change.

When we talk about climate (long term changes; centuries) or weather (short term changes; decades) local temperatures are going be in Celsius (C) in the EU and science, or degrees Fahrenheit (F) in America. The base temperature for the earth that NASA established is 14.00 C or 57.20 F; but these are both relative measures and do not tell us how much heat (thermal energy) is there. To know that we must use Kelvin (K) or Rankin (R) and that would be 287.150 K and 516.870 R all four of those numbers 14.00 C, 287.150 K 57.20 F, and 516.870 R are exactly the same temperature, just using a different base. But if the current temperature went from 14.00 C, to 14.860 C that is a 6.14% increase in C, an increase of 2.71% in F and an increase of .30% in K and R; so which one is real? The answer is .30% because Kelvin and Rankin are the only ones that measure the total increase in energy! Table One shows these relationships that we just discussed.

The next step is to plot Carbon Diode (CO2) from NOAA-ESRL and the estimated global temperature as published by NASS-GISS each month.  As can be seen in Table One It doesn’t really matter whether we would use Kelvin and Rankin since the increase in thermal energy is exactly the same either way; but we’ll use Kelvin as that is the accepted norm in the scientific community for determining the amount thermal energy in any object especially when looking at changes in temperature or measuring the thermal energy in any object.  There are other less known temperature scales that have specific purposes but they don’t really apply here in this subject.

The important thing is how much has the temperature actually gone up since we started to measure CO2 in the atmosphere? To show this graphically Chart 8 was constructed by plotting CO2 as a percent increase from when it was first measured in 1958, the Black plot, the scale is on the left and it shows CO2 going up about 30.0% from 1958 to May of 2018. That is a very large change as anyone would have to agree.  Now how about temperature, well when we look at the percentage change in temperature from 1958, using Kelvin, we find that the changes in global temperature are almost un-measurable. The scale on the right side had to be expanded 5 times (the range is 20 % on the left and 4% on the right) to be able to see the plot in the same chart in any detail. The red plot, starting in 1958, shows that the thermal energy in the earth’s atmosphere increased by .30%; while CO2 has increased by 30.0% which is 100 times that of the increase in temperature. So is there really a meaningful link between them that would give as a major problem?

Chart 8 and all the rest of what is shown here in this paper are based on the following two data series. First NASA-GISS estimates of a global temperature shown as an anomaly (converted to degrees Celsius) as shown in their table Land Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) and shown in Chart 1 as the red plot labeled NASA the scale for the temperatures is on the left. The NASA LOTI temperatures are shown as a 12 month moving average because of the very large monthly variations. Second NOAA-ESRL CO2 values in Parts per Million (PPM) which are shown in Chart 1 as a black plot labeled NOAA the scale for CO2 is shown on the right no change is required to the NOAA data set it is ready to use as is.

NASA published data is shown as an anomaly, but what is a temperature anomaly?  An anomaly is a deviation from some base value normally an average that is fixed. There were two problems with the system that NASA picked which were number one there is no “actual” global temperature and two since climate is a variable and always has been so there cannot be a real base to measure from. NASA known for its science and engineering expertise back in the day thought it could get around these issues and created a system to do so. First they developed a computer model which took the readings from all over the planet and made adjustments to them in software which they called homogenization and came up with the estimated global temperature. Second they picked the period 1950 to 1980 (30 years) and averaged the values found in that period and came up with 14.00 degrees Celsius and make that their base.  Lastly they took the calculated monthly temperature and subtracted the base from it which gave them the anomaly and multiplied the result by 100.

The problem is that both are arbitrary. Why pick 1950 to 1980 as the base period? Is there something special about that time frame? And as to a global temperature there is no such thing for many reasons like the earth faces the sun so one side is cool and onside it warm. Higher latitudes are cooler than the equator and higher elevations are cooler than lower. And finally there are many areas where there are no measurements taken. Therefore there is no one temperature only an artificial artifact solely dependent on the soundness of the software used to create that one temperature!

Chart 1 below is 100% accurate and based only on NASA and NOAA data as published.

Now that we have a base to work with we are going to add to Chart 1 three things. The first is a trend line of the growth in CO2 since that is according to the government through NASA and NOAA the entire basis for climate change. That plot is superimposed over the black plot of the actual NOAA CO2 values as the cyan line labeled as the CO2 model and one can see there is a very good fit to the actual NOAA values so there should be no dispute about its validity, and it’s historically accurate.  This plot allows us to make projections to future global temperatures according to the projected level of CO2The second added item is James E. Hansen’s 1988 Scenario B data, which is the very core of the IPCC Global Climate models (GCM’s) and which was based on a CO2 sensitivity value of 3.0O Celsius per doubling of CO2. This plot is shown here in lavender and is from a presentation that Hansen showed congress in 1988 to help support the UN in setting up the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This plot is labeled as Hansen Scenario B which Hansen stated was the most likely to happen based on his 1979 climate theories’.  The third item is the current plot of the most likely temperature of the planet based on the growth of CO2 published by the IPCC. This plot is shown in Red and is labeled as IPCC AR5 A2 as that is the table where the data was found. This plot is a GCM computer projection of the planets temperature based on the complex relationships developed by the IPCC primarily though NASA and NOAA.

 

It can be seen in Chart 2 that the lavender plot and the Hansen plot are very close from 1965 to around 2000. However there isn’t a good correlation between the growth in CO2 and the increase in the planets temperature, as shown in Chart 8. The CO2 is going up in a log function and the temperature was going up until 2000 then it plateaued from 2000 until 2014 where there was a mysterious spike up of .5 degrees Celsius just in time for COP21 in Paris. Then after CP21 was over the unexplained change in temperature started to come back down. The climate doesn’t make changes like what the NSA/NOAA data shows that would be weather if it even was real.

Chart 7 looks at the period from 2010 to 2020 so we can see where a change in CO2 of only a few ppm has caused a major change in the global temperature way beyond anything previously shown in any published NASA data. There are three ovals on Chart 7 one at the top of Chart 7 which is a black oval around the CO2 levels from 2010 to 2018 and it’s very obvious that there has been very little change, maybe 3 ppm a year Then at the bottom of Chart 7 is dark red oval around the NASA global temperature levels from 2013 to 2018 and its very obvious that there has been a sudden large change, almost .50 degrees Celsius in 3 years. There has never been such a large increase in temperature from such a small increase in CO2. By contrast the previous comparable period of the last part of 2010 through 2013 Blue oval shows about the same increase per year for CO2 but global temperature decreased.

An explanation is needed here as the NASA temperature plot in Chart 7 seems to show the jump in temperature in 2016 not 2015; this is a result of the very large jump in temperature shown by NASA. Since we are using a 12 month moving average and the increase occurred in only a few months it actually shifted the curve into 2016. The raw data for December 2012 was at a low of 14.44 degrees Celsius but by February 2016 the temperature was at a record high of 15.35 degrees Celsius a .91 degree Celsius increase, Red arrow. With the global temperature over 15.0 Celsius at COP21 in December 2015 at the Paris COP21 conference the climate accord was approved and the manipulation was a success. After COP21 the Fake Warming was no longer needed so we are now seeing a downward trend developing. The current temperature for June 2018 is 14.88 degrees Celsius.

In summary, the IPCC models were designed before a true picture of the world’s climate was understood. During the 1980’s and 1990’s CO2 levels were going up and the world temperature was also going up so there appeared to be correlation and causation. The mistake that was made was looking at only a ~20 year period when the real variations in climate  move in much longer cycles of centuries which can be observed in the NASA data but they were ignored for some reason.  By ignoring those actual geological trends and focusing only on CO2 the Global Climate Models will be unable to correctly plot global temperatures until they are fixed. Also the temperature data from 1850 to 1880 was dropped for some reason as it showed a lower temperature than would be expected. The lower temperatures’ in that period would have shown a shorter cycle they didn’t want shown.

A decade ago when I started looking at “climate” change the first thing I did was look at geological temperature changes since it is well known that the climate is not a constant; I learned that 53 years ago in my undergrad geology and climatology courses in 1964. The next paragraph explains currently observed patterns in climate related to this subject and is historical accurate.

Ignoring the last Ice Age which ended some 11,000 years ago when a good portion of the Northern hemisphere was under miles of ice the following observations give a starting point to any serious study on the subject of climate. First, there is a clear movement up and down in global temperatures with a 1,000 some year cycle going back at least 3,000 to 4,000 years; probably because of the apsidal precession of the earth’s orbit of about 20,000 years for a complete cycle. About every 10,000 years the seasons are reversed making the winter colder and the summer warmer in the northern hemisphere. 10,000 years from now the seasons will be reversed again. Secondly, there are also 60 to 70 year cycles in the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans that are well documented. These are known as the Atlantic Multi Decadal Oscillations (AMO) in the Atlantic and as La Nina and El Nino in the Pacific. Thirdly, we also know that there are greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that can affect global temperatures. Lastly the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) estimated that carbon dioxide had a doubling rate of 3.0O Celsius plus or minus 1.5O Celsius in 1979 when there were only two studies available and one for sure and maybe both were not peer reviewed.

The result of looking objectively at the three possible sources of global temperature changes was a series of equations based on these observations that when added together produced a sinusoidal curve that seemed to follow NASA published temperatures very closely when first developed in 2007, and modified a few years later when it was found the short and long cycles were related to multiples of Pi.  Since this curve was based on observed temperature patterns it was called a Pattern Climate Model (PCM) which has been described in previous papers and posts on my blog and since it is generated by “equations” many assume it is some form of least squares curve fitting, which it is not. It does seem to be related to ocean currents where the bulk of the planet’s surface heat is stored and cloud formation.

Chart 5 shows the PCM a composite of two cycles and CO2. There is a long trend, 1036.7 years with an up and down of 1.65O Celsius (.00396O C per year) we in the up portion of that trend. Then  there is a 69.1 year cycle that moves the trend line up and then down a total of 0.29O Celsius and we are now in the downward portion of that trend (-.01491O C per year), which will continue until around ~2035. Lastly, there is CO2 currently adding about .0079O Celsius per year so together they all basically wash out at -.0039O C per year, which matches the current holding pattern we were experiencing until 2014. After about 2035 the short cycle will have bottomed and turn up and all three will be on the upswing again duplicating what was observed in the 1980’s.  Note: the values shown here are only representative from what is in the model.

When using a 12 month running average for global temperatures up until 2014 the PCM model was within +/- .01 degrees of what NASA was publishing in their LOTI table since the early 1960’s as shown in Chart 5. Further the back projection of the PCM plot matched historical records and global temperatures going back past the time of Christ. It should also be considered that geologically CO2 levels have reached levels many times that of the current 400 ppm without destroying the planet so the current hysteria over the current very small numbers can only be explained by political science not real science.

Lastly, Chart 9 shows what a plot of the PCM model, in yellow, would look like from the year 1400 to the year 2900. This plot matches reasonably well with recorded history and fits the current NASA-GISS table LOTI data, in red, very closely, despite homogenization.  I do understand that this PCM model is not based on physics but it is also not some statistical curve fitting. It’s based on two observed reoccurring patterns in the climate and a factor for CO2. These patterns can be modeled and when they are, you get a plot that works better than any of the IPCC’s GCM’s. If the real conditions that create these patterns do not change and CO2 continues to increase to 800 ppm or even 1000 ppm then this model will work well into the foreseeable future.  150 years from now global temperatures will peak at around 15.750 to 16.000 C and then they will be on the downside of the long cycle for the next ~500 years.

The overall effect of CO2 reaching levels of 1000 ppm or even higher will be about 1.50 C which is about the same as that of the long cycle.  The Green plot on Chart 9 shows the observed pattern with no change in CO2 from the pre-industrial era of ~280 ppm. CO2 cannot affect global temperatures more than 1.500 C +/- no matter what the ppm level of CO2 is. The reason being that the CO2 sensitivity value is not 3.00 per doubling of CO2 but less than 1.00 C per doubling of CO2 as shown in more current scientific work and it’s a logistics curve not a log curve.

The purpose of this post is to make people aware of the errors inherent in the IPCC models so that they can be corrected. 

The Obama administration’s “need” for a binding UN climate treaty with mandated CO2 reductions in Europe and America was achieved as predicted at the COP12 conference in Paris in December 2015. To support this endeavor NASA was forced to show ever increasing global temperatures that will make less and less sense based on observations and satellite data which will all be dismissed or ignored.  Within a few years the manipulation will be obvious even to those without knowledge in the subject, but by then it will be to late the damage to the reputation of science will have been done. Fortunately President Trump pulled us out of the bad agreement.

In closing keep this in mind. The current panic generated by the government using political science is that the current global temperature of around 15.0O Celsius is an increase of 7.14% from the 1960’s when the global temperature was 14.0O Celsius; and that does seem like a lot. However those views would be in error as the actual increase in thermal energy, as measured by temperature, would be only .35% because we must use Kelvin not Celsius when working with heat energy. When we use kelvin the temperature goes from 287.15O K to 288.15O K which is only .35% not 7.14% about 1/20 of what is implied by the IPCC. What the IPCC shows is not technically wrong as much as it is extremely misleading to anyone without a science background.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers for science of the 20th century, and he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. The following quotes of his apply to this subject.

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

… (S)cience is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.

Netflix Abruptly Cancels Michelle Wolf’s Unfunny Show – Only Lasted 3 Months…


Michelle Wolf gained notoriety for her obnoxious, unfunny and rude diatribe during the White House Correspondents Dinner:

(Via Mediaite) […] The comedian made a name for herself earlier this year at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where her monologue received a mix reception, especially for her jokes targeting Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who attended the event. Wolf had previously appeared as a correspondent on The Daily Show and a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Wolf’s controversial brand of comedy continued at Netflix, which debuted shortly after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in late May.  (read more)

Wolfe’s show only lasted 10 episodes and was cancelled.  According to media reports the show staff and producers found out about their termination via twitter.  Meanwhile Sarah Sanders is still White House Press Secretary.

The British Pound & The Conservative Split


QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, It seems that the conservatives have split into two parties here. It is the same nonsense that they pulled to overthrow Margaret Thatcher. I really do not understand why they think we have to be part of the EU which is so obviously a sinking ship. As we always said here, when there is a good fog in the Channel, you would never know Europe was even there.

I read your piece on how France can object and prevent a trade deal for rest of the members. France is a hopeless communist country. Their stock market is not even worthy of investment. It has never made a new high since 2000. My question is simple. Does your forecast for the pound necessitate that the conservatives really mess up this Brexit escape from the EU?

LN

 

ANSWER: The basic trade numbers show that the United States received the most British export goods last year, followed by Germany and France. The top trade partner for imports was Germany, followed by the United States and China. The UK exported £31.7bn worth of products to the US. Britain has NEVER benefited from the EU. Your economic growth has declined ever since joining back in 1973. I use to have detailed conversations about this with Margaret Thatcher. Britain’s biggest trading partner is the USA yet she cannot negotiate trade with the USA as long as it remains inside the EU. It is absolute insanity.

 

Now, as for the pound, unfortunately, it continues to point lower against the dollar. Interestingly, the computer pinpointed the crisis in the Euro would begin during the 3rd quarter here in 2018 where we had both a Directional Change and the beginning of a Panic Cycle. Brexit will end Friday, March 29th, 2019. Note that there is a turning point showing up in the 1st quarter next year but the big one will be the 3rd quarter 2019.

 

As far as price against the dollar, there is support technically in the 92 area. The very worst support is at 53, but that does not seem likely absent war in Europe.

IMPORTANT – Michael Pillsbury: China Has “New Respect” For U.S. Trade Strategy…


Sad Panda increasingly frustrated as disruptor Trump heaps vociferous praise on Chairman Xi, while simultaneously out maneuvering Beijing’s geopolitical economic strategy.

China expert Michael Pillsbury discusses the current environment around the Beijing leadership with Fox host Tucker Carlson.  This is really important. WATCH:

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What Pillsbury outlines is exactly what CTH predicted last year when we shared how the Red Dragon would be caught entirely off-guard.  They’ve never seen this approach before.

NOTE: The upcoming Chinese trade delegation is not showing up at the end of this month as a matter of scheduling happenstance.  What no-one in the financial/trade/economic media is connecting is the timing of their visit with USTR Lighthizers’ Section 301 Tariff hearings –SEE HERE.  August 20th through August 27th, you can guarantee the Chinese delegations will be all over those hearings; including dispatching their paid lobbyists to provide input on their behalf.

Each time China takes aggressive action (red dragon) China projects a panda face through silence and non-response to opinion of that action;…. and the action continues. The red dragon has a tendency to say one necessary thing publicly, while manipulating another necessary thing privately.  The Art of War.

President Trump is the first U.S. President to understand how the red dragon hides behind the panda mask.

It is specifically because he understands that Panda is a mask that President Trump messages warmth toward the Chinese people, and pours vociferous praise upon Chairman Xi Jinping, while simultaneously confronting the geopolitical doctrine of the Xi regime.

In essence Trump is mirroring the behavior of China while confronting their economic duplicity.

President Trump is putting on a MASSIVE economic squeeze.

Squeeze #1. President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin sanctioned Venezuela and cut off their access to expanded state owned oil revenue. Venezuela needs more money. China and Russia are already leveraged to the gills in Venezuela and hold 49% of Citgo as collateral for loans outstanding.  China and Russia now need to loan more, directly.

However, China cannot engage in economic commerce with Venezuela or they risk losing access to the U.S. banking system.  Therefore all current Chinese aid to Maduro comes in the form of IOU’s.  These ongoing loans are likely impossible to be repaid.

Squeeze #2. China’s geopolitical ally, Russia, is already squeezed with losses in energy revenue because of President Trump’s approach toward oil, LNG and coal. Trump, through allies including Saudi Arabia, EU, France (North Africa energy), and domestic production has influenced global energy prices.  Additionally, President Trump is demanding NATO countries, specifically Germany, stop supporting financial dependence on Russia.

Meanwhile, and directly connected, Russia is bleeding out financially in Syria. Iran is the financial reserve, but they too are energy price dependent and President Trump is now putting pressure on Iran vis-a-vis new sanctions and new demands on allies.

Squeeze #3. In 2017 Trump and Secretary Tillerson, now Secretary Pompeo, put Pakistan on notice they need to get involved in bringing their enabled tribal “extremists” (Taliban) to the table in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s primary investor and economic partner is China. The U.S. removed $900 million in financial support to pressure Pakistan toward a political solution in Afghanistan, China has to fill void.  [NOTE: Last month the World Bank began discussions about a financial bailout for Pakistan.]  Again, more one-way bleed for China.

Squeeze #4. China’s primary economic threat (competition) is next door in India. President Trump has embraced India as leverage over China in trade and pledged ongoing favorable trade deals. The key play is MFN (Most Favored Nation) trade status might flip from China to India. That’s a big play.  It would have massive ramifications.

Squeeze #5. President Trump launched a USTR Section 301 Trade Investigation into China’s theft of intellectual property. This encompasses every U.S. entity that does manufacturing business with China, particularly aeronautics and technology, and also reaches into the financial services sector.

In March of 2018 U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer completed a section 301 review of China’s trade practices.  [SEE HERE] Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 authorizes the President to take all appropriate action, including retaliation, to obtain the removal of any act, policy, or practice of a foreign government that violates an international trade agreement or is unjustified, unreasonable, or discriminatory, and that burdens or restricts U.S. commerce.  However, as talks with China progressed, President Trump shelved the 301 action to see where negotiations would end-up. The May and June, 2018, negotiations between the U.S. and China provided no progress.  The 301 review of China is now pulled back off the shelf, and President Trump assembles his trade-war strategy.  The 301 tariffs/sanctions are currently being worked out with U.S.T.R Robert Lighthizer.

Squeeze #6. President Trump, Secretary Ross, Secretary Mnuchin and USTR Robert Lighthizer are dissolving NAFTA in favor of two bilateral agreements; one with Mexico and one with Canada.  One of the primary objectives of team U.S.A. is to close the 3rd party loopholes, including dumping and origination, that China uses to gain backdoor access to the U.S. market and avoid trade/tariff restrictions. [China sends parts to Mexico and Canada for assembly and then back-door entry into the U.S. via NAFTA.]

Squeeze #7. President Trump has been open, visible and vocal about his intention to shift to bilateral trade renegotiation with China and Southeast Asia immediately after Team U.S.A. conclude with NAFTA. [Current discussions with Japan are ongoing]

Squeeze #8. President Trump positioned the U.S. relationship with the E.U. as a massive potential loss for Europe (via Steel, Aluminum, and Auto tariffs) if they did not: (A) shift their trade relationship toward greater reciprocity; and (B) reconsider the size of their trade relationship with China.  After initially trying to push-back, Europe acquiesced.

Squeeze #9. President Trump has positioned ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as trade benefactors for assistance with North Korea. Last year the KORUS (South Korea and U.S.) trade deal was renegotiated, and announced in March. The relationship between ASEAN nations and the Trump administration is very strong, and getting stronger. Which leads to…

Squeeze #10. President Trump has formed an economic and national security alliance with Shinzo Abe of Japan. It is not accidental that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un fired his last missile over the Northern part of Japan. Quite simply, Beijing told him to.  However…

Squeeze #11. President Trump cut-off the duplicitous Beijing influence over North Korea by engaging directly with Kim Jong-un.  The open exchange and ongoing dialogue has removed much of the ability of Beijing to leverage the DPRK nuclear threat for their own economic benefit.  This dialogue was as much, if not more, about dismantling the Beijing geopolitical influence as it was about denuclearizing the Korean peninsular.  However, no-one caught on to that part of the strategy.

Add all of this up and you can see the cumulative impact of President Trump’s geopolitical economic strategy toward China. The best part of all of it –as we previously stated– is the likelihood China never saw it, meaning the sum totality of “all of it”, coming…. at first.

Now they do, and, as Mr. Pillsbury notes from his travel and engagement, China is not quite sure how to respond.

Only President Trump could use economic leverage with such incredible insight and strategy toward achieving dual results benefiting the U.S. economy and U.S. national security position.  It really is stunning when you stand back and look at how it has all played out…. in the open…. and yet seemingly no-one saw what he was doing.

Just brilliant.

Ho-Lee-Cats: Freight Haulers Order 450,000 New MAGAnomic Big Rigs in 2018 – Backlog for Delivery Extends into 2019….


Freight hauling trucks are like the lymphatic system within a healthy economy.  As the economy writ large needs to move stuff around, it’s the truckers who git-r-done; and no time in U.S. economic history has there been such a demand for haulers.

In a stunning Wall Street Journal Report they note Analyst group ACT Research says manufacturers are on track for 450,000 orders for heavy-duty trucks this year, easily breaking a 14-year-old record. In July alone, North American fleets ordered more than 52,000 trucks, the largest order in history.   Whoot, Whoot !!

(Via WSJ) An unprecedented run of orders for big rigs has pushed the backlog at truck factories to nine months, according to industry analysts, the largest since early 2006, when truckers stocked up to get vehicles in place before tougher environmental restrictions would take effect. Typically the backlog is about five months for the truck industry’s manufacturers, analysts said.

“It is longer than it should be,” said Magnus Koeck, vice president of marketing for Volvo AB’s North America operation, where Class 8 truck orders this year soared to 25,000 from 11,000 during the first six months of 2017. “Of course we are not alone in this situation,” he said. “Everyone is in the same boat.”

North American freight-haulers ordered more than 300,000 Class 8 trucks in the first seven months of this year and are on track to order a record 450,000 of the heavy-duty vehicles for the full year, according to ACT Research. That would be the largest book since 2004, when orders reached 390,000, according to analysts.

[…] Freight-hauling fleets are trying to keep up with swelling demand in a robust U.S. economy even as they say they face difficulty finding drivers. New trucks are one recruiting tool, and the new vehicles also get better fuel mileage—an attractive feature for fleets as other costs are rising. (read more)

Fleet companies making this scale of an investment is one of the more visible performance indicators that we haven’t seen anything yet.  The Main Street economy is only just beginning to get started.   This is the beginning, of the beginning, of the most massive middle-class economic expansion in the history of our United States.

This KPI also aligns with the sector seeing the largest initial wage and benefit increases:

  (More Data)

Will Inflation Return to the Eurozone?


There are three distinct types of inflation – Demand, Asset & Currency. The major type of inflation that everyone assumes is DEMAND. This unfolds when there is actually an economic boom and people have confidence in the economy. Asset Inflation is when there is no real demand from the consumer but the asset values rise primarily from foreign investment. This is normally witnessed in real estate, stocks, and bonds. There is a subdivision of Asset Inflation that is concentrated to a single area such a food that is driven by a collapse in supply due to perhaps a drought or flooding. The third type is Currency Inflation. This is when the actual nominal value of assets do not change, but the currency fluctuation will attract or detract foreign investors because of the large fluctuation in the value of the currency on world markets.

During the 1970s, I always bought German cars. A Porsche in 1970 was about $12,000 and by 1980 it was $50,000. The rise was really created by the decline in the dollar which created the perception that German cars would so well built, they would appreciate. I would drive one for 2-years and sell it used for a profit. This was the net result of CURRENCY INFLATION. As the Euro declines, we will see inflation in the Eurozone rise sharply. The ECB will proclaim victory after 10 years, but this has nothing to do with Quantitative Easing.