George Rebane

Students of history and current affairs must be intrigued as they witness the ebb and flow of civilizations, cultures, and fortunes.  If they are of a conservative nature and hail from the west, they must also be sitting on a growing inventory of fear.  We are seeing a resurgence of socialism and the decline of liberties.  At the same time Americans completing their education (not necessarily graduating) are at a nadir in their understanding of what has happened and what is going on (more here).  Our sciences are increasingly imported from overseas, reserving the politically correct pursuits to technologies that serve only mandated markets.  Quality of Life (QoL) maintaining jobs in the west are more and more reserved for the fewer and fewer who have the wherewithal to serve.  The east is again reaching for the sky as its people leave the plow to manufacture what the world needs.  There they are engaged in raw wealth generation while we concentrate on how to hamstring and redistribute what is turning out to be less and less.

In the hamstring department we witness corps of scientists that are directed, bought, and paid for by politicians.  The scientists and their handlers have figured out what songs must be sung to pay for their suppers.  But the tab always winds up with the taxpayers who are viewed only as walking wallets by the ruling class.  Doug Hoffman (here) summarizes  –

” Never have so many scientists looked so long and so hard for corroborating evidence to prop up a theory. After looking for a smoking gun for 50 years, it is about time for the eco-alarmists and warm-mongering climate change supporters to admit that their pet theory is not supported by the facts. The reason they have not found the proof they seek is simple—the anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong and changing its name to global climate disruption will not make it right.”

Perhaps an even more scary sight is that of the new mega-carriers designed to ply the Pacific.  These foreign ships will haul over 15,000 containers at a time from China to the US in four to five days.  They are larger than America’s nuclear carriers and are manned by a crew of thirteen.  And the scary part?  Since we manufacture nothing the Asians need or want, they return EMPTY.  We don’t build them, we don’t own them, we don’t man them, and we make nothing that anyone wants to ship in them.

For those who believe that the hyper-hyped ‘clean energy jobs’ are the nation’s savior of manufacturing jobs, the outlook is not that rosy.  Those jobs can be and are being shipped overseas, and then the mandated products are shipped back here for installation by government diktat.  And doing that is still cheaper than hiring the overpaid (and probably union mandated) workers to make the stuff here.  We in Nevada County, of course, are holding our breath for these jobs which will arrive only at the point of the government gun (more on the problem and a glimmer of hope here).

Finally, the worldwide movement of fiat currencies is perhaps the most visible casino where bets are placed on the nature and pace of our future.  Led by central banks and oil money, the dollar and its euro cousin are not faring very well.  In its synoptic oscillation, the USD price of gold has appreciated 353% in the last decade, and is now lighting off its second stage as it rockets past $1,300 per ounce (more here).  An increasing number of smart bettors – individuals, institutions, and sovereign states – are turning paper into gold for riding out the coming storms.  Attentive readers who were made aware of all this a few years back have now almost doubled their money.

Multiple hat tips to readers who have sent me supporting materials.