#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Oil prices have gone negative in Canada:
And there it is… May WTI just traded below zero for the first time ever (trading below NEGATIVE $40 per barrel)… There was a small bid right into the settlement at 1430ET leaving the May contract to settle at negative $37.63.
Interesting times, my friends. Very interesting times.
As usual, the big US corporations have learned absolutely nothing from the disruption of the production and supply chains as a result of the coronavirus.
Large US companies operating in China don’t want to move production and supply chains from the country in the near future, even though the coronavirus may force them to adjust their business strategies, a recent survey found.
Around 70 percent of 25 firms with global revenue of over half a billion dollars have no relocation plans, despite the effect the coronavirus outbreak has had on their business, according to a joint poll conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. The results of the March survey, published on Friday, also show that around 40 percent of the respondents would rather keep their long-term supply chain strategy for China unchanged.
While more than half of the firms polled say it’s too early to make any decisions on relocation, only four percent of the companies are planning to shift all production outside China, while 12 percent of the respondents intend to move part of their facilities.
It’s time for President Trump to start imposing massive penalties on US firms manufacturing anything outside the USA, and for Congress to do the same. And any firm that lobbies against the penalties or opposes them in any way should be deemed ineligible for any bailout money or federal funding for its employees.
David Ricardo is dead. Free trade is the most expensive and destructive kind of trade. There is no comparative advantage. And this is why no nation that plans to survive can afford it.
Prestige Ameritech. The North Richland Hills company is America’s No. 1 maker of hospital surgical masks.
During this crisis, you’d think the company would be pushing forward on all cylinders, working 24/7 to manufacture the one commodity that Americans and the rest of the world want so badly.
Nope.
When there’s an outbreak — like last time, with Swine Flu — he gets orders. He ramps up to fill them.
Then the outbreak passes, and guess where the hospitals go? Back to China.
This leaves him with capital equipment leases and people. If he doesn’t lay them off he goes out of business. If he does lay them off he get’s hammered with much higher unemployment insurance premiums, the leases on the equipment he has no use for, and he goes out of business.
The last time he nearly did.
This time, he’s demanding long-term contracts. Good for him.
Guess how many he’s gotten?
I’ll bet you can figure that out.
Corporatism not only isn’t capitalism, it is pure and unadulterated short-term-preferenced evil.
Which will mark the post-2008 transition from credit disinflation to actual deflation:
We didn’t really need any more confirmations. In recent weeks, as the US economy came to a screeching halt because of the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen banks take over $20 billion in reserves in anticipation of a looming default wave (a five-fold increase if not nearly enough based on historical precedent), Moody’s predicting that as many as 30{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of Americans with home loans – about 15 million households – could stop paying their mortgages if the U.S. economy remains closed through the summer or beyond, with the number of households that have already stopped paying their loans soaring by 1,496{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} in just six weeks, and even JPMorgan in the process of shutting down its entire net interest margin origination platform, by getting out of new loans and HELOCs and boosting the standards on new loans.
These are all clear signs that a wave of mass defaults has started and is about to break all across America as tens of millions of household suddenly lose their jobs.
2008 is when the post-war debt system finally broke. Since then, the Federal Reserve has frantically been kicking the can of consequences harder and harder, until now, when the can finally didn’t move. All of the various estimates are meaningless, but we can be confident that the current system will be replaced, we simply can’t know what the successor system is going to be as it will largely depend upon how the massive pool of existing bad debts are written off.
UPDATE: For those of you who are, apparently, still too stupid to grasp the obvious, THIS IS WHY USURY WAS HISTORICALLY BANNED IN WESTERN SOCIETIES. Because once the debt cycle starts, it ALWAYS ends this way, sooner or later. The only reason it took this long to go terminal is because, for the first time in history, the entire global economy was turned into collateral supporting the credit inflation.
DC Comics goes around Diamond in an email to comic book stores:
A couple of weeks ago we told you we were working on a solution-focused plan to address the current climate and help us all get back to the business of selling DC comic books, graphic novels, and collectibles in these difficult times, including the exploration of a multi-distributor model that would help to mitigate any further disruption to getting product into the hands of readers. We’d now like to share the details of our plan and next steps for its execution – which took into account your feedback, the market outlook, and the resources available at our disposal.
Current Orders
First, because of the global distribution disruption, all orders placed with Diamond Comic Distributors for in-store dates of 4/1, 4/8, and 4/15 have been cancelled with Diamond. You will need to resubmit orders for DC’s upcoming titles. To that end, instead of simply “lifting and shifting” the same scheduled titles for each of the missed in-store dates, we’ve made changes to the publishing schedule. The new schedule is designed to allow each of you to begin ordering a limited amount of DC product at first, and then ease back into the number of books that represents a normal release schedule from DC when your business can accommodate it.
This tends to indicate further disruption in the establishment comics world even when the lockdowns are lifted, as Bleeding Cool reported yesterday.
Right now, even though Diamond will be returning to comics distribution in a month’s time, we still don’t know if DC Comics will return to Diamond, if other publishers will copy DC’s moves, set up their own rival distributors or join with DCBS and Midtown. Most publishers Bleeding Cool contacted last night were blindsided by DC’s decision and weren’t saying anything right now.
Apparently the comic stores are deeply underwhelmed by DC’s new distribution strategy, which does tend to remind one of Marvel’s failed experiment with Heroes World that led to the establishment of the Diamond monopoly in 1997.
But all this turmoil is of little concern to Arkhaven, which continues to roll without hitch or hesitation thanks to our much-appreciated backers, and is even creating new series and entering new territories. Speaking of which, it’s Monday, so there is a new episode of Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #1, The Street Rules Episode 3: Zero Paperwork, up at Webtoons for your perusal, and, one hopes, enjoyment.
We’re also pleased to show off some of the work of our new Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted colorist, an experienced industry veteran who just joined the Arkhaven team last week. This is the cover of the forthcoming Issue #6, and he’s recoloring the first issue prior to that beginning its appearance on Webtoons. It will appear regularly on Thursdays.
BJ Campbell points out the statistical implausibility of the “wet market” theory of the coronavirus, not that anyone with more than half-a-brain ever bought it in the first place:
This thing came from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, probably the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We don’t need evidence gift wrapped by the Chinese to make this case. We just need simple mathematics, and the case is rock solid.
The “official channels” have maintained for four months that this virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan, not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is the world’s Mecca of studying emergent SARS coronaviruses that originate in bats. A lot of speculation by the media has gone into supporting this case, as well as the solid support of the Chinese government, but the case is obviously garbage. I grant that wet markets for exotic harvested wild meats are a great vector for something like this, but set that aside for a moment.
There are between a hundred and a thousand wet markets in China. There are well over a thousand wet markets in Vietnam. There are well over a thousand wet markets in Thailand. There are hundreds or thousands of wet markets in Laos, hundreds or thousands more in Cambodia, hundreds or thousands more in Burma and Myanmar and Malaysia. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s completely reasonable to estimate the total number of wet markets in East Asia being at least ten thousand.
But only one of these ten thousand or more wet markets is two blocks from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The chance that a brand new never before seen SARS coronavirus variant would emerge at the only wet market two blocks from a laboratory whose primary function is to study never before seen SARS coronavirus variants, specifically from bats, is simply too astronomical to believe. If a brand-new world epidemic virus were to emerge every day from a wet market in east Asia, it would be three years or more on average before one emerged from Wuhan. No honest scientist would believe that coincidence given what we know.
The only real question is who arranged for its release there, as there are only three plausible state parties: China, the USA, or Israel, and one non-state party, the Deep State. At this point, we have absolutely no way of knowing which of the four are responsible.
The recent ascendance of the philosemitic wing of the Labour Party may be very short-lived:
Labour faces multi-millionpound lawsuits over a leaked antisemitism report that could ‘bankrupt’ the party.
Sources close to whistleblowers and complainants whose identities were revealed by the leak say Labour could face a legal bill as high as £8million – effectively putting it out of business.
They say more than 30 individuals, including general secretary Jennie Formby, may sue the party over breach of privacy and for putting their safety at risk. The dire warning came as Labour officials were hastily forced to delete addresses from party membership databases to protect some people now apparently receiving death threats after their identities were made public….
The threat of massive legal bills has sparked panic among senior party figures that they could be personally liable.
I’ve read the report. It’s very damning, although not necessarily in the way one might think. Basically, the report is a put-up job written to support the false narrative being pushed by the (((Blairites))) who recently unseated the Corbynites and took over the party leadership. It turns out that more than HALF of the anti-semitism complaints were filed by a single invididual; the whole thing is little more than an amplified variant on the rabbi painting swastikas on the synagogue.
It appears that the Corbynites have decided that if they’re going to be pushed out of the party, they’re going to leave their successors with nothing but scorched earth. To put it in American terms, it’s as if the John Birch Society burned down the Republican Party instead of permitting the neocons to take it over.
USA Today ran an article on prepping and mentioned Castalia’s own David the Good and his survival masterpiece.
Not everyone has the privilege of owning land, but even having a backyard can offer opportunities not available to apartment dwellers, like starting a garden or raising chickens. Many preppers even had remote “bug out” locations in rural areas perfect for social isolation.
If you had a time machine, you might want to go back in time and buy 50 acres, but your best bet now is to use what you have. Our supply chain is being stressed to its limits, and even if barren shelves are more a symptom of panic buying than an actual shortage, anything we can do to relieve stress on the supply chain will help. Spring is almost here, so now is the perfect time. You might need less space than you think: Steven Cornett in San Diego started his own commercial farm on a mere quarter of an acre.
Here are some resources to get gardening fast:
- Steve Solomon’s Gardening When It Counts, which is just what it sounds like.
- Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening. The late Mel Bartholomew wasn’t what you’d call a survivalist, but his intensive, low-labor method is as close as you can get in terms of a “gardening quick fix,” especially if you have easy access to water.
- David the Good’s Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening, which again, is just what it sounds like. David outlines the best crops to plant for survival, how to fertilize with your own urine, and even how to grow your own tobacco. His YouTube channel is a wealth of information.
You can pick up a paperback copy of Grow or Die at Amazon. Because this is the one book you do NOT want to have only in ebook.
Is it really “conspiracy theory” when both the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel echo the warnings of past political leaders concerning a shadowy “deep state” pulling the strings from behind the scenes?
People who met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent months have heard lengthy speeches that seemed to be taken from one of Oliver Stone’s conspiracist screenplays. He told them that even though he has been elected repeatedly, in reality, the country is controlled by a “deep state.”
“There’s no democracy here, but a government of bureaucrats and jurists,” he said. The strings of this shadow government are ostensibly pulled by the prosecution, which Netanyahu views as more dangerous than Hezbollah’s precision missiles. Prosecutors and judges, he believes, have a symbiotic relationship whose goal is ousting him.
Unfortunately, our Swedish friends at IDKA were unable to make a go of their social-media-with-privacy service. They sent out this email this morning. It’s a reminder that starting a new business is always very difficult, and every genuine success is hard-won.
Dear enthusiast and Idka user
As you know, Idka was started by a small group of inspired, driven and sincere privacy enthusiasts and activists, a group which has since been joined by other similarly driven people, staff, consultants, investors and other supporters. We are all very proud of the idea and the ‘designed bottom up for privacy’ cooperation and social media platform that Idka has become. We sincerely thank all the present and past staff and consultants who have contributed to this fantastic achievement.
We thank you, the enthusiast user, for your support as well. We also thank the contributors to our blog and videocast channel, who have kept the very important dialogue around privacy alive, motivating people to act – to Idka.
However, we have not managed to grow the user bases as fast as we would have hoped for, in spite of the tsunami we are experiencing in terms of interest around privacy. This has led to a need for more growth capital. The board of Idka have for some time been in close contact with funds, either existing or under establishment, which specialize in funding purpose driven companies and business ideas with a particularly focus on privacy. This is a new trend within VC funding that Idka has contributed to and which time now have come.
The board of Idka has planned for, and had gotten positive indications from prospective investors (new and existing), to raise further bridge financing, in order to the company through the Corona-pandemic and then raise growth capital from one or more of these very exciting new funds. However, due in large part to the Corona-pandemic, some of the support for the share issue was withdrawn.
As a result of this, and in spite of our hard work and your support, Idka may not be able to attract necessary short-term funding. We are still working hard at it, but due to the grave financial situation Idka is in and the implications of the pandemic lock-down, the board have taken the decision to inform you that the Idka service may discontinue at any time; and that you as a matter of priority should download any material you have uploaded to the cloud storage.
We are indeed very sorry to have to write this message, and still hope that we would manage to secure future funding. However, no-one should rely on this, so please save your digital assets as soon as possible (see below).
Stay safe, take care of yourself, your family and your friends in these difficult times.
All the best from the Idka team.
It would appear the Chinese have inadvertently discovered how to break the chains of global US hegemony, as both Pat Buchanan and The Saker are both contemplating the same potential consequences of Corona-chan:
Seeing what happened on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, the coronavirus could have a major impact on U.S. global commitments.
Americans were already coming home from the Middle East, drawing down our 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after a deal with the Taliban, and moving our 5,000 troops in Iraq into fewer bases.
We have disengaged from the Saudi war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and are drawing down our forces in Syria.
In Libya’s civil war, it is Russians, Turks, Egyptians and Gulf Arabs, not Americans, who are the supporting actors.
American soft power is also in retreat from the world.
Some 10,000 Peace Corps volunteers have been brought home. Scores of thousands of U.S. citizens have been repatriated by the State Department. We have shut the door to Europe, China, the world.
What now becomes of the U.S. geostrategic “pivot,” the shift of planes, troops, ships and bases from the Middle and Near East to the Indo-Pacific theater to contain a rising China?
And contain China with what?
The Roosevelt has been ravaged by the coronavirus. As of Tuesday, 589 cases of COVID-19 were reported from a crew of 4,800. Four thousand sailors in Guam are in various stages of a 14-day isolation period in hotels and spare rooms across the island.
But it is not just the Roosevelt. Every U.S. warship — carriers, cruisers, frigates, destroyers, subs — has cramped quarters conducive to the spread of the coronavirus.
How many of these vessels will soon be doubling as hospital ships?
The same question might also be asked of the U.S. Army and Marine barracks in South Korea, Japan, Australia and Okinawa.
There are allegations that the coronavirus did not originate in the Wuhan “wet market” where bats are sold for food but instead escaped through a horrible blunder in a Chinese bioweapons laboratory a few miles away.
Whatever the truth, the Wuhan virus appears to have become the most effective means of disabling U.S. hard and soft power that we have encountered in many a decade.
The Saker observes that carrier diplomacy is no longer an option when an entire carrier group can be disabled by arranging to infect a single sailor on shore leave.
First, the obvious: USN carriers cannot operate effectively under a bio-attack (a truly weaponized virus would both be much more transmissible than SARS-COV-2 and it would be far more deadly). This also indicates that they would probably do no better under a real chemical warfare attack either.
Considering that in reality USN carriers are a instrument of colonial repression and not ships to be engaged against the USSR (which had real biowarfare capabilities), this makes sense (while most university labs & the like could produce some kind of virus and use it as a weapon, truly weaponized viruses, the kind effectively used in special delivery systems, can only be produced by a limited list of countries). However, in theory, all the formations/units/subunits/ships/aircraft/armor/etc of a military superpower should be trained to operate in case of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack. Clearly, this is not the case with US carriers, most likely because nobody in the USA really expected such an attack, at least not during the Cold War.
For the current situation, however, I think that the lesson is clear: the USN simply does not have an effective capability to operate under NBC attack conditions.