Time for a cocktail ...

OPEC Presents: QE4 and Deflation

Thinking plummeting oil prices are good for the economy is a mistake. They instead, as I said only yesterday in The Price Of Oil Exposes The True State Of The Economy, point out how bad the global economy is doing. QE has been able to inflate stock prices way beyond anything remotely looking fundamental, but energy prices have now deflated instead of stocks. Something had to give at some point. Turns out, central banks weren’t able to inflate oil prices on top of everything else. Stocks and bonds are much easier to artificially inflate than commodities are.

The Fed and ECB and BOJ and PBoC may of course yet try to invest in oil, they’re easily crazy enough to try, but it will be too late even if they did. In that sense, one might argue that OPEC – or rather Saudi Arabia – has gifted us QE4, but the blessings of the ‘low oil price stimulus’ will of necessity be both mixed and short-lived. Because while the lower prices may free some money for consumers, not nearly all of the freed up ‘spending space’ will end up actually being spent. So in the end that’s a net loss as far as spending goes.

The ‘OPEC Q4? may also keep some companies from going belly up for a while longer due to falling energy costs, but the flipside is many other companies will go bust because of the lower prices, first among them energy industry firms. Moreover, as we’re already seeing, those firms’ market values are certain to plummet. And, see yesterday’s essay linked above, many of eth really large investors, banks, equity funds et al are heavily invested in oil and gas and all that comes with it. And they are about to take some major hits as well. OPEC may have gifted us QE4, but it gave us another present at the same time: deflation in overdrive.

You can’t force people to spend, not if you’re a government, not if you’re a central bank. And if you try regardless, chances are you wind up scaring people into even less spending. That’s the perfect picture of Japan right there. There’s no such thing as central bank omnipotence, and this is where that shows maybe more than anywhere else. And if you can’t force people to spend, you can’t create growth either, so that myth is thrown out with the same bathwater in one fell swoop.

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/opec-presents-q4-and-deflation/

U.S. auction of Silk Road bitcoins draws 27 bids

(Reuters) - The U.S. Marshals Service on Thursday received more than two dozen bids for 50,000 bitcoins seized from the alleged owner of Silk Road, an Internet black-market bazaar on which authorities say drugs and other illegal goods could be bought.

Lynzey Donahue, a Marshals Service spokeswoman, said the government had 11 registered bidders and 27 resulting bids. Winning bidders for the bitcoins, valued at $18.6 million, will be notified on Friday.

It was the Marshals Service's second such auction following one in June for almost 30,000 bitcoins seized during a raid on Silk Road in 2013.

To date, the government has recovered 173,991 bitcoins while pursuing the case, including 144,336 from computer hardware belonging to Ross Ulbricht, the alleged creator of the underground website.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/04/us-bitcoin-auction-idUSKCN0JI1FB20141204

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Great investment, bid on something that lost half its value in the last year ...

Right to Work is WRONG for EVERYONE ...

The "Urbee" 3D-Printed Car: Coast to Coast on 10 Gallons?

The digital age seems synonymous with change. When it comes to communicating, who doesn't know what an email or a cell phone is, or hasn't heard of Facebook and Twitter?

"In the 21st century, the revolution may not be televised - but it likely will be tweeted, blogged, texted and organized" with digital tools, writes Catherine O'Donnell at the University of Washington.

What is required is a "complete rethink of the automobile," whereby the fundamentals are derived from "a science-based solution to personal mobility that allows movement without damage for centuries to come."

In her article, O'Donnell extensively cites a scholarly report by Phillip Howard, an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington, who was the project lead for a 2011 study quantifying the "use of social media in Arab Spring," Regarding Howard's findings, O'Donnell says the impact of social media in Tunisia and Egypt was nothing short of tremendous, where in the weeks just before Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign "the total rate of tweets from Egypt - and around the world - about political change" exponentially grew from "2,300 a day to 230,000 a day."


http://truth-out.org/news/item/27430-the-urbee-3d-printed-car-coast-to-coast-on-10-gallons


http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/10025562443

Idaho GOP Hires Larry Craig, The Anti-Gay Senator Arrested For Soliciting Gay Sex

Almost everyone who keeps up with anti-gay republicans caught engaging in gay sex remembers Larry Craig, the senator who repeatedly voted against LGBT rights, but was then caught toe-tapping in an airport bathroom. In case you don’t, here is a refresher.

In June 2007, Larry Craig was arrested in Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport for allegedly soliciting sex in a men’s room from a man who happened to be an undercover cop, Sergeant Dave Karsnia. In Karsnia’s arrest report, it is said that Craig tried to explain away his peering through cracks between stalls and nudging the officer’s foot in a most ridiculous manner:

Craig stated … He has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine.”to explain why he had tapped on a bathroom stall and peeked through the side several times.

As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, Craig was caught using campaign funds illegally to finance his own defense in this case. In order to keep it quiet, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of lewd conduct. However, this did not work.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/11/23/idaho-gop-hires-larry-craig-the-anti-gay-senator-arrested-for-soliciting-gay-sex/

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This is all the Repukes can dig up anymore ...

Firestone and the Warlord

HARBEL, Liberia — THE KILLERS LAUNCHED from the plantation under a waning moon one night in October 1992. They surged past tin-roofed villages and jungle hideouts, down macadam roads and red-clay bush trails. More and more joined their ranks until thousands of men in long, ragged columns moved toward the distant capital.

Men in camouflage mounted rusted artillery cannon in battered pickup trucks. Thin teenagers lugged rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Children carried AK-47s. Some held long machetes.

The killers wore ripped jeans and T-shirts, women’s wigs and cheap rubber sandals. Grotesque masks made them look like demons. They were electric with drugs. They clutched talismans of feather and bone to protect them from bullets. In the pre-dawn darkness, they surrounded Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.
They loosed their attack on the sleeping city. Artillery slammed into stores and homes. Mortars arced through thick, humid air that smelled of rot. Boy soldiers canoed across mangrove swamps. As they pressed in, the killers forced men, women and children from their homes. They murdered civilians and soldiers. Falling shells just missed the U.S. Embassy, hunkered on a high spot overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

https://www.propublica.org/article/firestone-and-the-warlord-intro

Rights groups release software to detect government spyware

Human rights group Amnesty International released free software on Thursday that allows users to determine if their computers are bugged by government intelligence agencies.

The program, Detekt, was designed specifically for human rights activists and journalists, whose computers governments regularly target, Amnesty said.

“Governments are increasingly using dangerous and sophisticated technology that allows them to read activists and journalists’ private emails and remotely turn on their computer’s camera or microphone to secretly record their activities,” said Marek Marczynski of Amnesty International.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/11/20/amnesty-nsa.html

https://resistsurveillance.org/

KKK Threatens ‘Lethal Force' Against Ferguson Protesters! [VIDEO]

Dividing the Spoils

We’ve been watching Congress since the mid-term elections and reading Zephyr Teachout’s terrific history book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United. That snuff box was a gift from King Louis XVI of France. His Majesty was a good friend of the American Revolution but when he gave Benjamin Franklin the gold box, featuring the monarch’s portrait surrounded with diamonds, some of our Founding Fathers objected. They worried that the gift would corrupt his judgment and unduly bias Franklin in France’s favor.

The framers debated the meaning of corruption at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and Americans have been arguing about it ever since. Today, gifts to politicians that were once called graft or bribes are called contributions. The Supreme Court has granted corporations the rights our founders reserved for people, and told those corporations they can give just about anything they want to elect politicians favorable to their interests. Diamond and gold snuff boxes are as outmoded as the king’s powdered wig. Now we’re talking cash — millions upon millions of dollars. Quadrupled, quintupled and then some – and it’s not considered corruption.

Consider the new report from the watchdog Sunlight Foundation: From 2007 to 2012, the two hundred most politically active corporations in the United States spent almost $6 billion for lobbying and campaign contributions. And they received more than $4 trillion in US government contracts and other forms of assistance. That’s $760 for every dollar spent on influence, a stunning return on investment.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/21/dividing-spoils