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Monday, October 14, 2024

2024-10-14

***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:


................... One of Marks’s most important lessons is the concept of asymmetric investing. Essentially, this means structuring your investments so that your potential gains are much larger than your potential losses. Sounds simple, right? .....................


GDP Report Continues To Defy Recession Forecasts

................. Unsurprisingly, financial markets reacted positively to the latest GDP report, viewing it as evidence that the economy has avoided a recession from a period of elevated interest rates. That optimism has been particularly evident in the stock market ........................


What is still recessionary and what’s been different this time?

................... Today, GDP, GDI and retail sales look stable. It is only industrial production that suffered a recession

..................... There are a few components of our US recession model that remain recessionary.

In the labor market, permanent job losers have been rising (similar to Sahm rule), although this is NOT being confirmed by jobless claims data or other diffusions we track like the Philly Fed diffusion.

.................. There is currently a stark difference between single family and multi-family building activity. Multi-family building permits have collapsed (black line, below chart) while single family permits have slowed more gently and look to be back to pre-Covid trends (red line, below chart).

............. Smaller businesses look to have already suffered a recession. Operating margins for non-financial non-corporate firms have already collapsed (red line in below chart). This is where the recession has been.

.............. What’s been different this time?
In our June US consumer report we highlighted how large fiscal deficits and low effective mortgage rates have contributed to low consumer savings rates, which is propping up incomes. This relationship still holds.


.... We have to be careful about the cognitive bias that makes us see stories and trends where there aren’t any, which is why it’s so very important to not focus on one month’s number. Or two. But if you look at this chart, it sure looks like the outlier might not be August and September, but May and June. Doesn’t it? ...........



Headline inflation numbers are a bit higher than the Fed's target, but that's entirely due to the way shelter costs are estimated. On balance, it's clear that the Fed has brought inflation back down to acceptable levels. 

Relative to ex-shelter inflation, interest rates remain quite high, especially mortgage rates. The Fed has plenty of latitude to lower short-term interest rates ......... .

... If it weren't for the BLS's faulty measurement of shelter costs, which greatly overstates housing inflation, inflation would be essentially ZERO. 





China Fare:

Magnus: China’s plan to boost flagging growth is the very definition of economic insanity

China’s leaders seem to have invoked the definition of insanity, attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Einstein: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

For the fourth time in 16 years, Beijing has been spooked by faltering growth into adopting an array of economic stimulus measures designed to reset the economy. It didn’t work for long in 2008, 2015, or 2021, and the “bazooka”“measures announced recently will also most likely come up short. 

These programmes have failed in the past because the government’s focus is mainly on the cyclical – or short-term – outlook. It thinks quick palliatives are the answer to systemic problems such as high youth unemployment, the real estate bust, weak productivity and deflation. China’s problems, however, require structural ...............



P.E. Fare:



Charts:
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(not just) for the ESG crowd:



so, about that:
Let’s be CLEAR about what “Mainstream” Climate Science actually says. (Part Three)

FEEDBACKS and SYSTEM STABILITY

The multipliers in the Climate Change equation.

I have been mulling over how to write this piece. I want to clearly convey the Moderate Climate Science position because it is “mainstream” climate science. It’s the science that goes into the IPCC reports, that GISS says is true, that NOAA uses, and that is taught in Universities throughout the world. ...............

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If you think that this assessment sounds EXTREME. Remember, this is the Moderates speaking. They are projecting only +2.7°C of warming by 2100 in this report.

What they aren’t saying, is how they think that is even possible. Given that we are now at +1.6°C and just had a +0.5°C global temperature increase over the last 4 years.

They are projecting an additional +1.1°C of warming from an increase of another +100ppm of CO2 over the next 50 years. With “Net Zero” being achieved sometime around 2075.

Does that seem realistic?

Remember.

“Because feedback loops are not yet fully integrated into climate models, current emissions reduction plans might fall short in adequately limiting future warming.”

OMG is that an understatement.

Still, this is the “position paper” of the Moderates in Climate Science. It is the “mainstream” position on the “State of the Climate System”. This is “the science” that world leaders, the media, and general public are being told to trust.

As BAD as it is. I’m telling you, things are actually much, much worse. ...............

Apropos of that. Here was something I saw recently on Reddit.
“If we had taken climate change seriously by 1970, we could have prevented disaster with a minor slow down in economic growth.”

“If we had taken climate change seriously by 1980, we could have prevented disaster with a serious but sustainable effort.”

“If we had taken climate change seriously by 1990, we could have prevented disaster with a painful commitment to combating the crisis on par with WW2.”

“If we had taken climate change seriously by 2000, we could have prevented disaster with a global maximum sacrificial effort that would scar humanity for decades, but save us in the end.”

“Instead, we stepped on the gas as we approached the cliff, and there is no way to avoid what’s coming.”


.............. These are the sort of problems you face, when society pursues perpetual economic growth: By the time you realize you have a problem, you can no longer fix it. To achieve net zero by 2040, copper demand would increase by 50% by then compared to 2023. But they’re already running into problems keeping current production levels going, right now.

With no copper, you can’t use solar panels (the grid has to be upgraded and you need a converter), you can’t use wind, you can’t build electric vehicles, even nuclear depends on copper. This is what I mean, when I say the writing is just on the wall by now. Anyone can see where this is going. .................

I’m not really telling you anything new here, it’s not hard to figure these things out. Green growth is an illusion, because growth is the problem. We’ve known this for a long time, it’s what the Club of Rome warned about, that growth would start breaking down right around now, with a sharp crash in production of material goods.

But most people don’t really want to see the bigger picture. Americans are like a drunk guy at a frat party, who is continuing to drink so he doesn’t feel his headache. .....................

At its most essential, degrowth just means doing less. The world already produces more food than we need, but we feed most of it to animals that are then fed to humans. You could think of SARS2 as a way of forcing degrowth upon society: If most people become too sick to work, that will also work to shrink the economy.


Key climate indicators from greenhouse gas levels to ice loss have reached record levels this year in what researchers call a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”


The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating


Decades of warming strains arctic ecosystem, imperils vegetation




Geothermal heat pumps are energy efficient, but they're expensive. Is this technology the "Tesla of heat pumps"?


Why governments and big oil cannot face the future



At September’s UN General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s President Lula described the international financial system as a “Marshall Plan in reverse” in which the poorest countries finance the richest. Driving the point home, Lula thundered, “African countries borrow at rates up to eight times higher than Germany and four times higher than the United States.”

Lula is not alone in this diagnosis. Centrist technocrats par excellence Larry Summers & NK Singh coauthored a report earlier this year arguing that the development world’s mantra to scale up direct financing to the global South—from “billions to trillions”—has failed. Instead, global finance seems to be running in the opposite direction, from poor to rich countries, as was the case last year. Summers and Singh summarize the arrangement thusly: “millions in, billions out.” Added to this is the great global shift to austerity that makes a mockery of climate and development goals.

It’s in this context that talk of “green Marshall Plans”—proposed by Huang Yiping in China and Brian Deese in the US—must be received. Negotiations over technology transfer, market access, and finance deals are a permanent feature of the new cold war: call it strategic green industrial diplomacy. .....................

.............................................................. Both China and the US are, of course, doing what serves their immediate economic and  political needs. Marshall Plans continue to be a mirage; the marriage of decarbonization and development requires far more internationalism than political coalitions in either great power are currently willing or able to underwrite.




Geopolitical Fare:




................. So there you have it. After a full year, they’re finally beginning to admit what this has always been about.

This was never about freeing hostages. It was never about getting rid of Hamas. It was never about Israel’s “right to defend itself”. It was never about mass rapes, beheaded babies, or babies cooked in ovens. It was always about stealing land from the indigenous people of Palestine. .....................



Israel appears to have begun its long-planned ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, with the IDF dropping bombs, issuing evacuation orders for multiple hospitals, attacking civilians with sniper drones, and besieging civilian populations in order to force tens of thousands of people to either move south or die. Israel has reportedly been dropping leaflets on the Jabalia refugee camp ordering people to leave, and then shooting anyone who tries to.

Since the seventh of October last year Israel has committed roughly 100 October sevenths in Gaza ....................

............................ Anyway, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s the trajectory the US empire has us on. An active genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the threat of another extermination campaign in Lebanon, and acceleration toward a direct war of unimaginable horror with Iran.

These psychos must be stopped.



........... We are led by the absolute worst of us. This past year has been a nonstop reminder of this. When western governments support and defend a live-streamed genocide, you know for certain that we are led by the very cruelest and most psychopathically deranged people in our society.

The individuals who are making the most consequential decisions about the direction that human civilization will take on this planet are the individuals who are the least qualified to do so. The absolute least qualified. Any random person walking by you on the sidewalk would be more likely to make decisions which benefit humanity if given control over our world than the people who currently have control over it.

We are ruled by the worst among us, and the worst among us do everything they can to make sure that only they get to rule. The normal, healthy desires of normal, healthy people are at all times being subverted and undermined to ensure that our votes don’t make a difference, that our voices have minimal impact, and that everyone is constantly ingesting a feed of information which is tailored to advance the information interests of the psychopaths in charge.

It isn’t just our right to overthrow such a system, it is our duty. We owe it to the world. We owe it to the people of the global south who are constantly being butchered, brutalized and exploited by the perverse, unwholesome will of our rulers. We owe it to all the nonhuman organisms with whom we share this planet who are being driven to extinction by the ecocidal economic and political systems our rulers keep in place.

We are entitled to overthrow these monsters, and they are not entitled to try to stop us. They are the very worst among us. They deserve nothing but the end of their rule. .............

❖

Gaza is such a great example of both the power of narrative control and of its limits. The power of narrative control has manufactured consent for history’s first live-streamed genocide with many obvious evils, but those obvious evils have also shaken a lot of people awake.

It speaks to the power of narrative control that anyone can be persuaded to believe dropping massive military explosives on areas that are densely populated with children is good and acceptable. It is only by weaving a tapestry of stories about October 7 atrocities and anti-semitism and self-defense and terrorism that anyone can think something so self-evidently evil is actually fine. Humans are storytelling animals whose lives are dominated by mental narrative, so if you can get them to believe absurd narratives, you can get them to espouse absurd positions and absurd worldviews.

But it also speaks to the limitations of the power of narrative control that people are seeing through the stories. There are only so many dead kids you can see, so many screaming mothers and weeping fathers clutching tiny shredded bodies, so many bombed-out hospitals and desperate, starving civilians, before you snap out of your propaganda-induced coma with a start and go “Wait a second — this is evil! Have they been lying to me this whole entire time?? Oh my god, what if everything I’ve been taught about the world is a lie?”

Both Israel and the US-centralized empire understand the power of narrative control. That’s why Israel and its apologists have the concept of “hasbara”, and it’s why the US empire has the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed. But it has its limits, and people are beginning to wake up from the delusions instilled by imperial narrative control.

If enough people wake up from the propaganda, the possibility for real revolutionary change opens up. That’s why Israel and the US empire pour so much energy into reinforcing the bars on the cage of the narrative matrix. If enough of us can wake each other up to reality, it’s over for them. And they know it.





There is a great believe peddled by main stream media that the Biden administration is trying to hold the Zionists   back from their devastating action in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond, but unfortunately fails to do so. Some commentators argue that this is the case because the Israel lobby has a very strong position in U.S. policies and can direct the U.S. government into any direction of its liking.

My hunch is that this is putting the cart before the horse.

It is in fact the Biden administration which is using the Israeli (and Ukrainian) government to serve its foreign policy purposes. ............



Here’s the thing about Iraq, or Palestine, or Libya: what your leaders will do in these countries is what they would do to you if they though it would benefit them.

................... American and Western elites are predators, and their population are sheep. The cops are, as they say themselves, sheep-dogs. They make sure the population holds still for the shearing, and when necessary, the killing. ............

Policy since about 79 has been about deliberately impoverishing the mass of people, while making themselves rich. This isn’t close to in question. ................

Police in America steal more money than burglars. They kill and beat people in significant numbers.

And the day they perceive it to be to their benefit to Iraq or Gaza a big chunk of Americans, they’ll do it. Don’t think otherwise.



.......................... Yet, Israeli society has been drunk on perpetrating crimes. Unlike in the West, where Israelis try to portray themselves as victims, in Israel, the image is the exact opposite: that of strong, undefeatable soldiers who assert their superiority over Palestinians. This is what explains the many TikToks proudly showing Israeli soldiers blowing up Palestinian universities and homes. This is what explains the desire to show them torturing Palestinians and the endless videos of Israelis dressed in hijab and with dirt on their faces mocking Palestinian women and children who have survived Israel’s relentless bombs. Israel is the place where superiority (and cruelty) is on full display.  ..........................



So, the new paradigm for war is: if you can see it, you can kill it.

And drones all over the battlefield mean you can see it. ......................

what’s coming down the line is going to allow for some truly dystopian levels of control and scary levels of individual targeting. ...........


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U.S. B.S.

Republican endorsements, running to the right on foreign policy, an unambitious agenda of incremental change less important than how bad the other guy is. Where have we seen this before?



......... I don’t think I’ve typed the name “KAMALA” more than five times this year, because she is a cipher; a person without any real strong beliefs or convictions beyond her own selfish ones. She is a showroom dummy for the powers-that-be, albeit nowhere near an ideal one as everyone who isn’t a liar will readily concede.

Trump, for better or for worse, is already a known factor. You know what you are going to get with him. The only question is whether he has learned any actual lessons from his previous residency in the White House that could help him perform better the next time around….if he does occupy it in late January of 2025. He was the worst performing POTUS of my lifetime (not the worst POTUS, that was Dubya), half it of being his own fault, the rest belonging to those who were purposely engaged in actively subverting his administration. Has he learned anything? I am not in a position to tell. .............................

This election was always going to be a referendum on what we call the “Deep State”, even though Trump is aligned with the Deep State on so many issues, China being the best example. I wager that future historians are going to have difficulty understanding why the powers-that-be were so stridently opposed to him beyond elements of his personality.

No matter who moves into the White House next year, 90% of what is happening in the USA will remain the same. ..................


I havent read JHK in awhile; twas worth doing so again if only b/c really has a knack at turning a phrase:
Kunstler: Kamala Unwinding
“. . . we are facing a catastrophic collapse of governance. With democracy reduced to a tragedy or a farce (probably both things). . . ." — Ugo Bardi

............... Surely that said it all. She has nothing, brings nothing.

Long ago, she was a pretty girl with a law degree and an infectious laugh on the fringes of local politics in San Francisco.

The winds of fortune blew her this way and that way until she ended up way over her head, used by the reprobates around her as a mere device to stay out of jail.

She ends as an historical prank on her own country.






Sci Fare:






Other Fare:


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The Age of Strong Men
I’ve always felt as though I was born in the wrong era. My wife tells me this on a regular basis and I am consistently drawn to stories from a time for which only an echo remains. An age of heroism, honor, valor, and hand-to-hand warfare.

There is something deeply inspiring about the feats of courage performed by our ancestors. The fact that we made it this far, without things like toilets, sanitation, electricity, refrigerators, supermarkets, and the like is mind-boggling if you think about it. Men crossed hundreds of miles on foot, with no Nikes or special military footwear, carrying armor, weapons, and supplies on their backs, over mountains, valleys, and rivers, to challenge each other, to fight hand-to-hand, smelling the very sweat, bile, blood and excrement of their enemy, and in the process, getting stabbed, slashed and wounded; but still, somehow, surviving. Overcoming all of that, they went on to build the monumental foundations of the civilisation we live in today.

Humanity when viewed through such a lens is truly awe-inspiring, and it’s unfortunate that most people don’t appreciate this.

Much of the corpus of modern anthropo-historic study suggests that the story of humanity is a progressive one. The general view is that humanity evolved from savagery to barbarism, and from there into civilization. In fact, if you ask Francis Fukuyama, in the last few decades we reached the end of history! We finally transcended our savage roots and are now more representative of… civilized (domesticated?) humans? Obedient little pets? Who knows.

Others such as Friedrich Nietzche, Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola and, more recently, Bronze Age Pervert have pushed back on the notion of ‘progress’, and made a case for history being cyclical. In their view, ancient man was closer to “the gods”, while modern man is but a husk of his ancestral greatness, who over the centuries has exchanged his honor and virtue for the material comforts of a soft civilisation. 

I used to be in the naive camp of the former, believing that the story of humanity has, besides a few troughs along the way, been one of “progress”; but I’ve come to reconsider this and cede mental territory to the latter arguments. While there has certainly been a general undercurrent of technological progress, the social, structural and moral fabric that binds us is undoubtedly more cyclical. Sure, we live in a technological golden age, but we also live in a moral, intellectual, emotional, and physiological dark age - a perspective that more people are beginning to agree with, not least because of the growing amount of supporting evidence.

............... Our nihilistic age is characterized by a pervasive, nebulous sense of hopelessness and creeping disquiet. We are trapped in a longhouse of our own making, managed by an administrative class to whom we’ve ceded ever more power. The world has become one giant HR department run by crazy cat ladies and a never-ending horde of bureaucrats. 


Radagast: The low IQ problem

................ When you bring up the low IQ problem on the right, conservatives will bring up the mental illness problem on the left. But the mental illness problem, is an outgrowth of the high IQ problem. If your mind can entertain more ideas and process more inputs from your environment, you’re more likely to have to deal with negative realizations about our world ............


The Conversation
Who's having it?

................ Neither I nor my spouse nor any of our friends will get to retire. We’ll count ourselves lucky if we even make it to our 60s, provided disaster and disease don’t take us out first. Anyone with a halfway-decent house has no idea if it will withstand the next hurricane, the next flood, or the next tornado. We await the slow, inevitable collapse of the insurance industry and the power grid. I used to daydream about having a home library. Now I daydream about having a cave. .........

........................ Every day, millions of people around the world desperately want to have the conversation with their friends and family. It’s eating them alive to keep their knowledge of the future to themselves. They think we’re downers. They have no idea how much we’re already picking and choosing what to tell them. Every day, we train ourselves to enjoy the moment, as if it’s the last ..............



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