- "It Was A Very Bad Year" – 1000s March In Hong Kong Protests At China Repression
2019 kicked off with anger in Hong Kong as thousands of demonstrators marched to demand full democracy, fundamental rights, and even independence from China in the face of what many see as a marked clampdown by the Communist Party on local freedoms.
As Reuters reports, over the past year, countries such as the US and Britain have expressed concerns about a number of incidents they say have undermined confidence in Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy under Chinese rule.
These include the jailing of activists, a ban on a pro-independence political party, the de facto expulsion of a Western journalist and barring democracy activists from contesting local elections.
The New Year’s day march included calls to restart stalled democratic reforms and to fight “political repression” from Beijing.
Echoing the mainland repression, The South China Morning Post reports that the organiser of the protest march says it has been ordered by officials to prevent demonstrators from displaying pro-independence banners outside government headquarters.
Describing the demand as unprecedented and a threat to freedoms, the Civil Human Rights Front vowed not to do so.
Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, convenor of the front, said the order was a step backwards for human rights and had no sound legal justification.
“I cannot see why our freedoms are limited once we step in the gateway of the forecourt. Are the streets we march along not under the reign of the government?” he said.
“Looking back at the year that passed, it was a very bad year … The rule of law in Hong Kong is falling backwards,”
Wayne Chan, of the Students Independence Union, said members of his group would still display banners with independence slogans “to spread their aspirations across the world”.
“We will not retreat under government suppression,” he said.
Some protesters carried “wanted” posters of Hong Kong’s top legal official, Theresa Cheng, criticising a decision to drop a corruption investigation into Hong Kong’s former pro-Beijing leader Leung Chun-ying, without a satisfactory explanation.
“I’m afraid the pressure will continue,” said Joseph Cheng, a veteran rights campaigner and retired professor who was raising money for a “justice” fund for activists facing hefty legal fees for several trials.
“We’re going to face a few difficult years, but we must stand firm … Unlike in mainland China, at least we can still protest.”
“There will be continuous suppression on the Hong Kong independence movement, but the movement will grow stronger and stronger,” said Baggio Leung, an independence leader who said several of his members had been harassed by purported “triads” or gangsters, before the march.
Organisers said the march drew 5,500 people, revised down from an earlier estimate of 5,800, while police said 3,200 people were on the streets at the march’s peak.
- Repo Rate Soars Most On Record As Yield Curve Goes Nuts In Year-End Liquidity Chaos
While markets were in a festive mood on New Year’s Eve, with the S&P enjoying a last second 15-point spike even as 10Y yields tumbled to the lowest level since January…
… something strange took place in both overnight funding markets and the Treasury market.
While it is well-known that dealers tend to “window dress” their books on the last day of the year by curtailing activity in financing markets to shore up balance sheets, what happened on Monday left quite a few mouths wide open: with the General Collateral rate trading around 2.50% on Friday, Monday saw a historic surge in overnight GC repo, that sent the rate surging by the most ever, spiking sharply to 6.125% on Monday morning, with the bid/ask trading 6.50%/5.75% just after 10am after opening Monday at 3.75%/4.00%, which was already nearly 1.50% higher than the Friday close (incidentally, the Broad General Collateral Rate (BGCR) was set at 2.45%, the same as the Tri-party General Collateral Rate).
In fact, the closing print of 6.125% was the highest GC repo rate observed since January 2001, and just under 400 bps higher than the Fed funds rate.
“The cash never came in,” said Scott Skyrm, EVP at Curvature Securities, noting that “funding pressure should be about 50 basis points. This was 350 basis points.”
Indeed, confirming the need for cash, on the last day of 2018, 17 counterparties took only $41.8BN at the Fed’s overnight reverse repo operation on Monday, up from $3.21b on Friday, which was the second-smallest quarter-end usage since the RRP was created in 2013, and suggesting that instead of padding books with cash-equivalent securities to satisfy regulatory requirements, banks were suddenly strapped for cold, hard cash.
Clearly there was something amiss with year end liquidity: while there have been year end spikes in the repo rate all prior years, not once in the past decade was the surge as high as it was this time, prompting questions if there were broader year-end liquidity plumbing issues in the market than just traditional window dressing.
Meanwhile, in yet another bizarre manifestation of year-end liquidity events, on Monday shortly after a 52-week Bill auction priced amid unremarkable results, the short-end of the curve inverted dramatically, with the yield on the 1Y finding itself more than 10bps higher than the 2Y.
In fact, the yield on the 52-week Bill closed Friday at 2.5986%, higher than the yield on the 7Y TSY which was at 2.5869%, meaning the 1s7s was inverted.
The last time the 1s7s curve inverted? You guessed it – the same time the overnight repo rate surged as much as it did on Monday – back in early 2001.
One reason cited for the bizarre shape of the yield curve was the bond market’s confusion about what the Fed will do, with the short-end still anticipating perhaps one or more rate hikes, while the longer-end increasingly pricing in deflation, rate cuts and, eventually, QE, although since both of those expectations are what makes up the shape of the yield curve by definition, that explanation was left wanting.
As for the record spike in repo, rates traders were left scratching heads, with Curvature’s Skyrm warning that market participants may have to start pricing in the fact that if repo rates “spike up a bit, they could go much higher.”
- America's Defeat In Syria Is A Crisis Of Empire
The U.S. lost in Syria. Donald Trump finally had the courage to admit that to the world when he ordered the pull out of all U.S. troops there.
Syria was to be the sparkling jewel in the Empire of Chaos’ Crown. A masterstroke of realpolitik which would advance every major U.S., Israeli and Saudi objective while thoroughly destabilizing the Levant and setting the stage for wiping out Iran and eventually Russia.
If the Assad government fell, Syria would become something worse than Libya. It would become a source of abject chaos for decades to come. And the formation of greater Kurdistan would put advanced U.S. and Israeli military assets on Iran’s doorstep.
Carving up Syria, Iraq and possibly even Turkey, once Erdogan was removed from power, would put the U.S. and Israel in control of the oil assets to fund a jihadist-led insurgency across all of central Asia.
Moreover, the chaos would ensure a steady stream of refugees into Europe to destabilize it. That chaos would lead to further political integration of Europe under EU control.
You can see the remnants of this plan all around you today. In fact, a great deal of it is still on auto-pilot. Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron’s tag-team calls for ceding national sovereignty to the EU are a perfect example of this.
They can all feel the project slipping away from them. Despite their failing political power they are pushing their legislatures to ignore the people, calling them traitors.
Orwell would be proud of Macron for saying, “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason.”
The generals Trump just fired over his decision are another example. They still believe they can win a balkanization of Syria and Iraq. They just need more assets and more time.
Israel’s childish and disgusting antics sending missiles at the Damascus airport using civilians as human shields is the most damning.
If you look around the game board right now all of the people who were the architects of the Syrian war are either out of power or losing it rapidly — Hillary Clinton, Obama, Merkel, Macron, Netanyahu, David Cameron.
Russian Rescue
This is why Russia’s entrance into Syria was so important. It was a moment the entire geopolitical narrative turned. Someone stood up to the U.S. successfully.
Institutional confidence is based on the perception of invulnerability. And Putin moving air assets into Syria to assist the Syrian Arab Army was a declaration that Russia had reached its limit, just like with Crimea, with U.S. meddling in its long-term goals.
Remember, in 2015 the narrative was ISIS just sprang up out of the desert. And they would need a full invasion to defeat.
Then the Russians send in some 30 planes and change everything about the conflict within six weeks.
All of a sudden ISIS was beatable. All the U.S. could do was attack Putin for going after Al-Qaeda, not ISIS.
But, why were we protecting Al-Qaeda? Didn’t they blow up the Twin Towers?
Trump will never admit this in public but in some ways he does owe his election to Putin. By forcing open the truth, Putin set the stage to blow up the Syria narrative in late 2015/early 2016.
Trump used that to catapult himself to the Presidency. And that is truly what has everyone in The Swamp angry; the reality that the rubes aren’t buying their lies anymore.
And the wars need to end.
As the losses for Al-Qaeda and ISIS mounted thanks to a Russian air campaign they will write military logistics textbooks about, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all got cold feet.
The Russian intervention prompted the Saudi King to change the line of succession as it became obvious they would never get their spoils from Syria — a gas pipeline into Turkey.
Turkey quit the moment Erdogan realized he was being set up to take the blame for the entire mess. After all, he and his son were selling the oil ISIS was smuggling in plain sight across the Syrian desert to Turkey.
And somehow an all-powerful U.S. military and surveillance system which can read license plates from space couldn’t find convoys of Toyota pickup trucks ferrying tons of oil to Turkey.
Imperial Retreat
Once someone stands up to the Empire successfully once it creates the opportunity for someone to do it again. Putin’s interventions in Syria, both in 2013 diplomatically and in 2015 militarily, told the world Russia was no longer afraid of the U.S.’s ability to project power around the world.
And that’s what truly changed the narrative. And that’s why we’re where we are today with Trump rightly acknowledging the Empire is bankrupting not only the U.S. but, truly, the rest of the world.
His challenge will be surviving the backlash from the entrenched powers in D.C. and Europe. They will push for his head, literally and figuratively.
By declaring victory over ISIS and leaving Syria Trump puts a period on the end of a shameful period of U.S. history. And the loss to the empire will not be easily overcome.
Syria represented the worst kind of imperial over reach. And in some ways it was a quagmire the U.S. and its allies could never win because the assets needed to take it were never available.
And those assets were political. The appetite for endless war had been spent with Obama’s election, no less Trump’s. So, absent a casus belli which could make Americans feel good about intervening in Syria, we were never going to give either President the mandate for a full-blown NATO intervention.
The only question surrounding it in hindsight was whether those that stood to lose the most — Russia, Iran, Lebanon — would stand together and convince China to support them in saving Syria, and, by extension, themselves.
Once it became clear that they would, with Russia’s intervention and China’s tacit approval and financial support, the end was then written in the sand, as long as they would keep their eyes on the big prize.
Winning by surviving. Syria was a war of attrition in which the pro-Syria coalition, step-by-step, made U.S. occupation more untenable. Eventually, that plus deft diplomatic maneuvers to advance a political solution led to this point.
This loss will beget others. Unbridled U.S. aggression has successfully been countered with mostly passive resistance. Afghanistan and Ukraine are on deck.
* * *
Please support the production of independent and alternative political and financial commentary by joining my Patreon and subscribing to the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Investment Newsletter for just $12/month.
- Visualizing The Extreme Concentration Of Global Wealth
In recent decades, extreme world poverty has declined significantly and many millions of people have joined the swelling ranks of the middle class – particularly in China.
While these economic shifts are positive, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley notes that it’s the other end of the global wealth spectrum that attracts the most attention. A high degree of wealth creation is amassed by those at the top of the economic pyramid.
THE TOP-HEAVY WEALTH SPECTRUM
Today, slightly less than 1% of the world’s adult population occupies the $1M+ wealth range. Despite their small numbers, this elite group collectively controls 46% of the world’s wealth, valued at approximately $129 trillion.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
On the flip side of the equation, 70% of world’s population fall into the sub-$10K wealth band. This majority of people around the world collectively control a mere 2.7% of the world’s wealth.
Even as “the rich get richer”, there is good news for the majority. The percentage of people in that lowest wealth band has been shrinking over the years.
MONEYED METROPOLISES
Not only is money concentrated among a small portion of the population, those people tend to gravitate towards global cities such as London, Hong Kong, and New York.
In fact, 70% of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) – persons with investable assets of $30 million or more – reside in just ten cities around the world.
According to Credit Suisse, emerging markets now account for 22% of growth in the UHNWIs category – up from just 6% growth in 2000 – with China alone adding over 16,000 UHNWIs to the mix. Many members of this elite class may generate their wealth in emerging economies around the world, but as we can see from the map above, the world’s richest people end up very concentrated, geographically speaking.
GLOBAL WEALTH, BY CONTINENT
As the visualization below demonstrates, wealth accumulates in Europe and North America. This trend is so pronounced that it only becomes evident once the scale is adjusted to see the detail in the upper percentiles.
One thing is for certain – the world is changing quickly, and just as this graph would have looked very different 20 years ago, global wealth will almost certainly look different in 20 years time.
- Chinese Admiral Wants To "Sink Two US Aircraft Carriers" Over South China Sea
Mere days after Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to “resolutely” defend China’s security interest – a veiled reference to maintaining its domination of the South China Sea – News.au has published details from a speech delivered two weeks ago by one of China’s leading military commanders where he outlined a strategy to rebuff the US Navy should it take an even more interventionist posture within the nine-dash line.
Rear Admiral Lou Yuan told an audience in Shenzhen that the simmering dispute over the East and South China Seas could be decisively ended by sinking two US aircraft carriers.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that Admiral Lou gave a long speech on the state of Sino-US relations, where he declared that the trade spat was “definitely not simply friction over economics and trade,” but a “prime strategic issue.” And that if China wants the US to back off, it must be willing to attack US ships when they intrude in Chinese territory.
During the Dec. 20 speech to the 2018 Military Industry List summit, Lou declared that China’s anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles were capable of hitting US carriers, even when they were in the middle of a “bubble” of defensive escorts.
“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” Admiral Lou declared.
He said the loss of one super carrier would cost the US the lives of 5000 service men and women. Sinking two would double that toll.
“We’ll see how frightened America is.”
Lou also explained what he described as the US’s five vulnerabilities, and insisted that China must not hesitate to strike back at any of them should a US fleet even dare to stop in Taiwan.
In his speech, he said there were ‘five cornerstones of the United States’ open to exploitation: their military, their money, their talent, their voting system — and their fear of adversaries.
Admiral Lou, who holds an academic military rank – not a service role – said China should “use its strength to attack the enemy’s shortcomings. Attack wherever the enemy is afraid of being hit. Wherever the enemy is weak …”
“If the US naval fleet dares to stop in Taiwan, it is time for the People’s Liberation Army to deploy troops to promote national unity on (invade) the island,” Admiral Lou said.
Should Taiwan become increasingly restive, China possesses the capability to stage a military takeover of the island in 100 hours, Lou said. This eventuality is more likely than many might believe, Lou said, adding that 2018 could be a “year of turmoil” for Taiwan, and that a military conflict was possible.
“Achieving China’s complete unity is a necessary requirement. The achievement of the past 40 years of reform and opening-up has given us the capability and confidence to safeguard our sovereignty. Those who are trying to stir up trouble in the South China Sea and Taiwan should be careful about their future.”
“The PLA is capable of taking over Taiwan within 100 hours with only a few dozen casualties,” said retired lieutenant general Wang Hongguang.
“2018 is a year of turmoil for Taiwan, and a possible military conflict may take place in Taiwan soon. (But) As long as the US doesn’t attack China-built islands and reefs in the South China Sea, no war will take place in the area.”
US military commanders have long warned that China’s growing military presence in the Pacific is a serious threat to US security, and China has underscored these concerns by organizing military drills explicitly to threaten Taiwan. Indeed, a military conflict with China remains one of the most widely cited “black swan” risks to global security – a possibility that has only been exacerbated by the trade conflict.
- The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts"
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Cybersecurity “experts” in the United States have long alleged that “Russian bots” were used to meddle in the 2016 elections.
But, as it turns out, the authors of a Senate report on “Russian election meddling” actually ran the false flag meddling operation themselves.
A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name. Described by the New York Times as a group of “tech specialists who lean Democratic,” New Knowledge has ties to both the U.S. military and the intelligence agencies.
The CEO and co-founder of New Knowledge, Jonathon Morgan, had previously worked for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the U.S. military’s advanced research agency known for horrific ideas on how to control humanity. Morgan’s partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the NSA (National Security Agency) who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of authoritarian investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone, according to a report by RT.
Morgan and Fox have both struck gold in the “Russiagate” scheme, which sprung into being after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. Morgan, for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. And also worth mentioning, that dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by NATO (North AtTreaty Tready Organization)and USAID (United States Agency for International Development).
It is worth noting that the 600 “Russia-linked” Twitter accounts monitored by the dashboard is not disclosed to the public either, making it impossible to verify these claims. This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry journalists, however. Yet on December 19, a New York Timesstory revealed that Morgan and his crew had created the fake army of Russian bots, as well as several fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama’s 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate.
From the way it was formed to the secrecy of its “methods” to the blatantly false assumptions on which its claims rest, “Hamilton68” is probably the single most successful media fraud & US propaganda campaign I’ve seen since I’ve been writing about politics. It’s truly shocking.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 22, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead. In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”–RT
This scandal is being perpetrated by the United States media and has so far deceived millions, if not more. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story on “expert opinion” from Morgan’s dubious creation, Hamilton 68.
Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Times piece, had known about the meddling for months because he spoke at an event where the organizers boasted about it!
Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama’s former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge’s campaign to suppress Republican votes, “enrage” Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a “false flag” to hurt Moore. He dubbed it “Project Birmingham.” -RT
There really was meddling in American democracy by “Russian bots.” Except those bots weren’t run from Moscow or St. Petersburg but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the “Russiagate” hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection, brainwashing, and Nazi-style propaganda campaigns.
- Tires Slashed, Guns Pulled On Self-Driving Cars As Arizona Residents Revolt
More than 20 driverless vehicles in Arizona have reportedly been vandalized over the last two years, according to the New York Times, as enraged locals in the Waymo test market of Chandler have begun to revolt.
Tensions began to flare last year after an Arizona pedestrian was killed by a self-drivng Uber car, with residents slashing tires, throwing rocks at, pulling guns on, and trying to wreck the autonomous cars.
Some people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.
In one of the more harrowing episodes, a man waved a .22-caliber revolver at a Waymo vehicle and the emergency backup driver at the wheel. He told the police that he “despises” driverless cars, referring to the killing of a female pedestrian in March in nearby Tempe by a self-driving Uber car. –NYT
“There are other places they can test,” said 37-year-old Erik O’Polka, who was issued a warning in november after multiple reports that his Jeep Wrangler had tried to run Waymo vans off the road. In one instance, O’Pokla reportedly drove head-on toward one of the self-driving vehicles, forcing it to abruptly stop.
O’Polka’s wife Elizabeth, 35, admitted in an interfview that Erik “finds it entertaining to brake hard” in front of the driverless vehicles, and that she herself “may have forced them to pull over” for a good yelling-at. The couple says their hatred of self-driving cars began when their 10-year-old son was almost hit by a self-driving vehicle while playing in a nearby cul-de-sac.
“They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Polka. “They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife.
Natural reaction
According to New York City University media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, “People are lashing out justifiably,” as he compared driverless cars to “robotic incarnations of scabs,” workers who cross picket lines to take the jobs of striking workers.
“There’s a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart,” said Rushkoff. “Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.”
Some of the attacks have been difficult for law enforcement to pursue, as Waymo emergency drivers told the Chandler police that the company prefers not to pursue the prosecution of the assailants. In several cases, the police say Waymo was unwilling to provide video of the attacks – and were told that they would need a warrant in at least one case.
Officer William Johnson of the Chandler Police Department described in a June report how the driver of a Chrysler PT Cruiser wove between lanes of traffic while taunting a Waymo van.
A manager at Waymo showed video images of the incident to Officer Johnson but did not allow the police to keep them for a more thorough investigation. According to Officer Johnson’s report, the manager said that the company did not want to pursue the matter, emphasizing that Waymo was worried about disruptions of its testing in Chandler.
The report said Waymo was concerned about the effect the attacks were having on its emergency drivers, who are intended to remain in monitoring mode. “The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other vehicle may do,” Officer Johnson wrote. –NYT
Waymo said in a statment that the attacks only involved a tiny fraction of the more than 25,000 miles the company’s vans travel every day in Arizona.
“Safety is the core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our top priority,” said Waymo spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson. “Over the past two years, we’ve found Arizonans to be welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make our roads safer.”
She added that the company disputes claims that they are trying to avoid bad publicity by avoiding criminal prosecution of vandals.
“We report incidents we deem to pose a danger and we have provided photos and videos to local law enforcement when reporting these acts of vandalism or assault,” said Georgeson. “We support our drivers and engage in cases where an act of vandalism has been perpetrated against us.”
According to Rob Antoniak, COO of Phoenix transit operator Vallet Metro, Arizona is still welcoming driverless cars with “open arms” despite the attacks on Waymo vehicles, tweeting in December: “Don’t let individual criminals throwing rocks or slashing tires derail efforts to drive the future of transportation.”
#Arizona is welcoming #AutonomousVehicles like @Waymo with open arms… Contrary to some recent news reports, don’t let individual criminals throwing rocks or slashing tires derail efforts to drive the future of #Transportation #AZ #chandler
— Rob Antoniak (@RobRants) December 14, 2018
The naysayers remain unconvinced.
One of them, Charles Pinkham, 37, was standing in the street in front of a Waymo vehicle in Chandler one evening in August when he was approached by the police.
“Pinkham was heavily intoxicated, and his demeanor varied from calm to belligerent and agitated during my contact with him,” Officer Richard Rimbach wrote in his report. “He stated he was sick and tired of the Waymo vehicles driving in his neighborhood, and apparently thought the best idea to resolve this was to stand in front of these vehicles.” –NYT
The Waymo employee inside the vehicle, Candice Dunson, declined to file charges, and Pinkham got a warning from the police.
- Martin Armstrong On The Coming Mini Ice-Age
Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,
Just because someone claims to be a scientist and states for or against Global Warming, really does not add up to a lot for just as when you go visit a doctor, they always tell you to get a second “opinion” because that is all you are getting.
Previously, I have reported that NASA confirmed we are going into a cooling period – not warming. They have put out a forecast of declining sunspot activity. Now NASA has come out confirming what our computer has been forecasting. They have reported that as the sun is experiencing a rapid decline in sunspots, it is also dimming in brightness or energy output. NASA’s Spaceweather station has recorded during 2017, 96 days (27%) of observing the sun have been completely absent of sunspots.
While NASA has now confirmed that the outer atmosphere is getting cooler. In fact, one of the top NASA scientists has broken camp and warned that the surface temperature of the sun has collapsed so much, he fears a new Ice Age is upon us. Meanwhile, this has been the COLDEST Thanksgiving in 150 years! Interestingly, however, is that this sudden sharp decline in the energy output of the sun coincided with the 2015.75 turning point of the Economic Confidence Model.
I have previously warned that if this trend continues during the next winter, then we have exceeded any short-term reactionary trend and the weather appears poised to continue to get colder going into the distant future. Socrates was projecting that the peak on this cycle aligned with the ECM 2015.75. This is a Longitudinal Cycle, not Transverse. That means peak to bottom varies. This short-term wave should be a 13-year decline from 2015 making it 2028 initially. After that, if we see colder winters beyond 2028, then the next low will be with the peak in the ECM 2032. There is a SERIOUS RISK that we are looking at the final low coming in during the period of 2046.
It appears we are plunging now into a deep mini ice age. There is just no way we can reverse this trend no matter how much the government regulates or increases the taxes. For the next 20 years at a minimum it’s going to get colder and colder on average. There is a very HIGH PROBABILITY that we are declining for 31 years from 2015.
What people fail to understand is that the entire weather system of our planet is extremely dynamic. Research has traced the north-south shifts of the northern-most edge of the tropics back 800 years, which was conducted by the University of Arizona-led international team. They have mapped out the fact that the Tropic Belt is also subject to cyclical movement. I have reported that in ancient times, the region we call the Sahara Desert was lush and green and there were cave drawings showing herds of animals in the region. The research has revealed that indeed the Tropic Belt has moved upward and downward over the centuries and the research has documented where it has moved for the last 800 years.
The University of Arizona wrote:
“From 1568 to 1634, the tropics expanded to the north, the team found. That time period coincides with severe droughts and other disruptions of human societies, including the collapse of the Ottoman empire in Turkey, the end of the Ming Dynasty in China and near abandonment of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia…”
The Tropic Belt has been gradually moving northward since 1970. There is debate over what is even causing that. The data we hope to also run through our model to see if that also aligns with the future forecasts on climate change our model has been projecting. This too may be yet another confirming link in the outcome we must face.
- Mobile App Lets You Buy And Sell Equity Shares Of Blue-Chip Collector Cars
Launched in 2016, Rally Rd. is an SEC-compliant mobile app where users buy and sell Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis and other exotic automobiles.
The company said it has about 50,000 members that have invested millions. Currently, there are about 20 cars available to purchase stakes in, though Rally Rd. expects to have around 100 available to trade on the app in the second half of 2019, reported TechCrunch.
Rally Rd.’s co-founders Chris Bruno and Rob Petrozzo told TechCrunch back in October that the crypto bubble implosion opened the eyes of many Americans into the digital asset investing space.
The founders recently solidified a $7 million Series A funding round to open what they call a “live investing ecosystem,” a showroom where users can participate in initial car offerings. The first location will be built in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, with other sites to follow in Los Angeles, South Florida, and Texas.
“We want to create that Apple Store atmosphere where anyone can come in and learn about equity investing on the spot,” said Petrozzo.
Here is how the scheme works: Rally Rd.’s deal team finds blue-chip collector cars and are turned into stocks. To do this, they form a new special purpose entity (a subsidiary of an LLC) whose sole function is to hold the car’s title. The company then holds an SEC-registered offering where investors can view details about the investment and if desired purchase equity shares in the entity that holds the car’s title. Each automobile is registered for sale through a registered broker-dealer available in 32 states.
Similar to the stock market, after the initial offering, shares of the car will trade on an exchange during regular trading hours.
“They’ve literally recreated the NASDAQ or NYSE experience for these assets on the Rally Rd. platform,” investment partner Greg Bettinelli, who has joined Rally Rd.’s board of directors, told TechCrunch.
The special purpose entity structure enables some investors to make a tender offer for all outstanding shares of a specific car, and if investors accepted the offer, the leveraged buyout would enable the buyer to completely own the car.
If a museum wanted to borrow the car, that entity would offer a one-time dividend to all shareholders.
The blue-chip collector cars are stored in a temperature controlled facility which is prepaid for by money raised in each offering. In 2019, investors will be able to watch their investments on a 24/7 live stream.
As per TechCrunch, Rally Rd. takes no management fees or shares of the offering, but since nothing in this world is free, we would expect some type of hidden fee, additional premium or subscription services in the future to generate revenue for the company.
The company also said they could expand into other verticals, including art and sports memorabilia. The founders said a worldwide launch of the app should debut later down the road.
As it now seems TINA ‘There Is No Alternative to the stock market’ is dead, cash has been king since the stock market imploded several months ago. With the risk of poor returns from equities over the next ten years high, Rally Rd.’s digital investments of classic cars could be a hit with the baby boomer generation, as blue-chip collector cars have outperformed gold, the S&P500, and New York City Real Estate since 2012.
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...