My Jewish friends have often wondered about the rise in anti-semitism among the young, especially college aged children. This CBN report provides an example of an uncomfortable truth. American higher education purposefully teaches anti-Jewish hatred and employs people who promote those views:
In the event of civil unrest or financial collapse Jewish Americans need to take extra safety percaustions to defend their lives and property.
Dollar hits “fresh 15-year-lows” against the Yen:
TOKYO – The dollar fell to a fresh 15-year-low against the yen in Tokyo on Thursday amid growing speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy next month.
The U.S. currency was quoted at 81.07 yen briefly in late Thursday trading in Tokyo and was trading around 81.10 yen around 7:30 p.m. (1030 GMT; 6:30 a.m. EST).
Dollar-selling accelerated in Asia following Singapore’s surprise move to widen the trading band of the Singapore dollar. The island nation’s central bank, known as the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said Thursday that it will continue with a “modest and gradual” appreciation of the Singapore dollar.
The dollar’s continuing decline against the yen — nearing a post-World War II low of 79.75 yen set in 1995 — led the Bank of Japan to act last month to stem the yen’s rise by buying dollars — it’s first intervention in the currency market in six years.
[…]
The dollar has been under intense pressure as investors bet that the Fed will enact a bond-buying program in early November. Buying bonds would drive interest rates and yields even lower, and tends to encourage dollar-selling.
Shocking. Then there’s this:
LONDON – European and U.S. stock markets mostly fell Thursday as investors awaited a speech from the Federal Reserve chairman that is expected to give more clarity on what the central bank is planning to do to prop up the ailing U.S. economy.
However, the prospect of more dollars floating around the system continued to pile the pressure on the currency itself.
[…]
Figures showing the U.S. labor market remains in the doldrums just added weight to what investors have already fully priced in — that the Fed is planning another monetary stimulus and possibly the creation of an inflation target.
All eyes will be on Fed chairman Ben Bernanke Friday when he delivers a speech on monetary policy, more or less at the same time as monthly inflation figures are set to show price pressures in the U.S. economy remain subdued.
Analysts said it’s no longer a question of if but how and how much money the Fed will pump into the U.S. economy.
[…]
“Dollar holders’ anxiety over the potential implications of upcoming Fed policy actions has understandably ratcheted up another notch,” Hardman added.
In other words, the dollar is a sucker’s bet and everyone is going to be dumping them as the Fed pursues it’s hyper-inflationary policies.
Which of course means all that funding the federal government promising you suckers on the left is off the table as the world stops funding us:
On already-tough week for Treasury auctions turned dramatically worse Thursday when investors skipped out on a 30-year bond sale.
The $13 billion of reopened long bonds was a mess: the yield of 3.852 was well above the when-issued level; a bid-to-cover ratio, or the measure of how much was bid compared to each dollar auctioned, came in at 2.49, which was the worst since February and well below the average of 2.70; and foreign interest, as measured through indirect bidding, was a paltry 32 percent.
The poor results added to earlier losses for the bond market, which fell even though the stock market also was off in afternoon trading.
The 30-year was half a point lower in price to yield 3.85 percent, while the benchmark 10-year note shed 10/32 to yield 2.46 percent.
Treasury yields have fallen in recent weeks as traders piled into the market on bets that the Federal Reserve would begin another Treasurys purchase program to help stimulate the economy and create healthy inflation.
That must be the same “healthy inflation” that is driving food commodity prices up and caused a 10% rise in grocery bills in the last two months. Lay in your larder if you haven’t and do not shy away from “emergency” food supplies because the climbing cost of food is an emergency. Bulk purchases of freeze dried foods or grain buckets will serve you better than gold when food shortages really hit America.
Doesn’t seem very smart to me:
Home Depot later this year plans to carry a Philips LED bulb designed as a replacement for the common 60-watt incandescent.
The bulb, now called the 12-watt EnduraLED, will be available by the beginning of December and will cost between $40 and $50, representatives from Philips and Home Depot said today.
Home Depot started selling a line of LED bulbs under the EcoSmart label earlier this year, which includes both spotlights and general-lighting LEDs. The Philips bulb will likely be sold under a different name than 12-watt EnduraLED, Philips representative Silvie Casanova said.
[…]
In terms of efficiency, the lumens per watt on the 12 watt EnduraLED comes in at 67. That’s slightly better than EnergyStar-certified CFLs, which put out 800 lumens with 13 watts to 15 watts for an efficacy of between 53 and 61. But, this LED is rated to last 25,000 hours, about three to four times that of CFLs. The EnduraLED is also dimmable.
As commenters on the review point out the bulb uses almost the same amount of energy as CFLs of similar output, and trades off four times the longevity for ten times the cost. The benefit is that these bulbs aren’t filled with dangerous levels of mercury like the CFL bulbs the greens want you to use. So soon consumers can either pay $50 for a light bulb or bring toxic mercury into their house.
I’ll be using oil lamps first. I’ll never bring a CFL in my house or drop $50 on a bulb. Make arraignments for your lighting needs now before it’s too late.
The myth of spending = prosperity is an illusion that relies on overheated economies working overtime to bring in foreign wealth; exports are the only wealth producing activities these Keynesians are involved and thus must make up for the failure of the welfare state and consumption based economics. This means that ALL countries need their goods to be cheaper than others to stimulate buying, which in turns creates motive for countries keeping their currencies artificially low of for devaluing currency as America is doing now.
Since all the countries seek this competitive advantage, “currency wars” become commonplace. But the global recession has meant that it is not two or three countries posturing, it is the entire world involved in racing to the bottom so that more of their goods are purchased abroad:
If there’s one thing the world’s economic powers can agree on, it’s that none of them wants a strong currency right now.
Most advanced economies expect lukewarm domestic growth at least through next year, leaving them unusually export-dependent. The major emerging economies, including China and Brazil, rely on exports too. They all know a weaker currency gives their goods a competitive advantage.
Fears that a currency war may be brewing will likely dominate talks when financial leaders gather at the twice-yearly International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington beginning on Friday.
In the past month, Japan has intervened to drive down the value of the yen, and a couple of emerging markets have followed. The U.S. dollar has tumbled as investors brace for the Federal Reserve to print as much as $1 trillion to fund debt purchases in the hope of propping up the recovery.
Currency wars also create political instability between countries as the losers realize that the others are winning a war with them without firing a shot, but the results can be as devastating:
Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said last Monday the world was in an “international currency war” that put emerging markets like Brazil at a disadvantage. Both the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner dismissed that view, however.
In the long term losing a currency war is the kind of grudge that leads to warfare between countries years or perhaps decades down the line. In the short term Americans, who are on the “winning” side of the war, are going to suffer immeasurable damage to their savings and quality of life:
U.S. employment figures due on Friday are likely to serve as yet another reminder of the sluggish pace of recovery. Economists polled by Reuters think the data will show virtually no job growth in September, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 9.7 percent.
That is likely to provide encouragement for the Fed to flood the economy with even more easy money, perhaps as early as its November policy-setting meeting, which would put still more downward pressure on the dollar.
Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said weakening the dollar may be the Fed’s most powerful economic weapon because interest rates are already rock bottom, and this has not spurred sufficient lending or spending.
“One of the main ways that our monetary policy is working is through competitive devaluation,” he said in a Reuters Insider interview. “Brazil, China, India are probably robust enough that they can withstand that, but I certainly understand their annoyance.”
Emerging economies can withstand a cheaper dollar but can the American consumer? Make no mistake, victory in the currency war will help some American industries at the expense of destroying the purchasing power of all Americans. This is madness, but the government wants to present the people with growth, and if the only way to get that growth is to put Wal-Mart goods out of the price range of most shoppers that what they will do.
Inflation is here even without this competition to debase our dollar. Once the fed starts “fighting” this currency war you will rapidly lose ground financially even as some well connected businesses profit. It is time to start storing long term food and water supplies if you haven’t already.
From USA Today:
BOSTON (AP) — An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: A new gene that can turn many types of bacteria into superbugs resistant to nearly all antibiotics has sickened people in three states and is popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.
The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.
How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.
Scientists have long feared this — a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance.
Researchers have been warning about drug resistant bugs like MRSA for years. NDM-1 has the potential to make the already deadly MRSA strains even harder to treat as well as making common infections deadly. Of course authorities are telling people to avoid using antibiotics but that’s a too little too late scenario. Keeping yourself as clean as possible (including irrigating and cleaning even minor wounds) is now a must.
On the herbal front there’s been studies suggesting green tea has the ability to boost the effectiveness of antibiotics and “photo-medicine” or light therapy has show great promise in treating infections. The theory there being that a device like this Light Relief, which uses infrared light to treat minor pain, may also inhibit or retard the growth of antibiotic resistant superbugs.
Honey also has been used extensively to treat infections and covering a wound with it will stop infection from setting in.
h/t N.T.A.