Thursday, August 27, 2015

CHINA'S BLACK HOLE OF DEBT CREATES GHOST CITIES AND WORLD CRISIS


 












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The ripple effect of China's out of control black hole of debt with its overbuilt and uninhabited ghost cities throughout China as well as its poorly regulated and hyper valuated stock market is becoming a world crisis which, like a black hole in space, is drawing most of the world into its rapidly collapsing debt vortex where the mother of all real estate bubbles is in the process of bursting: Allen L Roland, PhD

 

 "I have been warning for years that the greatest - and final - bubble to burst, in this century of bubbles, would be China. Now that cracks in the great red dragon's economy are widening, it's time to prepare for the worst" ~  Harry Dent, Global Financial columnist

In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the claim was advanced that China could serve as the growth engine for the world economy. That illusion was dashed some time ago by China's recent currency devaluation ~  but it has been replaced by growing fears that an unravelling of the massive Chinese investment and real estate boom will have major global consequences, especially for so-called emerging markets that are dependent on the Chinese economy and its already happening. See CBS 60 minutes 12 minute report on China's real estate bubble and ghost cities ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjwhk1ktNw

 
China's consumer spending by households is only 35 percent of the nation’s G.D.P. ~ one of the lowest levels in the world. Its investment rate ~ nearly 50 percent of G.D.P is extraordinarily high. And the productivity of this investment is beyond dismal.

To a large extent, China's authoritarian command and control economic governance is to blame for its current financial peril. Limits on legal migration to cities promoted an underclass of illegal urban workers toiling for meager wages, slowing consumer spending and hindering urban development. State-owned monopolies plowed profits back into investment rather than into government spending on social welfare. Near-zero interest rates on deposit accounts provided cheap loans to business but penalized savers and the name of the game became to buy real estate ~ it's the mother of all mothers real estate bubble and its bursting at the seams.

Further economic change in China will inevitably lead to political instability ~ which is not exactly the strongest incentive for government reform in China so it's time for China's leaders to circle the wagons and protect the authoritarian regime, regardless of the consequences to the people ~ for the Chinese Potemkin village of progress must be maintained or China will financially bring the world down with its immanent stock market collapse.

 
It's the ultimate financial blackmail and it may just work for a short time ~ for it's also a con game operating on a worldwide basis.

As usual, WSWS provides the on target lurid details of this world wide Ponzi scheme;

"An article published Sunday in the New York Times (“Investors Race To Escape Risk In Global Bonds) sheds light on a significant factor behind the crisis atmosphere on global markets. The Times explains that some of the biggest bond mutual funds based in the US, including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Pimco, are massively invested in emerging market government bonds whose values are now collapsing.

The article raises the very real possibility that one or more of these firms could be bankrupted by demands from investors for the return of their cash, under conditions where the firms cannot offload their emerging market bonds and meet these demands. Such an event would be comparable to, if not worse than, the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Following the 2008 Wall Street crash, the American ruling class led the way in using unlimited supplies of virtually free credit provided by central banks to push stock prices to record highs and generate an emerging market bubble, while laying siege to the jobs, wages and conditions of workers through mass unemployment and austerity policies.

The resulting “recovery” had the character of a gigantic Ponzi scheme, resting on a stagnant real economy and ever-increasing social inequality. This financial house of cards is being undermined by the growth of deflationary tendencies in the world economy, reflected most starkly in collapsing commodity prices and the slowdown in China, but also in anemic growth or outright recession in Japan, Europe and the US."

On September 16, 2008, the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the WSWS declared:A sea change is unfolding in the US and world economy that portends a catastrophe of dimensions not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”   
See WSWs article http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/24/pers-a24.html

China's black hole of debt is now twice the size of its gross domestic product and it's fueling a Potemkin Village of potential growth. China’s total debt amounted to RMB 111.6 trillion ($18.3 trillion) at the end of 2012, which was 215.7 percent of that year’s GDP. Of this amount, corporate debt equaled 113.5 percent of GDP; government debt, 53.5 percent; household debt, 31.1 percent; and financial sector debt, 17.6 percent.

Ruchir Sharma, Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, wrote last year that: “Since 2008, China’s total public and private debt has exploded to more than 200 percent of GDP ~ an unprecedented level for any developing country” in his opinion ~ and that China’s debt problems are “huge.” See article http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2014/01/21/chinas-debt-how-serious-is-it/

 
This black hole of Chinese debt is clearly unsustainable, along with its ghost cities, but there is one person who clearly saw the hand writing on the wall in 2009 regarding China's dangerous debt excesses and his name is Jim Chanos. The was the founder of Kynikos Associates, a $3 billion hedge fund that specializes in short-selling, Chanos was the first person to figure out, some 15 years ago, that Enron was a house of cards ~ and now he reveals that China is also a huge house of cards on a massive international scale.

 


Chanos and his crew at Kynikos don’t make big “macro” bets on economies; their style is more “micro”: looking at the fundamentals of individual companies or sectors. And so it was with China. “I’ll never forget the day in 2009 when my real estate guy was giving me a presentation and he said that China had 5.6 billion square meters of real estate under development, half residential and half commercial,” Chanos told me the other day.

“I said, ‘You must mean 5.6 billion square feet.’ ”

The man replied that he hadn’t misspoken; it really was 5.6 billion square meters, which amounted to over 60 billion square feet.

For Chanos, that is when the light bulb went on. The fast-growing Chinese economy was being sustained not just by its export prowess, but by a property bubble propelled by mountains of debt, and encouraged by the government as part of an infrastructure spending strategy designed to keep the economy humming. (According to the McKinsey Global Institute, China’s debt load today is an unfathomable $28 trillion.)

That insight soon led Chanos to make an audacious call ~ Short Chinese stocks. China was in the midst of an unsustainable credit bubble ~ witness the countless Chinese ghost cities fueled by nationwide false hope and manipulation.

Chanos soon went public with his thesis, giving interviews to CNBC and Charlie Rose, and making a speech at Oxford University. He told Rose that property speculation in China was rampant, and that because so much of the economy depended on construction ~  in most cases building properties that had no chance of generating enough income to pay down the debt ~ China was on “the treadmill to hell.”

 
As it turns out, China’s economy began to slow right around the time Chanos first made his call. No matter: Most China experts remained bullish. Chanos, meanwhile, was shorting the stocks of a number of companies that depended on the Chinese market. And he was regularly sending out emails when he came upon articles that seemed to confirm his thesis: stories about newly constructed ghost cities and troubled banks and debt-laden state-owned enterprises."

 
China’s not the only reason the stock market has been so volatile, but it’s the most important one. China’s economy is faltering, its stock market is collapsing, and the ham-handed efforts by government officials to prop up both have mainly had the effect of disabusing anyone who still thinks the government can revive the economy with the snap of its fingers. This loss of confidence in China and its leaders has spooked stock markets around the world."  See article ~  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/opinion/joe-nocera-the-man-who-got-china-right.html?emc=edit_th_20150825&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65700837

 

This loss of confidence has rightfully spooked stock markets around the world because we are all part of this world wide credit/debt scam and China's descent into this black hole of debt will have worldwide ramifications that will affect us all.

 
"The world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats,” Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, wrote in a recent research note.

 
And this ocean liner has just hit a massive iceberg of debt and is sinking fast ~ and there are no lifeboats and that includes Quantitative Easing ~ An unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities out of thin air from the market in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply.

 
The Fed is now pumping annually approximately 1 to 2 trillion dollars out of thin air into the economy and that includes vast amount of Mortgage backed bonds and effectively putting a halter on Interest rates but at the same time piling up more debt ~ which now stands at 18 billion versus 6 billion in 2008.

Every great con game or Ponzi scheme eventually comes to an end and it's always painful.

"Why would any rational investor want to put money into investments that will make them poorer on a purchasing power basis in the long run?  And when any central bank initiates a policy of “quantitative easing”, any rational investor should immediately start demanding a higher rate of return on the bonds of that nation.  Creating money out of thin air and pumping into the financial system devalues all existing money and creates inflation.  Therefore, rational investors should respond by driving interest rates up.  Instead, central banks told everyone that interest rates would be forced down, and that is precisely what happened.  But now things have shifted.  Investors are starting to behave more rationally and the central banks are starting to lose control of the financial markets, and that is a very bad sign for the rest of 2015. See http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/tag/quantitative-easing

 
The game is up and the day of reckoning is already here but the global elite will do everything in their power to indefinitely keep the Ponzi con game intact.

 
The weakness in China is even compelling officials at the United States Federal Reserve to think more globally, as they consider raising interest rates. William C. Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, said on Wednesday that a September rate increase looked less compelling than it did a few weeks ago and China's economic blowback as well as credibility is the obvious unmentioned reason.

The confusion and bankruptcy of governments and policymakers in the face of the renewed China downturn was summed up in a column published in the Financial Times over the weekend by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who called on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates at zero indefinitely.

Summers wrote: “Satisfactory growth, if it can be achieved, requires very low interest rates that historically we have only seen during economic crises. This is why long-term bond markets are telling us that real interest rates are expected to be close to zero in the industrialized world over the next decade"

Summers, who has virtually no financial credibility, is also in denial for the die is cast and China's collapsing Debt vortex has already captured if not been inspired by the United States who has been playing the same con game as well as delaying the inevitable economic collapse.

We stand at the precipice or the event horizon of the greatest economic transition that any of us have ever seen.

China's black hole of debt has taken China beyond the point of no return and even though things may seem very “normal” to some people right now ~ the truth is that the global financial system is fundamentally flawed, and large cracks in the system are appearing throughout its infrastructure..

One thing is certain ~ when this economic Ponzi game does collapse, it will take most people entirely by surprise.

But it shouldn’t for it has always been in plain sight for those willing to see beneath the surface as well as  the Potemkin Chinese ghost cities without inhabitants.

All con games eventually fall apart in the end, and we are about to learn that lesson the hard way.

 
Allen L Roland, PhD
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/chinas-black-hole-of-debt-creates-ghost.html


Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

Friday, August 21, 2015

JIMMY CARTER / A WISE TRUTH TELLER PREPARES TO DEPART


 
 
 








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I have always thought that Jimmy Carter is not only one of our greatest presidents but is also the perfect example of James Kavanaugh's quote and book ~ There are men too gentle to live among wolves. Carter is an extremely intelligent, gentle and deeply religious man who tried to do his best and live among the global elite and Wall Street wolves but they never trusted his sincerity and eventually brought him down and replaced him with a cartoon image of Republican leadership and deceit, Ronald Reagan who initiated our gradual decent to global terror, torture and finally moral irrelevance: Allen L Roland, PhD

 
"There are men too gentle to live among wolves" James Kavanaugh

 
Two years ago I wrote an article about Jimmy Carter calling him America's most famous truth teller saying our 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president Jimmy Carter is America’s most famous truth teller and moral revolutionist. See article ~ http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/07/31/jimmy-carter-americas-most-famous-truth-teller-and-moral-revolutionist/

 

Carter was way ahead of his time when he declared then that “The U.S has no functioning Democracy” which did not appear in the American mainstream press; Carter also rightfully defended NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden actions declaring that “the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far” and finally Carter correctly argued that “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestine land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East.”~ and yet Jimmy Carter continued to be ostracized by the global elite and main stream press who obviously deeply feared his revolutionary moral truths ~ and now Jimmy is preparing to depart with a spreading and perhaps incurable cancer, but he most certainly will not depart quietly into the night.


 Carter's most famous speech is his Crisis of Confidence or Spiritual Malaise speech on July 15. 1979 which was deeply prophetic of future unfolding events which have led us to our present morally deteriorated state ~ see 2 minute video of excerpts ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lHplhMChZQ

Here are excerpts of Carter's exact words on the moral apathy which has gripped our nation as well as our lack of a spiritual base ~ "Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past….But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose…. The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world."

 
Jimmy Carter is a global moral force and trouble shooter for fairness and justice who gives living truth to these words by William James ~ words which also happen to be an inspiration for myself ~ "I am done with great things and big things and great institutions and big successes, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets or like the capillary oozing water, yet which, if you give them time, will bend the hardest monuments of human pride"

Here are some famous Jimmy Carter quotes which give ample evidence of his moral courage;


 

 

 
"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts." Jimmy Carter




 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And now Jimmy Carter at 90 may be dying of Cancer but he is fully prepared for the worst.

"I'm ready for anything and looking forward to a new adventure," said Carter, appearing upbeat and making jokes as he openly talked about his cancer during a recent news conference.

. "I just thought I had a few weeks left, but I was surprisingly at ease. I've had a wonderful life," the 90-year-old Carter said. "It's in God's hands. I'll be prepared for anything that comes."


 
Most people are not only afraid of death but they are really afraid of the incompleteness of their lives ~ but that most certainly does not include Jimmy Carter who is seemingly ready for his next exciting adventure of transitioning into another state of consciousness ~  the Unified Field  of love and soul consciousness that lies not only beyond the event horizon of death but also beneath our deepest fears, as I demonstrate every day in my heart centered self-healing consultations.

 
Since death is an illusion measured by the limits of our consciousness ~ Jimmy Carter's greatest gift may well be demonstrating to us how his strong faith can both face and defeat Death.


There have been many tributes to Carter but one interview in the Los Angeles Times, was especially well done. Written by the New York Times‘ Carolyn Kellogg, it was on target, with this headline: “In ‘A Full Life,’ Jimmy Carter at 90 remains a wise truth teller”.

Kellogg wrote that Carter’s book demonstrates his consistent “truth telling”. It is entitled, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.

Kellogg’s interview reinforces the truth-telling characteristic of Jimmy Carter that is at the center of his life as a moral man and a world leader. She writes:

One challenge of Carter’s presidency was that he spoke the truth, even though during his years in the White House (1976-80), the truth was often bad news. He faced an energy crisis, a capsizing economy, opposition from Congress, and the revolution in Iran than led to American hostages being held captive 444 days.”

 
However, it was Carter’s truth-telling in his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which forced the Israel-Palestine issue into the light of the world’s attention and in many ways inspired the world wide BDS movement against Israel.

Without that book, which cost him dearly in American circles of power in the nation he led for four years, the truth of Palestinian occupation might still be struggling to gain a hearing in the court of world opinion.

Truth tellers are rarely appreciated and usually have only one option, tell their truth ~ but it is also the only way you can truly love yourself ~ which explains Jimmy Carter's inner peace of mind as he prepares to depart this life.

 
Noam Chomsky wrote this about Carter's genuine religious fundamentalism ~  "Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.”

Hamilton Jordan worked for Carter and offers this telling insight ~ "It's hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for Jimmy Carter was to tell him something was impossible, and he would usually do it."

 
But Ambassador Andrew Young, who prays with Carter, wrote this telling assessment of his friend ~ "President Jimmy Carter was a citizen soldier. Ironically, he was considered weak because he didn't kill anybody and he didn't get anyone killed."

 
Out of such supposed weakness grow giants of moral integrity such as Jimmy Carter.

 
Allen L Roland. PhD
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/jimmy-carter-wise-truth-teller-prepares.html
 



Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

Thursday, August 13, 2015

HILLARY'S SECRET WEAPON ~ DONALD TRUMP


 
 
 
 





Click on photo to enlarge

Donald the Brash and the Jeb the Toad playing their respective political roles in Republican Presidential primaries.

 
Watching the recent Republican Presidential auditions was like watching Kabuki theater where a toad like Jeb Bush attempted to rationalize the criminal actions of his older brother while at the same time riding on his badly frayed coat tails. Meanwhile an out of control Donald the brash Trump seized his moment in prime time with the ultimate narcissistic and vacuous TV selfie thereby revealing Hillary's secret weapon ~ the total discrediting and irrelevance of the Republican Party via Donald Trump: Allen L Roland, PhD

 
In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican: H.L. Mencken

 
The obvious problem for Hillary lies in Trump's narcissism which, when fully released and uncontrolled, will eventually destroy the enabler herself. Witness Maureen Dowd's recent comment regarding the debates in the New York Times ~  "Consider how Trump yanked back the curtain Thursday night explaining how financial quid pro quos warp the political system. “Well, I’ll tell you what, with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding,” he said. “You know why? She had no choice because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn’t know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world.”

 
But the most important audience for the Republican debates is not TV viewers ~ The party’s leaders also carry tremendous sway ~  since the infamous election of 1980, the single best predictor of a party’s nominee is the number of endorsements from party elites in the months before primaries begin. As Lynn Vavreck points out in the New York Times ~ " in 2012, it became clear that when candidates’ share of media coverage grew and the tone of their coverage became increasingly positive, a direct bounce in poll numbers resulted."

 
So what we really have here is a National Audition before the financial elite, including AIPAC ~ where the decision is really made before the primaries on who to back and which one to concentrate media coverage as well as the big bucks.

 
For the top candidates, it’s an audition for party elites, moneyed supporters and lastly, the voters. The goal in reality isn’t to wow the crowd or create a surge in the polls, but instead to reassure ~ to confirm their ability to win, to handle the presidency and above all to maintain the status Quo of the Oligarchy.



 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 





It's ShowTime and all the pretenders are there including the barker or lightning rod (Trump) to create the illusion of real change in the air ~ and thus true Kabuki theater.

It is no longer the people's election ~ it is now the Oligarch's election in that a few dozen super-rich contributors are bankrolling ~ and thereby controlling ~ the 2016 presidential election campaign.

Here's the true breakdown on the bankrolling of candidates as reflected in these representative headlines that appeared over the past two weeks:





As usual, WSWS provides the lurid details ~

" Each of these reports relies on the figures from the FEC to document the role of a tiny group of extraordinarily wealthy contributors in shaping the course of the 2016 presidential campaign in both the Democratic and Republican parties. The bulk of this money has been channeled through so-called super PACs, the nominally independent political action committees called into existence by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, which legalized unlimited political contributions by millionaires and billionaires.

A few of the most important figures are worth citing:

* Fewer than 400 families account for nearly half of the $388 million raised by June 30 for the 2016 campaign.

* Just 130 families provide more than half of the super PAC money raised for Republican candidates.

* Some 67 donors have kicked in more than $1 million apiece, nearly half of them in the camp of Jeb Bush, who leads the fundraising race with $119 million.

* Super PAC fundraising has shot up ten-fold since the last presidential campaign, from $26 million at this point in 2011 to $258 million this year, nearly two-thirds of the total campaign cash that has been raised "


 
Of course, the Democratic campaign, in terms of the number of candidates, offers the inverse of the Republicans. Hillary Clinton has become the prohibitive favorite because she was the only candidate with significant backing from the financial oligarchy. Already, eight individuals have given $1 million or more to one of Clinton’s super PACs, with Wall Street and Hollywood the main contributors.

 
In a little-noticed commentary on a national radio program Tuesday, former President Jimmy Carter correctly confirmed that money had completely corrupted the political system of the United States. “Now it’s just an oligarchy,” he said, “with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and US senators and Congress members.”

 
Just note all this as we watch Bernie Sanders bring in the huge crowds in his current grassroots Presidential campaign ~ and recognize what he is really up against. Because of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision , corporations are now citizens with a vote and the means to decide an election with all their money and media support. What is emerging in the corruption of the 2016 US presidential election is the essence of capitalist politics ~ the dictatorship of the financial overlords who dominate every aspect of American society.

 
The game is rigged and we don't really have a meaningful vote ~ we are not in the big club and no one says it better than the late George Carlin. 3 minute video ~  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI

 
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary: H.L. Mencken

 
Allen L Roland, PhD
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/hillarys-secret-weapon-donald-trump.html

 
Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net