Tag Archives: Russia

Nov 29 2017

Zarrab has Flipped – Is Erdogan the real Target?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law

Re-Posted Nov 29, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The New York Justice System is what it is. They have “flipped” the Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab into a prosecuting witness offering him a reduced sentence if he testifies. That means the deputy chief of the Turkish Halkbank, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, is now the only defendant in the process to stand trial. According to the New York Times, Zarrab is now listed as a “suspected accomplice” on a list of potential witnesses and other stakeholders handed over to members of the jury on Monday. This is now really political for his testimony could have serious consequences for the Turkish government. Zarrab had close contacts with the family of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan must expect to be in the sights of the US investigators themselves. The question is now, are they targeting Erdogan to discredit him internationally?

 

Nov 27 2017

Core of climate science is in the real-world data


News Weekly Mobile

ENVIRONMENT

Dr Ian Flanigan
November 18th 2017

The Government continues to flounder with directionless and inconsistent energy policies, inviting much public commentary, but the science these days scarcely gets a mention.

As we have seen in social policy, the strategy of the left is first to shut down debate and delegitimise any dissent from the position adopted by the left-leaning elements of the media, academia, bureaucracy, the environmental movement and renewable-energy interests.

Lacking the capacity to distinguish science from pseudo-science, the Coalition under Howard effectively acquiesced to the totalitarian-left idea that the science on global warming was settled. It dared not question the assertion that carbon dioxide was causing dangerous global warming for fear that it would be loudly denounced and ridiculed as being in denial about the harmful effects that our emissions of carbon dioxide were supposed to be having on the climate.

In doing so, the Coalition allowed the totalitarian left to define the terms of the debate. But, let us do the impermissible and look at the science behind the question of whether carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming.

The scientific method for investigating a new idea is to pose two falsifiable hypotheses: the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. The null hypothesis tests the most obvious explanation; and the alternative hypothesis tests the new theory that the scientist is bringing to bear on the issue.

In the context of global warming, the null hypothesis is that the warming observed since the onset of industrialisation is due to natural causes; the alternative hypothesis is that this warming is due to anthropogenic carbon-dioxide emissions. Both hypotheses must be tested and the objective is to see which of these two hypotheses is incompatible with the data. That is, we are attempting to falsify one or the other or both of the hypotheses (since it is conceivable that there is another human-related cause of the global warming which has not yet been thought of).

A hypothesis can never be proved by this method but it remains viable only as long as it remains consistent with the data. You must not cherry-pick your data; the hypothesis must be consistent with all of the available data. It takes only one instance of the hypothesis being found to be inconsistent with the data for it to be falsified; and this is why the science is never “settled”.

One must begin by assembling all of the available data. The data we are concerned with in this issue are the temperature and atmospheric carbon-dioxide data. The temperature data consists of the meteorological record that has been collected using various instrumental techniques since the 1850s, and also data from various “proxy” sources that enable the temperature record to be inferred. This may be done from such techniques as the measurement of isotope ratios in gas samples extracted from ice cores and seabed cores.

Using these proxy sources of temperature data, scientists have been able to reconstruct the temperature history of the planet going back thousands to hundreds of thousands of years and beyond. Samples collected from ice and seabed cores can also be used to determine the concentrations of carbon dioxide present in the air over those periods.

Figure 1. After Professor Bob Carter (lecture at the 10th International Conference
on Climate Change at the Heartland Institute on June 12, 2015). Air Temperatures
above the Greenland ice cap for the past 10,000 years reconstructed from
ice cores using data from Alley, 2000 (The Younger Dryas cold interval
as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19, 213-226)
(top panel), with a time scale showing years before modern time.
Lower panel shows the carbon-dioxide concentrations of the atmosphere
over the same period from EPICA Dome C ice core.

Figure 1 shows one example of data derived from such proxy sources. The top panel of the figure shows a declining temperature trend over the 8,000-year period from the Holocene Climate Optimum to the modern warm period (left-hand scale). It also shows that this location experienced numerous cycles of warming and cooling that involved temperature changes of the order of two degrees Celsius.

The superimposition of the temperature data from the modern period instrumental record (dotted line and right-hand scale) provide a very appro-ximate context to the late 20th-century warming.

The lower panel shows that the carbon-dioxide concentration over the same period has been consistently increasing. Neither the cooling trend nor the cyclic behaviour of temperature is reflected in the carbon-dioxide record in the lower panel. Therefore carbon dioxide cannot be causing the observed temperature changes. No causation can exist if there is no correlation.

These data clearly show that whatever effect carbon dioxide may have on the temperature, it is far outweighed by other factors: and this falsifies the hypothesis that carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming. The data show that there is nothing unusual about the current episode of increased global temperature in either its timing or its amplitude, which lies well within the bounds of natural variation.

From these data we cannot ascribe any cause to the current warming event, nor is it necessary to do so. We simply observe that the data are seen to be consistent with the null hypothesis that the modern warming is due to natural causes, and inconsistent with the alternative hypothesis that this warming is due to carbon dioxide. We do not need to understand the details of the operation of the climate system, which so occupies the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It is important to recognise that no single data set is ideal. All available data sets have their limitations, including those of Figure 1. It is equally important to recognise that all of the available data must be considered. It is not valid to simply disregard data that don’t suit you when there is no satisfactory data set available to provide all the information required on its own.

The data most commonly relied upon in making the case that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming are the data from the instrumental meteorological record. Over the 167-year period of the meteorological record, it is not possible to observe the extent of natural variation in temperature that can be seen in the proxy record of figure 1. Therefore the meteorological record is incapable of being used to test the null hypothesis. This makes the meteorological record the least useful of the data sets that are available for answering the question of whether the warming observed over the last 100 years is due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Conclusions based on these data alone are therefore worthless.

The main limitation of the data of Figure 1 is that they are derived from ice cores at a single location and cannot therefore be considered to represent the “global average” temperature that the meteorological record attempts to approximate. This does not mean that these data can be disregarded. There is evidence from a vast range of sources that the warming cycles of Figure 1, among them the Mediaeval Warm Period, The Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period and the Holocene Climate Optimum, did not occur only at the sites from which the cores were taken but were in fact widespread and probably global. (For a comprehensive discussion of the evidence, see Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science, by Professor Ian Plimer. Available from Freedom Publishing.)

It is probable, however, that the amplitude of the temperature excursions from the baseline in Figure 1 are somewhat larger than would be seen in a global average graph, if such a graph were available, since temperature variations in equatorial regions are usually smaller than temperature variations at higher latitudes. Nevertheless, the data cannot be ignored, because such data provide the best indication we have of the natural variability of temperature and provide the context within which modern-day warming must be considered. In this context, the current warming event appears to be just the latest in a long series of warming and cooling cycles.

The alternative hypothesis is seen to be completely inconsistent with the data and must be rejected since the 8,000-year declining temperature trend occurs in conjunction with a steadily increasing carbon-dioxide trend.

The current meteorological record shows that there has been no statistically significant warming over the past 19 years. This suggests that we may be at the peak of the current warming cycle and that the next temperature change is more likely than not to be the cooling phase of this cycle. This is consistent with the expectation by some astrophysicists that in the next 20 to 30 years we will encounter conditions similar to those of the Little Ice Age that were experienced during the last cooling cycle.

Under those conditions, the global-warming alarmists may come to regret their love affair with wind turbines that stop turning and solar panels which, in colder areas such as those located around Canberra, may become covered with snow if the southern hemisphere experiences a similar cooling to the northern hemisphere. The alarmists may then want to burn all the coal that they can get their hands on. That may become difficult if the Greens are successful in their push to have all coalmines and coal-fired power stations closed down. Do they seriously imagine that these natural climatic cycles have somehow stopped?

Changes in the climate can be expected and it is prudent to prepare for them. But whether it is warming or cooling, our ability to cope with the changes will depend on the availability of cheap and reliable power. It is deadly foolish to base our response to inevitable climate changes upon a theoretical understanding of the way that the climate system operates that is known to be inconsistent with the data and that would result in a complete inability to deal with the cooling that will inevitably come at some time in the future.

The cooling that was experienced in Europe during the Little Ice Age resulted in shorter northern-hemisphere growing seasons, crop failures, starvation, depopulation and the plague, and was far more deadly than any possible warming we might face. (Again, see Plimer, Heaven and Earth.)

Although there is endless reporting and commentary about the danger of global warming, there is no mention of the data supporting the anthropogenic global-warming hypothesis because no such data exist. Discussion always diverts to such matters as modelling, sea-level changes, weather events, reef bleaching, melting ice caps or any of a myriad other phenomena in which changes have been observed.

If you study nature you will always observe change, but these changes must be seen in their proper context. All of these changing phenomena may (or may not) be signs of warming. But signs of warming are precisely what one would expect to see at the peak of a warming cycle and they tell us absolutely nothing about the cause of the warming. To test the hypothesis that it is carbon dioxide that is causing the warming we must turn to carbon dioxide and temperature data: and they show that whatever the cause of the warming is, it is not carbon dioxide, whose warming effect, such as it is, is clearly outweighed by natural factors.

Any attempt to imply that rises in sea level, for example, are a sign that carbon-dioxide emissions are the cause of global warming is bogus science (there are other reasons why sea levels might rise). It is effectively saying that the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is causing global warming is being supported by another hypothesis: that sea-level rises are due to global warming, which is due to carbon dioxide. Or that the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is due to the warming of the oceans, which is due to global warming, which is due to carbon dioxide.

You cannot support a hypothesis with another hypothesis or even a series of hypotheses. That is bogus science. The test of the global-warming hypothesis can only be made against the carbon-dioxide and temperature data.

In a similar vein, any attempt to assure us that we must cut emissions because if we add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere we will reach a “tipping point” that our theory (and our models) show will bring us catastrophe, is also bogus science. Such a line of reasoning is effectively saying: “Don’t take any notice of the data that falsify our global-warming hypothesis. No, we have a theory about how the climate system operates and our understanding of this system is much better at telling how carbon dioxide affects the climate than the data. We know about triggers and tipping points and whatnot, and if we keep adding to the carbon dioxide it will bring catastrophe – just you wait and see.”

That is not science; you cannot support a hypothesis with a theory. The theory is, after all, based on the premise that the hypothesis is true: but the data show that it is false. When vascular plants evolved on earth some 400 million years ago, the carbon-dioxide concentration was more than 10 times the current level, and that did not cause tipping points or runaway global warming; yet we are asked to believe that a mere doubling of carbon dioxide from the very low levels we see at present will bring catastrophe.

Those who claim that carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming need to produce data that force the rejection of the null hypothesis: that the warming is due to natural causes. This has not been done and, in the absence of those data, the global-warming hypothesis must be regarded as nothing but a theory based on a premise that is known to be false.

For all the costs that “clean” energy policies and high energy prices impose on household, business and national budgets, there can be no possible bene-fit, since the proposition that carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming is falsified by the data.

One must ask: how can the government have got it so wrong, since the government has access to the best scientific advice available?

The answer to that has two parts. The first, as alluded to earlier, is that the left long ago completed its march through the institutions – including the scientific institutions – so the overwhelming majority of advice to the government conforms to the so-called “consensus” view. The second is that there are too few people entering the ranks of Parliament who understand science and who recognise when they are being fed pseudo-science by those providing the advice.

As the late Professor Bob Carter pointed out, it was not until the election to Parliament of Dr Dennis Jensen as a Liberal Member for the House of Representatives in 2004 that the Liberal Party had anyone with the scientific qualifications and training to discern the pseudo-science from the science and develop an informed approach to the global-warming issue. Dr Jensen displayed a healthy scepticism about the global-warming alarmism in his maiden speech to Parliament.

Unfortunately, Mr Howard did not put him in charge of global-warming policy. Instead, the Liberal Party continued to struggle with the issue while the myths and falsehoods associated with global warming took hold and green ideology took the moral high ground in professing to be intent on saving the planet from “carbon pollution” and the dangerous global warming it was alleged to cause.

Malcolm Turnbull entered Parliament in the same year as Dr Jensen and, in the biggest mistake of his career, Mr Howard in 2007 placed the left-leaning Turnbull in charge of Environment and Water Resources, presumably to give his environment policies some “green credentials”. The opportunity to tackle the global-warming falsehoods and develop a rational energy policy was thereby lost.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States and his rejection of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, however, provide the Australian Government with an opportunity to admit its mistake and change direction on global warming and energy policy and thereby give itself a chance of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat at the next election. It needs to find a leader who can tackle this issue head on in the face of the furious opposition that it will encounter from the ABC and the rest of the media, academia, the bureaucracies, and vested interests in the scientific and renewable energy industries.

It will be a tough fight, but it is a fight that can only be fought from within government and not from opposition. It is only when you control the appointments and the purse strings that it is possible to challenge those presenting pseudo-science as evidence and dismiss those who will not properly deal with the scientific objections to the global-warming “consensus” position.

I believe it is the only way this nation can be saved from the high energy costs that are crippling our industries and punishing household budgets. Providing strong support to President Trump on this issue might even begin to turn around this insanity globally and allow the availability of cheap and reliable power to lift underdeveloped nations out of the poverty that currently denies them access to electricity, clean water and sanitation.

Dr Ian Flanigan (retired) obtained a PhD in chemistry at the Research School of Chemistry (ANU).

Nov 25 2017

UNICEF’s Endangered Children


By Tabitha Korol

A mission statement is defined on the Internet as “a written declaration of an organization’s core purpose and focus that normally remain unchanged over time.”  UNICEF’s mission, mandated by the UN General Assembly in December 1946, is to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs, and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.  UNICEF’s website states, “Every day children face violence, disease and hunger. They are battered by the chaos of war and disaster and forced to flee their homes. They are denied an education . . . we have saved millions of children’s lives.”

A noble pledge, indeed, and UNICEF has remained faithful to some of its core purposes, yet our attention is drawn to the burgeoning globalist agenda, revealed through their literature and political involvements.  Neither the UN nor UNICEF was established for political advocacy, a particularly volatile issue in the Middle East, yet the following will show how UNICEF has abandoned its morality, betrayed the integrity of the organization, and deceived the generous countries who believed this was humanitarian aid for needy Palestinians.  Most importantly, it has forsaken a member state, seeking to undermine and marginalize the only homeland for the Jewish people, even in the most inhumane ways.

In 2013, the UN pledged its solidarity with Palestinians, and in 2015, when $380 million of US tax money was earmarked to UNWRA for Palestinian education, health, and social services, UNWRA workers were disseminating hate propaganda and Holocaust-denying literature to its schools, and inciting terrorism.   This year, the UN agreed to fund eight of its agencies, including UNICEF, with a $65 million grant to be used in lawsuits against Israel for alleged war crimes, apartheid, crimes against humanity, and to continue anti-Israel BDS campaigns.  This was then followed by an agreement signed by the UN and UNICEF with the Palestinian Authority, for $1.3 billion to “Palestine’s Path to independence.”  In an astonishing and unprecedented display of partiality in UN history, they will fund, train, and advise one side of a conflict to pursue legal advocacy against another within the UN!  The UN has essentially joined the Palestinian Authority in its delegitimization war against the sovereign state of Israel

Another website declaration reads: “UNICEF keeps children safe by providing vaccines against deadly diseases” and insists that “the survival, protection and development of children are universal development imperatives that are integral to human progress.”  In conformance, UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), with the support of Bill Gates’s GAVI organizations, have promoted the highly controversial Pentavalent (5-in-1) vaccine, which combines hepatitis-B, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and Hib (haemophilus influenzae type-b) into one.  Although the Pentavalent was banned or not used by Japan, the UK, Canada and the US, several developing countries have been sites for clinical trials by large pharmaceutical companies, raising many human rights concerns about unprincipled experimentation, uninformed consent, and forced medical procedures.

The head of pediatrics at St. Stephens Hospital in New Delhi, Dr. Jacob Puliyel, wrote in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics regarding children’s deaths in Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and India following WHO’s administration of the Pentavalent vaccine: “At best, vaccinating 25 million babies might save only about 350 children from Hib meningitis and Hib pneumonia, but that “3,125 children will die from the vaccine’s adverse effects.”  Meanwhile, UNICEF continues to try to smother concerns about the experimental treatments at Auschwitz, and California’s laws of vaccinating children without parental consent.

The Gates Foundation-supported Polio Global Eradication Initiative may have resulted in more than 47,500 cases of vaccine-induced paralysis in Indian children in 2011 alone – twice as deadly as the wild-type polio it claimed to have ended on January 11, 2012.  According to a 2010 BBC News report stated, “Children often survived better outside the UN scheme.”  It appears that UNICEF is evolving from a life-affirming, child-saving, Nobel peace prize-winning foundation to a contraceptive-distributing, abortion-performing, and sterilization-providing partner of notorious family-planning organizations.  Child mortality has increased in some parts of the world, among them sub-Saharan Africa.

UNICEF professes to be guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and promote ethical principles and international standards of behavior towards children – a daunting, if not impossible, task as long as its Board members represent the Islamic culture and a major source of its funding.  Today Arab children lead lives of desperation due to their cultural practices.  Early childhood rituals at home and in schools inhibit friendships and bonding, and severely restrict expression through music, art, song and dance.  They focus on stringent religious doctrine, hatred and war play, decapitation, explosives, and other jihadi activities.

Muslim girls learn of their comparative worthlessness immediately, living under the absolute power of the male over as many as four wives and his numerous children who cannot help but experience distrust and jealousy in this unhealthy, competitive household.   Sexualized and devalued as human beings, girls are candidates for Female Genital Mutilation from infancy on, another assault on their femininity.  Two hundred million around the world have undergone FGM as children, and 507,000 are at risk or already victimized in the US.

The girls are doomed to wearing a burqa that serves to defeminize as well as impose on them a sense of insignificance, anonymity, a nothingness that they are only to serve the man and bear responsibility for his honor in a shame/honor culture.  They are deemed unworthy of an education, banned from socializing with peers, entered into a loveless marriage where she will suffer psychological trauma from submission and rape, often bleeding to death from sexual intercourse or pregnancy.  The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million girls will marry before their 18th birthday over the next ten years.

Young boys, barely out of toddlerhood, may be kidnapped from their homes and used as camel jockeys, and for the sheikhs’ pleasure. “Bacha bazi” (boys for play), as young as age 11 (but photos show younger) may be bought from poor families for prostitution and sexual slavery. They are dressed and adorned as girls and forced to dance and sing at parties before they are taken by the men – unsurprising that this practice exists, given the culture’s extreme repression and gender apartheid.  The boys are conditioned to homosexuality through humiliation, and subject to being killed for being homosexuals.

UNICEF boasts of working for children’s rights to “survive, thrive and fulfill their potential” in 193 countries.  Yet benefactor Saudi Arabia is the go-to country for kidnapping, forced labor ad debt bondage, withholding wages and passports, forced prostitution, physical and sexual abuse, restrictions on movement, child sex tourism with “temporary marriages” and wife selling.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres revealed that UN members, Saudi Arabia and Iran, caused the death of 350 Houthi children in Yemen (2016), 333 injured, and 28 schools destroyed. Iran executed a gay teenager without benefit of legal representation and 48 inmates remain in death row since their youth.  With Iranian support, Syrian forces released 13,000 deadly barrel bombs, killing 166 of their own children in 2016.  Iranian children of the Baha’i faith are denied the right to higher education.  Assad’s chlorine gas attacks caused torturous deaths, also to children.   We need answers as to how UNICEF cannot only tolerate Board Members from countries with such heinous practices, but also receive financial donations via the parent, UN.

From a cursory reading of UNICEF’s website introduction, it is clear that the organization is accelerating its long-time pursuit of the globalist scheme that is now concealed behind the dismal euphemism, Agenda 21.  Using the “sustainable development” slogan, UNICEF is identifying itself with the creed that echoes a strategy for world development – the importance of the environment and earth conservation above the value of human beings.

UNICEF claims to strive for “For every child hope, a safe home, laughter, a future,” but Agenda 21 mandates that the world population be severely diminished, land masses seized, and humans confined to designated island areas.  Some hope. Some future.  It is time for America to leave the UN – gettheUSoutoftheUN.org – inhibit its progress and retake our sovereignty.

Nov 25 2017

US v Europe Bank Analysis


Armstrong Economics Blog/Forecasts

RE-Posted Nov 25, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong; It is becoming obvious which banks are following your model and putting a spin on it fundamentally and they seem to be outside the USA. Swiss banks are calling for a rally and Goldman Sachs calls for a decline. This is very curious indeed given that your enemy has been Goldman Sachs.

JH

ANSWER: Obviously, I am not at liberty to discuss such matters. With MIFID II, it is more curious as to how American banks will be able to put out such forecasts contrary to MIFID. I cannot reveal the plot just yet going on in Washington to deal with MIFID. Trust me, there is a very sinister plot afoot and when I reveal the scope you will be very surprised how the Trump Administration is being manipulated as has every Administration since Clinton.

Nov 23 2017

Religious Persecutions have impacted Political-Economy


Armstrong Economics Blog/Religion

Re-Posted Nov 23, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: hi martin

question for you
if we fed the data and all the info you had on ISLAM – CHRISTIANITY – JUDAISM etc and all other religions into SOCRATES
and ask it …..what would its preferred choice be ……of RELIGION and what should the world follow…………what would SOCRATES say?
have you ever tried this thought experiment?
Regards
SS
ANSWER: Interesting question. I do not believe it would pick one for that is a subjective decision. It would forecast trends, but not which religion is better. What it does do is it will forecast religious upheaval, which is tied to economics. Change the economy and you create change in religion. The introduction of Communism followed Marx in banning religion.
During the 3rd century, it was the collapse of the monetary system of Rome that sparked the biggest wave of Christian persecutions. Why? The Pagans believed the gods were angry because the Christians would not pray to them. So the evils befalling upon the empire was blamed on the Christians. In turn, the Christain said their gods were impotent and only the true God would save them. Eventually, many Pagans left and became Christians praying for help.
Then there was the Spanish Inquisition headed by Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498). Even the Pope came out against it. Nonetheless, the Spanish Crown used religion as the pretense to confiscate property and attacked both the Jews and the Arabs. This caused the Jews to flee mostly to the Netherlands. This is where banking and insurance became major in Amsterdam.
So religious persecutions have been had a major impact upon economics and the rise and fall of empires, nations, and city-states.
Categories: Religion
Nov 22 2017

The Hidden Risk of Broker/Clearer


Armstrong Economics Blog/Banking Crisis

Re-Posted Nov 22, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Dear Mr. Armstrong, Thank you for your work in “educating” us in your “University of the Conscious Investor”! My question relates to your “Trading a Vertical Market” report. I am slowly digesting this report which is truly fascinating and a must read for any rational minded investor. My experience tells me (and you have reaffirmed this within your report) that being able to trade correctly for the market is critical. In analyzing the correct actions we must take I have reached the conclusion that we must also investigate deeply the trading company we use and how any wild ride will impact their ability to actually fund the successful trades we have managed to get into and out of. I recently was issued new T&C’s for my accounts to accept and that makes for scary reading in the light of any major reset or mammoth gap or moves we anticipate. How would you recommend we evaluate the companies actually holding the bag to be able to pay up at the end of the day? This appears to me to be a most crucial question in the light of what Socrates is pointing out.

Be Well,

ANSWER: Yes, you are absolutely correct. Your broker/clearer is an additional risk.

 The kind of market conditions we are about to face will force questions beyond extreme volatility, no bids and the gapping of price and trade. What Traders must realize is that these extreme price actions themselves trigger increased margins, which again could trigger a liquidity crisis. Under such panic moves, prices can gap ‘without’ a trade and is worth remembering people sell what they can not what they should. This forces other markets to move just to raise cash. If market movements are violent everyone is pulled into the mix.

This is when you have to hope that every one of your fellow account owners (under the broker/clearer you are using) is liquid enough to honor margin requirements. This type of information is rarely going to be available to all and so makes many remain vulnerable.

Just to make you aware, it is possible that your money is vulnerable even if you do not have an open position and is just sitting with your clearer if they were to fail.

A lot of people lost money in the MF Global Scandal.

 

Nov 22 2017

The Political Crisis in Germany Changes the Game


Armstrong Economics Blog/Germany

Re-Posted Nov 22, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

Merkel faces the worst crisis of her career and many behind the curtain are starting to wonder if she will even survive. The German Federal President Steinmeier could not actually order new elections immediately. The procedure in this regard is quite complicated in Germany. The earliest possible alternative would be to hold new elections come the spring of 2018. It is likely that the AFD is likely to gather even greater support from new elections. Nonetheless, the CDU will continue to support Merkel at least right now. However, the CDU has been severely weakened by the election and if we do not see new elections until the spring, there is a distinct possibility that Merkel’s support even within the CDU could collapse if they see the AfD will win even greater support.

The head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Dieter Kempf,  has chastised the political leaders calling on the SPD, FDP and Greens to form a coalition. The price that the SPD will demand is that Merkel leaves before they would consider any compromise. There is just bad blood now between the SPD and CDU. Of course, this makes it even more likely we see and even more difficult Brexit. The practical crisis is the fact that Merkel must attend to domestic issues and will not truly have the time or authority to assume a leadership role in Brussels.

This turmoil in German politics is actually shifting the stage to Macron. The uncertainty in Germany may be opening the door for Macron to reform the EU and the Eurozone pushing Germany to second place. The political fortunes for the EU may be far more uncertain than many suspects.

From a market perspective, political uncertainty in Europe still creates uncertainty in markets rather that confidence.

Nov 21 2017

Embattled Angela Merkel Indicates New Election Preferred Over Minority Governing…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on November 20, 2017 by

Stunningly even Chancellor Merkel herself admits her immigration intransigence is the leading reason for her inability to form a coalition government.  Yet she is so committed to the ideology of ‘open borders‘ she will tender no compromise.

In an effort to leverage political blackmail against her opposition Merkel prefers the route of another election rather than trying to govern from the minority position.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would prefer a new election to ruling with a minority after talks on forming a three-way coalition failed overnight, but Germany’s president told parties they owed it to voters to try to form a government.

The major obstacle to a three-way deal was immigration, according to Merkel, who was forced into negotiations after bleeding support in the Sept. 24 election to the far right in a backlash at her 2015 decision to let in over 1 million migrants.

The failure of exploratory coalition talks involving her conservative bloc, the liberal pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens raises the prospect of a new election and casts doubt about her future after 12 years in power. (read more)

It really is remarkable the level of entrenched ideology amid those who carry a far-left world view.  The position of Chancellor Merkel is reflective of visible authoritarianism within a democratic assembly of government.  There is apparently no limit to what Merkel is willing to do in order to retain her individual political outlook without concession.

Not surprisingly, the media fail to call out this representative reality; behavior which is, ironically, exactly what media falsely accuse President Trump of doing.

Nov 21 2017

Merkel Vows to Run Again


Armstrong Economics Blog/Germany

Re-Posted Nov 21, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

After the failure to form a new government, Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear she has no intention of withdrawing from the race. New elections in Germany are looking ever more likely. Merkel appeared on TV on ZDF and said that she had not thought of resigning. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged the parties to make a new attempt to form a government. The SPD, however, reiterated it will not agree to a grand coalition.

Nov 21 2017

The Approaching Famine


Armstrong Economics Blog/Agriculture

Re-Posted Nov 21, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The most serious forecast that we see from our computer models has been a rise in agricultural prices caused by Global Cooling – not Global Warming. Crops cannot grow without the sun and water. Historically, when the weather turns cold, the crops fail.

There is no question that food prices will rise during periods of war when crops cannot be planted and armies require food on a priority allotment.

However, Mother Nature sticks her finger into the pot to stir things up. The famine cycle is also an 8.6-year frequency, but the volatility aspect comes in units of 12 rather than 6.

   

Our database on wheat from 1259 forward (excluding our data on the Roman Empire grain prices), reveals that there is a serious risk of famine from 2020 onward. It appears that we may very well enter a 12-year rally into the year 2032. Our Bifurcation Models are reflecting also a gap in time between 2020 and 2031 suggesting a trend appears to last for that period of time.

The downside of taxation, and particularly inheritance taxes, has driven farmers to sell their land to conglomerates just to pay the inheritance taxes. This has resulted in genetically altering crops to increase yield. While genetically altered crops do not really appear to present a major health concern as many seem to argue, the real danger is the fact that during the past 100 years, 94% of the world’s edible seed varieties have vanished.

The downside of socialism which has attacked the rich, we have sacrificed the historical model in our food supply for corporate decision making that bribes politicians handing them their needed money to remain in office with each election. The consequence of this corruption has been the concentration of our food supply into an ever-shrinking basket of diversity. Today, 75% of the world’s food comes from only 12 plants and 5 animal species (see source). This lack of biodiversity has seriously increased this risk of widespread crop disease, and throw in the climate change turning colder, corporate decisions are not the way to protect society. Corporate boards are typically dominated by lawyers and accountants. They are not scientists nor do they even make proper decisions for investment or currency hedging. Corporations will never be able to cope with a sudden change and then make decisions that will impact the world. Major companies, such as Monsanto, could find themselves in control of the fate of human existence with the decisions being made by lawyers and accountants fixated on their bottom-line.

The period ahead, 2020-2032, appears to offer something much more different. While politicians keep pushing Global Warming because they can tax emissions, the risk of a monumental human disaster lies in the opposite direction.

The entire theory of Ice Ages emerged after the discovery in 1772 of wooly rhinos and mammoths were frozen in ice with plants still in their stomachs. Suddenly, science woke up and came to the shocking realization that climate can change drastically with no notice.

We have the technology today to drow food inside without even soil. This is something one should consider to put in your basement as 2020 approaches on the horizon.