IS TURKEY A WATERSHED?

Turkey is hurting, and 45 is making it worse with sanctions. Turkey is refusing to be bullied though. Indeed the world is tired of being bullied by the USA, and doing more and more trade without using the USD.

Russia has the world’s best central bank, which is refusing to do the dangerous voodoo the major central banks have been up to for the last decade. Western Europe is still paying  lip service to the US, but is looking more and more East. Whatever is going on with Turkey, it’s a stage on the world’s journey East. The USA is getting left behind…

FINE DAYS IN JULY – FDIJ

Thanks to Elise, Orchid and Arild

The first incident

Surveillence again. After 2 decades of it, Intelligence First Officer Don D. was not enthused, to say the least. He was the saddest person his colleagues knew about. It was company policy  to not use last names, but the colleagues were sure his must be Dull. He was assigned  Junior Officer Ben B. for the day. Good, Don thought, at least he’ll shut up, unlike older opinionated chatterboxes. The cheer didn’t last though. When he saw what the assignment was, his mind was hurled down to career lows. It was a lady going to a funeral, to see who she met. Something started bubbling in his gut. His frustration was becoming unbearable, and he felt that something had to happen. Recently agents in sharp suits who wore sunglasses indoors had geen visiting, giving a talk about being more assertive.

Laura came out of an apartment building in a nice part of the city and got into a taxi. Following it was easy. It was after the morning rush, and traffic was light. The funeral was for her father. Strangely she had a good feeeling, as if something was completed. She felt a bit guilty for feeling that way, because she and her dad had been very close and had only each other most of the time after her mother had died when she was only 9. Now she was 41 and a university professor. Her only relationship had lasted 3 years, and the academic types didn’t attract her, so her work dominated her life. There had been opportunities to join research projects, but the cutthroat competition, the hunt for prestige and vanity and funding uncertainty kept her away. Instead she became the most popular lecturer in the university, and her students got the highest grades. She was able to make sense of all the thousands of pages the students had to endure reading.

The officers observed through binoculars, and dignitaries and even 2 govt ministers were present. Laura’s dad had been an important player in the intelligence community, an architect of good relations with the world after the Great War. Those who weren’t as peace loving in the intelligence realm were glad that he was gone. Don decided that they wouldn’t approach Laura on the way out, because there were journalists there.

There had been a light summer drizzle during the service, cooling the air and leaving droplets of water. Laura came out alone and stood on the curb. Right away a taxi came, and she got in. In these very quiet vacation days taxi driver and owner Ron had gotten a fare out of town and was on his way back. That was not only good money, but also a nice break from the boredom of doing very little all day. A nicely dressesd lady got in. She was taller than him, the lean straight-up-and -down body type with small breasts. Ron had musculous arms, shoulders and neck and a little pot belly from sitting and driving for so many years. Both liked what they saw.

Laura didn’t use taxis very often. When she did it was usually after being out at night, and she’d sit quietly in the back seat. Now on a bright, sunny day it would feel almost a bit rude to hide in the back seat, so she got in beside the driver. Chatting a bit could also be nice after the seriousness of the funeral.

The officers could see that it was a city taxi coming from outside and going toward the city. So they drove a short distance ahead and stopped. If the taxi should turn around they could do the same. Don popped the trunk and saw that the traffic stop equipment wasn’t there. Now his frustration became anger, and in a millisecond he knew what to do.

In a moment both Don and Ron the taxi driver would enter the zone where athletes, soldiers and racing drivers become observers of their own actions, their bodies being directed directly from the brain, making them act optimally.

Ron was from the working class part of town. When he was 14 he became part of a gang doing breakins and selling dope to spoilt kids from Laura’s part of town. He became the wheel man of the getaway car and an excellent driver. When people who had weapons and didn’t mind using them started dominating the gang, Ron got fed up and became a taxi driver. Now he was 46, and he too hadn’t had too much luck with relationships. Both cops and taxi drivers  work all and long hours, not conducive to relationships and family life. His girlfriends had never lasted more than 6 months.

The road was an alley with trees with thick trunks. The two officers had driven the unmarked cop car onto the grass between the trees. Don left Ben at the wheel,  and pulled out pistol and badge. When Ron saw a pistol pointed right at himself and his passenger, he enterd the action zone. His old friends could do crazy pranks, but not in broad daylight with a pistol, especially when he had a passenger in the car. So he accellerated, and accellerate he could! The car had 50 HP more than the more common version of this car, much used as as taxis. The diesel torque also gave monster push forward. Don fired a shot through the windshield under the rearwiew mirror which buried itself in the back seat. Amazingly, the bullet only made a hole in the glass the size of the bullet without cracking it. Then Ron saw the lights and heard the siren and slowed down and stopped.

 

 

 

Observations, thoughts, connecting dots – by yngso

TRADE PACTS

It’s not being said out loud, but this is what I think is going on: Big countries prefer bilateral trade pacts, because in multilateral ones, several smaller countries with coinciding interests get too strong.

Nixing NAFTA and Brexit are not good ideas in a world which is integrating more and more. The UK is picking a fight with a large block of big and small nations. Good luck with that!

NO FOREVER AND NO TREE INTO HEAVEN

Some traders are puttting less money more short term ino the stock market now, because the relentless rise has become too good to believe. There’s more skepticism about how much further this can go on.

One chartist has seen a possible downturn this week. That may or may not mean anything. The real downturns happens when the whole herd is spooked and the massive selloff starts. Even that can be shortlived like in 1987, but it’s important to remember that there were several crashes from 1929 to 1932. So if things normalize after one crash, it may be too early to sound the all clear. In ’87 it was about a bloated market. Today is like ’29 AND ’87 with a bloated market, and a weak economy which will make matters much worse when the dowturn comes. It always does.

No, I’m not saying that there’ll be an imminent crash. There are indications that the blowoff top isn’t happening yet. What is sure though is that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Makets rise slowly and crash fast and hard.

A retailcalypse with 23,000 store closings PLANNED in the US before the end of 2018! That will be terrible for employment and construction and the food courts and smaller stores around the big chain stores which are disappearing.

Today Nordstrom and  the Kushners can’t get financing for…wait for it…retail, and high end condos, another disastrous market! Banksters ain’t stupid…

Since the Fed, the WH and DC play their own games and are disconnected from the real economy, they won’t be doing anything about the retailcalypse. When the whole economy is in free fall and there’s a total Ecocalypse – thanks David Stockman for that one – the Fed will wake up and do massive amounts of what hasn’t worked before. Then a very humongous reset will have to happen, but more about that later.

This is not only about the US, but the whole developed world. There are numerous fragilities aka potential black swans worldwide. Key words are corporate and private debt and housing markets. Today I’ve seen the Chinese corporate debt chart. It’s not pretty!

POLS COMPLICATING PR RECOVERY

The Governor of Puerto Rico and the Mayor of the Capital San Juan are opposites politically and don’t collabotate well in a time when that’s more needed than ever. That’s another chapter in the post-Cold War hard left Latin American reality where the FARC was able to get all it wanted in the peace deal farce. Mexico is probably taking a left turn too when the next Prez is elected next year.

 

 

 

Observations, thoughts, connecting dots – by yngso

DESPERATE inMADURO NARCOCRACY

The Maburro went uninvited to Russia  to ask Czar Putyin for money, but  he didn’t even get a nyet, only a co-selfie before going out the back entrance of the event.

For those of us who know something and care about Vzla and the greater Carribean region and Latin America, watching Vzla disinegrate is frustratingly painful. The country is oil rich, but its people is suffering, and the inMaduro narcocracy  soon won’t be able to pay creditors!?

THE IMF IS WARNING ABOUT CORPORATE DEBT

This is what I’ve gathered about the subject: Making stuff isn’t very attractive any more in the developed world, because most people have been and still are losing purchasing power in the last decades. Share buybacks and dividend payouts boost the stock price, and shareholders and management with stock options benefit. Borrowing money is dirt cheap, so lots of it gets borrowed and fuels the party. When interest rates rise – they’ve been kept too low for too long by the central banksters – the accumulated debt load bomb will explode.

NIXING NAFTA?

That won’t happen for the same reason that the BAT ain’t happenin’. The only consolation for folks with ever diminishing  income is low prices. When real living costs, rent, health care, etc etc etc, rise, it’s even more important that the little that’s left for discretionary spending can buy as much as possible, ie prices must be low. That can’t happen if messing with NAFTA and BAT destroys industry supply lines and makes imported goods expensive.

So the tough talk is for the base, the same folks who would suffer if any of the crazy stuff should actually happen.

BOOMER DECEPTION

Many of us have nice pensions, but we see that many if not most of the x and y gens can’t look forward to the same. Much of what was gained after WWII has eroded away in the last 4 decades or so. IOW, our almost perfect world is falling apart, and we worry about how future gens will live.

EXITS AND VOLUNTARISM

Brexit and Caluñexit are reactions to centralised power. That’s understandable, but how to deal with it is important. So although exiting for many looks like the only solution, let’s look at this:

Top heavy entities like empires don’t work well, and eventually fail. Their upkeep becomes their downfall. Voluntary cooperation works much better than domination. Every country should be a federation. The stronger regions investing in the weaker ones must be voluntary. The EU could be renamed EA – European Association – and the countries cooperating with people, capital, goods and services keep on moving freely. Each country  could have its own currency, and it’s likely that the IMF SDR will replace the USD as intl trade and reserve currency, because the world doesn’t want US domination.

No more USSE and USSA…

USA BECOMING DPRK?

Recently someone said that the USA won’t lose its power as long as its military stays as strong as it is. – But at what price? The US has squandered trillions of $ on wars since WWII, and gained what exactly? Terror and the antagonism of the world!

So the cost of maintaining that military power can be that the people of the USA become dirt poor like those of the DPRK. Many are already suffering from the decline of the middle class, and that tendency is showing no sign of stopping or reversing.

«ELECTIONS» IN VENEZUELA

There’s a discusion about whether to vote or not. I think that both are right. Many will vote against the costituyente assembly, and many will abstain. The same message gets sent, and the «legitimate» base for the inMaduro narcocracy gets eroded. Not that it matters much in the official context, because the final numbers will be made up just like the last time.

1ST VS 2ND

The 2nd Amendment gets a lot more attention than the 1st except when it’s about Orange 45 and fake news. It is of course totally unnecessary to invent anything about the WH disaster which keeps on giving SNL and all the late nighters much more material than they need.

What’s a more real and permanent issue with the MSM is political bias, making a Watergate style investigation just about impossible coming from there. No wonder that there’s a whole new crop of alt-news outlets. Now the the challenge is finding out what’s what and what’s not among them. The good news is that ICT gives all of us the means to compare and find out what makes sense.

There’s no depth. Both amendments get misinterpreted, and that’s a recipe for disaster…

 

SOLVENT BANKS?

The same day very recently I heard that banks are making less money and that they’re getting ready for defaults on auto, student loan and credit card debt. Today I heard that they want to do more of that type of lending! Evidently, greed is keeping risk aversion at bay.

FED POLICY MISTAKES AND SURPRISES

On financial bubblevision news there’s a constant obsession about what the central banksters will do with interest rates and other voodoo in order to manipulate the economy. Most comments are benevolent, but lately some have hinted at the possibility of a policy mistake.

They’re 3 decades late. The original sin/ mistake happened when Alan Greenspan became Fed chief and the rabid greed-driven financialization that became possible after the gold standard was abandoned truly got under way. Now the central banksters are «surprised» when the naughty economy doesn’t do what they want it to do, and of course it’s only transitory, because their models are right and they’re always right. So now, policy mistake, impossible, the economy isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do!