- Intel Is To Portugal, As Microsoft Is To Switzerland… But It's Not A Tech Bubble
While Goldman Sachs, in a new report, goes out of its way to ‘prove’ that the current bubble in big tech is not a bubble at all, it has a funny way of showing it… by highlighting just how extreme valuations and market caps have become.
For instance, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have a combined market capitalisation greater than the annual GDP of Africa (54 countries).
Via Goldman Sachs,
Technology is dominating economies and stock markets alike. Since the start of the financial crisis we have seen a dramatic rise in the dominance of technology in stock markets as well as the influence of technology on sectors in traditional industries. Quite how successful and dominant it has become is difficult to overestimate. But such dominance of sectors and stocks is not without precedents and, as we will show, can be very long lasting.
The current size of the largest most powerful technology companies globally is put into some perspective in the ‘map’ above which compares some of the tech giants to the current annual size of GDP of some of the major European economies. Of course this is not a like for like comparison (a company value is the net present value of future expected cash flows whereas the size of GDP is an annual snapshot of an economy) but it nonetheless is fairly striking even when you compare the top technology stocks in size to other major markets.
But as the chart below shows that widens the comparisons to include stock market indices, the top 5 US technology stocks have a combined market capitalisation of more than the EuroStoxx 50 companies together. The top 20 global technology companies are bigger than the value of the STOXX 600 index of Europe.
But while tech dominates US markets, there are other examples of sectors that have achieved very strong growth which, like technology, has been driven by strong fundamentals.
One interesting example is the European luxury sector. The similarities are not immediately apparent but, like technology, luxury goods are a global sector with long duration and so benefit from relatively weak growth.
Also this is one of the few sectors where Europe ‘dominates’ an industry and are often seen as having few substitutes. It is also the case that, like the technology sector, much of the success of recent years has been driven by genuine earnings growth. Unlike the technology sector, however, the luxury goods sector has a limited global market and the stocks are much smaller in terms of their impact on the broader market.
It is also worth noting from Exhibit 18 that while luxury has been successful in generating earnings growth it has underperformed the earnings of the technology sector over the last 10 years despite similar price appreciation.
So, simply put, US big tech rules the world… for now.
- NATO Sabre Strike Exercise: Scaring Russia With Multiple War Games Of Unparalleled Scale
Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
This year, NATO has already organized about 100 exercises, 20 percent more compared to the same period in 2017. Saber Strike-2018, a large-scale US-led exercise involving 18,000 soldiers from 19 NATO members and partner nations, kicked off on June 3 to last till June 15. The scope of the exercise has been steadily expanding with every year. It was 11,000 troops in 2017, 9,000 in 2016, 6,000 in 2015, 4,700 in 2014 and 2,000 in 2013 – that’s how a relatively small drill turned into the regular deployment of substantial force in the proximity of Russia’s borders. Moscow expressed its concern about it at the NATO-Russia Council’s session held on May 31.
The annual multination training event organized every year since 2010 is being held across the training areas in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Non-NATO countries taking part are Finland and Macedonia. Air assault landings are part of the scenario to hone the skills for launching offensive operations.
Sabre Strike is timed with Swift Response airborne drill in Latvia to culminate on June 8. It involves 800 paratroopers from US, Latvia, Lithuania, Israel and Poland.
There will be more exercises held in 2018 near Russia’s borders, including Trident Juncture, a really big one to take place in late October-early November to involve 35,000 troops from 30 nations along with 70 ships and about 130 aircraft and Anakonda organized by Poland in November. The latter will involve 100,000 servicemen, 5,000 vehicles, 150 aircraft and 45 warships. The scale is mind-boggling. One can imagine how much it costs! The Anakonda scenario includes preemptive strikes. If it’s not an open preparation for war than what is? US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley believes it is. According to him, “Having large-scale NATO forces in the Baltic States and Poland, as well as the lack of transparency – we see serious preparation for a great war.” He knows what is talking about.
In May, NATO held a large Siil (Hedgehog) exercise in Estonia and northern Latvia involving more than 15 thousand troops. The series of training events are conducted against the background of the proposal put forward by Poland to deploy US troops on its soil with Warsaw shouldering the financial burden of base construction. A NATO annual summit in July will consider the issues related to further reinforcement of forces in Europe, including the eastern flank.
It has been revealed recently that the alliance plans to create an addition to the NATO Response Force (NRF) increasing its strength from 20,000 to about 50,000 by creating a pool of 30,000 troops with organic aviation and ships ready to be operationally deployed within 30 days. The initiative belongs to the US with Germany to take the lead. The bloc’s defense chiefs will discuss the issue at their upcoming meeting on June 8-9 before putting it on the agenda of NATO summit to be held on July 11-12. NATO war preparations against Russia include the new crisis response command center in Ulm, southern Germany, and another one in the US state of Virginia.
This force as well as other units will become part of training events and the soldiers will be deployed on temporary basis but holding regular exercises presupposes the creation of infrastructure to be used by troops upon arrival for launching offensive actions. Correspondingly, logistics are being beefed up.
There is fresh news to hit headlines before the July summit. Discussions are underway to deploy US THAAD air defense system in Germany. The move would plug a radar gap emerged as a result of postponing the deployment of a second Aegis Ashore system in Poland. The Polish government has announced plans to purchase US Patriot PAC-3 MSE air defense systems.
Both the THAAD and Patriot have rather limited capability against sophisticated ICBMs but Aegis Ashore is more effective.
Modernization will take place, advanced missiles and systems will be moved to the already existing sites. The main thing is that the infrastructure, the foundation to build ballistic missile defense and surface targets strike capability on, will be in place. And the only target is Russia. The Aegis Ashore can launch intermediate range surface-to-surface missiles against Russian territory in violation of the INF Treaty. In a couple of years, Poland will host it. The THAAD’s radar can greatly enhance the Aegis Ashore capabilities by relaying data to them. The AN/TPY-2 has an estimated range from 1,500km (932mi) to 3,000km (1,864mi). The maximum instrumented range is 2,000km (1242mi) to enable it to monitor large chunks of Russia’s territory.
The INF Treaty is teetering on the brink of collapse. If torn up, the infrastructure in question would be just the thing the US would need to station intermediate range forces in Europe with the means to protect them already in place. F-35s incorporating B61-12 nuclear precision guided munitions would also be under the umbrella of air defense systems in place formally deployed to counter the non-existent threat coming from Iran.
The NATO summit in July is to focus on “Russia threat”. The extraordinary scale of military exercises conducted so intensively with scenarios that include bringing in reinforcements to advance, not take defensive positions, the creation of infrastructure at Russia’s door and preparing the logistical base to provide for offensive operations will be described as the least the bloc can do while facing the superior enemy. Provoking Russia to take steps it would not take otherwise is the sure way to return Europe to the Cold War days.
NATO could have chosen a different approach of solving the problems at the round table but it did not. The European Security Treaty (2009) and the Agreement on Basic Principles Governing Among NATO-Russia Council Member States in the Security Sphere (2009) proposed by Russia were rejected off the cuff without any attempts to seriously negotiate the proposals. The 2016 German initiative to launch talks on a new European security agreement was greeted to be swept under the rug afterwards. The May 31 NRC meeting was devoted more to the Skripal case than European security and arms control issues.
Actually, NATO has not lifted a finger to dissipate tensions. Instead, it is rapidly increasing the tempo of military activities near Russia on unprecedented scale, undermining whatever is left of European security. The alliance has made its choice, giving preference to the policy of provocations.
- Ten Ways The Democratic Northern Hemisphere Nations Became The Orwellian West
Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com,
In his book, “1984”, George Orwell envisioned a future crushed by the iron grip of a collectivist oligarchy. The narrative told of the INGSOC Party which maintained power through a system of surveillance and brutality designed to monitor and control every aspect of society. From the time of the book’s release in 1949, any ensuing vision of a dark dystopia depicting variations of jackboots stomping on human faces, forever, has been referenced as being “Orwellian”. This is because Orwell’s narrative illustrated various disturbing and unjust conceptualizations of control, crime, and punishment.
For example, “Newspeak” represented the language of mind control, whereas “crimethink”, “thoughtcrime”, and “crimeface” manifested as transgressions against the state. Guilty citizens were captured by the “Thought Police”, and the ultimate punishment consisted of “vaporization”; which eliminated every last vestige of a person’s existence.
In the horrifying world of 1984, the nation of Oceania was divided into three concentric groups: The Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles, or proletariat. The Proles constituted 85% of the population and lived in extreme privation. The Inner Party represented the elite powerbrokers who led lives of comprehensive luxury compared to the minions in the Outer Party.
But in the real world of today, it is the globalist billionaires who own multiple mansions, fly private jets and ride in eight-cylinder limousines to climate-change conferences where policies are decreed to lower the carbon footprint of the proletariat. It is the wealthy elite of the westernized nations who have sacrificed individual freedom upon the altar of Collectivism as political correctness has stifled free speech and enslaved citizens drown under oceans of debt.
At the same time, megalithic multi-national corporations like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter, have become the eyes and ears of Big Brother; always watching and ever listening.
Indeed, Orwell was near prophetic in describing the proliferation of listening devices in both public and private settings as well as “telescreens”, which simultaneously broadcast propaganda while relaying live video feeds back to the Party watchers. And just as free will and individuality were sacrificed to the extreme demands of Collectivism in the fictional nation of Oceania, so do the globalists and corporate oligarchs of the twenty-first-century desire a new world government fused together by technology and the circular, magnetic dynamism of the hive-mind.
Orwell sublimely illustrated the practicality, and twisted morality, of the state’s utilization of contrived wars and political scapegoats to subvert and shape society by means of circular logic and cycling causation.
And, certainly, life does imitate art.
On January 12, 2009, Dr. Henry Kissinger said in his New York Times editorial entitled “The Chance for a New World Order”:
The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.
Given that Kissinger’s vision was to “shape the common concern” of the nations by “economic crisis” and the “fear of Jihadist terrorism” into a “common strategy” towards globalism, it makes one wonder if everything was planned after all.
Pursuant to 911 came the Patriot Act, the War on Terror, widespread electronic surveillance, eight years of Obama and Cloward-Piven-driven welfare spending, burgeoning sovereign debts, pervasive political correctness, and the weaponization of government agencies. America was definitely fundamentally changed by the Obama administration; and that goes to show, if the Inner Party ever wanted to turn a constitutional republic into a banana republic, they were geniuses to install the right Marxist of Kenyan descent.
As a result of the Hegelian Dialectic, central banking, pay-to-play politics, and collectivist orthodoxies, here are ten ways the democratic northern hemisphere nations became the Orwellian West:
1. Continuous War
In the 17 years after 911, if anything has become perfectly clear it is this: The U.S. wars abroad were not meant to be won. Instead, as Orwell once intimated, they were meant to be continuous. Orwell identified war as the means by which a collectivist oligarchy could maintain a hierarchical society by purging the excess production of material goods from the economy; thus, keeping the masses impoverished and ignorant by denying them the surplus “spare time” afforded by the convenience of modern technology:
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
— Emmanuel Goldstein, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9
In the novel, 1984, the wars alternated between the three nation-states of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. In the western nations of the new millennium, however, middle-eastern wars destabilized those populations which, in turn, created a mass migration crisis that is now subverting the former wealthy societies of the northern hemisphere.
By way of burgeoning domestic welfare programs, ever-increasing deficit spending, economic malfeasance, open borders, and wars abroad; the global elite powerbrokers have bankrupted the United States and destabilized other nations around the world. At the same time, it was revealed that Inner Party members, like George Soros, have subsidized color revolutions around the globe.
The goal? Order out of chaos.
Moreover, it is highly likely the near two decades of modern and urban warfare in the middle-east served as practice for the Orwellian technocracy’s New World Order; for a time when drones will deliver peace, like doves, from on high.
2. Widespread Surveillance
Although statutes prohibiting telegraph wiretapping date back as far as 1862, and the first person convicted was a stock broker named D.C. Williams in 1864, it wasn’t until Watergate before public concerns over government spying became widespread. In the wake of 911, however, as well as the passing of the Patriot Act, and the revelations of former government contractor, Edward Snowden, the concerns of Americans reached entirely new levels; especially regarding violations to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Snowden previously worked for Dell Computers and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before his employment with Booz Allen Hamilton, a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor. Hailed by some as a hero and whistle blower, and others as a traitor, Snowden released to the press hundreds of thousands of files related to the American NSA as well as other intelligence agencies from Australia and Britain.
The revelations were stunning.
As result of what became known as Edward Snowden’s 2013 Global Surveillance Disclosures, American and British initiatives were exposed including PRISM and Tempora that revealed cooperation with governments around the world working in connection with multi-national corporations including Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google, British Telecommunications, and Verizon. Furthermore, backdoor data-gathering programs such as XKeyscore were unveiled along with other various ways by which government spooks could intercept phone calls, text messages, and private data from commonly used internet platforms like Yahoo.
Just as technological breakthroughs in computing and the proliferation of “smart” communication and entertainment devices gave rise to government spying, it was not a very large leap of understanding to see how easy it would be too blackmail and control not only citizens, but government administrators, politicians, officials, and even judges, around the world:
Germany had reacted with outrage when information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that US agents were carrying out widespread tapping worldwide, including of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany where state spying on citizens was rampant, declared repeatedly that ‘spying among friends is not on’ while acknowledging Germany’s reliance on the US in security matters.
But to the great embarrassment of Germany, it later emerged that the [German spy agency] BND helped the NSA spy on European allies.
Is it any wonder why border laws are not enforced throughout the wealthy “democratic” nations of the world? Or why U.S. politicians pass legislation against the will of those who voted for them? Or why Chief Justice John Roberts passed the unconstitutional Obamacare mandate by calling it a tax?
No wonder Senator Chuck Schumer said the following in an MSNBC interview on January 3rd, 2017:
Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.
This likely explains why Florida Senator, Marco Rubio, recently asserted the FBI was not spying on Trump, but the agents were, instead, “doing their jobs to protect America”; and why, in apparent accord with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s previous statements, South Carolina Republican, Trey Gowdy, claimed the “FBI acted properly” and denied any evidence that the “FBI planted spies” in Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign.
3. Propaganda-Style Fake News
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2016 I wrote a sardonic “Thank You”piece in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. The article was, in turn, picked up by a website called “Zero Hedge”. Imagine my surprise, on Thanksgiving Day, when I read in The Washington Post, that Zero Hedge was guilty of spreading disinformation by the Russians, according to some obscure, and likely CIA subsidized, entity named “Prop or Not”.
Just as the “Ministry of Truth”, in 1984, served as the propaganda machine for Big Brother and the INGSOC regime, so do the handful of corporations, comprising 90% of the mainstream media today, who serve as the propaganda machine for the globalists.
Although the main purpose of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was to rewrite history in order to realign it with Party doctrine and make the Party look infallible, it also promoted war hysteria designed to manufacture consensus; and unite the citizens of Oceania against whatever, or whomever, the Party deemed culpable.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
So, too, do the Masters and Messengers of the new millennium march in lockstep toward a predetermined future. By way of the Hegelian Dialecticthey progress. First they create a problem; then they sow seeds of discord before finally demanding solutions designed to augment and centralize their political power.
Today’s modern manifestation of the INGSOC party, led here by loyal U.S. Democrats, have sought to control private lives, consolidate power, and restrict personal freedoms by weaponizing healthcare, welfare, FISA Courts, illegal immigration, anti-gun initiatives, and even turn Vladimir Putin into a modern day incarnation of Orwell’s imaginary and infamous scapegoat, Emmanuel Goldstein.
Certainly, the Collectivists would have had much more difficulty fundamentally transforming America and rest of the world, except for the never ending propagandic spin spewed forth by the mainstream media as the modern day Ministry of Truth. Using Orwellian terms like Election Hacking, Black Lives Matter, No Justice No Peace, Hands Up Don’t Shoot, #MeToo, #OneLess, and No More Guns, the Messengers ceaselessly promulgate their divisive bullshit around the world twice while the truth ties its shoes and gets slandered as fake news.
In one of the century’s greatest ironies, liberals and the press have labeled Trump as Hitler and his supporters as Nazis while employing the exact techniques used by Hitler’s henchman, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
4. Acceptance of Politically Correct Orthodoxies via Newspeak
For anyone born even as late as the mid twentieth-century, it would have been difficult imagining a time when a U.S. President would advocate for cross-dressing males to share the bathrooms of our daughters in schools. But that’s what the Obama Administration pulled off and it was the weaponization of words that allowed it to happen.
The Obama administration issued guidance Friday directing public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.
A joint letter from the Departments of Education and Justice went to schools Friday with guidelines to ensure that ‘transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school environment,’ the Obama administration said…
…..This guidance gives administrators, teachers and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies.
Identity politics and implementation of social justice policies have stifled the rights of free speech and freedom of association throughout the democratic nations of the western world. They materialized as the result of language manipulation. Remember when gender used to represent male or female? Yet in the above example, the word “identity” was added after “gender” thus opening a verifiable Pandora’s Box of Orwellian Newspeak.
Today in the formerly free societies of the northern hemisphere, men and women are forced to navigate Genderqueer and Non-Binary Identities, consisting of an entirely new lexicon including neo-designations such as Agender, Cisgender, Ceterosexual, Ceteroromantic, Demigender, Enby, and Epicene; just to name a few.
And, with the “guidance” of our government and corporate masters, “administrators, teachers and parents”- transgender students can be “protected” from “peer harassment” and “unjust school policies”.
See how that works?
It is the magic of Newspeak by which today’s children are protected from a multitude of great sins all deriving from the three evil societal pillars of sexism, homophobism, and racism.
To accept the world order in Orwell’s dark narrative, the protagonist, Winston Smith, was forced into believing that 2 + 2 = 5.
To accept the New World Order in 2018, one must believe that Black Lives Matter more than “all lives” and that gender is fluid based upon personal desire or plastic surgery.
Just as Newspeak manifested as thought control in 1984, so too has the language of political correctness today given rise to the strange new orthodoxies of a New World Order; and all for the inclusivity and unification of mankind; or rather “peoplekind” according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
5. Dumbing Down and Doublethink
Over the past four decades, and as a result of global academia’s embrace of the Frankfort School and Fabian Socialism, the U.S. Department of Education has dumbed down a majority of Americans while vastly increasing their taxpayer funded budgets over that time. Moreover, whereas emphasis was once placed on critical thinking, logic, classic literature, science, and math, today’s schools have instead prioritized the social sciences while cultivating into young minds attitudes of conformity and political correctness. Now universities around the world offer majors such as global studies, gender studies, and women studies, in order to prepare young people for career government jobs, positions in progressive non-profits, or to move back into their old bedrooms at Mom and Dad’s house.
This is why, in a recent Rasmussen Poll of 1,000 U.S. voters, forty-six percent favored government guaranteed jobs for all, why a Los Angeles Antifa group hung President Donald Trump in effigy and called for revolution against the capitalist state, why millennial candidates have embraced Socialism, and why four socialist-backed candidates recently won Pennsylvania legislative primaries.
Orwell defined “doublethink” as:
the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them
— Emmanuel Goldstein, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9
These people realize their utopian dreams have been tried before in history; like the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, the People’s Republic of China under Mao Tse-tung, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
Even so, forward, they march.
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
In the modern democratic nations of the world, what is called diversity is actually enforced as unity. In the name of tolerance, Muslim hordes are flooding through borders of the wealthy western Christian nations as oligarchical intolerance rains down upon any who dare question the catastrophic consequences of failed immigration policies. In the U.S., and most of Europe, people are condemned for any criticism of Islam.
Are the governments tolerant or intolerant? Obviously, they are both.
Recently, Donald Trump referred to violent MS-13 gang members as “animals” causing Democrat Party Leader, Nancy Pelosi, to question if the President didn’t believe that “we are all God’s children”. Evidently, Pelosi, advocates for the humanity of MS-13 gang members while touting the benefits of both Catholicism and abortion.
Furthermore, Doublethink occurs when the Party of the Klu Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws believes only they can righteously defend against racism; when Roseanne Barr is a bigot and Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt”, when informants aren’t spies, and when the Party insanely fears Trump’s America as a real-life dystopian embodiment of “The Handmaid’s Tale” while, simultaneously, marching on Washington D.C. for gun confiscation.
Even more fantastic is how special counsel, Robert Mueller, expects to convict President Trump of obstruction of justice in an investigation of which Robert Mueller says Trump is not a target.
Obviously moral relativity and dissimulation are the hot air that gives flight to the amazing magic carpet ride of Collectivism’s Doublethink.
6. Censorship
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Presidential Election, alternative-news websites were labeled fake news as the mainstream media propagated actual fake news regarding Russian collusion and election hacking. But that was just the beginning. Within a week after the general election, two of the world’s largest internet companies, Google and Facebook, announced their plans for outright censorship.
In Orwell’s 1984, books were outlawed and news was fabricated to align with the agenda of the INGSOC Party. The Party decided what was true and what was false on behalf of the people.
On December 15, 2016 Facebook announced a series of measures designed to address what they branded as “fake news and hoaxes”. In effect, the measures made one of the largest news sources in the world a last line of defense in the online information wars.
The efforts have continued.
Just last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a system to rank news organizations based on “trustworthiness” in an effort to suppress content based on that metric and eliminate hate speech.
What could go wrong with a company who, also last month, was accused of conducting mass surveillance through its apps and whose ad censors demanded the home address and driver’s license of a conservative author who wrote an Obama exposé book?
Evidently, all of the large internet news hubs are operated by the Party.
Earlier this year, the social media platform, Twitter, was revealed to be shadow-banning conservatives and President Trump’s son, Donald Jr., has more recently claimed conservatives were being shadow-banned on Instagram.
The country of France has just drafted legislation to stop what the government has called “manipulation of information” that opponents claim could be used to silence critics and, most recently, Apple has announced plans for the company’s own editorial team to soon be selecting the top news stories on Apple News.
In response to the outright censorship initiatives imposed by online media companies, sixty-three conservative leaders recently issued a joint statement demanding fairer social media policies.
Additionally, Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, along with Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, have written a letter calling for the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter to address concerns over conservative censorship ahead of the 2020 election, as well as a call for transparency.
7. Two Minutes of Hate against Political Scapegoats and Strawmen
In all likelihood, the Obama Administration’s spying on its political opposition will one day be known as the largest political scandal in the history of the United States. The Russian Election Hacking Lie, however, which was initiated in an attempt to concurrently conceal the misdeeds of the guilty government coconspirators and derail the incoming administration, will go down in history as one of America’s greatest frauds.
Of course, to best deflect and divert the attention away from what must not be seen is to provide the citizens with other, more suitable, narratives and targets.
In 1984, war and the dissident scapegoat Emmanuel Goldstein served that purpose to such an extent the citizens would publically vent their collective anger toward both in what was called the “Two Minutes of Hate”.
In America today, the real live Two Minutes of Hate occurs in succession over the course of every day on cable TV networks like CNN and MSNBC. It is there where the political pundits and the media talking-heads prosecute and convict guns for killing school children or Las Vegas concert attendees. Or, whenever the frenzy of the latest mass shooting wanes from a boil into a simmer, Vladimir Putin of Russia remains a primary scapegoat; even causing Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein to seem more loveable than the Pillsbury Doughboy by comparison:
8. Harassment and Arrest of Dissidents
Recently, President Trump pardoned conservative filmmaker, Dinesh D’Souza, which caused those in the Inner Party to speak out against such heresy. D’Souza was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to eight months of confinement by Obama’s Department of Justice (DoJ) for campaign finance violations that normally would have been settled with probation and community service.
The filmmaker was also subjected to what he said was reeducation by way of a court-ordered psychologist and targeted as a conservative in his DoJ file. His real crimes, of course, consisted of writing a book and making a documentary that were both critical of then president Barack Obama.
Of course none of D’Souza’s treatment should have come as a surprise from a petty tyrant who sued the state of Arizona for defending its southern border, spied on reporter Sharyl Atkinson, misused U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct a counterintelligence operation against political opposition and, previous to that, weaponized the IRS against the Tea Party.
Furthermore, just thirty-eight days after Trump was elected president, the Executive Lame Duck signed into law the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” resulting in the expulsion of Russian
diplomats“spies” from theirhomes“compounds” where non-existent crimes against the state never took place.Additionally, and most recently in the U.K., conservative activist and founder of the English Defense League, Tommy Robinson, was arrested for “breaching the peace” while reporting on an Islamic pedophile gang. Amidst a court-ordered media blackout, Robinson was later sentenced to 13 months on a contempt-of-court charge.
At the same time, conservative Canadian psychologist, Jordon Peterson, has been targeted by the left-wing smear machine:
The Left’s attack on Peterson is so unrelenting, so superficial, and quite frequently so vicious, that many of us who work and/or live in left-leaning social environments feel scared to speak up against it…
Before long, like Winston Smith in 1984, even writing down personal thoughts in a diary could result in a first class ticket to Room 101; where individuality and personality succumbs to the Borg.
This is very likely why the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is shopping contractors to compile a database of journalists and bloggers in order to identify “media influencers”. According to the DHS, today’s diariesconsist of “online, print, broadcast, cable, radio, trade and industry publications, local sources, national/international outlets, traditional news sources, and social media.”
9. #MeToo Sexual Purges
As mentioned before, in the novel, 1984, the members of the Outer Party were denied sex, other than for procreation. This was how sexual repression was channeled into enthusiasm for the State. In the eponymously named film (which was actually released in the year 1984), the actors John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton played Winston Smith and Julia, respectively, engaging in a secret love affair as a form of political rebellion.
Although the storyline of the film corresponds to that of the book, the viewer witnesses full frontal nudity onscreen as well as public confessions of captured dissidents in the background admitting forced proclamations of moral depravity. The manufactured sex crimes consisted of participation in orgies, homosexual seductions, and the purposeful proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases. These visual parallels in the 1984 film create a sense of foreboding in the mind of the viewer as the lovers persist in their rebellion against the Party with certain fatalism.
Inevitably, just before Winston and Julia are captured and stand naked before the militant, jackbooted INGSOC Party authoritarians, he told her “we are the dead”; to which she replied the same words back to him.
Today, sex is also wielded as a political weapon and, just like the dime store magazines of yore, nothing will titillate and tantalize the minds of readers and viewers alike, more than scurrilous headlines and stimulating suggestions of scandalously salacious crimes of fornication.
Although sex scandals have plagued the rich and famous around the globe, over the ages, and across all sides of the political spectrum, the consequences have varied. Chappaquiddick may have prevented Teddy Kennedy from becoming president but it did not prevent him from being a senator. Sexual impropriety ended the political career of Democratic Presidential Candidate Gary Hart in 1988, but Bill Clinton’s presidency survived an even worse sexual imbroglio a decade later.
Political Leftists, in the past, have been particularly forgiving of sexual improprieties. However, after the election of Donald Trump, liberals around the world seem to have decided it was time to clean house with the #MeToo movement which has brought about the demise of former Hollywood producer and democratic bundler, Harvey Weinstein, as well as other notable figures around the world.
In February of this year, President Donald Trump lamented the lack of “due process” behind the #MeToo movement but his own daughter Ivanka, two weeks later, praised the movement and with “credible evidence” as being sufficient for the accusations.
In the case of Donald Trump, is it possible all of the #MeToo sex crime victims are now given their day in the sun because the political opposition believes all roads lead to impeachment by way of Stormy Daniels? Or is the Trump Administration partially behind the take down of political opponents like Harvey Weinstein and others?
Either way, like in 1984, when it comes to sex crimes in today’s political theater, an arbitrary morality is hypocritically wielded as a double-edged sword, on the basis of convenience, and with one overriding premise: The accused are guilty until proven innocent.
In today’s surveillance society, therefore, there can be no doubt of sex crimes being used to control political and corporate leaders all throughout the Democratic nations in their long descent into Orwellian hell.
The question remains: Who will watch the watchers?
10. Historical Revisionism
The “memory hole” in 1984 was a chute connected to an incinerator and served as the mechanism by which the Ministry of Truth would abolish historical archives as if they never existed.
Had the establishment’s candidate, Hillary Clinton, won the U.S. Presidency in 2016, would any of the Orwellian revelations behind SPYGATE ever have seen the light of day? Of course not. Just like in 1984, the “Memory Hole”would have been utilized to make The Party appear infallible.
In reference to the (Orwellian) Obrien-like CIA and FBI mole, Steven Halper, who infiltrated and entrapped members of Donald Trump’s campaign, “The American Spectator” has written of it thusly:
Halper — who tried to get a position in the campaign, spent over a year shadowing Carter Page, and tried to entrap George Papadopoulos — ‘wasn’t spying.’ Halper was just ‘observing,’ ‘assisting an FBI investigation’ (as the Washington Post desperately put it), or, in the words of John Brennan, seeking ‘insight.’
George Orwell would have laughed at that one. ‘Political language,’ Orwell said, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ In this case, it is an all-hands-on-deck propaganda effort to make spying on political opponents respectable — a ruination of reputations, careers, and bank accounts of Trump campaign officials undertaken ‘for their own good,’ we’re told. Liberalism claims a monopoly on everything, particularly language, and liberals will let us know when we can and can’t use ‘spying’ to describe obtaining information secretly.
Indeed. The writings of George Orwell sublimely revealed how “political language” and the Memory Hole are used in combination by the Collectivists to move forward toward their final agenda of ultimate control.
It is why the Media Messengers have recently reported on “Trump Supporter” Roseanne Barr, but have never once referenced Harvey Weinstein as the “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Bundler”.
Did you catch that?
Roseanne Barr’s recent allegations of racism and intolerance against Obama’s advisor, Valarie Jarrett, are tied to Trump while tainted Harvey Weinstein’s liberalism and support for both Obama and Jarett are disappeared right down into the Memory Hole.
This is the exact same way the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 was later blamed on a YouTube video, why the Obama Administration was never held to account for its IRS harassment of the Tea Party, how a British judge could ban press coverage of Islamic pedophiles, and how the two lawyers responsible for covering up the crimes of Hillary Clinton were allowed to openly collude in a coup against a sitting president.
Think lawlessness like this could never occur in the Democratic nations of the Northern Hemisphere?
Too late.
Conclusion
Whether history and headlines rhyme, or repeat, or whether life merely imitates art – in the end, the stories rarely vary. Civilizations rise and societies fall. And, in the long term, entropy never ceases to run its course on the crumbling road to tyranny.
Obviously, the road to hell is paved with bad intentions, but under the guise of good intentions. Of course, the slide toward the slough will continue and those feigning the love of peoplekind will persist in their lies.
Soon, as George Orwell envisioned, the Party may become more honest and figure out the final solution. As Oceania’s Inner Party member, “Obrien” admitted while torturing Winston Smith in Room 101 of The Ministry of Love:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power….
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that.
– Obrien, ”1984”: part 3, chapter 3,
Although, as we draw nearer to Orwell’s perfect vision of hell on earth, to acquiesce to orthodoxies of political correctness in the meantime, is nothing short of suicide by cowardice. It would be akin to acknowledging the state’s embezzled power as god; and to bow down before those holding nothing sacred themselves, except power.
Even so, with the technological capabilities at the disposal of those in control today, the key for the Party to continually centralize its power becomes no more difficult than game of Whack-a-mole. And, sadly, most of peoplekind won’t fight as the dominoes fall. Instead they will slip on their electronic collars for slices of bread and learn to love their new “necklaces”.
Of course, it could have been different. But in looking at government administrations, the entertainment industry, the press, the media, politics, football, and now even coffee shops: There is nothing the Party has ever touched that it didn’t cause to wilt like a flower in the fall.
In the once-free, and previously Christian, nations of the Northern Hemisphere hope has become a luxury we can no longer afford.
- Elite Soldiers Testing Lockheed Martin ONYX Exoskeleton
Elite soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry division in the United States Army based at Fort Drum, New York, will be the first to test exoskeleton technologies from Lockheed Martin that reduces the metabolic cost of transport to improve endurance and reduce fatigue on the modern battlefield.
Lockheed Martin ONYX exoskeleton screen grab via YouTube. (Source Lockheed Martin)
The U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC), a developer and tester of new material systems for U.S. Army soldiers, including the Future Force Warrior System, partnered with the 10th Mountain Division in February to prepare the transfer of the exoskeleton technology to the Army.
According to the Army Times, NSRDEC has spearheaded the movement in transferring exoskeleton technologies to the Army. One of the more advanced exoskeleton technologies that will soon be fielded is designed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
Army Times spoke with Lockheed officials about the next-generation powered lower-body exoskeleton, ONYX, which has demonstrated its overall capacity to enhance mobility and dramatically reduce fatigue of its users during previous pilot tests.
“Despite the variation in cost of transport difference between participants, the knee-exoskeleton consistently decreased the cost of transport of walking up an incline with a load,” said a report from the University of Michigan in a 2017 evaluation of ONYX.
Lockheed officials said the ONYX device would complete three phases of testing with the Army, starting as early as Fall 2018.
ONYX™ boosts leg capacity for physically demanding tasks such as lifting or dragging heavy loads, walking with load, or walking up or down hills. (Source: Lockheed Martin)
“The first phase will include a six-month development effort in which researchers work on the quality of life portions of making the knee- and hip-focused device fit comfortably and correctly to the soldier’s body,” said Keith Maxwell, senior program engineer of Lockheed Martin’s exoskeleton technologies.
The second phase of the program will start in 1Q19 to upgrade “faster, quieter actuators to the device,” said Army Times. Then the NSRDEC will transition into the third phase in late 2019 for ruggedized operational tests. Army officials told the Army Times that the exoskeleton could be fielded in a combat zone as early as 2021.
ONYX is embedded with sensors that report speed, direction, and angle of movement to a micro-computer attached to the user’s hip. Based on the compilation of data in real-time, the machine works with the human using electromechanical actuators at the knees, to assist knee flexion and extension with limited latency to complete a task.
Among other benefits, ONYX enforces orthopedic alignment to help evenly distribute weight and avoid skeletal overstress and pressure injuries. (Source: Lockheed)
In other words, ONYX will enable the solider to go the extra mile while carrying mission-essential equipment by boosting leg capacity. Lockheed Martin said the solider can now carry heavier weapons, increase the ability to cross rugged terrain and complete combat missions without overstressing the body.
“Despite the variation in cost of transport difference between participants, the knee-exoskeleton consistently decreased the cost of transport of walking up an incline with a load,” said Lockheed Martin in a statement.
It seems as the Army is just that much closer in turning its soldiers into cybernetic organisms, which will eventually lead to Skynet robots.
Video: Lockheed Martin ONYX exoskeleton
- Is There Method To Donald Trump's Supposed Madness On Trade?
Authored by Jim Jatras, op-ed via RT.com,
It would be an understatement to suggest that Trump’s decision to slap higher tariffs on practically everybody – has outraged almost everyone: most of the business community, foreign governments, media and experts from all fields.
President Donald Trump, it is said, is unleashing a global trade war, which is already beginning with promised retaliatory measures from our closest trading partners. Trump justified his action by claiming that steel and aluminum are strategic materials essential for national defense. In all likelihood national defense had little to do with his action. Rather, it is a ploy to put a “national security” halo around a measure being taken for economic reasons.
That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong move, however. It’s important to put these measures into the context of long-term US trade policy. US trade policy since World War II could almost have been designed to undermine the economic interests of American workers and American producers. Starting with Germany and Japan, our defeated enemies, we offered them the proverbial deal they can’t refuse: they get virtually tariff-free, nonreciprocal access to our huge domestic market to assist with their economies’ recovery from wartime destruction; in return, we would take their sovereignty: control of their foreign and security policies, as well as their military and intelligence establishments, plus permanent bases on their territory.
In effect, Germany and Japan ceded geostrategic control of their own countries and were rewarded at the expense of domestic US economic interests. This may have seemed a good deal for both sides at the time, in light of the mounting Cold War with the Soviet Union. Germany and Japan were flat on their back, we were the only major world economy not devastated by the war – in fact, our economy was booming. We could afford to be generous, especially as the arrangement strengthened our geopolitical position vis-à-vis the USSR and Soviet bloc.
Unfortunately, not only was the Germany-Japan arrangement not ended when those nations recovered by the end of the 1950s, it became the standard for our trade relation with other countries in non-communist Europe, as well as some in the Far East, notably South Korea.
Though reduced politically to the status of satellites, these countries also benefited from having to spend only token amounts on their own militaries. (In fact, Japan accepted an arbitrarily low military spending cap of one percent of GDP, now beginning to erode.) This meant they could focus all of their resources on their economies, even while protecting them from outside competition, including from the US.
This is not to say no one in the US benefited economically. American corporations – or more accurately, companies that originated in the US but had gone global – jumped at the opportunity to dump their pricey American workers (along with bothersome labor and environmental regulations), move their manufacturing operations abroad, and then import their products back into the US virtually tariff-free.
While this didn’t benefit US workers, it has made life cushy for the corporate boardrooms and for shareholders (with corporate buybacks of stock, sometimes there is substantial overlap in these two categories).
So not surprisingly, for years the troubadours of the corporate class and their favored media and think tanks sing hosannas to the wonders of so-called Free Trade. With the predictability of Charlie Brown kicking the football, each new trade deal rushed through with “fast track authority” is touted as “opening new markets for American goods” and “creating millions of good-paying jobs” – and each with clockwork regularity leads to bigger deficits and lost jobs.
Before Trump’s election, Republicans (also deservedly known as the “Stupid Party”) barely paused for breath from their ritual denunciations of Barack Obama’s dictatorial abuse of his Executive Authority to steamrollblank-check autocratic presidential trade powers through Congress.
But while our political class exulted in America’s one-way commitment to Free Trade, our trading partner practice barely concealed mercantilism, both against each other and us. Consider, for example, the European Union’s Value Added Tax (VAT), which applies internally to domestic and imported goods but not to exports – in effect an export subsidy. But when the US considered leveling the playing field with a Border Adjustment Tax (BAT), the EU and other trading partners screamed bloody murder. As Alan Tonelson points out, “The BAT would have functioned like a value-added tax (a levy imposed by virtually every other country) — imposing a tax on imports heading for the U.S. market, and providing a subsidy for U.S. exports.” But for reasons that are not clear, the BAT was dropped.
To be sure, the American consumer benefitted in the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency which has allowed purchases of imported items at artificially low prices, even as domestic producers are forced out of business and their workers laid off. Then, “rather than exporting goods, the United States exports financial assets in the form of U.S. Treasuries, which have been purchased by central banks around the world to bolster their foreign currency reserves and to keep the value of their respective currencies low relative to the dollar.” The irony is that even with foreign goods’ attractive low, low, low prices, there are fewer working class Americans with good-paying manufacturing jobs able to support a Middle Class lifestyle.
The plight of these Americans is what largely propelled Trump into the White House as an improbable historical accident. Let’s recall that in 2016 there were anti-establishment rebellions in both parties, directed against Republicans and Democrats alike in light of flat economic growth, a shrinking Middle Class, flat or falling income levels (reflecting in large part loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs), crippling debt levels (“nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency”), a rising mortality rate (notably among the white working class, dubbed “the White Death”from suicide), substance abuse (with about five percent of the world’s population, the US consumes 80 percent of the world’s opioid prescriptions), and a diet of processed foods and GMOs (in a pattern reminiscent of collapsing life expectancy of Russian males as the USSR imploded), and a record low labor participation rate.
A widespread sense of foreboding suggests that the future will be even worse, with most Americans’ expectation of a lower standard of living for their children and grandchildren. Somebody is making a lot of money out of the more than two decades’ quest for “benevolent global hegemony,” but it sure isn’t the ordinary folks in, what the elite of both parties concentrated on the coasts disdain as, “Flyover Country.”
Trump pledged to do something about this. Especially in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, those who voted for him want something radically different from business as usual. They voted for Trump because they wanted a bull in a china shop, a wrecking ball, a human hand grenade, a big “FU” to the system.
So far, though, on many issues they have gotten instead something closer to a conventional Republican of the Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush variety. This is especially true on foreign policy, where Trump’s team and his actions seem to have been formulated by the same globalist, neoconservative-dominated establishment he denounced during the campaign. But with his tariffs Trump has boldly departed from recent Republican orthodoxy – and in fact, rejoined the nationalist tradition of the GOP from Lincoln to Eisenhower, when the US became and remained the industrial and economic envy of the world.
It remains to be seen whether anything like a trade war will materialize. Key to that will be what Europe will do, not just with respect to tariffs but to US sanctions against European companies doing business with Iran in the aftermath of American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. It is one thing for the Europeans to meet Trump for some serious horse-trading that begins to rectify the lopsided commercial disadvantage they have enjoyed for half a century. But it is another thing to succumb to political diktat in the form of Iran sanctions. One would hope the European leaders see the connection between the new Iran-related threats emanating from Washington and the decades-old cession of independence to which they have meekly submitted under a long-outdated American “security umbrella.”
In assessing the readiness of Europe (not just of the EU leadership but national governments) to resist threats from Washington, it’s always the smart bet to expect them to wimp out. This is perhaps partly a function of their institutional weakness (especially of the unelected nobodies in Brussels), but the main fault seems to be the low human quality of leadership in the likes of Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel, who wouldn’t know a principled stand for national sovereignty if it walked up and bit them.
Exhibit A is the European establishments’ inability to cope with – indeed, active encouragement of – migratory invasion, currently the only real external threat to Europeans’ safety and security. Exhibit B is the way European governments rushed to accommodate the US on the abominable global financial regulation known as FATCA (the “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act”), where these supposedly independent states abrogated their domestic personal privacy laws in the face of naked sanctions threats from Washington. (To be fair, Russia, which has even more reason to resist placing its financial sector under the authority of the US Treasury Department, has done no better.)
At this juncture, it matters less what the specific steps European governments decide to take but that they resolve to achieve their political independence from Washington, even though that must entail some short-term pain from loss of a privileged trade arrangement. That in turn will require them to make a sober assessment of their relationship with Russia and the so-called threat that is justification for continued – indeed, perpetual – American domination. That linkage was made recently by Austria’s populist Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, who called both for a reaction to US pressures and normalized EU-Russia ties in anticipation of President Vladimir Putin’s upcoming visit to Vienna.
Perhaps there’s something in the air when even the likes of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker can say that “Russia-bashing has to be brought to an end.” An even more hopeful sign may be the accession to power of the Five Star Movement – Lega parties in Italy, which has been called the “most radical challenge yet to the order that has dominated Europe since World War II.”
To be sure, Trump is hardly the sole cause of what the Council on Foreign Relations laments as the impending death of the “liberal world order,” but he certainly has been a catalyst. One can’t help but wonder to what extent that is deliberate.
* * *
And if data is your thing, the last two month’s trade deficit prints suggest Trump’s efforts are working, for now…
- Opioids Are Responsible For 20% Of Millennial Deaths, "Crisis Will Impact US For Generations
The opioid crisis has become a significant public health emergency for many Americans, especially for millennials, so much so that one out of every five deaths among young adults is related to opioids, suggested a new report.
The study is called “The Burden of Opioid-Related Mortality in the United States,” published Friday in JAMA. Researchers from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, found that all opiate deaths — which accounts for natural opiates, semi-synthetic/ humanmade opioids, and fully synthetic/ humanmade opioids — have increased a mindboggling 292 percent from 2001 through 2016, with one in every 65 deaths related to opioids by 2016. Men represented 70 percent of all opioid-related deaths by 2016, and the number was astronomically higher for millennials (24 and 35 years of age).
According to the study, one out of every five deaths among millennials in the United States is related to opioids. In contrast, opioid-related deaths for the same cohort accounted for 4 percent of all deaths in 2001.
Moreover, it gets worse; the second most impacted group was 15 to 24-year-olds, which suggests, the opioid epidemic is now ripping through Generation Z (born after 1995). In 2016, nearly 12.4 percent of all deaths in this age group were attributed to opioids.
Children live stream their ‘zombie’ parents ‘overdosed on heroin’ after they return home to find them passed out. (Source: Mirror Online)
“Despite the amount of attention that has been placed on this public health issue, we are increasingly seeing the devastating impact that early loss of life from opioids is having across the United States,” said Dr. Tara Gomes, a scientist in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s.
“In the absence of a multidisciplinary approach to this issue that combines access to treatment, harm reduction and education, this crisis will impact the U.S. for generations,” she added.
Over the 15-year period, more than 335,000 opioid-related deaths were recorded in the United States that met the study’s criteria. Researchers said this number is an increase of 345 percent from 9,489 in 2001 (33.3 deaths per million population) to 42, 245 in 2016 (130.7 deaths per million population).
Video: Millennial mother overdoses in store as her toddler cries
“By 2014, Canada and the United States had the highest per capita opioid consumption in the world and deaths related to opioid use have increased dramatically in both countries,” the study stated, which also said, “opioid-related death rates are increasing most quickly among adults aged 25 to 44 years in the United States. Consequently, the public health burden resulting from early loss of life is substantial.”
Drugs Involved in U.S. Overdose Deaths
National Overdose Deaths Involving Opioid Drugs
“These numbers show us the dramatic impact of opioid-related harms across all demographics in the U.S.,” said Dr. Tara Gomes, a scientist in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s. “We know this is not an isolated public health issue – it is one that spans across North America.”
All in all, the opioid crisis is much worse than we imagined, as millennials are craving, not just avocados these days – but, vast amounts of opioids inducing a tidal wave of fatal overdoses.
- The Surprising Reason Why There Are Now More Job Openings Than Unemployed Workers
As we reported yesterday, for the first time in history, the number of job openings in the US (6.7MM) has surpassed the official number of unemployed workers (6.1MM).
And yet something about that number does not make sense.
When we reported on the jobs number back on June 1, we observed that the number of people not in the labor force has risen to nearly 96 million, and while much of this is due to demographics, and the America’s “opioid” epidemic, a lot can be assigned to an increasingly inefficient labor market that lacks dynamism. Subsequent deep dives into the jobs number show us that the health of the job market may not be on a par with where it was back in 2006 , and that the job market “health” may be judging a book by its cover.
One such indicator to note is the amount of churn that occurs between jobs: churn is supposed to give an indication of how active participants in the workforce are in looking for better opportunities than the ones they currently have. In a market where there was recently more job openings than there were unemployed people to fill them, as was reported by the Wall Street Journal, one would expect churn to be at, or exceeding, levels it has previously been at during times of a “healthy” economy.
However, churn data shows no such thing. In fact, churn is still lower than it was in 2006 when unemployment was 4.8%. Some more details from the WSJ, which echoes what we said yesterday, namely that “the economy hit a new milestone in April, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. For the first time since record-keeping began in 2000, there were more job openings than there were unemployed people to fill them. It is the result of the steady job gains that have sent the unemployment rate down to 3.8% last month.”
However, “the big surprise is that with all of those openings, people aren’t changing jobs as much as you’d expect.”
Alongside the job-opening data it reported Tuesday, the Labor Department also released figures on job openings and what it calls job separations (which include job quitters, people who got laid off and people who retired). That data can be used to gauge how much movement between jobs, or “churn,” is going on. High levels of churn are considered a feature of a healthy job market.
One measure of churn—the sum of hires and separations as a share of overall employment—stood at 7.4% in April, around where it has been for the past year. That is far better than the 5.9% it plumbed in 2009, but still below the 8% it reached in 2006 when the unemployment rate was 4.6%.
According to the WSJ’s Justin Lahart, the lack of churn likely has to do with the aging of the US workforce, validating the point that unemployment is moving lower because more and more senior citizens, who would normally be expected to retire, are forced to say in, in certain, stereotypical cases as part-time Walmart greeters.
And as workforce ages, older workers are less likely to job hop. as housing costs continue to rise, particularly in some of the core urban areas where job openings are most plentiful. Meanwhile, many workers may still have lingering fears, sown during the recession, about leaving the security of an existing job for a new one.
The good news is that more people are quitting their jobs: the quits rate, which as Nicholas Colas dubbed the “take this job and shove it” indicator, as it measures the degree of confidence workers have in finding a new job, is the highest it has been since 2001. But fewer people are leaving their jobs for other reasons, pushing the churn rate lower.
Meanwhile, for companies, the low churn rate has been both good and bad. The good part is that it makes it easier to retain the employees, which helps keep labor costs lower. That mainly benefits companies that aren’t aiming to grow. The bad part, which mostly affects companies looking to expand their workforce, is that it can be hard to hire people without offering them strong incentives to do so. And those incentives usually involve higher pay.
- "Dollar Is King": Indonesia Joins India In Begging Fed To Stop Shrinking Its Balance Sheet
It’s getting a little tight around the neck for emerging market central bankers.
On the same day that the governor of Malaysia’s central bank quit, and just days after Urjit Patel, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, took the unprecedented step of writing an oped to the Federal Reserve, begging the US central bank to step tightening monetary conditions, and shrinking its balance sheet, thereby creating a global dollar shortage which has slammed emerging markets (and forced India into an unexpected rate hike overnight), Indonesia’s new central bank chief joined his Indian counterpart in calling on the Federal Reserve to be “more mindful” of the global repercussions of policy tightening amid the ongoing rout in emerging markets.
As Bloomberg reports, in his first interview with international media since he took office two weeks ago, Bank Indonesia Governor Perry Warjiyo – who bears a remarkable resemblance to what Jamie Dimon would look like if he were about 40 pounds overweight – echoed what Patel said just days earlier, namely that the pace of the Fed’s balance sheet reduction was a key issue for central bankers across emerging markets.
Bank Indonesia Governor Perry Warjiyo As a reminder, the RBI Governor made exactly thew same comments earlier this week, arguing that slowing the pace of stimulus withdrawal at a time when the US Treasury is doubling down on debt issuance, would support global growth, as the alternative would be an emerging markets crisis that would spill over into developed markets.
In a thinly veiled warning addressing the Fed, Warjiyo said that “we know every country must decide their policy based on domestic circumstances but look, you have to take account of your actions and the impact of your actions to other countries, especially the emerging markets.”
Actually, no it doesn’t: the only thing the Fed has to take into account is what its private owners (see “Bernanke’s Former Advisor: “People Would Be Stunned To Know The Extent To Which The Fed Is Privately Owned“) ask and proceed accordingly.
The growing complaints from EM central bankers come at a time when the Fed continues to tighten monetary policy, and with another interest-rate hike expected next week, emerging markets across the globe are bracing for a further selloff. Bank Indonesia has already raised its key rate twice to help bolster its currency, while the Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday became the latest to move, increasing its policy rate by 25 basis points to 6.25%, surprising a majority of analysts who expected no change.
“Communication is very important,” Warjiyo said. “We are looking for the Fed to communicate more clearly the intention of their policy so the market can understand clearly and also react and all the central banks can also anticipate and consider it in their policy making.”
Actually, here the Fed has been especially clear, often more so than the market, and unlike in 2015 and 2016, has been hiking just as often as its “dot plot” said it would.
Still, Warjiyo’s comments underscore the difficult policy choices central bankers are being forced to make as they try to respond to external forces driving their currencies.
On Tuesday, South African central bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said the Fed is communicating its intentions better than it did in 2013 during the taper tantrum, but its job is being complicated by U.S. fiscal policy.
“Nobody figured out that the U.S. could embark on all of these trade policies that they had embarked on and that complicates the work of the Fed,” he said in Johannesburg. “I don’t think that they had factored in earlier that there will be stimulus that had been put in for the U.S. economy from the fiscus.”
Unfortunately for all these central bankers, it’s about to get even more difficult as policy normalization in Japan and Europe will bring more uncertainty, further monetary tightening and more outflows from emerging markets. Warjiyo said that while the “dollar is king” at the moment, it may lose that status next year.
“There are three global players that impact the future of interest rates and exchange rates. Now it’s only the U.S.,” Warjiyo said. “That’s why the U.S. and the dollar are king. But next year if Europe starts normalizing, Japan starts normalizing, then I don’t think the U.S. or the dollar will be the only king.”
Like India, the Indonesian central bank moved decisively – and unexpectedly – to support the rupiah, holding an out-of-cycle meeting last week in which he increased the benchmark rate by 25 bps to 4.75%. The thinking goes that by pre-empting the uncertainty in financial markets, the central bank has been able to stabilize the currency, Warjiyo said on Wednesday, adding that more rate hikes are possible if financial and economic conditions warrant it.
“Yes, there is a possibility of a rate hike,” Warjiyo said. “Of course, the magnitude and timing will be measured and will depend on our calibration of new information that will be coming.”
And while rate hikes are great to stabilize EM currencies and capital outflows, if only briefly, there is a just as unpleasant tradeoff: they cripple economic growth, and the result – in virtually every single case – is a recession, which sooner or later shits into capital markets..
Indeed, as Bloomberg’s Garfield Reynolds writes, “India’s rate hike was Asia’s latest forced policy action as USD strength and Fed tightening spur emerging-market central banks to follow suit to stop FX routs. The result has been a massive surge in the average 2-year swap rate for EM Asia, and that may make conditions tight enough to hold down the region’s equities relative to U.S. peers.“
And once enough peripheral emerging markets tumble, it is only a matter of time before the contagion spills over into the core, and – eventually – the US.
- DOJ Watchdog Finds Comey "Defied Authority" And Was "Insubordinate"
The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog has found that James Comey defied authority several times while he was director of the FBI, according to ABC, citing sources familiar with the draft of a highly anticipated OIG report on the FBI’s conduct during the Clinton email investigation.
One source told ABC News that the draft report explicitly used the word “insubordinate” to describe Comey’s behavior. Another source agreed with that characterization but could not confirm the use of the term.
In the draft report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz also rebuked former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, the sources said. –ABC
President Trump complained on Tuesday of “numerous delays” in the release of the Inspector General’s report, which some have accused of being slow walked or altered to minimize its impact on the FBI and DOJ.
“What is taking so long with the Inspector General’s Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey,” Trump said on Twitter. “Hope report is not being changed and made weaker!”
What is taking so long with the Inspector General’s Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey. Numerous delays. Hope Report is not being changed and made weaker! There are so many horrible things to tell, the public has the right to know. Transparency!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“It’s been almost a year and a half and it is time that Congress receives the IG report,” said Congressman Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has been on the front lines of the battle against the DOJ and FBI’s stonewalling of lawmakers requesting documentation. “This has gone on long enough and the American people’s patience is wearing thin. We need accountability,” said DeSantis.
Another congressional official, who’s been fighting to obtain documents from the DOJ and FBI, said it is no surprise that they are putting pressure on Horowitz. According to the official, “They continue to slow roll documents, fail to adhere to congressional oversight and concern is growing that they will wait until summer and then turn over documents that are heavily redacted.”
ABC reports that there is no indication Trump has seen – or will see – the draft of the report prior to its release. Inspector General Horowitz, however, could revise the draft report now that current and former officials have offered their responses to the report’s conclusions, according to the sources.
The draft of Horowitz’s wide-ranging report specifically called out Comey for ignoring objections from the Justice Department when he disclosed in a letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election that FBI agents had reopened the Clinton probe, according to sources. Clinton has said that letter doomed her campaign.
Before Comey sent the letter to Congress, at least one senior Justice Department official told the FBI that publicizing the bombshell move so close to an election would violate longstanding department policy, and it would ignore federal guidelines prohibiting the disclosure of information related to an ongoing investigation, ABC News was told. –ABC
During an April interview, Comey was asked by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos “If Attorney General Lynch had ordered you not to send the letter, would you have sent it?”
“No,” replied Comey. “I believe in the chain of command.”
Deputy Attorney General slammed Comey’s letter to congress while recommending that Trump fire Comey last year – saying it “was wrong” for Comey “to usurp the Attorney General’s authority” when he revealed in July 2016 that he would not be filing charges against Hillary Clinton or her aides (many of whom were granted immunity).
“It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement,” Rosenstein wrote in a letter recommending that Comey be fired. “At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors.”
The draft OIG report dings Comey for not consulting with Lynch and other senior DOJ officials before making his announcement on national TV. Furthermore, while Comey said there was no “clear evidence” that Hillary Clinton “intended to violate” the law, he also said that Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her “handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
And as we now know, Comey’s senior counterintelligence team at the FBI made extensive edits to Clinton’s exoneration letter, effectively decriminalizing her behavior.
“I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say,” Comey said on live TV July 5, 2016.
By then, Lynch had taken the unusual step of publicly declaring she would accept the FBI’s recommendations in the case, after an impromptu meeting with former president Bill Clinton sparked questions about her impartiality.
Comey has defended his decisions as director, insisting he was trying to protect the FBI from even further criticism and “didn’t see that I had a choice.” –ABC
“The honest answer is I screwed up a couple of things, but … I think given what I knew at the time, these were the decisions that were best calculated to preserve the values of the institutions,” Comey told ABC News. “I still think it was the right thing to do.“
Comey is currently on a tour promoting his new book, “A Higher Loyalty.”
About that delay…
As many wonder just where the OIG report is after supposedly being “finished” for a while, the Washington Examiner‘s Chief political correspondent, Byron York, offers some keen insight (tweeted before details of the draft were leaked):
A series of tweets on what to expect from the much-anticipated inspector general report on DOJ/FBI handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation… 1/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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First, looks like it might be delayed yet again. Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a June 5 hearing to discuss IG report. After delay, had to be rescheduled for next Monday, June 11. Now looks like might be delayed again. 2/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Why delays? Feet are clearly being dragged. There are snags over classified information. Also, and this is intriguing: appears in last several weeks IG got new information, interviewed new witnesses. Could have contributed to delay. Don’t know what it’s about. 3/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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So, when IG report is finally released–looking like mid-June–what will it cover? Don’t know its conclusions, but here are some subjects you can expect to be reading about: 4/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Expect discussion of 6/27/16 Loretta Lynch-Bill Clinton meeting on tarmac in Arizona. IG has done extensive investigation. What was said? What were the intentions of those involved? Expect it to be covered carefully. 5/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Expect discussion of James Comey’s decision to begin drafting an exoneration memo for Hillary Clinton long before the FBI had even interviewed her, or at least a dozen other key figures in the case. Also: Why hand out so much immunity? 6/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Expect discussion of Comey’s intentions when he announced re-opening of Clinton investigation on 10/28/16, shortly before election day. Democrats specifically asked IG to investigate that. 7/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Expect discussion of what Andrew McCabe did when he first learned about existence of Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop in early October 2016. Did he sit on information? If so, why? What did Comey know? 8/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Expect discussion on rationale for Comey’s controversial 7/5/16 statement announcing no charges would be filed against Clinton. To say it was unorthodox would be an understatement. What was he doing? 9/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Expect discussion of Lynch’s refusal to recuse herself from investigation or to appoint special counsel. Plus, look for discussion of why McCabe waited so long to recuse himself even after public reporting of Clinton-related political contributions to his wife. 10/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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Finally, don’t expect to learn much new about McCabe ‘lack of candor’ situation re: leaks. Not clear whether IG will reveal much beyond what has already been released in wake of McCabe firing. End/
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 6, 2018
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