Apr 052021
 


Piet Mondriaan Composition in color A 1917

 

Yet Again on Covid (Hoskinson)
The Great Covid Power Grab (Clark)
Kentucky Passes A Philosophical Exemption Law For Vaccines (ky.gov)
Covid Passport Trials Begin With Live Comedy Night (BBC)
Everyone in England to be Offered Twice-weekly Covid Tests (G.)
High Vitamin D Levels May Protect Against Covid-19 (UCM)
Republicans Dangle ‘Easy’ Win For Trimmed Biden Plan (F24)
US National Debt Passes $28 Trillion, +$4.7 Trillion in 13 Months (WS)
Turkey and the Suez ‘Heart Attack’ (K.)
Ten Retired Admirals Detained in Turkey as Erdogan Warns of New Coup (GR)
Hunter Biden Is ‘100% Certain’ DOJ Probe Will Clear Him Of Wrongdoing (JTN)

 

 

 

 

Barkley

 

 

Excellent.

Charles Hoskinson is the founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum, two cryptocurrencies.

Yet Again on Covid (Hoskinson)

Read more …

“To compare Covid to the Second World War, as the 24 leaders have done, and argue that it needs a post-WW2 style settlement, surely redefines the word ‘hyperbolic.’ ”

The Great Covid Power Grab (Clark)

Johnson, Macron and Merkel have warned that the world needs a settlement to protect itself in the wake of Coronavirus. The question, as ever, must be: ‘who benefits?’ The answer, as ever, is ‘it’s unlikely to be you.’ “Out with nationalism and isolationism and in with international ‘Health and Security’!” That’s the cry from 24 world leaders, led by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The call for a new global ‘pandemic preparedness’ treaty came in a letter to the Daily Telegraph and in papers across the world. The letter uses words and phrases such as ‘solidarity,’ ‘global community,’ ’international cooperation’ and ‘protect’ repeatedly, to make us all feel that what is being proposed is for the good of us all. But is it?

If we read between the lines, we can see quite clearly that, while the plan is supposed to be about post-Covid pandemics, it is really about making sure that the draconian measures introduced since 2020 are maintained as long as possible. The ‘nobody is safe until everyone is safe’ mantra which appears at the end of the second paragraph in the letter, is saying to us – as Merkel and other globalists have strongly hinted – that restrictions cannot and will not be lifted until everyone in the world has been vaccinated. If you have any doubts, just take a look at the very next sentence, which states: ‘We are therefore committed to ensuring universal and equitable access to safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for this and future pandemics.’ Translation: ‘Africa, you’re going to take the vaccines we offer you whether you like it or not.’

To justify a ‘pandemic treaty,’ and other long-planned changes being implemented in its wake, they have to accord Covid a very special status. The first sentence of the letter boldly states: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge to the global community since the 1940s.’ But is that really true? Hong Kong flu claimed the lives of between one and four million people between 1968 and 1970. But it got a lot less coverage than Covid. There was no talk of a permanent ‘New Normal’ being established in 1970, or the need for a post-WW2-like settlement. Neither was there when HIV/AIDS hit in the 1980s. The UN says between 24.8m and 42.2 million people had died of AIDS-related illnesses by the end of 2019.

To compare Covid to the Second World War, as the 24 leaders have done, and argue that it needs a post-WW2 style settlement, surely redefines the word ‘hyperbolic.’ A reminder: some 75 million people died in the Second World War – including around 27 million citizens of the former Soviet Union. 60 million Europeans became refugees. By contrast, the current number of deaths ‘with’ Covid is 2.8 million. Yes, that’s serious –and all deaths are very sad– but the numbers alone can’t explain why it’s Covid –and not other diseases which killed many more and came before it– which necessitates a ‘Great Reset’.

Read more …

6 states have now passed similar laws: Wisconsin, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky.

Kentucky Passes A Philosophical Exemption Law For Vaccines (ky.gov)

AN ACT relating to exceptions to mandatory immunization requirements and declaring an emergency.


Amend KRS 214.036 to provide exemptions from mandatory immunization for any child, emancipated minor, or adult who, personally or by a parent or guardian, submits a written sworn statement objecting to the immunization based on conscientiously held beliefs; prohibit any administrative regulation, administrative order, or executive order from requiring during an epidemic the immunization of persons who submit either a written sworn statement objecting to the immunization based on conscientiously held beliefs or the written opinion of the person’s physician that such immunization would be injurious to the person’s health; require the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to develop and make available on its Web site a standardized form relating to the exemptions from mandatory immunization and to accept the form after it is submitted; amend KRS 209.552 and 214.034 to conform; EMERGENCY.

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And so it begins.

Covid Passport Trials Begin With Live Comedy Night (BBC)

The government is to trial a series of measures in England, including Covid passports, to allow the safe return of sports matches, events and nightclubs. Passes would show if a person had been vaccinated, had a recent negative test, or natural immunity. Trial events in the coming months will also explore how ventilation and testing before and after could help crowds return. Any use of passes would be “time-limited”, the sports minister has said. The pilots, which will include the FA Cup final, will last until mid-May, and some of the listed events will not be trialling vaccination certification, including those taking place in Liverpool.


Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston described the trials as a “learning experience”, saying no decisions had yet been made on processes or vaccination certificates. He said the earlier pilots “almost certainly won’t involve any element of certification”, and that the government would also be looking at mitigations such as one-way systems and hygiene measures. Mr Huddleston said the PM would receive a report on the trials at the end of May, and suggested further events could be added later in the year.

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Give people back the responsibility taken away from them.

Everyone in England to be Offered Twice-weekly Covid Tests (G.)

Boris Johnson is to unveil a plan for routine, universal Covid-19 tests as a means to ease England out of lockdown, as the government faced a renewed backlash over the idea of app-based “passports” to permit people entry into crowded places and events. Six months after Johnson unveiled plans for “Operation Moonshot”, a £100bn mass testing scheme that never delivered on its stated aim of preventing another lockdown, all people in England will be offered two Covid tests a week from Friday. The prime minister is to announce the rollout of the lateral flow tests at a press conference on Monday afternoon, at which he will also outline a programme of trial events for mass gatherings, as well as proposals for potentially restarting foreign travel.

The testing scheme, involving kits for use at home or at test centres, workplaces and schools, is billed as a means to limit any continued community transmission of the virus, in parallel with the vaccination programme, and as a way to track outbreaks of potentially vaccine-resistant Covid variants. The test-and-trace phone app will also be updated so that when pubs and other hospitality venues reopen everyone in a group will have to register, not just the lead person, with those who test positive asked to share other places they have visited. Some scientists have expressed scepticism at the plan, noting both the possibility of false negatives with lateral flow tests, and the need for better support for people to self-isolate if they do test positive.

Civil liberties groups and many MPs will also be wary if the new testing system potentially feeds into a regime of Covid certificates, which would use recent tests, vaccination or the presence of antibodies to the virus to determine entry to pubs or mass events. Sometimes also called “Covid passports”, these would be purely for domestic use, and would be distinct from a vaccination record to allow foreign travel.

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There’s a research deficiency about vitamin D deficiency. “This supports arguments for designing clinical trials”?

High Vitamin D Levels May Protect Against Covid-19 (UCM)

A new research study at the University of Chicago Medicine has found that when it comes to COVID-19, having vitamin D levels above those traditionally considered sufficient may lower the risk of infection, especially for Black people. The study, published in JAMA Open Network on March 19, retrospectively examined the relationship between vitamin D levels and likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19. While levels of 30 ng/ml or more are usually considered sufficient, the authors found that Black individuals who had levels of 30 to 40 ng/ml had a 2.64 times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than people with levels of 40 ng/ml or greater. Statistically significant associations of vitamin D levels with COVID-19 risk were not found in white people.

The study looked at data from more than 3,000 patients at UChicago Medicine who had had their vitamin D levels tested within 14 days before a COVID-19 test. The research team is now recruiting participants for two separate clinical trials testing the efficacy of vitamin D supplements for preventing COVID-19. This research is an expansion of an earlier study showing that a vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/ml) may raise the risk of testing positive for COVID-19. In the current study, those results were further supported, finding that individuals with a vitamin D deficiency had a 7.2% chance of testing positive for the virus. A separate study recently found that more than 80% of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient.

“These new results tell us that having vitamin D levels above those normally considered sufficient is associated with decreased risk of testing positive for COVID-19, at least in Black individuals,” said David Meltzer, MD, PhD, Chief of Hospital Medicine at UChicago Medicine and lead author of the study. “This supports arguments for designing clinical trials that can test whether or not vitamin D may be a viable intervention to lower the risk of the disease, especially in persons of color.” Meltzer was inspired to investigate this topic after seeing an article in early 2020 that found people with vitamin D deficiency who were randomly assigned to receive vitamin D supplementation had much lower rates of viral respiratory infections compared to those who did not receive supplementation. He decided to examine data being collected at UChicago Medicine on COVID-19 to determine the role that vitamin D levels might be playing.

“There’s a lot of literature on vitamin D. Most of it has been focused on bone health, which is where the current standards for sufficient vitamin D levels come from,” Meltzer explained. “But there’s also some evidence that vitamin D might improve immune function and decrease inflammation. So far, the data has been relatively inconclusive. Based on these results, we think that earlier studies may have given doses that were too low to have much of an effect on the immune system, even if they were sufficient for bone health. It may be that different levels of vitamin D are adequate for different functions.”

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“..not the more expansive spending Biden envisions to create jobs, fight climate change and stand up to a rising China..”

Republicans Dangle ‘Easy’ Win For Trimmed Biden Plan (F24)

Republicans opened the door Sunday to supporting a pared down version of Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, saying concentrating on physical improvements would deliver an “easy bipartisan win” for the US president. Biden’s American Jobs Plan — the second massive spending initiative of his 10-week old administration, after a $1.9 trillion short-term Covid rescue bill — would modernize America’s public works and make its energy system greener. But the proposal announced last week faces major hurdles in Congress amid criticism from Republicans and business lobbies who oppose the higher corporate taxes that would pay the bill.

Roy Blunt, the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, implored Democrats to focus on the traditional pillars of infrastructure — “roads, bridges, ports and airports” — and not the more expansive spending Biden envisions to create jobs, fight climate change and stand up to a rising China. Blunt spoke out as senior administration figures hit the Sunday talk show circuit to sell the policy to the American people as a vital component of sustained job growth. “I’ve reached out to the White House a couple of times now and said, you’ve got an easy bipartisan win here if you’ll keep this package nearly focused on infrastructure,” Blunt told ABC’s “This Week.”

That would not prevent the administration from later pushing through the other aspects of its plan on a partisan basis, he said. Blunt complained that the package contained more for electric vehicle charging stations than for physical improvements. “When people think about infrastructure, they’re thinking about roads, bridges, ports and airports,” he told ABC. Blunt, a senior member of Senate leadership team, struck a more conciliatory tone than the chamber’s Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had earlier vowed to fight the Biden plan “every step of the way.”

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It’s become fully abstract.

US National Debt Passes $28 Trillion, +$4.7 Trillion in 13 Months (WS)

It finally happened, that glorious moment, when, after teetering on the verge for weeks – for reasons we’ll get into shortly – the incredibly spiking US gross national debt, after kissing the line a couple of times for a moment, finally, and suddenly by a big leap, jumped over the $28-trillion mark, with a $143-billion leap in one day on Wednesday, March 31, following some big Treasury sales. It gave some of that up on Thursday as some bonds matured. And it now amounts to $28.08 trillion, as per US Treasury Department on Friday. The US gross national debt has now spiked by $4.7 trillion in 13 months since the end of February 2020, in the days before this show started.

The flat spots in the chart are the visual depictions of a charade unique to American politics, the periods when the debt bounced into the Debt Ceiling. Those were the days when everyone in Congress was still trying to hijack the Debt Ceiling law to get their favorite spending priorities! If it looks like the trillions have been whizzing by a little less fast in recent months, that the growth of the debt has somehow slowed, that is correct. The chart below magnifies the daily debt levels since December. On March 3, the debt level touched $28 trillion but only barely and just for one day, before backing off, and then kissed it again on March 17, only to back off again and remain tantalizingly close, but no cigar, until Wednesday, when it did the deed with one huge $148-billion leap:

The reason for this slowdown in borrowing is that the government sold a gigantic amount of debt last spring, adding $3 trillion to its debt in a few months, and then didn’t spend all of it, but kept the unspent amounts in its checking account – the General Treasury Account or GTA — which ballooned to $1.8 trillion by July, from the pre-crisis range between $100 billion and $400 billion. During the final months of the Mnuchin Treasury, it was decided to start spending down the balance in the checking account by borrowing a little less, and by early January, the GTA had dropped to $1.6 trillion.

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Erdogan wants to dig a new canal and bypass the 1936 Montreux Convention.

Turkey and the Suez ‘Heart Attack’ (K.)

Turkey continues to threaten to depart from the 1936 Montreux Convention that governs free shipping through the Bosporus strait. The accident in the Suez Canal served as the excuse for the speaker of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, Mustafa Sentop, to imply as much last week, even if he had to go back on his statement due to the tense situation between Ankara and Washington. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also proclaims this departure when he wants to utilize it geopolitically and when talking about his announced pharaonic intention of constructing a second canal in the Bosporus – one unregulated by international conventions. Could Turkey close the strait and block the passage of both merchant and military ships between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, depending on what serves its interests?

According to the Montreux Convention, merchant ships enjoy freedom of passage and navigation in the strait, irrespective of their flag and cargo. The convention allows Turkey to militarize the strait and permits the Black Sea countries freedom of passage for military ships provided they give a week’s notice, and substantially restricts the passage of military vessels that are not from the Black Sea states (notification of crossing, tonnage restrictions, armament restrictions, aircraft carriers cannot pass, and others). All of this in a time of peace, which, however, is threatened by Erdogan’s controversial views on the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the atmosphere in the Black Sea, reminiscent of the Cold War, where Ukraine is the epicenter of looming dark clouds and, according to analysts, will likely remain a source of global tension.

The Suez “heart attack” brought up questions on safe passage into and out of the Mediterranean, as much for the merchant fleets as the navies that move between the Red Sea, Gibraltar and the Bosporus, with the latter crossing attracting the attention of military and commercial organizations around the globe, given the volatile geopolitical situation in the wider region. Turkey, if it deems necessary, does not need to bar the gate to stop traffic in the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. All it has to do is conjure up an accident by scuppering two ships in the straits, without being accused of violating the Montreux Convention. That is why the West is feverishly readying the “continental straits” between Alexandroupoli and Burgas as an alternative, while NATO equips the fleets of Romania and Bulgaria.

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And he really wants to. These guys sent an open letter warning about the Montreux Convention and he just has them arrested.

Ten Retired Admirals Detained in Turkey as Erdogan Warns of New Coup (GR)

Turkey detained 10 retired admirals on Monday, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of a new coup following a letter signed by more than 100 retired admirals warning about a possible threat to a treaty governing the use of Turkey’s key waterways. The Ankara chief public prosecutor’s office said arrest warrants have been issued for the 10. Prosecutors also ordered four other suspects to report to Ankara police within three days, opting not to detain them because of their age. The development comes a day after the letter was sharply condemned by the government, which said the move is “reminiscent of coup times” in Turkey’s past. Turkey’s approval last month of plans to develop a shipping canal in Istanbul comparable to the Panama or Suez canals has opened up debate about the 1936 Montreux Convention.


The admirals said in their letter that apart from its environmental impact, the new canal venture could undermine the Montreux accord. The convention guarantees the free passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits of civilian vessels in times of both peace and war. It also regulates the use of the strait by military vessels from non-Black Sea states. The new canal would allow ships to transit between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea without passing through part of the straits that are covered by the treaty. The declaration has drawn strong reactions from the government and officials. Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın said the statement is “reminiscent of coup periods” and made the former soldiers “a laughingstock.” “Know your place and stay where you are,” he added.

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Probe started in 2018 and he just found out yesterday?

Hunter Biden Is ‘100% Certain’ DOJ Probe Will Clear Him Of Wrongdoing (JTN)

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has expressed complete confidence that he will be cleared at the conclusion of the Justice Department’s probe into his finances. During a CBS Sunday Morning interview, Hunter Biden said that he is fully cooperating with the investigation. He said that he is “100% certain that at the end of the investigation, that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing.” “I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” he said in a statement back in December. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.” Fox News reported that “according to a source familiar with the matter,” the probe started in 2018.

Read more …

 

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Nov 302014
 
 November 30, 2014  Posted by at 11:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


DPC Harlem River Speedway and Washington Bridge, New York 1905

Fresh Signs Of Global Slump Pose Challenge To US (WSJ)
Swiss Go to Polls on SNB’s Gold, Immigration in Economic U-Turn (Bloomberg)
Swiss To Vote On Massive Gold-Buying Plan (AP)
Can QE Prop Up Asset Prices Forever? (Acting Man)
Shale And Cheap Oil Make America The New Lucky Country (Telegraph)
Black Friday Online Sales Jump 22% as Jobs Spur Shopping (Bloomberg)
Capping Brazil’s Corruption Gusher (Bloomberg)
ECB Likely To Hold Off On Sovereign Bond Purchases (WSJ)
ECB Board Member Dampens Quantitative Easing Hopes (Reuters)
France Might As Well Be Communist, Blasts US Tyre Tycoon (Telegraph)
When Will the US National Debt Exceed $18 Trillion? (MyGovCost.org)
That Hot US-EU Trade Deal Destroys 600,000 EU Jobs (Don Quijones)
Economics’ Failure To Tackle Real-World Issues Drives Women Away (Observer)
Australia: Haven for Bank Control Frauds? (Macrobusiness)
Do We Own Our Stuff, or Does Our Stuff Own Us? (CH Smith)
Global Importance Of Urban Agriculture ‘Underestimated’ (BBC)
Geo-Engineering: Climate Fixes ‘Could Harm Billions’ (BBC)
Does Anybody Ever ‘Think The Unthinkable’? (John Gray)

“The low-growth outlook is raising questions over whether weak demand could wash onto U.S. shores in the coming months .. ”

Fresh Signs Of Global Slump Pose Challenge To US (WSJ)

Economic prospects are flagging across Europe, Japan and big emerging markets such as India, a turn that presents fresh challenges to the relatively robust U.S. economy at a time when the world needs a dependable growth engine. Multiple strands Friday pointed to slackening economic vitality across the globe. In Europe, consumer prices rose in November at their slowest annual pace in five years, deepening fears the continent may be tipping toward deflation. In Japan, the core consumer-price index in October rose at its slowest pace this year. In both places the fall in energy prices has clouded a concerted push by central banks to boost the inflation rate and stoke consumer and business confidence. The picture in emerging markets isn’t much brighter.

Economic growth in India decelerated in the third quarter, according to government data released on Friday. Figures in Brazil showed Latin America’s biggest economy had edged out of recession in the third quarter, helped by government spending, but economists warned of potentially prolonged stagnation. The low-growth outlook is raising questions over whether weak demand could wash onto U.S. shores in the coming months, even as American businesses and consumers benefit from falling gasoline prices heading into the holiday shopping season. America’s economy has grown steadily this year after a first-quarter contraction, and employers have added more than 200,000 jobs a month for nine straight months through October. But consumer spending and business investment in the U.S. was muted in October, suggesting the U.S. might provide insufficient demand to help buoy other economies.

Cheaper energy stands to boost both the U.S. economy and those of other oil importers, including China, by offering what amounts to a tax cut to businesses and consumers. But in Europe, “problems go well beyond oil,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, an economic forecasting firm in Holland, Pa. “But the better off the U.S. is, the better off Europe is going to be. So would we rather see oil at $70 a barrel instead of $100? The answer is absolutely yes, and so would Europe.” Economists at Oxford Economics estimated in a report Friday that oil prices at around $60 a barrel over the next two years would offer “a significant strengthening” of economic growth “for most of the major advanced and emerging economies.”

Read more …

A Yes vote would put the Swiss central bank in an unenviable position. It has spent tens of billions buying euros to keep the Swiss franc down. If it has to sell those to buy gold instead, it will be at a great loss, and it would push the euro down, which is what Switzerland tried to prevent in the first place.

Swiss Go to Polls on SNB’s Gold, Immigration in Economic U-Turn (Bloomberg)

Switzerland holds three referendums today that have the potential to have an effect on everything from the economy to the central bank and even the country’s international relations. Up for a vote is a requirement for the Swiss National Bank to hold at least 20% of its assets in gold, a clampdown on immigration and the abolishment of tax privileges for foreign millionaires. While polls by gfs.bern indicate all three proposals could get rejected, there remains a sizable cohort of undecided voters. Plebiscites are a key feature of Switzerland’s system of direct democracy, and are held nationally and at a municipal level several times a year. Campaigns in the run-up to the latest votes have seen factions throwing out accusations of xenophobia, while there have been warnings that the economy’s potential could be weakened and the SNB’s power neutered. “Independent of the fact of a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ on the votes, the message that is being sent abroad is that the Swiss model is not as predictable as we thought it would be,” said Stephane Garelli at the IMD business school.

While most votes are cast by mail before today, polling stations will close by 12:00 p.m. Zurich time and the first projections are due after 12:30 p.m. A final tally will be announced later in the day and the government will hold a press conference. There has been a sharp increase in the number of initiatives in recent years, including a ban on construction of minarets, curbs on executive compensation and a minimum wage. Some in Switzerland argue direct democratic privileges are being abused. “The constitution is becoming the toy of political exhibitionism,” Richard Saegesser, member of government in the town of Uster, near Zurich, said in a Nov. 23 speech. The “Save Our Swiss Gold” initiative would require the SNB to build up its bullion holdings, currently about 8% of assets, over the next five years and forbid it from ever selling any. That would make it harder to defend its cap on the franc of 1.20 per euro and fulfill its price stability mandate. The central bank would have to buy about 70 billion francs ($73 billion) of gold, policy makers estimate.

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Swiss bankers and politicians must feverishly hope this is voted down.

Swiss To Vote On Massive Gold-Buying Plan (AP)

In Switzerland, a campaign is on to protect the country’s wealth by investing in gold – a lot of gold. In a test of their sense of financial security, the Swiss are being asked to vote on a proposal to make the central bank hold a fifth of its reserves in gold within five years. That would mean buying about 1,500 metric tons, or 1,650 short tons, of gold worth more than US$60 billion. If the initiative wins the backing of a majority of voters today, the Swiss National Bank would also be prohibited from spending any of the treasure, which would have to be locked away in vaults entirely on Swiss soil. The prospect risks causing a spike in gold prices globally. The nationalist Swiss People’s Party, the country’s largest, has brought the “Save our Swiss Gold” initiative, arguing it will restore trust in the central bank and its paper money. The proposal is opposed by the Government and financial leaders but aims to capitalise on a growing sense of caution among the Swiss about the perceived dangers and increasing volatility of financial markets.

Though the country is among the world’s most prosperous, the initiative argues that owning physical gold in vaults would protect the country’s wealth from trouble in markets beyond the control of this small Alpine nation. The experience of the 2008 global financial crisis, triggered in part by complex investments that brought down multiple banks and bankrupted states, is fresh in people’s memories. Jacques Mayor, a Geneva accountant, said he was wary of the idea of Switzerland buying or selling gold in large amounts in international markets. “The last time they sold gold, we had an enormous loss,” Mayor said, referring to the central bank going US$10 billion in the red in 2013, when the value of its gold holdings slumped. Despite the perception that gold’s value is protected by the fact it is a physical good, its market price can in fact be quite volatile. The metal is used often by speculators as a safe haven.

Read more …

” .. genuine economic growth comes from two things: the number of workers in the labor force and the productivity of those workers. That’s a problem for the US.”

Can QE Prop Up Asset Prices Forever? (Acting Man)

It’s not just voters who buy into popular myths. Many investors do too. Few have wider appeal than the myth that central banks can create economic growth via the printing press. What central bankers and their supporters seem to forget is that growth comes from living, breathing human beings. It often sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. But genuine economic growth comes from two things: the number of workers in the labor force and the productivity of those workers. That’s a problem for the US. Because according to a recent report in The Economist, its potential labor force is set to grow at less than one-third the 0.9% rate we saw between 2003 and 2013.

Making things worse, many of America’s boomers – the first of whom qualified for Social Security in 2008 – are opting out of the labor force. Instead of looking for jobs, they are choosing to live on benefits. This helps explain why the%age of working-age adults looking for jobs in the US has fallen to below 63% from about 66% when the global financial crisis struck. And it’s not just Americans who are getting older on average. From The Economist:

“[T]he ratio of workers to retirees is now plunging in most developed countries and soon will in many emerging markets. Japan is already liquidating the foreign assets its people acquired during their high-saving years; China and South Korea are starting to do so and Germany will soon.”

Fewer workers in the labor force. More retirees to support for those with jobs. Foreign retirees cashing out of their US stocks and bonds. Janet Yellen et al. better hope investors are gullible enough to believe the magic of QE can continue to levitate financial assets forever. Otherwise, stock and bond investors will start to reconsider the prices they’re willing to pay to own their pieces of paper.

Read more …

The positive at all costs message here at the Telegraph makes so little sense it hurts.

Shale And Cheap Oil Make America The New Lucky Country (Telegraph)

We normally think of Australia as the “lucky country” but that label is surely better applied to the US today. You could hardly envisage a more benign backdrop for its economy and stock market than the current environment of tumbling energy prices, low inflation, narrowing deficits, competitive industry, a popular currency and consequently lower-for-longer interest rates. The frantic shuttle diplomacy in the run up to last week’s Opec summit in Vienna illustrated the pain being felt by the world’s less favoured nations – those like Venezuela and Russia which simply can’t balance the books at a $75 oil price. The meeting showed how difficult it can be to persuade individual countries, even members of a supposedly co-operative cartel like Opec, to work together if doing so runs counter to their own self-interest.

It may be beneficial to Opec as a whole to curb production in the face of surging US shale oil output and flagging global energy demand, but individual countries may quite rationally decide it is better to keep the oil flowing to protect their market share. If you have built up enough foreign currency reserves in the good years (as Saudi Arabia has) and you want to make life tough for your new rivals in the marginal oilfields of North Dakota, you might feel a couple of years of cheap crude is a price worth paying. The excess supply created by America’s shale revolution has been disguised in recent years by capacity reductions in war-torn countries such as Libya.

But the producers’ luck has run out this year as supply has picked up around the world even as China’s slowdown and stagnation in Europe and Japan has reduced demand. The jockeying for position by Saudi Arabia and others might sound like a game, but it really matters. With world oil exports amounting to around 40m barrels a day, the $40 drop in the oil price since June represents a transfer from oil exporters to oil consumers of more than $400bn a year. US consumers have an extra $70bn in their pockets, money they used to spend on fuel and can direct towards eating out, buying electronic gizmos or going on holiday. Even with the usual lag before consumers see the benefit of falling petrol prices, we are starting to feel the impact. Last week’s revision to third quarter US GDP, from 3.5pc to 3.9pc, was in part a reflection of more confident consumers with higher disposable incomes.

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And Bloomberg does the Telegraph one better.

Black Friday Online Sales Jump 22% as Jobs Spur Shopping (Bloomberg)

Sales online the day after Thanksgiving surged 22% from a year earlier as U.S. consumers, buoyed by higher employment and lower gasoline prices, flocked to computers and smartphones to hunt bargains. The gain outpaced online shopping on Thanksgiving as heavy Black Friday promotions attracted consumers, researcher ChannelAdvisor Corp. said today in an online statement. Sales at EBay rose 27% on Black Friday over last year, and Amazon saw a 24% increase. The online gains give a strong start to a holiday shopping season that the National Retail Federation predicts will be the best in three years.

Consumer spending in the last quarter grew at a 2.2% annualized rate, exceeding estimates for a 1.8% improvement. Black Friday online shopping was done less on mobile devices this year than on Thanksgiving, slipping to 46% from 49%, the company said. The rates of actual purchases also declined from Thursday, perhaps because consumers were more selective or finding hot items out of stock, ChannelAdvisor said. IBM Benchmark said Black Friday online sales rose 9.5%, and mobile sales jumped 25%. For Thanksgiving, mobile sales on smartphones and tablets accounted for 52% of online traffic.

Read more …

Note: all this does not yet include the 40% oil price plunge. Petrobras can indeed drag the whole country down.

Capping Brazil’s Corruption Gusher (Bloomberg)

Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil giant, is now engulfed in a scandal befitting its size – a multibillion-dollar miasma of bribery, larceny and political chicanery. How newly re-elected President Dilma Rousseff responds may decide not only her fate but also, to exaggerate only slightly, that of Brazil itself. It’s hard to overestimate the role of Petrobras in Brazilian society. Once a symbol of national pride, just four years ago it had the largest stock offering. Now police say it is at the heart of the case in which some of Brazil’s biggest builders formed a cartel to win $23 billion in public contracts. One Petrobras refinery was budgeted at $2.5 billion but will end up costing at least $18.5 billion. Kickbacks from overpriced contracts were allegedly used to bribe politicians to support the ruling Workers’ Party.

Rousseff, who was Petrobras chairwoman from 2003 to 2010, has said the case “will forever change the relationship between Brazilian society, the Brazilian government and private companies.” It’s already threatening the financial health of Brazilian builders and the prospects for a revival in economic growth. Corruption in Brazil eats up as much as 2.3% of gross domestic product a year. To Rousseff’s credit, she has done more than just talk about the need to fight corruption. During her first term, several ground-breaking laws were passed, including a “clean companies act” that could fine companies as much as 20% of their revenue and bar them from state financing or state contracts, and a freedom of information law guaranteeing access to public documents. Yet Brazil is notorious for “laws that don’t take.” Many states and cities have yet to implement the 2011 freedom of information law, for instance; in one audit of those that have, two of every five requests for information received no response at all.

In the 14 years since Brazil joined the Anti-Bribery Convention of the OECD, only one case has been prosecuted, and no sanctions have ever been levied. That’s a pretty thin docket for the world’s seventh-biggest economy. The “clean companies” law that Brazil passed last year could change that. Unfortunately, Rousseff has yet to issue the regulations for implementing the law. She should. Rousseff also needs to follow through on her pledge to reform Brazil’s campaign finance laws. Under their current terms, companies can donate up to 2% of their gross annual revenue. In fact, they supply more than 95% of the money for Brazilian elections, which have become wildly expensive. And campaigns need only disclose the identity and contribution amounts of donors in a final consolidated report issued after the election is over.

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The Germans have been consistent all along in their message.

ECB Likely To Hold Off On Sovereign Bond Purchases (WSJ)

Economists expect the European Central Bank to hold off on sovereign bond purchases next week, despite further dangers of deflation haunting the eurozone. The bank’s governing council meeting Thursday – the final one of 2014 – is likely to convey a more dovish message and lower inflation expectations, analysts say, but no new measures are expected until next year. The central bank has set in motion schemes to purchase covered bonds and asset-backed securities, but weaker prices put pressure on its President Mario Draghi to start buying sovereign bonds as well, a policy known as quantitative easing.

In a speech this week, ECB Vice-President Vitor Constancio opened the door to such purchases in 2015. “We must wait to see if ECB President Mario Draghi will repeat his readiness to start buying government bonds if the inflation outlook deteriorates further,” said Zach Witton, economist at Moody’s Analytics, in a research note Friday. Purchasing managers’ index figures for the manufacturing and services sectors are expected to show economic activity in the core eurozone countries – Germany, France and Italy – remained broadly flat in November.

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But one wonders what will happen to the euro after Thursday meeting.

ECB Board Member Dampens Quantitative Easing Hopes (Reuters)

ECB Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger said on Saturday she saw little room for further easing of monetary policy despite a further fall in euro zone inflation. “According to the current situation, the threshold as I see it for taking further action is very high, particularly for large-scale purchasing programmes,” she said in Berlin, speaking five days ahead of the ECB’s next Monetary Policy Committee meeting. Innovation in monetary policy was not a taboo, but must also not be an “end in itself”, she added. The ECB has cut interest rates to practically zero and is readying more buying programmes that could include government bonds – known as quantitative easing – to ward off the threat of deflation in the euro zone. Vice President Vitor Constancio said this week the ECB could make a decision on government bond-buying in the first quarter if the economy did not improve. The purchase of government bonds would be viewed extremely critically in Germany.

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France suffers from a dangerous dose of entitlement.

France Might As Well Be Communist, Blasts US Tyre Tycoon (Telegraph)

A US tyre tycoon has ridiculed French laws and trade unions that he said had prevented him from rescuing a stricken factory, saying France should become “communist”. Maurice Taylor, chief executive of Titan International, had initially expressed interest in taking over the loss-making Goodyear tyre plant in Amiens. But he pulled out of the deal and explained why to France Info radio. “You can’t buy Goodyear. Under your law, we have to take a minimum of 662 or 672 employees. You can’t do that. The most you could take is 333 … there’s no business for that plant now,” said Mr Taylor. “I tried to tell them all that before but you guys have got to wake up over there and tell the unions, ‘Hey if they’re so smart, they should buy the factory’. “It’s stupid. It’s the dumbest thing in the world. France should just become communist and then when it goes all bad like Russia did, then maybe you’d have a chance,” added Mr Taylor.

Goodyear announced in January last year that it was closing the factory, which employs 1,173 people, after years of negotiations with unions failed to come up with a solution to save jobs. Unions launched a series of legal proceedings against the company, but to no avail. Mr Taylor, known as “The Grizz” for his tough talk, has made waves before for his comments on France. In 2013, he wrote a letter to the French industrial renewal minister calling the country’s workers lazy and overpaid after years of negotiations by Titan to take over the plant had failed. “They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way,” wrote Mr Taylor. The minister at the time, Arnaud Montebourg, hit back, telling Mr Taylor: “Your extremist insults display a perfect ignorance of what our country is about. Be assured that you can count on me to inspect your tyre imports with a redoubled zeal.”

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“… can you point to what you personally got in return for that $42,291 worth of additional debt per household that the federal government accumulated during the last six years?”

When Will the US National Debt Exceed $18 Trillion? (MyGovCost.org)

Sometime in the next two to three weeks, the total public debt outstanding for the U.S. government will exceed 18 trillion dollars. If you were to ask us to pin down a precise date, we would say sometime around December 9, 2014, given the rate at which the national debt has been increasing during the federal government’s current fiscal year. Since the start of the U.S. federal government’s 2015 fiscal year on October 1, 2014, the national debt has grown at an average rate of $2.08 billion per day. If it helps put these very large numbers into a more human scale, when the U.S. national debt reaches $18 trillion, that will work out to be about $124,275 per U.S. household, which is up from $81,984 per U.S. household at the end of the 2008 fiscal year.

And the new figure would be on top of your mortgage, car loans, student loans, credit cards, et cetera that you might also have. But unlike those tangible things, where you can at least point to your house, your car, your education, or even the Christmas presents you might be buying this upcoming Black Friday, can you point to what you personally got in return for that $42,291 worth of additional debt per household that the federal government accumulated during the last six years? If you cannot, is it really worth it?

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The TTIP is more deadly than ebola.

That Hot US-EU Trade Deal Destroys 600,000 EU Jobs (Don Quijones)

In a 1994 interview with Charlie Rose, the British billionaire financier James Goldsmith delivered a stark, eerily prescient warning of the state the world would be in today if it succumbed to the freer borders and more centralized, corporate-owned governance envisaged by trade regimes such as NAFTA and GATT (the predecessor to the World Trade Organization). Goldsmith was spot on about just about everything, from the threats posed by derivatives – then in their infancy – to the risks of industrializing agriculture throughout the developing world. Yet his warnings went unheeded, as laments the U.S. economist and former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts:

Sir James called it correct, as did Roger Milliken. They predicted that the working and middle classes in the US and Europe would be ruined by the greed of Wall Street and corporations, who would boost corporate earnings by replacing their domestic work forces with foreign labor, which could be paid a fraction of labor’s productivity as a result of the foreign country’s low living standard and large excess supply of labor.

Now, 20 years on from the signing of NAFTA and GATT, our governments’ enthusiasm for bilateral and multilateral trade agreements is undimmed, despite the social upheaval and economic destruction they have left in their wake. Indeed, our governments now seek to take “free” trade to a whole new level, far beyond what was originally envisaged for NAFTA and GATT. If signed, the new generation of trade deals would sound the final death knell of what remains of nation-state sovereignty, while doing next to nothing to improve economic conditions on the ground. Of particular concern is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which seeks to bind together the world’s two largest markets, the U.S. and the EU, under a homogenized regulatory and legal superstructure designed for the exclusive benefit of transatlantic corporations and banks. Unsurprisingly, most of the official (i.e. European Commission-commissioned) assessments of TTIP predict gains, albeit negligible ones, in trade and GDP for both the EU and US.

Some even predict gains for non-TTIP countries, suggesting that the agreement would be a win-win for just everyone. However, according to a new study by Tufts University Professor Jeronim Capaldo, these rose-tinted forecasts rely on methods virtually unchanged from the models used to promote the liberalization of markets in the 1980s and 1990s. As then, they assume that the “competitive” sectors of the economy would benefit from the enhanced trade conditions while the losses racked up in the other sectors would be offset by falling salaries and rising employment.This assumption is provably false. As recent experience in Southern Europe has shown, lower salaries do not necessarily translate into the creation of new jobs. In fact, according to Capaldo’s findings – based on the UN’s much more up-to-date Global Policy Model – not only would the TTIP not create new jobs in Europe, it would destroy in the space of ten years a net total of roughly 600,000 jobs.

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“In the UK, women make up just 27% of economics students, despite accounting for 57% of the undergraduate population .. ”

Economics’ Failure To Tackle Real-World Issues Drives Women Away (Observer)

On the first Thursday of every month, nine men and women meet within the marble halls of the Bank of England to decide whether the nation’s mortgages will get more expensive and to answer the £375bn question: is it time to reverse the Bank’s electronic printing presses, which pumped money into the economy during the financial crisis. More specifically, seven men and two women make those vital decisions. As recently as six months ago it was nine men. It was only the arrival of Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, a former World Bank official, and Kristin Forbes, a US academic, at the monetary policy committee that ended an all-male run that had lasted for four years. Around the same time Charlotte Hogg was poached from Santander to become the Bank’s chief operating officer, as part of governor Mark Carney’s attempt to get more women into the 320-year-old institution. And early next year in the US, Janet Yellen will mark the anniversary of her becoming the first woman to run the Federal Reserve.

But despite these appointments, researchers warn that progress in getting women into such influential jobs will remain slow because not enough women are studying economics. In the UK, women make up just 27% of economics students, despite accounting for 57% of the undergraduate population, according to a study from the University of Southampton last month. This gap has remained unchanged for almost 20 years, even though female undergraduates now outnumber men in law and medicine, while almost equal numbers study business. Fewer girls than boys take A-level maths, a common prerequisite for an economics degree, but according to the Southampton researchers, those girls who did were more likely to get top grades, but then less likely to go on to economics at university. Mirco Tonin, lead author of the study, thinks deeper cultural factors put women off the “dismal science”. “Maybe when people think about economics what comes to mind is a male role model,” he says.

Kate Barker, who served on the MPC for nine years, was at times the only woman and says it was an odd experience. “It is not because I felt crushed or got at… There is just something odd about being the only woman on a panel of nine. It was much better when [former members] Marion Bell and Rachel Lomax were on. When there were three women it felt much more normal.” She was invited to help recruit her successors when her fixed term came to an end, but says: “We weren’t always able to attract as many applications from women as we would like. On the first two occasions we appointed men and we felt uneasy about perpetuating an all-male panel…but equally you have to appoint people of the right calibre.”

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Subprime down under.

Australia: Haven for Bank Control Frauds? (Macrobusiness)

Identifying whether a similar form of subprime fraud is widespread in Australia’s banking system and housing market deserves close scrutiny. Deregulation and privatisation of the financial sector since the 1980s has increased competitive pressures and the potential for fraud, as commercial lenders are provided with an incentive to maintain robust profitability via strong credit growth. Substantial evidence of subprime fraud has been provided by Denise Brailey, a criminologist and president of the Banking & Finance Consumers Support Association (BFCSA). It is a public-interest organisation dedicated to protecting investors and the pursuit of compensation for victims of predatory finance. Brailey is responsible for eleven inquiries investigating the predations of the FIRE sector and compliant regulators between 1997 and 2010.

Having worked in this field since the 1980s, Brailey has witnessed first-hand the financial and social destruction wrought by a multitude of scams and predatory lending, including the ‘finance brokers scandal’ in Western and South Australia, and the ‘mortgage solicitor scams’ stretching down the east coast from Queensland to Tasmania. Brailey alleges that since 1996, commercial lenders have engaged in widespread subprime fraud through over-lending to owner-occupiers and property investors, far beyond their ability to finance the debt. At the centre of the alleged fraud are loan application forms (LAFs), with borrower metrics altered by lenders without the knowledge, authority or consent of borrowers. The value of borrowers’ assets and incomes are radically inflated, justifying the approval of large loan sums, to the benefit of lenders and the broker channel.

As defaults typically show several years after loan origination, subprime borrowers struggle for an extended period before eventually succumbing, to the great benefit of the lenders in the form of higher interest payments, including penalties. Lenders then realise borrowers’ entire equity through foreclosure and sale. Similar to the US, Australian mortgage fraud is more closely linked with low-doc and no-doc mortgages than conventional (prime) mortgages. The process of alleged fraud begins with a potential borrower completing a three page LAF detailing their current assets and incomes. In the back office, the broker inputs the borrower’s details into a password-protected online ‘service calculator’, an application determining the amount of credit the lender, associated with the broker, is willing to provide.

The service calculator amounts to a black box, as brokers are not provided with any information as to how this application functions; it simply provides a ‘calculated’ futuristic income based upon the basic provided income details entered and then uses accounting add-ons and add-backs providing tax incentive ‘advantages’, to produce greater incomes. This in turn enables the banks to significantly increase the volume of lending.

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The answer is obvious. Just look around you.

Do We Own Our Stuff, or Does Our Stuff Own Us? (CH Smith)

The frenzied acquisition of more stuff is supposed to be an unalloyed good: good for “growth,” good for the consumer who presumably benefits from more stuff and good for governments collecting taxes on the purchase of all the stuff. But the frenzy to acquire more stuff raises a question: do we own our stuff, or does our stuff own us? I think the answer is clear: our stuff owns us, not the other way around. Everything we own demands its pound of flesh in one way or another: space must be found for it amid the clutter of stuff we already own, it must be programmed, recharged, maintained, dusted, moved, etc. The only way to lighten the burden of ownership is to get rid of stuff rather than buy more stuff. The only way to stop being owned is to is get rid of the stuff that owns us.

I propose a new holiday event, Gold Sunday: this is the day everyone hauls all the stuff they “own” that is a burden to a central location and dumps it in a free-for-all. Whatever is left after the freeters have picked through the pile is carted to the recycling yard and whatever’s left after that culling is taken to the dump. Frankly, I wouldn’t accept a new big-screen TV, vehicle, tablet computer, etc. etc. etc. at any price because I am tired of stuff owning me. I don’t want any more entertainment or computational devices, musical instruments, vehicles, clothing, kitchen appliances, or anything else for that matter, except what can be consumed with some modest enjoyment and no ill effects. We live in a small flat and I have no room for more stuff, and I have no time for more devices or entertainment. I have too much of everything but money and time. I don’t want to pay more auto insurance, maintenance costs, etc., nor do I want more devices to fiddle with. I am enslaved to the few I already own.

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“The most interesting factor when we look at India is that we could map the whole country as urban or peri-urban because there are so many towns and cities.”

Global Importance Of Urban Agriculture ‘Underestimated’ (BBC)

Urban agriculture is playing an increasingly important role in global food security, a study has suggested. Researchers, using satellite data, found that agricultural activities within 20km of urban areas occupy an area equivalent to the 28-nation EU. The international team of scientists says the results should challenge the focus on rural areas of agricultural research and development work. The findings appear in the journal Environmental Research Letters. “This is the first study to document the global scale of food production in and around urban settings,” explained co-author Pay Drechsel, a researcher for the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). “There were people talking about urban agriculture but we never knew details. How did it compare with other farming systems? This assessment showed us that it was much larger than we expected.”

The team acknowledged that the study could actually be conservative, as it focused on urban areas with populations of 50,000 or greater.Dr Drechsel said that when urban farming was compared with other (ie rural) farming systems, the results were surprising. For example, the total area of rice farming in South Asia was smaller than what was being cultivated in urban areas around the globe. Likewise, total maize production in sub-Saharan Africa was not as large as the area under cultivation in urban areas around the world. UN data shows that more than 50% of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, which could explain the changing landscape of global agriculture. “We could say that the table is moving closer to the farm,” observed Dr Drechsel. “The most interesting factor when we look at India is that we could map the whole country as urban or peri-urban because there are so many towns and cities.”

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What’s that line again about human stupidity?

Geo-Engineering: Climate Fixes ‘Could Harm Billions’ (BBC)

Schemes to tackle climate change could prove disastrous for billions of people, but might be required for the good of the planet, scientists say. That is the conclusion of a new set of studies into what’s become known as geo-engineering. This is the so far unproven science of intervening in the climate to bring down temperatures. These projects work by, for example, shading the Earth from the Sun or soaking up carbon dioxide. Ideas include aircraft spraying out sulphur particles at high altitude to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or using artificial “trees” to absorb CO2. Long regarded as the most bizarre of all solutions for global warming, ideas for geo-engineering have come in for more scrutiny in recent years as international efforts to limit carbon emissions have failed. Now three combined research projects, led by teams from the universities of Leeds, Bristol and Oxford, have explored the implications in more detail.

The central conclusion, according to Dr Matt Watson of Bristol University, is that the issues surrounding geo-engineering – how it might work, the effects it might have and the potential downsides – are “really really complicated”. “We don’t like the idea but we’re more convinced than ever that we have to research it,” he said. “Personally I find this stuff terrifying but we have to compare it to doing nothing, to business-as-usual leading us to a world with a 4C rise.” The studies used computer models to simulate the possible implications of different technologies – with a major focus on ideas for making the deserts, seas and clouds more reflective so that incoming solar radiation does not reach the surface. One simulation imagined sea-going vessels spraying dense plumes of particles into the air to try to alter the clouds. But the model found that this would be far less effective than once thought.

Another explored the option of injecting sulphate aerosols into the air above the Arctic in an effort to reverse the decline of sea-ice. A key finding was that none of the simulations managed to keep the world’s temperature at the level experienced between 1986-2005 – suggesting that any effort would have to be maintained for years. More alarming for the researchers were the potential implications for rainfall patterns. Although all the simulations showed that blocking the Sun’s rays – or solar radiation management, as it is called – did reduce the global temperature, the models revealed profound changes to precipitation including disrupting the Indian Monsoon. Prof Piers Forster of Leeds University said: “We have found that between 1.2 and 4.1 billion people could be adversely affected by changes in rainfall patterns. “The most striking example of a downside would be the complete drying-out of the Sahel region of Africa – that would be very difficult to adapt to for those substantial populations – and that happens across all the scenarios.”

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“Capitalism has lurched into a crisis from which it still has not recovered. Yet the worn-out ideology of free markets sets the framework within which our current generation of leaders continues to think and act. Today nothing is safe from the juggernaut of market forces.”

Does Anybody Ever ‘Think The Unthinkable’? (John Gray)

I have a vivid memory of the moment when I realised it wouldn’t be long before Margaret Thatcher’s radical experiment hit the buffers. It must have been sometime in the late 1980s. The venue was one of the free market think tanks that were so prominent in those far-off years. The topic of discussion was how we should be ready to transgress the boundaries of what was considered politically possible. Nearly all of those present were at one on the need to challenge existing assumptions. What we needed to do, they insisted, was “think the unthinkable” and extend the reach of market forces into public services and throughout society. For me this earnest consensus was not without an element of comedy. Free market ideas had been in power in Britain since Thatcher became prime minister in 1979. They were the ruling ideas of the age, and from my point of view already becoming rather stale.

In the early 70s, when I first became interested in Hayek and other free market thinkers, challenging the post-war political consensus may have required a certain contrariness. By the late 70s, when Britain had come close to bankruptcy and been bailed out by the IMF, there were many signs that the country was heading for a shift of regime in which it would be transformed irreversibly. But an abrupt change of this kind seems unimaginable to most people until it actually happens, and in much of politics, the media and academia Thatcher’s policies came as a bolt from the blue. By the late 80s, what had been heresy had been enthroned as orthodoxy. In these circumstances, the suggestion that one could become a fearless free-thinker by repeating, in louder and more extreme tones, what those in power were constantly saying was entertainingly farcical. At the same time it illuminated how political ideas actually work in practice.

As a general rule, “thinking the unthinkable” means accentuating and exaggerating, preferably to the point of absurdity, beliefs that are currently fashionable. Over the past three decades, this has meant, to my mind, applying the ruling free market ideology with little regard for history, circumstances or common sense. One may agree or disagree with Thatcher’s policies, but throughout most of her time in power she was more pragmatic than is often imagined, and rarely did anything just because it was required by an idea or theory. It was only when the ideologues in the free market think tanks persuaded her of the virtues of the poll tax that she allowed doctrinaire thinking to guide her, and that was the beginning of her downfall. The irony is that the ideas that ended her career in government nearly a quarter of a century ago have shaped politics ever since.

Capitalism has lurched into a crisis from which it still has not recovered. Yet the worn-out ideology of free markets sets the framework within which our current generation of leaders continues to think and act. Today nothing is safe from the juggernaut of market forces. If British Telecom could be successfully privatised, why not the prison service, national forensic service and probation service? Why not hand over the provision of blood plasma, or the search and rescue operations that have long been provided by the RAF and the Royal Navy, to private companies? No sell-off has been so obviously ill-conceived that it couldn’t be implemented. All of these privatisations have in fact occurred, under a variety of governments, or are currently in the works.

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