Princeton/Northwestern study concludes business has representation but Americans do not

Here, where however there isn't the slightest suggestion that increasing representation for the majority of citizens by restoring the size of US House to its constitutionally intended proportions might help mitigate the problem:

The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded. ... Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organisations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it." ... The theory of "biased pluralism" that the Princeton and Northwestern researchers believe the US system fits holds that policy outcomes "tend to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations."

h/t Business Insider

Antarctic Global Warming Scientists Rescued, But Rescue Ship Also Gets Stuck In Ice: Story Never Mentions It's Summer In Antarctica

Chinese Snow Dragon stuck in ice after rescue

Why would they go there at this time if they didn't think they could get to Antarctica?

The story is here.

Evidently the rescue ship is Chinese, but the scientists were transported from their stuck vessel to an Australian vessel which subsequently has been dismissed from the area despite the troubles of their rescuers' vessel, also now stuck.

Reminds me of the tow truck which came to retrieve a neighbor's dead vehicle the other day. The tow truck itself got stuck, and had to be towed by another tow truck. Needless to say the neighbor's vehicle didn't get towed until yet another tow truck came yesterday.

And that's how icy it is, from Antarctica to Michigan.

NY Times Photographer Likens Obama Image Management To Communist Propaganda From Soviet State News Agency TASS

Yeah, well, here's why!

And you thought the extremists were in the Tea Party.

Reported here:

Barack Obama's White House has been accused of producing Soviet-style propaganda by press photographers who are furious at being denied access to the US president. Mr Obama's aides routinely block independent photographers from capturing him at work, before distributing flattering pictures shot by Pete Souza, his official photographer. During a tense meeting at the White House, the practice was described by Doug Mills, a veteran photographer for The New York Times, as “just like TASS,” the Soviet Union state news agency.

33% Increase In Dutch Euthanasia Misreported As 13%

The figure for 2011 was 3,136, meaning the 2012 increase to 4,188 is 33%, not 13% as reported here by The UK Telegraph.

London Grows By A Million 2001-2011, But 600,000 Native Whites Flee

Which helps explain why UKIP is winning elections in Great Britain: It just went from 7 seats in Parliament local elections to 147, with Britons fed up with regulations which come with EU membership and flood their country with cheap, foreign labor.

Stories here at The UK Telegraph, and here at Sky News.

(originally posted May 7th, corrected)

Ben Bernanke Is A World Class Thief And Should Be In Jail

The average annual return to cash for the three years since July 2010 has been 0.04%, for example in VMMXX, Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund, but over that three year period inflation has absolutely raged at 7.18% overall, with the all items CPI soaring to 232.944 from 217.329. With about $10 trillion stuffed away in M2, returns to cash just keeping pace with inflation would have come to $718 billion to savers by now. Instead they've reaped just $4 billion (annually).

In a related note here, the contribution to GDP over the period from the Zero Interest Rate Policy and Quantitative Easing has mirrored the criminal returns to cash:

'But it turns out that the benefits of printing all that new money may have been negligible. According to a new study by two senior US economists, America's second programme of quantitative easing, nicknamed "QE2", boosted economic output by just 0.04pc.'

The rich have gotten richer the old fashioned way: they've stolen it.

Forget The "Threat" Of Deflation. Its Crushing REALITY Means Monetarism Is Doomed.

Galactic hitchhikers know this is the answer to everything.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Lars Christensen, here, think deflation is only an omnipresent threat:

The world is still in a contained depression. Sliding commodities tell us global money is if anything too tight. "There is a threat of deflation almost everywhere. A lot of central banks will have to follow the Bank of Japan, whatever they say now," said Lars Christensen from Danske Bank.

The era of money printing is young yet. Gold will have its day again.

I couldn't agree less. The threat isn't everywhere. The reality is everywhere.

Total credit market debt outstanding (TCMDO) for the five years ended on July 1, 2012 was up a paltry $5.83 trillion. Yes, I said paltry. For monetarism to continue working as it has in the past, TCMDO needs to double on average every 8.25 years. That's the historical experience of America going back to the beginning of the post-war. At the current rate since 2007, however, it's going to take until the year 2049 for TCMDO to double from July 1, 2007.

We've had periods of doubling as short as six years for TCMDO, and periods as long as 11.5 years, but at the current rate over the last five years continued into the indefinite future it's going to take 42 years to double. 42 years. Not 11.5 years. And not 6 years. 42 YEARS. America has hit a brick wall.

People who talk about an L-shaped recovery and decades of economic shrinkage ahead may not appreciate quite adequately enough just how right they are.

Margaret Thatcher's Last Words

(here)

Russia Was Just The Excuse For The Eurogroup To Steal From Cyprus

So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here, for the UK Telegraph:

"First they purloin the savings and bank deposits in Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus, including the working funds of the University of Cyprus, and thousands of small firms hanging on by their fingertips. Then they seize three quarters of the country’s gold reserves, making it ever harder for Cyprus to extricate itself from EMU at a later date. ...

"Cypriots are learning what it means to be a member of monetary union when things go badly wrong. The crisis costs have suddenly jumped from €17bn to €23bn, and the burden of finding an extra €6bn will fall on Cyprus alone. ...

"The workhouse treatment of Cyprus is nevertheless remarkable. The creditor powers walked away from their fresh pledges for an EMU banking union by whipping up largely bogus allegations of Russian money-laundering in Nicosia. A Council of Europe by a British prosecutor has failed to validate the claims. The EU authorities have gone to great lengths to insist that Cyprus is a 'special case', but I fail to see what is special about it. There is far more Russian money – laundered or otherwise – in the Netherlands. The banking centres of Ireland and Malta are just as large as a share of GDP. Luxembourg’s banking centre is at least four times more leveraged to the economy. ...

"The original plan in Cyprus – approved by the Eurogroup, but rejected by the Cypriot parliament – was to steal the money from any bank regardless of its health, and from small depositors regardless of the €100,000 guarantee. They have shown their character. The Eurogroup don’t give a damn about moral hazard. They are thieves."

Thatcher's Finest Hour: And So Say All Of Us

"She always afterwards regarded the Falklands War as the most important period of her premiership."

-- The UK Telegraph, here

Why Deposit Confiscation On Cyprus Was Wrong

Liam Halligan, for the UK Telegraph, here:

"Across Cyprus this Easter, hundreds of family-owned businesses are trying to come to terms with what they see as the theft of their working capital. Numerous charities, universities and other educational endowments have also been whacked. As I said, depositors are not investors. There is an absolutely crucial distinction between them, or, at least, in a modern society, there should be. Moving on any depositors, large or small, seriously undermines the financial and legal fabric of capitalism itself."

The Gas Hydrates Revolution Will Dwarf The One In Shale Oil/Gas

And the desperate Japanese are leading the way to its successful recovery within 5 years.

So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for the UK Telegraph, here:

'The immediate discoveries in Japan's Eastern Tankai Trough are thought to hold 40 trillion cubic feet of methane, equal to eleven years gas imports. The company described the gas as "burnable ice", saying the trick is free it from a crystaline cage of water molecules by lowering the pressure. Tokyo hopes to bring the gas to market on a commercial scale within five years.'

The stuff is all over the world, especially along coastlines of continents, deep, deep down, in quantities double the known fossil fuel varieties.

The future is bright!

Follow the link for more charts and discussion.

Secretary Of State John Kerry Causes 11 Letter Pile-Up Between Kyrgyzstan And Kazakhstan, Causing Kyrzakhstan

The former senator from Massachusetts was not seriously injured in the accident, physically.

Story here.

h/t Chris

5 Years Of Uncommon Snows Give London Mayor Boris Johnson An Open Mind

Lord I wish Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, England, were my mayor, my governor, hell, my president for crying out loud.

This guy, trained in the study of classical antiquity, utters more civilization and common sense in one brief column than I've heard in four years from Barack Obama on any subject, let alone from nearly anyone else in this increasingly barbarous republic of ours, if it can still be called a republic. And that's saying a lot because President Obama has been talking non-stop now for four years and hasn't said one damn thing yet, even when the teleprompter is working properly. Where else can you learn about the Maunder minimum, Martinis, the Dalton minimum, William Shakespeare and solar science all wrapped up in a delightful bow about winter snow? I know not where.

Notably, the mayor ends his column with the humility characteristic of a man who one day will doubtless be the leader of many more in England than just the happy inhabitants of London, or at least it can be hoped:

I am speaking only as a layman who observes that there is plenty of snow in our winters these days, and who wonders whether it might be time for government to start taking seriously the possibility — however remote — that [astrophysicist Piers] Corbyn is right. If he is, that will have big implications for agriculture, tourism, transport, aviation policy and the economy as a whole. Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment of a mini ice age.

But it doesn’t seem as nuts as it did five years ago. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.

And on this quotation, "Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines", which he makes from Shakespeare's sonnett, in the bleak mid-winter I can live for days as I remind myself that not everything dies forever, least of all the good, the true, and the beautiful:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Central Banks In 2012 Bought 536 Tonnes Of Gold, The Most In Half A Century

So reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

"[C]entral banks around the world bought more bullion last year in terms of tonnage than at any time in almost half a century.

"They added a net 536 tonnes in 2012 as they diversified fresh reserves away from the four fiat suspects: dollar, euro, sterling, and yen."

In dollar terms with gold at $1,600 the ounce, 536 tonnes is an allocation of roughly $30.26 billion to gold by central banks in 2012, conservatively speaking.

To put central bank demand in 2012 in its context, compare this from Reuters, here:


Jewellery buying, the largest demand segment, fell 4.4 percent to 1,885 tonnes [in 2012]. Global coin minting is forecast to have dropped to a four-year low of 199 tonnes, down 19 percent from the previous year. ... On the supply side of the market, mine supply is expected to tick up 1.5 percent to 1,389 tonnes in the first half [of 2013].

In other words, falling demand in jewellery and coin minting was offset to some extent by central bank buying in 2012, supporting the price of gold, which began the year near $1,600 and ended it near $1,650.

The bankers obviously saw 2012 as a buying opportunity in the wake of weak demand.

Separately, as I noted here, central bank purchases year over year in March 2012 had ramped up to 400 tons from 156 in the prior period.

Predictions last summer, when prices were at their 2012 nadir, that central bank purchases going forward would come in at roughly 375 tons max obviously underestimated the reality significantly, way over 40%.

Jose Manuel Barroso Call Your Office, Existential Threat For You On Line 2

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

A day after European Commission chief Manuel Barroso said the "existential threat to the euro has essentially been overcome", we have the monthly jobless data from Eurostat. Unemployment has reached a record 26.6pc in Spain, rising to 56.5pc for youth. It is almost the same in Greece: 26.0, (57.6) ... but Greece's data is old. It will soon be worse. Followed by: Portugal: 16.3, (38.7) / Ireland: 14.6, (29.7) … but improving, since Ireland is highly competitive in EMU / Slovakia: 14.5, (35.8) / Italy: 11.1, (37.1) … though be cautious of the Italian data because it famously undercounts discouraged workers. Italy's rate is probably nearer 14pc, comparing like with like. It is a record 11.8pc for EMU as a whole. ... Mr Barroso was once a Maoist and a student activist in Portugal's Carnation Revolution against the reactionaries. Good for him. Which side would he be on now if he were 40 years younger?

(image source)

The World's Second Largest Economy Is In Turmoil: The Rats Are Jumping Ship

The Chinese Year Of The Rat

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for the UK Telegraph, here:

The worry is that the transition [of power in China] could go badly awry as 70pc of top cadres and the military are replaced, the biggest changeover since the party came to power in the late 1940s. "That is what is causing capital flight. All the top officials are trying to get their money out of the country," he said.

Monetarist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Eats Keynes For Dinner, Austrians For Dessert

Frustratingly inconclusive and full of explanatory power at the same time, here:

Monetarists blame the ECB and the Fed for keeping money too tight in early to mid 2008, pushing a fragile credit system over the edge. They blame “pro-cyclical” regulators for aborting recovery ever since by forcing banks to raise asset ratios too fast. They are right on both counts.

Yet the `Austrian School’ is surely right as well to argue that a rise in debt ratios across the rich world from 167pc of GDP to 314pc in just thirty years was bound to end badly. There comes a point when extra debt draws down prosperity from the future. The future arrived in 2008.

Famous Spaniard Threatens Leaving Euro On Wednesday, ECB Moves On Thursday

And markets pop accordingly to finish the week, solely on a serious promise of coming central bank intervention.

As reported here on Wednesday the 25th, Spanish elder statesman Francisco Alvarez Cascos, former secretary-general of Spain’s ruling party, became the first major figure in Spain to openly suggest leaving the Euro, saying,

'This can’t go on for long, or we will have to think about leaving the euro before we are thrown out.'

Is it any coincidence that the European Central Bank "moved" on Thursday, as reported here?

'Mario Draghi, the ECB president, vowed to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro within limits of its mandate. "Believe me, it will be enough," he said in London.

'Picking codewords instantly understood by traders, Mr Draghi said the violent spike in bond yields in recent days was hampering "the functioning of the monetary policy transmission channels" - the exact expression used to justify each of the ECB's previous market interventions.'

It was bad enough that ousted Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi had been openly suggesting in recent weeks that Italy should think seriously about whether it ought to continue in the Euro. To put that on the table in Europe's third largest economy was a serious sign that events were turning. Now joined by a similar suggestion in the fourth largest economy in Europe, the ECB had to act to stanch the wound.

The bond markets are forcing everyone to do what they do not want to do, but they will have their say, one way or another.

Democrat Senator Pat Leahy Of Vermont Loves Violent Batman Film "Best Of The Three"

As reported here at The Hill:

The Vermont Democrat and big-time Caped Crusader fan got a sneak peek of “The Dark Knight Rises” at an advance screening Sunday in his home state and says he “Loved it.” The flick, which hits theaters Friday, is the last installment in the three-part series starring actor Christian Bale. ...

When asked how “The Dark Knight Rises” compares to the first two “Batman” films in director Christopher Nolan’s trifecta, the unlikely big-screen star beamed, “I liked it the best of the three.”


From a review which refuses to spoil it (how do you spoil what's already reeking?):

After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man's face is filleted by a knife, and another's is burned half off. A man's eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man's stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes.

A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic. Oh but don't worry, folks: there isn't any nudity.

And by the way, the director of the film appears to have contributed funds to Sen. Pat Leahy's political campaign in 2010. Did I mention he was the Democrat Senator from Vermont? Not to be confused with the Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders?