Rob McEwen Says Gold Could Reach $5,000 in Four Years

Tony Blair ‘sees’ Israel becoming role model for other states in region

Is this guy crazy, clueless, stupid, obnoxious or all four combined? What he ‘sees’ is a Fata Morgana. It’s true the multiplication of the populations is slowing but today they are still growing albeit at a slower pace. 

If you live in a land of sand with a rising population, declining water resources and shrinking arable land like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen even Israel then you are headed for disaster.

Blair seems not to understand Economics 101. If he’s wrong with economics where’s this guy wrong too? Blair is dangerous because he’s clueless! He should be thrown into a lunatic asylum where he can no longer murder innocent people. Blair’s calls for more military intervention will not change the root causes of the problems the Arabs face. I might be sound alarmist but the facts are that Saudi Arabia will stop pumping ground water for arable land because they are running on empty and the population grows like in Yemen. The same is true for Egypt where the population grows and the arable land shrinks since centuries. 

Long-term trends can not be easily reversed, if at all. Ever more people fight for shrinking arable land. This is crazy and national suicide. The Muslims only survive because of imported food. Without our food they all are dead in 2 weeks. They will have trade deficits forever. Oil revenue will ultimately decline like in Egypt, Yemen, Mexico, UK, Germany. The difference between the UK, Germany and the Arab states is the industrial base to overcome oil revenue. Arab states have no industrial base. Yes it’s true they have nothing what the world needs when the oil is gone. If i were an Arab leader i would be in full panic.

Saudi Arabia could be next. They are buying land in Africa to somehow overcome their nonexistend arable land. When the oil is gone they will be thrown into their place where they belong to. You cannot have an ever growing population without arable land and water. The Saudi business model only works because of oil. No Oil = No Business model.

All these fundamentally trends do not indicate they will become “regulatory” democracies! It will get worse until they collapse to the place where they belong to. In the future war, famine and mass deaths will determine the Middle East. Everything politicians like Blair say is sand in your eyes. –Admin

(Link to News)

Related articles

• African Land Purchases Have Jumped 1500% Since 2008 (businessinsider.com)
• Population Increase, War and Inequality (socyberty.com)
• Tony Blair ‘Used Children’s Cash to Set Up Office (tipggita32.wordpress.com)
• Blair demands more allied military action (independent.co.uk)
• “African Land Grab – “Acres for a bottle of Scotch”” and related posts (zerohedge.com)
• Ethiopia weighs benefits of foreign ‘land grabs’ (afroaddis.wordpress.com)

Jim Rogers on CNN Money June 20, 2011

Peter Schiff On CNBC Street Signs Jun 20, 2011

Gold and Silver Imports in India Surge a Massive 222% in May 2011 compared to May 2010

Gold and Silver Imports in India Surge a Massive 222% – Official Inflation Surges to 8.65%

CRAZY Howard Davidowitz: Walmart Is Great For America

Image via Wikipedia

Walmart (multinational corporations in general) is responsible for the structural problems in the first place because they destroy and undermine local communities. This trend continues unabated. Walmart actually is expanding with Mini-Walmarts into Americas hinterlands. They have reached the limit with Big-Walmart-Expanding-Forever; now they are on a suicide trip to give the American economy the rest with Chinese goods! Their business model is based on the oil age and cheap imports from China (70%). They make the trade deficit of America worse, destroy local economies and replace them with low wage jobs. America can not recover until this trend is reversed.  Multinational corporations are turning the U.S. into a low wage wasteland. Will the politicians grasp the magnitude of the structural problems they enabled? I doubt it. Peak oil is our only hope for a better future. Local economies will return because the tax-evading multinational corporations can no longer trade across the globe. Oversea bloodshed and the criminal economy based on oil and ultimately globalization will be defeated. –Admin

Read the full shit here.

Gerald Celente with Roy Green Show Corus Radio Network 17 June 2011

USA: Empire on credit (German)

Jim Rogers on Breakout June, 14 2011

Belarus threatens to close its border should the economy collapse, Damaging Moscows Customs Union

Lukashenko will close Belarusian borders if economy fails

German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk: Political Liberalism in Crisis, Neoliberalism has vile connotation

Peter Sloterdijk: Liberalismus muss wieder zum Synonym für Generosität werden. Das „Wort Liberalismus, das leider zur Stunde eher für ein Leben auf der Galeere der Habsucht“ stehe, wieder zu einem „Synonym für Generosität zu machen – und das Wort Liberalität zu einer Chiffre für die Sympathie mit allem, was Menschen von Despotien jeder Art emanzipiert“.

Der Philosoph Peter Sloterdijk sieht den politischen Liberalismus derzeit in einer schweren Krise. Nie zuvor hätten Begriffe wie liberal oder gar neoliberal eine so „niederträchtige Konnotation“ angenommen, wie in den vergangenen Jahren, schreibt Sloterdijk in einem Gastbeitrag für das Nachrichtenmagazin FOCUS. Noch nie habe man die „Freiheit so eng und fatal mit der Besessenheit von Menschen durch den Gier-Stress in Verbindung gebracht“. Als Konsequenz aus dieser Beobachtung folgerte der Philosoph, die Sache der Liberalität sei zu wichtig, „als dass man sie den Liberalen überlassen dürfte“.

Sollte es je zu einer intellektuellen Regeneration des politischen Liberalismus kommen, müsste sie laut Sloterdijk „von der Erkenntnis ausgehen, dass Menschen nicht nur haben wollende, giergetriebene, süchtige und brauchende Wesen“ seien, die freie Bahn für ihre Mangelgefühle und ihren Machthunger“ forderten. Sie trügen ebenso das „Potenzial zu geben wollendem, großzügigem und souveränem Verhalten“ in sich.

Sloterdijk plädierte dafür, das „Wort Liberalismus, das leider zur Stunde eher für ein Leben auf der Galeere der Habsucht“ stehe, wieder zu einem „Synonym für Generosität zu machen – und das Wort Liberalität zu einer Chiffre für die Sympathie mit allem, was Menschen von Despotien jeder Art emanzipiert“.

(Source – German)

Bayer AG’s Bayer 04 Leverkusen loses its main sponsor, Energy supplier Teldafax with 700,000 customers is insolvent, Supplies cut to 350,000

www.focus.de (German)

Das Troisdorfer Unternehmen hat zwar angekündigt, der Stopp der Lieferung an seine Kunden sei nur vorübergehend. Wie dem FOCUS bekannt ist, haben aber mittlerweile bundesweit mehr als 400 Netzbetreiber der Firma den Zugang zu ihren Leitungen gekündigt. Damit dürfte eine Wiederaufnahme der Geschäftstätigkeit für Teldafax so gut wie ausgeschlossen sein.

Full Story. (German)

The Decline of the English-Speaking World

By Fjordman

I will defend all Western countries but I feel especially close to Britain, which makes it all the more sad to see how humiliated this once-great nation currently is. The English language once conquered the world. Now the rest of the world is conquering the English-speaking countries. If current trends continue, people in Singapore will know English while the nation that created the English language will cease to exist.

At the same time as sharia law has gained official recognition as a part of the British legal system and Muslims proudly talk about conquering the Western world, a British woman was arrested because of a supposedly “racist” doll she kept in her window. In al-Britannia a Muslim man can claim benefits for children with multiple wives and brag about subduing the country and reducing its traditional inhabitants to second-rate citizens or worse, but you cannot have a “racially insensitive” doll in your own home, at least not if you’re white.

Full Article.

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• Texas Senator To Spanish-Speaking Man During Committee Hearing: “Why Aren’t You Speaking English?” (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)

Ten Economic Blunders from History

www.mises.org

[An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Brad Sandelin, is available for download.]

Take cover when you hear a political leader talking about economic affairs. You can bet a bad decision is incoming. Luckily for the leaders, their meddling usually has a slow, erosive effect on the economy. Every so often, however, the great ones manage to land a real whopper that takes them down along with their whole country. Here are ten examples from history.

1. Charge Too Much and You Die

In the year 301, the Roman emperor Diocletian issued the Edictum De Pretiis Rerum Venalium, i.e., the Edict on Prices of Foodstuffs, which rebalanced the coinage system and set maximums on wages and the prices of many types of goods, especially food. The penalty for selling above the stipulated prices was death. Copies of the edict were inscribed on stone monuments all over the empire. Here’s a tip for future dictators: never inscribe your blunders on stone unless you want people to laugh at you for the rest of eternity. The edict was a disaster. Sellers withdrew their goods, unwilling to sell at the fixed prices or even risk being falsely accused of selling beyond the maximum and thus be subject to execution. Workers responded to the wage edicts by vanishing or sitting around doing nothing. Eventually the edict was ignored and became a subject of derision and mockery which permanently lowered the prestige and authority of the empire.

2. Shearing the English Wolf

You know you are doing something wrong when your enemies become folk heroes like Robin Hood. Common sense is to tax the weak and give money to the strong, but after his failure in forestry policy King John of England decided to try the reverse. He relieved the knights of the realm from their military service requirements, but then ordered them to pay instead a hefty “scutage” (shield) tax. Soon, there were 10,000 Robin Hoods trying to kill him and going about it in an organized fashion. Signing the humiliating Magna Carta in 1215 bought him some time, but by the next year he was living on the lam. After his folly-won treasure was washed away in a mistimed river crossing, he went crazy and died soon after.

3. Paper Money Is Amazing

The fifth Khan of Persia was named “Gaykhatu,” which means “amazing” in Mongolian. After recklessly squandering the money left by his predecessors he was in no position to cope with a massive rinderpest epidemic that began devastating his subjects’ livestock in 1294. Amazing came up with an amazing solution to his financial problems: paper money. Invented by his boss, Kublai Khan, back in China the idea of paper money was a godsend. He would print up certificates just like the Chinese ones, decree death for anyone who refused them, and all his problems would be solved. Amazing! Unfortunately for Amazing he did not fuss too much with technical details like convertibility and capital controls, which Kublai Khan had agonized over, and the result was the total failure of the project. Economic chaos ensued. Amazing was deposed and put to death the next year.

4. I’ll Buy Every Sword You’ve Got

In the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573), Ming dynasty Mandarins in China adopted a policy of buying and importing swords from the Japanese with the goal of depriving the troublesome “barbarians” occupying those islands of their weapons. The gleeful reaction of the Japanese was along the lines of Jay Leno’s Doritos commercial: buy all you like; we’ll make more.

5. No Smuggling Allowed

Price controls are stupid anytime, but it takes true idiocy to apply them in the middle of a siege. In 1584 forces controlled by Alexander Farnese, the duke of Parma, were besieging Holland’s grandest city, Antwerp, in the Dutch War of Independence. At first the siege was ineffectual because the duke’s lines were porous and Antwerp could be supplied by sea, but the duke was in luck because the city decided to blockade itself voluntarily. The magistrates of the city declared a maximum on the price of grain. The smugglers who had been running the blockade up to that point became considerably less enthusiastic about making food deliveries after that. Facing starvation, the city surrendered the next year.

6. The Gold Factory of Venice

In 1590 the Republic of Venice was in decline. Nineteen years earlier it had gloriously fended off the Ottoman Turks by a tremendous victory at the Battle of Lepanto, but had nevertheless lost Cyprus, the republic’s greatest possession. In 1585 the newly elected doge had thrown silver coins instead of the traditional gold at his ascension. Weighed down by taxes, imposts, tariffs, duties, tithes, assessments and fees, the economy had seen better days. From out of this gloom a new hope unexpectedly appeared. A long-lost Venetian named Marco Bragadini, currently resident in nearby Lombardy, had discovered how to make gold. The republic had to act fast, though, because the duke of Mantua was trying to lay his hands on this valuable goose. A cohort of soldiers was sent forthwith and Bragadini was securely delivered into the city in triumph by three galleys. Rigorous scientific tests were ordered by the senate to verify the power of the “anima d’oro,” which Bragadini alone possessed. The alchemist filled a crucible with quicksilver, added a pinch of his secret powder and set it to fire. Soon the quicksilver turned to gold; it was all true. The price of alchemist capes and retorts skyrocketed. Signor Bragadini coolly informed the senate he could produce six million ducats or whatever they would require. For himself he wanted nothing but to be the humble servant of his country. Naturally, the senate put all the resources of Venice at his disposal. Nobles flocked to Bragadini by the dozen, imploring him to cut them in on his business. The months wore on, but the production of the new gold factory was disappointingly meager. Apparently there were limits to the speed with which the gold could be manufactured. Sensing a mounting impatience with his operations Bragadini absconded to Munich where Duke William the Pious was wooing him. Unfortunately for the maestro, in the meantime Pope Sixtus had died and been replaced with the sanctimonious Pope Gregory XIV who considered the alchemist and his two dogs to be the devil’s spawn and sent orders for their execution — with which William complied. The senate of Venice decided to pretend the whole thing never happened.

7. How to Deal with Hoarders

As the famine-fueled French Revolution careened out of control in 1793, a radical clique called the “Committee of Public Safety” headed by Maximilien Robespierre took power. The committee resolved to solve the food problem by enacting the “General Maximum,” a set of policies fixing the maximum price of bread and other common goods. When those measures failed to increase the supply of food, they sent soldiers into the countryside to forcibly seize grain from the evil farmers who were “hoarding” it. Robespierre and the committee went to the guillotine the next year.

8. A Hobo’s Dream, An Empire’s End

In 1880, railroad technology was advancing rapidly, and the Russians received several private petitions for a concession in the Far East. To the paranoid patricians of Moscow, it was not enough to merely deny these foreign schemers; they needed to build their own railroad to the east to keep them out. Under the leadership of His Royal Paranoidness, Czar Alexander III, the Russian state began taking out massive foreign loans and constructing the 5,000-mile Trans-Siberian Railway, the largest civil-works project since the Great Pyramid of Giza. Alexander (and his empire) would later die from injuries sustained in a railroad accident. By the time the corruption-ridden boondoggle was completed in 1904, Alexander’s son, Nicholas II, was technically bankrupt. Wars and revolts started to plague the empire. Instead of carrying trade goods, the new railway was carrying political prisoners and supplies for soldiers. When Russia rolled over its debts in 1907, it was obvious to the large banking houses that the empire was financially doomed and only small investors could be found to subscribe the new loans. Even with these loans suspended, Russia’s economy was so weak that it would not survive the coming war. Nicholas was executed July 16, 1918.

9. It Takes a Village to Build a Famine

The 1984 crop failure in Ethiopia presented a fresh set of problems for the Marxist junta called the “Derg” that controlled the government. The nationalization programs and price controls they had been experimenting with for years seemed less effective than ever. Obviously the remnants of capitalism were still infecting the economy, so they took vigorous measures such as outlawing grain trading. Oddly enough, that did not stop the famine. The chairman, Mengistu Haile Mariam, inspired by the brilliant agricultural successes of Secretary Stalin in the 1930s thereupon sponsored a whole new idea dubbed “villagization.” Under this plan the scattered rural inhabitants of Ethiopia would be gathered together in modernized villages with all the latest civic infrastructure. As might be expected, not all the beneficiaries of this plan realized what utopias these villages would be so they had to be driven there at gunpoint for their own good. Unfortunately, the expected increases in agricultural production never materialized and millions starved. The country descended into a permanent state of civil war, which only ended in 1990 after the Soviet Union stopped supplying the Derg. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe where he has become an important advisor to that nation’s rulers.

10. Rubles: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t

On January 22, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, decreed that all existing 50- and 100-ruble banknotes were no longer legal tender and that they could be exchanged for new notes for three days only and only in small quantities. This had the effect of instantly deleting large portions of the savings and accumulated capital of private citizens. He followed up this genius move on January 26, by ordering that the police had the authority to search any place of business and to demand the records of any business at any time. The union’s economic problems accelerated into a death spiral. Gorbachev resigned on December 25, and on the next day the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

John S. Chamberlain lives in Natick, Massachusetts, and works as a software engineer specializing in earth science and artificial intelligence. He has an A.B. in politics from Princeton University and an M.S. in computer science from Northeastern University. See John S. Chamberlain’s article archives.

Is America in Decline? The Charts Don’t Lie …

www.aolnews.com

<snippet>1. Just five years ago, according to data from Forbes, nearly a third of the world’s 2000 largest publicly traded companies were based in the U.S. Since then, that total has fallen by 36 percent.

2. Some (left-of-center) scholars have called the growth of multinational firms over the 20th century the new face of modern imperialism. And it’s true that in one sense, American businesses have lived up to this billing by earning a growing share of their profits from overseas – 28 percent last year, versus just 4 percent in 1948. But at the same time, globally, American businesses’ earning power has declined dramatically this decade compared with those from other nations.

3. To get a further sense of where the United States could be headed, it can also be instructive to look back at the economic fates of past world powers. This next chart shows the GDP of an empire’s home country over time. (Economic data prior to World War II is hard to come by, so the dashed lines in the chart below represent years when no data is available.)

</snippet>

Full Article.