The theory of output as a whole, which is what The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state. — John Maynard Keynes
In looking at and assessing the economic paradigm of John Maynard Keynes — a man himself fixated on aggregates — we must look at the aggregate of his thought, and the aggregate of his ideology.
Keynes was not just an economist. Between 1937 and 1944 he served as the head of the Eugenics Society and once called eugenics ”the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists.” And Keynes, we should add, understood that economics was a branch of sociology. So let’s be clear: Keynes thought eugenics was more important, more significant, and more genuine than economics.
Eugenics — or the control of reproduction — is a very old idea.
So maybe round #1 was a little too easy. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how wise and learned the Turdites are. OK, smartypants, have a go at this one.
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wakeup homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
100 Million Americans Without Jobs … The national unemployment rates gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million Americans don’t have jobs … According to the April jobs report, the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million. – Business Insider
Dominant Social Theme: We’re going through a rough patch but things will be all right.
Free-Market Analysis: There are 300 million people in America including 230 million-plus adults, according to US Census figures. This article, above, informs us that only 130 million Americans have jobs as traditionally defined in the 20th and 21st century.
The statistics actually come from the federal government and, of course, not all of the 100 million Americans out of work want jobs or need jobs. Some are retired, or stay-at-home parents or students at universities or individuals with disabilities who are not able to work.
You may have entertained the idea of an improbable civilization ending events such as a ‘global killer’ asteroid, earth crust displacement or massive solar storms, but what if there existed a situation right now that was so serious that it literally threatened our very existence?
According to a host of scientists, nuclear experts and researchers, were are facing exactly such a scenario – and current efforts may not be able to stop it.
When the Fukushima nuclear plants sustained structural damage and a catastrophic failure of their spent fuel cooling systems in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, it left the government of Japan, Tokyo Power and nuclear regulatory agencies around the world powerless to contain the release of deadly radiation. A year on, the battle for control of Fukushima continues to no avail.
The gold price didn’t do a lot through all of Far East trading on Thursday…and that continued into the London open. The London low, such as it was, came shortly after 9:00 a.m. BST…and from there it rallied until shortly after 9:00 a.m. in New York, which proved to be its high of the day at $1,579.10 spot.
From there, all Thursday’s gains disappeared plus more, as gold got sold off until it hit its Thursday low…$1,550.60 spot…which came at 2:00 p.m. in New York. Then it recovered a few dollars going into the 5:15 p.m. Eastern close.
Get the feeling that in the past two weeks Bazooko’s Circus has come back with a bang? You are not alone.
From Newedge:
Last thing I asked before I went traveling was “try not to break anything” while I’m away. I get back this morning and it looks like a bunch of teenagers have had a particularly messy drug-fuelled rave in the market’s front room. The day-on-day charts hide the roller-coaster ride we’ve seen on the back of the Euro. Bond markets are in lock-down awaiting what-ever-next “liquidity bomb” the authorities can find to drop. Aside from some minor bond crosses, there has been zip activity outside zero-coupon bunds, gilts and treasuries. There is more liquidity in the Atacama desert.
Today King World News interviewed one of the wealthiest and most street-smart pros in the business, Rick Rule. Investors have been incredibly worried about the plunge in stocks, and mining shares, but Rule told KWN that one of several things that will end the bear market in gold shares is takeovers. He also warned, “the big picture for Europe is bleak.” Rule, who is now part of Sprott Asset Management had this to say about what is happening in the markets: “We have a market where I think the leadership will switch from an institutional buyer to an industry buyer. Meaning that when the market resumes higher, it will be driven by companies that will be taken over by industry, rather than companies that exhibit things like leverage to gold.”
President Obama’s standard gripe is that the economy has performed so poorly during his term because of the financial crisis he inherited from George W. Bush. But this week it is Mr. Obama who has bequeathed to his successors a landmark in financial regulation. It is bound to haunt them, though not as much as it will haunt taxpayers.
The big meeting, this week, in Iraq concerning Iran’s nuclear program was a big bust. The meeting, once again, ended the same way the last one did—with a date for another meeting. The next one is in Russia, next month, and will involve all the same world powers (U.S. UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran).
The West wants Iran to stop enriching uranium to high levels for fear of turning it into a nuclear weapon. Iran has repeatedly said its program is for the peaceful production of energy. Israel has called the ongoing meetings a stalling tactic and is not ruling out military action, even though it has agreed to allow international inspectors. Greece is inching closer to a Euro exit. If it leaves the European Union, will Spain and Italy be next? Will the Fed and European Central Bank be forced to print money, again, to stop another calamity? Some say the problem will be “contained,” but isn’t that what was said about the sub-prime mortgages in 2007? That proved not to be contained as the market has cut home prices in half in some markets in the U.S.
[We go off the beaten track this morning with some reassuring scientific news about the aging brain. Merely staying mentally active, as those who post regularly in the Rick’s Picks forum are wont to do, is enough to keep the circuits firing and the brain supple enough, even, to learn new tricks. This guest commentary was written by my Chocorua, New Hampshire host (and ex-wife) Mary Peaco Todd. She is a cartoonist whose work can be found here.RA]
I remember when my fifty-some-year-old husband wandered into the kitchen after an evening of cramming. He was the oldest student in his law school program and, although he had graduated cum laude, the dreaded Massachusetts Bar Exam loomed. “I have a problem,” he said. “My brain is full.” “Full?” “Full. And I still have Contracts and Constitutional Law to review.” “Well,” I replied, “what are you going to do?” He shrugged. “I have no choice. Something’s gotta go. I’m going to have to delete childhood.”
I have read countless articles over the past few week stating a belief that Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras is bluffing in his threat to stay in the euro but default in debts.
Is it remotely possible to default and stay in the eurozone?
Since this is a multi-part question, let’s first address the question “is this a bluff?”
Not like this will come as a surprise to anyone in the aftermath of last week’s abysmal FaceBook IPO which pretty much killed all retail interest in equity markets, but in the last week, the “dumb” money pulled another $3.5 billion out of domestic stocks per ICI, bringing the total tally to 13 consecutive weeks of outflows, and 52 weeks of outflows in the past 56 weeks, with redemptions amounting to $46 billion in 2012, compared to just $6.5 billion for the same period in 2011. Algo-matic, the 20 remaining Primary Dealers and whatever hedge funds are left can pass hot grenades amongst each other: the retail money (RIP) has found other ways to amuse itself.
Jim is pleased to welcome back Louis-Vincent Gave, CEO at GaveKal Research in Hong Kong. Louis believes that Greece will ultimately exit the Euro, and the ECB will then ease massively to stem the tide of bank runs in other at-risk European countries. He sees opportunities in US blue chip stocks.
GaveKal is a financial services firm that offers institutional investors and high net worth individuals three different services: fund management, independent research on global macro-economic trends and events, and independent advisory work on China and its impact on the global economy.
The quickest way to divide people is to have them speak different languages. America has always been a nation of immigrants, but one of the things that has always united us as a nation has been the English language. In the past, it was always understood that if you wanted to thrive in the “land of opportunity” that you had better learn English and learn it well. Unfortunately, times have changed. Today, many radical activist groups are actually referring to the English language as a “tool of oppression” and are demanding that special accommodations be made for those that do not wish to learn the English language. But what languages are we supposed to accommodate? Overall, there are 325 different languages spoken at home in the United States today. So which of those languages should receive special treatment? How far are we really going to take all of this? Someday, instead of your telephone telling you to “press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish”, it may tell you to “press 323 for Italian, 324 for Arabic or 325 for English”. Yes, that is kind of a ridiculous example, but we really should examine where all of this is headed. Is America destined to become a multilingual nation where we all struggle to understand one another?
Once upon a time, the largest U.S. cities were the envy of the entire world. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Sure, there are areas of New York City, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles that are still absolutely beautiful but for the most part our major cities are rapidly rotting and decaying. Cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland were all once places where middle class American workers thrived and raised their families. Today, all of those cities are rapidly being transformed into cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness. Millions of good jobs have left our major cities in recent decades and poverty has absolutely exploded. Basically, you can turn out the lights because the party is over. In fact, some major U.S. cities are literally turning out the lights. In Detroit, about 40 percent of the streetlights are already broken and the city cannot afford to repair them. So Mayor Bing has come up with a plan to cut the number of operating streetlights almost in half and leave vast sections of the city totally in the dark at night. I wonder what that will do to the crime rate in the city. But don’t look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening in Detroit will be happening where you live soon enough.
Let me start by saying I completely understand that there are valid reasons to buy gold for the long term as insurance and for savings. I also don’t make trading decisions based on fundamental analysis.
Futures trade in a two way auction. Price is determined only by whatever amount someone is willing to bid or offer at a given moment. This is the truth. If the fundamentals are bullish, and the auction is bullish, a good trader is only going to be on one side of the trade, the right side. But if the auction is bearish what good are fundamentals? An Auction Market Analyst knows that the fundamentals will come out eventually, but by the time the “experts” have it right and are “genius” with the explanations after a move happens, the damage has been done unfortunately. An auction market analyst should never need anyone else’s opinion for confirmation. The confirmations are on the chart.
It’s bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it – with a big assist from Congress and the White House. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-wall-street-killed-financial-reform-20120510#ixzz1vsxo6X1R
Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he’d dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. “In history.”
This was supposed to be the big one. At 2,300 pages, the new law ostensibly rewrote the rules for Wall Street. It was going to put an end to predatory lending in the mortgage markets, crack down on hidden fees and penalties in credit contracts, and create a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to safeguard ordinary consumers. Big banks would be banned from gambling with taxpayer money, and a new set of rules would limit speculators from making the kind of crazy-ass bets that cause wild spikes in the price of food and energy. There would be no more AIGs, and the world would never again face a financial apocalypse when a bank like Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.
French President François Hollande managed to set the tone at his first EU summit with his proposal for euro bonds. It was the first such meeting in years that was not dominated by Chancellor Merkel. Hollande wanted to send the message that France will be more assertive in the future.
The air was stuffy in the French press room of the European Council building, which was crowded with journalists. Everyone wanted to see the new French president during his first press conference after a European Union summit. Shortly after 1 o’clock on Thursday morning, François Hollande held court just as his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, once had, explaining his “vision for growth” for nearly an hour.
In the room next door was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In front of her were just a few rows of chairs and some cameras, and the room was half empty. She had decided not to hold a full press conference. Instead, she gave a brief statement, answered two questions and left after five minutes. She apparently knew that she didn’t have much of a chance against the appeal of her new French counterpart. It almost seemed as if she was happy to concede the stage to Hollande without a fight.
Latest figures from the IMF show that Central Banks have continued to increase their gold holdings significantly in April, after a big increase the previous month.
LONDON – The latest official Central Bank gold holding figures from the IMF confirm that Central Banks around the world are continuing to buy gold – some in pretty large quantities which should be yet another stabilising factor for the gold price – and if the trend continues suggests that the CBs will buy even more this year than last – and that’s only the ones which let the world know exactly what their gold reserves are!
The latest figures not only show some substantial gold buying in April, but also a big lift in gold purchases by The Philippines which actually date back to March, but were slow in being notified to the IMF. The Phillipines’ March gold purchases amounted to no less than 1.033 million ounces – 32 tonnes – of the yellow metal – the biggest volume since Mexico bought around 78 tonnes a little over a year ago – and increased tet country’s gold reserves by almost 20%.
F. A. Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom in 1943. It was published in 1944. Americans who read the 1945 Readers Digest version liked it. University professors didn’t. This is one more bit of evidence that American voters have more sense than university professors. Are you surprised?
When Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, he had a marketing problem. The book’s title was absurd. He knew that. He knew the difference between Western serfdom, which had limited but defined property rights and the rule of law, and socialism, which in theory had neither. Serfdom was a system of liberty compared to Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism. But he was trying to sell the book to educated Leftists, who were favorable to socialism. He could not very well have sold copies in 1944 based on a title like The Road to Fascism, which was in fact the road the West was on in 1944.
Note the following sequence of events, bolded numbers, and dates:
Bank Of Spain Formally Nationalizes Bankia, Says Insolvent Bank Is “Solvent”, Adds There Is No Cause For Concern, Zero Hedge, May 9
Spain is taking over Bankia by converting its 4.5 billion euros of preferred shares in the group’s parent company into ordinary shares, BusinessWeek, May 21
Spain said on Wednesday its rescue of problem lender Bankia would cost at least 9 billion euros ($11 billion), as the government tries to clean up a banking system that threatens to drag the country deeper into the euro zone crisis, Reuters, May 23
Bankia SA will have to ask the Spanish government for more than 15 billion euros as part of its effort to restore its financial health, state-owned news agency EFE reported Thursday, citing financial sources, Dow Jones, May 24
Hopefully we aren’t the only ones to notice how the bailout cost has oddly doubled almost on a daily basis.
by Alex Daley, Chief Technology Investment Strategist Casey Research
Dear Fellow Technophiles,
Some issues in events in popular society are simply too big to be missed. The OJ trial. A “Royal Wedding.” Facebook’s IPO. In all the aforementioned cases, I did my own personal best to be as far from the action as possible when the fateful day came. It’s not a lack of interest, but just a time-tested life lesson that the real opportunities in life are where the circus has yet to land.
Still, at Casey Research we’re not content to simply write off a profit-making opportunity to “carnie wisdom.” And thus, we took a hard and close look at the Facebook IPO for Casey Extraordinary Technology subscribers. The result of that detailed analysis? Stay as far out of the way as you can. We made sure that subscribers understood that given the “muppet demand” on one side, the insiders cashing out on the other, and the banks taking billion-dollar paydays for nothing other than their government-mandated oligopolic postions in the middle, there was no play for a smart individual investor, long or short.
ALL CONTENT ON 'FINANCIALSURVIVALNETWORK.COM' AS WELL AS 'KERRYLUTZ.COM' IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. 'FINANCIALSURVIVALNETWORK.COM' ASSUMES ALL INFORMATION TO BE TRUTHFUL AND RELIABLE; HOWEVER, THE CONTENT ON THIS SITE IS PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. NO MATERIAL HERE CONSTITUTES "INVESTMENT ADVICE" NOR IS IT A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY OR SELL ANY FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO STOCKS, COMMODITIES, OPTIONS, BONDS, OR FUTURES. ACTIONS YOU UNDERTAKE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF ANY ANALYSIS, OPINION OR ADVERTISEMENT ON THIS SITE ARE YOUR SOLE RESPONSIBILITY. THANK YOU.
100 Million Americans Without Jobs … The national unemployment rates gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million Americans don’t have jobs … According to the April jobs report, the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million. – Business Insider
Yesterday in Gold and Silver
Today King World News interviewed one of the wealthiest and most street-smart pros in the business, Rick Rule. Investors have been incredibly worried about the plunge in stocks, and mining shares, but Rule told KWN that one of several things that will end the bear market in gold shares is takeovers. He also warned, “the big picture for Europe is bleak.” Rule, who is now part of Sprott Asset Management had this to say about what is happening in the markets: “We have a market where I think the leadership will switch from an institutional buyer to an industry buyer. Meaning that when the market resumes higher, it will be driven by companies that will be taken over by industry, rather than companies that exhibit things like leverage to gold.”
The big meeting, this week, in Iraq concerning Iran’s nuclear program was a big bust. The meeting, once again, ended the same way the last one did—with a date for another meeting. The next one is in Russia, next month, and will involve all the same world powers (U.S. UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran).
I have read countless articles over the past few week stating a belief that Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras is bluffing in his threat to stay in the euro but default in debts.
Not like this will come as a surprise to anyone in the aftermath of last week’s abysmal FaceBook IPO which pretty much killed all retail interest in equity markets, but in the last week, the “dumb” money pulled another $3.5 billion out of domestic stocks 
Jim is pleased to welcome back Louis-Vincent Gave, CEO at GaveKal Research in Hong Kong. Louis believes that Greece will ultimately exit the Euro, and the ECB will then ease massively to stem the tide of bank runs in other at-risk European countries. He sees opportunities in US blue chip stocks.
The quickest way to divide people is to have them speak different languages. America has always been a nation of immigrants, but one of the things that has always united us as a nation has been the English language. In the past, it was always understood that if you wanted to thrive in the “land of opportunity” that you had better learn English and learn it well. Unfortunately, times have changed. Today, many radical activist groups are actually referring to the English language as a “tool of oppression” and are demanding that special accommodations be made for those that do not wish to learn the English language. But what languages are we supposed to accommodate? Overall, there are 
Once upon a time, the largest U.S. cities were the envy of the entire world. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Sure, there are areas of New York City, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles that are still absolutely beautiful but for the most part our major cities are rapidly rotting and decaying. Cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland were all once places where middle class American workers thrived and raised their families. Today, all of those cities are rapidly being transformed into cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness. Millions of good jobs have left our major cities in recent decades and poverty has absolutely exploded. Basically, you can turn out the lights because the party is over. In fact, some major U.S. cities are literally turning out the lights. In Detroit, about 40 percent of the streetlights are already broken and the city cannot afford to repair them. So Mayor Bing has come up with a plan to cut the number of operating streetlights almost in half and leave vast sections of the city totally in the dark at night. I wonder what that will do to the crime rate in the city. But don’t look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening in Detroit will be happening where you live soon enough.
Let me start by saying I completely understand that there are valid reasons to buy gold for the long term as insurance and for savings. I also don’t make trading decisions based on fundamental analysis.
Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he’d dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. “In history.”
The air was stuffy in the French press room of the European Council building, which was crowded with journalists. Everyone wanted to see the new French president during his first press conference after a European Union summit. Shortly after 1 o’clock on Thursday morning, François Hollande held court just as his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, once had, explaining his “vision for growth” for nearly an hour.
LONDON – The latest official Central Bank gold holding figures from the IMF confirm that Central Banks around the world are continuing to buy gold – some in pretty large quantities which should be yet another stabilising factor for the gold price – and if the trend continues suggests that the CBs will buy even more this year than last – and that’s only the ones which let the world know exactly what their gold reserves are!
Every Tuesday 11:00amEST