The Peanut Gallery

Statements, comments and forecasts that have no substance, but just might turn out to be relevant.

1.Tony Sagami: "Sadly, roughly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line—the largest number in our nation’s history—and the poorest 40% of all Americans now spend more than 50% of their incomes just on food and housing." Check out these numbers

39% of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.

52% of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

63% of American workers make less than $40,000 a year.

72% of American workers make less than $50,000 a year.

COMMENT: No wonder Saunders and Trump are doing so well. Nobody is even listening to what they say!

2. Having adopted a negative interest rate on some excess reserves to penalize financial institutions for leaving money idle, the Bank of Japan may consider helping them lend by offering a negative rate on some loans, according to people familiar with talks at the BOJ. COMMENT: Pay the banks to give out loans....?! Somebody has lost their collective minds.

3.Terrrorists blew up a bus in Jerusalem a few days ago:

COMMENT: When the bus filled with real and not imagined innocent people exploded Bernie, did you feel the Bern? And then when the Jews of New York let you have it with both barrels...did you feel the Bern? 

4.(CNN): An experimental plane flying around the world without a single drop of fuel landed in California after a two-and-a-half day flight across the Pacific. Piloted by Swiss explorer and psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse 2 touched down in Mountain View just before midnight (3 a.m. ET). "It's a new era. It's not science fiction. It's today," Piccard told CNN from California after his successful voyage. "It exists and clean technologies can do the impossible." COMMENT: 

5.The Jewish Press: Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday announced a new technological breakthrough in Israel’s effort to locate Hamas underground terror tunnels. Speaking after the announcement of the discovery of a terror tunnel reaching 90 feet into Israel from the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu boasted that the breakthrough had occurred only days earlier, making it a light-speed pace between pointing out the need for the technology, in August 2014, and the delivery. The new technology has been dubbed “Iron Dome for Tunnels,” COMMENT: Thje media is already dubbing it "The Iron Mole". 

6. In South Africa the ANC government is slowly (slowly?) losing its racist mind.
Four national sporting bodies have  had their "privileges" revoked, because they have not met their own "transformation" targets. In other words they have not reached the amount of black players in teams based on a percentage of the population. The sports are rugby, cricket, athletics and netball. The South African football federation qualify since 99% of the players are black. Bottom line, players are chosen on the basis of colour and not merit. COMMENT: In the US African Americans are 12% of the population. They make up 70% of NFL football teams. 

7. CNBC:China’s total debt rose to a record 237 percent of gross domestic product in the first quarter, far above emerging-market counterparts, raising the risk of a financial crisis or a prolonged slowdown in growth, economists warn. Beijing has turned to massive lending to boost economic growth, bringing total net debt to $25 trillion at the end of March, including both domestic and foreign borrowing, according to Financial Times calculations. COMMENT: By comparison, Greece is at about 170% and Italy 130%. The US is about 100%

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” ― Mark Twain

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.” ― C.G. Jung


"Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere" - Glenn Turner

The Peanut Gallery

Statements, comments and forecasts that have no substance, but just might turn out to be relevant.

1.Israel’s foreign exchange reserves stood at a record $94.775 billion at the end of March 2016, up $4.156 billion from their level at the end of the previous month, which was itself a new record, the Bank of Israel reports. The foreign currency reserves at the end of 2015 stood at $88.9 billion. Comment: In the early eighties the balance stood at $6 billion. When the bank shares collapsed in 1983 the balance dropped to zero and Israel was forced to take loans to pay its creditors. Comment: GO ISRAEL!

2. Bernie Sanders announced that he believes in a two state solution for Israel and arab Palestinians. Now after claiming the IDF murdered 10,000 innocent Palestinians in Gaza he has corrected that to "more than two thousand innocents according to the UN"...another mistaken figure. Official UN figures put the number at 1,423. Other estimates are much lower. This type of rhetoric place Sanders directly in the Obama-Kerry camp. COMMENT: The instant one hears the word "innocent" in this context, its easy to understand who and what he is. The agenda is to continue the Obama trend of creating a division between US Jewry and Israel. 

3. Stratasys Ltd (Nasdaq:SSYS), the 3D printing and additive manufacturing solutions company, today introduced another industry first with its market-disruptive 3D printer, the J750. The new solution breaks restrictive technology barriers, enabling customers for the first time to mix-and-match full color gradients alongside an unprecedented range of materials to achieve one-stop realism without post-processing. Read more about this Israeli company:  http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160403005061/en/ COMMENT: Compare this to the "productivity" produced by the "Religion of Peace".

4. And still on the subject of 3D printing the IAF has turned this technology into a major refurbishing tool. Start-Up Israel: "3D printers make 30-year-old Air Force planes ‘better than new'. The conversion of old and damaged equipment into first-class defense systems takes place at a base in central Israel. This is fascinating. Please read http://www.timesofisrael.com/3d-printers-make-30-year-old-air-force-planes-better-than-new/?utm_source=Start-Up+Daily&utm_campaign=4109a46c96-2016_04_12_SUI4_12_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fb879fad58-4109a46c96-54596809

5.More and more figures in the Arab world are calling on the Arab states to recognize Israel. United With Israel: In a true sign of change in the Arab world, Kuwaiti media personality Yousuf ‘Abd Al-Karim Al-Zinkawi called on all Arab and Muslim states to recognize Israel, openly and without delay, and stop calling it “the Zionist Entity” or “the Israeli occupation,” terms which undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Al-Zinkawi writes that the vast majority of the world effectively supports Israel’s existence, and the Arab states have begun to move in that direction and should complete the process. COMMENT: As Islam implodes economically, there appear to be symptoms of distress on the horizon.

6.U.S. troops and military equipment would be sent on regular rotations in the Philippines, and said the two countries had started joint patrols in disputed waters of the South China Sea, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said April 14 during a visit to Manila, Reuters reported. The first U.S.-Philippines joint patrol occurred in March, and took place earlier this month, according to the Pentagon. Comment: The prime priority (and the one that governs all US foreign and military policy) for the US is to keep all trade routes open and at the same time prevent a potential military foe from reaching US shores. Antagonizing America's allies and threatening trade wars is counter productive...to say the least. 

7. The USD index (a basket of currencies reflecting USD strength or weakness) strengthened from 73 to 100 in 2014 almost causing the collapse of a global debt bubble created in 2008 to "save" the world from recession - most international debt is denominated in USD.  Since then the index continues to hover between 93 and 100. The 0.25% interest rate rise in Dec last year and the expectation of further rate rises was close to one of the worst mistakes by the Fed in its history, almost throwing the planet into depression mode. It also exposed a mistaken mindset in the US that they could go it alone and ignore the global economy. Since then The Fed has walked back the expectations of further rises. We can expect the "managed global economy" to move sideways in the hopes that the boat rights itself. COMMENT: The US population's backlash against trade agreements once again shows the American mindset that they can do and say whatever they like with impunity. That would be a huge mistake.

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” 

― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."― Edmund Burke, 

The Peanut Gallery

Statements, comments and forecasts that have no substance, but just might turn out to be relevant.

1. A look into the future: The dawn of next industrial revolution is on the horizon. 3-D printing using metal additives will once again re-shape economic priorities, reduce outsourcing and bring jobs back to America and developed nations. Stratfor: Additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3-D printing, as well as intelligent industrial robotics and other software-based manufacturing technologies, are reducing the advantage of low labor costs. Eventually, they will fundamentally change how goods are made by enabling manufacturing to move closer to consumer markets and eliminating the need to search for cheap labor or produce and assemble parts in different locations away from the assembly plant. These changes will decrease trade in intermediate goods and components and lessen the need for physical inventories, shortening and simplifying global supply chains in the long run. COMMENT: Thats how one brings jobs back to America... Innovation!

2.The Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Some of the largest banks in the world are involved and despite the minimal media coverage, sooner or later this event will rattle the political and economic world to the core. The world's biggest mafioso, corruption and politics inc. is about to be exposed. This will happen slowly as investigators dig in...but happen it will. COMMENT: An atmosphere of disquiet might just turn into a cold sweat as markets absorb the drizzle of info.

3.An opposition bid to impeach South African President Jacob Zuma was defeated in an April 5 parliamentary vote, Times Live reported. Lawmakers from Zuma's African National Congress party voted down the proposal 233 to 143. The move to impeach Zuma sprung from a March 31 ruling by the country's Constitutional Court in which the president was found guilty of not paying back public funds he used to renovate his private home. In 2014, an independent South African watchdog group found that Zuma had spent around $15 million to upgrade his home in Nkandla with expensive additions, including an amphitheater and a swimming pool. COMMENT: He needs a bigger home for his five wives and twenty something mistresses. 

4.(Reuters) - Top Zika investigators now believe that the birth defect microcephaly and the paralyzing Guillain-Barre syndrome may be just the most obvious maladies caused by the mosquito-borne virus. Fueling that suspicion are recent discoveries of serious brain and spinal cord infections - including encephalitis, meningitis and myelitis - in people exposed to Zika. The newly suspected disorders can cause paralysis and permanent disability - a clinical outlook that adds urgency to vaccine development efforts. COMMENT: It looks like this virus is evolving.

5.According to Ray Bokhara  senior adviser and director of the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,  The wealth and income divide in the US is not 1%-99% but more like 25%-75%.  The whole them versus us theme, which is infecting the current political conversation, needs to be a little bit better grounded in the actual data. The Federal Reserve of San Francisco published a book on the subject - What its Worth - http://www.strongfinancialfuture.org COMMENT: Compared to the run of the mill, manufactured from old foreskins type of establishment politicians - its unbelievable how much crap Bernie Saunders and Donald Trump sprout.

6.So when will Bernie Sanders apologize for stating that 10,000 "innocent Palestinians" were murdered by the IDF in the Gaza War? Jewish history is sprinkled with the Kapo type Jew who will say or do anything to justify their actions. Anybody remember Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor in the seventies?

7.Shurat Hadin: “We were surprised and shocked to read in the NY Daily News about the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s support for so many organizations involved in the anti-Semitic boycott movement. It’s hard to understand how the children of such a distinguished father could allow their foundation's name to be involved in such racist and discriminatory activities,” said Shurat HaDin founder Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Apparently these folk are making large donations to BDO and other hateful organizations. "Accordingly, we strongly advise you to consider whether RBF should continue to provide financial backing to these hate groups who promote BDS against Israel and Israeli companies, individuals, and products,” states the letter. COMMENT: Go Nitsana!  

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Even the longest con was never more than an assortment of moments that were in themselves very very short.” ― Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals