Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 7 pm in association with NZ Mint.
I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.
My must read today is #1. It's just plain sobering.
1. Is there something wrong in the world? - I have a confession to make.
I have an iPad that I use a lot. It does some great things. It seems cheap for what it is and does.
It was made in a factory in China where workers live in dormitories away from their families and are paid a fraction of workers in other places. Workers in these slave camps kill themselves or are killed in accidents.
The iPad has been a hit for Apple, which yesterday disclosed a cash pile of almost US$100 billion and that its CEO Tim Cook received compensation US$378 million last year, albeit much of it in stock options. Cook is the man responsible for Apple's much vaunted outsourced supply chain.
Is this the world we want to live in?
Apple can make us great stuff and make huge profits for shareholders while paying its CEO an amount of compensation that is so mind bogglingly large as to be unthinkable.
Is this OK? I read the Isaacson book on Jobs over the holidays. He didn't care about people very much. He cared about himself and his products a lot.
Here's the New York Times with some deep reporting on these Chinese factories:
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
And here's the quote that stood out for me:
“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management atFoxconn Technology, one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.
“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.
2. The €1.4 billion house - Irish artist Frank Buckley is building a house in Dublin from bricks made from the euro notes shredded by Ireland's national mint.
This is after he borrowed a 100% loan to buy a house...
And here's the Irish Times on the story:
“I’m sitting in my studio with my feet up on a box of €4 million of shredded notes and I thought, ‘God, this is just paper’,” Buckley said. “I just felt there needs to be a debate on this. Kids in school need to come down and see and get talking about it. What does currency mean?”
3. Austerity debt spiral - The IMF's Fiscal Monitor paints a dire picture of government austerity driving economies even deeper into recession.
This chart tells the story.
While deficits and debt in many advanced economies are high, the pace of consolidation projected in 2012 is considerable given the weak economic environment. Moreover, fiscal policy in many countries is already tighter with respect to the cycle than had been projected in the September 2011 Fiscal Monitor (Figure 3), partly because a lack of affordable additional financing is compelling some euro area economies to introduce new measures to attain existing headline deficit targets, rather than allowing the automatic stabilizers to operate.
4. Here's how desperate Americans are for a job - This is a video of a line of people waiting to apply for some jobs in a Ford factory in Chicago.
The sound is NSFW. The pictures tell the story.
5. This is curious - WSJ's excellent ChinaRealTime report points to the amazing traction that the 2009 movie about an Apocalypse in 2012 is getting in China.
All across China citizens are expressing the belief that in this year, the world may come to an end. “Husband, the end of the world is drawing near, why don’t we have a baby. We have 10 months left,” said one user of the popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo. Her comment was only one of many in a thread that’s been started about the end of humanity.
What’s behind this belief? Look no further than “2012,” director Roland Emmerich’s 2009 film about a global disaster that brought the end of the world.
While the movie received a luke-warm reception in the U.S., Chinese audiences latched onto it. With $466 million in Chinese box office revenues, “2012″ ranks as one of Hollywood’s top-grossing films of all time in China, according to film industry research company EntGroup.
6. George Soros is buying Italian bonds - Reuters reports from an interview with a man who may have a position he is front-running. He is picking deflation.
Salmon talks about this Newsweek interview with Soros:
“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”
8. Tibetan strife - Here's Bloomberg on problems in Tibet.
Police in southwestern China opened fire on protesters in a Tibetan enclave during a clash Jan. 24, the second straight day of deadly protests in the area, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The confrontation occurred after a crowd gathered two days ago near the Chengguan Police Station, Xinhua said yesterday, citing an unidentified police officer. The crowd refused to disperse and then stormed the station with knives, gasoline bottles and stones, according to the report.
9. US$140/bbl - The Telegraph reports the IMF has warned sanctions on Iranian oil would push the oil price up.
10. Totally irrelevant Stephen Colbert interview with Maurice 'Where the Wild Things Are' Sendak. It made me laugh.
The Colbert Report
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34 Comments
Bernanke will save us from deflation, with inflation targeting. Targeting the most disfunctional measure of inflation yet CPCE.
Well, we got an inflation target from the Fed. Basically, thinking at the Fed has been eliminated. The process has been automated. Bernanke has convinced the Fed board to adopt Core PCE as a determinate of monetary policy. So long as CPCE stays below 2%, Ben is going to have his foot planted on the monetary metal. It’s “full speed ahead” according to the Chairman. He's pushed things off until 2014 - a very long time from now.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/bernanke-goes-all
I dont think Bernanke can.....the hole is too big.....personally I wouldnt gamble on him doing so.....he will fail and we will have a MEGA depression.
Core should always be used to set policy and as far as I know the fed already does this.....so im not sure what they are taking about.....and yes its 2% or lower....and it will stay there.....maybe....deflation is most likely however.
What will stop Bernanke will be the un-serviceable and un-repayable debt and how Congress acts I suspect.....though the EU imploding is most likely...February is 50billion re-debt form italy, worth watching.....
Fed already has a OCR of almost zero so I cant see what else he can do but QE3 (or is it 4?) and I cant see that going down in congress well....
regards
Is the hole bigger then 10%+ govt deficits, and Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP)? The debt is unpayable, and according to Krugman isn't supposed to be paid. It is serviceable with more and more debt. Forget about who's buying it, the Fed will buy it (through the circular route of the secondary market). How congress acts, is different to how they talk, same as all politicians. Feb also has the next round of the LTRO.
Bernanke studied the Great Depression, and I doubt he will make the same mistakes, His mistakes will be far different. Personally I'm hoping to be totally independent before things really break down, the world is a messed up place run by messed up people, and the more distance I can put between them and me the better. if I had to pick I'd say deflation followed by very high inflation.
I like Hypertigers take on inflation.
>>>>
The gradual rate increases were not to solve an inflation problem.
That's what the moronic masses were told.
when bonds are bid up in price their yields drop...to create this you require more demand than supply...but when the supply/production of bonds is greater than demand...you get the opposite.
Yields that rise.
Hyperinflation..How did teh USA escape the hyperinflation trap due to teh rule change in 1971?
Once everything was in position to deal with the consequnece of the spike to pop the bubble...it was popped...the FED engineered rates at the maximum potential point even higher to stop the hyperinflationary bubble from expanding further...the driver which was the wholesale cost of production was then allowed to be exported out of the USA...first to Japan and then China.
Volcker didn't do anything until he was informed by his masters to spike rates up and pop the bubble.
Since then the global trade system has been sustained by continually lower rates...
To of course maintain the Illusion that the FED has magic powers to manipulate the Universe that the masses of morons believe the FED has.
From the spike up until the QE's of the past few years...all the FED did was set rates based on what the consumer demand for money dictated.
There is no way the FED can escape because all that was done in 1971 was postpone the inevitable implosion of the global trade system that was doomed to do nothing more than inflate to maximum potential and implode...
once you choose to take more than you give...the logical conclusion is collapse...All you can do is postpone the inevitable arrival at the logical conclusion for as long as possible.
That's all everyone globally has been doing...buying time with money from a magic printing press.
the key problem with exponential growth is...the more you perpetuate it the shorter the time in between teh point you are at and the logical conclusion becomes.
the cost of time exponentially grows...
so back in 2008-9 was the greatest global government interevention in the history of the world...the next one will have to be greater...and the next one even greater.
well rich people are ass draggers so ...Eventually there won't be enough time to for all ass draggers to get together for the photo shoot following the agreement to kick the can down the road one more time and postpone arrival at teh logical conclusion.
and it will be jigs up.
one solution is for more control...like world dictatorship...
In the end it will be some small member of the G20 that won't agree quick enough that will be promoted as the cause of the end of the world and all the kids will believe it.
that's basically the purpose of all this "those politicians better get their act together" social engineering...it's just pre conditioning of the rubes into accepting the solution to the problem.
The solution to the problem which is the collapse which is just an effect of the choice to take more than you give which is the cause of the problem.
Your phone was built by 13 year olds earning 70c an hour.
17 January 2012 - 01:28 PM
The top employs the bottom for the minimum to produce the maximum so the top can obtain the maximum for the minimum.
The top employ the bottom to supply the top with everything wholesale...the top then mark it up and sell it to the bottom retail.
the difference between the wholesale cost and the retail price is the yield teh top lives off of.
the top sucks from the bottom.
the top grows richer in power by taking more power than they give from the bottom while the bottom grows poorer in power by giving more power than they take from the top.
Once the bottom reaches their maximum potential to supply the demand for yield by the top...the system cannibalizes itself and collapses...implodes.
The yields have been dropping for 30 years because the only way the top has been able to obtain the yields from the bottom they demand...is by cutting the teh demand for yields and making up the difference on volume.
Just in case you need to find data.
This process has almost been exhausted the past 30 years and now the top is resorting to raising the prices of food and fuel to attempt to force the bottom to supply the demand for yield they require to sustain the delusional lifestyles of the wannbe rich and famous.
Those Chinesee slaves are worked so hard that they purposely drop things so they can rest stopping to pick up what they dropped...or kill themselves.
Tough being a worker making iPods all day but what's the alternative? Back to the fields? Starve? There are simply millions who can easily replace you so you have no bargaining power. The good news is that Chinese wages/conditions should eventually gradually improve as the supply of working age workers reduces (in no little part due to the foresight of the 'one-child' policy).
Seems like Capitalism not only corrupted itself, but corrupted Socialism/Communism too, by its money power...the poor Chinese slaves being sold out by their Communist masters who pay lip service to labour rights, labour power, etc....all for those who can afford to, to waste their time entertaining themselves on the phones and the pads......playing games/apps...what a travesty the world economy has become in the last few decades of internet revolution..
Apple: The fruit of the monetary system. As long as you have incentives for money and power, this will continue. It has been part of human history since the dawn of time. Technology has made these jobs obselete, yet the monetary system forces the masses to live in a world of scarcity. The reality is a world of abundance, and enforced scarcity. A resource based economy removes the incentives for money and power, and truely frees people.
"Looking at current developments on many fronts the world will never recover, because amongst the powerful in society, morals, ethics and standards don't prevail"
"The ECB started buying Greek bonds in May 2010, when the eurozone debt crisis first erupted. The objective of Jean-Claude Trichet, president, was to stabilise financial markets. The assumption was that bonds bought at market prices would be held until maturity, when the ECB would book a tidy profit.
Having taken action when the private sector held back, it justifiably feels it should not have to pay a price now, said Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit. “In an emergency, the fire brigade goes in – but the deal is that it is protected.”
Economists estimate that a 70 per cent “haircut” on the face value of the ECB holdings could leave a loss of more than €20bn – a significant but not disastrous sum given the size of the reserves held by the ECB and eurozone national central banks. But the ECB’s resistance to accepting losses is not just principled. Agreeing to take a loss could be viewed as providing financial assistance to Greece – and in violation of the European Union’s ban on central banks funding governments"
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
No worries....Jean-Claude Trichet is the culprit and he must repay the loss to the ECB....he can do that with an ECB personal loan...the ECB can imagine the credit out of thin air...so what's the problemo?
"2012 might end up being most famous as the year in which the world defected from the US dollar as the global currency of choice. Imagine the rest of the world doing the math and, little by little, beginning to do business in their own currencies and investing ever less of their surpluses in US Treasuries. It constitutes nothing less than a slow but sure decimation of the dollar"
"He's just exiting the plane now folks...yes he has something in his hand and he's waving it aloft...Mr Obama looks very pleased...he's about to speak..again...let's force ourselves to listen"
"Recovery in our time my fellow citizens...I have here a written promise that recovery...oh bugger"
"Err armmm sorry about that folks but a gust of wind has just blown away whatever Mr Obama was waving"
...........................................................................................................................................
"Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in December for the first time in four months, capping the slowest year on record for builders.....the worst year for the industry in records going back to 1963.
The threat of further price declines may be dissuading some Americans from buying a new home even with mortgage rates near all-time lows and more people finding work....., a wave of foreclosures may hamper the recovery in real estate as more distressed properties are put on the market."
How stupid is Gingrich?
"In a speech near Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre, the Republican hopeful and space-travel enthusiast pledged that by 2020 American families would be living and working on the lunar surface.
He even proposed that that when the colony's population reached 13,000 it could apply to become the fifty-first state of the union."
#1 and stories like this:
http://www .busines sinsider .com/ apple-l abor-abu ses-2012-1
Will tarnish Steve Job’s legacy….
I personally thought the guy was a total tool, but he did prove my point that it not necessarily the inventor of a technology that makes the difference but the person who best exploits the technology.
Also, before you put Steve up there on a pedestal with Thomas Edison you should know the Thomas Edison never really invited anything, much like Ford never invented the car, Edison invented the invention assembly line. He hired the best and brightest around the world to come to Menlo Park, NJ and ran an invention sweat shop. It’s the main reason Tesla and Edison had a falling out.
To all owners of Ipad and Iphones, no to mention owners of Apple shares...
Your gadget was made by a Chinese worker whos feels so miserable making it for you that he/she committed suicide after doing it......think about that for a minute before you go hugging the next tree and sipping your next Starbucks.
How else can Apple become the top earning and most valuable company in the world ??
And everybody thinks Steve Job is next to God ???
This is Western Society......
Now we know why we are in the Sh.. we are in ??
I agree, I don't have a i.* but I'm pretty sure, my modem, keyboard, motherboard, shoes, clothing etc. etc. were all made in similar conditions so I'm not feeling smug for not owning an apple. What stunned me the most was the arsehole getting paid $1,400,000 every day, while paying people $5. How can he sleep at night? What a wanker.
Putcha faith in Allah me boy ..... no need to worry about a pension plan !
.... the future lies in pyrotechnics , and in scattering your gizzards across a dusty bazaar in Bagdag ..........
.... but in heaven my son you will rape your reward , 17 vestal vrgins will be awaiting your pleasure ........ did you know that Mother Teresa had 16 sisters ?
Specially for GBH, Theresa's sisters, Sheep Shagger, Casual Observer and Wolly.
Wall Street gave him the title "next to God"...reason being "most profitable company" "most valuable company in the world " "Largest company in the world" etc etc...
We now know how the Company came about to become "Most profitable" "most valuable" etc etc
Charles Dickens would be proud that his writing is still very much relevant till today !!
Read more here :
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/26/state-of-the-apple-rotten/
I am an innocent elderly poor retired civil servant with little knowledge of such things Gummy and so I started to look up that term!..."The word twat has various functions"...and then I was forced out of gentlemanly conduct to put the wee arrow thingee on the red part with the white cross and make the picture go away....
Best laugh today...."David Cameron lectured European heads on how to run their economies - as Britain's slumped."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/29/business-economics-journ…
No mention of Bernard yet, in time though?
The crazy behaviour of the worlds politicians, most of whom won't admit the game is soon to be up as they endeavour to kick the can down the road a little further, does leave those of us who can see what’s going to happen some time in the near future, an opportunity to positions ourselves to take advantage of failing economies and global trends. The doom and gloom we're staring at need not be doom and gloom for those who can accept that times are changing.
We won't change the behaviour of politicians unfortunately, but you can take advantage of their predictability!
Invest in hard assets is my strategy, I think inflation is as sure a thing as you can get in this crazy economic world. I'm keeping away from most equities as while I am sure there are sound companies to invest in, these too suffer from the volatility of the market reaction to seeming nothing headlines, making near to impossible to pick dips to buy in on. Additionally you'll have to cope with the inevitable plunge as we have a Lehmann moment when a country defaults and banks fail.
There are some great economic trends that, while they will suffer some what at the hands of our current economic incompetence, will bounce back as the inevitable takes hold. For example global food demand is a great story, this will result in farm price and produce demand surge over the next few decades. See Here
http://www.farmlandinvestment.blogspot.com/
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