GMO Tests on Lab Rats

Just as tobacco research was suppressed by Big Smoke, so it seems GMO research is being suppressed by Big Frankenfood:

Now more than 2 years later, these are the facts: Séralini and his team's original study has been republished in a different peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Sciences Europe; they have won two key lawsuits against those who have attempted to ruin their reputations; and a recent peer-reviewed letter even asserted that Séralini and his team may have been right after all on their discovery showing tumors in lab rats fed GMOs. 
In other words, the jury is still out on GMO safety to say the very least, just as countless independent scientists have warned, and Séralini's study stands as yet another cause for concern with the ongoing GMO experiment. It also shows the lengths that the Biotech industry will go to in order to discredit any independent science that clashes with their own version of science.

The truth will out eventually, but there is another aspect to this apparently only I worry about: concentration of so much power in so few hands.  In USA 89% of the corn is now GMO.  Since GMO is under government issued monopoly, we have nearly 90% of our most common food under control of maybe a dozen people.  This is insanity.

There is no more revolutionary act a human can perform in capitalist American than start a business.  It is both counter-capitialism to start a business in USA, and part of the solution. Two in one!

Small businesses are necessarily free-market, since we have to pay our own way, as opposed to the capitalists who cannot proceed without their subsidies, or welfare.  America would die without its subsidy system, America will die because of the subsidy system.  People escape to anarchy in times such as this, and the free market is anarchy in action, the opposite of the chaos of capitalism.

In this specific case, Russia has outlawed GMO anything.  Russia has the space to grow anything.  At the same time Russia is experiencing trade sanction led by the USA as Russia failed to withdraw when the USA overthrew the elected Ukrainian government.  Their response has been wise: import substitution.  As oil revenue drops, and import prices become more dear for sanction, Russians can more easily begin to grow and make their own.

In USA cross contamination is one way that the GMO crop grows.  With only 10% of corn left non-GMO, and all that at risk in USA, corn might be imported from Russia for safety sake.  And to counteract the madness of GMO concentration in USA.  This not be shiploads as corn is normally traded, but pallet loads to be imported by small grocers, millers or whatever.

There is no evil the capitalists can perpetrate that does not have a fairly obvious and easy counteraction.  When your passions match one of those counteractions, expect all the more success.

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World Trade Crashing: Ho Hum!

The newest Census report on imports and exports show world trade is crashing for USA too!  Look at it go!  Both imports and exports!  I read the articles too!  Baltic dry index down! Maybe people should gain some perspective!  This is one year!

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/data/index.html?eml=gd&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Much more useful is to observe what has happened over the last 40 years, starting with Nixon going off the gold standard (lite).  Those trend lines accelerate after 1971.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/graphs/gands.html

Let's begin with Earl Butz, Nixon's Sec of Agriculture, who announced the policy of USA is "get big or get out."  Now, this does not mean that Uncle Sam was to help only big business, it means they will harm small business at the same time.  Stated policy, enacted means, results achieved.  At what point do you believe them?

Although regulations, taxes, death taxes all helped destroy the family business, even more insidious was unleashing banks to create and lend malcredit, at interest, when previously the vast majority of lending in USA was at no interest, and almost all the rest at cost of loan processing, through thrifts and credit unions.

The trick became rocking the cantillon effect, the more money you borrow, the closer you get to the source, the lower the cost: crush the competition, roll up the industry.

First they came for the USA manufacturers, countless small businesses. And those who fell for the folly of price cutting, down they went.  When the big box stores had wiped out USA industry, then they went to China, whose credit became good, give the untapped resources of the world largest country in people.

That big dip is 2008, which would have been a good peak to end the damage, but as you see in eight years things have gotten much worse, fatter problem.  Well, the next crash will be all that more bad for those engaged in the false economy (if you are employed, have a pension or stock portfolio, own property...  you are probably to that degree tied up in the false economy.  You'll learn how much by how bad this next crash hurts.).

A few points;  the damage is done during the boom, the crash is simply the correction.  The longer the boom, the more gets corrected.

The bottom of a market is not low prices, it is no buyers.  If you think anything is low priced now,  you ain't seen nothing yet.

The right side of the 2nd graph will look like the left, except 40 years of downward.  Deflation instead of inflation.  Rent, don't own.  Delay getting paid, not hurry up and pay me.  Work for yourself, family business with no benefit plans, not a "job with bennies."  This will be the path to wealth, properly defined.  It is the path to your peace and prosperity.

(Incidently, the 2nd is also a graph of the growth of government in USA, and a graph of the growth of microsoft, and so many other false economy monsters.

The drop in exports, small as it is, is mostly big business trades, not small specialty trades, as I have demonstrated here several times.

So get self employed, if retail great.  If wholesale, competing on design, take advantage of the worlds excess capacity to source your items, and in the coming years, when USA real estate crashes (and commercial crashes far faster and deeper than residential) families will be able to start small businesses in USA, manufactories, etc, and slowly we'll see a renaissance in USA small business.

It's about time!

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Exposing Default Swaps and Int'l Banking

Here is a complex article outlining the exposure international banks have, and how they are now claiming to be leaving Asia, Africa to meet regulatory changes.  The article demonstrates this is nonsense.

But read the article with two things in mind:

1. Note how lending malcredit domestically, where banks privatize any profits and socialize any losses is precisely what is going on with int'l banks.  Again it leads to malinvestment (malcredit gets malinvested) and while the domestic (say USA) taxpayers suffer the loss,  the difference is the idled factory is sitting in Botswana.

2. Credit default swaps are mysterious affairs, with a plausible explanation.  In this article for me the penny dropped.  The swaps are not about "I want your interest rate vs mine, it is about "Your name on my balance sheet keeps the auditors fooled about what junk it is they cannot access, just as my name on yours returns the favor."

I shoulda known!

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2016 Elections Results: Military Take-over

Cincinnati is named after Cincinnatus the Roman statesman and general who became a benevolent dictator and, after restoring order, retired to his farm.  After the Revolutionary war, a Society of Cincinnati, and not to put too fine a point on it, George Washington was the first head of the organization.  The statesman who became a general, dictator, and then retired to his farm.

As we wonder at these elections, and know Hillary will win, Trump will have had his election stolen, economic chaos is inevitable, as there are too many claims on too few assets.  These are the times of black swans.

Which is the one black swan no one has mentioned, so the most likely? A military coup in the USA.  It will never happen!

Why not?  The military is probably the one most popular god in the USA.  They have the organization and muscle to impose order, of a sort. A world war USA is the other likely event given hillary as president, since she wants to be a 'great" president, and we judge presidents by their wars. We would likely lose any world war, and generals do not like having their toys taken away.  So why not just conquer USA?

Before you scoff, recall these two recent articles: On the one hand, ex-military Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on his way out of office in disgrace has this to relate:

It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad that his regime would face consequences if it crossed a “red line” by employing chemical weapons against its own people. Assad did it anyway, and Hagel had spent the day approving final plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Damascus. U.S. naval destroyers were in the Mediterranean, awaiting orders to fire.

Instead, Obama told a stunned Hagel to stand down. Assad’s Aug. 21 chemical attack in a Damascus suburb had killed hundreds of civilians, but the president said the United States wasn’t going to take any military action against the Syrian government. The president had decided to ignore his own red line — a decision, Hagel believes, that dealt a severe blow to the credibility of both Obama and the United States.

As is usually the case, in time we found out it was USA proxies who launched the gas attack, but never mind,  Foreign Policy mag has never bothered with fact checking.  So here we have the military folk outraged as the civilian president calling the shots.

Then it gets better, this from Sy Hersh, on generals simply disobeying the president with whom the disagree:

The thrust of Hersh’s article is that unbeknown to President Obama, his former Joint Chiefs chairman orchestrated the way for Assad to remain in power while paving the way for Russia to enter the Syrian war—despite stated White House policies and criticisms of both Assad and Putin. 

Personally I am delighted that the USA military kept us from implementing stupid policy.  But the fact is, um, disobeying the president, that is orders, in war, well, not good.  But never mind, we have public instance #1 of the generals doing their own thing cuz they disagree with the President, their commander in chief.

When the USA military was in charge of occupied West Germany, they ran it as a socialist paradise, and shortages were endemic.  Finally a politician by the name of Adenauer prevailed upon the commanding US general to remove all price controls on just eggs, to see what would happen.  Within days, plenty of cheap eggs filled the markets.  Next bread, milk, etc.  Free markets emerged and West Germany emerged rather quickly from the horrors of war.

If a military coup would bring back free markets in USA, then count me in.

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Zero Hedge Advises Panic

A Jewish mother's telegram:  "Worry.  Details to follow."

Tyler Durden notes if everyone were to draw out their cash from the bank, to avoid negative interest rates, it would take twenty years for Uncle Sam to print the currency necessary.  Can you wait twenty years for the ATM to process your request? This article is full of fun facts.

The upshot is get gold, although as that is also property, it too will be subject to forfeiture, as we have done in USA before.  But but but, Uncle Sam was only able to get 20% of the gold.  Yes, but he suppressed it 100% for over 40 years.  Gold might have been hidden, but it was useless.  And available if Uncle Sam had decided to get tough.

Also, both USA and Germany had concentration camps and gold forfeiture.  Although Germany's concentration camps were earlier and nicer to start (according to inmates at the time) things got dire in Germany and horrors still unimaginable happened there.  The danger is not that USA will ever get an Adolf Hitler like Germany, the problem is the American and German people are no different when it comes to self-inflicted crises.

Sure panic, but currency or gold or whatever is property, low hanging fruit, and you are begging to have it taken.  The dinosaurs which grew in the primordial swamps of capitalism are now dying: McDonalds, Best Buy, Sports Authority, Petco, CVS,  Home Depot, etc.  The fetid air which they breathed is chilling.  The corner hardware, grocer, gas stations, pet shop, stationers, pizza parlor, burger stand, all family businesses, which they rolled up in the 70s, 80s, 90s...  gone...  but the dying dinosaurs are creating a vacuum of demand that nature abhors.  Ross Perot's giant sucking sound is retail America needing family businesses.

And they will signal what people really want now.  And for this traders will bridge demand with supply in such places as China, and as capitalism fails in USA, in that measure free markets will return to USA and small family manufacturers will begin to re-emerge, creating a new industrial base.  There is no politician who will not strive to stop this, but again, family self employment is fruit too high.

Sure, as Durden says, whoever panics first wins.  But get your assets into the means of production.

And as an aside, I am seeing thriving retailers who have adapted the ancient Powell's Book Store tactic of selling new books next to used copies, on the same shelves.  Hardware stores with new and used tools in the same store.  Boutiques with new and used clothes on the same racks.  It makes sense, a way to transition inexpensively, and serve a wider group.  Every brick and mortar better than  Amazon for selection and price.  Maybe that is why Amazon is now opening brick and mortar stores.

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Hyperinflation in Credit?

So it is easy enough to figure out the effect of the reverse from inflation to deflation on an asset such as homes and the right strategy.  With inflation (over the last 40 years) buy a home, any home and watch your investment grow.  With deflation, sell your home and rent, and watch the home prices drop.  Renegotiate rent lower every three years.  Your landlord will love you because he has a renter.

Now where it gets tough for me, is to wrap my head around what's going on in malcredit, and that is junk bonds (high yield) are faltering.

So junk bonds pay say 10% and there are investors hungry for that yield, in spite of proper labelling: this stuff is very risky.  it's risky, but bondholders are ahead of everyone else in a bust because they lent credit, not bought into the company. Who buys this is people with fairly solid tallies of credit, so it is not quite malcredit, or at least not the bank-generated toxic waste credit.

Next, we have these four parts: the bond issuer (borrower), the junk rate offered, the bond buyer (lender) and the junk rate earned.

Bonds are debt, not equity, so their process is different than equities.  So, when junk bonds sell at ever higher yields, and AAA debt at negative interest rates, then is the spread the thing?  The gap between the two yields?

in hyperinflation, your currency will not buy much of anything.  When dealing in debt and bonds, which pay in interest rates, what is the extreme/  When your yield offer will not get you much of anything?

Still trying to figure this out.

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How Big Box, Mass Merchandisers Die

There is a theoretical basis for a mass merchandiser, but in capitalism it seems they all require life support to get to mega-status.  Currently, very many names are in trouble: Best Buy, Micky D, Sears, Walmart, Petco, Office Depot, Aerospatiale, you name it, they got troubles!

How can you go under when you can get free credit and you are huge?

Now comes Sports Authority, with this tidbit:

Reuters, citing sources close to the matter, reports that Sports Authority intends to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as soon as next month and close up to 200 of its 450 locations.
The move was initiated after the company missed a $20 million coupon payment on Jan. 15, which triggered a 30-day period, ending Feb. 14, to work out a compromise with its creditors....
The retailer, which has an estimated $643 million in debt, was reportedly in talks with lenders on a deal to reorganize its operations in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

If you owe a buddy $643 and promise to pay him $20 next week, but when the time comes to pay $20 you must tell him you don't have the $20...  your buddy, and no one else, is going to lend you any more money. Nor will they extend you any credit.  you go to cash basis.

Well, Sports Authority cannot go to cash basis.  The entire operation is predicated on massive finance by Cantillon effect credit (Cantillon spoke of money, but the principle applies to malcredit, too).

In short, the early receivers of the new money will increase spending according to their preferences, raising prices in these goods at the expense of a lower standard of living among the late receivers of the new money or among those on fixed incomes who don't receive the new money at all. 

So, here we go...  Sports Authority starting in 1973 (again with the Nixon going off the gold standard lite) began rolling up smaller sporting goods stores, family operations, using bank malcredit and enjoying the Cantillon effect, to wipe out anybody who refused to sell out.  

(The one defense was to go up market, selling $800 ski pants instead of cheap-o discount stuff that burdens Sports Authority shelves today.)

By the 1980s, all of the USA manufacturers who had sold to Sports Authority were wiped out by the folly of discounting.  And just then China was open for business, and willing to extend this new malcredit they discovered from capitalist USA.  Not only were good manufacturing jobs not coming back, incalculable know-how was transferred to China, robbing USA of generations of innovation and improvement.  Advantage China.  But Lenin did say the capitalists will sell the communists the rope used to hang the capitalists.  Just so.

Today, even though malcredit is no-cost, since Sports Authority is in trouble, the pension plans and investors will no longer direct malcredit their way.  Although banks are sitting on mountains of undeployed malcredit, and can create more anytime they like, they are disinclined to all more Zombie businesses to their loan portfolio.

Like all of the other dinosaur roll-up thugs, Sports Authority's insurmountble problem is our economy has decimated Sports Authority's customer base.  Can't get around the fact not enough people coming through the doors to keep the doors open.  Also, the malinvestment and misallocation of malcredit-based buying power demanded a selection of goods and services for that false economy which no longer exists.  Wrong inventory selection, wrong stuff in the supply pipeline.  New product needed for real customers.

So all those Chinese factories putting out product for Sports Authority now have excess production capacity.

But Sports Authority has studied the situation and come up with a plan -  go upscale:

Sports Authority launched new store brand "S.A. Elite" in mid-2010, based on consumer research and testing. These stores are smaller than typical Sports Authority outlets and carry high-end sports apparel and accessories.[7][8]

It won't work.  Micky D and Best Buy have tried this.  Fail. They have the wrong skillset, wrong overhead, unworkable financing and wrong commercial real estate regime to make it work.

On the other hand, anyone with a passion for sporting goods who finds joy in sharing the best in each category can fill the void and meet the demand at retail by doing as a family business what Sports Authority is trying to do as a dinosaur on life support.

And then at the wholesale/supplier level can do so by contracting that now excess production capacity in China with better designs and specs.

And eventually, as the company grows, to relocate production back here in USA, once capitalism fails and free markets get to work on commercial real estate rates, wages,  etc.

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