I decided to split off my postings of economic links from Jim's Thoughts, so that I can get that topic back to what it was intended to be, a place for me to post trading ideas and thoughts I had that I felt could be of interest to the readers.

This topic is where I will post links to various economic articles, for those that find them interesting. If you want to read (or post) articles about the unfolding debaucle, this is the place to look. If you are a short-term daytrader or swing trader and have zero interest in the economy, you can now just read Jim's Thoughts and not have to wade through this type of dicussion.

At best I think this material only has a direct effect on longer-term plays, the bigger swings that make up the major legs of the bull and bear markets. I follow this stuff for that reason, and because I want to have a handle on things, if that is even possible in this era of lies and deception, so that I can make decisions on life issues.

For example, as I posted in the commentary on the website and discussed with many people well in advance, this was something that wasn't hard to see coming. I saw many people who told me as late as Oct 2007 that 'this thing is about to 'break out' to the upside, and that Dow 20,000, and then much higher, was 'just around the corner' '. The type of articles I am posting discuss the type of information that helped me form the viewpoints I had back then.

If this is far from over, as I suspect, we are in a similar postion now as back then. With the rally that is unfolding right now the talk is the bull is back, the bottom is in, and we are set. I'm not so sure. So, I try to weigh up all the factors and not get too sucked in by the hype. To that end, I will post things here I find interesting.

Everything seems to be unfolding according to schedule. The time for the distraction is coming, so we don't have a revolution here. All unfolding according to history. History may never repeat, but it sure rhymes.


http://www.zerohedge.com/article/former-goldman-sachs-analyst-joins-marc-faber-and-gerald-celente-predicting-major-war

And for all you head up your a#%, positive thinking middle class suckers out there who don't think it is going to get that bad (and even think it will soon get better), pardon my somewhat angry tone (I am really upset with all the 'positive' people, because I feel that attitude does absolutely nothing except breed inactivity while we all get raped), study this and look at how profoundly (negatively) this stuff will affect you. Seriously, do the math, it will be crippling to the middle class. And that first one? Kiss trading goodbye, that's the 'trader tax' (ignore that they say 'large institutions', by the time it is done, it will only be small investors and traders, directly or by pass along).

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cbo-everyone-bend-over

I don't have the time or energy to do a long post on this, but I would like to. I have discussed this with several people, and made some small references to it in posts, the idea that everything is so tied together. Our water, coming from the tap, requires high levels of energy, so if we have an oil issue, water goes down. Power grids are so weak, so interlocked, and so dependent that any small break and entire quadrants of the country could go down for a long time. Food is only as available as delivery processes, which would be hugely disrupted if there is an energy issue. Food is dependent on shipping things across the world at low cost. Again, interdependency, and dependency on oil.

If we just use U.S. food, we are dependent on factory/corporate farms, and they are very heavy energy, fertilizer, and pesticide (made from oil, too) dependent. It's all interlinked, and way more so than anyone imagines, or can extrapolate out, or accept. If one card goes, the whole house of cards can all go. Anyway, the History Channel did a two-hour show on the 'worst case' scenario if we had a global pandemic. It showed the breakdown of all the above, and the consequences. I thought it was almost exactly as I would expect in an oil shock/financial crisis/currency collapse scenario. If you have a strong stomach and want to know why I am always so scared, watch this. It's called 'After Armageddon'.

And to just show that I'm not full of it when I'm so 'pessimistic', I want to examine one thing of many like this, to show even this 'worst case' show was far from the worst case. Between the U.S. and Russia, and a few other rogue nations, there is estimated to be between 1,000 and perhaps 100,000 times as much poison gas in storage as needed to kill all life on earth, depending on which estimates you use (this is based on stats I have seen, but I didn’t want to search and confirm before posting this, afraid to draw the attention of Homeland Security with my keywords…). More than enough, many times over.

There is no known way to neutralize this gas. It is stored in 55-gallon drums, and since it is corrosive, the drums degrade over a period of time, and then they seal it up in a new drum. This process goes on daily, thousands and thousands of drums, as they get close to leaking, or actually start to leak. It's madness, insanity, but we made this stuff, and we have no way to get rid of it now. So, as soon as we have this breakdown and a return to a centuries-old lifestyle, all that stops. The gas eventually leaks and leaks, and it's all over. There would be no means to deal with this, no energy, no stockpile of new drums, no sealed facilities to do it in, and so on.

Understand, we also have tons of Level 5 germs, under constant supervision in depressurized areas. What happens to all that? The genetically engineered smallpox and all the other stuff we know is out there, totally unwatched in degrading facilities. Let's not even get into would people find this stuff as they ripped every place apart looking for food and materials, not knowing what they are doing, releasing it all. And all the nuclear plants, as we are now seeing in Japan, what happens to them when they all go 'offline', and there is no one to deal with that. And on and on and on. You tell me if the show was truly the 'worst case'. I think it was a super-mild case. Judge for yourself, but at least imagine what may really happen, not what your positive side hopes happens, always thinking the best.

A must read:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/straight-talk-john-rubino-damage-already-done

If you are short on time, just read the last paragraph of the intro write up.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/03/march-21-2011-stable-in-sense-of.html

Good stuff:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v33n1/cpr33n1-1.html

This is environmental and not truly economic (well, it will have serious economic impacts...), but I don't know were else to post it. This is the best article I have ever read on this, and the sickest, most twisted. It was also, coincidentally, a topic of conversation with my better half earlier today, where I alluded to her something like this, and lo and behold, it is the route they are going down.

The propaganda is worse than the old Soviet Union, China at its peak, or Nazi Germany, in my opinion. Sure, the financial crisis is behind us, yeah, right, all the oil in the gulf magically disappeared and things are fine there, absolutely that's true, and plutonium prevents cancer and radioactive iodine levels should be raised 100,000X from current levels, okay, yeah, sure, right...

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/government-responds-nuclear-accident-trying-raise-acceptable-radiation-levels-and-pretending

What Jim has been pounding the table about for years.

http://www.pimco.com/Pages/Skunked.aspx

Another great example of how the rule of law is alive and well in our wonderful country, as well as the concept of fairness:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/26nocera.html?pagewanted=all

I forgot, I do have another hero to go with Ron Paul and David Stockman, and that's Nigel Farage. Here's his latest:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-17/farage-unleashed-you-are-common-criminals