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Jim Rogers massive crash coming this year or next

Now even mainstream sources are ringing the alarm bells of an imminent massive economic crisis, with 1929 being an indicator of the scale of the coming events. You have less than 18 months, possibly less than 6 months. So if you think things are bad now, its only going to get worse.

Jim Rogers

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jim-rogers-worst-crash-lifetime-coming-2017-6?r=US&IR=T

Transcript of interview:

Legendary investor Jim Rogers sat down with Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget on this week’s episode of The Bottom Line. Rogers predicts a market crash in the next few years. One that he says will rival anything he has seen in his lifetime. Following is a transcript of the video.

Blodget: One of the things I’ve always admired about you as an investor is that you don’t talk about what should be. You figure out what is going to be and then, you do that. So what is going to be with respect to the stock market? What’s going to happen?

Rogers: I learned very early in my investing careers: I better not invest in what I want. I better invest in what’s happening in the world. Otherwise, I’ll be broke. Dead broke.Well, what’s going to happen is it’s going to continue. Some stocks in America are turning into a bubble. The bubble’s gonna come. Then it’s gonna collapse and you should be very worried. But Henry, this is good for you. Because someone has to report it. So you have job security. You’re a lucky soul.

Blodget: Well, yeah, TV ratings do seem to go up during crashes but then they completely disappear when everyone is obliterated, so no one is hoping for that. So when is this going to happen?

 

Rogers: Later this year or next.

Blodget: Later this year or next?

Rogers: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Write it down.

Blodget: And what will trigger it?

Rogers: Well, it’s interesting because these things always start where we’re not looking. In 2007, Iceland went broke. People said, ‘Iceland? Is that a country? They have a market?’ And then Ireland went broke. And then Bear Stearns went broke. And Lehman Brothers went broke. They spiral like that. Always happens where we’re not looking. I don’t know. It could be an American pension plan that goes broke and many of them are broke, as you know. It could be some country we’re not watching. It could be all sorts of things. It could be war. Unlikely to be war but it’s going to be something. When you’re watching Business Insider and you see, ‘That’s so interesting. I didn’t know that company could go broke.’ It goes broke. Send me an email and then I’ll start watching.

Blodget: And how big a crash could we be looking at?

Rogers: It’s going to be the worst in your lifetime.

Blodget: I’ve had some pretty big ones in my lifetime.

Rogers: It’s going to be the biggest in my lifetime and I’m older than you. No, it’s going to be serious stuff. We’ve had financial problems in America — let’s use America — every four to seven years, since the beginning of the republic. Well, it’s been over eight since the last one. This is the longest or second longest in recorded history, so it’s coming. And the next time it comes — you know, in 2008, we had a problem because of debt. Henry, the debt now — that debt is nothing compared to what’s happening now. In 2008, the Chinese had a lot of money saved for a rainy day. It started raining. They started spending the money. Now, even the Chinese have debt and the debt is much higher. The federal reserves, the central bank in America, the balance sheet is up over five times, since 2008. It’s going to be the worst in your lifetime, my lifetime too. Be worried.

Blodget: I am worried.

Rogers: Good. Good.

Blodget: Can anybody rescue us?

Rogers: They will try. What’s going to happen is they’re going to raise interest rates some more. Then when things start going really bad, people are going to call and say, ‘You must save me. It’s Western civilisation. It’s going to collapse.’ And the Fed, who is made up of bureaucrats and politicians, will say, ‘Well, we better do something.’ And they will try but it won’t work. It will cause some rallies but it won’t work this time.

Blodget: And we are in a situation where Western civilisation already seems to be possibly collapsing, even with the market going up all the time. Often when you do have a financial calamity, you get huge turmoil in the political system. What happens politically if that happens?

Rogers: Well, that’s why I moved to Asia. My children speak Mandarin because of what’s coming. You’re going to see governments fail. You’re going to see countries fail, this time around. Iceland failed last time. Other countries fail. You’re going to see more of that. You’re going to see parties disappear. You’re going to see institutions that hav e been around for a long time — Lehman Brothers had been around over 150 years. Gone. Not even a memory for most people. You’re going to see a lot more of that next around, whether it’s museums or hospitals or universities or financial firms.

Read more at

https://www.businessinsider.com/jim-rogers-worst-crash-lifetime-coming-2017-6#TmgQDyX5KdGWqTwl.99

 

 

Immigration a costly mistake

Black pigeon speaks on immigration citing economic impact from several studies in first world countries.

 

Islamic economic problems

Let’s be as dispassionate as possible and try to be rational. This is hard to do with what has become a polarizing issue in Australia; Islam.

What would Australia be like with more Muslims and Mosques. The best measure would could have is to look at Islamic majority nations.

Of all nations 20% of recognized nations (35 nations in total) have more that 80% Muslim population, there are a further 21 nations in the range of 20-80% Muslim these nations make up about 22% of the worlds population.

So on that basis one might expect these Islamic nation to make up roughly 22% of the worlds GDP. wrong, not even close.

GDP defined:

Just before we go further I will define GDP in a way more easily understandable to normal people. GDP is gross domestic product, which is the grand total of the valuable products and services a country produces and sells in a given year.  It is a measure of the  productivity of a country. If you think of your own household it is the value of work done by the members of the household.

GDP per capita defined:

GDP per capita is a measure of the GDP divided by the population level, which is an attempt to measure the average productivity of an individual in that country. So If Mum and Dad had two children the GDP per capita for that household would be =  (Mums income  + Dads income)/4. The 4 being the total people in the household. Clearly by this approach the more kids you have (which we assume are not earning any significant money for the household) really drag down the average. But this mean you divide you income between even more people. Because of the large size of families in Islamic countries the GDP get spread very thinly. This is made even worse by the unevenness of the distribution of income (and wealth) with a massive share going to elites.

So lets look at this GDP analysis of Islam majority (80%+) countries.

GDPislamOILtagged

The Muslim share of world GDP is 6.78% less than a third of what we might expect, all other things being equal.

What is worse is recognizing that the overwhelming majority of this GDP come for the Oil trade the extraction and/or transport of oil.

We know eventually the Oil will run out, and then what will that one fifth of the worlds population do to survive?

Without Oil Islamic majority nations will only have 1.28% of worlds GDP and 22%+ of the mouths to feed.

With oil Islamic countries are under-performing, without Oil, they are absolute economic basket cases.

The only real options would be:

To have wars with other Islamic nations to depopulate and take other resources. (Already happening, has been happening for along time).

Move to the non Islamic west. ( The west has taken as many as it can tolerate, and has not worked out well for many western countries, UK, France, Germany, Sweden

Invade Western countries by stealth ( the current Syrian refugee crisis is an example of this and the above.)

Why?

What are the reasons for the dramatic under achievement economically of many Islamic majority nations?

There are many but here are a few. Note there are just cultural observations, the Koran is the source of many of these problems. Get a copy of the Koran translated and see if you can search for different issues.

Education:

Large families and lack of investment in children’s education.

Compared to the west, Schools are uncommon, universities are rare.

60% of Muslims are illiterate.

It is estimated that half of Arab women are illiterate.

More than half of Muslims don’t know whats written in the Koran because they can’t read, they just believe what someone else has told them, a dangerous level of ignorance.

Because literacy is not common the world is simply a mysterious closed place to many Muslims, who are easily misled by their leaders.

The lack of education is one of the reasons unemployment (and under employment) is so high in Islamic countries.

In the west we talk about computer literacy as being important for business, whereas for more than half of Muslims the written word is a mystery.

Family:

Birth control as idea is shunned and multiple wives are common.

Birth rate is high and large numbers of children in a family is common.

Muslim boys are allowed to run wild in the streets, street battles between boys are common.  Muslim girls are under lock and key almost all the time.

This helps create the mentality of the males as adventurers and conquerors and the women as commodities and spoils of war.

Muslim women who shame their families are often at the very least badly beaten and at worst stoned to death.

Population growth is rapid, and often in paces with very infertile land, oil revenues allow for the continuous import of food.

Oil revenues have made Islamic Oil states a ticking demographic time bomb, once the Oil goes, the state collapses.

It is common in many Islamic countries for half of the population to be under 20 years old.

So no only illiterate by also young and naive as well.

Extreme Xenophobia and limited trade relationships:

Muslims seem to hate outsiders. Whatever form outsiders may take

Ancient family/clan/tribal conflicts are still common, the tension between the two major sects of Islam are still festering after 1400, a  problem which started as a family dispute over the inheritance of the first Muslim, Mohammad.

There is the open hatred or other religions which is well documented in the Koran.

Most other religions in the secular west take the view of other religions as this:

Their belief is not correct but its better for everyone if we all just try to get along, who knows if I am a good role model maybe one day they will convert to my faith.

For the Muslim, they wish to kill or subjugate all other non believers, including atheists, and the only thing ever holding them back is lack of numbers.

One cannot really be successful in a modern economic world without trade, and you can’t trade if you want to kill all your potential Trading partners because they are not exactly the same as you.

Also there is significant problems with the level of dishonesty and fraud generally, but especially towards outsiders,  outsiders often feel they will be likely cheated on business arrangements and there is significant history of this.

Hierarchy:

Most Islamic nations are the result of a military coup, and for many states there have been relatively short lifespans for these revolutions. So each of these states is young ans unstable and because of that have paranoid oppressive leadership. This often gives rise to abuse of office and massive disparity in wealth and income. Many Islamic nations appear to be quite feudal in economic operation with a few despot lords under a tyrant king holding almost all the wealth and power and the rest of the population living under abject poverty.Of course feudalism was abandoned  about 500 years ago by the west for more economically efficient mode of production. This Islamic feudal system means that tyrants are common and money is wasted on the whims of tyrants rather than invested into worthwhile productive businesses. This is an absolute third world mode of operation. Infrastructure spending is only what directly benefits the tyrants and they often see little benefit in a building roads as they travel everywhere by helicopter, for example. The religion itself is equally hierarchical which enforces the same thinking, but only offers the path of being a soldier for a warlord as a path from poverty to wealth. Having such a large pool of poor and ignorant men to fight for you only further enforces the hierarchy’s grip on power. Ironically Arab nations are not very good at wining wars with their neighbors because they are fighting other armed people, they are only ever good and fighting their own unarmed people and that further suppresses any divergent thought.

Women:

Women as previously mentioned are reduced to the status of cattle for Muslims, the reason why so few women are in the ‘Syrian’ migration scam is this: women are in short supply in Islamic countries because of honor killings and the wealthy mean in the ruling factions keep them in harems. Remember if every man wants four wives, there is going to be shortage. In refugee camps (and our detention centers) women are raped by Muslim men because Muslim men think  unchaperoned women are whores, and its OK to rape whores. Its sort of like petty theft, something that can be done to those who transgress the faith. It would be difficult to think of any society that treated women worse than how women are treated under Islam. It is mind boggling how any sane woman could advocate Islam without a gun to her head. Clearly the feminists who support Islam are insane, stupid or simply brainwashed. Female genital mutilation, this is more common in the non Arab Islamic nations but is universally encouraged by Islam. FGM is done specifically to eliminate sexual pleasure for women in an attempt to reduce the chance of infidelity. FGM is also done to make women traumatize and brutalize their prepubescent daughters so they do not trust each other. This betrayal mixed with the removal of the organ ( the clitoris) that might create a alternate mental state (sexual pleasure) means the FGM woman will not likely ever think outside of  the hum drum day-to-day grind of feudal Islam.

Utterly unsustainable:

Once the oil leaves the Muslim world one state after an other will fail. This is because the typical Muslim majority state without oil will consume about 20 times as much as it produces, and typically has nothing but sand to then sell. Many Muslim state are in this position and Syria is simply first to fall victim to this economic and demographic cliff. It is believed that much of Syria’s problems stem from former (and possibly currently) US funded mercenaries going rogue and becoming roving groups of bandits and selling oil when they were able to capture oil facilities. This was a consequence of the tribal warfare proclivity of male Muslims. Clearly is better than being starving peasant, well at least while it lasts.  Worst of all the Koran scoffs at the idea of plowing a field, instead advocating war as a more profitable and honorable activity.

In summary:

So this is why even after having a virtual monopoly on Oil for 40-50 years Islamic nations will see everything they ever knew get swallowed by the ergs in Arabia and north Africa, swallowed by the jungle in Africa and south Asia and covered in rubble in the middle east. This is precisely why Muslims are invading Europe and the west  right now, they know its almost game over. They send their peasant army to vandalize and weaken their new proposed feudal fiefdom, Europe.

Of course its the fault of the west that these Islamic nations failed as states.

Because the typical Muslim is young ignorant, xenophobic and warlike.

Of course Muslims are going to blame outsiders for all of his problems and he will use violence, they know little else.

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Catherine Austin Fitts Explains the last 10 years of finance fraud

Catherine Austin Fitts quite succinctly explains the entire sub prime scandal and how it was all deliberately planned to destroy wealth in the USA and then flow on to Europe and elsewhere.

A basic synopsis:

 

If you had savings:

The banks took your savings to lend it to your employer to invest it in foreign business to off shore your job and reduce your wages/salary or force you into unemployment.

If you were a borrower:

You were encouraged to get a mortgage on a bigger (and vastly over valued) house in a market bubble, despite that known rising energy costs in the future would make it too expensive to live in.

Those mortgages were packaged into securities and sold to your pension fund, so that when you default on your mortgage you default on your retirement plan, so you can loose your house and your retirement income.

 

So in short: a deliberate fraud planned out in a cold and clinical way to steal all the wealth and destroy the economy.

Socialism, Aeroplanes and Economics

A cargo cult gathering and their constructed idol.

A cargo cult gathering and their constructed idol.

What are these primitive villagers up to you may ask?

Actually they are anarcho-primitivists, but that’s not the point.

A cargo cult aeroplane.

A cargo cult aeroplane.

This is a cargo cult. These people actually believe that somehow the construction of this model aeroplane will cause cargo ( wondrous goods) to appear. This belief system started when US and allied forces arrived in South East Asia and Melanesia to form army bases and airstrips to fight the Japanese imperial army and navy. In setting up bases they did hand out a few trinkets along the way to keep the locals happy. The locals were quite amazed at the wondrous, magical and apparently godlike powers of the cargo and its owners. Eventually the planes and ships stopped coming and with that, the cargo stopped coming also. Seeing the obvious linkage between the vehicles ( aeroplanes, jeeps, and airstrips) and the cargo they formed the belief that if they could make their own airstrips,  aeroplanes and jeeps  from local materials the cargo would return.

So year after year they would create such effigies in hope the cargo would return. It sounds quite silly if you know the fallacy of their thinking. But you must admire their skill and determination. Among cargo cult fetishes that are built are, Aeroplanes, Airstrips, Airport control towers and even Jeeps and machine guns.

Unfortunately none of these effigies are functional, because the builders lack the actual knowledge behind how they actually work. If they did know for example how heavier than air, powered, controlled flight worked, their considerable efforts might have different results.

They have allowed unqualified belief determine they actions, rather than logic and simple experiments.

A modern replica of one of the first aeroplanes, Richard Pearce's invention

A modern replica of one of the first aeroplanes, Richard Pearce’s invention

Richard Pearce's aeroplane, showing struts made from bamboo.

Richard Pearce’s aeroplane, showing struts made from bamboo.

The first true aeroplanes were developed about 110 years ago, only 40 years before cargo cults developed. There are many competing claims as to who actually did it first. But According to some it was not the wright brothers, they give credit to an obscure New Zealander, Richard Pearce and his flying machine, which looks strangely similar to a modern micro-lite. Adding to the kudos of first powered, heavier than air, controlled flight , Pearce created many innovations, aerolons, variable pitch propeller, triangular under carriage with 3 wheels, a joystick for control and an air cooled reciprocating engine.

Amusingly the wing struts of his aeroplane were made from bamboo, just like some cargo cult planes today. Unlike the cargo cult aeroplanes his one actually flew, and with a degree of control also.

Strangely Pearce didn’t use the one really important innovation, aerodynamic lift, his aeroplane simply dragged itself into the air with lots of horsepower and the wings stopped it falling back to the earth.  Pearce used approximately twice the horse power as the Wright brothers used in their flyer. Pearce kept few records and didn’t promote his invention, lived in an isolated corner of the world, so others who worked at the same time and a little later, got the credit. The Wright brothers do deserve credit for a very structured  and documented approach to they way they developed the aeroplane, even determining the viscosity of air to put in their calculations and using aerodynamic lift.

All of this was a progression from hot air balloons, parachutes, gliders and uncontrolled flight to the final goal the modern aeroplane. People learned the phenomenon of flight and the properties of air to accomplish their goal of flight. The men who jumped off cliff flapping their arms were not successful.

Had the cargo cult members been successful in getting plane flying, they might fly to the US in their bamboo aeroplane and land hoping for cargo to magically load itself on their aeroplane. Once again they would be thwarted because there must be surplus or extremely low cost cargo and fuel for this to happen.

This of course brings us to Economics, another poorly understood cargo cult for many people, particularly Socialists and Neo conservatives.

As different as they both seem socialists and neo conservatives either don’t know or don’t want to talk (or think) about where money comes from.

Marx; How can the state provide everything to everyone when the state cannot cannot produce value? Marx argued that only human labour is of value, and therefore the state ( not having its own body) simply cannot create value, and must rob from Peter to pay Paul. Good if you are Paul, bad if you are Peter. Eventually everyone becomes Peter in socialism, apart from a few Pauls’ at the top.

Economics: Read about Zero sum game and tragedy of the commons.

Neo-Cons; How can the market provide, if all the means of exchange are privately controlled debt notes, counterfeited into existence, whose supply and value are arbitrarily manipulated by a self interested third party? In theory Neo-Cons should be screaming for 100% backed, hard money, but seem to think, too big to fail, bail out the incompetent fraud peddling banksters is the way to go.

Economics: Read about properties of money (particularly about how fiat is not real money)

The worst thing about economics is that it seems so abstract, and involves some maths, and that is a really big hurdle to most people.

 The majority of economics can be explained with axioms, short stories, and situations to consider.

A list some basic economic axioms here, trickier ones with a *. Honestly it’s not that hard.

Zero Sum game.

Prisoners dilemma.

Adverse selection.

Tragedy of the commons.

Battle of the sexes game.

Game of chicken.

External costs.

properties of money.

Infinite regret*

chain store paradox.

Principal – agent problem.

Irrationality of price wars*

Moral hazard.

Pareto optimum.

Gresham’s law.

Barriers to growth.

Sensitivity to initial conditions*

Credit paradox.

Nash Equilibrium.

Supply and demand*

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If you don’t understand Economics, you might as well build a rough copy of a space ship out of plastic bottles in your back lawn and hope ET will save you.

For captain obvious:

If you don’t understand how something works, there is no point idolizing some aspect of it, thinking it will be a substitute for knowledge.

For all the George Orwell fans, you will remember than in the book 1984 the state claimed to have invented the aeroplane, but Winston Smith remembered from this childhood that this was not true.

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