Credit deflation and the reflation cycle to come (part 2)

[JMD]

5 hours ago, Harley said:

And expressing them against a meaningless "cases' figure.  Need to know per capita, and a million other metrics, ideally all normalised.  They must have this data, else they are not trying to control it, or whatever.  So yes, they must have it but seem to keep it quiet!  Why is the key question? Or maybe the MSM are just dire at reporting things.  Or the govt thinks we are children as at least their advice about hand washing and isolation ties in with the article.  I beginning to get sceptical and conspiritorial.  Yes, it's real but so is influenza, etc.  I'm hunkering down but will be focussed on trying to detect and understand any parallel game being played out and react accordingly.

Harley, its interesting how so many recently on this blog are asking these types of questions. I wrote recently that I find DB's economic road maps useful for illuminating the social/political trends to be played out or yet to be. The macro discussions of this thread are also excellent for reinforcing this.    

I don't think its conspiracy Harley, but it may I think be something just as dark. So in terms of your phrase 'understanding the parallel games...' The social commentator Douglas Murray talks about the West having lost confidence in itself, its institutions, etc and effectively it is committing suicide. I don't think things are quiet so bleak (Murray has a book to sell I suppose) but I do think that so many facets of our culture, law, freedoms and learning have been hollowed out. It is so alarming to hear so-called activists talk incessantly about the importance of human rights and yet, for example, in recent years ancient freedom of speech laws have been upended under 'hate speech' laws, habeas corpus protections have been withdrawn by the European arrest warrant - yet these very things are perversely celebrated as being 'progressive'. This type of topsy-turvy thinking may now be endemic in the West where critical thinking skills have been replaced by emotion and feelings.  

Regarding Covid-19 the key question for me would be: what are the ages/prior health conditions of the 200 people who have died so far in the UK. If as I suspect. the vast majority were elderly and already ill, then why weren't these demographic groups of people told to self isolate weeks ago and then targeted/supported with relevant government help, health support, etc. After all this type of knowledge was learned many weeks ago from China's own experience of the virus. A far more effective solution I would have thought plus a far cheaper one and with no risk of bankrupting the nation. Strange than that the media has not asked whether this option was ever seriously considered? 

Harley, (as this is a financial thread!) you wrote in a recent post (I cant recall your exact wording so will paraphrase) about your thinking concerning a possible new financial paradigm emerging, and yet things weren't fully adding up in terms of arriving at conclusions. I think I agree and think that all these aspects feed in to what's happening around us now. I do just wish I could come up with a perspective - however light in detail - about how all these disparate moving parts can help inform us into making better investment decisions. Have you perhaps got any more thoughts about this in terms of investment strategy? 

[Gin]

2 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

I could swear I only typed BBC, not So-Called BBC, has @spunko rigged this to autocorrect? I'm spooked!

Not a good feeling is it. Unless you are in on the joke.

 

Come an be in my gang, my gang, my gang.

[CVG]

This was interesting from Bullionvault on Friday. Whole article here:

https://www.bullionvault.com/info/client-update-20200320

Extract:

"We have several substantial deliveries scheduled, but please be aware that demand continues to run very strong. This means that offer prices – quoted by other users wanting to sell silver – can be unusually high compared to the prevailing spot price in the wholesale market, because some sellers may seek materially higher margins over spot than BullionVault ordinarily does.

To protect you from over-paying, the BullionVault Order Board always rejects any new bid or offer that is more than 10% away from the current spot price. (Older orders outside that 10% limit will continue to appear for a time because they were nearer to the spot price when placed. New buyers cannot match them however, unless the spot price rises sharply.)"

[MrXxxx]

13 hours ago, spygirl said:

Let's get this straight - gold is totally useless as a means as exchange.

The stuff will rub off on your pockets.

For trade, you need a liquid, flexible currency that's broadly accepted.

Since I started following this sort if stuff in the 80s, it's always been the dollar.

At one point, I thought the Yen would ramp up. Then Japan blew up, and the whole trading thing that was Japan disappeared up its arse.

Then Euro started, and Europe is big. However, printing the slush fund needed for a trading currency is verboten by Germany. 

Dollar as a the reserve andor reserve currency is not the free ride people Inc. Americans think. It keeps the dollar strong, which destroyed jobs for the bottom 30% , which got Trump elected and a turn away from global trade.

Spy, I think you have made my point beautifully...you have cited a number of FIATs that have `failed`, yet despite hundreds of years gold still maintains its value. I agree its no longer used as a currency but it is still a store of wealth, and this is what the gold standard is/was its original purpose....

...just for the record I don't have any, so don't have a vested interest.

[CVG]

Dividends being suspended this morning include GOG and CARD and probably SGC. Update from SGC includes:

Management actions 

We have taken decisive action to reduce our cost base, reduce our capital expenditure and reduce the effect of the revenue downturn on our cash flow.  In particular:

·     No new business acquisitions are currently being considered;

·     No new non-essential capital commitments are being made;

·     We are reducing regional bus mileage, as explained above, and are in discussions with other organisations as to how our workforce and vehicle fleet might support the delivery of other services for which there is increased demand;

·     Non-essential discretionary spend has been stopped;

·     We have frozen all but essential recruitment of new staff;

·     Our Directors are sacrificing 50% of their salaries / fees for a period of time, will not receive any bonuses for 2019/20 and will not receive any pay increase for 2020/21;

·     Pay negotiations and decisions in respect of other staff will reflect the challenging environment we currently face;

·     We are working with industry bodies and other operators, and are in discussions with the relevant authorities about protecting the amounts we receive in respect of concessionary travel, tendered services, school services and Bus Service Operators Grant ("BSOG").

[spygirl]

1 minute ago, MrXxxx said:

Spy, I think you have made my point beautifully...you have cited a number of FIATs that have `failed`, yet despite hundreds of years still maintains its value. I agree its no longer used as a currency but it is still a store of wealth, and this is what the gold standard is/was its original purpose....

...just for the record I don't have any, so don't have a vested interest.

Gold drives people nuts.

Iron maintains a value.

Gold price varies a lot.

Currencies have two functions- store of value and transaction.

That chart does not show the storage costs, which can be very large.

Gold will never been used for transaction.

So, you then run into the issue of a gold derivative/certificate, which suffers from the problems are fiat currencies.

Gold, like silver and other non perishable commodities is a hedge.

 

 

 

[MrXxxx]

10 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

And as governments are taking policy from his paper, it will cause many deaths of economic despair.

I also had a look at Italy. There is evidence that Italy reports that a patient with coronavirus who dies, dies of coronavirus. This is a logical fallacy and ignores that they may have flu or other nasties at the same time. And it turns out that Northern Italy gets absoultely savaged by the flu this time of year, with deaths in the 1000s per week on average.

But as we both know, `our` government is very happy to roll out their scientist (and his/her authoritive opinion) whilst it suits their narrative, but are quick to drop them when it doesn't I.e. I wonder where their Drug Zsar is now?...and even if he/she believes in what they are saying (rather than increasing their profile/future grant success), it doesn't mean that they are correct; just look at the increase in Nature paper retractions in the last ten years for evidence of this.

[MrXxxx]

8 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Had to laugh today,when Sky news were reporting that Chinese health officials had been over to Italy to advise them how to lock down the locals.You couldn't make this up.

There are lots of issues with this Corona Virus and I've been through a few already.The main one is the lack of testing.It is beyond pointless both economcially and from an epedemiological point of view,to ban people who have antibodies to the virus, from leaving their homes/working in hosptials or paying taxes.As I've said before,the govts response has ,mainly been based on guesswork and nothing seems to be changing much,not least the poverty of the PPE they issue to NHS staff.

I link to a link to the Isreali Defence Minsiter with the most sensible policy solution to the probelms created by the virus that I've seen ie keep the oldies separate and develop herd immunity.Whatever your personal view of the Israelis',they have long history of having to be practical about life.

https://order-order.com/2020/03/22/israels-social-isolation-herd-immunity-strategy/

At the moment,in the UK,I'm watching civil liberties that took a hundreds of years to gain,getting washed away by a flu outbreak(whether that flu turns into pneumonia in elderly o rthe  immunosuppressed is a moot point it's still a flu outbreak) and noone seems to care.(and nornal flu kills a lot of people,far more than corona virus has so far)

Most importantly,there seems a total lack of understanding that economic problems resulting from the govt repsonse to the outbreak will take their toll.Yes,a decent size chunk of the elderly infected with heh virus will die, but there seems little concern for the fact that many people may suffer poor health as a result of having their local pub/cafe/market shut or from being laid off and made economcially inactive.

The political class would have you belive this crisis is all about averting the deaths of elderly patients with cardiovascular and respiratory problems,but actually its also about creating a whole host of mental & physical health problems that stem from unemployment,isolation and poverty.

Thank christ for this post, I was beginning to think `i` had lost the plot and was going insane (seriously!)...over the last two weeks things have changed so dramatically, with every day bringing a new level of democratic erosion that appears unbelievable yet the public seem oblivious...and you thought the whole Brexit scenario was a democratic game changer!

[headrow]

The Financial Conduct Authority issued a statement requesting that listed companies observe a moratorium on the publication of preliminary financial statements

[MrXxxx]

57 minutes ago, spygirl said:

Iron maintains a value.

You ever tried to go on the run with a pocket full of iron?..."You are Tyson Fury and I claim my £5 note!"...

57 minutes ago, spygirl said:

Gold will never been used for transaction

I appreciate I am not old enough to remember but it has been, in the same way any portable, high value measure of wealth has been I.e. diamonds...just look at hows gold/diamonds were used in WW2 amongst the wealthy fleeing.

57 minutes ago, spygirl said:

o, you then run into the issue of a gold derivative/certificate, which suffers from the problems are fiat currencies

Agree, but we were discussed the real thing not a promissory note weren't we?

[Alex]

19 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

Thank christ for this post, I was beginning to think `i` had lost the plot and was going insane (seriously!)...over the last two weeks things have changed so dramatically, with every day bringing a new level of democratic erosion that appears unbelievable yet the public seem oblivious...and you thought the whole Brexit scenario was a democratic game changer!

For the majority of people this has all happened too fast to yet register deeply, and they believe it's temporary. They are in the denial stage. It will turn ugly when the denial can no longer be sustained and suppressed fear turns to anger.

[PaulParanoia]

14 minutes ago, headrow said:

The Financial Conduct Authority issued a statement requesting that listed companies observe a moratorium on the publication of preliminary financial statements

Interesting.  Seems they are doing this to make sure investors aren't looking at out of date information ...

The City watchdog has told companies not to publish preliminary financial results for at least two weeks to give them time to adjust their reports in light of the Covid-19 crisis and prevent investors trading on out-ofdate information.

[sancho panza]

Possibly the best holistic take on the current crisis and the conclusion that the politcal elite focusing on corona virus in isolation will prove to the detriment of society more widely is hard to argue with.

I'm not saying A&E staff aren't getting smashed because they are but what I am saying is that the economic shutdown could well affect a lot more people than the corona virus.

hattip Andrew Neil twitter feed.

https://spectator.us/consider-costs-coronavirus/

Less than 24 hours after California governor Gavin Newsom closed ‘non-essential’ businesses and ordered Californians to stay inside to avoid spreading the coronavirus, New York governor Andrew Cuomo followed suit. ‘This is about saving lives,’ Cuomo said during a press conference on Friday. ‘If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.’

Cuomo’s assertion that saving ‘just one life’ justifies an economic shutdown raises questions that have not been acknowledged, much less answered, as public officials across the country compete to impose ever more draconian anti-virus measures:

• Is there any limit to the damage we are willing inflict on the world economy to mitigate the infection?
• What are the benefits of each new commerce-killing measure and how do they compare to the costs?
• What are the criteria for declaring success in the coronavirus fight and who decides whether they have been met?

To ask about the costs and benefits of the spreading economic shutdowns guarantees an accusation of heartlessness. But the issue is not human compassion versus alleged greed. The issue is balancing one target of compassion against another. The millions of people whose lives depend on a functioning economy also deserve compassion. Many of the businesses that are now being shuttered by decree will never come back. They do not have the reserves to survive weeks or months without customers. In New York City, many streets were already blighted by rows of empty storefronts. The virus shutdown could knock out the remaining enterprises, as customers acclimate themselves further to ordering on-line. Layoffs are piling up in restaurants, hotels, and malls; on Tuesday, unemployment claims in California were 40 times above the daily average, an increase greater than any coronavirus surge.

It is low-wage employees who are most being hurt. The knowledge class can shelter in place and work from their home computers. Their employers are not shutting down. Not so people who physically provide goods and services. The employees who have been let off now may not be able to find work again if the economy continues to collapse. While governors and mayors declare some businesses essential and some not, to their employees, they are all essential.

A prolonged depression will stunt lives as surely as any viral epidemic, and its toll will not be confined to the elderly. The shuttering of auto manufacturing plants led to an 85 percent increase in opioid overdose deaths in the surrounding counties over seven years, according to a recent study. Radical social upheaval is possible.

The arts world is being decimated. For the last two years the New York Times and other left-wing newspapers have been bashing the boards of major cultural institutions for being too white and too male. Those institutions had better hope that their ‘non-diverse’ trustees feel flush enough after the $5 trillion loss in the stock market to bail them out.

While the coming explosion of deficit spending — possibly $2 trillion worth — may be necessary to keep people afloat, government cannot possibly replicate the wealth-creating effects of voluntary commerce. The enormously complex web of trade, once killed, cannot be brought back to life by government stimulus. And who is going to pay for all that deficit spending as businesses close and tax revenues disappear?

Pace Cuomo, it is not the case that saving even one life justifies any and every policy. Decision-making is always about trade-offs. About 16,000 Americans are murdered each year. That number could be radically lowered by locking up known gangbangers and throwing away the key. The left in America, however, is on a crusade to empty the prisons and stop enforcing a host of criminal laws. Some of the de-incarcerated and decriminalized will go on to maim and murder. An influential criminologist once acknowledged to me that lowering prison sentences in order to end so-called mass incarceration would inevitably mean that ‘some guy will throw a little old lady off the roof’. The answer is not to back off of de-incarceration, he said, it is to explain that the community in the aggregate is safer with resources diverted into social programs instead of incarceration. That is a perfectly defensible line of argument, regardless of whether one agrees with the particulars in this case.

Around 40,000 Americans die each year in traffic deaths. We could save not just one life but tens of thousands by lowering the speed limit to 25 miles per hour on all highways and roads. We tolerate the highway carnage because we value the time saved from driving fast more. Another estimated 40,000 Americans have died from the flu this flu season. Social distancing policies would have reduced that toll as well, but until now we have preferred freedom of association and movement.

So it is worth reviewing what we know and don’t know about the coronavirus epidemic to assess the benefits and costs of the growing policies. The rising number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is undoubtedly a function to a considerable extent of increased testing. We don’t know its transmission rate. We don’t know how much shutting down restaurants and air travel lowers that transmission rate. We still have no idea what the virus fatality rate is, since we don’t know how many people in the general population are infected. Early fatality estimates were undoubtedly too high, since they were derived from a small denominator composed of already identified, severe cases.

The only situation to date where an entire, closed population was tested was the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship, as Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis observed last week. Among seven hundred passengers and crew members, seven died, for a 1 percent mortality rate — low given the close and prolonged exposure among the passengers. A cruise ship’s population is much more elderly than the general population and thus more vulnerable to disease. Ioannidis suggests that a reasonable fatality estimate for the US population as a whole could range from 0.05 percent to 1 percent; he settles for 0.3 percent. If 1 percent of the US population becomes infected, under a 0.3 percent fatality rate, 10,000 people would die, a number that would not move the needle much on the existing level of deaths due to various types of influenzas, Ioannidis notes.

Those fatalities would be highly concentrated among the elderly and the already severely sick. In Italy, as of March 17, there were 17 virus deaths under the age of 50, out of a little over 2,000 total deaths. Eighty-eight percent of those deaths were concentrated in just two adjacent regions — Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna — out of 20 regions, rather than being spread throughout the country. Five males between the ages of 31 and 39 had died, all had serious preexisting conditions including cardiovascular and renal disease, diabetes, and obesity. The fatality rate for those under 30 was zero. The median age of Italy’s COVID-19 decedents was 80.5. They had a median of 2.7 pre-existing health conditions: 33 percent had coronary artery disease, 76 percent suffered from hypertension, 35 percent were diabetic, and 20 percent had had cancer in the last five years. Just 3 decedents had no pre-existing conditions.

Italy’s demographics are different from our own — it is an older population with a high concentration of Chinese workers, especially in the north. On February 1, the mayor of Florence called on Italians to hug a Chinese person to fight virus-induced racism. According to a propaganda video put out by the Chinese government, many Italians complied. Nevertheless, American virus deaths so far mirror the pattern of Italy: geographically clustered in three states and concentrated among the elderly or those with serious chronic medical conditions. In South Korea, too, deaths have hit the elderly, whereas as many as 99 percent of all infections have been mild.

Nevertheless, government authorities at the federal, state, and local levels are seizing powers unheard of in peace or even wartime. Many on the left want an even greater assumption of power. Michael Dorf, a Cornell University law professor, has urged the suspension of habeas corpus, to eliminate the possibility of a legal challenge to a national lockdown. It’s hard to avoid the impression that some see the current moment as a warm-up for their wish-list of sweeping economic interventions.

The New York Times has touted the benefits of social distancing and curtailed commerce for global warming and air pollution. ‘Never waste even a tragic crisis,’ the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at University of Minnesota told the Times with reference to global warming policy. (This is the same sage, Dr Michael Osterholm, who early on criticized President Trump’s prescient travel ban from China as more of an emotional or political reaction than a sound public health one.) European leftists are noting with delight that large-scale state intrusion into the economy is being normalized. Times columnist Farhad Manjoo gloated that ‘everyone’s a socialist in a pandemic’. Actually, we had better hope that everyone’s a capitalist, since it is the extraordinary flexibility and fecundity of America’s private businesses that are continuing to restock grocery shelves after the panicked hordes strip them bare. It is private businesses that are retooling themselves to produce much-needed medical equipment.

The press is working overtime to ensure maximum hysteria. The New York Times outdid itself on Saturday, following a weeklong run of terrifying front-page banner headlines. A blood red map of the US above the fold purported to show infections by July 1 if no restrictions were imposed on public life — a completely counterfactual projection, since numerous restrictions have already been imposed and more are being added daily. The headlines above the fold contained the usual blend of Trump-bashing and fear-mongering: ‘PRESSURE ON TRUMP AS MILLIONS ARE KEPT HOME’, ‘Mixed Signals From President Sow Confusion’, and ‘Virus Tightens Grip on Nation’. This at a time of 214 deaths and 17,000 infected, compared to the 36 to 51 million infected by the flu this season, and the 140 to 350 flu deaths a day.

‘America plunged into a deeper state of disruption and paralysis on Friday,’ opened the lead story. But that disruption and paralysis were man-made, caused by the stay at home orders, not by the actual medical consequences of the pandemic. It was not the virus that was tightening its grip on the nation, it was policy and fear.

To be sure, we are facing a daunting public health challenge. Thousands will die; every death will be a harrowing loss for the victim’s family. Our medical personnel are already being severely taxed; they deserve proper equipment and facilities. The government is right to coordinate and boost the effort to supply them with desperately needed protective gear. But the rush to impose sweeping restrictions on public and commercial life across the entire economy should be more carefully evaluated. We have no ability to test the efficacy of those measures and no criteria for lifting them. The downside risk to their being over-inclusive could well outweigh the upside risk.

Moreover, a certain percentage of social distancing is virtue theater. While the elites stay at home and carefully maintain their cordons sanitaires, they expect their food and other necessities to magically materialize from a vast and complex supply chain whose degree of social distancing is out of sight and out of mind.

We should focus our efforts on our known vulnerable populations — the elderly, the infirm, and those who care for them. The elderly should be protected from unknown contacts. Nursing homes must be immaculately maintained. But until there is clear evidence that canceling commerce is essential to preventing mass casualties, the stampede of shutdown oneupmanship should end

[Democorruptcy]

Surplus energy:

Quote

 

On the basis of this scoping exercise, we can anticipate that the global financial system could be facing a hit of $160tn, which is 185% of GDP.

That might be something from which the economy itself could recover, albeit in a battered and bruised form.

But you’d have to be a long way towards the Pollyanna end of the axis of optimism to think that the financial system could survive without either severe inflationary effects or a systemically-dangerous process of default.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/03/22/168-polly-and-the-sandwich-man/

 

 

[sancho panza]

7 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

Maybe just stage managing the excuse to kick off the necessary co-ordinated massive QE? I mean if we had it figured out as an inevitability, I guess someone at high levels has too :-) I'd ask myself "well why didn't the Fed go big first, the dollar is killilng the rest of the world right now" and I'd answer myself "because they needed to scare the shit out of us, and congress in particular, first".

It's possible that they were going to wait for 'Big Kahuna' fear to do this, but are using the virus as an opportunity to do the same thing. Interesting times.

Ah he enjoys it really I think 

For my cyncial side you have to sit back and look at the scale of this QE and the fact that they're managed to push it through before we've even had an economic crisis.It's as if they're front running a debt deflation.Noramlly,you get the debt defltaion,then you get the QE.This time they've suprassed themselves.And as the article I post above alludes,we have yet to get a really clear picture of the nature of this crisis because the data is so,so poor.

Unfortunately,the MSM seem to be really running with this hysteria.

7 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

Interesting. This has been my view too, why punish the many? Tyrrany of the minority again, this is what I meant when I said "the old gits are shutting down the world to protect themselves" - the decision makers of the world are in at-risk groups, so lock it all down! Never mind that most of them don't have to work anyway.

It's interesting to see that whilst the elite in Londinium are telling us all to isolate,they're still bobbing around the capital,no doubt in amazement at how the online Ocado orders are getting filled.

[NogintheNog]

40 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

1 hour ago, spygirl said:

Gold will never been used for transaction

Really? That's news to me.

https://glintpay.com/

[TheCountOfNowhere]

FTSE is open ( and down below 5000 ).  Are these ***s seriously going to work ?

[M S E Refugee]

Gold better had start rising soon or the Dow is going to 1500 on a 1:1 ratio.

[sancho panza]

7 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

I guess they have to, if they want us kept indoors.

My wife is doing rounds of "but what about..." with me every night on the phone, as I try and talk her down off the roof. The 18 year old came up when I said 'we're not at risk'. I said "so what underlying condition did she have?' ' I don't know, I just saw the headline...'what have I said about headline writers....'

I tell her that small numbers of teenagers and twentysomethings die of the flu every year, and that the media is going to jump all over the outliers. She still kind of trusts what she hears from the media, especially from the So-Called BBC! They lost me a long time ago, circa 2007, it'll be a very interesting outcome of all this if they lose the trust of swathes more of the populace, if it has been overblown, that is.

I've had long debates with Mrs P regarding this crisis and the overreaction to it.From the start I've heard these arguments that 'it's not just old people','the lock down is to save the NHS' etc etc

Because of my profession,I have an understanding of what it's like to see someone literally dying in front of me with breathing problems and what it feels like to be the clinician dealing with it on my own once we're en route.I don't argue my case out of a lack of compassion but rather from compassion for wider society.

I also see that shutting pubs will adversely affect the old and the lonely and that isolation is a disease in itself.Some people need to associate and that whilst Whatsapp and Skype are great,for people who have habits going back fifty years,they quite simply can't replicate normal social contact.I know old blokes whose one daily routine is to go to the pub for a few pints who would probably enter a decent size depression at that being taken away.

Mrs P is the other end to my mother,who quite simply does not care about dying if it means she can't go shopping and have normal social interractions.Society could accuse my mother of selfishness and arrest her for venturing out(she's over 70) but she'd just go to prison.I've tried and tried to get her to stay in but she just won't.

I have a friend,who runs a bookies,relies on the overtime,so even if he gets the 80% off the govt,he's in trouble financially.

What I'm trying to say is that behind the rather inadequate and misleading govt stats are a lot of other histories that are pertinent that are being ignored and whilst I don't underestimate the impact on A&E of this crisis,I think we're letting the MSM obscure the broader picture to suit their own agenda.

[NogintheNog]

4 minutes ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

FTSE is open ( and down below 5000 ).  Are these ***s seriously going to work ?

Yeah, probably mostly from home via the various secure networks and VPN that are set up for them to do so. Not sure they are really ***s, I mean they are just doing gods work to quote Lloyd C. Blankfein!

I don't blame them, I blame men and women in grey suits above them, who have created the monster of the current financial system.

19 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

For my cyncial side you have to sit back and look at the scale of this QE and the fact that they're managed to push it through before we've even had an economic crisis.It's as if they're front running a debt deflation.Noramlly,you get the debt defltaion,then you get the QE.This time they've suprassed themselves.And as the article I post above alludes,we have yet to get a really clear picture of the nature of this crisis because the data is so,so poor.

Unfortunately,the MSM seem to be really running with this hysteria.

I wondered what they were up to at Davos....

[spygirl]

57 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

You ever tried to go on the run with a pocket full of iron?..."You are Tyson Fury and I claim my £5 note!"...

I appreciate I am not old enough to remember but it has been, in the same way any portable, high value measure of wealth has been I.e. diamonds...just look at hows gold/diamonds were used in WW2 amongst the wealthy fleeing.

Agree, but we were discussed the real thing not a promissory note weren't we?

Other than exception stones, Diamonds value was entirely made up by US marketing.

Assuming the US $ loses it place, Id guess trades will be some form of electronic barter system, using third parties.

Theres already system like this in place, esp, EU-Iran, where they cannot use dollars.

Ditto CHina

https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-barter-deals-china-dedollarizing-economy/5696047

 

 

 

[TheCountOfNowhere]

26 minutes ago, NogintheNog said:

Yeah, probably mostly from home via the various secure networks and VPN that are set up for them to do so. Not sure they are really ***s, I mean they are just doing gods work to quote Lloyd C. Blankfein!

I don't blame them, I blame men and women in grey suits above them, who have created the monster of the current financial system.

I wondered what they were up to at Davos....

They're only following orders.

[headrow]

StockMarketWire.com - Royal Dutch Shell said it would halt its share buyback programme and cut spending to counter the impact of the spreading coronavirus and a recent slump in oil prices.

The oil major said it would cut operating costs by $3bn-to-$4bn 'per annum over the next 12 months' compared to 2019 levels.

It would also reduce capital expenditure to $20bn or below for 2020, down from a planned level of around $25bn.

Shell said it had decided not to continue with the next tranche of its share buyback programme following the completion of the current tranche.

The company said it was still committed to its divestment programme of more than $10bn of assets in 2019-20, but with timing dependent on market conditions.

The Board of Royal Dutch Shell has decided not to continue with the next tranche of the share buyback programme following the completion of the current share buyback tranche.

'As well as protecting our staff and customers in this difficult time, we are also taking immediate steps to ensure the financial strength and resilience of our business,'said chief executive Ben van Beurden.

'The combination of steeply falling oil demand and rapidly increasing supply may be unique, but Shell has weathered market volatility many times in the past.'

'In these very tough conditions, I am very proud of our staff and contractors across the world for maintaining their focus on safe and reliable operations while also ensuring their own health and welfare and that of their families, communities and our customers.'

Shell said its liquidity remained 'strong', with around $20bn in cash and cash equivalents, $10bn of undrawn credit lines under its revolving credit facility and access to our extensive commercial paper programmes.
 

[sancho panza]

5 hours ago, JMD said:

 I don't think its conspiracy Harley, but it may I think be something just as dark. So in terms of your phrase 'understanding the parallel games...' The social commentator Douglas Murray talks about the West having lost confidence in itself, its institutions, etc and effectively it is committing suicide. I don't think things are quiet so bleak (Murray has a book to sell I suppose) but I do think that so many facets of our culture, law, freedoms and learning have been hollowed out. It is so alarming to hear so-called activists talk incessantly about the importance of human rights and yet, for example, in recent years ancient freedom of speech laws have been upended under 'hate speech' laws, habeas corpus protections have been withdrawn by the European arrest warrant - yet these very things are perversely celebrated as being 'progressive'. This type of topsy-turvy thinking may now be endemic in the West where critical thinking skills have been replaced by emotion and feelings.  

Regarding Covid-19 the key question for me would be: what are the ages/prior health conditions of the 200 people who have died so far in the UK. If as I suspect. the vast majority were elderly and already ill, then why weren't these demographic groups of people told to self isolate weeks ago and then targeted/supported with relevant government help, health support, etc. After all this type of knowledge was learned many weeks ago from China's own experience of the virus. A far more effective solution I would have thought plus a far cheaper one and with no risk of bankrupting the nation. Strange than that the media has not asked whether this option was ever seriously considered?

I like your use of the word 'dark'.Sums up my concerns about how we're surrendering freedoms for an ostensibly noble outcome but noone's really been clear about how or when these changes will be reversed and what the criteria for reversing them are.It seemingly makes me regressive for questioning the orthodox view.It's worth noting that these changes could have a long term impact on our society,economy and personal freedoms.In many ways it's been a very 'convenient crisis' for people like Macron with the Gilets Jaunes to suppress or the Madrid govt that is dealing with rising Catalan independence movement.

Without boring on too much,the reason health care systems are swamped is to do with ICU/A&E capacity.The vast bulk of corona infections aren't known about as many could be asymptomatic( as I've said before only randomised antibodies tests will reveal the true extent of the pandemic).So we have an ICU capacity crisis rather than a pandemic.

Pandemic definition

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pandemic?s=t

pandemic

[ pan-dem-ik ]

 

SEE SYNONYMS FOR pandemic ON THESAURUS.COM

---

adjective

(of a disease) prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area.

 

 

By the dictionary defintion,we have pandemics every year.Flu alone kills hundreds of thousands every year.What's particularly important about this pandemic is that it results in a large number of pneumonia cases in the elderly.Surpisingly,topping the list of comorbidities that predispose people to be more likely to die as a result is cardiovascular disease ,ahead of respiratory issues.

Where there is little data is in assessing roughly how many of these people may have died anyway,and whether the current death rate in regions particularly badly hit,will also suffer a drop in their mortality rates as time moves on.

As I've said variously,I'm not trying to demean patients' suffering or the pressure on A&E staff,dying of breathing problems is an horrendous way to go,something that could be verfied by anyone who's had a serious asthma attack or suffered anaphalaxis. I'm jsut trying to reinforce your point that there a lot of subtle nuances to this crisis and as @Harleypointed out,they're getting totally overlooked by the obssession with the headline infection count

 

 

In terms of investment strategy,I think steering towrds the decomplex trades has to be the way to go,and by that I mean deeply decomplex.

[sancho panza]

58 minutes ago, Democorruptcy said:

Surplus energy:

 

Thanks for psoting,and there was me jsut this very moment talking decomplex trades.

35 minutes ago, spygirl said:

Other than exception stones, Diamonds value was entirely made up by US marketing.

Assuming the US $ loses it place, Id guess trades will be some form of electronic barter system, using third parties.

Theres already system like this in place, esp, EU-Iran, where they cannot use dollars.

Ditto CHina

https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-barter-deals-china-dedollarizing-economy/5696047

 

 

 

$ has one more run in the sun hattip this thread.Then all bets are off as to what replaces it but something will and indeed has to.