Posts Tagged ‘economy’

Here is the latest newsletter/article from Elliott Wave, one of my favorite trend researching and investment companies on the web today.

Think That Central Banks Move the Markets? Think Again
April 23, 2009

By Mark Galasiewski

The following is excerpted from Elliott Wave International’s Global Market Perspective. The full 120-page publication, which features forecasts for every major world market, is available free until April 30. Visit Elliott Wave International to download it free.

Conventional wisdom says that central banks can influence or even direct financial markets and the macroeconomy. The very existence of Elliott waves challenges such assumptions. For if markets responded to every central bank directive, how could Elliott waves exist? Parallel trend channels, Fibonacci price relationships, the similarity of form between waves of different sizes and time periods—none of that would be possible. Central bank decisions would have to coincide perfectly with turning points in Elliott waves, and we know that just doesn’t happen. But even without using waves, we can expose the conventional wisdom for the fallacy that it is.

Take, for example, this assertion in a recent article in a U.K. economic weekly: “Part of the aim of central banks in driving down interest rates is to encourage a greater risk appetite among investors.” Two key assumptions underlie that statement: a) central banks determine interest rates; and b) lower interest rates can increase society’s appetite for risk.

To see how the first assumption is false, let’s take a look at the daily chart of Australian interest rate data. It duplicates a study that Elliott Wave International has often done with U.S. interest rate data. It shows how movements in the cash target rate set by Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), appear to follow those in 3-month Australian Treasury Bills. After decisive moves up in T-bills from 2006 to early 2008, for example, the RBA faithfully raised its target. T-bills have since led the RBA during the financial crisis of the past year. In fact, the record indicates that the RBA almost always follows T-bills over time.

The proper conclusion to draw is not that the RBA has orchestrated the decline in rates since the early 1980s—but that it’s been riding it. During good times, central bankers look like geniuses; during bad times, they get tarred and feathered. Closer to the truth is that their interest-rate decisions are not proactive, but reactive, and that they continually follow in the footsteps of the market for lack of any other useful guide.

Now let’s look at the second assumption: that lower interest rates increase society’s appetite for risk. A simple glance at the weekly chart shows this assumption to be false. After the 1987 crash, the ASX All Ordinaries actually rallied for two years on rising rates and then sold off through 1990 on falling rates. Stocks then rose in 1991 on continued falling rates and sold off in 1992 on even lower rates. Continue following the chart to the right and you will see that there is no consistent correlation between the direction of interest rates and that of the stock market.

The myth of central bank potency is so pervasive that conventional analysts can’t even imagine a better explanation for price trends: that the market is the dog wagging its central bank tail, not the other way around.

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For more information, download Elliott Wave International’s FREE issue of Global Market Perspective, available until April 30. The 120-page publication covers every major world market, global interest rates, international currencies, metals, energy and more.

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Mark Galasiewski is the editor of Elliott Wave International’s Asian Financial Forecast and member of EWI’s Global Market Perspective team covering Asian stock indexes.

There are generally four types of real estate properties out on the market today: There is raw land, farm land, residential land, and commercial land. So, when you look at the types of properties we’re dealing with, people will ask “what’s the different between raw land and farm land?” raw land has no income purpose since God created it so it just holds the world together. You probably wouldn’t want any of that because you have to pay cash for it. Now, farm land is highly specialized in that it has income because the farmer has potential to get income from that land.
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So, it’s a different category from vacant land or raw land, and farm land. The two areas that we will be concerned with are primarily residential real estate and commercial real estate. Let’s look at what the differences would be:

If you look at residential real estate there are three types: Condominiums, Single Family homes, and small multi-units. Where did the commercial term come from? When you look at it, it’s likemulti-units. It comes from a financing term, and this term has to do with office buildings, strip malls, industrial lots, etc. There are two types of loans in real estate: residential loans and commercial loans. IF you are buying a single family home, or a duplex or up to a four plex, you would have to apply for a residential loan.

Canadian Outlook

If you’re looking to buy, it’s great news, but if you already own, it’s terrible: According to new evidence, Canadian home prices could decline by 20 per cent, may not hit bottom until late 2011. It
could be seven years or longer before prices recover to today’s levels. Maclean’s senior editor Duncan Hood reveals a frightening new forecast made by a brand new housing futures market. The new market allows sophisticated investors to bet on where house prices are going, and it predicts that prices will fall by much more than most economists are predicting right now (Macleans, 2009).
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European/UK Outlook:

The message is clear: the property market is set to continue to fall throughout 2009. Yes, Britons are to witness thousands of pounds being wiped off the value of their homes, according to banks, estate agents and other sector commentators. According to a recent report by the Land Registry, the average price of a property stood at £161,883 in November. This marks a 1.9 drop from October’s prices and a 12.2 per cent reduction from the same month in 2007. Every region in England and Wales saw a decrease in property values over the past year (Know your money, 2009).

American Outlook:

Americans fear home prices will drop more sharply in the coming year, despite government efforts to resuscitate the battered real estate sector, according to a poll released on Friday.

U.S. homeowners surveyed by Reuters and University of Michigan predicted their home values would fall by 2.2 percent in the year ahead, the biggest anticipated decline in the past few years (Yahoo, 2009).

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Any unit, if its a multi-unit, those have residential loans and the rules are totally different for them. If you hear someone say “you don’t qualify” they are tlaking about a residential loan because you are the person qualifying for the loan, but in commercial the property is the criterial for qualification. So, because there are two types of real estate, an office might not be zoned commercial in some areas and be zoned “O” zone and so on. So, zoning issues can be fairly complex. So, under financing commercial would probably be your best bet in terms of investments.

Universities in Ontario are not the place to be to receive quality education, research shows. Indeed, Ontario is the most under funded, most understaffed, and has the most amount of students per teacher ratio in all of Canada. According to a Statistics Canada report released a day after the 1998 “students’ budget,” students are paying more than ever for their university education. After inflation, tuition fees have leapt 62 per cent since the beginning of the decade, while family incomes have dropped by 5 per cent.

Comment from “A born and rised here taxpayer”
Thu, Apr 24, 08 at 09:13 AM
There are no jobs in Canada now for people born and raised here. It is just another example of how our government takes from tax paying Canadians that were born and raised here and gives it to these people that should not be here in the first place. We need to take care of the people here first. I am sick of these people coming over here for a free ride on taxpayers’ money and taking everything from us. I feel sorry for the younger people this country has been taken over by them and has gone to hell!

In 2008, students are expected to shoulder, on average, a 28,000 dollar debt after graduating from a Canadian University. The problem is that Canadian Universities are not available to Canadians because of the Foreign Students from China, and that Canadian Universities are using our tax dollars to fund education in China. This is called “brain drain,” where students come to Canada to take advantage of tax payer subsidized education, and leave to their home countries, often flipping the bill and not paying a cent.

Scholarships: Unfair or a helping hand? By Monica Wolfson. Windsor Star. Friday, April 06, 2007.

The University of Windsor is coming under fire for luring first-year students to campus with lucrative scholarships that administrators know students will forfeit within the first year because they can’t make the grades.

Almost eight in 10 first-year students who received academic entrance scholarships in September lost them by December because they were unable to get an A- average. Three years ago, U of W administrators designed a program to boost enrolment by offering financial incentives to high school graduates.

That’s done, even though officials knew few students would get the money beyond the first four months, according to data and a report obtained by The Windsor Star through the Freedom of Information Act.

“I would characterize this as nothing short of false advertising because the institutions know full well how few students will maintain this scholarship,” said Jesse Greener, Ontario chairwoman of the Canadian Federation of Students. “It’s kind of like getting kids smoking. You need to get them in the door and it’s a captured market after that. People are committed to getting a degree because you have to in this market. The opportunities to reconsider another school after the loss of a scholarship aren’t there” (Windsor Star, 2007).

HENDERSON: A strike of mutual destruction

Asked what steps he would take to turn the university around if he were in charge, the prof said both the faculty and administration would feel the heat.
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For starters, he said, accountability to the students, the reason the university exists, would be foremost. “If you’re not pulling your weight, you are fired. So what if you have tenure? Sorry. You are out.” In reality, said the prof, it’s almost impossible to get fired at U of W. “You probably have to kill somebody.”

He said it’s appalling that the university churns out graduates, weaned on multiple-choice exams marked by computers, who can’t compose a sentence or “think their way out of a wet paper bag.”

Meanwhile, said the prof, the bloated administration could easily be cut by 50 per cent, freeing up large amounts of money. He said it’s ridiculous that some faculties, which used to have a dean and one secretary for 2,000 students, now have as many as a dozen computer-equipped staff supporting a lesser number of students (Windsor Star, 2008).

EDUCATION SERVES ITS PURPOSE

As you’ve gathered by now, education is not intended to uplift and empower. The world is run by a secretive interlocking cartel that controls the education system. Its goal, in the words of one of its founders Cecil Rhodes, is to “gradually absorb the wealth of the world.” Naturally it wishes to obscure the truth. It wants students to be confused and stupid. Professors who don’t play this game are fired.

Ironically most Great Men were bad students or didn’t attend university at all. “If I had my way I’d burn every one of them to the ground,” George Bernard Shaw said. “They stereotype the mind” (Henry Makow, 2003).

Education: Reality 101 in Canadian Universities

Like university presidents across the country, Szathmáry is learning some hard lessons in a highly demanding subject. Some might call it Reality 101. Its prerequisites are a tough skin and a keen eye for the bottom line. Its required assignments are to predict and play the marketplace of ideas, divest the enterprise of weak divisions, and maximize returns to nervous investors. Its instructors? Hard-nosed governments and a student body that has transformed itself from Generation X into Generation Y. Why can’t professors spend more time ensuring that courses are professionally relevant? Why is the focus on expanding the intellect rather than expanding marketable skills? Why don’t four years of hard work and high bills lead more directly to a good career? “It’s pretty simple,” says Trevor Lines, president of the University of Manitoba Students’ Union. “The university has got to learn some priorities. It has to zero in on what it does well, what it doesn’t, and what exactly its tuition-paying clients need to survive in the outside world.”
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In fact, both students and governments are becoming downright dictatorial in their quest to turn the ivory tower into a sleek and efficient employment machine. Slashing budgets, politicians are taking a firm hand in the division of the spoils: diverting scarce resources to vocational training, pressing universities to work more closely with local colleges, dispensing seed money to private-sector educators, and setting aside special funds for universities that produce job-ready graduates or that replace traditional classrooms with high-tech, on-line learning. “There are some who think this will all go away,” says UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN president George Ivany. “That’s bullshit. We are witnessing a fundamental reorientation of how we operate, what we offer and who we are” (MacLean’s Magazine, 1996).

Where is the accountability?

In the Ontarian schooling system (in Canada), the Universities, colleges, and post-secondary institutions are empowered under an enabling act and are bound by provisions of different provincial statutes (ie. The Expropriation Act). In addition, because these institutions receive public funds directly in trust (by way of endowments), there are therefore restricted by the rules of accountability. This essentially means they are accountable to the public for demonstrating where the public funds were spent for the goals intended, and to see that it is spent in an efficient and economical manner. However, as all pundits of economics know, and what the economic and historic models show, is that government is not capable of being effective when power is taken away from individuals.

This means that University administrations are supposed to be responsible for the management of the public funds they receive for collective purposes (very broadly for education and research), but who watches the watchers? Supposedly the board of governors serve this function, but the reality of the situation is that this board is largely a controlled aspect of University Chief Executive Officers’ preferences with no real stated process for reporting their effectiveness to taxpayers. Indeed, the MUSH sector (Municipal, Universities, Schools, and Hospitals) does not guarantee public accountability of funds with regards to University effectiveness (or lack thereof). This fact is so credible that even the Ombudsman of Ontario admitted it:

“Ontario has fallen behind in oversight of non-governmental organizations providing critical public services referred to as the “MUSH” sector – municipalities (except for the ability to investigate complaints about closed meetings in some cases), universities, school boards, hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, police, and children’s aid societies (Ombudsman, Ontario, 2008)

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It looks like students, home owners, business lenders, and the general population who loan money from banks and other institutions are not the only ones getting the monetary shaft these days. Indeed, students pay exorbitant loan fees and interest rates just in an attempt to compete with others both in their local economy but also in countries where educations are state subsidized and the eventual graduate sometimes immigrates to the latter student’s local economy to compete for the same jobs. Given many new immigrants are coming from minority status countries, guess who gets the job first?

International debt is a new form of slavery through which the rich nations enslave the poor with money that can never be paid back.
When countries in poverty owe large amounts of money to wealthy nations, it’s the poorest people who suffer the worst impact. The burden of debt leaves their governments precious little to improve the lives of their citizens.
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Debt becomes a trap they can’t get out of.

It’s a new kind of slavery that robs people’s control over their own futures.

Yet when a poor country’s debt is cancelled, it provides a great opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people. Let’s look at some compelling reasons why we should drop the debt.

Debt costs lives

In the world’s poorest countries, the majority of their people have no access to basics like clean water, adequate housing, healthcare and education. In spite of that, these countries must pay debt service to wealthy nations and institutions, at the expense of providing vital services to their citizens.

Consider this: Between $10 billion and $15 billion is needed a year to turn around the AIDS crisis in Africa that claims 7,000 lives a day. Almost $15 billion is paid in debt service by sub-Saharan Africa to wealthy nations and institutions every year. Where do you reckon the money should go instead?

At school in Tanzania

In 2001, Tanzania received a partial debt write-off of over $2 billion. With the money it saved, the Tanzanian government abolished school fees for primary education. Enrolment increased by 50% between 2002 and 2003. An extra 1,000 schools were built. Hundreds more teachers were trained. Books and learning materials were provided. Amazingly, around 1.6 million children were able to go to school for the first time.

Cancellation delivers results

Startling results can be achieved from even small amounts of debt relief. In Uganda, school enrolment has more than doubled. In Mozambique, it meant immunisation for 500,000 children. In Honduras, three more years of schooling can be provided.
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Paid back, and back, and back

These nations have already paid back their debts ? several times over. Skyrocketing interest rates and compound interest inflate the amount and make repayment impossible.
Example: Nigeria borrowed $5 billion, paid back $16 billion to date but still owes a shocking $32 billion.

Makes foreign aid more effective

Foreign aid like that from Australia frees up money for poor countries to pay their debts to other wealthy nations and institutions. Between 1990 and 1997, developing countries actually paid more in debt service than they received in aid. If debts are cancelled, aid can be used more effectively in reducing poverty and ultimately lessen these countries? dependence on aid.

Join in to drop the debt

Without debt relief, poor countries will never be able to repay all their debts. Is there anything that ordinary people can do about it?

Yes! Millions of people around the world have joined the Jubilee ?Drop the Debt? campaign to ?drop?, or cancel 100% of the debt owed by the poorest countries.

When these countries no longer have to spend all their money paying back debt and high interest charges, they can provide much-needed services like clean water, sanitation, health and education for their citizens.

Source: Jubilee Campaign Australia

House prices are falling and too many homeowners are discovering that
the value of their home is less than the amount owing on the mortgage. Unemployment numbers are going up and estimates are that the rates for 2009 will spike beyond 8%.

Personal and business bankruptcies are surging with approximately
88,000 bankruptcies in Canada in 2008 and many more expected in 2009. Too many fellow-Canadians are experiencing serious financial troubles because of the downturn in the manufacturing and financial sectors of our economy. Why??

As we ponder the ?why? answer, it is worthy of note that the number
one cause of these critical and depressing financial troubles facing
individuals, families and small to medium-sized businesses is the
growth of credit card debt due to the malfunction of usury. All
debtors/borrowers are servants to creditors/lenders and are therefore
victims of the modern tyranny of usury-banking practices.

Usurers commonly reduce oppressed borrowers (individuals, businesses,
governments) to beggars. And for lack of knowledge, and because they too, are saddled with usury-bearing debts our fellow-citizens – the police, lawyers, judges and court staff – enforce the usury contracts and unknowingly become servants to their masters – the same greedy usurers.

Is the vice of greed a factor in what is currently happening in our
orthodox financial system of usury-based, debt money? Is the virtue of
giving a factor in the growth and expansion of the usuryfree community currency movement? And is usuryfree living not only a possibility but a real probability in this 21st Century? Let’s explore some facts as we seek answers to these timely questions.
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To understand the difference between living with usury and
usuryfree living, one must first be re-educated on a couple of key
definitions. Let’s start with the word – interest. Interest ought
to be correctly defined as usury and this definition can be
confirmed by many significant supporting statements from all of the
Holy Books.

For example, the Bible has many verses that absolutely forbid the
charging/exacting of usury on money. In summary, meticulous research
reveals that any percentage of interest on money above zero percent
is correclty defined as usury. Likewise, the Koran has similar
verses regarding the forbidding the curse of usury.

Additional support for the correct definition of interest is offered
by any of those few pioneering Socreds who are still alive in this
21st Century. One elder Socred is rumoured to have made these two wise statements about interest otherwise known to him as usury – (a)
Interest or usury is theft. and (b) Remember this, money cannot
have babies.

My observation is that debtors are enslaved financially because they
are paying usury to their creditors – who are knowingly or
unknowingly motivated by the vice of greed. To live without paying
usury is noteworthy, BUT usuryfree living cannot be fully experienced
until all of us are freed from usury – that means that we neither pay
no usury nor do we receive any usury from our so-called savings.

Usuryfree creatives is another phrase that requires a definition.
Usuryfree creatives are often considered to be a sub-group in the
larger, well known group known as cultural creatives. Any search
engine will provide sources for a detailed explanation of cultural
creatives.

Usuryfree creatives who are fully aware of the truth about modern
money creation seek to experience the reality of usuryfree living and
commonly enage in barter/trade using one or more of the growing number of usuryfree community currencies. Usuryfree creatives have learned that they can create and spend their own community currency which is free of interest or usury.

Usuryfree creatives commonly use these usuryfree community currencies as a complement with diminishing amounts of usury-based debt money which exists as computer blips on credit cards or debit cards or in cheques or paper notes of federal cash. Does anyone else sense an agenda by the PTB’s (Powers That Be) to take away these paper notes of federal cash so that every negotiated exchange is tracked by Big Brother’s invasive computer system?

Research reveals that the vice of greed is directly associated with
the design flaw of usury in our orthodox system of debt-based money.
Indeed, there is much evidence of an abundance of greed in the
conventional, but floundering financial marketplace.

My observation is that this ugly vice of greed is driven by the
constant and ever-present shortage of money which is direclty caused
by the element of usury. Close examination suggests that both
currently and historically, usury is the direct and/or indirect cause
violence, wars, poverty, scarcity and lack – locally, nationally and
internationally.

The unnatural and man-made function of usury is not only a design flaw in our orthodox system of debt money, but also an evil and immoral element that feeds this vice of greed while legally permitting
creditors (bankers) to steal wealth (money and property) from enslaved debtors who for lack of knowledge keep signing impossible loan and mortgage contracts created by the greedy creditors.

To eliminate usury and experience the reality of usuryfree living is
an honoured goal pursued by usuryfree creatives as we progress into
this 21st Century. Usuryfree creatives are likely to practice the
virtue of giving or gifting as they experience peace, abundace and
prosperity as a by-product of usuryfree living. Evidence suggests that
there is a shift in the thinking of those usuryfree creatives who
grasp the simple detail that there is no need to hoard any currency
that bears no usury – so they willingly share their abundance with
those who lack.

As this current economic crisis deepens to a Grand-daddy Depression
that will make the 1929 Economic Crash look like a Sunday picnic, the
teaching and practice of usuryfree living is being promoted by
usuryfree creatives not only as a likely possibility, but also as a
distinct probablity.
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Most creditors (usurers) are not likely to be fully aware that they
can directly and/or indirectly referred to as practitioners of the
vice of greed. Neither are debtors aware of how they are victims in
this modern but cruel world of usury-based, debt finance (money). This
lack of knowledge by both creditors and debtors can be attributed to
the failings of formal education as well as the mainstream print and
electronic media. Whether this malfuntion in our formal education
system is by design or by accident is left for the reader to decide.

During the latter years of the 20th Century when the internet was in
its birthing process, many diligent ands meticulous researchers began
to effectively network their knowledge through email, news groups,
blogs and websites. As the design flaw of usury is being exposed for
the killer machine that it is, more and more re-educated individuals
are proudly defining themselves as usuryfree creatives.

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Usuryfree creatives organized the first UsuryFree Day (November 13th)
and UsuryFree Week (November 13th to 19th) in 2004 to celebrate and
foster the concept of usuryfree living. Each year, during UsuryFree
Week seminars and workshops are held in living rooms, community
centres, church basements, school auditoriums, hotel rooms etc.

During UsuryFree Week participants learn the difference between
living with usury and usuryfree living. Currently, events are
being planned to celebrate the Fifth Annual UsuryFree Day/Week from
November 13th to 19th, 2009.

Brought to you by EconoChristian.com but written by Tom Kennedy. You can read the rest of the article here.

Given the fact that manufacturing jobs and industries account for only one fifth (1/5th) of economic output of countries in the OECD, it is important to realize potential impacts this shift from tangible output driven economies to a more service oriented one, and the pundits’ chants that it is an advantageous phenomenon. Some questions to consider are: is the contraction of manufacturing in developed economies a result of so called manurity in economies or is it that the forced of globalization, speerheaded by government trumping corporations in search of cheap labor?
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Economists and gullible financial analysts, not to mention mentally disabled laymen touting the end of manufacturing as good thing, miss some central points concerning losing manufacturing:

The key fact is that manufacturing is the back bone of an economy because this sector is the one which actually produces tangible items. Some might say that intangible items like financial services, computer programs, and the like are products, but the reality of the situation is that these activities can be done almost anywhere in the world by anyone. What will stop these industries from fleeing just as manufacturing did? Indeed, they would flee even faster due to their nebulous nature. We have seen are only in the infant stages of the off shoring phemonenon of industries such as financial services and computer programming by large multi national companies.

Pundits will gather that this is the natural occurance of economies in that it drifts from an industrial boom to a post-industrial, so called information age and transforms into a mainly service sector based economy based on research, development, and management, but this is the theory that the economists push on behest of government to brainwash populations into accepting their fate of accepting lower wages, lower job security (if at all), and reduced spending.
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Let us explore this theory and implementation of this paradigm for a short while. Post-industrial really doesn’t mean “after industry”, it just really signifies the new industries that have come into being along side of traditional factory production. These new industries are computer technology, telecommunications, media and information processing (to name a few. Try and think of some more). These industries function unlike traditional industrial industries (auto, machine, building, textile, etc) because:

• a) their product is different (ie, non-tangible goods and services)
• b) some of the post-industrial professions involve more educated workers (white-collar as opposed to blue-collar) and
• c) production can take place in a number of different places (ie, not in a factory).

The problem Westerners and industrialized countries have is that the economists and political pundits hired by their respective governments have slowly but surely been brainwashing the financial, economic, and general population and trying to sell them on the idea that the next phase of an industrial economy is the incremental loss of manufacturing industries because “this is the way” as if it were some biblical law.
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Indeed, economics has become a religion into its own with paradigms such as so called “free trade” being pushed down peoples’ throats when in fact this idea is a fiction because all trade agreement are managed unless what you were aiming for was world government, and it just so happens this is what the politicians have been instructed to do.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, the International Montary Fund describes this phenomenon: During the past 25 years, employment in manufacturing as a share of total employment has fallen dramatically in the world’s most advanced economies, a phenomenon widely referred to as “deindustrialization.” The trend, particularly evident in the United States and Europe, is also apparent in Japan and has been observed most recently in the Four Tiger economies of East Asia (Hong Kong, China, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan Province of China). Not surprisingly, deindustrialization has caused considerable concern in the affected economies and has given rise to a vigorous debate about its causes and likely implications.

The real cause of deindustrialization is corporations’ constant attempts to find the cheapest possible labor and price, but at what cost? The Western world has some of the highest and stricted labor, environmental, and health regulations in the world which provides safe, healthy, and reliable products.

While the contraction of manufacturing employment has often been compared to that of agriculture, it does not apepar that non-homothetic preferences hahve played a similarly important role in deindustrialization. Indeed, if services are “superior” goods, then consumers would increase their relative demand for services as per capita incomes increase. This would in turn cause a decline in output and employment in the manufacturing sector.

There is, however, little evidence that shifts in the pattern of expenditures between services and manufacturing can explain the secular shift of employment out of manufacturing into services (Saeger, 1997).

However, corporations and governments really do not care about any of these three pillars of human dignity, therefore seek out the cheapest possible price to make the quickest buck. This is not a long term, sustainable relationship, but an extremely chaotic one with the ultimate goal of world government. While this may seem an unbelievable statement, if you were to realize that if all governments were eliminated, there wouldn’t be a need for things like tariffs and taxes or borders to regulate trade and commerce, but this is a fiction in an ideal world. What the powerful policy makers of the planet wish to do is create a one world government controlled by themselves as demonstrated by Dr. John Coleman:

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What Jesus Had to say about deindustrialization:

James 5:1-6, Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

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You can download a very interesting e-book here that explains the phenomenon of globalization, the loss of manufacturing in developed economies, and the results these effects have on the socio economic dynamics in these victimized countries.

Written by EconoChristian.com

If there was ever a maxim that lived throughout the ages of investing, sticking with “what everyone needs” certainly rings true today as it did 1000 years ago. That is, what “everyone needs” is basic necessities such as housing, food, clothing, healthcare products, and such items that people cannot live without for more than a few days. In economics we call this kind of item “demand inelastic,” which means that the demand for these kinds of items remains relatively the same as income decreases or increases compared to other items like cars, computers, and other luxury items like televisions and so on.
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The problem the US and Canada are facing is that a large portion of their manufacturing base has been off shored or sent to other countries in the past 20 to 30 years as so called trade agreements such as NAFTA, World Trade Organization, and other so called free trade instruments have been established which gave companies incentive to send middle class jobs to other countries which effectively stripped the parent coutnries of their bread and butter jobs, which eliminated or significantly reduced the spending power of the middle class.

Countries like Japan have, since the 70s to 1980s, pegged their currency to the dollar to take advantage of the manufacturing sector which gave incentive to US and Canadian producers to relocate to Japan or to allow more imports from Japan to be dumped into the US. Now we have a different problem: China, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam, but mainly China and its huge population base, extremely low standards, and manipulated currency.
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Since it is predicted that a large portion of the manfuacturing industry we have offshored in the past 20-30 years will return probable best way to attack this is to go back to Standard &Poor’s sector data for the time. However, it won’t be a very fine analysis as it would likely miss emerging industries. It is known that electronics were hot investments as the 1930s wore on– particularly radio, which was state-of-the-art at the time. Zenith Radio emerged as a leading producer: its stock languished until 1935 when it went from the range of 2-2 5/8 at the beginning of the year to 13 1/2 at the end of the year.

Many items, including stocks, reached a historic low in the early 30s.
Some never recovered, but others doubled from their low before the end of the thirties. Therefore we could be in a good buying position later this year, but it is assumed that large increases are unlikely from today’s position. Selling short would be smart before a crash later this year, but there is a fair chance weak prosparity will continue several more years, resulting in large losses for short sellers. So many things have changed since the 30s, and it is thought we won’t learn much, except that a disasterous crash is possible.
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Precious metals are where you can NEVER go wrong since Canada has a large reserve of natural minerals, metals, elements such as uranium and paladium used in nuclear reactors and catalytic converts, respectively (not to mention other uses). Specifically, food and food production is pegged to become the next “big thing” in the United States as the world’s producer of food, or so the prediction goes.

In mainstream economics, the theory is that the primary sector is agriculture from where the development cycle begins for any country. After that comes the secondary sector (manufacturing) and then the tertiary one (services). USA is now sitting at the tertiary sector at the top of this value chain and China seems to be enjoying its manufacturing status. India just jumped from primary to tertiary because of its’ hopping on the information technology bandwagon.

For the ultra safe, conservative types of portfolios, the best bets would be to invest in essential metals like gold, silver, copper, and paladium because these metals will always be in need and will likely raise in price as the world consumes more of the latter two metals. Indeed, copper and paladium are increasingly being used in electronics and other modern applications.

Written by EconoChristian.com

Given the fact that manufacturing jobs and industries account for only one fifth (1/5th) of economic output of countries in the OECD, it is important to realize potential impacts this shift from tangible output driven economies to a more service oriented one, and the pundits’ chants that it is an advantageous phenomenon. Some questions to consider are: is the contraction of manufacturing in developed economies a result of so called maturity in economies or is it that the forced of globalization, speerheaded by government trumping corporations in search of cheap labor?

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Working & Middle Classes to be extinct in 10 years

8th November 2004

News article filed by Lee Barnes, LLB (Hons)

Within ten years the entire unskilled working class workforce of Britain will be made redundant by cheap foreign labour and the middle class will be decimated as their jobs are off-shored. Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI the body for big business in Britain, will tell the annual CBI conference in Birmingham: “There will not be any work in Britain for unskilled people . . . within one scholastic generation.” He will say the 3.5 million people who are functionally illiterate in the UK will find it impossible to get work within 10 years.
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In a survey of 150 British companies, which employ 750,000 people between them, 51 per cent said cheaper foreign labour costs meant they are considering moving their jobs abroad. So much for the patriotism of the British capitalist elite! From Doc Martens Boots to Dyson’s Vacuums- the entire British economy is being shipped abroad.

Entire middle class extinction

The CBI says the phenomenon of moving jobs abroad has become so easy and profitable for business that it has spread from the largely unskilled manufacturing sector in Britain through to financial services and IT. The entire middle class of Britain from office secretaries, architects, accountants, computer specialists to middle managers will become extinct within ten years.

Ian McCafferty, the CBI’s chief economist, says call centres – the most significant example of outsourcing – accounted for only 14 per cent of jobs moved abroad. “That is well behind other services.” India and China remain the most popular places for exporting jobs, with Eastern European countries becoming increasingly attractive. In other words all the jobs in Britain that can be done by sending data down the internet to India or China will be finished in Britain in less than a generation.
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Catalogue of betrayal

“I have formed the view that if ever there was a country made for globalisation, it is Britain. It is in our DNA,” Mr Jones will say in a trite mixed metaphor. Mr.Digby seems to think that making money for a tiny percentage of global capitalists, and not protecting the social interests of our own people, should be the primary goal of the British economy. What he is suggesting is that because the British state has under-invested in educating its own indigenous workforce for generations (which is why we have so many cheap foreign nurses in the country) that the destruction of British industry is something to be applauded.

He is the voice of the ‘Cheap Labour’ greed driven capitalists that first imported millions of cheap immigrant labour into Britain and he is member of the global capitalist elite which fund groups like Searchlight and Unite Against Fascism to lie to the British people to ensure the BNP does not come to power as a party of national liberation. They call the BNP ‘racists’ for standing up for the economic and social interests of the indigenous British people whilst at the same time selling out the immigrant workforce that they once imported into the country by exporting jobs back to their homelands! One thing is for sure the plans of the British capitalist elite should ensure that many of the immigrants that came to Britain in search of work will now be considering returning to their own countries as no work will be left for anyone in this country in the future.

Protectionism condemned

“Protectionist voices who think they can stop this – that’s cloud cuckoo land,” he will tell the conference, which will be attended by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner – both willing participants in the prolonged ritual slaughter of the British workforce as a sacrifice to Mammon. They will both be clapping effeminately as the murder of the British working class is celebrated by the British ‘ globalist plutocratic elite ‘.

“Ensuring people have the skills remains our problem. You have nothing to fear if you skill yourself “- he intends to say. Well we say to the pompous Mr. Digby Jones that self advancement, of course, depends upon having a government that wants to educate its own workforce to a sufficient level of skill. The globalist agenda of the Labour government and the billions of pounds it is pouring into the War in Iraq means this investment in education will not, and cannot, occur.

At no time in history have the British people faced so many dangers at the same time. From the treason of its business leaders selling them out for Dollars, Rupees and Yen to the Global economy and our Labour government waging illegal wars for the American – Zionist elite of Bush and the Neo-Conservatives. Everywhere the age of degeneration and destruction manifests itself.
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Clear and simple choice

The British people have a clear and simple choice. You either become one of the globalised masses with your children sold as slaves to the ‘ Global Plutocratic Elite ‘ or you wake up and fight to take back your own country and your children’s future. Unless you wake up you will never be free again – simply remaining a commodity to be exploited. Unless you wake up your children will have no future – only an existence as perpetual wage slaves. You will have betrayed your ancestors with your silence and apathy.

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When the fall of this Globalist system occurs we will be prepared for the challenge. But we say this, right here and right now, that those that stand against us now will be judged by us when the time comes. Either stand with us or stand aside. The masses are too mired in their own greed and stupidity to care either way. This is a battle of wills between the forces of renaissance and renewal represented by the BNP and the forces of decay and entropy represented by the current Globalist political and economic elite. Our will is the noble determination of our ancestors that stood fast at Trafalgar , Waterloo, the Somme and through the Blitz – the will of our enemies is the lust of the parasite to drain the lifeblood of nations to enrich themselves.

They will fail – we will triumph.

In an addendum to previous posts regarding China switching currencies, it looks like it is going to happen sooner than later. Indeed, China has proposed using copper as their hard currency to dump from the dollar’s instability. Frightened by run away dollar debts, increasing trade deficits partially caused by Chinese devaluation and manipulation of its economy and currency, and the financial crisis occuring in the United States, is making the Chinese government think twice about accepting anymore dollars.

It looks terribly bad for the US dollar as the hegemon of the world financial system these days as five countries plan to ditch the dollar in favor of more stable choices. As we’ve all seen in the last few years, the US dollar has been more unstable than a Christian drunk on one too many alcoholic beverages. God commands Christians to avoid drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). The Bible also condemns drunkenness and its effects (Proverbs 23:29-35).
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Christians are also commanded to not allow their bodies to be “mastered” by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12; 2 Peter 2:19). It is obvious the world has become addicted to cheap oil, and since we know the US dollar is traded in oil, such a relationship can not be sustained for such a long time with countries like Iraq, Iran, and China wanting to trade oil in other currencies from other superblocks like the Eurozone’s “Euro” currency released in 1999.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 2:41PM BST 16 Apr 2009

China’s State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.

Nobu Su, head of Taiwan’s TMT group, which ships commodities to China, said Beijing is trying to extricate itself from dollar dependency as fast as it can.

“China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years.”

“The next industrial revolution is going to be led by hybrid cars, and that needs copper. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources,” he said.

The SRB has also been accumulating aluminium, zinc, nickel, and rarer metals such as titanium, indium (thin-film technology), rhodium (catalytic converters) and praseodymium (glass).

While it makes sense for China to take advantage of last year’s commodity crash to restock cheaply, there is clearly more behind the move. “They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings,” said Jim Lennon, head of commodities at Macquarie Bank.
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John Reade, metals chief at UBS, said Beijing may have a made strategic decision to stockpile metal as an alternative to foreign bonds. “We’re very surprised by Chinese demand. They are buying much more copper than they will need this year. If this is strategic, there may be no effective limit on the purchases as China’s pockets are deep.”
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Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank governor, piqued the interest of metal buffs last month by calling for a world currency modelled on the “Bancor”, floated by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944.

The Bancor was to be anchored on 30 commodities – a broader base than the Gold Standard, which had caused so much grief in the 1930s. Mr Zhou said such a currency would prevent the sort of “credit-based” excess that has brought the global finance to its knees.

If his thoughts reflect Communist Party thinking, it would explain the bizarre moves in commodity markets over recent weeks. Copper prices have surged 49pc this year to $4,925 a tonne despite estimates by the CRU copper group that world demand will fall 15pc to 20pc this year as construction wilts.

Analysts say “short covering” by funds betting on price falls has played a role. But the jump is largely due to Chinese imports, which reached a record 329,000 tonnes in February, and a further 375,000 tonnes in March. Chinese industrial demand cannot explain this. China has been badly hit by global recession. Its exports – almost half GDP – fell 17pc in March.
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While Beijing’s fiscal stimulus package and credit expansion has helped lift demand, China faces a property downturn of its own. One government adviser warned this week that house prices could fall 50pc.

One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America’s debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. “We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets,” he said.

This is slightly disingenuous. China has the world’s largest reserves – $1.95 trillion, mostly in dollars – because it has been holding down the yuan to boost exports. This mercantilist strategy has reached its limits.

The beauty of recycling China’s surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth’s crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China’s industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis.

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Beijing may yet buy gold as well, although it has not done so yet. The gold share of reserves has fallen to 1pc, far below the historic norm in Asia. But if a metal-based currency ever emerges to end the reign of fiat paper, it is just as likely to be a “Copper Standard” as a “Gold Standard”.

Brought to you by EconoChristian.com with help from Telegraph.

It looks terribly bad for the US dollar as the hegemon of the world financial system these days as five countries plan to ditch the dollar in favor of more stable choices. As we’ve all seen in the last few years, the US dollar has been more unstable than a Christian drunk on one too many alcoholic beverages. God commands Christians to avoid drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). The Bible also condemns drunkenness and its effects (Proverbs 23:29-35). Christians are also commanded to not allow their bodies to be “mastered” by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12; 2 Peter 2:19). It is obvious the world has become addicted to cheap oi, and since we know the US dollar is traded in oil, such a relationship can not be sustained for such a long time with countries like Iraq, Iran, and China wanting to trade oil in other currencies from other superblocks like the Eurozone’s “Euro” currency released in 1999.
[ad#prcln468ad1]
The numerous wars the US has racked up in the last decade have cost its debt burden tremendous amounts (not to mention the tremendous government expansion and subsequent cost of such). As we’ve seen, the price of oil has gone from a high of approximately $155 per barrel all the way back down to approximately $20 per barrel. We certainly do not live in stable times.

CHINA

What? A global “supercurrency” to supplant the dollar

The details: Last month, the governor of China’s central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, sent shock waves through the political and financial worlds by suggesting the world’s largest foreign holder of U.S. dollars supported the creation of a new global reserve currency.

In an essay published in both Chinese and English, Zhou, without ever mentioning the greenback, articulated concerns about the “inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system.” The world needs a reserve currency “disconnected from individual nations and … able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies,” the essay went on to state.

Zhou recommended building on an existing asset and exchange system, a kind of synthetic currency that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) created in 1969. In the special drawing rights (SDR) program, the 185 IMF member states fund a pool of money that the IMF distributes in shares, or SDRs. This currency could be used for government finance, trade transactions, pricing commodities, and international accounting. G-20 leaders expanded the SDR pool by $250 billion at their recent meeting.

The suggestion comes as the Chinese government attempts to push the renminbi, whose principal unit is the yuan, as a reserve currency in Asia. In past months, China has completed currency swaps with Argentina, Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea, among others; these allow China’s trading partners to buy Chinese goods with the renminbi, rather than the dollar. Soon, some economists predict, the renminbi may become the de facto pan-Asian reserve currency and a much bigger global player.

RUSSIA

What? A global “supercurrency” similar to the Chinese proposal

The details: Speaking in Moscow last month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev put his support for supplanting the dollar in stark terms: “Many of our partners maintain the point of view that everything is fine in this area, that all that is needed is a slight strengthening of major worldwide currencies, including the dollar. We hold another point of view.” He strongly reiterated this idea at the G-20 conference.

Medvedev seconded China’s support for expanding the IMF’s special drawing rights program. He said the ruble, renminbi, and gold should join the dollar, euro, and pound — the primary reserve currencies for the past 50 years — in a multicurrency basket pricing the SDR.

The inclusion of gold bullion in the currency basket caused a press kerfuffle; numerous articles described Medvedev and Arkady Dvorkovich, the Russian government’s chief economic advisor, as supporting a gold standard. In fairness, John Maynard Keynes and Franklin D. Roosevelt themselves recommended basing global reserve values on the price of gold and other commodities.

VENEZUELA

What? The “sucre,” a South American bloc currency

The details: At a regional summit last November, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called for the creation of an EU-type monetary zone and adoption of the “sucre,” a regional currency, to reduce dependence on the dollar. Chávez addressed leaders from the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) trade bloc, which includes Venezuela, along with Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
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The proposal came with a heaping dose of criticism for the United States and other G-20 countries, which Chávez accused of purposely suppressing developing economies. He also recommended that South American countries abandon the IMF, “an imperialist hand to dominate us.”
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“We’re not going to wait here with our arms crossed for the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund to come and solve the problems that this great threat [the United States] unleashed on the world,” he said. “The hegemony of the dollar must end,” he added.

ALBA members seem to be in favor, agreeing in principle to developing the sucre within two or three years.

IRAN

What? A common currency for Central Asia

The details: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested in March that the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) trade bloc — Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — take up a common currency when it debuts its planned free trade zone in 2015. “The process of obtaining one single currency in the trade and exchanges among members, and in the next stages with other countries and neighbors, should be designed,” he said.

“After the collapse of the closed socialist economy, the capitalist economy is also on the verge of collapse,” Ahmadinejad said, railing against the hegemony of the dollar in foreign trade.
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Were the ECO bloc to take up a common currency, it would rival the euro in its scope; the countries together have about 420 million people. Representatives from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan seemed to support the general idea, and the topic will be taken up again at the ECO’s next convention, in 2010.

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KAZAKHSTAN

What? The “acmetal,” a global currency

The details: In March, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking from the capital city of Astana, called for the creation of a world currency called the “acmetal,” a word coined from “acme” and “capital.”

“There is no other choice available to us, if we really intend to utilize effectively this unique opportunity of overcoming the shortcomings of the Old World and building up a New one,” the strongman opined in a pre-translated report. It went on to state, “It so happened that the whole of our world has somehow unexpectedly and imperceptibly got into the tunnel of global crisis from where nobody is able to see where is the ‘exit’.”

The Kazakh leader described how the G-8 or G-20 countries could band together to create a transitional currency, the “transital,” before full global adoption of the “acmetal.” He also described a putative new world order brought on by the currency scheme: “acmetalism.”
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Proposing new currencies is something of a hobby for Nazarbayev, who has advocated a Central Asian regional currency plan since 2003. He has called for the adoption of the “altyn” or “yevraz” in the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), which includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Moscow takes these suggestions as a slight, though. It has proposed that the EEC states band together and adopt the Russian ruble.

By Annie Lowrey
ForeignPolicy.com
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
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