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January 9, 2020
Open Thread 2020-02
Comments
@Cynica #66
True, but I really doubt any commodity or group of commodities constitutes anywhere as high a volume as oil. Wheat and corn, for example, are probably $10B to $20B a year or less, each. Coal is probably in the $100B-$150B range (10x smaller vs. oil). Iron is around $100B but it is almost all to China.
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 10 2020 13:37 utc | 101
@Tom_LX #72
The Fed’s reason is that there’s no point – it hasn’t been used for economic forecasting purposes and doesn’t convey useful info beyond what M2 does.
A legitimate likely other reason is that M3 would show just how much money the Fed was shoving into TBTF banks – because the 0.25% interest paid on deposits from these banks to the Fed would stick up like a sore thumb in such a graph. (M3 = M2 + time deposits).
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 10 2020 13:42 utc | 102
More fun with numbers: the US national debt is 41.5% of all world public (government) debt. We’re #1!
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 10 2020 13:49 utc | 103
Americans cannot even remember what they had for breakfast this morning, much less something that happened decades ago in a place few could even find on a globe. If the typical American has not seen it on the boob tube in the last couple days then it hasn’t happened for them. These days that also goes for people in executive positions as well. The US embassy in Tehran was overrun by students over four decades ago… getting pretty close to half a century now.
Do those mindless orcs in the US still dwell on being driven out of Saigon? Of course not. It is just something else they saw on a TV screen at some point. It has less impact on them than yesterday’s interview with a Kardashian. It is no different with the US embassy in Tehran. Most Americans don’t care if there is or even ever was an American embassy in Tehran, and that is only if you force them to think about it, which would just upset them and give them a headache.
There are now Americans in executive positions who were not even born when the Iranian Revolution occurred. They don’t even realize that the US president that followed that event was a crappy B-rated actor who literally took second billing after a monkey. That stuff is ancient history, like pay phones and 8-track tapes. “Did they even have color TV back then? And what does a black & white TV look like anyway?”
No, what is driving de facto policy right now is the corporate balance sheets of right now. Nobody even remembers the hostage crisis, much less cares.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 10 2020 13:53 utc | 104
William Gruff | Jan 10 2020 13:53 utc | 104
Do not forget that Ray-Gun was an FBI stooge as the selected el presidente of his union, snitching on “unreliable commie sympathizers”.
Later on he was senile. Paul Craig Roberts remains entirely delusional about the Ray-Gun man.
See “The Man Who Sold The World”… what a man! Oh brother, what a creep.
Posted by: Walter | Jan 10 2020 14:02 utc | 105
Update on Australia’s epic bushfires:
News Corp employee lashes climate ‘misinformation’ in bushfire coverage with blistering email
The email was sent by Emily Townsend, a commercial finance manager at News Corp, in response to an all-staff email from Miller detailing the leave arrangements available to staff and announcing other bushfire-related initiatives.
“This does not offset the impact News Corp reporting has had over the last few weeks,” Townsend wrote. “I have been severely impacted by the coverage of News Corp publications in relation to the fires, in particular the misinformation campaign that has tried to divert attention away from the real issue which is climate change to rather focus on arson (including misrepresenting facts).
“I find it unconscionable to continue working for this company, knowing I am contributing to the spread of climate change denial and lies. The reporting I have witnessed in the Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun is not only irresponsible, but dangerous and damaging to our communities and beautiful planet that needs us more than ever now to acknowledge the destruction we have caused and start doing something about it.”
The email landed in the inbox of all News Corp staff, and was leaked to the Guardian by multiple sources, but not Townsend herself.
Rupert Murdoch should invest more in a secure e-mail service…
Posted by: vk | Jan 10 2020 14:25 utc | 106
Mark Sleboda, USN convert to the forbidden zone, has interesting twitter… Evidently Comrade President P has a message for that good man the Trumper – all in the Spirit of the Season, when, you know, you want to give the very best to your partner.
4 minutes of fleet missile exercise…
“That’s nice shooting Soldier” General Jack Ripper
Posted by: Walter | Jan 10 2020 15:00 utc | 107
Who do you find fitting with this definition?
The fascists
Posted by: Sasha | Jan 10 2020 15:16 utc | 108
psychohistorian @91–
Thanks very much for posting that recap! It would be good to read his entire address. I would join him in saying that the UN and its Charter are far from dead, but they both need to be fought for to be preserved and strengthened. His pointing out nations that allow the illegalities of the Outlaw US Empire to go unopposed or even ally with was very necessary. That we need to rely on Chinese media to learn about very important words delivered in New York is a travesty but also serves to prove just how far BigLie Media will go to keep important information from the world’s English speaking public.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 10 2020 16:58 utc | 109
Did you guys see any mention of this, this is from the BBC update, hidden in there: “An Iranian official told the BBC on Friday that there was documentation to prove that the plane had a mechanical issue before take-off. It was not signed off for flying, but Ukrainian airline officials had overruled these objections, the official said, without giving further details.”
Honestly, this sounds exactly like the kind of thing that the Ukrainians would indeed do.
Posted by: Josh V | Jan 10 2020 17:18 utc | 111
Good job, HK protesters.
Shenzhen and Guangzhou extend GDP lead over Hong Kong
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 10 2020 17:25 utc | 112
The CBS 60 minutes show (can’t link to it from here) on Epstein seems designed to convince he was murdered, thus deceased.
We are shown: a corpse with a toe-tag which reads Jeffery Epstein (mispelled) – medecine bottles in his cell top bunk labelled with his name (correctly). We are told the body’s fingerprints correspond to those taken when he was arrested (so we must presume that the person arrested was Epstein). —No DNA analysis was done.
Dr. Baden offers descriptions, opinions, etc. that point to murder, I won’t go into those, they seem legit, match the pictures, and other ‘known’ facts about strangulation / garroting, etc.
Focus on the pix: The cell is a very messy scene. It matches with prison personel (or others) churning up much disturbance trying to ‘revive’ the deceased, plus and/or planting not very convincing ‘clues’ as to suicide – ref. to the ‘nooses’ found (pristine light cloth from prison sheets, laying on the floor, or mysteriously tied to bars of bunk bed..) Baden and many others make such points about the nooses, and the fact that electrical cords present would have been more efficient.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7855039/Graphic-photos-Jeffrey-Epsteins-autopsy-reveal-bloodied-neck.html
Epstein shown twice: one face – here enlarged
https://i.4cdn.org/pol/1578303853092.jpg
which is not Epstein. Look at it upright and compare to pix of him. See the ears, shape of nose. This is a pic of the same man in the very odd pic(s) of ‘arrival’ at the Presb. hospital.
https://dailym.ai/2QH75Hm
Note that this pic has now been doctored in much of the MSM and no longer shows the face, which is obscured by /med actions/ Ex. NY post.
https://bit.ly/2NeP6WN
Additionally, the hair length of the ‘face’ – short – does not match the second pic of the ‘corpse.’ which is quite long (see daily mail.)
The corpse pic. is wearing a hospital gown, and is on a hospital ‘bed’ or other (don’t know proper term) and the setting is ‘autopsy’ – from the vid. It looks very much like Epstein, particularly the arms, the curled hand is incredibly like. Epstein was 6 foot and the corpse does fill the space from top of head to toe. The sparse and longer hair is credible – he was loosing hair a bit. I can’t make up my mind if this is Epstein or not. Anyone trying to analyze this pic, and the pic of the legs, should recall that Epstein never drank, smoked, or took drugs (something he had in common with Trump, see the pix of parties, everyone else has a glass in hand..) So Idk.
In any case, the media is mixing up all kinds of stuff, either just thru total disinterest and sloppiness, or to muddy everthing.
Posted by: Noirette | Jan 10 2020 17:45 utc | 114
Situation in Australia is so critical that even the rain made the bushfires worse:
Videos: Australian Bushfires Merge Into 1.5 Million-Acre Blaze
“What we’re really seeing with a number of these fires merging is a number of small fires started by lightning strikes, across the landscape,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service spokesperson Anthony Clark is quoted as telling the Sydney Morning Herald. “And as they grow, we see fires merging.”
Posted by: vk | Jan 10 2020 21:49 utc | 115
http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20200111-ankara-donnerait-nationalite-turque-mercenaires-syriens-libye
while in Libya…
Posted by: mina | Jan 11 2020 8:40 utc | 116
VK 113 “all new members of Parliament must give an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown or else they cannot take their seats”
That is in UK
Australia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDqvWbA11OM
Canada https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT1l5kesjKA&feature=youtu.be
New Zealand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CfS9Ewjczk
The PM’s of all three must swear allegiance to the monarch of England rather than their own country before they can take office.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jan 11 2020 8:47 utc | 117
Mike Whitney weighs in on Iran:
General Soleimani’s Network of Revenge
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 11 2020 16:38 utc | 118
Sorry, Wayne Madsen weighs in, esp. sorry to Wayne.
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 11 2020 16:39 utc | 119
Trisha I put this here since it’s so off topic. It’s a reply to your comment in another more recent thread.
In the case you (and anyone else interested) haven’t seen theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed talk about “The End of Spacetime” (as a fundamental concept) you might want to watch (YouTube, a bit over one and a half hours long, SLAC 2018 version, he’s very energetic and easy to follow).
Anyway the view (but only when limited within the framework you/we are talking about*) very smoothly touched upon by Nima in the start of the talk (before the “new” stuff) means that both short-term and long-term is entirely unpredictable (including in your application) because determinism “as such” was killed off by quantum mechanics and then some (precision! certainty!) all we’ve got left is highly dynamic and chaotic “probability soup” 🙂
* however that framework is ever so slowly being replaced (ref.: the video) and there’s bound to be more beyond that too.
(Funnily enough this science confirms some of the basic yet counter-intuitive limits in real philosophy like how one has no guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow just because it has risen for as long as Earth has existed …which in turn could easily lead anyone into the Buddhist notion of the world being a special kind of empty illuson).
Anyway it’s a good talk and much better than this comment 🙂
I don’t have anything else to add so I’ll go away now XD
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jan 11 2020 19:27 utc | 120
Ps. no matter what he says mathematicians are not weird lol 😛 (I don’t claim to be one).
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jan 12 2020 2:33 utc | 121
Well this is odd everyone in Toronto Canada just got an alert regarding the pickering Nuclear power plant telling us there has been an emergency and to review local media for more information but theres nit a single story about whats going on
Posted by: Kadath | Jan 12 2020 12:37 utc | 122
Sputnik has a little (15:42 Moscow time which I think is UTC+2 and updated 15:53):
“The Canadian province of Ontario has issued an emergency bulletin citing an “incident” said to have taken place at the Pickering nuclear power plant. The bulletin is said to be applicable to those within 10 km of the facility, located about 20 km east of downtown Toronto.
The alert, issued at 7:20 am Sunday, assured Ontarians that “there has been NO abnormal release of radioactivity from the station and emergency staff are responding to the situation.”
The bulletin also indicated that people nearby “do not need to take protective actions at this time.”
No other details were made immediately available.”
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jan 12 2020 13:02 utc | 123
Now they sent a second alert saying the first alert was sent in error what a fricken joke, they send these emergency alerts out to everyone in Ontario is someone is late to a child custody meeting in Ajax but they cant even manage the emergency messages for the place they created the alerts for. This is the Hawaii missile drill hoax all over again
Posted by: Kadath | Jan 12 2020 14:21 utc | 124
– “The Washington Institute” has published an article on their website in which a few aspects of demographic developments are explained. Very interesting because it explains a number of demographic, financial and social issues that are in play in the Middle East.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/demography-in-the-middle-east-population-growth-slowing-womens-situation-un
– Yes, I know that this “think tank” is being “sponsered” by Israëli money. But in spite of that the article is surprisingly a-political and neutral in nature and tone.
– Keep in mind: I use here the words “Middle East”, which includes Israel AND Iran. Israel is – like the rest of the arabic world – sitting on a (demographic) timebomb.
Posted by: Willy2 | Jan 15 2020 12:51 utc | 125