- US Rotates To Ukraine As Location To Start Conflict With Russia
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The United States Government is now treating Ukraine as if it were a NATO member, and on September 27th donated to Ukraine two warships for use against Russia. This is the latest indication that the US is switching to Ukraine as the locale to start World War III, and from which the nuclear war is to be sparked against Russia, which borders Ukraine.
Here is why Syria is no longer the US alliance’s preferred choice as a place to start WW III:
On September 4th, US President Donald Trump publicly threatened Syria, Iran and Russia that if they exterminated the jihadists in Syria’s only remaining jihadist-controlled province, Idlib, then the US might launch a full-scale invasion against Syria, Iran and Russia in Syria. Either the US or Russia would then quickly escalate to nuclear war so as not to lose in Syria — that would be the conventional-war start to World War III.
The leaders of Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Syria (Putin, Rouhani, Erdogan, and Assad), agreed in two meetings, one on September 7th and the other on September 17th, to (as I had recommended on September 10th) transfer control of Syria’s only remaining jihadist-controlled province, Idlib, to NATO-member Turkey. This action effectively prevents the US alliance from going to war against Russia if Russia’s alliance (which includes Syria) obliterates all the jihadist groups in the Al-Qaeda-led Syrian province Idlib. For the US to war against Russia there would also be war against fellow-NATO-member Turkey — out of the question.
The US has been using Al Qaeda in Syria to train and lead the jihadist groups which have been trying to overthrow Syria’s Government and to replace it with a government that has been selected by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia. Ever since 1949 the US Government has been trying to do this (to place the Saud family in charge of Syria). That plan is now being placed on-hold if not blocked altogether, because of the Russia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, agreement. As I reported on September 25th, “Turkey Now Controls Syria’s Jihadists”. The US would no longer be able to save them, but Turkey would, if Erdogan wants to. “Turkey is thus now balanced on a knife’s edge, between the US and its allies (representing the Saud family) on the one side, versus Russia and its allies (representing the anti-Saud alliance) on the other.”
During the same period in which the US Government was setting Syria up as the place to start WW III, it was also setting up Ukraine as an alternative possibility to do that. US President Obama, in a very bloody February 2014 coup which he had started planning by no later than 2011, overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President, and replaced him by a rabidly anti-Russian racist-fascist regime whose Ukrainian tradition went back to ideologically nazi Ukrainian organizations that had supported Hitler during World War II. Though communism is gone from Russia ever since 1991, the US aristocracy never ended its goal of conquering Russia; the Cold War was secretly continued on the US-NATO side. Ukraine’s nazis (meaning its racist-fascists) are now the US and UK aristocracies’ chief hope to achieve this ambition of a US-and-allied global conquest. Here are the recent steps toward WW III regarding the US alliance’s new (since 2014) prize, Ukraine:
On September 28th, John Siciliano at the Washington Examiner bannered “Ryan Zinke: Naval blockade is an option for dealing with Russia” and he reported that Trump’s Interior Secretary Zinke had said “There is the military option, which I would rather not. And there is the economic option. … The economic option on Iran and Russia is, more or less, leveraging and replacing fuels.” He was saying that in order for the US to get its and its allies’ (mainly the Sauds’) oil and gas into Europe replacing some of Russia’s dominant market-share in that — the world’s largest energy-consuming — market (and also shrink Iran’s market-share there), a military blockade against Russia and Iran would be an option. Currently, most of Russia’s oil and gas into Europe goes via pipelines through Ukraine, which the US already controls. Siciliano’s news-break received a follow-up on September 30th from Zero Hedge.
On October 1st, George Eliason, the great investigative journalist who happens to live in Donbass, the southeastern part of Ukraine that broke off from Ukraine when Obama’s coup overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian President who had received over 90% of the votes in Donbass, reported at The Saker’s site, that Ukraine’s war against Donbass was now returning in full force. Headlining “War Crimes in LNR and DNR [Donbass] —The Unannounced War”, he opened:
On September 28th, Lugansk Peoples Republic (LNR)Deputy Foreign Minister Anna Soroka and Andrey Chernov gave a presentation unveiling a photo album entitled Unannounced war. This collection of 150 images details the war crimes by the Ukrainian government during the war from 2014-2018.
Over the last 4 years, many journalists including myself reported on the war crimes committed by Ukrainian punisher battalions and sometimes the Ukrainian army. These war crimes are privately funded by Ukrainian Diaspora groups led primarily by US and Canadian citizens.
The Ukrainian punisher battalions and Ukrainian volunteer battalions take pride in the fact there is no need to hide any of Ukraine’s crimes from the West’s prying eyes.
Even now, when there is supposed to be a ceasefire so the children can go to school, Kiev is shelling cities and towns across Donbass. On September 29th, in just 24 hours Ukrainian army units shelled DNR (Donetsk Peoples Republic) over 300 times violating the ceasefire.
The US Government is trying to bully Russia and its allies, and now is overtly threatening to go to a naval blockade against Russia. Those two warships that the US just donated to Ukraine could be helpful in such a blockade. Alternatively, Ukraine’s re-invasion of Donbass might become Trump’s opportunity to ‘aid a NATO ally’ and precipitate WW III from a conventional war in Donbass. Either way would likely produce from Russia a nuclear blitz-attack to eliminate as many of America’s retaliatory weapons as possible, so as to beat the US to the punch. In military terms, the side that suffers the less damage ‘wins’, even if it’s a nuclear war that destroys the planet. The side that would strike first in a nuclear war would almost certainly suffer the less damage, because most of the opponent’s retaliatory weaponry would be destroyed in that attack. Trump is playing nuclear ‘chicken’ against Putin. He is surely trying Putin’s patience.
If the US regime uses any of these entry-points to a conventional war, Russia would simply be waiting for the US to nuclear blitz-attack Russia, which the US regime has long been intending to do. Regardless which side goes nuclear first, the blockade and/or re-invasion of Donbass (repeating there such things as this and this) will have started WWIII. And, clearly, any survivors would likely view the US in the way that most of today’s world views the fascist powers in WWII: as having been the aggressors. Consequently, if the American people cannot first overthrow the US regime and establish an authentic democracy here, then WWIII seems likely to result, which would be an outcome far worse, for the entire world, than an overthrow of the government that the entire world considers to be by far the most dangerous on Earth.
- US Home Prices Hit Peak Unaffordability As Prospective Buyers Better Off Renting
With unaffordability reaching levels not seen in decades across some of the most expensive urban markets in the US, a housing-market rout that began in the high-end of markets like New York City and San Francisco is beginning to spread. And as home sales continued to struggle in August, a phenomenon that realtors have blamed on a dearth of properties for sale, those who are choosing to sell might soon see a chasm open up between bids and asks – that is, if they haven’t already.
While home unaffordability is most egregious in urban markets, cities don’t have a monopoly on unaffordability. According to a report by ATTOM, which keeps the most comprehensive database of home prices in the US, of the 440 US counties analyzed in the report, roughly 80% of them had an unaffordability index below 100, the highest rate in ten years. Any reading below 100 is considered unaffordable, by ATTOM’s standards. Based on their analysis, one-third of Americans (roughly 220 million people) now live in counties where buying a median-priced home is considered unaffordable. And in 69 US counties, qualifying for a mortgage would require at least $100,000 in annual income (Assuming a 3% down payment and a maximum front-end debt-to-income ratio of 28%). As one might expect, prohibitively high home prices are inspiring some Americans to relocate to areas where the cost of living is lower. US Census data revealed that two-thirds of those highest-priced markets experienced negative net migration, while more than three-quarters of markets where people earning less than $100,000 a year can qualify for a mortgage experienced net positive migration.
ATTOM illustrated this correlation between home affordability and net migration in the chart below:
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Rising home prices have played a big part in driving home unaffordability, but they’re not the whole story. Stagnant wages are also an important factor. The median nationwide home price of $250,000 in Q3 2018 climbed 6% from a year earlier, which is nearly twice the 3% growth in wages during that time. Looking back over a longer period, median home prices have increased 76% since bottoming out in Q1 2012, while average weekly wages have increased 17% over the same period.
Instead of fighting to overpay for existing inventory, one study showed that, for now at least, most Americans would be better off renting than buying a residential property. According to the latest national index produced by Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University faculty, renting and reinvesting will “outperform owning and building equity in terms of wealth creation.”
However, with the average national rent at an all-time high, American consumers are increasingly finding that there are no good options in the modern housing market. Which could be one reason why millennials, despite having more college degrees than any preceding generation, are increasingly choosing to rent instead of buying, even after they get married and start a family.
- US Citizens Have Even Less Freedom Thanks To Alleged Russian Election Meddling
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
The United States’ trek towards complete Communism is well on its way. Thanks to the alleged Russian election meddling, citizens living in what hasn’t been the land of the free in over a century have even fewer freedoms than they did a mere two years ago according to a report.
According to an independent watchdog that measures political rights and democratic institutions around the world, Americans now have less freedom since electing Donald Trump and because of the alleged Russian election interference, reported Business Insider.
“The United States’ political rights rating declined … due to growing evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, violations of basic ethical standards by the new administration, and a reduction in government transparency,” according to Freedom House. Overall, the US’s freedom rating dropped from 89 to 86 because its political rights dropped from 36 to 33, according to the annual Freedom House report. The “land of the free” only the 58th freest country in the world, making it a joke to even pretend we are free.
The report stated that the current administration’s defiance of ethical standards and Robert Mueller’s Russian election meddling investigation heating up are the specific reasons American citizens have become less free.
In terms of defying ethical standards, Freedom House specifically mentioned Trump refusing to release his tax returns, “promoting his private business empire” in office, and “naming his daughter and son-in-law as presidential advisers.”
As for making major policy decisions with little consultation or transparency, Freedom House mentioned Trump’s January 2017 executive order banning seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the US, and his July 2017 executive order banning transgender people from the military. –Business Insider
Read Freedom House’s 2018 Freedom in the World report here, and its explainer of the US’s freedom here.
This is not to say that we do or do not agree with how Freedom House determines the level of freedom, because taxation (government theft and the most obvious violation of basic human civil rights) rates were obviously not a factor in their rankings. Nor were the number of government services the public is forced to fund at gunpoint whether they use them or not taken into account. It appears they judge only on a few very social layers. But read the reports and see for yourself.
- Former Fed Governor Warns Of "Several Decade Cold War" With China
Former Fed governor Kevin Warsh warned on Thursday that the US-China relationship is “probably as poor as” it has ever been since former President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger developed strategic relations between both countries in the early 1970s.
“We’re at the risk of a real cold war” between the world’s two largest economies, said Warsh who had been on President Trump’s list for Fed chairman before Jerome Powell was chosen. “The last 30 years we’ve been living and breathing globalization as if it’s an inevitable force,” but now, it seems the six-decade-long bubble has finally popped.
Bank of Americas says trade wars and deteriorating relations with China have been some of the reasons for the decline in globalism. Especially, US tariff duties collected, % of total imports have surged under the Trump administration.
“Protectionism has cross-party support in the US, and nationalist parties continue to gain in Europe. Further action on China ($200bn), autos ($350bn), NAFTA ($690bn) could raise US tariff revenue as % total imports to levels not seen since 1946,” said BofA.
During the CNBC interview, Wash used the term “cold war” to describe the economic standoff, not the decades-long “mutually assured destruction” nuclear stalemate with Russia.
“We are probably on the precipice of a brand new relationship with the Chinese,” Wash told CNBC.
He asked: “Could we be at the beginning of a 10- or 20-year cold war?” If so, an economic cold war between the countries could have major implications for the global economy like causing a global growth scare and repricing risk assets.
What is next?
The return of a bipolar world: “Five or 10 years from now we might see two poles: a Chinese-centric world and an American-centric world. And the [other global] economies and countries will have to plug into one or both,” he said.
“Great power relationships are not about how many soybeans you’re going to buy [or how] many Boeing airplanes you’re going to buy. It’s about your core interests,” he added.
“I suspect that there will need to be between [Chinese President Xi Jinping] and President Trump a great summit, among great powers. And that requires two countries that want to have that discussion,” said Warsh, who was a Fed governor during and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
While Wash made no reference about a military “cold war” between the countries in the CNBC interview, it is likely that a continued breakdown in US-China relations will likely transform into a new arms race starting in the early 2020s.
“Trade war should be recognized for what it is…1st stage of a new arms race between the US & China to reach national superiority in technology over long-term via Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Electronic Vehicles, Robotics, and Cyber-Security.
China strategy to ensure that 40% of China’s mobile phone chips, 70% of industrial robots, 80% of renewable energy equipment are “Made in China” by 2025. China First strategy will be met head-on by an America First strategy. Note military spending by the US and China is forecast by the IMF to rise substantially in coming decades, to $4tn in China & $3tn in the US,” said Bank of America.
With the threat of a full-blown trade war in 2019, and relations between both economic superpowers to worsen. It is only a matter of time before a hot war develops.
- The Damage Done By The Kavanaugh Hearings
Authored by Alice Salles via The Mises Institute,
As Gallup reports that more Americans expressed support for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during the week he denied being guilty of sexual assault, it’s clear that whether accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is speaking the truth, the public might not be ready to accept the allegations without evidence. But if you were to rely solely on most news outlets , you would think Kavanaugh had been charged and convicted.
While the outspread concern over a Supreme Court nominee is warranted , mainly due to the power justices have over our lives, the conversation was never about how Kavanaugh saw the PATRIOT Act as “measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional,” despite the law’s mockery of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Democrats also never bothered to mention Kavanaugh once ruled that “the Government’s metadata collection program is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment” while sitting in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before the allegations of sexual assault, all they seemed to worry about was how Kavanaugh would rule on an abortion case, apparently frightened that states would have to pick up where they left off before Roe v. Wade. But ever since Ford entered the picture, offering a compelling story of assault but also one with gaps and no evidence , the focus is back on one thing and one thing only: We must believe all women, no matter what.
The #MeToo movement has long been co-opted by politicians and Americans who identify as Democrats in the President Donald Trump era. Perhaps because accusations of sexual assault boost ratings . If news outlets can link anything back to Trump, then they’re sitting on a goldmine.
But there’s also another unintended consequence to the movement, one that seemed clear from the get-go as the #MeToo hashtag went viral in Oct. 2017.
Then, America’s left-leaning influencers , politicians , and celebrities made it clear that believing all women was always the right thing to do, automatically abandoning due process and trashing any presumption of innocence in the name of fairness.
In this very public court of opinion, accusers were seen as infallible while the accused, when formerly charged, had already been convicted long before appearing before a court. But as libertarian writer and feminist Wendy McElroy wrote recently, the damage of #MeToo-style public “prosecution” lies in how it’s made us all ignore nature.
“‘Believe the accuser’ runs up against human nature,” McElroy wrote. “People are not only fallible, but they [are] also capable of bad behavior, such as lying.”
Imagine that! As if women could ever lie .
But perhaps, what’s even more damaging to the left’s own cause, if you consider they are genuinely concerned about women’s welfare, is how the “believe all women” theme in the Kavanaugh hearings could damage an entire generation of young women.
Coming of age in a world that teaches you ought to expect being protected and treated with respect no matter where you go might sound like the ideal scenario, but it doesn’t reflect real life.
While we live in a much safer world than our grandparents did, the reality is that the world remains a big place, filled with people of different backgrounds and sometimes, ulterior motives. Ignoring this reality is to ignore truth itself.
For poor and low-income women in urban areas, for instance, dealing with harassment and abuse is all too common . Knowing how to deal with these situations ends up being part of who they are .
But for middle- and upper middle-class girls, harassment is also a possibility. Understanding that there are risks and knowing how to avoid them will better prepare these girls so they may grow into stronger, more capable, and yes, more self-resilient women .
Needless to say, it’s heartbreaking that in the United States young women (and men) are in constant danger of being victims of sexual assault. Nevertheless, it is our duty — and right — to defend ourselves when necessary, and to act accordingly if the risk outweighs the benefits.
As professor and famed feminist author Camille Paglia once explained, feminism to her generation meant having the freedom “to risk rape.” Those women were not saying they wanted to be shielded and treated like precious porcelain dolls, quite the contrary — they were stating they were ready to fight back.
Not too long ago, after punk rocker Mia Zapata was violently raped and murdered in a dark Seattle alley, Grunge musicians of the time such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Heart came together to raise funds for a campaign called “ Home Alive ,” which organized self-defense classes for local women. Singer Joan Jett joined the movement, writing the song “ Go Home” and releasing a video depicting a woman successfully fighting her attacker.
But the spirit doesn’t live on with the younger generation, at least it doesn’t seem like it does as many today will often say that no, women should not have to defend themselves from attackers. This is particularly true among those who defend restrictions on firearm ownership, claiming that guns don’t deter sexual assault while real life cases prove otherwise .
Regardless, the reality is that as Kavanaugh is accused of having attacked Ford, the accuser is seldom pressed to provide more evidence while the Supreme Court nominee feels compelled to continuously prove his innocence. But while Ford’s account might as well be true, the reality is that we’re turning this charade into the main story, and we’re judging Kavanaugh on the basis of an unproven claim, not real policies he’s supported and that continue to impact all men and women in America.
To young girls witnessing the spectacle on TV, girls whose parents may say they have no doubt they know what happened in that room in 1982 and who are, perhaps, pro-gun control activists and even Hillary Clinton supporters — as strange as it may seem — the message couldn’t be clearer: The world owes you your safety.
As Paglia wrote in 1991 about then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and his accuser, Anita Hill, Hill made uncorroborated allegations that served Democrats with a very clear agenda: abortion rights.
While Ford’s and Hill’s stories are different in nature, it is as true today as it was then that Democrats are using allegations to push an agenda, choosing to talk about uncorroborated claims instead of the Supreme Court’s power over our lives. And that’s not a bug in the system, as both Democrats and Republicans will take any opportunity to have more control over the narrative. Still, this showdown has real-world consequences, as young people are largely influenced by what they see on social media. And you can’t go through one day online without seeing celebrities , politicians , and news personalities discussing the Kavanaugh allegations as facts.
- "F**king Historical" – Watch Banksy Painting Self-Destruct At Sotheby's Auction
A Banksy painting “self-destructed” Friday evening on the auction podium at Sotheby’s New Bond Street location in London after being sold for 1.04 million pounds.
The spray-painted canvas “Girl With Balloon” was subjected to furious bidding at the Contemporary Art Evening Sale with a winning bid by telephone, fetching more than three times its pre-sale estimate and a record price for the mysterious artist. Shortly after the auction was concluded, an alarm from within the painting sounded, with most of the artwork emerging from the bottom in strips. Hidden within the base of the frame was a shredder.
“We’ve just been Banksy’ed,” Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s European head of contemporary art, said at a press conference after the auction.
“We have not experienced this situation in the past . . . where a painting spontaneously shredded, upon achieving a [near-]record for the artist. We are busily figuring out what this means in an auction context,” he said.
Banksy, who remains one of the most mysterious artists of this era, began his career spray-painting buildings in England and has become a global figure. Some of his works include two policemen kissing, armed riot police with yellow smiley faces, and a chimpanzee with a sign displaying the words “Laugh now, but one day I’ll be in charge.”
A post on Banksy’s official Instagram page showed the moment when auction house officials and bidders were stunned when the artwork self-destructed. He titled the post “Going, going, gone…”
Social media immediately responded.
kimsingh, an Instagram user, said, “You have consistently shown the courage to thumb your nose at the commercialism of art. Bravo !!”
Another user asked, “Was it supposed to stop halfway or did it jam?”
evrthmover said, “Fucking historical.”
Banksy had made his feelings known about the commercial art world in a recent masterpiece titled “I Can’t Believe You Morons Actually Buy This Shit.”
- "Fess Up To Reality" – Former Google Exec Exposes Silicon Valley Hypocrisy In Scathing Essay
After overcoming the temptation to publish under a pseudonym, former Google PR executive Jessica Powell has finally dropped her long-awaited satirical novel/memoir “The Big Disruption” last week. In the highly anticipated book – and in an accompanying personal essay published on Medium – Powell offers what may be one of the most scathing critiques of Silicon Valley from a former executive at one of its biggest and most influential companies.
Some of her claims are nothing short of shocking – like when she admitted in her essay that she quit Google last August (she was the company’s top PR executive, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai) not to go back to school to study creative writing, as was reported at the time, but because she “got tired” defending the company’s unscupulous actions. In particular, she cited YouTube’s argument to UK lawmakers that it couldn’t censor all of the far-right and jihadist recruitment content posted on its platform because of the sheer volume of content – a claim that Powell said was an outright lie, per the Daily Mail.
Memorably, there were some instances where Google even paid some of the accounts that posted terrorist content.
Google has been widely criticised for allowing jihadists, far-Right extremists and other hate preachers to post content on its YouTube video platform. In some cases, it funnelled cash from advertisers to the extremists posting videos.
But the firm has repeatedly told MPs it cannot stop problem content because of the sheer volume of videos that are uploaded to YouTube.
Miss Powell was in charge of the company’s response to the criticism, reporting directly to Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai.
Her decision to quit the lucrative role in August last year surprised many in the industry. At the time, Miss Powell claimed she was leaving to go back to university to study creative writing.
However, in her essay, published for free on the Medium website, she admitted she needed to ‘take a break from the issues that I got tired of defending at parties’.
She said: ‘On the surface, things seemed really important and exciting. We were doing big things! Bringing the internet to the developing world! But also, on some level, it all felt a bit off, like when you go on vacation and find yourself wondering when it’s going to feel like the Instagram pics other people have posted.’
While Silicon Valley insiders probably think they’re among the most noble people on the planet as they fight to expand Internet access in the developing world and support other similarly “noble” causes, Powell argues that there’s a certain cognitive dissonance that arises from tech industry excuses about its failures to combat election hacking and its unwillingness to be transparent about how user data is monetized.
“This is an industry that takes itself far too seriously, and its own responsibility not seriously enough.”
[…]
“You can’t tell your advertisers that you can target users down to the tiniest pixel but then throw your hands up before the politicians and say your machines can’t figure out if bad actors are using your platform.”
“You can’t buy up a big bookstore and then a big diaper store and a big pet supply store and, finally, a big grocery store, national newspaper, and rocket ship and then act surprised when people start wondering if maybe you’re a bit too powerful.”
Powell urged Silicon Valley to “end the self-delusion” and “fess up to reality” or work toward holding itself to a higher ethical standard.
“I want Silicon Valley to end the self-delusion and either fess up to the reality we are creating, or live up to the vision we market to the world each day. Because if you’re going to tell people you’re their saviour, you better be ready to be held to a higher standard.”
Of course, no Silicon Valley tell-all would be complete without details of the sexual harassment that’s reportedly rampant in the valley. And Powell’s essay is no exception.
Should I start with the early stage companies? Like the time I was at a startup and the founder I was working for — a guy who owned a hundred shirts in the same color and quoted Steve Jobs on a daily basis — asked me whether we should hand out dildos as company swag or consider converting our social media platform into an anonymous sex club. (We even whiteboarded it.)
Or maybe I could start with the money — all the absurd valuations with seemingly little basis in reality. Or the time a partner at a VC “jokingly” offered up my female friend, his employee, as an enticement for a founder to work with his firm.
To be sure, Powell isn’t saying anything new. All of these criticisms of Silicon Valley have been lodged in the past – but mostly by outsiders. The fact that she was a senior executive working her tech – and that she walked away from the money because she became disillusioned – is almost as relevant as the details of her story.
- Think You're Prepared For The Next Crisis? Think Again
Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,
Even the best-laid preparations have failure points…
No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
~ Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
~ Mike Tyson
Scottish poet Robert Burns aptly penned the famous phrase: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.” (commonly adapted as “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”)
How right he was.
History has shown time and time again that the only 100% predictable outcome to any given strategy is that, when implemented, things will not go 100% according to plan.
The Titanic’s maiden voyage. Napolean’s invasion of Russia. The Soviet’s 1980 Olympic hockey dream team. The list of unexpected outcomes is legion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during WW2, went as far as to say: “In preparing for battle, I’ve always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”
This wisdom very much applies to anyone seeking safety from disaster. Whether preparing for a natural calamity, a financial market crash, an unexpected job loss, or the “long emergency” of resource depletion — you need to take prudent planful steps now, in advance of crisis; BUT you also need to be mentally prepared for some elements of your preparation to unexpectedly fail when you need them most.
Here are two recent events that drive that point home.
Lessons From Hurricane Florence
A family member of mine lives in Wilmington, NC, which received a direct hit last month from Hurricane Florence.
Being an avid “prepper” who has lived on the east coast all his life (i.e., well-experienced with the late summer/early autumn hurricane season), he was MUCH more geared up for this storm than his neighbors. He also had nearly a week’s advance notice to top off his preparations as the media tracked Florence’s trajectory following its formation off of the west coast of Africa.
But as ready as he thought he was, he still found he was vulnerable in places he hadn’t anticipated.
While he and his family made it through the storm all right in the end, he experienced numerous failures in his preps throughtout. Here are just a few:
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Climate-related corrosion — despite careful efforts to store his emergency gear responsibly, he discovered the humid North Carolina climate had ruined several pieces of equipment. The alkaline batteries used in the emergency radios had exploded, corroding the terminals and rendering the devices useless. Similarly, the wick controls on several kersosene lanterns had rusted to the point of inoperability. The lesson here? If you live in an area that experiences excessive conditions (heat/cold/humidity/mold/etc) for even part of the year, you must check your gear regularly to ensure it’s still functional.
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Incorrect assumptions — Several components did not work as expected when deployed. The “universal” gas line purchased in advance to connect his collection of camping stoves to a large propane tank simply didn’t fit. Similarly, his Gas Tapper siphon failed to work, which he was hoping could help neighbors refuel their generators by transferring gas from their cars. But in every case but one, it simply didn’t work. The takeway? If you haven’t tested a specific piece of gear in advance, under non-emergency conditions, assume it won’t work when you need it.
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Random fate — Sometimes, as Burns said, plans just go awry. In this case, a diesel truck had been configured to act as a generator and provide electricity to key appliances (freezer, fridge, etc) should the power go out for a prolonged period — which it did. But as random fate would have it, the starter motor failed. The truck sat there like a big useless brick during the blackout. Fortunately, there was another vehicle in the garage set up similarly that did work. The lesson? Always, always have backups in place for any resources that perform an essential function.
Lessons From The Nevada Desert
The 30+ Peak Prosperity members who spent last week at a defensive firearm training program in the Nevada desert received a similar ‘reality check’.
Most who participated already owned firearms and had invested previous hours at their hometown ranges honing their shooting skills. Or so they thought.
What they quickly realized is that shooting at a stationary paper target under controlled conditions is easy. But maintaining the same accuracy and precision under stress is hard.
Simply adding time-pressure makes shooting well exponentially harder. From a distance as short as 5 yards, hitting the target center-mass repeatedly is an easy task when untimed. But put on a 1.5-second time limit to get your shots off — which leaves little time for aiming and spikes your adrenaline levels — and suddenly the misses multiply.
And of course, using a handgun in an acutal kinetic altercation is orders of magnitude more stressful than what we experienced. Low lighting, a moving target who may be armed and/or actively attacking, endangered loved ones, the threat of being seriously injured/killed — these factors will undoubtedly handicap your proficiency to a MUCH greater extent.
We did one simulation drill ‘clearing’ a home, opening doors that may or may not have bad guys behind them. The added uncertainty and awkward ‘real life’ obstacles resulted in a lot of misses and accidentally-killed bystanders. Thank god it was just a simulation.
The hard-hitting insight learned during this experience is: If you haven’t stress-tested your gear and your skills under the same conditions you plan to rely on them in, you’re woefully underprepared. And to think different is dangerously deluding yourself.
For those of you with preparations in place — in case of a home invasion, or a fire, or a week without access to the grocery store, or a grid-down event, etc — have you actually done a ‘dry run’ to explore how smoothly/poorly your plans work in practice?
How Ready Are You, Really, For A Financial Crisis?
Here at PeakProsperity.com, we’ve been vocally warning about the high risk of another global financial crisis on par with (or worse than) that seen in 2008.
Quite honestly, we’ve been warning about this for a long while, as markets have powered higher. While that’s been very frustrating to endure, we see the market’s manic melt-up as further reason to worry — as the fall from today’s over-extended heights will be that much more painful.
And we may finally be seeing the onset of a correction. Wall Street’s ‘Fear Gauge’ is suddenly spiking, signalling that traders expect increased volatility along with falling prices:
Echoes of February Collapse Reappear in Friday Fear Gauge Inversion (Bloomberg)
October 5, 2018, 9:53 AM PDT
The scariest Halloween costume imaginable pales in comparison to a Friday inversion of the VIX futures curve.
A severe sell-off in technology stocks has pushed the front-month VIX futures contract to a premium relative to the second-month contract.
VIX futures are based off the Cboe Volatility Index, a measure of 30-day implied volatility for the S&P 500 Index that’s often called the “fear gauge.”
Typically, the curve is in contango — that is, upward sloping — because the outlook for U.S. equities is more uncertain over longer time periods than shorter ones. The historical pattern of realized volatility shows it’s prone to outsized spikes but generally trades in a modest range.
A curve that’s in backwardation — the opposite of contango — indicates traders are acutely concerned with the near-term outlook for equities. This structure also provides a tailwind to investors looking to go long volatility through exchange-traded products.
The same situation happened on a pair of inauspicious Fridays. The VIX futures curve inverted on Aug. 21, 2015 and Feb. 2, 2018.
Given the spasm of instability that has rocked the bond and stock markets over the past 48 hours, Chris Martenson just issued a warning to Peak Prosperity’s enrolled subscribers, explaining why the recent activity is so concerning.
Here’s just a small part of what he had to say:
Joining the 10-year in breaking its long-term downtrend line are the 30-year and 5-year bond yields:
Dialing in a little closer, we see that the 30-year bond yield has more recently carved out a pretty convincing “head and shoulders” pattern which indicates a strong likelihood of heading higher:
Here’s the 5-year bond yield chart. It also looks like a breakout:
What’s fascinating is that as the stock market has only recently started to wobble a bit, the main US Treasurys have been declining in earnest since mid-August:
To recap: what we’re seeing now is very consistent with the end of a major credit-liquidity cycle. Everything is being sold. Stocks and bonds.
There’s been no ‘Jell-O moving around the plate’ — which is the flight-to-safety effect where bonds do well on days stocks do poorly, and vice versa. Both stocks and bonds are being sold off, and bonds have been going first.
As they say on Wall Street: Stocks are for show, but bonds are for dough. Meaning the smart money is in bonds, and they tend to tell the tale first.
So how ready are you, really, if we’re indeed headed into another 2008-style market crash?
One in which the major stock market indexes could drop 50% or more in a matter of just a few weeks? Where housing prices could drop by 30-40% (or more) and home buyers go on strike? Where bond prices relentlessly drop as interest rates march higher, freed from a decade-long suppression at historic lows? Where mass layoffs return, and hundreds of thousands of workers lose their jobs each month?
Things could get ugly. Really, really ugly.
Are the steps you’ve put in place to-date sufficient? Have you simulated what’s most likely to happen to your portfolio, your job, and your living standards under a variety of scenarios?
I think for most reading this, the honest answer is “no”. No one is perfectly prepared. You can always do more.
For those feeling more vulnerable than they’d like, here are our recommendations for using the remaining time we have (which may not be much) wisely:
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Attend to any unfinished basics — Money is just one component of the true wealth you need to protect. Another Great Recession will have impact on your home, your relationships, your community, your mental state, etc. First, take our Self-Assessment (it’s free) to see where you’re currently most vulnerable. Then, review our guide for developing resilience (also free) for guidance on the specific steps to take to best protect yourself.
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Crash-test your portfolio with a professional financial advisor — How vulnerable are your current financial holdings to a major market disruption? If stock/bond/home prices suddenly drop from here, and/or you lose your job, what impact will that have on your lifestyle and your retirement plans? If asset prices fall and you have dry powder to put to use, what logic will dictate the investments you make at that time? These are all critical exercises to go through with your professional financial adviser before the next crash arrives. Contact your adviser to go through them soon — or, if you don’t have a good one, consider scheduling a crash-test consultation (it’s free) with the adviser Peak Prosperity endorses.
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Monitor carefully the key crash indicators — Watching the right indicators is the best way to avoid getting caught unawares by the next financial correction. This was a principal theme of our recent New York Summit featuring David Stockman, Chris Martenson and James Howard Kunstler. You can watch several short video clips from the event (again, for free) by clicking here.
And finally, read the report WARNING: The Markets Are Suddenly Looking Very Sick that Chris Martenson just released. It’s an excellent composition of the recent developments that point to a market breakdown in-progress.
Remember: the only valueable preparations are those put in place before crisis arrives.
Or to put it more simply: To fail to plan is to plan to fail.
So get going.
Click here to read Chris’ full report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
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- The States With The Most (And Least) "Legal" Opioid Sales
Submitted by Priceonomics
Today, the opioid crisis in America has become a public catastrophe. Drug overdose, many due to the abuse of opioids is the new leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50, overtaking automobile accidents and heart disease.
What’s perhaps most shocking about the crisis, is its cause is widely considered to be the overuse and over-prescription of legal painkillers, namely Oxycontin. Today opioid use has expanded beyond prescription narcotics to illegal (and often times deadly) drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
Given the known risk of prescription opioid drugs, are their sales on the rise or decline America? And in which states are legal opioids sold at the highest (and lowest) rates and how does that compare to drug overdose rates?
Along with Priceonomics customer Consumer Protect, we decided to analyze government data provided by the Drug Enforcement Agency of controlled substances sales to look at the per capita opioid sales by state and over time.
We found that opioid sales today have more than doubled versus in 2000. However, sales today have declined 28% since 2010. Today, the states with the highest rate of opioid sales are Tennessee, Oklahoma and Nevada, in that order. The places with the lowest rates of opioid sales are Washington DC, Minnesota and Illinois.
We found that the current rate of opioid sales was mostly uncorrelated with drug overdoses today. However, we found a much stronger relationship between past sales in 2010 and current levels of overdoses.
Put differently, where “legal” sales of prescription opioids were high in the past, today we see their consequences in the form of drug overdoses.
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To provide some context, first let’s look at the rate of legal opioid sales in the United States over the last almost two decades. The data is provided by the Drug Enforcement Agency which tracks the sales of the two main variants of prescription opioids: Oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet) and Hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco).
From 2000 to 2011, the rate of opioid sales per 100,000 people in the United States more than triples from 10.6 to to 33.9. By 2011, however, as the harmful addictive side-effects of the drugs become more well publicized, crackdowns on “prescription mills” began.
Today, still 24.4 kilograms of opioid drugs are sold per 100,000 people in America, more than twice as much as in 2000, though 28% less than the peak of 2011.
While the national average in 2017 was 24.4kg opioids sold per capita, that figure varies dramatically by location. The chart below shows each state ranked from most to least opioids sold.
In Tennessee, a state with a full blown opioid crisis, has the highest rate of opioid prescription pharmaceuticals sales in the country. In Tennessee, nearly twice as many opioids are sold as the national average. Oklahoma and Nevada round out the top three states with the highest rate of opioid sales. On the other hand, the District of Columbia has the nation’s lowest rate of opioid sales, followed by Minnesota and Illinois.
Over the last two decades, where did opioid sales in America explode the fastest? Opioid sales increased everywhere, but in some states, they grew much faster than others.
Kansas ranks #1 as the state with the highest rate of opioid sales growth in the country, with sales increasing by 259% versus year 2000. All of the top 10 states with the fastest growth in opioid sales increased more than 200%. Even in DC, Massachusetts, and Maine (the states with the slowest growth) have seen opioid sales expand approximately 50%.
Is there any good news? Well, since the beginning of the decade, the rate of opioid sales have declined. The following charts show the states making the most and least progress on curbing sales of these drugs.
During this decade, states like Florida, Maine and Delaware have seen their rate of opioid sales decline. During this time period all states have had a reduction in legal opioid sales, with the exception of Idaho, Wyoming and Arkansas where sales are up modestly.
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Is there any relationship between the level of prescription opioid sales and the amount of drug overdoses? Next, we looked at drug overdose data for 2016 as compiled by the CDC compared to opioid sales.
At first, we compared today’s opioid sales in a state to its death rate and found it had a near zero correlation. Next, however, we looked at today’s death rate versus the rate of prescription opioid sales at the beginning of the decade when sales were peaking.
Did the proliferation of “legal” opioids in the past result in more widespread deaths from drug overdose today? The following chart shows the relationship:
While further analysis is required, we found a positive relationship between past legal opioid sales and fatal drug overdoses in 2016 (the most recent year the data is available). The data provides some credence to the thesis that legal sales of prescription drugs in the past helped hasten the dramatic crisis going on today. What’s more, this data highlights the magnitude of the opioid epidemic in places like West Virginia where the death rates from drugs are nearly off the chart.
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Today’s opioid epidemic in large part has been catalyzed by the proliferation of drugs like Oxycontin in the 2000s and 2010s.
While sales of this drug have recently been reigned in, their rate of sale continues to be much higher today than two decades ago with states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Nevada having the highest rate of sales in the nation. Most recently, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington DC have the lowest rate of opioid sales.
In the last decade, the rate of legal sales has slowed down in all states except Arkansas, Wyoming and Idaho. However, the opioid epidemic has worsened even as prescription drugs have become harder to come by. Legal prescriptions may be less available, but users have switched to illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl, which are cheaper and more deadly.
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