2013-04-29

More global cooling news: 200 year solar cycle may keep temperatures low for two centuries

Cooling in the Arctic: what to expect?
Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.
Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.
These scientists estimate the major effects may not arrive until 2030 or 2040.

2013-04-28

Euro at a crossroads


COTS reflects the technical crossroads on the chart of the euro.

More global cooling

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) models predicted rising temperatures. Climate models/predictions from scientists adhering to historic cycles or solar output predicted cooling. The results continue to favor the latter:

Second Coldest Start To Spring In US History

The slow death of AGW continues. Negative social mood will finish it off because the it was an over-hyped rising social mood phenomena. These headlines don't actually refute the case, as each individual story is one data point, but focusing solely on the social/media sphere, every cold weather story is a strike against the hysterical proponents of climate change legislation. It became a political/cultural story and it will die as one. It will be unfortunate if, in the long-run, it turns out the AGW theories were right, but fortunately the odds of this being the case continue to decline.

2013-04-25

Switzerland shuts the door

Switzerland shuts the door on EU migrants: A new 'us vs. them' in Europe?
As I happened to be standing in the most intolerable immigration line that I've ever faced – more on that later – I read on my Twitter account that the Swiss government on Wednesday announced a new policy to cap residence permits for all of Western Europe. Switzerland, which is not part of the EU but joined the Schengen bloc that allows freedom of movement of people across European borders, says that it is being overwhelmed by arrivals from across the continent, to the tune of 80,000 people each year.

The U.S. is going to shut the door as well if amnesty passes. A majority of Americans want restrictions on legal immigration, and when the amnesty reveals not 12 million illegals, but more like 20-25 million, the American people will say enough and shut the door.

2013-04-22

Andy Xie on the plunge in gold prices

After the Flash Crash
The recent crash has cleansed the gold market of speculative liquidity. The demand for gold is mainly from emerging economies that face chronically high inflation. The recent growth deceleration pushes these economies into stagflation. Their demand for gold is likely to be persistent.

At the beginning of the year, I was positive on gold for the second half of 2013. I was expecting a rising dollar and strong stock market to dampen gold demand. As a weak global economy eventually cools stock markets, gold will come back.

Now I believe that gold has bottomed. Speculative money in gold has left. Inflation and slowing growth are favorable for gold. Stock markets are likely to struggle for the next few months. The dollar's rise is pausing for now. It seems that the headwinds for gold are removed and the tailwinds are getting stronger. Gold should perform quite well for remainder of the year. Even a new high is possible.

Retail investors must be vigilant on market manipulation. Physical gold demand is mainly from emerging economies like China, India and Middle Eastern countries. The gold financial markets are in New York and London. The financial players can make money from emerging market retail investors by creating artificial cycles, creating euphoria and panics. Gold buyers should not buy after a price surge. Now is a good buying opportunity.

War is coming

The End of War
War is a fact of human nature. As long as we exist, it exists. That's how the argument goes.

But longtime Scientific American writer John Horgan disagrees. Applying the scientific method to war leads Horgan to a radical conclusion: biologically speaking, we are just as likely to be peaceful as violent. War is not preordained, and furthermore, it should be thought of as a solvable, scientific problem—like curing cancer. But war and cancer differ in at least one crucial way: whereas cancer is a stubborn aspect of nature, war is our creation. It’s our choice whether to unmake it or not.

In this compact, methodical treatise, Horgan examines dozens of examples and counterexamples—discussing chimpanzees and bonobos, warring and peaceful indigenous people, the World War I and Vietnam, Margaret Mead and General Sherman—as he finds his way to war’s complicated origins. Horgan argues for a far-reaching paradigm shift with profound implications for policy students, ethicists, military men and women, teachers, philosophers, or really, any engaged citizen.

The Death of Equities. The End of History. The End of War.

China Gold Frenzy 2013: Tons of buying; Caibai flagship store in Beijing sells more than 1 ton of gold

News out today gives some statistical weight to what I saw on Saturday (China Gold Frenzy 2013: Post-Smash Sale Brings in Massive Crowds and Sunday. Click the link for photos and some discussion. The pictures are from the main Caibai store in Beijing. I was at another on Sunday and they were sold out of investment gold. The sign said you could purchase today, but you'd have to wait 2 weeks to gain possession.

Here's the story out today: 北京菜百上周黄金每天卖过亿 (Last week Beijing Caibai sold more than ¥100 million every day)

Average sales were 180 kilograms per day, topping at 250 kilograms on the highest day. At the flagship Caibai store, they sold more than a ton of gold last week, and they have already purchased another ton to replenish their inventory. The article states that sales were 5 to 8 times higher than last year at this time. The single largest purchase was 15kg of investment bullion.

Caibai's flagship store likely saw more traffic because it is a gold shopping destination, but similar buying frenzies were unfolding in every single shopping mall in Beijing, and indeed across China. How many tons were purchased this week alone?

2013-04-20

China Gold Frenzy 2013: Post-Smash Sale Brings in Massive Crowds

Last year, I posted some pictures from the Caibai market just before the Chinese New Year showing China's gold frenzy. It was the Year of the Dragon and sales were brisk. Today, the crowds were bigger and there was a very long line to buy investment gold and silver. It was almost impossible to look at the jewelry without forcing your way through the crowd, which was sometimes 3 people deep in front of the counters. I saw clerks turning over inventory rapidly, pulling out new necklaces to fill empty cases where everything had been purchased. Studded earrings were severely depleted and nearly impossible to look at since they were in the price range of almost any Chinese worker will gainful employment.

I snapped fewer pictures this year because the guards were more vigilant. I was asked to stop just before I could snap a pic of a 600+ gram golden cobra statue that looked like it belonged in the Cobra Commander's war room.


No doubt, imports will be up when the numbers are reported.

2013-04-18

The Gold Smash is the New Opium War

Liu Jun Luo is in form:

The gold smash is designed to wipe out the people with high cost basis in gold. But if gold plunges 10% in a night, why was the Dollar Index so weak, and the renminbi hit a new high?

This is WWII strategy. First, use tanks and artillery to blast a hole in the lines, and then send in the army to rapidly and violently penetrate the lines. Well, in the financial war, gold is the tanks and artillery, the dollar index is the army. The Americans and Chinese "Yeltsins" are working together to raise the renminbi exchange rate and pull in more people to buy the dips. Today is the "gold gap" campaign, but by the end of April or in early May, this will shift to the "dollar index army" and it will be rapid and violent.

Military war and financial war use different results to reach the same outcome.

黄金大抄底与“新鸦片战争”

2013-04-06

Why USG will not kill Bitcoins

People say the U.S. government will kill Bitcoins because it can be used to move money anonymously, funding illegal activity. While this is possible in future, it isn't yet.

Bitcoins are far too small of a currency. The price would need to move to $1,000 per BTC or higher before the transaction volume even began to register for government agents. The drug or arms dealer that can make use of Bitcoin is a small time crook. There are also ways for the government to target an individual and unravel the Bitcoin chain. In order for Bitcoin to become a real problem, it needs to aid the mass movement of illicit goods and services in such a way that becomes untraceable for USG. It needs to replace cash U.S. dollars, the currency favorite for criminals today. Since crack and stolen guns will never be sold for Bitcoins on the street, it needs to become the favorite of major crime syndicates who already do a good job of avoiding detection with cash and banks.

On the positive side, the number one use for Bitcoins will eventually be avoiding capital controls. Banks in some countries (China) limit the amount of foreign currency that can be held or taken out of the country. The U.S. dollar is the reserve currency and will be the last country to implement currency controls, since implementation is the destruction of the reserve currency, a last ditch effort to stop a hyperinflation or bank run. Any other country experiencing bank runs and currency collapses is USD supportive by default because it is the unit of account. It doesn't matter where the Bitcoins flow to, as long as it is out of a foreign currency, the net effect will be dollar positive until the dollar itself is in question, at which time the culprit will be newly issued foreign currencies (post-hyperinflation), gold, oil, wheat, etc.

2013-04-03

Chinese driving the Bitcoin bubble

Chinese searches and mentions of Bitcoin have tripled from the 2011 peak (and up 5 times from pre-bubble), whereas in English Bitcoin has only doubled from the 2011 peak.

Understanding the extremist immigration policy; xenocide and suicide; why an immigration moratorium is the sensible policy

At one extreme is peak negative social mood and peak xenophobia: murder of foreigners. At the other end is peak positive social mood and peak "ethnophobia": murder of one's own nation (to make room for foreigners). It is finally coming to light that the immigration policy at peak social mood was in fact suicidal, as evil and extreme as murdering foreigners is during peak negative social mood.

We can tell we are in a peak social mood when we associate positive social mood traits positively, and negative social mood traits negatively. One such word is xenophobia, which is generally considered a bad thing and is often used to describe anyone who opposes immigration. Some people may consider negative social mood in and of itself a bad thing, whereas positive mood is a good thing, and certainly, when looking at major wars, negative social mood plays a role. On a broader scale though, negative social mood often has very positive results because it serves to clean out the bad from the positive mood swing. It is the same role played by a recession: weak companies are removed, clearing the way for new companies to form. Strictly using the words as they are meant in today's common parlance, if we have a lack of xenophobia during positive social mood, we want to see that balanced with some xenophobia during negative social mood. Of course xenophobia implies a hatred and fear of foreigners, and people against immigration may have no hatred or fear of them, but simply wish to preserve their own culture against change. However, During extreme social mood, positive or negative, the reasonable middle becomes extremist relative to the popular position. Common sense on immigration makes one a xenophobe, just as being for slightly less communism made one a traitor to the revolution and a reactionary.

How I am partly to blame for Mass Immigration
When I was a Revolutionary Marxist, we were all in favour of as much immigration as possible.

It wasn't because we liked immigrants, but because we didn't like Britain. We saw immigrants - from anywhere - as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties.

Also, we liked to feel oh, so superior to the bewildered people - usually in the poorest parts of Britain - who found their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed into supposedly 'vibrant communities'.

If they dared to express the mildest objections, we called them bigots.

Revolutionary students didn't come from such 'vibrant' areas (we came, as far as I could tell, mostly from Surrey and the nicer parts of London).

We might live in 'vibrant' places for a few (usually squalid) years, amid unmown lawns and overflowing dustbins.
The West has engaged in nearly 40 years of an open door policy driven by hatred of its own people. The message of immigration was easy to sell because it was a period of positive social mood, but the reasoning behind it was as radical as a policy of hunting down and deporting foreigners. As the truth comes out, we see many of these leftists changing their position to anti-immigration. I believe it is genuine, but there is also the need for survival—when the population turns they will look for enemies.
They have taken the parts of them they liked, and made much of them.

They have ignored the parts they did not like.


Mr Galloway likes the Muslims' opposition to the Iraq War and their scorn for New Labour (and good luck to him). But he does not like their views on sexual morality.

The same is true of many others.

One of the most striking characteristics of the majority of migrants from the Caribbean is their strong, unashamed Christian faith, and their love of disciplined education.

Yet the arrival of many such people in London was never used as a reason to say our society should become more Christian, or our schools should be better-ordered.
If the left-wing turns right, who is left? The foreigners.

This is why an immigration moratorium is the sanest and most sensible policy to implement immediately. As social mood declines and more of the truth leaks out, the people will become outraged at the foreign presence in their nations and this position, today reserved to the racist fringe, will be the majority opinion. Nations that continue to flood their countries with foreigners are bringing them into a powder keg filled with xenophobia. And it will be impossible to stop because extreme xenophobia is a rational response to what has taken place. The way governments stop the extremes at social mood peaks is by giving the public a less extreme form of what they want. Halt immigration before the violence begins, otherwise they will have immigration halted by violence.
I now believe that the unreasoning hatred comes almost entirely from the liberal Left.

Of course, there are still people who harbour stupid racial prejudices.

But most of those concerned about immigration are completely innocent of such feelings.

The screaming, spitting intolerance comes from a pampered elite who are ashamed of their own country, despise patriotism in others and feel none themselves.

They long for a horrible borderless Utopia in which love of country has vanished, nannies are cheap and other people's wages are low.

What a pity it is that there seems to be no way of turning these people out of their positions of power and influence.

Myth of US Energy Independence

A myth if it doesn't include nuclear power that is.......

The Myth Of U.S. Energy Independence
There is no hope whatsoever of so-called U.S. "energy indepedence" unless three things happen. Environmental rules have to be wound back to 1970 standards -- in other words, disband the EPA and make civil plaintiffs show actual harm, not just hypothetical harm because someone goofed on a sheaf of mandated paperwork. Second, stop wasting taxpayer money on nonsense like $25 per gallon biofuel.

Third and most urgently, stop subsidizing Wall Street. Let the market decide what interest rates make sense, rewarding companies who can find and produce oil, instead of gorging themselves sick on artificially cheap junk bonds that money-losing shale swindlers will never pay off.

2013-04-02

The path to political victory

U.K. Independence Party finds its voice amid growing anti-immigrant wave

As the WaPo article on UKIP shows, the American elite remain tone deaf on the issue. UKIP has forced the issue in Britain, but if an American party or candidate runs a real anti-immigration campaign they will cruise to victory. Yes, they will be called racist and xenophobic, but a candidate who ignores the jibes will soon find open territory lies just beyond. The extremist policy is the defacto open borders policies of the U.S. and U.K. and once put on the defensive, it's all down hill. This is why the left changed the term illegal alien to illegal immigrant to undocumented worker. Once you turn the argument the other way, especially given the unemployment rates, legal immigration will come under attack. A moratorium on all immigration seems outlandish today, but only because no one is pushing it. Both parties are basically open borders, but while immigration moratorium might not win, but it could become a defensible position for one party, while the other would argue for limited high-skilled immigration. This is how far apart the peak social mood extremist immigration policy is from current social mood. And we're still a long way from peak negative mood.

Pandemic Fears

Is This a Pandemic Being Born?
According to Chinese authorities, some of the dead pigs tested antibody-positive for circoviruses, or PCV-2, and samples of the virus were isolated from Huangpu River. The implication was that the Shanghai pigs died of PCV-2, a type of virus that is harmless to human beings, as well as birds. Photographs of the carcasses reveal that the animals were large adult hogs, but PCV-2 does not kill adult pigs -- it is lethal to fetuses and newborn piglets.

The Chinese health authorities have to date offered no cause of death for the ducks and swans, failed to describe any unusual genetic features that might have turned the PCV-2 into an adult pig-killer virus, and insisted there is no connection between the pigs, people, and birds. Though the surviving woman, Han, had some contact with live chickens, according to Xinhua, neither Li nor Wu had any known contact with birds. Wu has been identified variously as a butcher, meat processor, and employee of a meat plant -- all of which might imply he had contact with pigs.

Influenzas are named according to the specific nature of two proteins found on the virus -- the H stands for hemaggluntinin and the N for neuraminidase. These proteins play various roles in the flu-infection process, including latching onto receptors on the outside of the cells of animals to transmit the virus into their bodies. Those receptors can vary widely from one species to another, which is why most types of influenza viruses spreading now around the world are harmless to human beings. As far as any scientists know, the H7N9 forms of flu have never previously managed to infect human beings, or any mammals -- it is a class of the virus found exclusively in birds. It is therefore extremely worrying to find two people killed and one barely surviving due to H7N9 infection.

...If the pigs, people, and birds have died in China from H7N9, it is imperative and urgent that the biological connection be made, and extensive research be done to determine how widespread human infection may be. Shanghai health authorities have tested dozens of people known to have been in contact with Wu and Li, none of whom have come up positive for H7N9 infection. Assuming the tests are accurate, the mystery of Li and Wu's infections only deepens. Moreover, if they are a "two of three," meaning two dead, of three known cases, the H7N9 virus is very virulent.

UKIP on its way to shock victory as left moves right; Australians want to ban all immigration; immigration will end in the West

The next British election is scheduled for May 7, 2015 if no early elections are called. I predict there will be early elections to head off a surge in the UK Independence Party as immigration becomes a major issue and the country moves right. The Tories are not the conservative party, they are the liberal party along with Labour. UKIP isn't conservative on all issues, but it is the leading conservative party in Great Britain today. Adding to UKIP's appeal is their leader, Nigel Farage, who has a background in the financial industry yet is lined up against the banking industry.

Here's the latest open revolt from the left on immigration, with a pure social mood headline trumpeting the "age of insecurity":
Leader: Liberalism now feels inadequate in this new age of insecurity
Ever since the Thatcher era, British politics has been defined by forms of economic and social liberalism. The right won the argument for the former and the left the argument for the latter, or so it is said. Yet in the post-crash era, this ideological settlement is beginning to fracture. The right is re-examining its crude economic liberalism and the left its social liberalism. This shift is characterised neither by a revival of socialist economics, nor by one of reactionary conservatism. Rather, it is defined by a mutual recognition that liberalism, at least in some of its guises, does not provide all the answers to Britain’s most entrenched problems: its imbalanced economy, its atomised society, its lack of common identity.
Socialism is dying and headed into the grave. Reactionary conservatism is rising from the ashes. It isn't on the scene yet, but it will be.
In a recent speech to the Fabian Women’s Network, Diane Abbott, the shadow public health minister and once on the hard left of the party, spoke out against the “sexualisation” of childhood. “For so long,” she said, “it’s been argued that overt, public displays of sexuality are an enlightened liberation. But I believe that for many, the pressure of conforming to hyper-sexualisation and its pitfalls is a prison.” Ms Abbott concluded: “We’ve got to build a society based on open-minded family values and not ‘anything-goes’ market values.”
There's no going part way, politics never works that way. Once you put the pendulum in motion, it makes a full swing, even going to extreme points, before returning. This is the end of a 300-year pendulum swing that lines up with the Grand Supercycle and as people shift their values from left to right, the logic will compel them to go further and further right. It is the same reason why gay marriage will inevitably lead to legalized polygamy, if the pendulum doesn't swing before then. There is no argument left against polygamy once gay marriage is legalized because the main opposition to gay marriage comes from social conservatives and they have been soundly defeated. Even bestiality will eventually be legalized given enough time, though the "ick factor" may be enough to keep it illegal until the pendulum swings back. As for the argument about families, once children are again made the center of the family and public policy reflects this, divorce, promiscuity, late marriage, birth control, homosexual culture and women's rights will all be reevaluated. People cannot even comprehend the total shift in society that is coming based upon a changing social mood that will accelerate a multi-century rightward swing in society.
This insight is also shaping the Labour leader’s approach to welfare and his call for a reassertion of the “contributory” principle. By remodelling the benefits system so that there is a clearer link between what people put in and what they receive, Labour seeks to restore public confidence. The view of the welfare state as a pot from which all draw as much as they can is being rejected in favour of one that emphasises reciprocity. This is necessary if the welfare state is to survive and to continue to enjoy majority support.
This concept is to the right of the American right wing. This type of view can be found on talk radio in America, not in the mainstream public debate. In England, the left is already moving full steam to the right.
Yet there is good thinking occurring on the right. The Tory MP Jesse Norman and the conservative commentator Ferdinand Mount recognise that Britain’s lightly regulated model of financial capitalism has undermined the conservative goal of a stable and orderly society. Mr Norman, who will shortly publish a book about Edmund Burke, has written of how markets should not be idolised, but “treated as cultural artefacts mediated by trust and tradition”.
The rise of the liberals came with the fall of religion, which served as the backbone of tradition. Socialism is dead and though we cannot see it today, religion is on the rise. It could take decades or a century before we see major changes (or much sooner if the economy collapses), but the answers society is searching for will be found on the right.

It's important to keep in mind that there is a right and left in today's politics and a Right and Left in extremely basic issues, such as monarchy versus democracy. It's very possible that a left-wing party by today's standard will implement very right-wing policies. You see this clearly in free trade arguments, where left and right-wing liberals support free trade, and far left and far right conservatives oppose it. What is taking place is the formation of new political parties and new political alliances along new ideological lines. It would be a mistake to view this coming shift right as the triumph of Tories or Republicans, for example, since if they are openly fighting the shift! Both right and left will win in elections, what will change is their goals.

Meanwhile in Australia:

Half of Australians want end to immigration
The survey of 2,000 people, conducted for the tabloid Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper, found 51 percent thought "our population is too high (and) we should stop immigration".

Australia has some 23 million people, compared to 19.6 million a decade ago.

Canberra set its immigration programme for the year to June at 185,000 places, with another 13,750 slots available to refugees on humanitarian grounds.

But in the poll only 32 percent of respondents felt Australia should welcome more immigrants and almost two thirds, some 65 percent, said "migrants should adopt the Australian way of life".

The responses revealed a marked swing away from the more tolerant attitudes of previous surveys conducted in 2005, 2001 and 1995, the newspaper said.
Notice the carry over from the Grand Supercycle peak into 2005. Australia is doing better than other nations economically, but they are also moving against immigration. We may not see political results until the latter half of this decade, but suffice to say, if you want to immigrate to Australia, Canada, U.S.A., Britain, Singapore, etc., now is the time to do it because the window is closing. The only people who will be able to immigrate in coming years will be the most talented and wealthiest people, and possible those moving to similar cultures, such as from Canada to the U.S.