It reeks of storm!

Do you smell it?

I do not think I do: I really do. It rather stinks; it is going to be one of those storms described as perfect. Perfect because things are starting to fall into place that we expected to eventually fall but not all at once.

I could live with bad management, lousy and/or corrupt managers being punished like it finally seems to happen with RBS and HBOS’ so called former bosses. Whether in the end any of those heroes will ever really get punished - I doubt it. See the Libor scandal! What scandal you might ask? True: that law-breaking insolence is dealt with behind those thick curtains that protect today’s banksters’ offices from any light; just in case Deutsche Bank and others set up provisions, some hundred million Euro, measurements in return reducing their tax load and buying them off. But, that scam will end without further consequences except for them trying harder, next time.

That Offshore Leak might be a different story; for one there is not much about that in British media, yet * ; may be that is because there are many off-shore paradises, money wise in this case, that speak English, some very close, and many are somehow related to thee Queen, thee Commonwealth and thee City? Mind you, we are told it involved 170 countries and 120.000 letterbox-companies. Mind boggling that amount of data going back 30 years and as much as this needs to be dealt with ** – I am afraid this could be a financial and social tsunami. What if the Queen and the Camerons are part of this, or even Tony and George? What if Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Berlusconi plus Sarkozy needed to be arrested and put into the same jail cell? Well, guess somebody would notice and put Madame Merkel into the female block.

Watch the suicide and emigrant lists of those 170 countries … and do not believe a minute that any criminal or immoral aspect of all this will be put into any bankster's basket; evil to him who evil thinks and while all banks offer sophisticated off-shore services it is the stupid customer that gets caught, eventually.

Emigration will not really help anybody to avoid that global currency battle, now entering an unknown dimension with Japan going berserk. As a measurement of last resort they are printing vast, vast, vast sums of money – mind you, that’s hitting return after punching in 12 or 15 zeros behind a 1 or a two or actually any figure and that not only once but monthly from now on – fiat money the easiest way, ever - to buy back their own crap; recycling, snow-balling, ponzi-ing? Government bonds and then dump them in a bin, or the worst bank, if that’s the better name for it. That is the most daring monetary experiment of modern times as The Telegraph titled this flooding the market with YEN; the idea is to massively devalue the currency for exports (jobs!) to grow fast and furious, to force-inject inflation into what is a deflating economy and hope for nobody else following that pattern.

That’s hopeless, stupid! What BO and BSB do for the greenback in the US, why Merkel insists on a EURO agitated by the PIIGS’ and french stress to keep it soft, DC and GO want to do in the UK; strengthen UK exports by weakening the Pound or rather vice versa; woau! How much of that export strength is left? I believe proper schooling, training, apprenticeships worth the title, dual education plus on-going, extensive studies and education would do much better!  Want an example?

While discussing Passiv Haus Standard during this year’s ecobuild seminars and the installation of a MVHR, a mechanical ventilation system including heat recovery, UK experts explained coram publico that this would make things too complicated, too difficult a gadget for the average British tenant/owner to cope with.

Sorry? Hellooow!? Such a system includes a ventilator and a mechanical heat exchanger controlled by three or four buttons to press – basta.

Frightening; and insulting: why would the average middle-European be able to cope with that kind of high tech while the British … ? Or, this very likely is the early result of adding the word vitiosus to this circulus of cuts and savings into schools, training, education? Next step will be to forbid knife and fork endangering the hungry!

Apropos weak: how much does a weak Pound buy? We import more than 50% of our energy and, while you might like it cold, more than 50% of our food! Do you like strict diets? This year we might even have to import much more, or do you see UK potatoes growing with the coldest March on record?

Just for another record: in general terms importing means we have to pay in a foreign currency after swapping Pound into $, € or ¥ where, please note, the last stands for the YEN but also for the YUAN!

China is boosting its defence spending by almost 11% - this year! Obviously China has the funds, hardly any debts and something to prepare for or against? It is also growing its agriculture and pumping a lot of money into renewables. Funny, isn’t it? We are cutting any incentives, we are discussing silly bedroom taxes for the poorest and whether to install Casinos in Cyprus to save its economy, Merkel’s Euro and Schaeuble’s regime - while China prepares for its future. They might not value human life as high as we are rumoured to do, but then...

Well - the Euro! Really, I wanted to avoid that criminal rubbish; it is still alive; rather, it is not disconnected, yet, from life supporting but until lately utterly illegal instruments such as bad banks, bail-outs and bail-ins, and the on-going … here we are again: money printing.

A pity they cannot print jobs. Unemployment in the EU rates are soaring, even the official ones, the ones that lack continuity and belief:

Spain 26.3%, Portugal 17.5% Italy 11.6%, Greece 26.4%; that’s the overall one.

But our future even looks more difficult and much darker:

Spain 55.7%, Portugal 38.2%, Italy 37.8%, Greece 58.4%, France 26.2%; the official figures for those between 18 and 24 years old. Official! And what kind of jobs does the rest have? Low-paid ones, un-trained ones, picking tomatoes or serving beer to poor tourists? How many of them all have gone through any decent apprenticeship and can base their lives on the founds of a sustainable education?

Source: www.querschuesse.de

Shows unemployment of the 18-24 in countries…

Please see Greece, Griechenland!

30% when it entered EURO-Casino!

You could call it the Euro’s unemployment bomb - until it explodes; no wonder DC and GO think, why should they put any money and effort into a dying market of people needing training and education?

Guess what, at least car sales show some sympathy:

Spain minus 13.9%, France minus 16.4%, Austria minus 19.9%, Finland minus 58.6%, Germany minus 17.1, Netherlands minus 31.4, and in addition Japan minus 16.7, Brazil minus 4.7%. So, really, how long can we be happy and proud on headlines like UK car sale rise for 12^th consecutive month? And what is the base of this rise, how are they paid for, those cars, and how long do they or does this last?

Is it a coincidence that VW is creating new jobs, outside the EU?

It becomes apparent that Mr Neo and Mrs. Lib have not only allowed all those jobs to be exported to – mainly – China; any kind of job machine has been given up for nothing, for free. This is the third time I add this video… I think it should now read 2020, not 2030:

My respect, China. Age must help in becoming wiser.

While Gobi Dessert is growing steadily, 28% of Chinese landmass is dessert-like area, anyway, and China buying all kinds of land worldwide, we are all in for increasingly bad weathers; if you thought that cold lately would tell us Global Warming has had it then I would recommend to come to senses and title the problem Climate Change. And that’s what it is.

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/

http://climatecrocks.com/

http://tamino.wordpress.com/

The rate of changes multiplied by the level of ignorance in solving any of our problems is unbelievable; we are presented with scientific results by crowds of scientists from all over the world, they describe the problems we face, we see and in many cases feel those; we do understand most of them but we are unwilling or incapable of addressing and solving them; or, even worse, we wilfully ignore them all for all kinds of stupid, bad and criminal reasons; that makes it easy for the storm to become that perfect storm.

I can smell it.

Carpe diem!

 

* … might be that they all need time; similar to the big fish on Cyprus when Putin took two days to decide whether he would support Cyprus or rather give his friends and soon-to-be-friends time to visit those London branches of the Cyprus banks to sort out their accounts just in time…

** ... we will see capital control mechanisms installed like we had them before 1985, no question.

 

China's economic lessons...

by far too complex for our leaders, no matter what couleur!

I came across Robert Reich's blogpost titled "The Real Economic Lesson China Could Teach Us". It is well worth reading; I am in agreement with what he writes and explains; alone, his conclusions are ending half way into yesterday, only.

China is eating our lunch. Why? It has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for shareholders.

In reality China is not eating America's lunch, breakfast and dinner, only; it is also having luxury five-course meals three times a day European style; no wonder it faces obesity problems.

For many years, already, it is obvious that China follows a national economic strategy; not much to do with obesity but with ensuring China's direct access to all kinds of resources with an emphasis on land and energy; I keep mentioning this, alone, nobody seems to really care and understand what the enormous amounts of green bonds, green as in greenback, that some see rotting and molding in Chinese bank deposit boxes are buying them; China's  global investment bonanza has already won the race against an ever more hollow Dollar (and EURO) and against the publicly discussed and most amusing fact that the US (and Europe) will never in a million years be re-paying its debts.

"He who laughs last laughs best" must be an old Chinese country lore!?

All this is backing up the Yuan, a currency that most of us still never saw or  touched but which will be the one and only key-currency owned by the one and only super power in the foreseeable future. Chinese national debt is said to be 14% of GDP - sensational in a world where every other country is in high two or far advanced into three digits debts.

Robert Reich sums it up:

Here’s the real story. China has a national economic strategy designed to make it, and its people, the economic powerhouse of the future. They’re intent on learning as much as they can from us and then going beyond us (as they already are in solar and electric-battery technologies). They’re pouring money into basic research and education at all levels. In the last 12 years they’ve built twenty universities, each designed to be the equivalent of MIT.

Their goal is to make China Number one in power and prestige, and in high-wage jobs.

Yes, and the rest is falling behind, far behind; share-holder value tin gods and global strategies for Mr. Neo and Mrs. Lib help(-ed) China long term and accelerate(-d) the sellouts of America and Europe. Distractions that will make the "Made in Germany" or "...US" or "...UK" an essential criteria for defining goods in the antique malls; in short: one producing wealth while the rest produces debts.

The dark ages have left China for the West and the East.

Politicians of the darkness, don't you worry; it needed independent intelligence both of which your profession doesn't allow for.

Carpe diem!

not made in Greece but Japan?

While all are watching Greece and the ECB snowballing bonds and guarantees at each other and their bailed out banks it is worthwhile to take a look far East: Japan is up for trouble - and at the same time tells us what the chances of an economy are that since the nineties has never really made it out of deflation. One stimulus package after the other built up unbelievable sums of debts that have driven the country into a solid cul-de-sac.

source

We estimate that if the market demands an interest rate of anything more than 3.5% then Japan will not have the revenue to service its debt. In other words, as the interest rate approaches 3.5% Japan must use all its tax revenue to pay interest on its debt.

More details here.


Carpe diem!

the race for the weakest currency...

has only just begun!

We live in a globalised world where all have access to the same means and tools to compete in what is running for labour, market shares and hopefully heaps of money.

While the US very openly seek an advantage in keeping the greenback at the low side the Chinese just piggybacked their paper money called Renminbi to ensure their exports staying competitive which at the same time enables them to massively import labour; the trick with holding more than two trillion soft bucks in cash is not really that bad as those dollars buy access to energy and plenty of shares in i.e. African countries and companies that are used to even weaker currencies.

What is likely to happen in the not so far future is the EURO, which so far endured and tolerated - of course, lacking an alternative - the dominant but weakening world currency ending is some kind of programmed implosion.

With Greece more than insolvent, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Belgium not far behind and in general terms very overstressed French and German budgets and economies the once so-called hoard of stability, the EURO, is about to fail dramatically. And if it is not failing in one go we will see it stretched until it does.

A scenario where one EURO country goes bust has not been taken into any kind of consideration in Maastricht when the artificial currency was imposed not to mention an ugly event where a number of EURO economies are becoming insolvent in a matter of months. What a coincidence, at the same time the once leading and ever so strong economies like France and above all Germany are virtually running out of paper to print the buckets of money they need to bail out or rather pump up banks, run scrappage schemes or fill up tax revenue holes.

A bursting EURO will automatically open the currencies' race downwards; the battle to export what is produced and to minimise cost but still put people into jobs is fought at the low end of a currency's value, see China. With only two plus two major and globally traded currencies left - $, €, and ¥, £ - it will be interesting to see who will win that race.

I dare say we will all loose.

Carpe diem!