Commercial Intelligence – Page 183 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/05/06

Oil, Food, Middle Class Down = Long Emergency

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 04 Indonesia, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 06 Russia, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Sense-Making

D2 SCENARIO

I gave a little talk at a financial conference (Casey Research) that included the following very simple economic scenario:

Oil prices are going up (inexorably). China + Peak Oil + Financial diversification. Oil doesn't stop going up until GDP goes down. It's an inexorable force until then.
The US middle class is broken. A hollow husk unable to withstand the slightest gust. Regardless, it's the ultimate source of demand for the global economy. It's an immovable barrier.
When oil hits ~$150 a barrel the impact occurs between inexorable force and immovable barrier. The combo of higher prices at the pump and for everything else (food and other essentials) starts to crush middle class budgets and force defaults. The economy shrinks until the price of oil goes down enough to be affordable again (for those still left in the middle class).

We keep repeat the pattern above until we're in the second depression (D2). Long term low demand.

Phi Beta Iota: This is precisely why the BRICS (now including South Africa) and a new coalition, perhaps led by Cuba and Venezuela since Chile is refusing to lead, should focus on the immediate challenge of creating infinite free renewable energy–the foundation for global non-zero advances. Such a strategy would be inherently ethical, legal, citizen-centered, and non-violent as well as non-intrusive on any conceivable concept of sovereignty or indigenous privilege.

2011/05/05

Blackwater’s New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater.

Ashcroft will head Xe’s new “subcommittee on governance,” its backers announced early Wednesday in a statement. The subcommittee is designed to “maximize governance, compliance and accountability” and “promote the
highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private-security industry.”

Full Story

Phi Beta Iota: We don't make this stuff up.

2011/05/05

Get Ready for a Global Growth Slowdown

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Key Players

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

A good tour of the world economy by my my friend Marshall Auerback

Get Ready for a Global Growth Slowdown

Tuesday, 05/3/2011 – 1:31 pm by Marshall Auerback | 9 Comments

Governments across the globe are headed for a disaster entirely of their own making.

Though capital markets remain strong, the global economic backdrop continues to deteriorate as fiscal retrenchment takes hold. Commodity markets have rallied in tandem with the fall in the dollar even though there are signs that growth in the emerging world is slowing. Japan’s economy is in the soup, the U.S. economy has failed to pick up as many thought (with a mere 2% growth rate expected to be released for Q1 shortly), and the European economy is overdue for its own slowdown. The U.S. stock market has also rallied despite the threat of a very high gasoline price, disappointing economic growth data, and a fairly mixed earnings picture.

Read full article….

2011/05/042011/05/04

Defense and the Deficit–Busting the Defense Bubble, Ending Defense Entitlement

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Last Saturday's issue of Barron's ran a cover story on the deficit and their own take on how to address it. In contrast to the recent recommendations from President Obama and the House Republicans, defense was actually “on the table,” not “at” it. In the absence of any adult thinking on the deficit since the Deficit Commission in December, Barron's addresses a void that remains vast and empty in Congress and the Executive branch. The article puts on the table a defense recommendation — which I urged to them — that goes significantly deeper than even the Deficit Commission's — in truth fuzzy — recommendation on “security” spending.

Almost immediately, Forbes published at its website a related piece on defense spending and The Pentagon Labyrinth that contains some interesting private sector views on how the public might be beginning to perceive the current size of the defense budget and condition of our armed forces: note the references to “defense entitlement,” “defense bubble,” and “parade ground military.” It would seem that the paradigm is changing, at least outside Washington DC. (If you think that the recent killing of bin Laden proves the “parade ground” moniker wrong, I urge you to read the introduction essay in The Pentagon Labyrinth: “Why Is This Handbook Necessay?“.

Bursting The Defense Bubble: End The Entitlement Mentality
Steve Denning, Forbes, 30 April 2011

Grow Up, Guys!
By GENE EPSTEIN
Barron's Cover SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011

While the President and GOP sling mud at each other, the debt crisis is growing. Barron's offers some tough-but necessary-ways to alleviate it.

Phi Beta Iota: It is possible to eliminate the deficit by making Medicare prices honest and stopping the borrowing of money for corporate pork that feeds political pork. It is possible to eliminate personal income taxes by adopting the Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax, which actually produces a great deal more revenue which is desperately needed to bail out the equally irresponsible state governments and pension funds (both government and corporate). America is hosed. It is not possible to “reset” until Washington can combine intelligence and integrity, and that may require a public revolt on both taxes and the fraudulent corrupt Electoral System that keeps the two-party tyranny in a position to continue looting the Commonwealth.

Serious (Honest) Thinking About US Budget

$500 Billion in Cuts is Minimal Mandatory….

US Goverment 2011 Revenue, Costs, & Debt–Two Party Tyranny Lies Straight Up, Media Goes Along

2011/05/01

Sleepwalking through America’s Unemployment Crisis

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

Sleepwalking through America’s Unemployment Crisis

Mohamed A. El-Erian

Mohamed A. El-Erian is CEO and co-CIO of PIMCO, and author of When Markets Collide.

NEWPORT BEACH – It was relegated to the Q&A session, rather than featured prominently in the opening statement, at last week’s first-ever press conference of US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. It is an issue that too many in Washington, DC are willing to dismiss as “transitory,” despite visible evidence to the contrary. It is extremely vulnerable to high oil and food prices. And it undermines the operational assumptions that underpin the long-standing characterization of the US economy as vibrant and responsive.

The issue is the scope and composition of unemployment in America – a problem that is yet to be sufficiently recognized for its increasingly detrimental impact on the country’s social fabric, its economic potential, and its already-fragile fiscal position and debt dynamics.

Let us start with the facts:

· At 8.8% almost three years after the onset of the global financial crisis, America’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly (and unusually) high;

· Rather than reflecting job creation, much of the improvement in recent months (from 9.8% in November last year) is due to workers exiting the labor force, thus driving workforce participation to a multi-year low of 64.2%;

· If part-time workers eager to work full time are included, almost one in six workers in America are either under- or unemployed;

· More than six million workers have been unemployed for more than six months, and four million for over a year;

· Unemployment among 16-19 year olds is at a staggering 24%;

Read rest of article….

2011/05/012011/05/01

Google Owns You…What’s Your Problem?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Mapping

Google Memo Reveals Importance of Android Location Database

Location Services Icon in Maps

Just how important is location-based data to Google? Just how important is it for the sun to rise each morning? Same deal.

This question comes in the wake of eyes turning toward mobile handsets—specifically, Apple's iPhone and smartphones based on Google's Android OS—for the information they collect about the various wireless access points and cell phone towers the devices connect to (or notice) throughout the course of a given day.

Four Weapons Against Humanity

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Secrets, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the commons,
But lets the greater villain loose
That steals the commons from the goose.
– 16th century English rhyme

March 23, 2011

Four weapons

Posted by leavergirl under civ, problem of power, traps

Anthropologists have noted three main pathways to power. I say there are four. And out of these pathways come four types of weapons used against us, and four types of weapon industries. One of these has been obvious to all, two became more and more visible as the 20th century progressed, and the last needs far greater exposure than it has received. What are those weapons? What are the main ways to inflict damage on human beings by those who seek to dominate?

Read concise elegant discussion of each of the following:

1. Physical Weapons .. 2. Economic Weapons .. 3. Ideological Weapons including Religion & Rote Education .. 4. Government as a Weapon

Phi Beta Iota: There are two literatures that are relevant here, the first represented by such books as Tragedy & Hope and its introductory companion the Naked Capitalist, and the second by a less well known but amply robust literature on the sovereign individual. A general strike and a refusal to pay taxes are the legitimate last resort of an abused public. Similarly, a public demand for Electoral Reform, absent which the legitimacy of any government is ended in the eyes of all, can be equally compelling. The times they are a'changing. We have high hopes for 2012 as the year of awakening and reconciliation based on truth.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)