US factory orders fall; Turkish inflation stays high; Aussie economic activity softens; Panama, Suez, Asia rail all face threats; UST 10yr 4.29%; gold drops and oil stays low; NZ$1 = 61.7 USc; TWI-5 = 70.6

Summer of discontent....

There is increasing amounts of news snippets to suggest that there is an anti-Kremlin/Putin Russian revolutionary movement occurring in Russia. This groups are against the war in Ukraine and it's effects have motivated them to fight against Russian armed forces inside Russia. Ukraine has denied responsibility for a lot of attacks in Russia and it seems this group are increasingly effective. The bridges might well be their work. If Putin continues on his path, he may well find himself facing a bigger problem at home. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/11/30/embracing-the-collapse/

Worth a slow read - I've selected a point or two below. Pertinent to the nonsense here, now:

'Although it is doubtful that any of those politicians had a detailed map with a clear end point, the essence of what they were doing was simple.  Faced with a falling rate of productivity gains following the exponential growth between 1953 and 1973, the aim was to lower the single biggest cost centre in business and government… that is, workers’ wages'

'By the time Tony Blair arrived to cement the neoliberal consensus into place, the entire UK population was caught up in a mass delusion based on the quasi-religious belief that the value of property would increase forever… thereby ensuring that the old days of boom-and-bust cycles had been brought to an end.'

This brings us to one of those great human flaws – our inability to process time.  Our tendency is, for example, to blame the incumbent government for everything that goes wrong while they are in office.  But in human systems, crises can take decades to be realised (although this shouldn’t excuse short-term idiocy of the kind which has become all too common these days). 

It may still be early days, but the new central bank policy approach in Turkey hasn't yet had any effect on bringing down inflation there. It is still running at 62% pa in November.

Global Insecurity - Michael Hudson

Every hyperinflation in history, such as we’re seeing in Argentina now, whose prices have gone up 140% in the last year, every hyperinflation has come from the currency depreciation, from the balance-of-payments deficit. And Germany, now that it is deindustrializing, now that it cannot import, if affordable, gas and oil to run its industry, all of a sudden this anchor of the euro’s exchange rate has turned into a deficit, meaning the euro is looking like it’s on the downside.

The reality back in the 1920s is Germany had to pay reparations. The payment of reparations caused the currency to plunge. When a currency goes down, as Germany’s did and Argentina’s today, the price of imports go up. And the price of imports go up, increase the domestic price of food, the domestic price of doing business. And so the government then has to create more money to enable these transactions of the economy to take place at the higher price level.

In every case, the hyperinflation and even regular inflations are led by the balance-of-payments deficit, followed by a declining exchange rate, followed by increasing import prices and domestic prices, and then at the very end, money creation increases, just the opposite of what Milton Friedman and the Chicago School and the right-wingers say.

When you have a false view of what causes inflation for the last 100 years, ever since the 1920s, it’s not a mistake. It’s because there’s a social interest in having a wrong view. The social interest is essentially to squeeze government and essentially privatize everything.

What you’re seeing in Argentina now is that the incoming Mr. Milei is trying to create a new government. He’s dropped the idea of dollarization, but he says there’s a simple way to stabilize Argentina’s balance-of-payments. And it’s exactly what Argentina did in 1991, and that is you sell off the public domain. Argentina was able to stabilize its exchange rate by selling its banks, selling its natural resources, selling its public utilities. Milei says, we can raise the exchange rate once again and stop the depreciation if we just sell off everything, sell off our roads, sell off our streets, sell off our land, sell off whatever natural resources we have, and you’re going to have an influx of foreign money coming in, and that foreign money is going to buy up our government, what we sell off from the government, and that will stop the inflation, and now you middle-class and working-class people can somehow survive.

And, of course, the problem with this is once you privatize the public domain, the private owners are now going to raise the prices for public services. They’re going to turn government infrastructure into monopolies and extract monopoly rent, and all of this rent is then going to be remitted to their own countries abroad, and most foreigners in Argentina are Argentinians, the 50 families that run the economy, operating out of offshore banking centers, the Dutch West Indies, the United States, London, and so they’re pretending to be foreigners, so you’re having a huge privatization and the squeeze of the middle-class and the working-class.

In Australia, there are building signs their economy is softening, and quite quickly.

"Sub-Imperial Power” by Clinton Fernandes, a former Australian intelligence officer and now professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales

In other words, Fernandes’ point is that the key characteristic of the “rules-based international order” relates to the actual structure of the American (or British, French, Australian, etc) social and economic system, which seeks to enforce an order where the whole world is open to the penetration and control of their respective national moneyed classes. Which is why the order is about hegemony, and not about security, and why the former so often comes at the expense of the latter.

I'm all for a peaceful protest, but as soon as you interrupt my schedule to go about and earn some dollars of which a portion goes towards the infrastructure that you use (hospitals, welfare, roads etc etc), you lost me. Throwing your toys out of the cot as the election didn't go your way and then trying to hold the majority of people at ransom will not get you many sympathiser's, probably the complete opposite.

Bitcoin on a tear. Maybe it is the new Gold? (seen as a safe heaven in tough times).  Disclaimer, I don't know enough about Bitcoin to cast an educated judgement.

And so the gradual decline of our living standards continues. With the election of the new government it is becoming more apparent that there are no magic bullets to solve our money problems. We are constrained on all sides and have realistically reached peak export income. Which means we need to start living within our means or borrow more until that tap is turned off. Or sell our remaining assets to the highest bidder. The short term immigration hit is only delaying the inevitable decline. Our current lifestyles are unsustainable on many levels. Not the least of which is burning fossil fuels to gain energy. Our slow readjustment is going to be painful as our poorest will be the worst affected as per usual and whatever group they are aligned with and represent their interests will foster and foment that disenchantment. But as PDK repeatedly asserts there is no more growth left. We have wrung the planet dry and should look to surviving as best we can for the next decade or so. Learning to live with less. Had to happen.

As always there will be an uneven decline in living standards across the globe. I think the extent to which climate change affects certain regions will accelerate/delay societal stress. In NZ we are in the precarious position of having a generally benign climate but needing to continue exporting to maintain any sort of modern lifestyle. Rather that subsistence living if our export economy collapsed rapidly. So while the ships keep sailing and our customers maintain a modicum of social cohesion then we are probably OK for a short while. Once our customers lose their ability to pay for our goods for whatever reason then our society faces some serious risks. Maybe 2 decades away? Heck I hope that the Chinese can raise their stop banks high enough and stabilise their hillside rice paddies to keep their food production going. Or can buy enough to make up the shortfalls.

Well now we have it that TPM did not swear an oath to the Crown, or to NZ, but only to their own. 

But they will be allowed to take their seats, and receive all the pay and benefits that go with them. While treason is a term generally only applied in a time of war, could they be accused of it if they did something against civil order if they haven't sworn an oath of loyalty to the country?

If they want an effective protest that kicks this government in the nuts. Why not a rent strike? They would be doubled over in pain after just one week.