- Where Is Craft Beer Most Popular In America?
It’s difficult to miss the degree of variety beer lovers can enjoy at this moment in the US. This is due to the explosion of small breweries coming on to the scene, which emphasize experimenting with flavors and styles.
As Priceonomics.com notes, over the past 40 years (thanks to deregulation in the beer industry) the number of breweries in America expanded from a post-prohibition low of under 100, to over 5,000 in 2016. The bulk of this growth comes from small breweries, the most familiar to consumers being the microbrewery.
According to the Brewers Association, a trade group for American craft brewers, a microbrewery is any local and independent brewer that sells fewer than 15,000 barrels of beer per year and sells at least 75% through other bars, restaurants, and liquor stores.
Unfortunately, it’s not the case that you can walk to your local liquor store and choose from 5,000 different breweries to bring home tonight. The reach of small breweries are confined to particular markets as most microbreweries have limited and local distribution. The variety from these small craft breweries is typically limited to the state or metro area the brewery where the brewery is located. The fact is, some areas of the country are just better for beer aficionados who want lots of options.
So where do you have the best chance to sample the greatest variety of beer possible? Which states and cities have the most breweries overall?
We analyzed business listing data from Priceonomics customer Datafiniti to offer some perspective into that. This data set included the listings of craft breweries along with their locations. We combined this with supplementary information from the Brewers Association catalog of breweries, to offer more specific details.
From our analysis, we are able to find out in what parts of America breweries reign supreme.
So, which state has the most breweries?
Number one is California by a serious margin, with over 600 breweries. Colorado and Washington are the next closest with about 350 each. With 15 or fewer breweries, Hawaii, Mississippi, Washington D.C. and North Dakota are at the bottom of our list. We found that cities in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado are your best bet for finding the most breweries in one place. Cities along the coasts and in the Midwest are also solid destinations. There are also some exciting small cities outside of this trend that should not be overlooked (like Asheville, NC). Vermont is the state with the most craft breweries per capita, while Boulder, Colorado is the city with the highest density of craft breweries.
Looking at the information in absolute terms skews our list towards the larger states with greater population. It’s intuitive that states with more people (and therefore more beer drinkers) would be able to support more breweries.
Understanding the number of breweries per capita will tell us where breweries are most plentiful relative to population…
The title of most breweries per capita goes to Vermont. Even though they only have about 50 in total, since the state is so small, that equates to 8 breweries per person. Montana, Colorado, Maine, and Oregon all have about 6 breweries per person. Overall we see a strong presence of breweries in the Pacific Northwest, New England, and the Midwest.
- Paul Craig Roberts Warns American Democracy Is "A Dead Man Walking"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
Trump’s “sell-out,” as it is called, coming on top of Obama’s eight-year “sell-out,” is instructive. We have now had a Democratic president who sold out the people who elected him and a Republican president who has done the same thing. This is a very interesting point, the meaning of which most people miss.
But not Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. At the Valdai discussion club, Putin summed up Western democracy, which I paraphrase as follows:
In the West, voters cannot change policies through elections, because the ruling elites control whoever is elected. Elections give the appearance of democracy, but voting does not change the policies that favor war and the elites. Therefore, the will of the people is impotent.
People are experiencing that they and their votes have no influence on the conduct of affairs of the country. This makes them afraid, frusrated, and angry, a combination of emotions that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in response organize the powers of the state against the people, while urging them with propaganda to support more wars.
Obama promised to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq or perhaps it was both. He promised to reverse the police state created by the George W. Bush regime. He promised to focus American resources on American domestic problems, such as health care.
But what did he do? He expanded the wars and launched new ones, destroyed Libya and attempted to destroy Syria, but was stopped by British non-participation and Russian objection. Obama overthrew democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine. He expanded the police state. He began the demonization of Russia and Putin. He betrayed the American people again by allowing the private insurance industry to write his health care plan known as Obamacare. The private interests wrote a plan that diverts public monies from health care to their profits.
All of this is forgotten when the ruling elites and the presstitutes that serve only them refocused the demonization on Trump. Suddenly, it was the president-elect of the United States who was the main danger to the US and the American people. Trump was a Russian agent. He had conspired with Putin to steal the US election from Hillary Clinton and make the White House a partner of Putin’s alleged reconsruction of the Soviet Empire.
The nonsense was hot and furious, and it was effective. Trump succumbed to pressure and sacrificed his National Secuity Advisior, who was supportive of Trump’s promise to normalize relations with Russia. Trump replaced him with a Russophobic idiot who apparantly cannot wait to see mushroom clouds over cities all over the Western world.
Why did two presidents in succession completely sell out the people who voted for them?
The answer is that presidents are not as powerful as the interest groups who make the decisions.
Trump was going to get us out of Syria, so he committed an unambigious war crime by gratuitously attacking Syria with Tomahawk missiles.
Trump was going to normalize relations with Russia, so his Secretary of State announces that US economic sanctions will stay on Russia until Russia hands over to Ukraine the Russian Crimean naval base on the Black Sea.
It is impossible to normalize relations when the cost to the other party of the normalization is national suicide.
Despite Trump’s complete surrender to the powers that be, today (May 2) on NPR I heard raw propaganda dressed up as “expert opinion” that Trump is biased against the media, when what all of us have seen is massive media bias against Trump, including the program to which I was listening.
For example, NPR had accumulated “experts” who said that Trump had slandered Obama by accusing him of intercepting his comunications. NPR said nothing about the Obama regime’s charge that Trump conspired with Putin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
If anything was slander, this was, but all the talk was about how Obama could sue Trump.
But, of course, both are public figures, and neither can sue the other.
I wonder why NPR’s “expert” didn’t get around to this point.
Why is the ruling oligarchy still using its presstitutes to campaign against a president who has surrendered to them?
Perhaps the answer is that the real powers that be are going to make an example out of Trump so that never again does a person running for elected office make a populist appeal to the electorate.
- "Someone Is Blowing Up": RBC Warns China-Induced Unwinds Are Escalating
"Something is off," warns RBC's head of cross-asset strategy Charlie McElligott in the introduction to his latest market noting that the swing in US fiscal policy optimism is coming at a critical time as the China's liquidity tightening is spooking the reflation story.
SUMMARY:
Movement on US fiscal policy is currently driving US rates and equities higher, counteracting the tremendous negative implications of this ‘Chinese tightening / deleveraging’ story and the impact this is having upon commodities (industrial metals & crude) and thus, ‘inflation expectations.’
‘Connecting the dots’ between the crude oil / commodities selloff and a strong (negative) reversal in ‘mean reversion strategies’ both cross- and inter- sector (energy) within equities, as well as notable drawdowns in ‘momentum’ market-neutral strategies over the past few weeks.
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FISCAL POLICY OPTIMISM SWING COMES AT CRITICAL TIME, AS CHINA LIQUIDITY TIGHTENING STORY IS SPOOKING REFLATION:
The big +++ story overnight: Republicans are planning a ‘make or break’ vote on the ACA repeal today, as the GOP feels they now have the votes to pass the Trump campaign healthcare promise. This sudden swing to ‘movement’ / optimism speaks to the ‘pessimistic overshoot’ seen across the Street with regards to the consensually negative view on ‘fiscal policy’ implementation, following the administration’s / Republicans’ self-inflicted wounds of the past few months.
NOW, this opens the door again to not just tax reform (as it creates a much more benign revenue ‘starting point’ for tax-cut offsets), but potentially infrastructure as well, which might too be bundled into the tax plan. Yes, none of this is ‘imminent’ per se, but the sentiment-inflection here is swift and of extreme importance to the ‘reflation’ trade.
As such, equity futures and US nominal rates are currently holding higher, despite what looks to be a total breakdown in crude oil and commodities turning outright ugly now.
And today is seeing the move accelerate…
with the biggest single day drop since Nov 2016…
This newly-found ‘US fiscal policy optimism’ could not have come at a better time for the ‘reflation’ camp, who have been sweating bullets in recent days because our much-discussed ‘Chinese tightening / deleveraging’ theme is playing-out real-time and wreaking havoc on global commodities–particularly with industrial metals (Dalian Iron Ore limit-down overnight -8.0% and reopening down another -5% today). Look at the carnage on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, particularly in the MTD / QTD columns:
This comes following the total meltdown in copper (-4.0%, and another -1.7% move this a.m.) during yesterday’s US session, while too we see the breakdown in the crude oil complex accelerating with WTI making YTD lows this morning while falling through its trend-support line dating back to last August. BHP and RIO are the proxy for the breakdown in the equities-complex (while a popular US equities ‘inflation’ basket is crushed a massive -4.3% over the past five days), while too we see China- / resources- levered AUD come unglued in the FX space, now -2.3% month-to-date despite a very ‘meh’ USD. At the same time, we’ve now seen weaker Chinese Manu PMIs and Caixin Composite PMIs over the past week, in conjunction with an ISM Manufacturing misses in US.
All of this is tied-into the enhanced Chinese efforts to deleverage the economy via ‘measured tightening’ (higher money markets rates—see O/N SHIBOR again making new 2 year highs last evening) and reduced liquidity (net removals as MLF loans roll-off versus now-smaller / not offsetting RR cash injections and OMO’s). In conjunction with these quantitative efforts, the Chinese are also ‘cracking down’ on shadow financing and wealth management products, both of which participate in the liquidity / commodity-price feedback daisy-chain (to my point yesterday and in the past on higher short-term rates acting as ‘margin calls’ on ‘commodities as collateral’ financing trades).
Mark Orsley and I have been working on a “Chinese Liquidity Monitor” which tracks the PBoC’s various measures (repos, reverse repos, OMOs, SLFs, MLFs, Pledged Supplementary programs)—see below. The key point here: it’s not just the sharp decline in the ‘rate of change’ of PBoC ‘lending’ / ‘financing’ / ‘credit creation’….it’s that liquidity is being outright REMOVED.
It makes total sense too—the Chinese have recently used the ‘air-cover’ of the Fed’s own tightening to conduct their own–so the current timing is perfect, as a June FOMC hike became that much more of a ‘lock’ after yesterday’s hawkish message was successfully delivered (looking through the Q1 data softness as “transitory”).
The simple fact is that global liquidity–and thus, financial conditions as well–are tightening.
US real rates are gapping-tighter, as 5Y TIPS yields have swung from -24bps on April 12th to this morning’s +13bps. 3m LIBOR has MORE THAN DOUBLED since June and currently sits at highs since March 2009. As mentioned earlier, overnight SHIBOR printed another new 2 year high, same for Chinese 10Y government bond yields. US nominals are back approaching the upper end of their recent range as well. Yes, if this was a pure reflection of growth, it would be an outright ‘risk-asset positive.’ But it’s much more nuanced than that, especially from the Chinese ‘demand driver’ impact on the global economy. Tighter financial conditions à slower growth à lower inflation.
From a risk-perspective though, this is then counter-balanced via by-and-large ‘still expansionary’ global PMIs, BIG corporate earnings growth and now, into the aforementioned (and SUDDEN) positive uptick in sentiment around US fiscal policy movement. If fiscal can re-jigger ‘animal spirits’ (especially on the ‘optimism’- / confidence- side), then it becomes much more attractive to put those ‘reflation trades’ back on (rates shorts, long cyclicals / banks / value factor, potential to re-load USD length as well). To this point, I will continue watching that 2.40 / .45 level (smack-dab btwn 50- and 100-dma’s in UST 10Y yields and the overhead resistance level since late-March—H/T Mark Orsley)…while still feeling confidence that this ‘Chinese tightening’ story (and the impact it is have on commodities and thus, global inflation expectations) will keep US rates ‘anchored’ despite the Fed’s hiking intentions.
NOW LINKING THE ABOVE ‘COMMODITIES / CRUDE DISTRESS’ INTO A NOTABLE DEVELOPMENT IN EQUITIES FACTOR MKT NEUTRAL:
In yesterday’s note, I pointed-out particularly acute ‘unwind’ price-action in US equity 1m ‘momentum’ factor market neutral strategies seen on Tuesday—as ‘momo leaders’ were splattered, while ‘momo losers’ squeezed sharply-higher. We have now seen a ‘clustering’ of 1.5- to 2.0- standard-deviation drawdowns in the strategy over the past few weeks (almost dating-back to the start of the quarter frankly), which is anecdotally quite atypical in a ‘flat to up’ intraday tape. It would be safe to surmise that there is either signaling a rotation that is playing-out in the market, or conversely, an unwind of some sort.
Looking back to the start of the quarter though, we haven’t really seen that sector- or factor-level rotation generally-speaking, as thematically, ‘growth’ factors / sectors continue to lead, while at the bottom, we see cyclicals / value / anti-beta still lagging, as they have all year. But if looking at a strategy such as ‘prior quarter mean reversion’ you begin to see something interesting.
This is crude, but using a simple ‘Q1 mean reversion’ proxy (deployed in Q2), where I go long Energy (worst perf S&P sector Q1) vs short Tech (best perf S&P sector Q1), I see significant signs of ‘stress’ or outright unwind in recent weeks. The above portfolio run $-neutral has experienced a near 5% swing over the past 3 weeks, with the loss doubling over the past week alone–it’s likely this ‘rate of change’ that is the problem from the risk management perspective. This of course correlates with the breakdown occurring in crude oil, as WTI is now -11.8% over the past three weeks.
Sector-specific within energy, you see signs as well. Energy equities trader Ryan Businski noted the following ‘unwind’ behavior across Texas shale plays: “Seeing long sales across the Niobrara names today forcing unwinds/covering in Bakken names. WLL, OAS, CLR rallying with no news Bakken related.”
With the sector now -10.4% YTD within the S&P / -20.3% within the Russell, alongside a lot of talk in recent-weeks of a number of multi-manager shops shuttering energy books, I feel comfortable in stating that somebody’s ‘mean-reversion’ strategy (likely a stat arb / quant fund) has triggered ‘stop outs’ as the underlying commodities space now ‘catches down’ to the behavior already exhibited across the energy equities space throughout the course of 2017.
- Earth Overshoot: How Sustainable Is Population Growth?
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
For decades people have been predicting overpopulation would wipe out energy resources if not the entire planet. Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last?
Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last?
Reader Rick Mills at Ahead of the Herd addresses the subject in a guest blog that first appeared on his blog as Earth Overshoot Day.
Earth Overshoot Day
The second half of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world’s population in human history. Our population surged because of:
- Medical advances lessened the mortality rate in many countries
- Massive increases in agricultural productivity caused by the “Green Revolution”
The global death rate has dropped almost continuously since the start of the industrial revolution – personal hygiene, improved methods of sanitation and the development of antibiotics all played a major role.
Green Revolution
The term Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfers that happened between the 1940s and the late 1970s.
The initiatives involved:
- Development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains
- Expansion of irrigation infrastructure
- Modernization of management techniques
- Mechanization
- Distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers
Tractors with gasoline powered internal combustion engines (versus steam) became the norm in the 1920s after Henry Ford developed his Fordson in 1917 – the first mass-produced tractor. This new technology was available only to relatively affluent farmers and it was not until the 1940s tractor use became widespread.
Electric motors and irrigation pumps made farming and ranching more efficient. Major innovations in animal husbandry – modern milking parlors, grain elevators, and confined animal feeding operations – were all made possible by electricity.
Advances in fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and antibiotics all led to better weed, insect and disease control.
There were major advances in plant and animal breeding – crop hybridization, artificial insemination of livestock, growth hormones and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Further down the food chain came innovations in food processing and distribution.
All these new technologies increased global agriculture production with the full effects starting to be felt in the 1960s.
Cereal production more than doubled in developing nations – yields of rice, maize, and wheat increased steadily. Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased by over 250% – and the world added a couple billion more people to the dinner table.
The modernization and industrialization of our global agricultural industry led to the single greatest explosion in food production in history. The agricultural reforms and resulting production increases fostered by the Green Revolution are responsible for avoiding widespread famine in developing countries and for feeding billions more people since.
The Green Revolution helped kick start the greatest explosion in human population in our history – it took only 40 years (starting in 1950) for the population to double from 2.5 billion to five billion people.
We goosed agra machine’s growth and saved a billion people who birthed billions more.
Malthusian pessimism
“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man“. Thomas Robert Malthus
Malthusian pessimism has long been criticized by doubters believing technological advancements in:
- Agriculture
- Energy
- Water use
- Manufacturing
- Disease control
- Fertilizers
- Information management
- Transportation
would keep crop production ahead of the population growth curve. Malthus’s prediction hasn’t come true because, so far, rising agricultural yields have always outpaced population growth.
Norman Borlang, Father of the Green Revolution, is on record as saying if we did everything right the Earth has a human carrying capacity of 10 billion people.
Ester Boserup, an agricultural economist says don’t worry, that population growth is the driver of land productivity – our planet’s human carrying capacity is based on the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than environmental limits.
Ester’s downgrading of environmental limits to second place doesn’t give me much comfort moving forward. It seems a little shortsighted.
Population
In 1950 the world’s population stood at 2.52 billion people. Today there are over 7.5 billion of us living on Earth.
Current World Population: 7,500,072,439
According to United Nations predictions humans could number 9.7 billion people by 2050, and over 11 billion by 2100.
The earth might be big enough for one billion people, four billion maybe even eight or nine or even the 10 billion as Borlang believed. But the time is quickly coming when our sheer numbers will demand more than the earth can possibly supply.
Some say that number has already been surpassed.
Ecological Overshoot
For most of human history, there is no doubt we were consuming resources at a rate far lower than what the planet was able to regenerate.
Unfortunately, we have crossed a critical threshold. The demand we are now placing on our planet’s resources appears to have begun to outpace the rate at which nature can replenish them.
The gap between human demand and supply is known as ecological overshoot. To better understand the concept think of your bank account – you have $5000.00 paying monthly interest. Month after month you take the interest plus $100. That $100 is your financial, or for our purposes, your ecological overshoot and its withdrawal are obviously unsustainable.
Humans are currently withdrawing more natural resources than our Earth bank is able to provide on a sustainable basis. How much more? At today’s rate of withdrawal, we need just over another half earth. We’re on track to require the resources of two planets by 2050.
If today, everyone on earth were to start consuming the same amount of natural resources as the average Australian we’d need 5.4 planets, an ecological overshoot of 4.4 planets.
Earth Overshoot Day
According to the Global Footprint Network (GFN) August 8th was Earth Overshoot Day 2016 – the day when humanity exhausts our ecological budget, the day when our consumption exceeded the environment’s renewal capacity for the entire year.
The rest of the year we’re in ecological overshoot and we currently use the renewable resources of 1.6 Earths.
The GFN predicts that by 2030, Earth Overshoot Day will be in June – meaning it will take two entire Earths to sustain our species’ consumption.
Loss of species
Every two years, Global Footprint Network, WWF, and the Zoological Society of London publish the Living Planet Report. The Living Planet Report 2016 (October) is an eye opener:
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- The Global Living Planet Index shows a decline of 58% between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 14,152 populations of 3,706 species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
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- The terrestrial LPI shows a decline of 38% 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 4,658 populations of 1,678 terrestrial species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012
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- The tropical forest species LPI shows a decline of 41 per cent 1970 and 2009 Trend in population abundance for 369 populations of 220 tropical forest species (84 mammals, 110 birds, 10 amphibians and 16 reptiles) monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2009.
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- The grassland species LPI shows a decline of 18 per cent between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 372 populations of 126 grassland species (55 mammals, 58 birds, and 13 reptiles) monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
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- The freshwater LPI shows a decline of 81 per cent 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 3,324 populations of 881 freshwater species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
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- The wetland-dependent species LPI shows a decline of 39 per cent between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 706 inland wetlands populations of 308 freshwater species (4 mammals, 48 birds, 224 fish, 4 amphibians and 28 reptiles) monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
- The marine LPI shows a decline of 36 percent between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 6,170 populations of 1,353 marine species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
The Earth has gone through five major extinction events – from the Ordovician-Silurian (350 million years ago) to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (65 million years ago), in each event 70-90% of all species died.
The Anthropocene, or the age of the humans, is considered by scientists to be a 6th extinction event. That’s real bad news long before even 50% extinction – loss of species means loss of pollinators – which is a real problem since so many varieties, and so much of our food crops rely on insects (ie. bees) to pollinate.
The revolution wasn’t really green
The modern agricultural complex spawned by the Green Revolution may have allowed us to grow more food, but dependence on this high-cost industrial input type of system extracts an extreme toll:
- Agricultural output did increase as a result of the Green Revolution, but the energy input to produce a crop increased faster – the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased. This is because High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of seeds only outperform traditional varieties when adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers are used
- Green Revolution agriculture produces monocultures of cereal grains. This type of agriculture relies on the extensive use of pesticides because monoculture systems – with their lack of genetic variation – are particularly sensitive to bug infestations
- The transition from traditional agriculture to GR agricultural meant farmers became dependent on industrial inputs – not made on the farm inputs. Farmers faced severely increased costs because they now had to purchase such items as farming machinery, fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation equipment and seeds
- The increased level of mechanization on larger farms removed a large source of employment from the rural economy. New machinery – mass produced gas tractors, large self-propelled combines and mechanical cotton pickers – all combined to sharply reduce labor requirements
- Less people were affected by hunger and died from starvation – but many more are affected by malnutrition such as iron or Vitamin A deficiencies. Green Revolution grains do not have the same nutritional values as traditional varieties. The switch from heavily rotated multiple crops to mono-cropping or dual cropping reduces total soil fertility and the nutritional value of our food
- The Green Revolution reduced agricultural biodiversity by relying on just a few varieties of each crop. The food supply could be susceptible to pathogens that cannot be controlled by agrochemicals
- Many valuable genetic traits, bred into traditional varieties over thousands of years, are now lost
- Wild plant and animal biodiversity was hurt because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid to farm
- The 20/80 phenomenon – the rapid increase in farm size and the concentration of production among large producers means 20% of producers generate 80% of the agricultural output
- As a result of modern irrigation practices, aquifers in places like India (once Borlaug’s greatest triumph) and the US midwest have become depleted. There are two types of aquifers: replenishable, most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable – depletion means the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge. For fossil or nonreplenishable aquifers – like the U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer – depletion brings pumping to an end. In the more arid regions like the southwestern United States or the MiddleEast, the loss of irrigation water could mean the end of agriculture in these areas
- Green Revolution techniques rely heavily on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of these are developed from fossil fuels which makes today’s agriculture regime much more reliant on petroleum products
- Farming methods that depend heavily on chemical fertilizers do not maintain the soil’s natural fertility and because pesticides generate resistant pests, farmers need ever more fertilizers and pesticides just to achieve the same results
- The increased amount of food production and foods low price led to overpopulation worldwide
I said earlier we currently use the renewable resources of 1.6 planets and that by 2030 we’ll use the renewable resources of two planets. We do that by agricultural inputs – the massive use of fertilizers, diesel, insecticides, pesticides, fresh water for irrigation etc.
Has anyone thought about the further effects on our environment of ramping up fertilizer, pesticide, insecticide and herbicide applications even further?
How about increasing use of pollution emitting fossil fuels and fresh water for irrigation to enable big agra to feed 2.2 billion more of us?
Have you thought about the effects of the existing billions of people (who don’t live even close to a western lifestyle) all wanting to live, or at least consume, like an American or Australian does? What happens when urbanization increases all the newly minted urbanites living standards and all those new consumers start to climb the protein ladder alongside the future 2.2 billion coming to the table?
It’s obvious the world needs a new farm – one the size of South Africa.
Unfortunately, the UN also says that by 2030 an area twice the size of South Africa will become unproductive due to desertification, land degradation, and drought.
Desertification
Desertification is a phenomenon that ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our time. Unfortunately, most people haven’t heard of it or simply don’t understand it. Desertification doesn’t refer to the advance of deserts which can and do expand naturally.
Desertification is a different process where land in arid or semi-dry areas becomes degraded – the soil loses its productivity and the cover vegetation disappears or is degraded to the point where wind and water erosion can carry away the topsoil leaving behind a highly infertile mix of dust and sand.
Desertification and land degradation is a global issue with desertification already affecting one quarter of the total land surface of the globe today
Today the pace of arable land degradation is estimated at 30 to 35 times the historical rate. Desertification is degrading more than 12m hectares of arable land every year – the equivalent of losing the total arable area of France every 18 months.
The issue of desertification is not new, it has constantly played a significant role in human history, even contributing to the collapse of the world’s earliest known empire, the Akkadians of Mesopotamia.
Climate change can accelerate and intensify the degradation process.
Climate Change
When Norman Borlang made his estimate of our planet’s human carrying capacity Climate Change was not the huge driver behind his modeling as it would have to be today.
According to science the world is going to continue to get warmer, polar ice caps will melt, so will the Greenland ice sheet and most glaciers. More sunlight will be absorbed by the Earth’s oceans, causing increased evaporation. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and amplifies twofold the effects of other greenhouse gasses. With Earth’s ice gone there will be significantly less sunlight reflected back into space, vast expanses of Arctic tundra will thaw releasing unbelievable amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than CO2.
The polar jet stream has already been altered, wide swinging north-south deviations (meanders) have become the norm – deviating far from its normal path and meandering north into Canada, the jet stream brings warm air while dipping far south over Europe, the polar jet stream brings record cold and snow.
Ocean currents will be altered further impacting our climate and sea levels will rise – coastlines will be flooded forcing mass migrations inland. Freshwater aquifers will suffer from saltwater intrusion, once habitable zones will become uninhabitable.
Because of increased average global temperatures, the tropical rain belt will have widened considerably and the subtropical dry zones will have pushed pole-ward, crawling deep into regions such as the American Southwest and southern Australia, which will be increasingly susceptible to prolonged and intense droughts.
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that climate change will amplify extreme heat, heavy precipitation, and the highest wind speeds of tropical storms. Extreme weather events are going to happen with increasing frequency, the climate for the area you live in is, if it hasn’t started already, going to change. We are all watching and experiencing these events and changes in real time because changes that use to take tens and tens of thousands of years are now happening in decades.
Conclusion
We humans have been changing the world around us for tens of thousands of years. It’s pretty much what we do, we shape and we change the existing environment through design and then indifference to the results of our actions. One of the most basic, fundamental problems (other than the rapid depletion of our fresh water resources) we’ve created for ourselves is the impact of human activities on the land we need to cultivate for our very survival.
Our exploding population, our accelerating demand for the world’s treasures (it’s natural resources) our ‘who cares’ attitude towards pollution and habitat destruction are all increasing what were once tolerable pressures towards, and sometimes already beyond, the breaking point in ecosystems all over the world.
Are Norman and Ester right? Does population growth march lockstep into the future with technological advances keeping food production on the increase?
Were they correct in their Malthusian pessimism?
I don’t think so, but they might have been thinking about feeding you a diet of algae, jellyfish, and tofu. Bon appetite.
Are food, fresh water and climate change on your radar screen?
If not, maybe they should be.
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Mish Comments
The comments and concerns of Rick Mills are well thought out and well presented.
In regards to Mills’ post I do not know what will happen, and since he ends with a slew of questions, he doesn’t pretend to either.
That said, Mills asks the right questions thereby providing ample room for discussion.
- The Toronto Housing Market Is About To Collapse By This Measure
With the collapse of Home Capital Group focusing the world's attention on the Canadian real estate market, nowhere is the subprime debt time bomb more likely to go off than Toronto, which as we recently noted "has gone nuts."
Even Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz (who declined to comment on questions about Home Capital Group and whether he’s worried about contagion), noted that Toronto is out control tonight while answering questions following a speech in Mexico City…
"pretty sure recent gains in Toronto home prices were not sustainable and that the city’s housing market had elements of speculation"
"Financial stability is part of the Bank of Canada’s monetary policy decision making, but the central bank’s primary mission is inflation targeting,… it would be odd to use interest rates to target home prices in just one city."
Perhaps Mr. Poloz… But, as we noted previously, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this will end in tears. Even the big Canadian banks are fretting. “Let’s drop the pretense. The Toronto housing market and the many cities surrounding it are in a housing bubble,” Bank of Montreal Chief Economist Doug Porter warned clients. But the bubble’s deflation would push the city into a fiscal and financial sinkhole
Jason Mercer, TREB’s Director of Market Analysis, explained the basic supply and demand problem:
“Annual rates of price growth continued to accelerate in March as growth in sales outstripped growth in listings,” he said.
“A substantial period of months in which listings growth is greater than sales growth will be required to bring the GTA housing market back into balance.”
And that is exactly what Capital Economics is pointing out is occurring – in a very accelerated manner… as listings flood the market and an extreme lack of affordability means homes remains unattainable to all but the oligarchs seeking safe-haven for their 'hard'-hidden gains, prices will have to adjust rather rapidly.
Additionall, Mercer told policy makers to tread carefully: “As policy makers seek to achieve this balance, it is important that an evidence-based approach is followed,” he said. This is a gravy train, and it must be allowed to speed on until the last cent has been extracted.
What we don’t know yet is when it will end in tears, and whose tears it will end with. But we already know: When it does end in tears, real estate organizations will first be denying it, and then they’ll be clamoring for a bailout of their stakeholders – so it will end in the tears of others.
- "Chicago Is A War Zone": Police Suicide Rate Surges To 60% Above The National Average
During his early days on the force, 30-year-old, rookie Chicago police officer, Scott Tracz, was described by colleagues as an “upbeat” cop who had always dreamed of becoming a police officer to help people in his city. That is, until he sat in a black sports car outside his girlfriend’s suburban house late last year, put his gun to his head and took his own life. Per Reuters:
Tracz had long dreamed of becoming a police officer to help others. But working in the violence-stricken Chicago Lawn district, he came face to face with the city’s violent crime. The area accounted for 58 of the city’s more than 760 murders last year, as well as 228 shootings.
“He would say, ‘You can never imagine what the human race is capable of doing,’ then he would just put his head down,” said his cousin Maciaszek, 46.
Unfortunately, stories just like the one of Scott Tracz are becoming all too common on the Chicago police force as officers deal with the psychological side effects of having to go to work every single day in Chicago’s “war zone.”
“Chicago is a war zone,” said Alexa James, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Chicago. “They (officers) are seeing the worst day of everybody’s life every day.”
“Suicide is killing officers, alcohol is killing officers, at a far greater rate than ambushes, but there is not the same sense of urgency around this issue,” said Christy Lopez, a former Justice Department official who led the Chicago federal probe.
Chicago police’s suicide rate was 29.4 per 100,000 department members between 2013 and 2015, the report said, citing police union figures. The department disagreed in the report, putting the rate at 22.7 suicides per 100,000 members. Both estimates were higher than the national average of 18.1 law enforcement suicides per 100,000.
As we’ve noted many times in the past, Chicago’s homicide rate in 2016 soared to levels not seen since the mid-90s when gang wars plagued the streets of cities all around the nation (charts via HeyJackAss!).
And, things aren’t getting any better so far in 2017…
…particularly in the city’s South and West side neighborhoods.
To add insult to injury, because of Chicago’s onerous gun laws that permanently prohibit anyone who has been involuntarily committed for in-patient mental health treatment from carrying a gun, a requirement for cops, the folks working for the Chicago PD generally refuse mental health services out of fear of losing their job.
Some officers believe that seeking counseling will result in the loss of their Firearm Owner Identification Card, a requirement to carry a firearm under state law, according to current and former officers, as well as health officials. That view is mistaken, say Justice Department officials.
Still, “If someone thinks I have talked to EAP they think I’m unstable, so I’m not going to call,” said one veteran officer, who asked not to be identified.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in February the department’s past approach to mental health was wrong. In a report issued in March, the department said it would review mental wellness support services.
“Law enforcement historically has been seen as a very macho profession,” Johnson said at a public forum about police reform. “To say you needed help was seen as a sign of weakness and we were wrong for looking at it that way, we were simply wrong.”
But hey, at least the Obama administration sought to help Chicago Police officers by dropping a DOJ study, one week prior to departing the White House, effectively labeling their department as nothing more than a bunch of racist, hate-mongering bullies who routinely resort to the use of “deadly force” in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.
- ALERT: Euro impending collapse, but don't worry – FX is simple
Forex is the most simple market in the world. As we explain in our book Splitting Pennies – Forex is the underpinning of the world’s financial system. Although it is also the least understood market, there’s nothing ‘sophistocated’ about FX. Take a dollar, exchange it for a euro. The rate changes – exchange it back. Simple! Trading money.
There is no ‘2 day settlement’ in Forex, a custodian, there’s no Reg D, no Reg NMS – there’s no HFT front running your orders, there’s no ‘order types’ – there’s no exchange rules (because there’s no exchange). Actually, when you strip away the complexities of most markets like securities, bonds, real estate, commodities, FX is many times over the most simple market.
Understandably, the securities market is the most widely promoted to investors because of the potential for making high returns from participating in corporate ownership (and thus ownership of profits). But securities are a derivative. Investors don’t really own the companies – they own the shares. And actually to be technical, they don’t own the shares too – they are controlled by a huge custodian DTCC. The securities, bond, and futures markets are the core of modern capitalism. But they aren’t a necessity, they are an abstration and thus – have complex rules. Or to say differently – the banking system needs the real economy – the real economy doesn’t need the banking system.
How do these abstract markets drive inflation? Here’s how. QE doesn’t directly go into the economy. However, by keeping interest rates low, both in real terms and buy the Fed’s various asset purchase programs – it means money has never been cheaper. With cheap money, it’s easy for i-banks to borrow at zero or near zero rates, invest in any index at 2x or 4x leverage and get their 20% – 40% per year with virtually no risk (that is, no seen risk – there is huge tail risk that one day the market will collapse, which it will for sure, like the big bubble that it is.)
The ‘stock markets’ have become so intertwined with the real economy, they have made themselves a necessity. Like a virus that has taken over a host, now it would be practically impossible to kill the market without affecting the overall economy. All of this has become so complicated, with so many involved parties – it has become a giant spider web.
On the topic of the Fed and their direct stock market alleged manipulation, consider the following. The Fed is owned by the member banks. The Fed gives it’s QE to the member banks, almost all of which are now publicly traded companies. Here’s where the paper trail begins for the ‘conspiracy crowd’ about the Fed being owned by nefarious 13 families: Public disclosure rules mean that anyone can lookup what’s going on at Bank of America (BAC). Hiding significant information at public companies is very difficult, and becoming more and more difficult with the digitization of records, communications, and basically all aspects of business, which by the way is all ‘doubled’ and recorded on a network level by ATT (T) another public company – and stored in an NSA database. America Inc. is technically a corporation and the states such as South Carolina are more like countries (hence the name ‘states’) – although you can’t buy and sell shares of America Inc. you sort of can, it’s called immigration – citizens of USA are sort of like shareholders. And there’s a short side too, record numbers of US Citizens are giving up their citizenship. So, does the Fed manipulate the stock market? It’s not a fair question, because Fed ownership and operations are completely intertwined with the stock market. During the time when the Fed was created, America was just passing the wildcat banking era, where there were thousands of private banks. Do not confuse ‘private banking’ with a ‘privately owned bank’ – private banking is discreet services for rich people who may want to hide their assets or not let others know how rich they are. Privately owned banks are nearly non-existant in the USA today, for a number of reasons – mostly caused by generational wealth transfer and generally a trend towards the institutionalization of assets. What does that mean? It means that 100 years ago, things were in YOUR name, if you were JP Morgan or Andrew Carnegie. Today, it’s all in tax havens, the Carnegie foundation, trust funds, and almost nothing is in YOUR name. That includes banks, which are mostly publicly traded and thus, publicly owned. The individual has become obsolete.
So all these tendencies, make the market so complicated it’s even confusing to describe.
All this drama created by Nixon is really in the eye of the beholder – this idea of ‘economic collapse’ is a fantasy promulgated by religious types in armaggedon style packaging, as if the Earth will explode and burn in a big singularity event. The reality is that ‘economic collapse’ is happening every day, simply that only some of us notice it.
Forex simply guages the tides as they ebb and flow, EUR/USD rate changes, but not really that much. Brexit gave us a 9% move which is huge for FX but not really statistically significant in the grand scheme of things.
Take a look at EUR/GBP for last 10 years:
This is a monthly chart. You can see why FX is not interesting for the general public. But it takes a lot less time to understand FX than the stock markets. FX is simple.
As we head into a potential complete meltdown of the Euro, and tomorrow’s NFP, we’re heading into an event that may change the face of FX forever.
Dear Trader,
With the upcoming second round of the French Presidential Election this
weekend, we require that your account balance plus any open profit or loss
covers at least 3% of the total notional exposure across all EUR crosses and
EUR Equity Index CFDs by 4pm (UK time) Friday, 5th May 2017. Where
the cover is lower than 3%, we may reduce your positions to increase the
cover on your account before the market close.Exit polls will be released prior to the market open on Sunday, 7th
May 2017 and there is increased risk of wide spreads and large price gaps on
the market open and through the night. Please ensure you are comfortable with
the exposure on your open positions leading into the market close on Friday,
5th May 2017.If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact Client Services by
calling +44 20 3192 XXXX or emailing XXXXXX.FX and CFDs are leveraged products that can result in losses exceeding your
deposit. They are not suitable for everyone so please ensure you fully
understand the risks involved.Kind regards
LMAX Exchange
Client Services Team - Italian Prime Minister Secretly Meets With George Soros In Rome Amid Migrant Transport Scandal
Submitted by Gefira
In the past few weeks, the transport of migrants from the African shores has become a case of national importance for Italy, and is now under investigation from the prosecutor of Catania, who recently testified to the Defence Committee of the Italian Senate and will meet soon with the Superior Council of the Magistrates.
Harsh criticism of the activities of the NGOs has come from opposition parties Forza Italia, Lega Nord and even Movimento 5 Stelle, normally more neutral on immigration issues, while Prime Minister Gentiloni has opted to let the judicial system run its course.
Yet, a new element will further exacerbate the situation; George Soros, a billionaire who is incredibly active politically on both sides of the Atlantic, met in secrecy with Prime Minister Gentiloni, less than a week after the latter had commented on the NGOs activities. The meeting was not listed on the website of the Italian government as official and its timing is at the very least suspicious.
George Soros had penned multiple arguments in favour of immigration, suggesting that Europe should welcome “at least one million refugees a year” and that the EU should create EU-bonds to support attendant expenses.
He’s no stranger to NGOs either: one of them, MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), facing the harshest criticism , received half a million dollars from Avaaz, another NGO, co-founded by MoveOn, an online community, receiving donations from none other than George Soros himself.
Save The Children, another NGO involved in the Mediterranean migrant shipping, lists among its partners Open Society Foundation, George Soros’s primary NGO. Finally, even, Médicins Sans Frontiéres is listed among the partners of Open Society and the Soros network.
Soros had already been named by Lega Nord leader Salvini as the secret financier behind the NGOs and his well-timed arrival is bound to create further controversy.
No information has been leaked so far about the content of the meeting between Soros and Gentiloni.Is the cat out of the bag?
- Macron Document Leaker Releases New Images, Promises More Information
The anonymous source of documents alleging Emmanuel Macron’s involvement with an operating agreement for a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the Caribbean island of Nevis returned to release several high quality images of the purported documents along with promises to identify account locations and the extent of the assets Macron is supposedly hiding from regulatory authorities.
The images, released anonymously less than an hour ago on online messageboard 4chan, are higher resolutions of alleged documents leaked yesterday which claimed to show that Emmanuel Macron had entered into an operating agreement for a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the Caribbean island of Nevis, and that the company may have had a business relationship with a bank which has been previously involved in tax evasion cases in the Cayman Islands. The anonymously released PDF files purported to show corporate records of a company named La Providence LLC apparently created by Mr. Macron in Nevis, a noted offshore tax haven.
The new images are of the second document, a fax between La Providence Ltd. and First Caribbean International Bank, as well as the first page and signature from the purported operating agreement.
- Screenshot of image showing the alleged Macron signature on the operating agreement
The leaker revealed that Macron’s assets were not located in the Bahamas as was been reported by some media outlets, but in the Cayman Islands, another known hotspot for tax evasion. They further stated that they were taking measures to conceal their identity because they are located in the European Union and did not wish to be arrested. The leaker also explained that they were one of a small group of individuals working online with a source in the Cayman Islands to expose the leaked information. They claimed that they were in possession of SWIFTNet logs dating back for several months, and would soon not only know where Mr. Macron’s alleged accounts are located but also the “extent of the money he is hiding from [France’s] government.”
Macron has strenuously denied the authenticity of the leaks, telling France Inter radio “I have never had accounts in any tax havens whatsoever, firstly because it is not in my nature and secondly because I have always wanted to return to the public domain.” His team has further alleged that the news was being disseminated by an “obviously Russian” network, without providing any proof of this contention. French prosecutors described the leak as “a suspected attempt to tar presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron” and have opened a probe into the origin of the leaks after Mr. Macron filed a complaint.
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