Our chairman who art at Goldman
Blankfein be thy name
Thy rally’s come, God’s work be done
In the Dow as it is in the Nasdaq
Give us this day our daily gain
And forgive us our frontruning, as we punish those who frontrun against us
And bring us not under indictment
But deliver us from regulators
For thine is the cashflow, and the power, and the bonuses,
forever and ever.
Amen
I think the model of vast Federal bureaucracies solving every citizen's problems is inherently insolvent and irredeemably broken. Well-care will have to come from a wellspring of individual responsibility and small-scale community effort, not some gigantic institutional machine which stripmines the entire economy to feed its voracious and insatiable appetite for more money to fund a crazymaking jumble of completely perverse incentives.
Wellness requires an integrated understanding of the oneness of food, diet, fitness, physical and mental health and the culture which sustains or erodes this understanding; without this full-spectrum understanding, then well-care will remain forever beyond reach.
There was the joke at the beginning of the session that one fellow tasked with raising money was “fluent in Mandarin.” From the chuckles, I gauged it to be a joke.
But that might prove to be the most significant point economically. The Treasury is putting pressure on the Dollar through high debt issuance, and the Fed through the creation of short-term credit to heal various debt markets. The benefits are going to debtors, not creditors. What value should the creditors assign to the Dollar? The simple answer should be less than previously. Yet, nations follow many noneconomic goals, many of which benefit the US as the reserve currency in the short-run.
The ultimate answers are complex, because they rely on how other nations will act.
[cut]
Let me try this — as the world has gone capitalist, the edge of the US has been eroded. Now we face a world where doing certain jobe should pay the same, regardless of where they are located. Wages in the US will converge with those from the rest of the world, adjusted for capital investments.
Throughout human history, “middle classes” have been abnormal. The current adjustment in the US may be showing the once large middle class that it is not a normal thing, and is hard to maintain.
There is no conspiracy. The US Government is up against economic forces larger than it can combat. The rest of the world is out-competing the US, and the US has a shrinking portion of the pie as a result.
Для государства неоценимая польза клиринговой палаты состоит в том, что объём платежей по клирингу всегда точно соответствует объёму товарооборота. При этом не возникает ни проблемы эмиссии дополнительных расчётных средств при росте товарооборота, ни проблемы стерилизации лишних денег при сокращении товарооборота. Получается, что расчёты по клирингу являются идеальными во всех смыслах – функция расчётного средства реализуется, а никаких негативных эффектов при этом не возникает.
Для того, чтобы вывести такую клиринговую палату из-под рисков со стороны российских законов или со стороны ЦБ РФ её надлежит учредить международным договором РФ, Белоруссии и Казахстана. Тогда в соответствии с частью 4 статьи 15 Конституции РФ международный договор о её учреждении оказывается выше всех российских законов (включая Конституцию). И для учреждения такой Международной Клиринговой Палаты есть очень удачная база – дело в том, что между РФ, Белоруссией и Казахстаном существуют международные договоры о создании единого экономического пространства и переходы на расчёты в российских рублях.
Т.е. вместо того, чтобы тратить усилия на создание локальных платёжных систем, я призываю всех энтузиастов сосредоточиться на более перспективном варианте – создании Международной Клиринговой Палаты.
Рост долговой нагрузки на одно рабочее место с 1948-го по 2009 почти десятикратный. 45 тысяч долларов 2008 года долга на одно рабочее место! Это очень много.
Видно три периода роста [долговой нагрузки]:
1. С 40-х по конец 60-х - рост долговой нагрузки в бизнесе. Процентные выплаты превратились в грабительский налог, которым не государство, а частные банки обложили прочие корпорации, которые заставили их отказываться от инвестиций в долгосрочные проекты, искать все более и более короткие прибыли, и превращаться в алчных шакалов, рыщущих по всему миру в поиске новых жертв. Не случайно ряд уважаемых ранее производственных корпораций – типа General Electric – превратились в те годы в финансовых спекулянтов, чья производственная деятельность осталась лишь странным историческим наследством, которая лишь портила их отчетность.
2. С середины 80-х по начало 90-х – рост ипотечной нагрузки. Нацию начали загонять в ипотечное рабство, что немедленно сказалось на "случайном" многократном росте числа заключенных и резком падении рождаемости у белых в период после 80-х – вот цифры.
3. С конца 90-х начался последний банкет – чисто спекулятивный. Тогда начался спад деловой активности (что видно по падающей кривой бизнес-кредитования), но его удалось приостановить путем непомерных трат, вызванных иллюзорным богатством с помощью спекулятивных пузырей на новой экономике и недвижимости.
Вывод - чтобы вернуть США былую способность конкурировать, нормальная долговая нагрузка на одно рабочее место не должна превышать 5-10 тысяч долларов (в долларах 2008 года). Это значит, большую часть долгов либо нужно простить (= уничтожить финансовую систему и запустить новую), либо гиперинфлировать доллар по меньшей мере в 5-9 раз. Иных решений не видно.
Today, the UN is warning that parts of the world could become 'economic deserts', unviable for people or agriculture, and may have to be abandoned. Even in rich countries, people are hitting the limits of what can be done with money and infrastructure because there simply isn't enough water anymore. Disaster is feared as desertification spreads.
1) In China's northwest, desertification has escalated from 1,560 sq km annually in the 1970s to 2,100-2,400 sq km in the 1990s. Dust storms from the Gobi desert regularly blow through Beijing, and the government's response is getting more desperate: Chinese authorities have begun telling hundreds of villagers that farming will cease and that they will have to give up their animals.
2) Strong desertification processes have been developing in Latin America with several countries of the region, as well as significant sectors within some countries, in a state of water stress. This situation is projected to worsen significantly over the medium term.
3) Decades of war and mismanagement, compounded by two years of drought, are wreaking havoc on Iraq's ecosystem, drying up riverbeds and marshes, turning arable land into desert, killing trees and plants, and generally transforming what was once the region's most fertile area into a wasteland.
4) The Sahara desert is encroaching into the Nigerian landmass at the speed of 600 meters per annum, thereby threatening the country's food base. Most villages in the northern states have already been overtaken by sand dunes.
5) 90 percent of the water in Lake Chad, which is considered to be the sixth largest in the world and is bordered by four countries (Chad, Niger, Nigeria and the Cameroon) has been lost to the adverse effects of climate change. Lake Chad served as source of fresh water to the more than 30 million people living around its bank.
6) The Sahara Desert is crossing the Mediterranean, and the livelihoods of 6.5 million people living along its shores could be at risk.
7) 74 million acres of fertile land along the Mediterranean is turning to desert, giving rise to the term Sahelisation (ie: becoming part of the Sahara desert).
8) In Egypt, brackish groundwater has already compromised half the country's farmland.
9) Aquifers around the Po Delta in northern Italy are also showing signs of saltwater contamination.
10) Spain has implemented its first Program of National Action against Desertification after recognizing that 37 percent of the country is at risk from desertification and is in danger of becoming "eroded forever".
11) A new desert is forming 250 km from the 'Garden City of India', Bangalore. This new desert is the result of continued indiscriminate water use by village inhabitants even as sand from floods and wind started covering the region. Now thousands of acres of land are covered by sand dunes.
12) This September, Sydney residents woke to scenes from a Hollywood apocalypse movie as the worst dust storm in 70 years, carrying an estimated 5 million tons of soil from drought-ravaged farmland, turned the sky blood red.
Save for the Antarctica, desertification affects all continents. New deserts are growing at a rate of 20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometers) a year. More than 70 percent of drylands in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are being used for agricultural purposes are already experiencing the effects of desertification. Desertification leads to famine, mass starvation and unprecedented human migration.
Stocks falling wouldn’t necessarily cause gold to do the same. But lately they’ve both been the beneficiaries of the liquidity that’s flooding in from the world’s central banks. So it’s not unreasonable for gold to fall if declining stocks lead to renewed deflation fears. Look for a lot of comparisons between the current market and that of 1931.
So -- again with the caveat that I’m the world's worst trader -- this seems like a pretty good time to bet on a temporary drop in the price of gold. But only for traders. Most people with money in precious metals and long time horizons should play golf or hang out with the kids for another five years while the broad, long-term forces of monetary destruction work their magic. But if you’re someone who can't help playing with his money once in a while, the nice pop that the junior miners, for instance, have seen lately might be a good excuse to raise some cash.
