Last year ended with a whimper on Wall Street. The S&P 500 was down 1% for the year, down 4% from its all-time high in May, and no higher than it was 13 months ago at the end of QE3. The Wall Street shysters and their mainstream media mouthpieces declare 2016 to be a rebound year, with stocks again delivering double digit returns. When haven’t they touted great future returns. They touted them in 2000 and 2007 too. No one earning their paycheck on Wall Street or on CNBC will point out the most obvious speculative bubble in history. John Hussman has been pointing it out for the last two years as the Fed created bubble has grown ever larger. Those still embracing the bubble will sit down to a banquet of consequences in 2016.
At the peak of every speculative bubble, there are always those who have persistently embraced the story that gave the bubble its impetus in the first place. As a result, the recent past always belongs to them, if only temporarily. Still, the future inevitably belongs to somebody else. By the completion of the market cycle, no less than half (and often all) of the preceding speculative advance is typically wiped out.
Hussman referenced the work of Reinhart & Rogoff when they produced their classic This Time is Different. Every boom and bust have the same qualities. The hubris and arrogance of financial “experts” and government apparatchiks makes them think they are smarter than those before them. They always declare this time to be different due to some new technology or reason why valuations don’t matter. The issuance of speculative debt and seeking of yield due to Federal Reserve suppression of interest rates always fuels the boom and acts as the fuse for the inevitable explosive bust.
In 2009, during the depths of the last crisis that followed such speculation, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff detailed the perennial claim that feeds these episodes in their book, This Time is Different:
“Our immersion in the details of crises that have arisen over the past eight centuries and in data on them has led us to conclude that the most commonly repeated and most expensive investment advice ever given in the boom just before a financial crisis stems from the perception that ‘this time is different.’ That advice, that the old rules of valuation no longer apply, is usually followed up with vigor. Financial professionals and, all too often, government leaders explain that we are doing things better than before, we are smarter, and we have learned from past mistakes. Each time, society convinces itself that the current boom, unlike the many booms that preceded catastrophic collapses in the past, is built on sound fundamentals, structural reforms, technological innovation, and good policy.”
“The essence of the this-time-is-different syndrome is simple. It is rooted in the firmly held belief that financial crises are something that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen, here and now to us… If there is one common theme to the vast range of crises we consider, it is that, excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.”
The third speculative boom in the last fifteen years fueled by Federal Reserve idiocy is about to become a the third bust in the last fifteen years. The unwashed masses who believe what they are told by CNBC are going to be pretty pissed off when they lose half their retirement savings again. None of their highly paid financial advisors are telling them to expect 0% returns over the next twelve years, but that is their fate. The numbers don’t lie over the long haul.
My view on “this time” is clear. I remain convinced that the U.S. financial markets, particularly equities and low-grade debt, are in a late-stage top formation of the third speculative bubble in 15 years. On the basis of the valuation measures most strongly correlated with actual subsequent market returns (and that have fully retained that correlation even across recent market cycles), current extremes imply 40-55% market losses over the completion of the current market cycle, with zero nominal and negative real total returns for the S&P 500 on a 10-12 year horizon. These are not worst-case scenarios, but run-of-the-mill expectations.
Hussman recently saw the brilliant take down of Wall Street – The Big Short – and thought it was a highly accurate portrayal of the rampant criminality of the Wall Street banks. They created fraudulent mortgage products, doled them out to suckers, and created complex toxic derivatives, selling them to clients while shorting them at the same time. Hussman’s only problem with the movie was that it left the true villain off the hook with nary a mention. Wall Street could not and would not have created the trillions of fraudulent products if the Federal Reserve had not kept interest rates at 1% and had performed their regulatory obligations of overseeing the banks.
The answer is straightforward: as the bubble expanded toward its inevitable collapse, the role of Wall Street was to create a massive supply of new “product” in the form of sketchy mortgage-backed securities, but the demand for that product was the result of the Federal Reserve’s insistence on holding interest rates down after the tech bubble crashed, starving investors of safe Treasury returns, and driving them to seek higher yields elsewhere.
See, the Fed reacted to the collapse of the tech bubble and the accompanying recession holding short-term rates to just 1%, provoking yield-seeking by income-starved investors. They found that extra yield in seemingly “safe” mortgage securities. But as the demand outstripped the available supply, Wall Street rushed to create more product, and generate associated fees, by lending to anyone with a pulse (hence “teaser” loans offering zero interest payments for the first 2 years, and ads on TV and radio hawking “No income documentation needed! We’ll get you approved fast!”; “No credit? No problem! You have a loan!”; “Own millions of dollars in real estate with no money down!”). The loans were then “financially engineered” to make the resulting mortgage bonds appear safer than the underlying credits were. The housing bubble was essentially a massive, poorly regulated speculative response to Federal Reserve actions.
And now the Fed has done it again. The stock market on most valuation measures is the most overvalued in world history. The rolling tsunami is about to wipe away the life savings of millions for the third time in fifteen years.
The current, obscenely overvalued QE-bubble is simply the next reckless response to Federal Reserve actions, which followed the global financial crisis, which resulted when the housing bubble collapsed, which was driven by excessively activist Federal Reserve policy, which followed the collapse of the tech bubble. As my wife Terri put it “It’s like a rolling tsunami.”
The pompous professionals inhabiting the gleaming skyscrapers in the NYC financial district are still arrogantly ignoring the imminent bust headed their way. The Fed juiced gains over the last six years will evaporate just as they did in 2007-2009. Cheerleading for and denying the existence of the bubble is a common them among those whose paycheck depends upon them doing so.
One had to suffer fools parroting things like “being early is the same thing as being wrong” until the collapse demonstrated that, actually no, it’s really not. The 2007-2009 collapse wiped out the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of risk-free Treasury bills, all the way back to June 1995.
Since two crashes weren’t enough to teach the lesson, here we are again, at what’s likely to be seen in hindsight as the last gasp of the extended top formation of the third speculative bubble in 15 years. The median stock actually peaked in late-2014.
And now for the bad news. At current market valuations, a run of the mill bust will result in a 50% decline. A bust that puts valuations back to 1982 bear market lows would result in a decline exceeding 75%. Whether it is a violent collapse or long slow decline, there is no doubt that returns over the next decade will be non-existent. This is not good news for Boomers or GenX entering or approaching retirement.
For the S&P 500 to lose half of its value over the completion of the current market cycle would merely be a run-of-the-mill outcome given current extremes. A truly worst-case scenario, at least by post-war standards, would be for the S&P 500 to first lose half of its value, and then to lose another 55% from there, for a 78% cumulative loss, which is what would have to occur in order to reach the 0.45 multiple we observed in 1982. We do not expect that sort of outcome. But to rule out a completely pedestrian 40-55% market loss over the completion of the current cycle is to entirely dismiss market history.At present, investors should expect a 12-year total return from the S&P 500 of essentially zero.
The reckless herd has been in control for the last few years, but their recklessness is going to get them slaughtered. Corporate profits are plunging. Labor participation continues to fall. A global recession is in progress. The strong U.S. dollar is crushing exports and profits of international corporations. Real household income remains stagnant, while healthcare, rent, home prices, education, and a myriad of other daily living expenses relentlessly rises. The world is a powder keg, with tensions rising ever higher in the Middle East, Ukraine, Europe, and China. The lessons of history scream for caution at this moment in time, not recklessness. 2016 will be a year of reckoning for the reckless herd.
There’s no question that at speculative extremes, recent history always temporarily belongs to the reckless herd that has ignored concerns about valuation and risk at every turn. Fortunately, the future has always belonged to those who take discipline, analysis, and the lessons of history seriously. Decide which investor you want to be.
“For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge -I am the man who will now tell you.”
Nassim “Black Swan” Taleb On The Real Financial Risks Of 2016
Authored by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, publish op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,
Worry less about the banking system, but commodities, epidemics and climate volatility could be trouble
How should we think about financial risks in 2016?
First, worry less about the banking system. Financial institutions today are less fragile than they were a few years ago. This isn’t because they got better at understanding risk (they didn’t) but because, since 2009, banks have been shedding their exposures to extreme events. Hedge funds, which are much more adept at risk-taking, now function as reinsurers of sorts. Because hedge-fund owners have skin in the game, they are less prone to hiding risks than are bankers.
This isn’t to say that the financial system has healed: Monetary policy made itself ineffective with low interest rates, which were seen as a cure rather than a transitory painkiller. Zero interest rates turn monetary policy into a massive weapon that has no ammunition. There’s no evidence that “zero” interest rates are better than, say, 2% or 3%, as the Federal Reserve may be realizing.
I worry about asset values that have swelled in response to easy money. Low interest rates invite speculation in assets such as junk bonds, real estate and emerging market securities. The effect of tightening in 1994 was disproportionately felt with Italian, Mexican and Thai securities. The rule is: Investments with micro-Ponzi attributes (i.e., a need to borrow to repay) will be hit.
Though “another Lehman Brothers” isn’t likely to happen with banks, it is very likely to happen with commodity firms and countries that depend directly or indirectly on commodity prices. Dubai is more threatened by oil prices than Islamic State. Commodity people have been shouting, “We’ve hit bottom,” which leads me to believe that they still have inventory to liquidate. Long-term agricultural commodity prices might be threatened by improvement in the storage of solar energy, which could prompt some governments to cancel ethanol programs as a mandatory use of land for “clean” energy.
We also need to focus on risks in the physical world. Terrorism is a problem we’re managing, but epidemics such as Ebola are patently not. The most worrisome fact of 2015 was the reaction to the threat of Ebola, with the media confusing a multiplicative disease with an ordinary one and shaming people for overreacting. Cancer rates cannot quadruple from one month to the next; epidemics can. We are clearly unprepared to deal with such threats.
Finally, climate volatility will produce some nonlinear effects, and these will be compounded in our interconnected world, in which disruptions are more acute. The East Coast blackout of August 2003 was nothing compared with what may come.
good quote !
“Worry less about the banking system, but commodities, epidemics and climate volatility could be trouble”
Seriously?
Climate volatility eh? That must be code for “marxist shit bags stealing more of my hard earned dough because they think they can control the weather”???
I think Nassim should stick to writing about the markets.
Unknown to most people, the Fed has a congressionally mandated 5 trillion dollar cap on it’s balance sheet. When the balance sheet was down around a trillion, it was discussed all the time. Now it’s hard to find on google. Without that cap, it would just have kept counterfeiting away. We are nearing a huge pivot point in the global niggertown. What if the new president doesn’t want to play ponzi? What if returns become once again tied to actual earned profits? This is a year to spend converting paper into physical assets. Returns should take a back seat to asset preservation. All that excess liquidity might have staved off the day of reckoning, but it now has created it’s own set of problems. It’s about time the financial industries start being forced to eat their own seed corn. Buckle up.
These corrupt greedy fucks have been missing the nail with the hammer and hitting their thumb for so long that they can’t feel the pain anymore. One can only imagine what they will come up with once the well is dry and their families are having popcorn and old ramen noodles for supper. Jump fuckers, I promise we wont catch you as gravity works its magic.
John Galt: I respect the personal sentiment; the astroturfing across political and economic spheres, not so much.
Libertarian economic fantasies stoked by think tank money is conspicuously behind the deregulatory movements which led to the monstrous top tier financial institutions, the same which had no problem taking “gubmint handouts” when threatened with dissolution in 2008-2009.
Equally, the true John Galt figure in the Great Depression wasn’t some everyman, but a scion of one of the leading political and wealth-class families recognizing the greatest danger to capitalism: unrestrained capitalists.
Even as this 2nd Gilded Age draws towards fin de siecle, where is the pseudo-Marxist scion of the upper classes who will save capitalism from itself?
THIS is actually the world that most people want, a world where they don’t have to think, where they can play and do drugs all day, where someone else takes on the responsibility of thinking and producing. They WANT a playground with lots of sex, video games, violent sports, and alcohol.
“That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has granted you your wish.”
—- Atlas Shrugged
How do the Chinese write “this time is different”? John
I had to come in from chores just so I could watch the Dow fall off a cliff. I had a feeling about this week.
SPX is down 2% right now after China’s major index fell 7% and had trading halted.
As usual, there are two paths ahead (three actually) from which Mr. Market can choose. With the Williams %R hitting -100 for all practical purposes (on a daily chart), if this decline holds for today, either we’re at the end of a long consolidation and tomorrow will be an upside reversal (followed by a rally to new all time nominal highs) or we’re entering a meltdown phase.
No way to know in advance, sadly, and there’s no clear trade for me now. My shorts ride for the moment.
Taleb continues to promote a central Narrative, that the banking system is not at risk.
This is pure crap.
The current tens, hundreds or thousand of TRILLIONS of dollars of IOU’s in existence is the largest synthetic short sale of any currency EVER.
Prior Extraordinary Pop Del & Madness of Crowds (EPopDaMoC) all were delimited by MONEY being A SINGLE THING (gold, or silver usually.)
This one, decades in length, has has more room to run because Money is paper and IOU’s, and the IOU component was a feedback loop in growing more IOU’s.
It remains my contention that eventually this IOU house of cards will utterly collapse. The top layer, Junk Bonds (weakest debtors’ IOU’s) is in full collapse now.
Eventually this should spread to corporates, then weaker governments, then stronger governments, each layer pancaking onto the lower one in a step-wise progression.
The second-to-lowest layer is cash currency…in this case mostly dollars in paper form.
The bottom layer is physical possession of actual capital (land, plant&equipment, defensible patents and manufacturing processes, and possibly gold/silver…although I’m not all that sure about the latter two.) The problem is that the politics of the bust phase are likely to include cannibalism democracy where the mob votes in rulers who promise to strip the owners of capital of their wealth (not just their incomes.)
The entire world is going to have its Argentina Moment. Holding onto wealth is going to be very difficult.
The real concern is if cannibalism democracy moves to zombie democracy, where the mob begins to eat the brains (smart people.)
Smart people better be VERY well armed.
From: http://www.amerika.org/
Santa Claus comes in many shapes and sizes. This Christmas he came to our family in the form of a Great Aunt who thought my kids’ school pictures were cute and therefore she would spoil them. A multitude of X-Box games appeared as if by magic beneath the tree. But the favorite one by a wide margin was Minecraft.
Therefore my son spent Christmas Morning mainlining Minecraft as if he were Slash or Duff during The Guns N’ Roses Heroin Era. He began to get really good at the lower levels. His adorable little sister grew bored with her Pony Castle and came to see what her brother was doing. She then spoke the evil magic words that set today’s tale into motion. She said “Me TOO!!!”
My son had no intention of unplugging brain from X-Box, but his little sister was determined. No Minecraft character ever survives having the X-Box violently unplugged from the wall. He had to give in and let his sister take a turn. She did terribly. She got slaughtered. The sad, sad boy had to start all over again from scratch. This gave his dad the opportunity to impart a fundamental ¡HATE TRUTH! It was time to teach this innocent young child that socialism sucks.
While my son stood there outraged at his sister, I twisted in the Rapier of Unfairness. “You two have to take turns every 15 minutes, and I don’t want to hear ANY arguments.” I explained.
So my son started off and spent 15 minutes a-strikin’ and a-killin’. He built a pretty tough guy with a collection of cool items in his pack. Then it was his hapless sister’s turn. She managed to roll down a volcano’s slope and into a puddle of lava. Anyone who was ever worked as a fry cook at McDonalds knows what happened to the Minecraft character my son had lovingly sculpted after that. So my son started over again. His sister did a little better the second time and gotten eaten by wolves in the forest.
At this point I intervened before my adorable daughter got her brains exposed to the atmosphere over a dumb video game and sat my children down. I explained to him that this is what socialism and fairness are all about. The talented and hard-working people don’t get to enjoy what they create until they have shared those gains with the least capable and least intelligent. As long as socialists gain power, you will never be allowed to enjoy nice things because it is unfair to people who are too stupid to create them. You are a slave to people who are too incompetent to shine your shoes.
Afterwards, I separated them by playing a game with my daughter and let my son plug back in. It is my wish for the new year that both of my children will remember that Christmas Morning when their loving father tried his best to give them the gift of Hate Knowledge. The ¡HATE KNOWLEDGE! that socialism in all its guises yea verily Sucks!
01/04/2016Author Brett Stevens Categories Politics
SPX breaking below 2000 at 9:04 Central time.
The daily EMA’s are “hooking.” Given the rest of the chart’s “look,” I think the benefit of the doubt has to be given to Total Meltdown.
[img]http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/kaavio.Webhost/charts/big.chart?nosettings=1&symb=spx&uf=0&type=2&size=2&sid=3377&style=320&freq=1&entitlementtoken=0c33378313484ba9b46b8e24ded87dd6&time=8&rand=747743578&compidx=aaaaa%3a0&ma=6&maval=13&lf=4&lf2=32&lf3=256&height=553&width=579&mocktick=1[/img]
Some people posit that this last couple years has been a massive head-and-shoulders pattern. If they are right (no way to know in advance) then the SPX should plunge toward 1600 in very short order (weeks, or a couple months at most.)
[img]http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/kaavio.Webhost/charts/big.chart?nosettings=1&symb=spx&uf=0&type=2&size=2&sid=3377&style=320&freq=2&entitlementtoken=0c33378313484ba9b46b8e24ded87dd6&time=12&rand=1003676609&compidx=aaaaa%3a0&ma=6&maval=13&lf=4&lf2=32&lf3=256&height=553&width=579&mocktick=1[/img]
Remember that train roaring toward the precipice beyond the tressles’ curve, as we’re all shackled to the passenger seats,………enjoy the ride
Pinned over at ZH.
Nice.
“Where is Major Kong!”
Hey DC, that was very clever. Kudos.
DOW’s only down 362 last I looked.
If the PPT is still any good it will recover quite a bit by the end of the day and loose only a little -maybe even gain- by the end of the week.
If they aren’t any good any more then buy as much as you can as fast as you can now or you’ll miss a big tax write off on your taxes this year.
Anon, the PPT has existed in every market. Pools of Big Money tried to stem the carnage in 1930, too. It didn’t work.
Markets go up until they don’t. Then they go down until they don’t. It’s an illusion to think that anyone actually controls them. If they were subject to actual control, they’d only go up.
We’ve lived our lives in the largest credit-driven asset inflation in history. We don’t know any other way. It teaches us to think this is normal.
It’s not.
The key, as I now see it, is the bond market. Bond prices rose (and interest rates fell) for 30 years. During that time stocks went on massive tears higher three times and 50% busts twice (so far.)
The behavior of stocks, metals, commodities and real estate all simply reflected vast dollar-based liquidity sloshing around from market to market, but the KEY was bonds because in a fiat money environment DEBT = WEALTH. As long as bond prices fell (meaning that no matter how much debt was issued, it was tantamount to printing money) the reservoir of “monetary wealth” kept filling and that sloshed from market to market creating booms and busts one after another.
Bond prices topped over the last couple years and interest rates hit the limit…ZERO.
Bond issuance continued without raising rates much, so the pool of total dollar wealth kept getting deeper and wider until now it’s a veritable OCEAN of IOU’s that represent WEALTH.
As far as the eye can see, people are sloshing around in dollar wealth…but it’s all just mass psychology sharing a belief that the IOU’s are “money good,” their issuers are solvent forever, Amazon is worth 1/3 of a trillion dollars, etc.
As long as the mania persists all this silliness can, too.
Men with dicks can claim they’re girls and your employer will fire you for refusing to pay homage to their delusions. The only way deviants can be more insistent on their fellows enabling their deviancy is if bestiality, polygamy/polyandry and pedophilia are the next waves of insanity.
If bond prices remain high, even these insanities are apt to get some support. (I hope someone rips the guts out of those who do so, however, and I’ll volunteer for the firing squad if given the chance.)
The key is NOT the stock market. It’s bonds (and by axiom, interest rates.) If JNK keeps falling (I lack long term chart data for a surrogate of shaky debt) and especially if bond weakness begins to spread, then we may finally be at the point of inflection.
If so, the underlying poverty of the last 50 years’ public policy and economic insanity will soon be revealed as the 50 year compounded increase in illusory wealth will simply evaporate.
Worried about Wealth Inequality? Soon most everyone will be poor, when the tide goes out from under bonds.
DC has been silent since August about the markets. I’ve been interested to hear his thoughts. There are some on various threads who say”I am tired of gloom and doom, you have been saying it for years”. A little doom today if you are in the markets. Like your comments DC.
Hussman notes what I’ve said for some time:
The 3rd time will be The Big One.
The only way to prevent a low (capitulation) from occurring is to teach people to NOT CAPITULATE.
What lesson have people learned since 2000? If you sell, you miss the recovery.
The markets can collapse on very little volume. Prices drop when TWO PEOPLE agree to transact at a lower price even as EVERYONE ELSE does NOTHING.
Most people will DO NOTHING. They will lose everything.
wow…gone are the silly insults,
the boys are cooking with gas,
very impressive brain trust,
much respect issued.
And, thank you.
DC – 100% agree with you, most people will do absolutely nothing.
Bea, that’s the problem. Those of us who already “did something” mostly got our asses handed to us. I will be writing capital loss carry-overs off my taxes for years to come, so “something” did I do. (facepalm.) I haven’t had a net gain on which to pay taxes since 1998, if I had to guess. It’s been that bad, and that long. Some people just can’t help but tilt at windmills.
I wish I’d never opened a brokerage account.
I never in my wildest dreams imagined that “How High Is UP?” would go on for 20 years starting in 1995.
I don’t know for sure this is even “the big one.” For all I know, the mania is still in force and we’ll be treated to an unknown number (in advance) of MORE stupidity, higher stocks, more IOU’s, etc.
Life’s an adventure. That’s the only thing I know for sure.
Nassim “Black Swan” Taleb .says not to worry about the banks…Hmmm…did he forget the trillions and trillions of derivatives that the banks have on the books ?
D.C. said ” it’s an illusion to think that anyone actually controls them.”.
D.C. I have to disagree. Heck high speed training is one form of controlling the market .I really doubt that a trader fat fingered his key board when the Dow dropped 1000 points back in May of 2010 . Or when Brad Sherman said that CONgress was threatened that the market would drop 2000 or more points in one day in order to get the bailouts the Banks wanted .
same applies to the “war on terror”
“This is not good news for Boomers or GenX entering or approaching retirement.” Any Boomer with a retirement portfolio should be in mostly cash at this point in their lives. Maybe 10% of their portfolio should be in stocks even if they were bullish. 30% bonds/real estate, and at least 50% in cash/cash equivalents. Anyone who is 60 years old and holding mostly stocks is just a fool and deserves to part with their money.
New Year begins with record number of men not in the labor force: Those not in the labor force increased by 1.9 million last year while the labor force increased by only 1.1 million.
For such an intelligent website, I find the whole climate change denial thing that seems to be so prevalent amongst the readers here rather strange. On what kind of stuff are you basing your views? Why would you disagree with the scientists who are studying this?
Captured scientists who need grant money from the government. This intelligent website is skeptical of all storylines. The climate changes. It always has and always will. There is absolutely nothing government drones can do to change it. They just want to tax the living fuck out of us.
Climate change is a religion, I’m quite happy with my own casual brand of christianity. Tell you what, jynn, you come up with something positive I can do to save mother earth BESIDES paying more taxes, I will be happy to listen. Get back to me
JYNN…when you think of Climate Chnage ( also known a Globull Warming ) ask yourself a question.
Did we have an Ice Age ( yah know before the man had facories etc ) …the answer is of course yes .
How did it end….it got warmer. How did it get warmer if we didn’t have any factories,cars etc to warm up the Earth…..because the Climate is constantly changing…with or with out man’s intervention .
I keep reading about rising sea levels . I ask a Climate Change person…you’re afraid of rising sea levels…yes is the answer .
Well here in South Carolina they’ve found whale bones,sea shells etc in the Columbia area,110 miles from the ocean. How did that happen ? Oh that’s right at one time the sea shore was 110 miles or more inland . WOW how did that happen…oh that’s right the seas have risen and receded many times over a Millennia or more
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-the-medical-code-overhaul-will-affect-you-2016-01-02
I agree with all of you to some extent,
– yes, the government likely see it as a great opportunity to tax everyone
– yes, there are likely some captured scientists
– No there is bugger all you, me or even governments can do to reverse it. I think the human species is pretty screwed
– yes, the climate is constantly changing
but none of this proves man-made climate change is not happening.
If hypothetically we were in a natural warming phase of 1C per 1000 years, and we have now accelerated that to 3C per 100 years, that is man made disastrous climate change.
I don’t see how anyone can refute the following logic:
– CO2 is a warming greenhouse gas and global temps track CO2 levels,
– CO2 is currently around 390ppm and rising at vastly higher rate than has it ever has as a result of human activities.
– in the last cooling / warming cycles spanning more than 400000, it never got above 300ppm and reached that level slowly.
Please see the following page with a chart showing what I mean 3/4 of the way down.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-levels-airborne-fraction-increasing.htm
fwiw my brother, who is one of the most honest people I know, is working for the UN being sent to many different countries to best advise them how to deal with the coming climate change. He has studied this stuff and on a personal level know he would never have gotten into this field if he found out it was a fraud.
JYNN – I’m in complete agreement re climate denialism on these forums. My suggestion: Don’t even go there. I believe in/acknowledge in many conspiracies in the sense of people conspiring for particular outcomes (e.g., central banks, big pharma, etc.). The danger with the mindset, though, is seeing conspiracy everywhere – if evidence supports the theory is giving legitimacy (proof!), but if there’s any contradictory evidence it’s just dismissed as “part of the conspiracy.” The ridiculous dismissal of so much science astounds and offends my sensibilities, but that’s not what I come here for. I go to environmental blogs for the latest on that. Just like I wouldn’t come here to get advice on how to breakup with a narcissist, I won’t listen to these folks about climate science.
(Now I’m curious to see if there’s any vitriol from expressing my counter opinion.)
Jynn, you manned up nicely, so let me respond. Co2 is a warming greenhouse gas. No, it is a trace gas, and being a trace gas, it would have no measurable effect on temperature. Global temp track Co2 levels. Hard to find a correlation, I’m not buying it. Co2 is currently at 390 parts per million (isn’t that .000,000,390?) Like I said, trace gas. And rising at a vastly higher rate than it ever has. Come on, we haven’t studied this for fifty years. And is the result of human activities. Uh huh. In the last 400,000 year cycle it never got over 300 ppm and reached that level slowly. That’s some good data. Sorry, jynn, dad was a meteorologist for NOAA, I watched this whole plan hatch from a front row seat. Thanks for playing.
I, too, rarely get involved in the Climate Change discussions. Jynn, you seem reasonable, but I can refute at least on eof your irrefutable points: Namely, ice core samples going back tens of thousands of years show that CO2 levels LAG temperature increases, in other words, historically temperature increases CAUSE CO2 levels to rise, not the other way around. This is NEVER mentioned in any way, shape or form because it does not fit the narrative. Another thing never mentioned is the ONLY reason we have a climate and that is the giant ball of fusion 93 million miles away. This ball, know as the sun, recently posted here and let us all know that it goes through cycles, in other words, it is not a constant, though it is treated as such by ALL AGW models.
Of course, there is SOME effect we have on the climate. To say it is completely Anthropogenic is beyond absurd and not good science. But people who do not understand science and are intimidated by the very word, use the word like a shield. “It’s settled science” these pundits scream, without realizing that the phrase is in fact an oxymoron. True science is NEVER settled. New evidence is always admitted and continually changes true science.
So, claims like a made up word (“denialism”) and that to be skeptical is to dismiss are illogical, emotionally driven arguments, while the issuer (in this case OneMoreCup) somehow likes to claim the logical high ground.
So, again, of course, we are causing SOME change to climate, how could we not. But, next, you will here from some AGW pundit that cow farts are more to blame than cars. Interesting. So, by that rationale, the early settlers actually did the environment a great service by slaughtering millions of buffalo–who, I have no doubt, fart like there is no tomorrow. It is this type of idiocy, while somehow trying to maintain the scientific high-ground, that I cannot stand.
One more point, we (humans) are fucking up our environment in myriad ways. I am tremendously “environmentally conscious.” In my estimation, even if the very worst scenario of AGW were true, it would still rank no higher than 5th on a scale of how humans are fucking up the planet, behind ocean acidity& pollution (including nuclear), soil erosion and chemical poisoning, burning fucking rain-forests, and the summation of local pollution disasters (smog in cities, lake and river pollution, etc.). So, why is AGW the only one of these that EVER gets national attention? Simple…the govt already taxes our food and our water, they now feel the need to tax the air we breathe. Period.
I disdain the politicization, hypocrisy and bastardization of science involved in AGW…but I always try to refrain from vitriol and ad hominem. I only ask the same.
just curiuos , im very tired atm , but @ DC do any of your models on financials include POCB’s controlling damn near everything? I mean if central banks control the value, thru increasing or decreasing the amount of currency units in play , thus affecting the perceived value of mostly intangible items like stocks ,bonds, or other financial instruments or even tangibles like PM’s or foodstocks or whatever ,why would anyone invest in anything other than something that would retain it’s value regardless of what POCB’s decree? I’m not trying to be argumentative.
Honest question from me tho . For example , I need to provide for family , me or whoever .
I cannot speculate. But I can, thru my labor ,accumulate increasing quantities of particular tangibles , along with an amount of whatever fiat is needed for taxes etc , so that the overall effect is constantly increasing , albeit slowly, to have enough steady stored labor for whatever is needed ?
I have a terrible time writing articulately sometime , so don’t pick my grammer apart too much lol !
On climate change , omg! Sun is a definite factor that is not included correctly . If co2 is such a problem lets get rid of it , and all plantlife will die . Look up co2 generators for farming .
Near as I can tell , the earth is in for a global cooling period , unknown how long that will last tho .
It appears that all the smog, pollution, man made shit is DELAYING this atm.
My meandering thoughts … which I m going to go off the deep end here lol , IF ,the world ,was indeed going to go thru a major cooling period , with subsequent ice age etc , AND , you were TPTB, and you wanted a viable population when this time frame was up , would you not want as much genetic human diversity as was possible ? Which would explain the absolutely insane policies of so called governments at this time?
If it was a survival of the species event , wouldn’t you hedge your bets accordingly ?
LOL just a cook with too much time on my hands atm , drinking some homebrew and really tired actually , been awake for 32 hours atm .
But I keep peeling the onion and the core keeps fracturing into many cores that occupy my meager intellect with probability fields that have at least some substance when you look at the data .
Nothing new under the sun . Whatever )
What is wealth?
If everyone agreed that sea shells were wealth, couldn’t those who live nearest the sea just take a stroll on the shore and clean up? Yep.
Why is a share of AMZN worth $633.72 at the moment I just looked? Because all who are inclined to trade it at that moment agree that the price should be a little less than 20 barrels of light crude oil, or a little more than half an oz of gold.
All of it is simply mass psychology.
Central banks are an invention that arises when people want to believe something can be created out of nothing, that’s all. They are an effect, not a cause.
I adhere to a theory I think explains the sine-wave curve of all this; it’s called the Wave Principle. It is based on the idea that we all herd, because people are social animals. There is an entire two-book set to explain it, so I don’t try here. Look up elliottwave.com or socionomics.net if you’re curious enough.
This theory posits that the mood chooses the leaders and the policies, not the other way around. I find it compelling, because history (and markets) are not random. They are clearly patterned. The problem is that the pattern is infinitely variable and thus of limited value in forecasting.
Markets will fall when they fall. I’m not all that worried about it any more. It is so much more difficult to make money speculating in a bear market that I have little interest left in trying. I have enough money in the market now to just brag about it if I’m right, that’s all. It’s too small an amount to materially affect me.
Much more fun will be when I think the markets have bottomed. I intend not to miss that again. For now, however, I see no compelling reason to buy stocks or bonds or real estate…and buying gold has proven quite difficult to locate a low risk entry.
Regarding “climate change,” all I needed to know was that proponents got caught red handed gaming the raw data.
ONLY LIARS AND FRAUDS CHANGE THEIR RAW DATA OR REFUSE TO LET OTHERS VET THEIR SYSTEMS!
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is simply not at a level to discuss it. NOAA and the East Anglia people have gotten caught dead-to-rights on this, and Michael Mann refused to share the raw data on which his famous graph was based.
Sorry, folks, that’s not science.
I’m a scientist by training (microbiology and biology degrees) and spent years in research and in industry. I know how data is massaged. I know how lies are told via omission.
AGW is a complete and total fraud, and that is certain because of the very way it is promoted.
FOR the record, the notion that HIV causes AIDS, too, is a pervasive error pyramid. Here, saturated as we are in the Information Superhighway, we are subject to more Error Pyramids than any time in human history.
Our problem is not what we don’t know; Our problem is what we think we know that JUST AIN’T SO.
– CO2 is a warming greenhouse gas and global temps track CO2 levels.
Jynn,
please point me to any evidence of this, a peer reviewed article or whatever hard data, that gives unequivocal proof of this.
As to why I ask, to prove that temperatures follow a rise in co2 (and not vice versa) you’d have to have dating methods so exact that any reasonable doubt is impossible.
So far, all I have seen is a correlation. Scientific dogma has it that correlation is not causation.
Your brother should be able to provide these data.
gm, capitalist economies are based on the idea that you can produce an excess of what you need to live during your “productive years,” turning your excess into some sort of “marker” that others will accept in trade while you are non-productive (i.e., in old age) for what THEY are actively producing.
What’s the key here:
All consumption is in real time, here and now.
It is impossible to consume that which has not yet been produced. A debt can be one of two things: it can be backed by an existing real asset that has real, current and predictable market value or it can be a pledge of some sort of future value or future activity or performance…which by definition has no current market value but may be deemed trustworthy or certain enough that the current debt is deemed “money good.”
The former of these describes where debt should and does equal wealth.
The latter of these describes a dangerous, metastatic cancer that has grown to monstrous proportion.
Debt has risen far, far beyond what is actually backed by real value. Government debt is backed by future taxes levied on FUTURE PEOPLE who work in a FUTURE ECONOMY.
What could go wrong? Right?
All that debt today is deemed wealth ONLY because people collectively trust all those issuers and their ability to some day deliver that which is owed.
What if they can’t?
I submit that we long ago left the point where delivery was possible. Honest GDP (not the BS one we’re given which includes government spending like it’s producing something) would have to grow by 10%, 15%, maybe even 20% compounded annually to make all the debts in existence today “money good.”
The problem we face is that we get the system (government, economy, polity, etc.) to which our neighbors acquiesce. Today people accept an Orwellian system that snoops us, cajoles us, threatens us 24 hours a day. They accept that anyone can issue an IOU and whoever holds it is richer by the face value, even if the issuer used the proceeds to buy an African Studies BS degree with a minor in underwater basket weaving. (talk about zero collateral)
How do we respond?
Beats me. Stay out of debt. Be skilled. Live simply. All the platitudes familiar to us all.
Hell, I’m unemployed now, a decade before I expected to “retire.” I’ve probably got an IQ above 130, I’ve a bachelor’s and a master’s degree and 27 years of outside sales experience.
Yet I’m essentially unemployable.
Good thing I’ve prepared for this. I’m not missing any meals. But it speaks to how hard I find it to navigate these times.
I sure as hell don’t have all the answers. I’m not sure I have more than a few….but of those I’m pretty sure.
Re the stock market.
Still looks impulsive to the downside to me, with action since 11 AM CT yesterday overlapping and corrective.
Until the market institutes a rally that breaks higher than the lower-low/lower-high trend of the last two months, the benefit of the doubt must be given to the downside.
I have yet to see conditions mark a solid, tradeworthy LOW, and the last signal for a fairly decent low was on November 13th, and it fizzled before hitting a new high for the move.
Re Central banks:
Back in Dec when the Fed’s “decision” was pending, I wrote that if the 3-month T-bill yield was .25% or more the Fed would DEFINITELY raise its rates.
It was, and the Fed did.
I also noticed, however, that the chart looked a bit like mid-December’s T-bill rate increase might turn to weakness….and it did. T-bills are yielding 0.20% or so now, after hitting 0.15 a couple days ago. This makes the Fed look like it’s “Too Tight.”
Wait to see if this sort of complaint begins to surface.
BTW, the whole “Ozone Layer In Danger” thing from a couple decades ago was a complete fraud, too.
Ozone is a product of sunlight, and the Antarctic “hole” occurs every winter there…and has since the Earth began.
It never had anything to do with freon.
Yet here we are with freon-free refrigerants and systems that have half the service life because the replacements are crap.
We are stuck permanently with legal frameworks that are a product of nothing but superstition, fraud and profiteering.
Humans are, collectively, like the monkeys on “Monkey Island.”
Drud and Starfcker, I did a bit of digging to find out how it could be possible that warming precedes CO2 increase as I wasn’t aware of those ice core samples. Here is a summation of what I found:
“When the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth’s orbit. The warming causes the oceans to release CO2. The CO2 amplifies the warming and mixes through the atmosphere, spreading warming throughout the planet. So CO2 causes warming AND rising temperature causes CO2 rise. Overall, about 90% of the global warming occurs after the CO2 increase.”
Check out this page if you’re interested in reading more fully. There is also a very good 5 minute video near the top made by a professor of chemistry explaining it all.
One last:
Another thing we’re stuck with? Onerous regulations on Gun sound suppressors (AKA silencers.)
Since 1934 Americans have been partly or almost wholly denied a piece of safety equipment that would largely end firearm-related hearing loss.
Typical firearms produce sound in the 140-160 dB range.
The best ear plugs reduce sound pressure by about 32 dB.
Hearing damage occurs WELL below the resultant (for example: 140-32=) 108 dB.
Suppressors typical work about the same as plugs, so adding one to your gun would reduce its sound pressure to a level where ADDING PLUGS or MUFFS would result in a safe level for your ears.
Silent, they are not.
Politicians and bureaucrats who perpetuate the GCA 1934 limits on silencers do so not to “prevent crime” but to keep America’s gun enthusiasts on the path to partial deafness.
I sincerely hope every single politician in favor of maintaining the bans (like in Illinois) and onerous regulations (at the federal level) contracts a flesh-eating venereal disease that eats away his or her genitalia.
forgot to add the link:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
Jynn, go to http://wattsupwiththat.com/
I’ve seen quite a few of those ‘climate change myth’ proofs before and also seen them soundly debunked. Not going to go into the details, but it’s all there on http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Whenever I see the word “debunked” it usually means that any kind of discussion has ended. Like “settled science” or “law of the land” it’s an attempt to sound authoritative without the work involved.
There are huge scars on the rocks in Central Park made by a half mile thick glacier. That suggests some major global warming during the neolithic era when mankind had zero impact on the climate. You never hear anyone talking about going back to those good old days, do you?
Climates change. Solar activity, polar shifts, interstellar flak, orbital disturbances, volcanism- all of them contribute to our ever changing climate and like human beings, all of them are normal phenomenon. Forcing people to pay a tax to try and alter the climate is one of the absurd propositions ever made and that they are done by people who jet around the globe with their heavily armed Praetorian guards, dining on stuffed hummingbirds and caviar makes it all the more entertaining. Especially when their ground troops do all the heavy lifting.
Debunk that.
Jynn, they ain’t listening. Why engage? There’s plenty of science out there, over 30 years worth in a dozen different disciplines, but these folks are choosing to ignore it or throw in with the deniers. It’s like teaching a pig to smoke…Why waste your time. Though, I appreciate your attempt and your calm tone. You’re more courageous than me.
People are invested in their points of view and can look on the internet for sites to support their POV. There’s certainly plenty out there to support any notion, regardless of its substance.
Regardless of their denialism, they’ll still suffer the impacts, so there’s that.
It’s precisely these kinds of comments about climate change that frustrate me. I’d like to point my family and friends towards some of these blogs about the market and economy, but I fear they’ll read the comments and make assumptions that the authors hold similar beliefs.