By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Gold and COVID-19
[Here’s a post from a guy I read occasionally. His style (to say the least) is quite over-the-top. Believe what you choose and discard the rest. –Bob]
The entire global financial structure is in the process of faltering, breaking, and crumbling. It is better described as sabotage by the Globalist cabal in league with their fascist partners. As the entire economy fractures, as all debt faces failure, as most assets break down, as countless households struggle, the King Dollar faces a certain sunset, true safe haven will be uniformly sought. Correspondingly, the Gold price is ready to launch onward and upward. It will light the fuse on the Silver price in sequence. Demand will skyrocket, while supply has been limited. Behold the greatest fraud and hoax in the history of mankind behind the corona virus. It is named after the Queen of England, a primary funding partner. She filed a corona virus patent in December 2018, from engineered creation. The COVID-19 entity is far more a fascist project to force political change than actually a virus at all. The disease is a mirage, and exaggerated agent of deep fear and fright. Let it be known that not 5% of the population know what a virus is, how it works, the method to identify, or the best prevention. Ignorance is a great ally to the global cabal.
Australian Climate Policy Changes
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
h/t JoNova – as Aussie greens panic about expiring climate policy targets, an effort by Australia’s opposition politicians to appease angry coal union supporters by offering to include a place for coal in a future bipartisan climate deal has upset radical greens.
Labor offers to deal with terrorists in climate wars
In offering bipartisanship on energy, Labor is offering to do a deal with the ‘terrorists’ who have thwarted all forms of climate action for years.
Gold Summer Doldrums 3
Gold, silver, and their miners’ stocks suffer their weakest seasonals of the year in early summers. With traders’ attention normally diverted to vacations and summer fun, interest in and demand for precious metals usually wane. Without outsized investment demand, gold tends to drift sideways dragging silver and miners’ stocks with it. Feared as the summer doldrums, sometimes unusual catalysts short-circuit them.
This doldrums term is very apt for gold’s summer predicament. It describes a zone in the world’s oceans surrounding the equator. There hot air is constantly rising, creating long-lived low-pressure areas. They are often calm, with little or no prevailing winds. History is full of accounts of sailing ships getting trapped in this zone for days or weeks, unable to make headway. The doldrums were murder on ships’ morale.
I’ve Seen This Before in Venezuela
An immigrant from Venezuela warns us that what we are seeing today, with toppling statues, defunding police, and other anti-American actions by the far left are a warning. She saw this happen in her native Venezuela before that country went down the drain. –Bob
Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #414
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.” – Richard Feynman
Number of the Week: 2%
Oversimplified: Last week, TWTW presented a new paper from MIT Professor emeritus in Atmospheric Physics Richard Lindzen titled: “An oversimplified picture of the climate behavior based on a single process can lead to distorted conclusions.” The discussion was limited to what was presented in the No Tricks Zone blog. Further, TWTW did not draw a clear distinction between what the blog presented and what Lindzen actually wrote.
Starting with the UN and continuing through virtually all industrialized countries in the West, there is enormous political pressure to replace reliable fossil fuels with unreliable wind and solar power, particularly for electricity generation. Yet, no successful demonstration project exists showing this can be done at reasonable costs. Even the largest “battery” in the world, the Bath County Pumped [Hydro] Storage Station in Virginia, must be recharged, refilled, nightly by electricity from reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
Trampoline Cliff Diving
We start this week’s commentary with some rather depressing news from Reuters:
The ratio of downgrades to upgrades in the credit ratings of leveraged loans has spiked to a record level, five times above that hit during the last global financial crisis, reflecting the unprecedented stress in risky assets due to the coronavirus pandemic. Leveraged loans, which are loans taken out by companies that have very high levels of debt, usually with non-investment grade credit ratings–tend to be used by private equity firms as a way to fund acquisitions of such companies. The U.S. leveraged lending market has grown to more than $2 trillion, up 80% since the early 2010s, according to credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service.
Add in the $1.2 trillion junk bond market and the $3.2 trillion in BBB debt, which is just barely above the junk category, and you end up with nearly six and a half-trillion dollars’ worth of corporate debt that is primed for varying degrees of default. The catalyst for this default is the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Climate Activist Recants His Alarmism, Then is Victimized by Cancel Culture
‘I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding…’
Michael Shellenberger / IMAGE: TEDx Talks via YouTube
After an opinion piece it published Sunday drew the wrath of militant eco-warriors, Forbes appeared to have doubled back on it only a day later, pulling from its online platform the shocking apology by reformed climate-alarmist Michael Shellenberger.
Shellenberger is a devout environmentalist and political progressive, and he’s blowing the whistle on the climate change movement starting with a simple message: Sorry.
“On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years,” he wrote in a Sunday Forbes op-ed.
As of Monday, however, only a faint trace of the original article was visible on the site.
NSW Government Offers Subsidised Infrastructure for Renewable Energy, Overwhelming Response
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
The NSW government has offered support in the form of improved grid infrastructure and streamlined approvals for new wind farm projects in designated renewable energy zones.
Government renewable energy investment program swamped by support
Plans to open up the Central West of NSW to more renewable energy have generated overwhelming investor interest – topping $38 billion, or nine times the government’s available capacity.
The government program is designed to attract investors to build 3000 megawatts of new wind and solar farms worth an estimated $4.4 billion in the state’s first renewable energy zone around Dubbo, but has instead drawn proposals for 27,000MW in so-called 113 registrations of interest, the Berejiklian government said.
Greens Promote Child Slave Labor and Ecological Destruction
By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Why don’t African black lives and ecological values matter? or impacts in and beyond Virginia?
The US Supreme Court recently ruled 7-2 to reverse a lower court ruling that had invalidated a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will bring West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and North Carolina, for home heating, factory power, electricity generation and manufacturing petrochemical feedstocks.
Environmentalists had claimed the US Forest Service had no authority to issue the permit, because a 0.1-mile (530-foot) segment would cross 600 feet below the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail, which is administered by the National Park Service. Justice Thomas’s majority opinion scuttled that assertion.
Why I Love America
By Dennis Prager – Re-Blogged From Prager University
Dennis Prager has traveled all over the world. But at the end of every trip, he returns home with a new appreciation for America. Why? Because no country is more open, more generous, and has done more for the cause of freedom than America has.
This video is sponsored by Colorado Christian University. CCU is offering a $1,000 scholarship to PragerU subscribers for online classes through CCU Online. Go to Prageru.com/ccu to learn more.
Please watch the VIDEO
Gilead’s $2,340 Price for Coronavirus Drug Draws Criticism
[Gilead is the drug company that Fauci and 8 other NIH officials had a conflict of interest with (they received money from Gilead). That conflict induced Fauci to NOT test HydroxyChloroquine against COVID, even though tens of thousands of local doctors’ reports showed good results – much better than Remdesivir is showing. –Bob]
Report: Almost half of all COVID-19 deaths are linked to nursing homes
Re-Blogged From Informing America
Nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States are connected to nursing homes and long-term care centers, according to a new report from the New York Times.
The analysis found that there were more than 54,000 residents and workers at nursing homes and long-term care centers who have died from coronavirus-related illnesses. There were over 282,000 people infected at 12,000 senior facilities across the country. COVID-19 cases at nursing homes made up only 11% of all COVID-19 cases, but accounted for approximately 43% of the total U.S. deaths.
How The Fed Gets Away With Ripping Off Ordinary Americans
The Federal Reserve has printed trillions of dollars without generating runaway price inflation through the use of a neat trick.
The privately owned bank cartel shovels the bulk of the money to Wall Street banks and not to the public at large. Instead of millions of Americans rushing out to bid up prices on consumer goods, a relative handful of bankers is using the free money to bid up asset prices and then pay themselves huge performance bonuses.
Climate Advocates Grappling with the Gruesome Human Cost of Renewable Energy
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
As calls for more renewables and a green Covid recovery mount, renewable energy advocates are facing uncomfortable questions about the vast quantities of raw materials required for their green revolution, and allegations of child slave labour which haunt the base of their specialty material supply chains.
Green Energy’s Dirty Side Effects
The global transition to renewables could lead to human rights abuses and risks exacerbating inequalities between the West and the developing world.
Wind Energy in Scotland
By David Redfern – Re-Blogged From WUWT
I was invited by Charles the Moderator to write an essay with the emphasis on Scottish wind derived electricity.
I’m not a scientist, nor an engineer, in fact barely educated beyond high school, so, whilst you won’t get ‘shorthand’ scientific terms here, you will get something laymen can grasp, hopefully.
And that’s important as, whilst there are a small number of scientists/engineers etc. in the world, the majority of voters are like me, just plain old laymen and the subject of climate change is now political so every voter is vital.
Census Shows White Decline; Non-White Majority Among Youngest
By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines
‘We are browning from bottom up in our age structure…’
For the generation of Americans not yet old enough to drive, the demographic future has arrived.
For the first time, nonwhites and Hispanics were a majority of people under age 16 in 2019, an expected demographic shift that will grow over the coming decades, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.
Gold Stocks Still Undervalued
Gold miners’ stocks rocketed out of mid-March’s stock panic, breaking out to major new bull-market highs in mid-May. Such blisteringly-fast gains, and gold stocks’ upleg stalling out since, have left many traders nervous about this sector. Calls for a serious selloff are mounting. But arguing in favor for more near-term gains to come, gold stocks never grew overvalued in this post-panic upleg and are still undervalued today.
The recent gold-stock action is best understood through this sector’s most-popular benchmark, the GDX VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF. Holding the world’s biggest and best gold miners, it dominates gold-stock-ETF capital flows. GDX’s world-leading $15.1b in net assets this week are triple the size of its little-brother GDXJ mid-tier gold miners ETF! No other gold-stock ETFs come remotely close to GDX’s scale.
A Collapsing Dollar And China’s Monetary Strategy
This article describes how China can escape the fate of a dollar collapse by tying the yuan to gold. There is little doubt she has access to sufficient gold. Currently, her interest is to preserve the dollar, not destroy it, because it is the principal means of Chinese foreign interests being secured .
Furthermore, a return to sound money requires China to reverse its interventionism under Xi, returning to Deng Xiaoping’s original vision. Sound money can only last if the relationship between the state and the wider economy is properly addressed.
Of all the major economies, China’s is best placed to implement a sound money solution. At the moment it seems unlikely the necessary reforms will be forthcoming; but a general collapse of the global fiat currency regime presents the opportunity for reassessment and change.
Decline of the U.S. Dollar Could Happen at ‘Warp Speed’
Stephen Roach, a Yale University senior fellow and former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman, tells MarketWatch that his forecast for a sharp deterioration of the U.S. dollar could be a very near-term phenomenon, not an event that looms off in the distance.
“I do think it’s something that happens sooner rather than later,” the economist told MarketWatch during a Monday-afternoon interview.
His comments come as the financial expert has been warning for weeks of an epic downturn of the buck that could signal the end of the hegemony of the greenback as a reserve currency — an event that would ripple through global financial markets.
Stephen Roach
IMF Downgrades Outlook for Global Economy
[The Recession was caused partly by the COVID Pandemic, partly from the lockdowns put in place in over 40 US States, and partly by the economic troubles starting before that (eg. the REPO Rate crisis). These IMF forecasts likely are too optimistic. –Bob]
Time To Revisit Lifetime Supreme Court Appointments
It was my understanding that the Supreme Courts’ only job was to determine if the laws and regulations passed by Congress or executive order by the President were constitutional and everything else was to be done by the state courts.
Well, they have never done that in my lifetime and became a rubber stamp for FDR not because they thought what he was doing was constitutional but because he threatened to stack the court if they didn’t.
So much for the honor and separation of the court.
What Were the Benefits of Locking Down?
– Re-Blogged From AIER
The school closures, stay home orders, shuttering of businesses, banning of elective surgeries, closure of physical entertainment events, blocked flights, and sudden imposition of a central plan – it all happened suddenly from mid-March in the course of only a few days, and to enormous shock on the part of people who had previously taken their freedom and rights for granted.
Despite enormous pressure from Washington, eight states did not lock down or used a very light touch: South Dakota, North Dakota, South Carolina, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.
Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #412
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “Aqueous vapor [water vapor] is a blanket, more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man. Remove for a single summer-night the aqueous vapor from the air which overspreads this country, and you would assuredly destroy every plant capable of being destroyed by a freezing temperature. The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.” – John Tyndall (“Heat: A Mode of Motion”, 1861) [H/t William Happer]
Number of the Week: Daily change of 100⁰C (or daily change of 180⁰F)
California Rules Trucks Must Be Electric
Re-Blogged From CBS News
The rules, which would not take effect until 2024, will require at least 40% of all tractor trailers sold in California to be zero emission by 2035. For smaller trucks, including models like the Ford F-250, 55% of all sales would be zero emission by 2035. The standard is the toughest for delivery trucks and vans, with 75% of sales required to be zero emission by 2035.
California already has similar rules in place for passenger vehicle sales. But no one has yet imposed rules like these for work trucks, which unlike passenger vehicles are purchased with the intent of returning a profit.
A “Godzilla Dust Cloud” From the Sahara Desert Is Hitting the United States Right Now
By Victor Tangermann – Re-Blogged From Futurism
Godzilla Cloud
After wreaking havoc on air quality readings in the Caribbean, dust from the Sahara Desert just arrived at the US gulf coast, forming what experts referred to as a “Godzilla dust cloud.” It’s so large, it can be easily seen and tracked from space.
“This is the most significant event in the past 50 years,” Pablo Méndez Lázaro, an environmental health specialist with the University of Puerto Rico, told AP earlier this week. “Conditions are dangerous in many Caribbean islands.”
“The ongoing Saharan #dust outbreak across the tropical Atlantic is *by far* the most extreme” since records of global dust began in 2002, atmospheric scientist Michael Lowry tweeted on Wednesday.
Aussie Royal Commission to Investigate how Climate Activists “Hijacked” Forestry Management
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
2020 Economic Predictions: This Series of Unfortunate Events Guarantees the Epocalypse
Look at the plethora of problems in my list of 2020 economic predictions, which are so severe and so likely to get even worse that it’s more difficult to imagine they won’t get worse than to believe they will. Some are so bad that just a few of them would plunge us into an abyss of social and financial catastrophes.
Here are my economic predictions for the remainder of 2020
This list of economic predictions is not hard to come up with. It is, however, the fact that it is so easy to predict these things this year that makes this year’s list so important.
AG Bill Barr on Minneapolis and Police Reform
[While I haven’t included much about racial goings on, here is a brief clip (starting at the 36 second mark), with US AG Bill Barr. –Bob ]
By Gary Franchi – Re-Blogged From Informing America
The following story is brought to you courtesy of The Next News Network. Click the link to visit their page and see more stories.
Jim Hoft from The Gateway Pundit reports, Attorney General Bill Barr joined Maria Bartiromo this morning on Sunday Morning Futures. The two discussed the recent police killings and resulting violent Black Lives Matter protests.
Gold, Copper And Silver Are Must-Own Metals
Gold surged on Monday after a spike in coronavirus cases worldwide dashed hopes of a quick economic recovery. Within 24-hours the number of infections globally rose 183,020, a new record, the World Health Organization reported, Reuters said the US saw a 25% increase in new COVID-19 cases over the week ending June 21st.
A Can Too Big For The Fed And ECB
There are lies, damned lies, and economists. Whether these economists work for the government or a bank, they spend all their time on the computer extrapolating current trends with minor adjustments.
If you want to understand the future, don’t spend your life preparing and constantly revising an Excel sheet with masses of economic data. Collective human behaviour is extremely predictable. But not by spreadsheet analysis but by studying history.
Do Jobless Claims Point To Sluggish Recovery
Jobless claims paint a much grimmer picture than other pieces of economic data. So, the Fed (and other central banks) will remain dovish for years, which should support gold prices.
More and more economic reports show the beginning of the economic recovery in the U.S. Following the retail sales earlier last week, the Philly Fed Manufacturing Index turned from negative 43.1 in May to positive 27.5 in June, the first positive reading since February. And the Leading Economic Index rose 2.8 percent in May, after a record plunge in the two prior months.
Defaults Are Coming
We are reading now about possible regulations for air travel. In brief: passengers might be forced to spend hours at the airport. Authorities will perform medical checks, including possibly needles to draw blood, no lounges, no food or drink on board the plane, masks required at all times, and even denied the use of a bathroom except by special permission.
We would wager an ounce of fine gold against a soggy dollar bill that people will hate this. The majority of vacationers will not want to fly. A holiday is supposed to be fun, and air travel promises to be a lot less fun that it was in March.
The Ferguson Lie
By Larry Elder – Re-Blogged From Prager University
Most people think they know what happened in Ferguson, MO on August 9, 2014. Most people are wrong. Radio host and author Larry Elder presents a factual account of what actually took place on that fateful day.
Please watch the VIDEO
Climate Statistics 101: See the Slide Show AOC Tried, and Failed, to Censor
By Caleb Rossiter – Re-Blogged From WUWT
This is the slide show and 20-minute talk that Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chellie Pingree tried to censor at the LibertyCon 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. After Dr. Rossiter gave a climate talk at LibertyCon 2019, they wrote to sponsors of the event, such as Google and Facebook, and asked them not to fund any event with an appearance by “climate deniers” from the CO2 Coalition. See http://co2coalition.org/2019/01/30/representatives-ocasio-cortez-and-pingree-and-climate-change-debate/
Could Entomophagy End U.S. and African Protein Shortages?
By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Would we even want it to do so? A modest proposal, inspired by Jonathon Swift.
Nearly two centuries ago, amid a fungal infestation that destroyed Irish potato crops and brought famine, starvation, death, and the emigration of countless men, women and children, Gulliver’s Travels author Dr. Jonathon Swift offered “A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.”
Dr. Swift suggested that children too young to work could be eaten in place of potatoes. As he explained, “a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee, or a ragoust.” Surely, he said, this is preferable to aborting unborn or murdering newly born children.
Supreme Court Overrules Previous Court Decision, Approves Permit For Atlantic Coast Pipeline
By Varun Hukeri – Re-Blogged From WUWT
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a proposed natural gas pipeline which would be built under the Appalachian Trail, would be reinstated.
In a 7 to 2 decision, the justices tossed out a decision from a lower court and ruled that the U.S. Forest Service can grant rights-of-way for developers in land within national forests, the Associated Press reported. Energy companies and the Trump administration supported reinstating the permit, while environmental groups opposed it.
The European Green Deal is a Bad Deal
By Marcus Holtkoetter – Re-Blogged From AGWeb
The European Commission has a plan to eliminate modern farming in Europe.
The details emerged last month, as part of a “European Green Deal” announced late last year that calls for the continent to become “climate neutral” by 2050.
The commission speaks of “turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities.” It also talks about “making the transition just and inclusive for all.”
It should have added three words: “except for farmers.”
Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #412
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.” – Richard Feynman
Number of the Week: 11,000 & 1,600
Dynamics in the Tropics: In 2017, Judith Curry retired from her tenured position as a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she had been Chair of the department, to focus on her private firm, Climate Forecasts Applications, citing the “craziness” of the field of climate science and the great politization of research funding. She has long recognized that there are major problems in the field, particularly in the dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans in the tropics. As a climate modeler, she has first-hand knowledge of these problems, yet to be solved.
Covid-19 Could Accelerate the Robot Takeover of Human Jobs
Erika Hayasaki – Re-Blogged From MIT Technology
Machines were supposed to take over tasks too dangerous for humans. Now humans are the danger, and robots might be the solution.
Franziska BarczykWelcome to Renewable Energy Australia, Where Businesses are Paid to Shut Down
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
h/t JoNova – Australia’s increasingly precarious green energy grid is forcing curbs on economic activity, with plans to pay energy intensive businesses to shut down during periods of high demand, to minimise the political risk of voters noticing what a mess their electricity supply is.
Electricity users will get paid to cut energy use under historic new market reform
By Stephen Long Posted Yesterday, updated Yesterday
Electricity consumers will be paid for reducing their power demands under a radical change to the market that will be introduced next year.
Key points:
- ‘Wholesale demand response’ will come into effect in October 2021, allowing large electricity users to be paid for reducing demand
- Big energy generators and retailers had wanted to delay the change, citing the COVID-19 crisis
- Some advocacy groups want to extend the scheme to households and small businesses
The historic rule change announced on Thursday will allow what’s known as “wholesale demand response” — where the wholesale market can pay users for cutting electricity consumption, rather than paying electricity generators to increase supply, when the system is under strain.
The shift, which will begin in October 2021, has been adopted by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) despite opposition from big energy generators and retailers, who were using the COVID-19 crisis to pressure for delaying the rule changes.
The commission has described the change as “an important reform to the NEM (National Electricity Market)”.
It argues it will reduce electricity prices for consumers and improve reliability on the network, by allowing demand response to compete with “peaking” electricity generators that typically receive very high prices for supplying additional electricity during times of heavy demand.
…
The rule changes are a major victory for a coalition of community and environment groups that fought for the shift to demand response — the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the Australia Institute and the Total Environment Centre.
…
“Big energy users like factories and farms will be able to earn money by saving energy during heatwaves and at other times when electricity prices are high,” the Australia Institute’s energy lead Dan Cass said.
…
Earning money for shutting down factories and farms and not producing anything – what could possibly go wrong?
The goal of going full renewable is impractical, maybe impossible. A study in 2019 identified the cost of going renewable is an expansion of mining and industry, with increases in industrial activity around 35 – 105% (and in the case of lithium an eyewatering 2700%) just to satisfy existing energy needs.
When you add in the need to increase energy to supply all that additional mining and industry, the upper end of that estimate is likely a runaway equation, in which renewable infrastructure can never catch up with the energy demands of new industry and mining required to build and maintain renewable infrastructure – especially if everything has to shut down and stop producing whenever weather conditions are unfavourable.
The Crisis Goes Up A Gear
Dollar-denominated financial markets appeared to suffer a dramatic change on or about the 23 March. This article examines the possibility that it marks the beginning of the end for the Fed’s dollar.
At this stage of an evolving economic and financial crisis, such thoughts are necessarily speculative. But an imminent banking crisis is now a near certainty, with most global systemically important banks in a weaker position than at the time of the Lehman crisis. US markets appear oblivious to this risk, though the ratings of G-SIBs in other jurisdictions do reflect specific banking risks rather than a systemic one at this stage.
A banking collapse will be a game-changer for financial markets, and we should then worry that the Fed has bound the dollar’s future to their fortunes.
The dollar could fail completely by the end of this year. Against that possibility a reset might be implemented, perhaps by reintroducing the greenback, which is not the same as the Fed’s dollar. Any reset is likely to fail unless the US Government desists from inflationary financing, which requires a radically changed mindset, even harder to imagine in a presidential election year.
Alternate Unemployment Charts
By John Williams – Re-Blogged From Shadow Stats
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
Public Commentary on Unemployment
Unemployment Data Series 
(Subscription required.) View Download Excel CSV File Last Updated: June 5th, 2020
May 2020 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment is 34.0%, 36.5% net of BLS errors (Flash Nos. 1435 and 1439).
New Trick Could Save Agriculture Even If All the Bees Die
By Dan Robitzski – Re-Blogged From Futurism
Pollen Jocks
Should bees die off at a catastrophic rate, a team of scientists has a new technique they say we could use to continue to pollinate plants without them.
It turns out that soap bubbles — like the ones you might make with a kid’s toy — can carry pollen as they float around, CNET reports. After mounting bubble makers onto the bottom of drones, scientists successfully pollinated a pear orchard, suggesting a possible way to grow crops should we fail to restore bee populations.
Bubble Boys
Previous attempts to automate pollination tend to involve replacing bees with miniature robots that would fly from plan to plant like their biological counterparts. But the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology researchers behind the new study, published Wednesday in the journal iScience, found that soap bubbles were far gentler on the plants, to say nothing of the challenges of actually building mini bee-bots.
Retail Sales Headlines Are A Complete Joke
The stock market promoting mainstream media this morning reported “U.S. Retail Sales Rose Record 18% in May” (e.g. the Wall St Journal). The S&P futures jumped from up 45 points to up 90 points.
But, as usual, the details are in the fine print of the report itself, and it’s apparent that nobody in the financial media bothered to look beyond the headlines.
In fact, the 18% rise is measured from April’s report, which was heavily depressed due to the shelter-in-place restrictions and the closure of many retail businesses. Funny thing about using the percentage change as the metric of measurement. If April had one dollar of retail sales and May had two dollars, the percentage gain would have been 100%.
California Continues to Inflict More Costs onto the Energy Used by Residents
By Ronald Stein – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Irvine, California
Rather than reducing demand, the state imposes more costs on the supply
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided on May 28th that climate lawsuits filed by San Mateo County and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland asserting a California public nuisance claim against five energy companies arising from the role of fossil fuel products in global warming can proceed in state court. The lawsuits utilize an obscure area of the law called “public nuisance” to place the blame for global climate change on a few energy companies that develop and sell the energy used by consumers and businesses.
What San Francisco, Oakland, and Governor Newsom fail to understand is that the oil and gas industry is not just a California business with its few refineries, but an international industry with more than 700 refineries worldwide that manufacture the derivatives from oil that are needed to make more than 6,000 products, as well as the various fuels to the world to operate planes, trucks, construction equipment, merchant ships, cruise ships, and automobiles.
Without the California energy suppliers operating in the 5th largest economy in the world, the state would become a national security risk for the entire country being dependent on foreign countries for our existence.
If the GND ever gets fully implemented in California, we’ll have no refineries manufacturing in -state. We would be getting all those thousands of products from the derivatives from oil, and our fuels from foreign refineries via ships to our ports. Newsom may have difficulty suing offshore refineries for their nuisance to society!
When placed in the context of more onerous regulations during a global pandemic ravaging the American and California economy, this environmental crusading is particularly concerning. Despite this fact, certain voices in the environmental movement have continued to leverage the pandemic to attack the suppliers that only exist to meet the demands of society.
California has methodically driven most manufacturing out of the state, as it’s been more cost effective to import much of the demands of our society from locations outside the state that can manufacture our needs and transport them to the state.
This “outsourcing” concept has yet to be realistic for the daily demands of jet fuel, diesel fuel, gasoline, and for all those derivatives from crude oil that are needed by thousands of products in our daily lives. If it were more cost effective to import those energy needs from foreign locations, it would already be in place.
The COVID-19 induced impacts on our social lifestyles, was a virtual shutdown of airports, cruise ships, most forms of transportation, restaurants, and the leisure and entertainment industry. The resultant reduction in demand dramatically impacted the supply chain for all the energy needed to meet the social needs of society.
The pandemic gave us a preview of what weaning our economies off fossil fuel-addiction that our social lifestyles have become, as we try to accelerate the transition to greener alternatives of intermittent electricity from wind and solar.
During the quarantine, it was almost like living in the 1800’s with virtually no transportation systems, but and that’s a BIG BUT, we were able to survive the quarantine as we benefited from all those products derived from the derivatives from oil that produced all the critical medical equipment like ultrasound systems, ventilators, CT systems, and X-ray, medicines, masks, gloves, soap and hand sanitizers for hospitals, and protective gear for doctors and nurses, and all the electronics and communications equipment that allowed us to work virtually.
Yes, we may be using fossil fuels too extensively for leisure, entertainment, and travel but the developed world is where it is today, healthier, and wealthier, because of all those products we get from those oil derivatives. As we weed ourselves from oil, we will need to lower our demands for leisure, entertainment, and transportation infrastructures that COVID-19 has shown us the way.
The same politicians that are thrashing on in-state energy suppliers, and seeking their demise, are the same ones reaping the benefits of the medications, medical equipment, communication networks, and the thousands of other products from that industry that have contributed to their lifestyles, and their ability to live beyond 80 years of age.
All the lawsuits and bizarre laws and regulations against the local energy suppliers will most likely result in a hodgepodge of lawsuits across the nation that burden our court system, create uncertainty and fail to create any real solutions. They will continue to invoke more self-inflicted costs on the suppliers to be paid by the users. In the meantime, those 700 foreign suppliers remain ready to meet the demands of society.
The costs to import the energy into California from those foreign suppliers to meet local demands are currently more expensive than we are now paying, which is already the most expensive in the country. The emissions from those foreign refineries will be greater than those in California as foreign environmental regulations are significantly less stringent than those locally.
Until the voters say enough-is-enough, the infliction of more costs by our elected officials and environmentalists onto the suppliers, that are paid by the users, will continue into perpetuity.
Remaking Post-Covid-19 Capitalism in the West: Lessons for the East
By Tilak Doshi – Re-Blogged From WUWT
As the world emerges painfully from the lockdown cure that is likely to be far worse than the disease of Covid-19, we are now being sold yet another bill of goods. We are told from almost every quarter that the economic recovery from the pandemic-panic induced lockdowns has to be “green”. Political leaders and mass media editors hitched to the climate change bandwagon cite the well-known if cynical slogan “never let a crisis go to waste” – commonly attributed to former President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. Politicians and “thought leaders” ceaselessly claim that massive sums of money need to be spent on economic stimulus plans to recover from the self-induced economic coma and that the spending has to be “sustainable” (aka “green”). Not only will this save us from the “crisis of capitalism” but it is deemed vital for the future of human civilization itself.
Climate Litigation: Big Oil Must Fight on the Science or Die
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Re-Blogged From WUWT
- This will be a long posting. You have been warned.
The news that the Ninth Circus in California has decided that global warming is a State rather than a federal matter highlights a costly and now potentially ruinous strategic failure on the part of big oil.
Two loony-Left cities brought a case in the District Court for Northern California alleging that the oil corporations were causing a nuisance by engaging in their trade – a lawful and necessary trade at State as well as Federal law – of extracting, processing, distributing and selling petroleum products.
Big Tech Pandemic
By Leo Goldstein – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Patients in Wuhan, China, are being saved with high-dose vitamin C. In the U.S., you can get your Twitter or Facebook account deleted or your video scrubbed for even talking about it.
The Statistics
Strikingly, the 10 countries with the highest COVID-19 mortality rates are large Western countries, including the US, UK, France, Spain, and Italy. The non-Western country with the highest mortality rate is Ecuador, ranked at #13. Ecuador only has 195 deaths/million, however, compared with the median of around 450 deaths/million in the “top 10”. No Asian countries make the top-20 list despite being close to the epicenter of the epidemic and having high population densities. No African country makes the list despite many having much traffic from China.
Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #411
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Number of the Week: 10% loss
An Inverse? Traditionally in Washington, Fridays are a slow news day and during June reporters, and others, would be leaving early for the beach or for other activities. During the Obama Administration, regulatory agencies often would announce expanded regulations on Fridays giving time over the weekend to assess the response.
