Financial topics

[aedens]

What do you believe the earned income tax credit is, except a negative income tax ( aka a guaranteed minimum income ) for politically favored members of the U.S. society?

Do you believe a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans is likely to happen?

Already is from the unseen internalization processes of bureaucracies. If they make under $12,000 per year they pay no city winter or summer tax and growing. Make $12001.00 and your homeless around here. The energy poverty this winter has wiped out countless of souls I consider on top of the peak never seen before seizures of unpaid state taxes noted here last July.
Last numbers I seen and very hard to verify why work when the services provided equal $14.19 per hour for goods and services the tax payers pay from the counterfeit parasites.
It is considered cheaper than them wandering the streets homeless.
Nor saying we do not need a level of services and the fiat system works as we know they get the first availability of the theft.
That stolen capital cannot be rendered productive as they parrot the current European business model.
The consequences are certain and ongoing.
The fastest growth industry is the poverty business model. It will implode.
The agenda models are clear and best practice in there bent of mind to the parasitic statist.

As I seen noted - parabolic consumption rates. - not locally
lead and control the population blocks - already well underway
No accidents in politics...
Should I open another business? No damn way...
As noted before even with the fisher money multiplier number they lost money when the business model changed
when I moved they slammed me with well over $28000 going forward with another tax bill. The day it started the closed
sign was in the window the day before. Six employees elsewhere for government thieves and idiots on parade.

On a global level they will sift the ashes and could care less as before. What can be salvaged will be since even they state
in irony they are blunt monetary policy tools. Synonym for dictator and totalitarian is socialism.
The planet is being bulldozed globally and economically as we speak in design.

Heraclites: “You can not step twice in the same river.”

At the annual banking structure and competition conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in May 1987, the buzzword heard in the corridors
and used by many of the speakers was “that which can be securitized, will be securitized.”

Avarice and Hubris will meet its end.

[Higgenbotham]

U.S. Approves Expanded Gas Exports

The Obama administration on Friday cleared the way for broader natural-gas exports by approving a $10 billion facility in Texas, a milestone in the U.S. transition into a major supplier of energy for world markets.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 0300876450

The Russian oligarchs who own GazProm aren't going to like this.

[aedens]

U.S. Approves Expanded Gas Exports

The Obama administration on Friday cleared the way for broader natural-gas exports by approving a $10 billion facility in Texas, a milestone in the U.S. transition into a major supplier of energy for world markets.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 0300876450

The Russian oligarchs who own GazProm aren't going to like this.

Corupt by the progressives of fact owned by the energy cartels now asserting genocidal pipeline wars, or are so utterly removed from reality they
cannot understand. I think the point is simply the trains run on time in Italia attitude and profound taxpayer stupidity of epic historical fact of design.

http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... roit#p9346

829 of the type: A > B > C > A
4395 of the type: A > B > C > A
8963 of the type: A > B > C > A
3129 of the type: A > B > C > A

Vlad knows this asset allocation ruse foisted on us. He took the producers.
From the two other views now closer that in other words, the 1937 and 1973 time periods, the interest rate movements, and the time lags.

[Higgenbotham]

WASHINGTON — The crisis in Crimea is heralding the rise of a new era of American energy diplomacy, as the Obama administration tries to deploy the vast new supply of natural gas in the United States as a weapon to undercut the influence of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, over Ukraine and Europe.

The administration’s strategy is to move aggressively to deploy the advantages of its new resources to undercut Russian natural gas sales to Ukraine and Europe, weakening such moves by Mr. Putin in future years.

In an interview, Mr. Pascual asserted that his team’s efforts had already weakened Mr. Putin’s hand, and had helped lower Ukraine’s dependence on Russia for natural gas supplies to 60 percent, down from 90 percent.

Mr. Pascual said that his team had worked to help Ukraine and other European countries break away from dependence on Russian gas by finding supplies elsewhere, including Africa, and assisting the Europeans to build up their natural gas storage. The team, he said, is working with Ukraine and the European Union on completing a European energy charter, which already allows natural gas to move more quickly through Europe and permits countries to negotiate lower rates with Gazprom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world ... .html?_r=0

Gazprom's gas exports are worth about $66 billion a year, roughly 13% of total
Russian exports of $515 billion.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/12/news/ec ... as-threat/

[aedens]

using a cautious strategy of delay and avoidance - theory advocating state ownership of industry - established by gradual reforms within the law -

i.e. walking in circles. Same as 1943 view seen we already knew. Infrastructure vs. Regional cartels and more importantly building a war chest of Funds or SWF for when shit hits the fan.

Nations Begin to Pursue Policies of Economic Nationalism ----- soon....
World Trade System Breaks into Segregated Markets ---- warm reboot we warned of. Jul 07, 2013

[Reality Check]

Economics is what this war is going to be about. The Soviets want the US corporations out of their territory and any territory they are going to take over. There's a clear dividing line between Soviet controlled areas and US controlled areas. Like if we go down the list of the Dow 30, there is no McDonald's in a Soviet controlled area, no Procter and Gamble products, no Disney. Chevron won't be in the Ukraine to make an oil and gas deal. I saw some Coca-Cola products there but they are hard to find. Real Russians won't drink that crap anyway. The Soviets let Lufthansa fly into Belarus and that's the only Western airline that is allowed in. If the Soviets take over any country, all the US corporations are going to get kicked out.

It is my understanding that the Russian economy is based on Energy and that Russia imports many of it's high tech, and industrial products from Germany and other European countries.

To some extent the Russians really are Barbarians in the classic sense. The Germanic tribes that destroyed Rome did not suddenly have all the engineering, technical and financial skills that the Romans, and the Greeks before them, had. Those were lost for centuries to a dark age in Europe. The Germanic tribes coveted what Rome had, but they only had the power to destroy Rome, not to absorb all aspects of the Roman empire.

If Germany elected neutrality, that might be the best outcome for Russia, but if Russia was forced to destroy Germany, in the same way Rome was destroyed, then the United States, not Russia might be the only country left with that level of skill and knowledge.

The military and political inheritors of Rome; First the Franks occupying Gaul, and later the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe, were lesser Germanic ( barbarian ) empires of the dark ages.

By contrast, the U.S. elites, and elites from the rest of the world present in the U.S. as refuges, would have the western hemisphere's resources available to them, as well as what very well might be the strongest military left on earth, with local military supremacy in the western hemisphere, and no military aspirations outside the Western hemisphere and Oceania.

The U.S. might be a worthy trading partner for many different lesser empires around the world.

Russia would have the Western, Northern and Southern European countries to deal with militarily, as well as the Sunni Muslim countries and the Chinese, all with land borders with Russia on the Eurasian continent. At best Russia can dominate Eastern Europe until it has time to develop the countries it subjugated, a task that would take decades. Western Europe, Russia, China, Africa, non-Chinese Asia and even Russia might have many reasons to trade with the U.S.

China, Russia and a recreated Sunni Muslim empire based in Africa and the Middle East, might have many issues to deal with besides an isolationist United States dominating the western hemisphere and supporting the independence of the island nations of New Zealand and Australia.

The economic bubble would pop and elites the world over would lose Trillions in paper money and electronic balances, but the resources would still be there to exploit and and the U.S. would have the military power to control those resources in the western hemisphere. Just another way to view an unknowable future, not a prediction. The fact that Obama is de-facto abandoning Europe militarily was an unknown fact to me until a few weeks ago, and it made me question what else may happen that I did not consider as even being possible.

[Higgenbotham]

Economics is what this war is going to be about. The Soviets want the US corporations out of their territory and any territory they are going to take over. There's a clear dividing line between Soviet controlled areas and US controlled areas. Like if we go down the list of the Dow 30, there is no McDonald's in a Soviet controlled area, no Procter and Gamble products, no Disney. Chevron won't be in the Ukraine to make an oil and gas deal. I saw some Coca-Cola products there but they are hard to find. Real Russians won't drink that crap anyway. The Soviets let Lufthansa fly into Belarus and that's the only Western airline that is allowed in. If the Soviets take over any country, all the US corporations are going to get kicked out.

It is my understanding that the Russian economy is based on Energy and that Russia imports many of it's high tech, and industrial products from Germany and other European countries.

To some extent the Russians really are Barbarians in the classic sense. The Germanic tribes that destroyed Rome did not suddenly have all the engineering, technical and financial skills that the Romans, and the Greeks before them, had. Those were lost for centuries to a dark age in Europe. The Germanic tribes coveted what Rome had, but they only had the power to destroy Rome, not to absorb all aspects of the Roman empire.

If Germany elected neutrality, that might be the best outcome for Russia, but if Russia was forced to destroy Germany, in the same way Rome was destroyed, then the United States, not Russia might be the only country left with that level of skill and knowledge.

The military and political inheritors of Rome; First the Franks occupying Gaul, and later the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe, were lesser Germanic ( barbarian ) empires of the dark ages.

By contrast, the U.S. elites, and elites from the rest of the world present in the U.S. as refuges, would have the western hemisphere's resources available to them, as well as what very well might be the strongest military left on earth, with local military supremacy in the western hemisphere, and no military aspirations outside the Western hemisphere and Oceania.

The U.S. might be a worthy trading partner for many different lesser empires around the world.

Russia would have the Western, Northern and Southern European countries to deal with militarily, as well as the Sunni Muslim countries and the Chinese, all with land borders with Russia on the Eurasian continent. At best Russia can dominate Eastern Europe until it has time to develop the countries it subjugated, a task that would take decades. Western Europe, Russia, China, Africa, non-Chinese Asia and even Russia might have many reasons to trade with the U.S.

China, Russia and a recreated Sunni Muslim empire based in Africa and the Middle East, might have many issues to deal with besides an isolationist United States dominating the western hemisphere and supporting the independence of the island nations of New Zealand and Australia.

The economic bubble would pop and elites the world over would lose Trillions in paper money and electronic balances, but the resources would still be there to exploit and and the U.S. would have the military power to control those resources in the western hemisphere. Just another way to view an unknowable future, not a prediction. The fact that Obama is de-facto abandoning Europe militarily was an unknown fact to me until a few weeks ago, and it made me question what else may happen that I did not consider as even being possible.

Nothing I can disagree with here. While I don't believe this scenario is likely to happen, it is plausible, and if it did, whereby Washington can maintain itself as the political capital of the areas you mention and maintain an industrial civilization in a reduced state then, in my view, it might be accurate to say that the result will be that the world as a whole falls into a dark age but the US itself will be relatively unaffected and will not itself meet the criteria for having fallen into a dark age, by my defintion anyway. That definition would be that Washington ceases to be the political capital of any territory in the US or at least the vast majority of it. One possibility that seems likely under the scenario that there is an orderly wind down in US influence is that Washington retains certain powers like military control while there are also regional or state capitals in the US on equal footing, which assume control of and responsibility for other powers. I don't see that scenario constituting a dark age either, just to be clear about what I am saying, the reason being that there will be orderly continuity. This scenario is what I thought might be likely before Bernanke went crazy with QE and weakened the US to the extent that, in my opinion, it will never recover - economically, socially, or politically. Too much capital has been spent. Sometime in the near future I'll make a detailed post as to why I believe that is true, covering the subject in its entirety.

[Reality Check]

U.S. Approves Expanded Gas Exports

The Obama administration on Friday cleared the way for broader natural-gas exports by approving a $10 billion facility in Texas, a milestone in the U.S. transition into a major supplier of energy for world markets.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 0300876450

The Russian oligarchs who own GazProm aren't going to like this.

I believe there have been over a dozen of these proposals stuck in the federal governments regulator pipeline for years.

Only handful, maybe two counting the one just announced, have been approved and the two I am aware of are in deep south red states with no significant anti-energy environmental communities: Louisiana and Texas.

If the White House were to announce an accelerated 30 day review process for the between 15 and 20 cases pending, that might have a short term impact on future markets, but this is really not a competitive threat to GazProm in my opinion.

GazProm is an extremely lower cost producer for delivery to Europe in a free market environment. It might interfere with GazProm growing in the Liquified Natural Gas export market though I doubt LNG is anything but a miniscule part of the Russian economy.

In my opinion the multi-Billion dollar investments in the gas Compression facilities in the U.S. would never be paid back, and would just be another bubble that will burst.
A long the same lines as many of the renewable energy projects that are simply not economically feasible.

The economics are not there in a free trade environment and the technical and vulnerability issues of multi-billion dollar processing facilities located on the coasts in a war time environment are remarkable. These facilities are more vulnerable to total destruction by sabotage, or by military attack, than an ammunition factory, and much more expensive.

You punch a hole in an above ground holding tank next to the processing facility and the resulting fire and explosion will destroy both the tank farm and the multi-billion dollar processing facility.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -overseas/

A much bigger economic threat to Russia would be to announce a U.S. Marshal plan in the United States to move much of the economy from dependence on higher cost imported petroleum products, to energy independence using much lower costs U.S. produced natural gas, and much smaller quantities of oil produced only in the United States. This could be done with using a modestly expensive plan such as the T. Bone Pickens plans, privately financed with U.S. government low interest loan guarantees for economically justifiable conversion to natural gas.

http://www.pickensplan.com/natural_gas/
http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan

An announcement that North America was going to be totally energy independent within five years, with major reductions in imported energy starting this year, would have a much bigger, and long lasting, impact on the futures market for Oil, and a much larger permanent negative impact on the Russian economy,

[Higgenbotham]

The economics are not there in a free trade environment and the technical and vulnerability issues of multi-billion dollar processing facilities located on the coasts in a war time are remarkable. These facilities are more vulnerable to total destruction by sabatoge than an ammunition factory, and much more expensive.

You punch a hole in an above ground holding tank next to the processing facility and the resulting explosion will destroy both the tank farm and the multi-billion dollar processing facility.

You got that right. I was working closely with a facility in the US that was carrying propane through pipelines at high pressure, about 280 psi, as I recall. They had required training for outsiders and strict procedures as to what anyone could wear when going near the areas where the propane was dispersed, i.e., no polyester for fear the static on it could create a spark that would blow the whole building up (out of several buildings that dispersed the propane). It was my thought that this facility was very vulnerable to sabotage, and I was just typing in exactly how I thought that could be done at the time, but decided I had better not. Suffice it to say that a knowledgeable individual could do it at low cost with a high probability of success, in my estimation, from outside the fenceline of the plant.

These natural gas facilities would likely be many times more vulnerable.

[Reality Check]

On a tangent there is black and white news reel film of the secondary, and tertiary explosions that occurred when an LNG tank farm in Cleveland Ohio developed a leak in the early 1900s. I saw it in school many decades ago, but I am not able to locate a copy, any one know of a link to a copy of the film on the net ?

There was not film of the primary explosion, but apparently some time passed between the primary explosion, and the later ones, and an airplane was up filming the devastation from the first blast when the follow on explosions occurred.

A brief description of the Cleveland event can be found at the below link. The liquid natural gas flowed into the sewers, evaporated, expanded and bubbled up through the toilets and sink traps under pressure. Apparently the houses had an open pilot light because the film shows the houses on a street bursting into flames sequentially as the gas made it's way down the sewer line. Sort of like trees cooking off in a forest fire. The images have stuck with me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_ ... _explosion