“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:
- Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
- Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
- Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
- Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”
The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
I’m waiting for the extinction asteroid!
The fourth turning is well under way, to be sure. Do you have the feeling almost like being on the top of the big drop on a roller coaster?
@bonz eye, that’s a good way of putting it.
“Looks like we picked the wrong day to go hiking.”
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Japan Cabinet OKs Record Military Budget With Eye on China
TOKYO — Jan 14, 2015, 2:15 AM ET
By MARI YAMAGUCHI and ELAINE KURTENBACH Associated Press
Japan’s Cabinet approved the country’s largest ever defense budget on Wednesday, including plans to buy surveillance aircraft, drones and F-35 fighter jets to help counter China’s rising assertiveness in the region.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet endorsed a nearly 5 trillion yen ($42 billion) defense budget for the year beginning in April as part of a record 96.3 trillion yen ($814 billion) total budget.
The budget must still be approved by parliament, but Abe’s coalition holds majorities in both houses.
The 2 percent rise in defense spending is the third annual increase under Abe, who took office in December 2012 and ended 11 straight years of defense budget cuts.
The increase mainly covers new equipment, including P-1 surveillance aircraft, F-35 fighter jets and amphibious vehicles for a new unit similar to the U.S. Marine Corps. The aim is to boost Japan’s capacity to defend uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that it controls but which are also claimed by China.
The 2015 budget also covers the cost of purchasing parts of “Global Hawk” drones, planned for deployment in 2019, two Aegis radar-equipped destroyers and missile defense system development with Washington.
Abe favors a stronger role for Japan’s military, despite a commitment to pacifism enshrined in the U.S.-inspired constitution drawn up after the country’s defeat in World War II. Japan’s defense guidelines were revised in December 2013 as tensions rose over the East China Sea islands.
Chinese patrol boats often visit waters near the islands, which are known as the Senkakus in Japan and as the Diaoyu islands in China.
China has been stepping up military spending, which rose 12.2 percent to $132 billion last year, second only to the U.S. It also has a large and sophisticated defense industry.
Japan, meanwhile, is seeking to build up its defense industries with an eye toward the global market.
The defense budget is designed to achieve “seamless and mobile” defense capability that can respond to various contingencies, the ministry said in the Cabinet-approved budget plan. It will provide effective deterrence and contribute to stability in the Asia-Pacific region and improvement of the global security environment, the ministry said.
Abe’s government must tread a fine line between spending enough to support economic growth and defense and slowing the rise in Japan’s debt, which is the highest, proportionately, among industrialized countries.
As Japan’s population quickly ages, welfare costs are soaring. Social security spending will account for about a third of the budget. The economy is in recession but the government has forecast growth at 1.5 percent this year, after an estimated 0.5 percent contraction in 2014.
To balance his conflicting priorities, Abe is increasing outlays targeting families and other households that are struggling as wages lag behind price increases. But he also intends to cut corporate income taxes by 2.5 percentage points in the fiscal year that begins April 1, to 32.11 percent. Further cuts are planned.
The government is also tweaking tax rules to encourage elderly Japanese, who hold about 60 percent of the country’s 1.6 quadrillion yen ($13.6 trillion) in private savings, to spend more on their children and grandchildren.
The F35 fighter jet …….. isn’t that like the Yugo version of fighter aircraft?
You would be hard pressed to find a bigger financial and military boondoggle (seriously) in the history of the world. Glad we’re selling it to the Japs.
Stucky,
Yeah, from what I hear via the coconut telegraph, the F35 is a huge piece shit… the F22 flat out rocks balls, but the F35 appears to be as bad as the F22 is good…
Remember reading a scathing comparison between the two, but I forgot where it went…
Whatever…. here, heard this the other day and it got stuck in my head. The only way to unstuck it is to pass it to someone else…
Tschuß…
Stuck….although not as expensive, the Sgt. York was a pretty crappy piece of military hardware. The Sgt’s at Fort Gordon told us pretty funny stories about it….like the system locking on to the port-a-toilets and shooting the crap ( pun intended) out of them !
At least the PTB are consistent.
When spending yourself into insolvency doesn’t work, double/triple down and buy moar war!
War is good!
Wonder whom the freak Japan will be buying rocket fuel from?
We are a world of defective morons being led by a corrupted and greedy lucky few dozen.
And we wonder why things don’t get better with stellar policies like this.
Ponzi on Abe and Obama, Ponzi the fuck on.
As Bloomberg reports,
Stunned by the sudden plunge in the price of oil, energy companies have increasingly resorted to layoffs to cut costs since Christmas, shocking a new generation of workers, like Osakwe, unfamiliar with the industry’s historic boom and bust cycles.
Workers who entered the holiday season confident they had secure employment in one of the country’s safest havens now find themselves in shrinking workplaces with dimming prospects.
As the following anecdotes illustrates, more than a few Americans are becoming greatly disillusioned…
Sean Gross, 35, was over the moon when he secured a job in March last year at Schlumberger Ltd., the world’s largest oilfield service company. He’d been laid off from a technology company and saw the oil business as his salvation.
“I was happy. My life was starting to take shape. Life was really, really, really, really good,” he said.
…
By December, Gross said talk was spreading through his Houston office about people losing their jobs “left and right.” Old-timers were suddenly retiring. Yet Gross still thought he’d be okay working in information technology far from the oilfield.
…
As a newcomer to the energy industry, he didn’t realize how crashing oil prices would ripple through the company. He’d made it through another unsettling day and was in the parking lot, buckling on his motorcycle helmet for the ride home, when he looked up to see his boss running after him. “Hey Sean, I need to talk to you in my office.”
“Oh God, here I go again,” Gross recalled thinking as his boss delivered the news that he was getting laid off.
There’s no firm number yet on how many oil industry workers are losing their jobs, or how many more cuts might be coming… some are well known like Halliburton and Suncor but other companies have announced layoffs, but many are making the cuts without public fanfare.
As the following comments from energy sector executives notes, things do not appear to ‘stabilizing’
“We are constantly in the process of trying to right-size our company,”
“We do anticipate a continued downturn in domestic drilling activity.”
…will continue to make adjustments to its workforce “based on current business conditions,”
“While these reductions are difficult, we believe they are necessary to work through this challenging market,”
* * *
A buddy of mine has been told, along with ALOT of his co-workers, that head counts are going down. The lowest paid guy on the rig, everybody’s bitch, makes juuuuust under $100,000. Within weeks the notices take effect for his company. Interestingly, he said when its over, the whole bakken will be run by practically just Halliburton – no idea if that’s true, but he’s smart and several levels off the bottom.
“I was happy. My life was starting to take shape. Life was really, really, really, really good, …”
———— Sean Gross, 35, …… author of upcoming book “Reality Fucking Sucks”
Welcome aboard the Train To Hell, Sean
Prognosticators from A – Z have been predicting the collapse/meltdown/apocalypse/whatever for years now and TPTB have been able to hold the world together with QE, lies, spit and bailing wire to wring every last penny they can from the sheep before it all comes crashing down.
If this is the ‘top of the rollercoaster hill’ and it’s down (big time) from here, hell, let’s get on with it! I’ve been looking forward to the SHTF moment and its aftermath for years! The reaction of the Sheep to this will be a marvel to behold!
The culling of the flock – if this is IT – let’s GET. IT. ON!