Posts
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Global Ponzi meltdown/House of Cards ##
Factory
gate prices are falling in China, Korea, Thailand, the
Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore. Some 82pc of the items in the
producer price basket are deflating in China. The figures is
90pc in Thailand, and 97pc in Singapore. These
include machinery, telecommunications, and electrical equipment,
as well as commodities.
Singapore’s
housing market may face “fire sales” with mortgage defaults
as the government’s property curbs hurt home sales and
prices, the city-state’s second-biggest developer said.
Today,
Russia inked a second blockbuster deal with China that will
starve Europe for natural gas in just a few short years.
It's now increasingly clear that 2018 will mark the
beginning of the end for any hopes Europe had of returning to
robust economic growth.
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Airline Death Spiral ##
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Fault lines/flashpoints/powder kegs/military/war drums ##
Former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger disputes the mainstream U.S.
media’s view of the Ukraine crisis, noting that Russia’s
response was reactive to the West’s actions, not the other way
around. But the MSM keeps up the drumbeat about
Russian “aggression.”
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Global unrest/mob rule/angry people/torches and pitchforks ##
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Energy/resources ##
The
U.S. shale boom masks threats to global oil supply including
Middle East turmoil, conflict in Ukraine and the difficulty of
unconventional oil production beyond North America, the
International Energy Agency said.
There's
a lot of money being lost in oil, and also in gas. Which means that
debt keeps piling up. As the author points out, prices could keep
declining. In the end, who's going to pay all that debt? -- RF
London-based
energy company Tullow Oil said Wednesday it's joining the list
of companies reviewing its cost base in response to lower crude
oil prices.
Given
the state of the world nuclear power industry, it is fair to ask if
any of them will actually be built. -- RF
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Infrastructure scavenging ##
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Got food? ##
Chinese
authorities are probing reports a unit of China Modern
Dairy Holdings Ltd. (1117) sold milk cows that tested
positive for tuberculosis, the latest food scandal to hit
the country, sending shares of the raw-milk producer to the
lowest in more than a year.
EU
politicians on Tuesday backed a plan to allow nations to ban
genetically modified crops on their soil even if they
are given approval to be grown in the European Union,
raising the chance their use will remain limited on the
continent.
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Lifestyle Solutions ##
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Environment/health ##
The
U.S. military said Wednesday it would deploy 25 percent fewer
U.S. troops to fight Ebola in West Africa than originally
projected, but said the cut wasn’t evidence that the crisis
was under control.
Cars are
not as fuel efficient and environmentally friendly as
officially described by the carmakers, a Transport
and Environment (T&E) report has found. The reality is
different due to flaws in the testing system.
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Intelligence/propaganda/security/internet/cyberwar ##
Inserting
a few thousand additional logic gates into a design with hundreds
of millions of gates is not particularly difficult. This means
a foreign power could, theoretically, insert a hardware backdoor
into the chip that would be almost impossible to detect.
Oh,
brother! -- RF
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Systemic breakdown/collapse/unsustainability ##
Described
as the ‘missing piece of the Yas Island jigsaw
puzzle’, stakeholders hope the now-complete Yas Mall will join
the island’s theme park, beach and golf course to make it
Abu Dhabi’s go-to entertainment destination.
Throughout
history, in most cases of economic collapse the societies in
question believed they were financially invincible just before
their disastrous fall.
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Japan ##
I
stick with my prediction that vegetable factories do not have a
future. -- RF
Waste
of money. -- RF
The
number of corporate bankruptcies in Japan in October dropped
16.6 percent from a year earlier to 800, the lowest for the
month since 1990, due mainly to continued monetary support by
the government and financial institutions for cash-strapped
small and midsize firms, a credit research agency said Tuesday.
Get
ready for the next wave of bankruptcies. -- RF
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China ##
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UK ##
The Bank
of England has warned that inflation could fall below 1% in the next
six months, owing to lower food, energy and import prices, as
well as feeble growth in Europe and elsewhere.
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US ##
The
number of felony suspects fatally shot by police last year —
461— was the most in two decades, according to a new FBI
report.
And
finally...
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