By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com
The lofty US stock markets remain riddled with euphoria and complacency, fueled by an exceptional bull. Investors believe downside risks are trivial, despite long years of epic central-bank easing catapulting valuations to dangerous bull-slaying extremes. This has left today’s markets hyper-risky, with a massive bear looming as the Fed and ECB increasingly slow and reverse their easy-money policies. Caveat emptor!
But what if aging itself is the real disease?
“Aging is the one disease that we all get if we live long enough,” Sinclair told Seeker. “I define it as a disease. Most doctors are trained that aging is something separate from disease. But the only difference in the medical textbooks is that if the majority of people get an age-associated disorder, we call it aging. If less than half of people get something over time, it’s a disease.”
Sinclair is part of a growing movement of “geroscientists” who believe that aging is not inevitable. What we once thought of as a natural process is in fact a degenerative condition — a condition that cannot be cured, but can in fact be slowed. With greater understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of aging, they insist, we can delay the onset of age-related diseases, keeping us healthier longer.
Last week, Sinclair and a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of New South Wales announced the discovery of a molecule that significantly boosts a cell’s ability to repair damaged DNA. In a paper published March 23 in the journal Science, the authors describe how a molecule called NAD+ blocks a protein that inhibits the body’s natural ability to repair DNA.
“We’re not going to see people spend longer in nursing homes. We’re going to see them spend more time out of nursing homes.”
As we get older, NAD+ levels decrease, allowing DNA damage to build up. These mutations aren’t a direct cause of the progressive deterioration associated with aging, Sinclair said. “Cells cope with the damage by turning on the wrong genes at the wrong time,” he explained.
If NAD+ levels could be increased, Sinclair and his team hypothesized, perhaps the damage could be reversed.
They tested their theory on a group of older mice with low NAD+ levels. For a week, the mice drank a special serum of water mixed with NMN, a precursor of NAD+ that’s small enough to pass through the cellular wall. Once inside the mice’s cells, the NMN bonded with NMN molecules to form more NAD+.
“After just a week, we couldn’t tell the difference between the young mice and the old mice when we looked at their tissues,” said Sinclair.
Now Sinclair’s team is moving toward human trials of the NAD+ booster, with the hope of getting a drug on the market within the next five years.
RELATED: How Food ‘Age’ Affects Lifespan — and Why Eating Less Could Mean Living Longer
“Our technology in the animals slows down the appearance of diseases, and that’s how we know that it’s slowing down aging itself. And as a consequence of being healthier, the animals live longer,” said Sinclair. “We think the same will happen in people. If we can delay all major diseases, then we will extend people’s lives, but only because they’re healthier. We’re not going to see people spend longer in nursing homes. We’re going to see them spend more time out of nursing homes.”
But even if Sinclair’s drug proves to delay the onset of age-related diseases in humans — effectively prolonging the human lifespan — it won’t be marketed as an “anti-aging” pill. That is, not unless the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepts that aging is a treatable condition.
The FDA approves drugs for specific “indications” or recognized medical conditions. For example, the indication for a statin drug like Lipitor is cardiovascular disease, and one of the indications for Xanax is anxiety disorder. While the FDA approves drugs indicated for age-related diseases like cancer, type-2 diabetes, and dementia, it doesn’t recognize aging as its own indication… yet.
In June 2015, a group of scientists working under the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) met with FDA officials to make an ambitious proposal. Instead of approving a drug for one or two indications, they wanted the FDA to give their blessing to a clinical trial that would test a single drug’s effectiveness at preventing all of the major age-related illnesses at once: cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and type-2 diabetes.
“We worked for weeks honing our arguments and our strategies for trying to convince them,” said Steven Austad, science director at AFAR and chair of the biology department at the University of Alabama Birmingham. “When we actually got into the meeting, within the first 15 minutes they said, ‘OK, that sounds good. Now let’s talk about the design of your study.’ We were kind of taken aback that they had accepted our logic so easily.”
“I think this is probably the most exciting thing to happen in aging research yet, and I think that’s going to be true no matter how the trial results turn out.”
Austad and his colleagues carefully avoided any mention of the words “anti-aging,” which they believe carry a whiff of hyperbole. Instead, they focused on making a sound scientific case for approving a “multimorbidity drug” that extends the so-called health span by delaying the onset of the most common age-related illnesses.
The drug in question is metfornin, a generic medication already approved by the FDA for type-2 diabetes. Metfornin has been taken by thousands of patients worldwide for decades and carries no side effects, except for a few unexpectedly positive ones. When researchers study people taking metfornin, they report startlingly lower incidence rates of cognitive impairment, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. And they live longer.
“By accident, metfornin seems to be a drug that affects most of the processes that we think are critical in determining how well or how poorly someone ages,” said Austad, including improved mitochondrial function, inhibition of free radicals, protection of DNA, and stimulation of something called the mTor pathway.
RELATED: Life Continues Within the Body After Death, Evidence Shows
The metfornin study proposed to the FDA, called Targeting Aging with Metfornin (TAME), would track 3,000 elderly participants over six years and collect detailed health data across a range of illnesses and conditions associated with aging. The trial will cost an estimated $66 million. AFAR is waiting to hear back about an NIH grant, and has a benefactor waiting in the wings with $35 million to cover any shortfalls.
“I think this is probably the most exciting thing to happen in aging research yet, and I think that’s going to be true no matter how the trial results turn out,” said Austad. “But if they turn out to be positive, then this is a game-changer in the health business.”
Austad envisions a day when older people take metfornin preventatively like a multivitamin.
“This has the potential of giving the average person another five to 10 years of healthy life,” he remarked. “Whether it will make them live longer remains to be seen. But even if it doesn’t, it will be a great advance if it were simply to shorten the period of ill health before the end of life. An extra five to 10 years of healthy life for the average person is huge.”
Sinclair at Harvard Medical School also serves on the board of AFAR and is hopeful that the TAME trial will open the door for the FDA to fully recognizing aging as a disease.
“No question, that’s one the biggest things that this administration could do for medicine, to allow biotechnology companies to work toward [an aging drug] as a goal,” said Sinclair, who has co-founded several biotech companies of his own. “Right now, it’s not considered a realistic business model for that very reason. And if that were changed, the investment would go up exponentially.”
It seems that Pope Francis has learned little since his 2015 papal encyclical calling on the world to fight climate change by limiting the use of modern technologies and fossil fuels. At a recent Vatican meeting he called many of the world’s leading oil company executives to the carpet. Francis told the executives they should shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources to fight “global warming.”
Pope Francis has myriad misguided beliefs about climate science, almost all of which he holds based on faith alone, as if they were holy writ. Even worse, his belief that society can transition from fossil fuels while reducing hunger and poverty is downright dangerous.
By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com
We have been writing about capital destruction. This week let’s look at an event which is currently making news. Social Security will begin tapping into its trust fund this year. This happens, as the Social Security Board of Trustees states antiseptically, “four years earlier than projected in last year’s report.” In other words, the economy is growing by every conventional measure, yet Social Security is spending more than its tax revenues years earlier than projected. According to those same inaccurate projections, the trust fund won’t run dry until 2034.
By Clyde Hughes – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health
Parkinson’s disease drugs have been linked to compulsive behavior in some users, according to a study that suggests the drugs could lead to financial ruin, unhealthy eating and sexual risk-taking, HealthDay News reported Wednesday.
The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, said that medication meant to restore movement in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease could unlock some of those compulsive behaviors more often than originally thought, HealthDay said.
By Albert Albrecht – Re-Blogged From https://www.mmsonline.com
If you can believe the economist, it is on its way to recovery. Machine tool shipments and imports have turned around since the 2009 recession low, and in recent months have steadily improved. After a dismal 2009 and poor start in 2010, quarterly shipments have started to increase, evidence that the industry has started to recover. This is encouraging, if it were not for the fact quarterly shipments fell to record lows and 2009 and 2010. It is like getting a few drops of wine to an empty wine glass—the glass is still less than half full.
By David Middleton, petroleum geologist – Re-Blogged From WUWT
From Forbes…
JUN 17, 2018
What If India And China Used Natural Gas And Oil Like The U.S.?
Jude Clemente , CONTRIBUTOR
BP’s just releasedStatistical Review of World Energy 2018 has got my wheels turning. The first thing you should know is that global energy consumption has essentially just begun: around 85% of the global population – 6 in every 7 humans – still lives in developing nations. They don’t live in rich cities, like San Francisco, Toronto, New York City, Los Angeles, London, or Tokyo; they live in poorer ones, like Mumbai, Lagos, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Calcutta, and Karachi. This is where the future energy action is man: at least 90% of future demand will be in nations that are currently not developed. We rich, “all the energy that we want at our fingertips” Westerners still aren’t grasping a sad and cold reality: most of the world is poor and energy deprived.
By Mike Gleason – Re-Bloggd From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Gerald Celente, publisher of the renowned Trends Journal. Mr. Celente is perhaps the most well-known trends forecaster in the world, and it’s always great to have him on with us. Gerald, thanks for taking the time again today, and welcome back.
Gerald Celente: Thanks for having me on.
Mike Gleason: Well, Gerald, the potential for a trade war is the hot topic in the financial press these days. Around here, the question is what escalating concerns over trade might mean for the precious metals markets, and we would like to get your thoughts on that. But first, please give us your take on the President’s trade policy in general. Some people think the U.S. has been a major beneficiary of trade. We’ve been able to import real goods and services in exchange for increasingly worthless dollars. Others hate what so-called globalization has done to U.S. manufacturing and think Trump is delivering a long overdue warning shot to nations who have taken advantage of the U.S. So, where do you stand on all this?
By Dr Roy Spencer – Re-Blogged From http://www.drroyspencer.com
Last week I had the privilege of being invited to present a talk at a small conference of world experts in a variety of disciplines. The venue was spectacular, on the French Riviera, and we had an entire late-1800s hotel to ourselves, right on the Mediterranean. For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I had the feeling that the organizers wanted the event to have a low profile, and so I won’t mention names.
By Peter D. Tillman – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
Got your attention, didn’t it? But they are actually the good guys — two working scientists who, behind the scenes, have had striking success in bringing on retractions by publicly calling out questionable data. Their work was written up in Science Magazine in a freely-available article, here.
Once a problematic paper has been identified, it’s seldom straightforward getting it fixed. Nick Brown and James Heathers have had unusual numbers of successes, perhaps because they start out low-key, but don’t hesitate to go public if they get no response. Other would-be whistle-blowers have had less success, as the Science article describes in some detail. One whistle-blower’s efforts attracted legal threats — another scenario WUWT readers will recall, with a few progressing to actual lawsuits. The litigious Dr. Michael Mann comes to mind.
By Brian Freeman – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
The United States Cyber Command has quietly taken a significantly more aggressive approach to defending against cyberattacks, a shift in strategy by the Pentagon that could heighten the risk of conflict with adversaries that sponsor menacing hacking groups, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
This is the 30th anniversary of James Hansen’s testimony to Congress regarding “global warming”. It was his testimony that set off the disastrous 30 Year War on Carbon. There have been articles in the press celebrating the anniversary of his testimony and lauding Hansen’s role, but I see nothing to celebrate. It has been a war with lots of casualties, mostly among the poor who can least afford it. It’s a war that has increased my electricity price by 50%. I can afford that … but there are many who can’t. It’s a war that has plunged thousands of people into a new kind of poverty, “fuel poverty”. Fuel poverty is where in midwinter, you have to make a choice between heating and eating …
I shudder to think about what that choice must be like.
And sadly, one of the main casualties of this mad war is the reputation of climate science itself. The disreputable actions of far too many activist scientists have blackened the names of every honest climate scientist and indeed of the entire field.
How did we get into this insane fight against a natural component of the atmosphere? Much of it traces back to a very successful underhanded scam pulled off by Jamex Hansen surrounding his Congressional testimony during that summer thirty years ago.
Why do I call it an “underhanded scam”? Here’s a description of the chicanery from an interview with Senator Tim Wirth, one of the flim-flam artists who helped James Hansen with his Congressional testimony. The interviewer is asking Senator Wirth about the events surrounding that Congressional Hearing. The interviewer asks:
What else was happening that summer? What was the weather like that summer?
Senator Wirth: Believe it or not, we called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6 or June 9 or whatever it was, so we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo: It was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it. It was stiflingly hot that summer. [At] the same time you had this drought all across the country, so the linkage between the Hansen hearing and the drought became very intense.
Simultaneously [Mass. Gov. Michael] Dukakis was running for president. Dukakis was trying to get an edge on various things and was looking for spokespeople, and two or three of us became sort of the flacks out on the stump for Dukakis, making the separation between what Democratic policy and Republican policy ought to be. So it played into the presidential campaign in the summer of ’88 as well.
So a number of things came together that, for the first time, people began to think about it. I knew it was important because there was a big article in, I believe, the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated on climate change. [Laughs.] So there was a correlation. You figure, well, if we’re making Sports Illustrated on this issue, you know, we’ve got to be making some real headway.
So these underhanded cheats set the stage for hyping “global warming” by deliberately choosing the hottest day of the year for Hansen’s testimony. Then they morphed his oh-so-movingly hot testimony into a very successful partisan political issue for the Democrats.
And the amazing thing is, Senator Wirth sees his deceit as something to boast about!
“But wait”, as they say on TV, “there’s more”. Here’s the next question to Senator Wirth:
And did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
Senator Wirth: … What we did it was went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right? So that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room and so when the, when the hearing occurred there was not only bliss, which is television cameras in double figures, but it was really hot. …
So Hansen’s giving this testimony, you’ve got these television cameras back there heating up the room, and the air conditioning in the room didn’t appear to work. So it was sort of a perfect collection of events that happened that day, with the wonderful Jim Hansen, who was wiping his brow at the witness table and giving this remarkable testimony. …
There you have it. Wirth and Hansen picked the hottest day, opened the windows, and disabled the air conditioning to create a made-for-tv illusion of global warming, nobody could deny it seeing Hansen and the Senators sweat … and now Senator Wirth is boasting about how clever they were. Can’t get much more pridefully underhanded than that.
They say that “Fish rots from the head down”, and the Thirty Year War on carbon dioxide is a clear example of that. The war on carbon dioxide was born in lies, cheating, deliberate subterfuge, and intentional misrepresentations by James Hansen and Senator Tim Wirth … and it has continued down that same path since the beginning.
They also say “As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined”, and starting with Wirth and Hansen deceiving the US Congress, down through Michael Mann and his lies about the Hockeystick being validated, to Peter Gleick and his lies about the Heartland Institute, to Caspar Amman lying to get the Jesus Paper into the IPCC report, the field has had far, far too many devious, deceitful “scientists” shading the truth, ignoring opposing evidence, disabling air conditioners, and telling porkies to advance their allegedly noble cause.
And to advance their careers as well, although surely that is only coincidental …
The most amazing part of this story is that even though these scientific malfeasants fooled Congress, and even though they lied their keisters off, even though they stacked the peer review panels with reviewers blind enough to put Stevie Wonder to shame, and even though the governments and the universities and the scientific organizations and the mainstream media all bought into their deceit and lies, even despite the fact that tragically they poured billions and billions of dollars down the rathole in the process … they still haven’t convinced the core of the US population that CO2 is the double extra secret control knob that can simply be turned up and down to regulate the global temperature to the nearest degree.
Thirty years on now, and all that time they tried and they tried, and they lied and they lied, but they just couldn’t pull it off.
So what I’m celebrating today is the 30th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln being proved right when he said “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
And on this anniversary I’m also celebrating those who have fought the good fight in this war, and it is a long and tiresome fight indeed. First and foremost, Anthony Watts, whose original Surfacestations project morphed into Watts Up With That, the most successful climate blog ever. Next, Steven McIntyre, whose dogged pursuit of the smallest details showed just where the Hockeystick was fatally cracked, and who exposed errors in dozens of papers.
Among the professional scientists who have followed the facts and fought for the scientific method, I give big props to Drs. Bill Gray (sadly no longer with us), Roy Spencer, Tim Ball, John Christie, Pielkes Pere et Fil, Willie Soon, the dean Fred Singer, the irrepressible Judith Curry, Craig Loehle, and many more honest scientists known and unknown.
Beyond them are dozens and dozens of amateur scientists, bloggers, journalists, and people from other disciplines doing or reporting on interesting original climate research—Jo Nova, Steve Goddard, Matt Ridley, Warwick Hughes, Jennifer Marohazy, Donna Laframboise, Roger Tallbloke, Bishop Hill, the delightfully mad Lord Moncton, Lucia Liljegrin, James Delingpole, Ross McKitrick, and many, many others.
(I apologize in advance for leaving out anyone whose name I should have mentioned, but rest assured, your contributions are known beyond the confines of my faulty memory.)
Next up for war decorations are the moderators of all of the climate-related blogs, particularly of WUWT. Since WUWT has a worldwide reach, it needs to be moderated 24/7. This is done by a global group of dedicated people who have selflessly donated their time to keep the doors open. Kudos to the moderators on all the blogs.
Next are all of the other active participants in the climate discussion, AKA the commenters. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from the comments on all of the blogs—there’s always something new, some different way to look at things, some insight about how I might be able to solve a problem.
Next, a special war medal for those who have show me and others where our scientific claims are wrong. Science progresses inter alia by one person trying to find flaws in the scientific ideas of another person. It is essentially adversarial, and nobody likes to be publicly shown to be wrong. Me, I hate it … but being shown wrong has saved me months, perhaps years, of following some incorrect understanding down some blind alley. It is the willingness of the skeptics to be wrong that will sustain people’s faith in the scientific process.
To round it all out, I want to give a shout-out to the lurkers, those who read the articles and comments with great interest, but rarely or never comment. The lurkers are the unseen nine-tenths of the iceberg that give it the mass necessary to bring down the big “ship of fools” …
Anyhow, that’s what I’m celebrating on this 30th anniversary of the start of the Carbon Wars—this mad, ad-hoc, unorganized, chaotic army of professional and amateur scientists, interested individuals, bloggers, people with unconventional scientific ideas, intellectual nonconformists, lurkers, climate curmudgeons such as myself, general weirdos, and a host of other in-laws and outlaws who have united under the banner of science-based skepticism, and who have fought the combined power of governments, universities, activist scientists with billions in funding, and the mainstream media to a standstill.
My profound congratulations to all involved. Not that the war is won, but at least we’re at what might be called the “Churchill inflection point” … well done to everyone, thanks for fighting the good fight.
w.
PS—The “Churchill inflection point”? It is that point in a war that Churchill described as follows:
It is my best judgement that after thirty years of climate science being hijacked by activists, we are now at the end of the beginning of the fight to return sanity, transparency, and honesty to climate science.
By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
A couple of days ago, we noted that this year’s edition of BP’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy report on global energy use is out, and it contains one of the most telling charts about the failure of the climate crusade’s “war on coal” ever presented.
Most of the lamestream media coverage has focused on this particular chart from the BP report, which shows coal having a small uptick in 2017 after several years of decline. Doesn’t look like much, does it? Just a blip. Nothing for the enviro-faithful to worry about, the net trend is still down, right? They are blaming president Trump for it.
By Russ Juskalian – Re-Blogged From MIT Technology Review
The Ausbildung is widely touted as an example other countries should follow. But it’s struggling to keep up with technological change.
Within buildings 10 and 30 of the Siemens complex on the outskirts of Munich, the next generation of German workers are toiling over a range of test projects. The assignments are carefully chosen to impart the skills needed to continue the German miracle in automated manufacturing.
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
According to NPR, since 2001 there has been a surge in young people graduating with nuclear engineering qualifications, who are driven by the desire to convince their fellow greens to embrace the nuclear path to a zero carbon future.
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant. By marya from San Luis Obispo, USA – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Link
By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
The gold miners’ stocks are drifting listlessly in the summer doldrums, largely forgotten by investors and speculators. They are missing a fantastic opportunity to buy low in this barren sentiment wasteland when no one else wants to. The gold stocks remain exceedingly cheap relative to the metal which drives their profits, and they continue to establish a strong technical base. They are ready to soar as gold returns to favor.
Gold-stock investing feels pretty thankless these days, like an exercise in self-flagellation. Thus there aren’t many traders left in this realm. Week after week as gold stocks continue to drift on balance, the ranks of remaining investors and speculators dwindle. Interest in this sector is among the lowest I’ve ever seen in decades of actively trading gold stocks. They’ve been left for dead as contrarians vanish.
By Daan Joubert =- Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
When two opponents are locked in a quite evenly balanced bitter and struggle, the balance tends to sway first one way and then the other as either side manages to find and exploit an opportunity until the other counters it then pulls out all stops to regain any lost ground. Typically there is no clear victor and the result looks like a stalemate. Sometime, though, one side receives reinforcements to suddenly change a pending stalemate into victory. Wellington experienced that at the Waterloo. Wall Street can tell a similar tale.
By DPC – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health
Doctors can’t yet predict if someone exposed to the flu will become sick. But such predictions may be getting closer to reality, new research hints.
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine say they’ve identified a “biomarker” that indicates a person’s susceptibility to flu viruses.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse
Home prices are still rising pretty much everywhere in the US, with California as usual leading the way. State-wide, the median CA home is now above $600,000, up 9% year over year. In San Francisco County, homebuyers are paying an average of 18% above the asking price, and price per square foot is now more than $1,000.
Even Silicon Valley residents, who are used to this kind of thing, are finding it remarkable. See ‘Facebook is taking everything’: rising rents drive out Silicon Valley families.
By Mac Slavo – Re-Blogged From Freedom Outpost
A European Union committee has just approved rules that could “destroy the internet as we know it.” The two new and controversial rules change the dynamics of the internet and introduce wide-ranging new changes to the way the web works.
For starters, the rules, known as Article 11 and Article 13 could be used to “ban memes.” Article 13 has been criticized by campaigners who claim that it could force internet companies to ban all memes. It requires that all websites check posts against a database of copyrighted work, and remove those that are flagged. The reason many believe this could lead to a meme ban is that memes often use images taken from films or TV shows and could be removed by websites under article 13. It’s just a convenient and propagandized way of making censorship sound better, though.
By David Archibald – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
For the first time a major political party has gone into an election with an anti-green platform and won big time. Specifically the Conservative Party platform for the Ontario election on 7th June promised:
By Adrian Vance – Re-Blogged From iPatriot
An EMP Event?
One of the great panic pushing possibilities promoted by the bureau building denizens of the Deep Swamp is the threat of an EMP event caused by a single North Korean thermonuclear bomb exploded in space over Kansas with the objective of shutting off the electric grid systems that power America while crippling every computer, cell phone, television and appliance from sea to shining sea in America. Can it be
By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
Back in 2010, 43 fellows of the Royal Society wrote to its then president, Paul Nurse, to complain about the unscientific tone of the society’s messages on climate change. A few days ago, a group of 33 current and former fellows of the Geological Society wrote an open letter to their president in similar vein. The text is reproduced below.
By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
Russia is rethinking what counts as a haven asset as it duels with the U.S.
Although investors usually seek safety in U.S. debt, Russia cut its holdings of Treasuries nearly in half in April as Washington slapped the harshest sanctions to date on a selection of Russian companies and individuals. In a shift Danske Bank A/S attributed to a deepening “geopolitical standoff,” Russia is instead keeping up its purchases of gold.
By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
Newsbytes tell the story:
Global greenhouse gas emissions began rising again last year as the first pick-up in coal burning since 2013 overshadowed a record expansion in renewable energy, a BP report said. The opening of new coal-fired power plants in India and China drove coal consumption higher by 1 percent, highlighting the difficulties developing economies face in meeting demand for electricity while fighting pollution. —Reuters, 13 June 2018
By Gary Tanashian – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
I am sure you remember the lead up to Q1 2016. The US economy and stock market were transitioning from a Goldilocks environment and narrowly avoiding a bear market while the rest of the world was still battling deflation. Precious metals and commodities were in the dumper and try though US and global central banks might, they seemed to fail to woo the inflation genie out of its bottle at every turn.
Then came December of 2015 when gold and silver made bottoms followed by the gold miners in January of 2016. Then by the time February had come and gone the whole raft of other inflatables (commodities and stocks) had bottomed and begun to set sail.
By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health
Viruses that sneak into the brain just might play a role in Alzheimer’s, scientists reported Thursday in a provocative study that promises to re-ignite some long-debated theories about what triggers the mind-robbing disease.
The findings don’t prove viruses cause Alzheimer’s, nor do they suggest it’s contagious.
By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
Light pollution a reason for insect decline
Artificial lighting at night could be a reason for declining insect populations
Climate change, pesticides and land use changes alone cannot fully explain the decline in insect populations in Germany. Scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) have now discovered that regions that have experienced a sharp decline in flying insects also have high levels of light pollution. Many studies already suggest that artificial light at night has negative impacts on insects, and scientists should pay greater attention to this factor when exploring the causes of insect population declines in the future.
Counting insects is part of the job. CREDIT Gabriel Singer/IGB
By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
99.989% rounds up to 100%. This is fantastic news… Unless you’re a Warmunist. Fortunately for Warmunists, Science News tailors their headlines to your preferences…
NEWS
CLIMATE, EARTH, OCEANSAntarctica has lost about 3 trillion metric tons of ice since 1992
Ice loss is accelerating and that’s helped raise the global sea level by about 8 millimeters
By Michael Snyder – Re-Blogged From Freedom Outpost
What would the United States look like right now if 113 political figures had been gunned down since last September? Well, that is precisely what has happened in Mexico.
Once upon a time, Mexico had a thriving economy and a very stable government, but now the nation is devolving into a Mad Max society in which the drug cartels gun down any politicians that they do not like.
By Arkadiusz Sieron – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
The recent growth acceleration in the EU could distract attention from problems of the common bloc. Fortunately, you can always count on Italy. Whenever you start thinking that only bright future is ahead of the union, the descendants of the proud Romans remind about themselves. Indeed, Italy focuses three major EU’s problems like in a lens. What are they and how could they affect the gold market?
First, populism. As you remember, Italians held general elections in March. As we reported then, the populist party founded by comedian Beppe Grillo won about one-third of the votes. Since then, the Five Star Movement and League, the two biggest parties in the new parliament, have been negotiating to form a new government. In May, they finally published a contract for their shared platform.
Re-Blogged From Stratfor
Table of Contents
(ALY SONG-POL/JOHANNES EISELE/HULTON ARCHIVE/MLADEN ANTONOV/TIMOTHY A. CLARY/ABID KATIB/KATJA BUCHHOLZ/DAVID MCNEW/ATTA KENARE/FOverview
China Remains in the U.S. Crosshairs. The United States will impose tariffs, sanctions and blocks on investment and research in a bid to frustrate China’s development of strategic technologies. China not only has the tools to manage the economic blow, but will also accelerate efforts to lessen its reliance on foreign-sourced technological components.
Trade Battles Fall Short of a Full-Fledged War. Trade frictions will remain high this quarter as the White House continues on an economic warpath in the name of national security. U.S. tariffs will invite countermeasures from trading partners targeting U.S. agricultural and industrial goods. As Congress attempts to reclaim trade authority, the White House will refrain from escalating these trade battles into an all-out trade war.
By Gary Christenson – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com
In 1967 the Jefferson Airplane sang:
“When the truth is found to be lies,
And all the joy within you dies…”
Restate this for global currencies and it becomes:
When the truth is found to be lies,
Confidence in currencies dies.
By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
For the first time ever, Moody’s Investors Service cut its outlook for U.S. utilities to negative, warning that the sector’s debt levels have reached their highest since the financial crisis and may remain there for months.
The sector’s consolidated debt-to-equity ratio has hit the highest level since 2008 as companies finance mergers, acquisitions and other investments in renewable energy and pipelines, Moody’s analysts led by Ryan Wobbrock said in a note Monday. The federal tax overhaul signed by President Donald Trump stands to make matters worse, since utilities that depend on regulated returns are collecting less cash from customers to cover their tax expenses, the ratings firm said.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse
Here’s one for the Clueless Regulator Hall of Fame:
(CNBC) – Share buybacks have surged since the Republican-backed tax bill made it through Congress in December.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse
Europe is frequently held up as an example of how the rest of the world should behave on a variety of issues. But this comparison misses at least two things: First, “Europe” is actually a lot of different countries in a lot of different situations. Second, much of what seems to work over there only does so because it’s being financed with ever-increasing amounts of debt.
For countries, as for individuals, borrowing money is fun at first but beyond a certain point becomes debilitating, as interest payments begin to crowd out everything else. That’s where a growing number of Europe’s failed states now find themselves, with overly-generous pensions and overly-restrictive labor laws making it virtually impossible to run a functioning market-based economy.
By Kaylee McGhee – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines
Photo by jronaldlee
(Kaylee McGhee, Liberty Headlines) Anti-poverty initiatives, like higher minimum wage laws and heftier welfare programs, have actually hurt poor and disadvantaged communities, according to a new studyby the Employment Policies Institute.
University of California, Irvine economists David Neumark and Brittany Bass, and Brian Asquith of the National Bureau of Economic Research, studied the long-term effects of these programs in struggling neighborhoods, looking at how minimum wage and welfare policies have impacted poverty rates over the past three decades.
They found that rather than improving impoverished communities — as they are designed to do — these policies have hurt poor areas.
“Neither a higher minimum wage nor more-generous welfare benefits have reduced poverty rates in the country’s most-disadvantaged neighborhoods. In fact, the authors find some evidence that poverty rates and the share of residents on public assistance have increased alongside a rising minimum wage,” the study reads.
The researchers said they found that the most common long-term outcome of higher welfare benefits was increased poverty and a higher number of people receiving public assistance.
“To put this in practical terms, it means that each $1 increase in the minimum wage has, in disadvantaged neighborhoods over the past three decades, increased poverty rates and the receipt of public assistance by roughly three percent,” the researchers wrote.
This study raises important questions about the effectiveness of the poverty-reduction programs leftist politicos tout.
“These findings cast serious doubt on whether the normal poverty-reduction policies — minimum wages and welfare programs — actually contribute to increased employment, reduced poverty, and higher household earnings,” the EPI wrote. “Indeed, this study should give pause to any level of government interested continuing or expanding such policies.”
Two of the most powerful men in the world. Trump? Putin? Xi? Nah. Chairman Jerome Powell and President Mario Draghi. Let’s analyze their recent press conferences!
Powell – Chairman for People
In the last edition of the Gold New Monitor, we promised that we will elaborate on the Powell’s and Draghi’s press conferences. It’s high time we fulfilled the promise.
By Zoe Papadakis – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health
Party dips can give you norovirus and even herpes, an investigation revealed, so you might want to think twice next time you indulge in a party spread.
On Monday’s episode of Food Unwrapped on Channel 4 in the U.K., microbiologists revealed just what dangerous viruses could be lurking in some of your favorite dips and the worst part is that you would not even know about it until it was too late, The Daily Mail reported.
By Sylvia Booth Hubbard – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health
Keeping physically fit and having more flexible arteries may be keys to slower brain aging, says a study from Australia’s Swinburne’s Center for Human Psychopharmacology.
“Exactly why this occurs is unclear, but research indicates that exercise and physical fitness are protective,” said lead author Greg Kennedy. “A healthier, more elastic aorta is also theorized to protect cognitive function, by reducing the negative effects of excessive blood pressure on the brain.”
Kennedy says that from early adulthood, memory and other features of cognition slowly decline, and the risk of dementia rises with age.
(Apologies to Winston Churchill the brave Battle of Britain people.)
By Dr. Tim Ball- Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the people who formulated the structure that directed their research, constantly manipulated the data and the methods to predetermine the results. It began with the definition of climate change given to them as Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This involved overstating and misrepresenting the amount of atmospheric CO2 currently, and in the past. It also included misrepresentation of its movement through the so-called carbon cycle.
You can pick any segment of the Carbon Cycle they show in Figure 1 (Their Figure 6-1, Fifth Assessment Report) and none of it is based on actual measures, that is real data; everything is an estimate and can’t qualify even as an educated guess.
Figure 1
By Barbara Elliott, Contributor to PhDify
For most people, beginning their way after finishing the university is an extremely difficult thing. They have already received the degree, they could have the best grades and the most experienced instructors, but they meet lots of difficulties anyway. Some practical skills couldn’t be provided by classes in the university, textbooks, or dissertation writing service. Those skills should be taken from the real life.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
Monthly economic readings tend to be full of noise and are therefore unreliable. So it’s best to save the excited assertions for established trends.
The US Consumer Price Index appears to have reached that point:
By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
Regular readers of Goldmoney’s Insights should be aware by now that the cycle of business activity is fuelled by monetary policy, and that the periodic booms and slumps experienced since monetary policy has been used in an attempt to manage economic outcomes are the result of monetary policy itself. The link between interest rate suppression in the early stages of the credit cycle, the creation of malinvestments and the subsequent debt dénouement was summed up in Hayek’s illustration of a triangle, which I covered in an earlier article.
Brought to You by www.SEPP.org The Science and Environmental Policy Project
By Ken Haapala, President
Vincent Gray, RIP: On May 14, we lost a stalwart defender in the battle to keep rigorous science for descending into bureaucratic nonsense. Vincent Gray of New Zealand was an enthusiastic expert reviewer of all five Assessment Reports by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His comments number in the thousands and he was effective.
By Peter Schiff – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
Over the last 12 months, the purchasing power of your dollar has dropped at the fastest rate since 2011.
According to the latest data released by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped by 2.8% year-over-year in May. That follows on the heels of a 2.5% leap year-over-year in April.
In other words, prices are going up. That’s not good news for people who buy stuff.
By 
