Oct 29

Today’s News 29th October 2017

  • Trump Confirms "All JFK Files Are Released" After Latest Clash With Spy Agencies

    Update: Following Friday's disappointing release of some, but not all, remaining files related to the death of President John F. Kennedy, President Trump just confirmed, via tweet, that the rest of the files are released, well ahead of schedule…

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    Of course, given that this is the government – and the government does not work weekends – the files are unlikely to be released on to the official National Archives site until Monday.

    This appears to be a victory for Trump in his never-ending battle with the intelligence agencies.

    *  *  *

    As we detailed earlier, The Deep States' 'war' with President Trump may sink from the headlines every so often, but there is little doubt that it continues to bubble away, battle after battle. This week's delayed, reduced… and now soon-to-be-complete release of the rest of the previously classified JKF files is yet another clash with the spy agencies… and this time President Trump may have won…

    As AP's Zeke Miller writes, it was a showdown 25 years in the making: With the world itching to finally get a look at classified Kennedy assassination files, and the deadline for their release just hours away, intelligence officials were still angling for a way to keep their secrets. President Donald Trump, the one man able to block the release, did not appreciate their persistence. He did not intend to make this easy.

    Like much else surrounding investigations of the 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy, this week’s release of 2,800 records from the JFK files was anything but smooth. It came together only at the last minute, with White House lawyers still fielding late-arriving requests for additional redactions in the morning and an irritated Trump continuing to resist signing off on the request, according to an account by two White House officials. They spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

    The tale of the final hours before the congressionally mandated 25-year release deadline on Thursday adds a new chapter to the story of Trump’s troubled relationship with his spy agencies. He again flashed his skepticism and unpredictability in dealing with agencies long accustomed to a level of deference. Intelligence officials, meanwhile, were again left scratching their heads about a president whose impulses they cannot predict.

    And those officials had their own story tell, some rejecting the notion they were slow to act on Trump’s expectations for the documents. The CIA began work months ago to get its remaining assassination-related documents ready for release on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the process. The person, who was not authorized to publicly to discuss the process and spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the goal was to have all the agency’s documents ready to be released in full or with national security redactions before the deadline.

    Since taking office, Trump has challenged the integrity of intelligence leaders, moved to exert more control over U.S. spying agencies and accused his predecessor of using government spycraft to monitor his campaign. In the JFK files matter, one White House official said, Trump wanted to make clear he wouldn’t be bullied by the agencies.

    Whatever occurred in the lead-up to deadline day, Trump was irritated Thursday that agencies still were arguing for more redactions. The president earlier in the week had tweeted to tease the release of the documents, heightening the sense of drama on a subject that has sparked the imaginations of conspiracy theorists for decades. Under a 1992 law, all of the records related to the assassination were to be made public unless explicitly withheld by the president.

    Just before the release Thursday, Trump wrote in a memorandum that he had “no choice” but to agree to requests from the CIA and FBI to keep thousands of documents secret because of the possibility that releasing the information could still harm national security. Two aides said Trump was upset by what he perceived to be overly broad secrecy requests, adding that the agencies had been explicitly warned about his expectation that redactions be kept to a minimum.

    “The president and White House have been very clear with all agencies for weeks: They must be transparent and disclose all information possible,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said Friday.

    Late last week, Trump received his first official briefing on the release in an Oval Office meeting that included Chief of Staff John Kelly, White House Counsel Don McGahn and National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg. Trump made it clear he was unsatisfied with the pace of declassification.

    Trump’s tweets, an official said, were meant as a signal to the intelligence community to take seriously his threats to release the documents in their entirety.

    According to White House officials, Trump accepted that some of the records contained references to sensitive sources and methods used by the intelligence community and law enforcement and that declassification could harm American foreign policy interests. But after having the scope of the redactions presented to him, Trump told aides he did not believe them to be in the spirit of the law.

    On Thursday, Trump’s top aides presented him with an alternative to simply acquiescing to the agency requests: He could temporarily allow the redactions while ordering the agencies to launch a new comprehensive examination of the records still withheld or redacted in part.

    Trump accepted the suggestion, ordering that agencies be “extremely circumspect” about keeping the remaining documents secret at the end of the 180-day assessment.

    “After strict consultation with General Kelly, the CIA and other agencies, I will be releasing ALL JFK files other than the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living,” Trump wrote in a Friday tweet.

     

    “I am doing this for reasons of full disclosure, transparency and in order to put any and all conspiracy theories to rest.”

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  • Mutual Assured Destruction

    Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Sometimes it is possible to read or view something that completely changes the way one looks at things. I had that experience last week when I read an article at Lobelog entitled “A Plea for Common Sense on Missile Defense,” written by Joe Cirincione, a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee who now heads the Ploughshares Fund, which is a Washington DC based global foundation that seeks to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

    The article debunks much of the narrative being put out by the White House and Pentagon regarding missile defense. To be sure, it is perfectly reasonable to mistrust anything that comes out of the federal government justifying war given its track record going back to the War of 1812. And the belligerent posture of the United States towards Iran and North Korea can well be condemned based on its own merits, threatening war where there are either no real interests at stake or where a diplomatic solution has for various reasons been eschewed.

    But the real reason why the White House gets away with saber rattling is historical, that the continental United States has not experienced the consequences of war since Pancho Villa invaded in 1916. This is a reality that administration after administration has exploited to do what they want when dealing with foreign nations: whatever happens “over there” will stay “over there.”

    Americans consequently do not know war except as something that happens elsewhere and to foreigners, requiring only that the U.S. step in on occasion and bail things out, or screw things up depending on one’s point of view. This is why hawks like John McCain, while receiving a “Liberty” award from Joe Biden, can, with a straight face, get away with denouncing those Americans who have become tired of playing at being the world’s policeman. He describes them as fearful of “the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, [abandoning] the ideals we have advanced around the globe, [refusing] the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

    McCain’s completely fatuous account of recent world history befits a Navy pilot who was adept at crashing his planes and almost sank his own aircraft carrier. He also made propaganda radio broadcasts for the North Vietnamese after he was captured. The McCain globalist-American Exceptionalism narrative is also, unfortunately, echoed by the media. The steady ingestion of lies and half-truths is why the public puts up with unending demands for increased defense spending, accepting that the world outside is a dangerous place that must be kept in line by force majeure. Yes, we are the good guys.

    But underlying the citizenry’s willingness to accept that the military establishment should encircle the globe with foreign bases to keep the world “safe” is the assumption that the 48 States are invulnerable, isolated by broad oceans and friendly nations to the north and south. And protected from far distant threats by technology, interceptor systems developed and maintained at enormous expense to intercept and shoot down incoming ballistic missiles launched by enemies overseas.

    In a recent speech, relating to the North Korean threat, President Donald Trump boasted that the United States anti-missile defenses are 97% effective, meaning that they can intercept and destroy incoming projectiles 97 times out of a 100. Trump was seeking to assure the public that whatever happens over in Korea, it cannot have an undesirable outcome over here in the continental United States nor, apparently, in Hawaii, Alaska and overseas possessions like Guam, all of which are shielded under the anti-missile defense umbrella. Trump was undoubtedly referring to, even if he was ignorant of many of the specifics, the Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) installations in Alaska and Hawaii, which are part of the existing $330 billion missile defense system.

    It is certainly comforting to learn that the United States cannot be physically attacked with either nuclear or conventional weapons no matter what our government does overseas, but is it true? What if the countermeasures were somewhat closer to 0% effective? Would that change the thinking about going to war in Korea? Or about confronting Russia in Eastern Europe? And for those who think that a nuclear exchange is unthinkable it would be wise to consider the recent comments by Jack Keane of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War, a leading neoconservative former general who reportedly has the ear of the White House and reflects its thinking on the matter. Keane is not hesitant to employ the military option against Pyongyang and he describes a likely trigger for a U.S. attack to take out its nuclear facilities or remove “leadership targets” as the setting up of a ballistic missile in North Korea with a nuclear warhead mounted on top “aimed at America.” Some observers believe that North Korea is close to having the ability to reduce the size of its nukes to make that possible and, if Keane is to be believed, it would be considered an “act of war” which would trigger an immediate attack by Washington. And a counter attack by Pyongyang.

    The claim of 97% reliability for the U.S.’s anti-missile defenses is being challenged by Cirincione and others, who argue that the United States can only “shoot down some…missiles some of the time.” They make a number of arguments that are quite convincing, even to a layman who has no understanding of the physics involved. I will try to keep it simple.

    First of all, an anti-missile interceptor must hit its target head on or nearly so and it must either actually strike the target or explode its own warhead at a close enough distance to be effective. Both objectives are difficult to achieve. An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) travels at 5,000 meters per second. By way of comparison a bullet fired from a rifle travels at about one fifth that speed. Imagine two men with rifles standing a mile apart and firing their weapons in an attempt to have the bullets meet head on. Multiply the speed by five if one is referring to missiles, not bullets. Even using the finest radars and sensors as well as the most advanced guidance technologies, the variables involved make it much more likely that there will be a miss than a hit. Cirincione observes that “…the only way to hit a bullet is if the bullet cooperates.”

    Second, the tests carried out by the Pentagon to determine reliability are essentially fraudulent. Contrary to the Donald Trump comment, the 97% accuracy is an extrapolation based on firing four anti-missile missiles at a target to make up for the fact that in the rigged tests a single interceptor has proven to be closer to only 56% accurate, and that under ideal conditions. This statistic is based on the actual tests performed since 1999 in which interceptors were able to shoot down 10 of 18 targets. The conclusion that four would result in 97% derives from the assumption that multiple interceptors increases the accuracy but most engineers would argue that if one missile cannot hit the target for any number of technical shortcomings it is equally likely that all four will miss for the same reason.

    The tests themselves are carefully scripted to guarantee success. They take place in daylight, preferably at dusk to ensure maximum visibility, under good weather conditions, and without any attempt made by the approaching missile to confuse the interceptor through the use of electronic countermeasures or through the ejection of chaff or jammers, which would certainly be deployed. The targets in tests have sometimes been heated to make them easier to find and some have had transponders attached to make them almost impossible to miss. As a result, the missile interceptor system has never been tested under realistic battlefield conditions.

    Even the federal government watchdog agencies have concluded that the missile interception system seldom performs. The Government Accountability Office concluded that flaws in the technology, which it describes as “failure modes,” mean that America has an “interceptor fleet that may not work as intended, prompting one Californian congressman John Garamendi to observe that “I think the answer is absolutely clear. It will not work. Nevertheless, the momentum of the fear…of the investments…[of] the momentum of the industry, it carries forward.”

    The Operational Test and Evaluation Office of the Department of Defense has also been skeptical, reporting that the GMD in Alaska and Hawaii has only “…a limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland from small numbers of simple intermediate range or intercontinental ballistic missile threats launched from North Korea…the reliability and availability of the operational [interceptors] are low.”

    The dangerous overconfidence being demonstrated by the White House over the ability to intercept a North Korean missile attack might indeed be in some part a bluff, designed to convince Pyongyang that it if initiates a shooting war it will be destroyed while the U.S. remains untouched. But somehow, with a president who doesn’t do subtle very well, I would doubt that to be the case. And the North Koreans, able to build a nuclear weapon and an ICBM, would surely understand the flaws in missile defense as well as anyone.

    But the real danger is that it is the American people that is being fooled by the Administration. War is thinkable, even nuclear war, if one cannot be touched by it, a truism that has enabled the sixteen-year- long and counting “global war on terror.” If that is the message being sent by the White House, it would encourage further reckless adventurism on the part of the national security state. Far better to take the North Korean threat seriously and admit that a west coast city like Seattle could well become the target of a successful nuclear weapon attack.

    That would demonstrate that war has real life consequences and the unfamiliar dose of honesty would perhaps result in a public demand to seriously negotiate with Pyongyang instead of hurling threats in speeches at the United Nations and on Capitol Hill.

  • Visualizing $63 Trillion Of World Debt

    If you add up all the money that national governments have borrowed, it tallies to a hefty $63 trillion.

     

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    In an ideal situation, governments are just borrowing this money to cover short-term budget deficits or to finance mission critical projects. However, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, around the globe, countries have taken to the idea of running constant deficits as the normal course of business, and too much accumulation of debt is not healthy for countries or the global economy as a whole.

    The U.S. is a prime example of “debt creep” – the country hasn’t posted an annual budget surplus since 2001, when the federal debt was only $6.9 trillion (54% of GDP). Fast forward to today, and the debt has ballooned to roughly $20 trillion (107% of GDP), which is equal to 31.8% of the world’s sovereign debt nominally.

    THE WORLD DEBT LEADERBOARD

    In today’s infographic, we look at two major measures: (1) Share of global debt as a percentage, and (2) Debt-to-GDP.

    Let’s look at the top five “leaders” in each category, starting with share of global debt on a nominal basis:

    Together, just these five countries together hold 66% of the world’s debt in nominal terms – good for a total of $41.6 trillion.

    Next, here’s the top five for Debt-to-GDP:

    While only Italy and Japan here are considered major economies on a global scale, the high debt levels of countries like Greece or Portugal are also important to monitor.

    In the IMF’s baseline scenario, Greece’s government debt will reach 275% of its GDP by 2060, when its financing needs will represent 62% of GDP.

     

    – A recent IMF report, obtained by Bloomberg

    Greece, for example, is continuing along a particularly unsustainable path – and external creditors are getting stingier. Most recently, both the IMF and Greece’s euro-area creditors have demanded for the country to implement a law that automatically introduces austerity measures if a budget surplus of 3.5% of GDP isn’t hit.

    While Greece has dismissed such demands as “unacceptable”, the country – along with many others around the globe – will have to accept that constant debt accumulation has eventual consequences.

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    To get “$63 Trillion of World Debt” in printed form, go to the Kickstarter page now. Deadline: Oct. 31, 2017

  • US Homes Have Never Been More Unaffordable

    Just under a year ago, US home prices finally surpassed their prior all time highs, one decade after the 2006 bubble…

    … and haven’t looked back since. Which, all else equal, would be great news for America, where the bulk of middle-class wealth is not in the stock market contrary to conventional wisdom, but in its biggest, and most illiquid asset-cum-investment: one’s home.

    There is just one problem: while house prices are once again hitting new all time highs every month, household incomes have failed to keep up; in fact, as the Political Calculations blog shows, in the past two years there has been a distinct trend in home affordability, or lack thereof.

    As the first chart below shows, starting in September 2015, the TTM average median new home sale price in the U.S. has been rising at an average rate of $906 per month.

    That’s the good news; the bad news is that in terms of affordability, the ratio of the trailing twelve month averages of median new home sale prices to median household income in the U.S. has risen to an all time high of 5.454, which following revisions in the data for new home sale prices, was recorded in July 2017. The initial value for September 2017 is 5.437.

    In other words, the median new home in the US has never been more unaffordable in terms of current income.

    One final way to visualizie it comes from Ironman’s next chart, which shows the long-term relationship between median new home sale prices and median household income, with the annual data now spanning 2000 through 2016 and the monthly data covering the period from December 2000 through September 2017. It confirms the above: for the average American, buying a new home has never been more unaffordable.

  • Trump Will Own The Next Fed But "All Their Models Are In Ruins"

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    President Trump is expected to nominate the next Federal Reserve chair within a matter of days.

    As I’ve explained before, Donald Trump has the opportunity to appoint a higher percentage of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system at one time than any president since Woodrow Wilson.

    President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act during the creation of the Fed in 1913 when they had a vacant board. At that time, the law said the secretary of the Treasury and the comptroller of the currency were automatically on the Fed’s board of governors. But besides that, President Wilson selected all of the other participating members.

    Due to vacancies he inherited and key resignations, Trump now has the opportunity to fill more seats on the Fed’s Board of Governors than any president since then.

    That’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

    To review, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors is made up of seven appointees. That means that they can make a majority decision with four votes. If you’re reading about the Fed, you might also see reference to “regional reserve bank presidents.” These are roles within the Federal Reserve System, but the real power is found on seven-member Board of Governors.

    Trump will own the Fed.

    Meaning, whatever the president wants monetary policy to be, he’ll get. In other words, Donald Trump will be able to shape the Fed’s majority. But the tricky part is figuring out how he plans to shape it…

    During the campaign season, Trump called China and other nations currency manipulators. That signaled he believed the dollar was too strong and wanted it to weaken. But then the North Korean nuclear crisis rose to the fore.

    Trump backed off his threats against China because China has the most economic influence over North Korea, and Trump wanted China to use that leverage to convince the North to back off its nuclear program.

    But China didn’t deliver as Trump had hoped, and a trade war with China is now likely. That’s especially true now. Chinese president Xi Jinping has solidified his hold on power after the Chinese Politburo re-appointed him yesterday. Xi had avoided rocking the boat in recent months while his position was uncertain. But now that his lock on power is secure, Xi can afford to be much more confrontational with Trump.

    Trump’s trade policy has led many to believe that Trump will appoint a lot of “doves” to the Board. But don’t be surprised if Trump goes with a hard-money board. In fact, that’s what I expect. These will be hard-money, strong-dollar people, contrary to a lot of expectations.

    Trump advisers include hard-money advocates like Dr. Judy Shelton, David Malpass, Steve Moore and Larry Kudlow. I expect Trump to heed their advice.

    Which brings us to Janet Yellen and the next Federal Reserve Chair…

    Janet Yellen’s term as chair is up at the end of January – just over three months from now. Whoever President Trump appoints to replace her will be subject to Senate confirmation.

    Because that process takes time, that means the president has to name Yellen’s successor around November or December.

    And again, he’s expected to make that announcement by Nov. 3, before he heads to China.

    The market is tightly focused on President Trump’s pick. As of now, betting markets had the approximate probabilities as follows:

    Powell’s main qualification seems to be that he’s just like Yellen except he’s a Republican. So, if we combine their votes, that a 68% chance that policy will continue unchanged, which means more rate hikes ahead.

    The next in line is John Taylor, who is considered the most hawkish of the group. If we add his votes to the Powell + Yellen pool, that an 85% probability that policy will either be the same or tighter.

    No relief for gold in the Fed sweepstakes.

    Now, as I’ve been saying for months, my money’s on Kevin Warsh. Warsh is the likely next chair of the Fed.

    Warsh has previously served on the board. After being nominated by President George W. Bush he was a Fed governor where he served from 2006 until he resigned early in 2011.

    Kevin Warsh is a pragmatist, not an ideologue like Yellen. He’s not beholden to obsolete Fed models like Phillips curve that says low unemployment means higher inflation. Warsh understands that disinflation is a serious problem for a country with a 105% debt-to-GDP ratio, like the U.S.

    Warsh and the pragmatists understand that inflation is needed for the U.S. to have any hope of getting the debt problem under control.

    Warsh believed that the Federal Reserve should have raised interest rates a long time ago. But with disinflation a much more pressing concern than inflation right now, being a pragmatist means he won’t commit to tightening if conditions don’t warrant it.

    We’ll see how this all plays out probably late this week or early next before Trump leaves for China.

    But it’s important to realize that institutions boil down to people. And there’s going to be a lot of turnover at the Fed under Trump. It’s not just limited to his choice of Fed chair.

    Yes, Yellen will likely be out. But so are Fed officials that align with her, like Vice President Stanley Fischer, who announced his resignation in September.

    As I indicated, the new, emerging Fed will have less faith in traditional models. For example, in September, Fed governor Lael Brainard delivered one of the most significant Fed speeches ever. Translating from Fed-speak to plain English, she more or less admitted the Fed has no idea how inflation works.

    Brainard pointed out that the Fed began its current monetary policy tightening cycle in the belief that tight labor markets implied inflation was coming with a lag. The Fed raised rates in December 2015, December 2016, March 2017 and June 2017 in part to get out ahead of this coming inflation.

    Instead the opposite happened.

    The Fed’s favorite measure of inflation plunged from 1.9% to 1.3% between January and August 2017 even as job creation continued and the unemployment rate fell. In other words, the relationship between tight labor markets and inflation turned out to be the exact opposite of what the Fed believed.

    Their models are in ruins.

    Of course, this is what I’ve been telling my readers to expect all year. The Fed was tightening into weakness, not strength, and would soon have to flip back to ease in order to avoid an outright U.S. recession. And ease is exactly what Brainard called for in her speech.

    In the meantime, a lot of uncertainty over the Fed’s direction will hover over the market, as if there wasn’t enough uncertainty in the market already.

    But one thing is certain:

    The next Fed head will have a lot on his (or her) plate.

    The biggest winner will be gold. The time to enter your gold position, if you don’t already have one, is now.

  • "The Incredible Shrinking Yard": Growing McMansions Are Increasingly Devouring Backyards

    America’s obsession with the ever-growing McMansion, combined with a perpetual lack of funding for said McMansion, has resulted a unique phenomenon which Trulia has dubbed “The Incredible Shrinking Yard.”  Analyzing public records to compare residential lot sizes to home footprints, Trulia says that homes built over the past two years occupy a staggering 25% of the land on which they sit, compared to roughly half that amount in 1975. 

    Here are some of Trulia’s key findings:

    • Nationally, single family homes occupy 17.4% of the lots on which they sit, regardless of the year they were built.

     

    • Homes built since 2015 occupy 25% of the land on which they sit, while homes built in 1975 occupy just 13.9%. This is being driven by a combination of lots shrinking by 36.2% and home footprints growing by 15.2% size.

     

    • Meanwhile, some of the oldest homes in the country, built in the early 1800s, occupy less than 5.0% of the large lots they are built on. The last time lot usage was nearly as high as it is now was during the early 1900s.

     

    • Don’t mind the neighbors? Single family homes in places like Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which are both geographically small but dense, have the highest lot utilization at 57.7%, and 44.2%, respectively.

     

    • Want plenty of yard space? Head to New England. Three Connecticut metro areas, Worcester, Mass., Hartford, Conn., and Bridgeport, Conn. make up the places with the smallest amount of house occupying lot space, at less than 7.5%.

     

    • While most metro areas have seen lot usage grow since the mid-70s, with Oakland, Calif., and Miami seeing the largest upward swings, six metros have bucked the trend with San Francisco, Memphis, and Long Island, N.Y. moving toward less lot usage.

    When national home price growth charts start to look like an Amazon stock chart, despite the fact that wage growth remains non-existent, but you know your family of 4 can never find a way to survive in a house even an inch smaller than 4,000 square feet, it only makes sense that lawn sizes would have to shrink to keep purchase prices somewhat ‘reasonable’…and by reasonable, of course we mean below FHA lending limits so that those McMansions can be purchased with minimal money down and backstopped by the American taxpayer.

    As Trulia notes, since the mid-70s, when the proportion of lots used by new construction hit a national low of 13.6%, it climbed 11.3 percentage points to 25% of the lot of homes built in 2015 or later. Most metro areas have seen lot usage grow similarly. Oakland, Miami, and Indianapolis have seen the largest upward swing in lot usage, with homes built after 2015 occupying 25.6, 24.9, and 20.3 percentage points more, respectively, of the lots they are built on than they did in the mid-70s.

    Meanwhile, 7 of the 95 metro areas analyzed by Trulia managed to buck the trend, with San Francisco, Memphis, Tenn., and Long Island, N.Y. actually seeing a 12.9, 11.6, and 6.0 percentage point decrease, respectively, in the percent of lot usage by homes constructed after 2015 when compared with homes built in the mid-70s.

     

    With that, here’s a helpful chart depicted just how small the ‘American Dream’ has become in your neck of the woods:

    Lot Usage by MSA

    //

  • Jamie Dimon Should Learn About Lemons

    By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

    A tale of two James’.

    What does this guy:

    Captain James Cook

    …have in common with this guy:

    Two things:

    1. Same first name, and
    2. similar opportunities.

    Let me explain.

    Captain James was probably just another ruffian salty with poor hygiene and bad teeth. But you know what the catalyst to his fame was? And by extension what turned muddy old Britain into an empire?

    These:

    You see, the thing holding back Captain Jamie from extended ocean going voyaging was a nasty disease called scurvy. We know now that Jamie was dead eager to get out there and bring nasty European diseases to natives in faraway lands and upon arrival announce, “By George it’s nice and lush here, we’ll take it.”

    And so when Scottish physician James Lind figured out via controlled experiments that, in fact, a diet including vitamin C rich foods cured this pesky disease, the advantage presented to sailors was enormous. After all, those poor sods used to routinely lose up to 60% of their crews to scurvy on voyages.

    Imagine setting out knowing such odds.

    Da Gama, for instance, lost 116 if his 170 crew, and Magellan 208 of his 230. You’d have better odds skulling a bottle of Absolut and then playing chicken with Mack trucks on a freeway.

    It took the Brits about 40 years to put this knowledge to good use, but it has been argued by historians to have been a catalyst to the founding of the British Empire. At the time, there were plenty other countries who could quite easily have stacked up some lemon juice in the hull, set sail, and begun planting flags. But they didn’t.

    Isn’t that amazing? The bloody British Empire owes its fortunes to the humble lemon. And, by golly, old Jamie Cook took advantage of that didn’t he? And the rest, as they say, is now history.

    And this brings me to the other Jamie.

    You see, Jamie (the old Brit Jamie), used something quite revolutionary at the time to alter the course of history and become a major player in it.

    And Jamie (the not so old yank), Captain of the JPM ship has a similar opportunity today.

    It’s why he should learn about lemons.

    It seems he knows little about modern day “lemons” and their properties. Here’s some major ignorance points he shared with us all on his views just recently.

    I think Alex Gurevich said it best:

    I was mentioning this all to my lovely wife the other night, and you know what she said?

    She said that if he was a she (Jamie that is), he probably wouldn’t be so arrogant and may look at the manual. Which in this case is, of course, Satoshi’s white paper.

    And, as usual, she’s right. When we got our last DVD thingy player she immediately pulled out the manual to learn about how it all works so that when she wants to, she’ll be able to play exactly what she wants without delay and mess and fuss.

    Me? I stabbed away at the buttons, safe in the knowledge that even if I’m trying to get the Blu-ray to play, I’ll probably get the USB figured out, and who knows what excellent films are on the thumb drive I’ve shoved in there.

    I console myself with the fact I’m male, and as such, reading the manual is against my religion. But I tend to make up for it by diving in and learning by doing.

    Jamie, bless him, isn’t even prepared to do either, and that’s fine.

    It just means that when Bitcoin hits another all time high and history books are written (by the robots, of course), he won’t even make the pages. He’ll simply be like all those other sailors in Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands who, in the 1800s, were sailing around at the same time Captain James Cook was.

    And you know what? We don’t know anything about them, and neither will future generations know anything about the present Captain of the USS enterprise JPMorgan’s Jamie “I don’t know isht about Bitcoin” Dimon.

    And that’s probably how it should be.

    – Chris

    “Do just once what others say you cannot do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.” — Captain James Cook

    ————————————–

    Liked this article? Then you’ll probably like my other missives on

    this topic as well. Go here to access them (free, of course).

    ————————————–

  • Blockchain And Gold Like Peanut Butter And Chocolate?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via TheMaven.net/MishTalk,

    Even before the emergence of the growing plethora of cryptocurrencies, several attempts had been made in the past to create digital currencies based on gold, but none of them gained widespread support. Will blockchain and Bitcoin succeed where other attempts failed?

    One of the common criticisms and challenges of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is their price volatility which renders their consideration as a store of value nearly impossible. Some believe that gold backed cryptocurrencies may hold the key to solve these key challenges.

    There are already several cryptocurrencies, otherwise known as altcoins, backed by gold that have been launched. Several of the leading online bullion exchanges have implemented or are also implementing blockchain to create more efficient mechanisms for managing transactions. Each month it seems like there are more and more players joining the fray.

    My friends at The Hutch Report have provided me with an analysis of this nascent gold backed cryptocurrency niche along with a review of some the various players in the space. There are already some obvious differences across platforms which will most likely serve to weed out the serious players from those looking to make a quick buck.

    This analysis provides an objective review of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as well as a look at 23 gold-backed crypto and digital currencies. A review of some of the exchanges is also thrown in for good measure.

    Those Interested in more detail you can download the full report on Gold Backed Cryptocurrency. If you are looking for either a "To the moon, Alice" kind of report, or "This bubble will crash" kind of report, you are likely to be disappointed. Rather, this report analyses the increasing number of cryptocurrencies being backed by gold bullion. Included are research and analysis on 23 different companies and 4 gold exchanges using the blockchain. Here is their conclusion.

    Hutch View

    The recent economic and financial crisis of 2007-2008, not to mention the savings and loan crisis years before, woke people up to the fact that their banking and savings accounts may not be as secure as they once thought. In addition, people have begun to realize that the purchasing power of their fiat currency savings have been eroding over time as working families are fmding it harder and harder to get through the month.

    Massive central bank intervention into our free markets has not only caused more worry about potential runaway inflation, which would cause fiat currencies to be devalued and further losses of purchasing power, but their actions have caused an ever increasing wealth gap between the rich and the poor. It is clear that fiat money has serious economic and ethical drawbacks. This has prompted a search for a better alternative.

    The marriage of cryptocurrencies and gold enables alternative choices to holding more than fiat currency. Although we can't imagine fiat currencies to be replaced overnight, the promises of gold backed cryptos do look compelling moving into the future and they are certainly important to follow.

    In spite of the strengths of a gold backed cryptocurrency there are still many unknowns. In their short history we already have some that have come and gone. Our research into many of the up and coming gold backed cryptocurrencies has shown that the information available is not completely clear or transparent and sometimes sketchy at best. Previous examples of blatant fraud is also a reason to be defensive but not dismissive of the newcomers. We also have a variety from different parts of the globe. There is not enough of a track record with which to have the confidence to make a significant investment although it is worthwhile to look at them from a short term trading aspect in order to see how well they function and if they are able to deliver on their promises.

    The principle strengths of the gold exchanges based on the blockchain is that they are being developed by reputable organizations. We don't lose site of the fact that these blockchains being used are centralized which means they don't incorporate many of the advantages of the decentralized model for which cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have become known. They are not yet fully operational therefore it is difficult to judge their efficiencies.

    Although these new gold backed cryptocurrency and blockchain gold exchanges provide a compelling alternative to the purchase of gold we would not be jumping in just yet, however the future looks very exciting and by understanding the current developments in the sector through this report you are provided with a greater advantage as they mature.

    The ventures with the strongest management teams look to be the most compelling. For this reason the exchanges; Bankchain Precious Metals, Goldmoney, The Royal Mint and Tradewind, look solid. Among the gold backed cryptocurrencies, we will be following the launch of BullionCoin.

    Mish View

    If you want to hold gold, hold gold. But if you are still itching to get into cryptocurrencies despite (or because of) the massive crypto-rally, then gold backed crypto may be the way to go.

     

  • Prius (D)riving NY Legislator Fakes PTSD Panic Attack To Get Out Of Minor Speeding Ticket (VIDEO)

    Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

    Ulster County, N.Y. legislator Jennifer Schwartz Berky (D) – who is up for reelection Nov. 7, put on quite an act for a local police officer Gary Short after she was pulled her over for driving 43 mph in a 30 mph zone while talking on her cell phone.

    A 26-minute video of the May 2017 incident was released last Tuesday during an Ulster Town Board meeting, and features a meltdown of epic proportions.

    After Berky failed to impress officer Short by casually mentioning “I work for the county government, I’m a county legislator,” she immediately shifted into the victim role and proceeded to have histrionic tantrum. “Please don’t give me a ticket, I’m broke,” Berky cried, adding “I’m completely broke, and if you tell people, it’s going to hurt me. I’m totally broke. I made $20,000 last year. Please don’t give me a ticket.”

    Officer Short – a consummate professional throughout the encounter, returns to his squad car to run Berky’s information, when Berky gets out of her car and fakes a panic attack, while on the phone, claiming PTSD.

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    Full video here:

      

    Berky has learned from this and is ready to move on!

    In response to the viral video, Berky issued an apology (the comments section is hilarious):

    “The video released earlier this week of my Town of Ulster traffic stop captured a tough moment for me,” stated Berky. “Like so many working families, I too face tough times and stressful situations.  As a professional, a public servant and a mother, I know my interaction with Police Officer Gary Short was unacceptable. I want to apologize to Officer Short and thank him for his patience and professionalism with me during a very difficult time. This has been a humbling experience for me. I hope to use it to grow and learn how to better represent the diverse working families who reside in the great the city of Kingston.”

    If you’re an Ulster resident and would like to check out Berky’s platform – here ya go. I don’t think it’s going over so well.

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