Central Banks Locked and Loaded
June 15th, 2012Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
People are emailing me about other sites that are going full freakout with advice to empty bank accounts and activate doomsteads, etc. and why am I not freaking out, running for the hills, etc.
Ok, first of all, I “ran for the hills” back in 2006, and it has been quite nice out here, thanks. Second, if this Eurozone situation genuinely goes sideways, recall the vocabulary lesson from 2008 where we learned about the term, “unlimited” as it relates to the totally bogus financial system:
The U.S. Federal Reserve led an unprecedented push by central banks to flood financial markets with dollars, backing up government efforts to restore confidence in the banking system. The ECB, the Bank of England and the Swiss central bank will offer unlimited dollar funds in auctions with maturities of seven days, 28 days and 84 days at a fixed interest rate, the Washington-based Fed said today. The Bank of Japan may introduce “similar measures.”
So, what’s the difference between 2008 and 2012?
About four years. That’s it. It’s called kick the can and it has been going on for decades. So, is Monday finally going to be it? The End. For reals?
While anything is possible, I seriously doubt it.
All collapse is local. If you’re reading from Greece, you know this. However, I don’t yet see this as a systemic threat. While I’m not saying that disorderly moves won’t happen, you need to understand that these central banks can and do collude when necessary. The Reuters piece below indicates that the same voodoo magic show, that we saw in 2008, is about to kick off again.
Now, I did make one small defensive play. I moved a large portion of our cash from a call account into a higher yielding term deposit account to lock in a higher rate for a year in case the RBNZ eases in the face of European chaos. But that’s it. I keep our savings mostly in cash and gold, with a small portion of the cash available for very speculative, short term equity plays that I don’t talk about much on here.
A far more disturbing prospect than some kind of financial stop event is that the grindhouse continues to operate, sucking up ever more of people’s assets and converting them into wars and technologies of political control. That’s my guess as to where we’re headed.
Via: Reuters:
Stocks jumped on Thursday after news major central banks are preparing coordinated action if the results of Greek elections this weekend lead to turmoil in financial markets.
The central banks from major economies will take steps to stabilize markets and prevent a credit squeeze if necessary, Group of 20 officials told Reuters.
The news late in the trading day invigorated a market that has been highly volatile this week, whip-sawed by concerns the ballot in Greece on Sunday may set the stage for the country’s exit from the euro zone.
The European Atrocity You Never Heard About
June 14th, 2012Via: The Chronicle of Higher Education:
What was different about the deportation of Loch and his fellow passengers, however, was that it took place by order of the United States and Britain as well as the Soviet Union, nearly two years after the declaration of peace.
Between 1945 and 1950, Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians—the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, and children under 16—were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland. As The New York Times noted in December 1945, the number of people the Allies proposed to transfer in just a few months was about the same as the total number of all the immigrants admitted to the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. They were deposited among the ruins of Allied-occupied Germany to fend for themselves as best they could. The number who died as a result of starvation, disease, beatings, or outright execution is unknown, but conservative estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people lost their lives in the course of the operation.
Apple’s Siri to Ride Shotgun in Cars From Nine Major Auto Manufacturers
June 14th, 2012Via: Gizmag:
As part of its keynote speech on the opening day of this year’s WWDC, Apple mentioned that Siri will be featured in vehicles from no less than nine major global automakers. Not only will Siri be making her much anticipated iPad debut, but she’ll also be joining you on your daily commute. Apple calls it the “Eyes Free” system.
Apple said that Siri will be seamlessly integrated into vehicles from Audi, BMW, Chrysler, General Motors, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover and Toyota. With the push of a button, you’ll be able to stop fiddling around with your phone or infotainment system, focus on the road and let Siri handle the other work.
Apple didn’t share any details beyond the basics, leaving us to imagine exactly how Siri will work in a vehicle. Given Apple’s mention of a spoken mapping function in iOS 6, it seems obvious that Siri will take over the role of turn-by-turn navigation. Other common functions like audio control and points of interest should slide naturally under Siri’s voice-activated umbrella. Oh yeah … you’ll be able to make calls, too.
Related: Introducing Siri: DARPA’s Ghost in Apple’s Machine
Research Credit: noncompliant
What Facebook Knows
June 14th, 2012Via: MIT / Technology Review:
If Facebook were a country, a conceit that founder Mark Zuckerberg has entertained in public, its 900 million members would make it the third largest in the world.
It would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Private conversations, family photos, and records of road trips, births, marriages, and deaths all stream into the company’s servers and lodge there. Facebook has collected the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior. Some of your personal information is probably part of it.
…
Heading Facebook’s effort to figure out what can be learned from all our data is Cameron Marlow, a tall 35-year-old who until recently sat a few feet away from Zuckerberg. The group Marlow runs has escaped the public attention that dogs Facebook’s founders and the more headline-grabbing features of its business. Known internally as the Data Science Team, it is a kind of Bell Labs for the social-networking age. The group has 12 researchers—but is expected to double in size this year. They apply math, programming skills, and social science to mine our data for insights that they hope will advance Facebook’s business and social science at large. Whereas other analysts at the company focus on information related to specific online activities, Marlow’s team can swim in practically the entire ocean of personal data that Facebook maintains. Of all the people at Facebook, perhaps even including the company’s leaders, these researchers have the best chance of discovering what can really be learned when so much personal information is compiled in one place.
U.S. Bolsters Ties to Fighters in Syria
June 14th, 2012In other news: Syria: Clinton Admits U.S. On Same Side As Al Qaeda To Destabilize Assad Government.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
U.S. intelligence operatives and diplomats have stepped up their contacts with Syrian rebels in part to help organize their burgeoning military operations against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, according to senior U.S. officials.
As part of the efforts, the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department—working with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other allies—are helping the opposition Free Syrian Army develop logistical routes for moving supplies into Syria and providing communications training.
‘Visit America: It’s Easier Than You Think’
June 14th, 2012The spoofs of this will be brutal.
Via: U.S. State Department:
64 Drone Bases on American Soil
June 14th, 2012Via: Danger Room:
There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.
Public Intelligence, a non-profit that advocates for free access to information, released a map of military UAV activities in the United States on Tuesday. Assembled from military sources — especially this little-known June 2011 Air Force presentation (.pdf) – it is arguably the most comprehensive map so far of the spread of the Pentagon’s unmanned fleet. What exact missions are performed at those locations, however, is not clear. Some bases might be used as remote cockpits to control the robotic aircraft overseas, some for drone pilot training. Others may also serve as imagery analysis depots.
Countries Across World Gird for Greece Turmoil
June 14th, 2012Via: Reuters:
The threat of turmoil sweeping across global markets next week if Greece’s election prompts a panicky flight of money from the euro zone has policymakers from Beijing to Zurich preparing to protect their currencies and economies from an unwelcome influx.
Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan is among the most vociferous, dangling the threat on Thursday of imposing capital controls to stop the Swiss franc from soaring as a result of investors seeking the currency’s relative safety.
“The SNB will not tolerate this,” he said bluntly.
Switzerland is not alone. The Bank of Japan is prioritising market stability, according to one source, with economists saying the bank’s main concern would be to stop the yen taking off.
Intervention would be a likely response should the yen rise too high for the authorities’ taste. With G20 leaders meeting in Mexico next week there is even speculation of a coordinated global response although no evidence of that has emerged so far.
India has a range of crisis management groups within the government set up to deal with euro zone-triggered financial stress, according to Kaushik Basu, the finance minister’s chief economic adviser.
In China, key agencies including the central bank, have been asked to come up with similar plans, sources said last week. Measures may include keeping the yuan steady and stepping up policies to stabilise the economy, they said.
The big concern for all these countries – and others across Europe and the Americas – is that a victory on Sunday by parties in Greece opposed to austerity attached to its second bailout will send the euro zone further into crisis by pushing the country towards the currency bloc’s exit door.
There are already signs of contagion. Spanish 10-year bond yields rose above 7 percent for the first time in the euro era on Thursday, hitting a level widely seen as being unsustainable.
It has all triggered concerns about another global financial market spasm similar to the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Britain: Government Wants Records of All Internet Activity Kept for One Year
June 14th, 2012Via: BBC:
Details of internet use in the UK will have to be stored for a year to allow police and intelligence services to access it, under government plans.
Records will include people’s activity on social network sites, webmail, internet phone calls and online gaming.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the change was needed to keep up with how criminals were using new technology.
But senior Tory David Davis said it was “incredibly intrusive” and would only “catch the innocent and incompetent”.
The Communications Data Bill has been published in draft form – but the government faces a battle to get it through Parliament intact, with Lib Dem MPs and Conservatives such as Mr Davis calling for it to be watered down or abandoned altogether.
Related: Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
MIT Researchers Create Glucose Powered Fuel Cell for Medical Implants
June 14th, 2012Via: MIT:
MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again.
