Federal Reserve officials like to pretend they can use interest rates like a motorcycle throttle on the U.S. economy. They can either rev things up by dropping interest rates or slow things down by moving rates higher.
The public has been led to believe the central planners can do whatever is needed with rates to keep things purring along.
By Jim Steele, From Pacifica Tribune Re-Blogged From WUWT
What’s Natural
Our Urban “Climate Crisis”
Based on a globally averaged statistic, some scientists and several politicians claim we are facing a climate crisis. Although it’s wise to think globally, organisms are never affected by global averages. Never! Organisms only respond to local conditions. Always! Given that weather stations around the globe only record local conditions, it is important to understand over one third of the earth’s weather stations report a cooling trend (i.e. Fig 4 below ) Cooling trends have various local and regional causes, but clearly, areas with cooling trends are not facing a “warming climate crisis”. Unfortunately, by averaging cooling and warming trends, the local factors affecting varied trends have been obscured.
As markets continue to gyrate on global trade and tariff threats, precious metals are struggling to capture investor interest.
Lately, the big push in alternative assets has been in Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has doubled in price over the past two months, though it remains well below its old high.
The full implications of new U.S. tariffs and retaliatory tariffs by China have yet to be reflected in markets. The media has reported on how tariffs could help or hurt particular industries. American farmers, for example, are worried they will suffer most from Chinese retaliation.
By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
U.S. state and local government pensions, already with about $2 trillion less than they need to cover all the benefits that have been promised, are falling short of their investment-return assumptions this fiscal year — and President Donald Trump’s trade war with China isn’t helping.
The median public fund, which typically has a fiscal year ending June 30, returned 3.25% for the three quarters through March 31, according to Wilshire Associates Trust Universe Comparison Service.
May 20, 2019: Around the world, amateur astronomers are monitoring a strange phenomenon on the verge of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS). The giant storm appears to be unraveling. “I haven’t seen this before in my 17-or-so years of imaging Jupiter,” reports veteran observer Anthony Wesley of Australia, who photographed a streamer of gas detaching itself from the GRS on May 19th:
By Dr. Michael Chase – Re-Blogged From https://clisciwatch.wordpress.com
SCOPE
This article describes the method and PRELIMINARY outcome of a relatively low cost “laboratory” (kitchen) experiment on the response of seawater pH to increases in atmospheric CO2.
When additional CO2 is added to the air above seawater the chemistry of the water is expected to change, with much focus on the pH measure of acidity. I find that the change in pH when equilibrium is established is readily detectable on a low cost portable pH meter with 0.01 resolution, but the measured size of the effect appears to be significantly smaller than reported in the recent scientific literature. This article deals mostly with the experimental method and results.
By Jocko Willink – Re-Blogged From Prager UniversIty
In this year’s 2019 PragerU Commencement Address, Navy Seal (Ret.) and best-selling author, Jocko Willink, offers some hard-learned, practical advice. It all starts with Discipline. That’s what will get you on the road to personal fulfillment and success – and keep you there. Watch and find out why.
Please view the Video
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