NC Renegades

by Brandon Smith

We live in strange economic times, stranger perhaps than at any other point in history. Since 2007-2008, the globally intertwined and dependent fiscal system has suffered considerable declines in every conceivable area. Manufacturing around the world is in a slump, from Japan to China to Europe, with the minimal manufacturing accomplished in the U.S. also fading. Consumption is falling, most notably in petroleum and raw materials. Employment is truly dismal, with the U.S. posting over 94 million people as “non-participants” in the national work force.

High paying jobs are disappearing, and the only jobs replacing them are in the low wage service sector. This problem is becoming so pervasive that certain more socialist states including California and New York are attempting to offset the loss of sustainable income jobs by forcing retail and service companies into paying an inflated minimum wage. That is to say, states hope to stop the bloodletting in wages by magically turning low paying jobs into high paying jobs.

As anyone with any economic sense knows, you cannot have a faltering consumer sector in which people are buying less and force service based companies to pay their employees far more per hour than the job is worth. Those companies will simply lay off more employees, cut hours or shut down entire branches of their operations in order to maintain their profit margins. Either that, or those companies will go out of business.

One sector, though, has continued to reap certain benefits (for now), and that is equities. There is a good reason for this.

More…

Has the U.S. economy gotten better over the past six months or has it gotten worse?  In this article, you will find solid proof that the U.S. economy has continued to get worse over the past six months.  Unfortunately, most people seem to think that since the stock market has rebounded significantly in recent weeks that everything must be okay, but of course that is not true at all.  If you look at a chart of the Dow, a very ominous head and shoulders pattern is forming, and all of the economic fundamentals are screaming that big trouble is ahead.  When Donald Trump told the Washington Post that we are heading for a “very massive recession“, he wasn’t just making stuff up.  We are already seeing lots of things happen that never take place outside of a recession, and the U.S. economy has already been sliding downhill fairly rapidly over the past several months.  With all that being said, the following are 19 facts that prove things in America are worse than they were six months ago…

#1 U.S. factory orders have now declined on a year over year basis for 16 months in a row.  As Zero Hedge has noted, in the post-World War II era this has never happened outside of a recession…

In 60 years, the US economy has not suffered a 16-month continuous YoY drop in Factory orders without being in recession. Moments ago the Department of Commerce confirmed that this is precisely what the US economy did, when factory orders not only dropped for the 16th consecutive month Y/Y, after declining 1.7% from last month

#2 Factory orders have now reached the lowest level that we have seen since the summer of 2011.

#3 It is being projected that corporate earnings will be down 8.5 percent for the first quarter of 2016 compared to one year ago.  This will be the fourth quarter in a row that we have seen year over year declines, and the last time that happened was during the last recession.

#4 Total business sales have fallen 5 percent since the peak in mid-2014.

#5 S&P 500 earnings have now fallen a total of 18.5 percent from their peak in late 2014.

More…

by Robert Gore

For a long time, economic policy in affluent, developed countries has attempted to end-run reality. While there have been isolated remnants of intellectual integrity that stood in opposition, much of what passes for the field of economics has provided cover. Delusions being more comforting than reality—and often more profitable in the short term—financial markets have fully endorsed them. Evading reality doesn’t make it go away, and evasion makes the eventual consequences that much more severe. Governments and central banks have postponed and ameliorated the consequences, but the mounting long-term costs are staggering. Now, the end run is no longer possible.

A phrase used to sell the Federal Reserve Act in the early 1900s—“an elastic currency”—denotes its foundation in fantasy. When money is left to private actors, choices, and markets, it is neither elastic or inelastic. Just like other goods and services, it’s acquisition and use is governed by the dynamic forces of supply, demand, and the price mechanism. Money has obvious functions and usefulness, so there is a demand for it. It will be, if government has no role, something tangible that requires resources to produce, probably a precious metal, or something directly convertible to that intrinsically valuable medium (see “Real Money”). Its supply will be governed by the same factors that determine the supply of other tangible items. Its price is its exchange value relative to other goods and services. In a system where government has no monetary role, debt is not money, although it may sometimes fulfill monetary functions, and is tethered to production. Its quantity can not long outrun the means to repay it.

The welfare state—theft from those with productive ability to the government and those it deems “in need”—is a self-evident attempt to abridge reality. Ability and its fruits are limited, needs are not. Governments now meet “needs” for income, pensions, shelter, medical care, child care, weaponry, military bases, corporate subsidies, bailouts, mass transit, crop price supports, education, and anything else those running the governments judge necessary, or more correctly, politically expedient. In most if not all welfare states, the “needy” now outnumber the able. Not surprisingly, economic performance has deteriorated for decades. Economies are sputtering around the zero growth line, depending on the abstruse calculations underlying seasonal adjustments and price indexes, on their way to destinations well below zero.

More…

Some politicians want to ban cash, arguing that cash is helping criminals. The first steps in that direction are the withdrawal of big denomination notes and the limits imposed on cash payments.

Proponents of a ban on cash claim that this will help fight criminal transactions — involved in money laundering, terrorism, and tax evasion. These promises of salvation are used to get the general public to agree to a society without cash. But there is no convincing proof for the claim that the world without cash will be a better one. Even if undesirable behavior is indeed financed by cash, you still need to answer the question: will the undesirable behavior disappear without cash? Or will those who commit the undesirable acts take to new ways and means to reach their goal?

Take the example of the 500 euro note. If we do away with it, won’t those who wish to use cash pay with five 100 euro notes instead? Or ten 50 euro notes? And what about the costs imposed on the large majority of respectable people, if you put a ban on their cash? Using the same logic, should we ban alcohol, because some can’t handle it properly?

It’s Really about Central Banks

More…

The crew of a U.S. Navy ship stopped a massive Iranian arms shipment dead in its tracks, seizing thousands of weapons, AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers that likely were headed to Yemen, the Pentagon announced Monday.

The seizure, which unfolded in the Arabian Sea on March 28, was the third of its kind in recent weeks, military officials say. Iran has been supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen in their proxy war against a Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States. Like Iran, the Houthis are a Shia-led group.

The arms shipment appears to mark the latest provocative action from the defiant Islamic republic, which reported last month that it tested missiles marked with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out.” And on Monday, the Iranian government warned the U.S. to butt out of trying to control its missile program. “The White House should know that defense capacities and missile power, specially at the present juncture where plots and threats are galore, is among the Iranian nation’s red lines… and we don’t allow anyone to violate it,” Deputy Chief of Staff Brig-Gen Maassoud Jazzayeri told state media.

On Friday, President Obama said Iran was obeying the “letter” of its landmark nuclear agreement with the West, but not the “spirit” of it.

More…

Evangelical preacher the Rev. Franklin Graham has warned that much like the decline of the Babylonian empire close to 2,500 years ago, America may also be staring down at its end, unless it turns back to God.

“What’s the writing on the wall for America? As a nation we are found lacking because of sin and disobedience to God’s Holy Word. We have not honored Him. If we don’t turn back to God, I fear that our end will be near,” Graham wrote on Facebook Sunday.

He noted that 2,500 year ago, present day Iraq was known as the Babylonian empire, and boasted one of the largest armies in the world at the time.

“Its king, Belshazzar, was having a big party drinking and boasting with his wives, his mistresses, and his nobles,” Graham described, referring to the account in the book of Daniel in the Bible.

He added: “While they were partying, the hand of God appeared and wrote a message on the wall, terrifying everyone including King Belshazzar. His face grew pale and his knees went weak. Daniel is called in to interpret the handwriting which says three things: ‘Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.'”

More…

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Monday that states may count all residents, whether or not they are eligible to vote, in drawing election districts. The decision was a major statement on the meaning of a fundamental principle of the American political system, that of “one person one vote.”

“We hold, based on constitutional history, this court’s decisions and longstanding practice, that a state may draw its legislative districts based on total population,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court.

As a practical matter, the ruling mostly helped Democrats and upheld the status quo.

But until this decision, the court had never resolved whether voting districts should contain roughly the same number of people or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places that have large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally — including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants and children. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

More…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is always hope for the country. There is no hope for this government.

David DeGerolamo

h/t Watcher