But first, watch this video of a sinking ship and you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about here:
You back? OK. Well, the video is relative because, first; the passengers are oblivious to dangers coming (the passengers represent us "the people"). Second; when the ship started sinking, the captain and crew were splitting. The captain & the crew represent our politicians and bankers.
Not a pretty picture. People going along, as usual, in their ignorant bliss. The "leaders" knowing full well what's going on but trying to get out with what they can, while they can! The only difference between the sinking ship and the economy is there won't be any rescue coming for us.
While the entire world watches Greece and Italy, it seems, from looking at this chart, the real action is the UK, Japan, Spain and France.
Business, government and household debt in Japan show a 492% of GDP problem for Japan. The tax and spend days are coming to an end soon in Europe, the USA and, of course, in Japan.
This entire house of cards is going to collapse around our heads. When the collapse does come, it will come suddenly. Hope you have cash readily available and at least a few weeks of food and water ready. Because when the crash does come, stores will be empty in a matter if a few hours - if it takes that long.
A reader sends in this video. Kyle Bass on the BBC saying that Japan is "next":
Monday morning (Sunday for most people who read this blog). I've got a ton of things to do but here's a few things I've been thinking about... Especially how, even a few days after press release, you can see proof of how messed up a company Linkedin Japan is. Linkedin Japan is a FAIL!
First up, though, before the bashing begins, for your enjoyment, a very cool video Mash-up by Hexstatic of Nancy Sinatra's sixties smash hit "These Boots Were Made For Walking"
The picture in Greece, whose troubles kicked off the crisis almost two years ago, is bleaker than ever. A new report from Athens' international debt inspectors -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- proved that a preliminary deal for a second package of rescue loans reached in July is already obsolete.
The report showed that in the past three months Greece's economic situation has deteriorated so dramatically that for the bank deal to remain in place, the official sector would have to provide some euro252 billion ($347 billion) in loans. Alternatively, to keep official loans at euro109 billion ($150 billion), banks would have to accept cuts of about 60 percent to the value of their Greek bonds.
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100 Million Euros is insufficient. The IMF pegged the amount between 100 million and 200 million. There is absolutely no reason to suspect the minimum is needed. Indeed, there is every reason to expect 400 million euros is insufficient.
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I believe 400 million Euros will prove way insufficient once Portugal, then Spain, then Italy get into trouble.
Like I said, I think we could see the bankruptcy of Greece any day now. If that happens, all bets are off and it's every man (family) for itself. I think people would be wise to draw out a good sum of money from the banks and have it at home for a few weeks just to be safe until we can see what is going to happen. I fear a "bank holiday" where it might not be possible to withdraw money (or possibly even use credit cards) from banks for a few days or even a week or two (or more?)
I always follow my own advice and I think I've done pretty well. I always mess up dates, though... But I predicted a bad situation in Autumn on 2011 and, well, here it is, autumn. Please refer to: Japan's Financial Armageddon is Coming in 60 Days?
I warned people in October of 2008 to buy gold and silver and to stock up on food (click the links for proof). At that time, gold was $724.08 an ounce (today gold is $1562.30) and silver was $9.11 an ounce (today silver stands at $47.40).
If you had taken my advice, you would have easily more than doubled your investment in gold and taken over a 520% profit on silver. It's still not too late to get into gold and silver but a price correction is coming so wait a bit.* There will be no price correction on food. Stock up now, while you can.
After the big Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, when the stores shelves were bare for a week or so (and no one knew at the time how things were going to turn out on the food and water situation) my family was fine; we had 6 months of food and water, enough for 5 people, stocked up and ready to go. When people panicked and ran away from Tokyo or when they were fighting for parking spaces at the local grocery store, or fighting for bottles of water, I only watched and shook my head in disbelief.
How can people be so gullible and foolish? How can people be so negligent and irresponsible not to be prepared?
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Let me give you fair warning again. Especially if you live in Japan:
1) Store up enough water for at least 2 months (6 months preferable)
2) Fill your bathtub with water every night (if water stops you can use for cleaning)
3) Today or this week, buy at least 2 months of canned food (6 months preferable)
4) It is still not too late! Start saving money every month by buying gold and silver. If you have some savings, take 33% of it out of the bank and buy gold. Take the other 33% and keep it at safe place at home.
It looks like we are headed for some really rough times. Better be prepared to stay out of the way.
The point I am ultimately making is that of course no one can predict the future but just because of that fact not being prepared is just plain foolish. I'm sure that there were many people in Tohoku before the earthquake and tsunami who could make the same claim that "No one could have predicted the future" so that's why many did not have food or water or the means to escape (same as many in Tokyo)... But this is not about predicting the future, this is about protecting yourselves and your family.
If you think this is about predicting the future, then use that same logic next time you buy auto, car, fire or life insurance. Don't need them, right? No one can predict the future.
While I mention Greece, another curious thing about the situation there is that it is not being mentioned on the MSM. There's lots about demonstrations in the USA, where things are peaceful for the most part, but in places like Greece, where the sh*t is about to hit the fan? Not a peep.
I had been looking at many videos on Youtube and others showing some very heavy fighting between rioters and police. I wish I would have bookmarked them. This one, though, give a good idea. This is not a friendly party.
The most worrisome point about the situation in Greece is that the government needs the police and military to stand by them to protect them from and increasingly angry and militant civilian gathering, yet, at the same time, even the Greek police and civil servants are furious about getting pay cuts and massive slashes to their pensions. I wonder how long until they switch sides?
What would that mean for Greece and the other countries in immediate danger (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland?)
And, finally, I see the ridiculous announcement from Linkedin that they finally "launched their Japanese site". Well, that's one big strike against them; they're lying. The service was actually launched sometime before May of 2010.
How to correctly handle a new product or service release? (in Japan)
A new company/product/service will need to appoint somebody in Japan to handle PR for them in Japan and work with that company to make a plan.
A necessary part of any good plan of attack would be that the representatives in Japan arrange meetings with major media at least 1 - 2 weeks before Japanese release day, as pre-press release. This is critical.
If this sort of ground-work is not fully prepared by the company and their reps in Japan, I strongly suggest that the company postpone the release of the product/service (and fire their representatives and hire a competent company) and then get properly prepared. If this sort of pre-press release is done correctly, the Japanese media will then follow-up and prepare and study the circumstances of the product/service and company so that they may be able to publish and provide better information for the Japanese audience (don't forget that the Japanese media are competing with each other, too, to provide up-to-date concise information, so this has to be done. No short-cuts here). This is critical for the success of any new company in Japan.
Even after years of repeated failures byvarious companies, to this very day, foreign companies come to Japan and repeat the mistakes Pepsi Cola and Seven-Up made decades ago. Some recent examples are Linkedin; E-Bay Japan, Google.jp, and a few others. (I strongly suspect Sugarsync is about to make the same mistake too!)
Take, for example, Linked-in. Linked-in came out with a Japanese version quite a while back but no one here in Japan uses it because no one knows about it; they had no local representation; no pre-press release information.
Kind of shocking, when you think about it; a supposedly forward thinking company coming to Japan and making such an amateurish mistake.
Well, Linkedin made that mistake. I also am quite familiar with this as I wrote a letter to Linkedin twice in early 2010 offering them a partnership with some companies that suggested tying up with Sony and placing the Linkedin software with all new Vaio computers sold. I sent them the letter twice. Twice, no response. Chuckle. Now, they've realized almost 1.5 years later that no one uses their Japanese language product (and probably won't). They blew a golden opportunity to tie up with one of the biggest companies in Japan... Now, what are they going to do?
You don't penetrate the Japanese market on the cheap and you usually have only one chance to get it right.
Let me make a prediction that I will stand by completely: Linkedin Japan will be a flop and failure along the lines of E-Bay in Japan.
Well, it's the start of another week. Keep positive. Write down your goals and smile.
Logic is based in math. Understanding numbers and how to interpret them helps us to sift through the rubbish. This rubbish comes from the mass media, politicians and from so many sources today.
There issubstantial evidenceofongoing nuclear chain reactions. Another piece of evidence - as pointed out by nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen - is that there are widespread anecdotal reports of people in Japan and the West Coast of the United States reporting a metallic taste in their mouths:
When I first blasted Gundersen for saying something stupid, many people came out of the woodwork to defend him. They've all disappeared now. There's no defending such asinine statements anymore. I think Gundersen might need to see a doctor. This nonsense ranting sounds like old age or Alzheimer's.
I can't possibly deal with all those issues in one small blog post. so I am focusing on the mathematical probability of drug testing to show you how people lie with numbers.
Perhaps I should call this post's sub-title: Why drug testing isn't all what it is cracked up to be....
Yesterday's blog was about critical thinking and a comparison using drug testing. In that post entitled
"A particularly and important question today is that of testing for drugs. Suppose it is assumed that about 5 percent of the general population uses drugs. You employ a test that is 95 percent accurate, which we'll say means that if the individual is a user, the test will be positive 95% of the time, and if the individual is a nonuser, the test will be negative 95% of the time. A person is selected at random and given the test. It's positive. What does the result suggest? Would you conclude that the individual is highly likely to be a drug user?" I think that most people would say that the odds of this randomly selected person, who tested positive for drugs, are 95% correct. This is a very common misunderstanding. The tests show that this person has a 95% chance of being a drug user. But the result of a one-time random test is way off from the actual odds of this person being a drug abuser. The chances that this person is a drug abuser are nowhere near 95%. Understanding this should make people who consider the results of drug testing great pause. The correct answer to this test, once again, lies in logic and math. I hope some reader will be able to solve this puzzle.
I also gave a hint away at the bottom of that article saying that I hoped it would be a 50/50 chance that dear reader would come back tomorrow for the correct answer. Well, one smart reader, James, got the answer correct the first time. He wrote:
"Fifty-fifty indeed! Perform this test on one hundred people. 95 of them will be non-drug users, but 5% of them will get false positives on the test = 4.75 people. Five people will be drug users and will get true positives 95% of the time = 4.75 people. So out of the 9-10 people out of 100 that this test will flag as positive for drugs, only half of them will actually be drug users. That right?"
James is absolutely right. James! Move to the front of the class with honors! Even though the drug test is considered "correct" 95% of the time, it is still only correct, in this example, 50% of the time.
Here's how the "fifty-fifty" answer is determined. Suppose the general population consists of 10,000 people. Of those people, we assume for this problem that 95% of them (9,500) are non and that 5% of them (500) are users.
Of the 9,500 non users, 95% of them (9,025) will test negative. That means 5% of them (475) will test positive. Of the 500 users, 95% of them (475) will test positive. That means that 5% of them (25) will test negative. These are the totals:
There are 475 "false positives" and 475 "true positives", a total of 950 positives, so when we find an individual in that positive group, there's only a 50/50 chance that s/he's a user.
But let's suppose instead that a randomly chosen person tests negative. From the above calculation, we can see that there are 25 "false negatives" and 9,025 "true negatives" - a total of 9,050 negatives - so for an individual in that negative group, there's an overwhelming chance that s/he is not a user.
Understanding the above can help anyone of us to be able to better filter information that we are receiving daily from the mass media. It is especially helpful when we are fed numbers that have no meaning such as "Radiation levels in Tokyo are up 400%!" That was a headline that we all read a few months back. 400% up from what? After some research some of us discovered that, even though radiation in Tokyo went up 400% it was still at half or even 1/4 the rate of Rome, Italy.
Nevertheless, the news caused fear and panic.
A better understanding of mathematics and its use towards critical thinking and analytical reading skills will do much for many people to calm their fears and to help them understand exactly what is going on.
It all reminds me of my favorite saying of Mark Twain:
"I'm an old man now and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."
IS THIS SITUATION IS FAST SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL? MUST SEE!
The demonstrations in Egypt weren't nearly this big! In Europe, first Greece then Iceland now Spain! Massive demonstrations and protests have broken out all over Europe. There's not a word mentioned about these huge protests in the Japanese media or in the US media either! See the live feed at the bottom of this post. These demonstrations are huge and the news about them seems to be blocked all over the world!
Elections are tomorrow but the protesters have said that they will continue to protest until they get what they want... I'm sure the elections will not satisfy their demands. What's next? This and events in Portugal and Italy bode ill for the Euro and the world economy. This will certainly hurt Japan's already faltering economy.
These massive demonstrations continue to grow and have turned quite ugly and violent in Greece and have now been banned in Spain (which has only served to increase their size). In Spain's case, the government has banned these gatherings, but absolutely cannot afford to send the police in and kick these people out.
Ultimately, unemployment, taxes and austerity measures have caused these huge demonstrations that are, as one protester said, "... against the criminal behavior of the central bankers and IMF. Taking tax money from the people and giving it to rich bankers have finally made the people take to the streets...."
Yet, this news is nowhere to be found in the Japanese news services in English or in Japanese.
I predict that this demonstration in Spain will collapse the Spanish government.
"After passively submitting to the crisis, young Spaniards have finally taken to the street. Breaking out on the eve of municipal elections, the protests of recent days have been inspired by those in Iceland that led to the fall of the government in Reykjavik.
One morning in October 2008, Torfason Hördur turned up at what Icelanders call the “Althing”, the Icelandic parliament in the capital city, Reykjavik. By then, the country's biggest bank, the Kaupthing, had already gone into receivership and the Icelandic financial system itself was in danger of going under. Torfason, with his guitar, grabbed a microphone and invited people to talk about their dissatisfaction with the freefall of their country and to speak their minds.
A movement spawned by the Internet
But those voices calling for real democracy are not just being raised in Iceland, a country of about 320,000 inhabitants. Here in Spain, the umbrella organisation for various Spanish movements – Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) – already lists among its proposals some 40 points ranging from controlling parliamentary absenteeism to reducing military spending through to abolishing the so-called Sinde law (a law restricting on-line infringements of copyright).
Spain demonstration yesterday. This is not news in Japan!????
The demonstrations have broadened spontaneously, as was the case for those who rallied under the umbrellas of the "alternative globalisation" movements, and have evolved, one decade after the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on a more modest stage than the one demonstrators faced in the past at the World Economic Forum of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland.
All this is happening at astonishing speed via the Internet, which has amplified the echo of discontent and opened the lanes of cyberactivism to groups such as Anonymous, notable for intervening against companies like PayPal and Visa during the advocacy campaign for Wikileaks chief Julian Assange. Yet it was also there at the beginning of the revolts in the Arab world, to help people get round the censorship of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships.
“When we grow up, we want to be Icelanders!" cried one of the leaders of the organisation during the march on Sunday May 15 before a column of young – and not so young – parents and children, students and workers, the jobless and pensioners. Many Saturdays in Iceland were needed before citizens won the changes they had demanded. Spain’s first Sunday has taken place, and was followed by a Tuesday [May 17]- but there’s still a long way to go.
Protests have now spread to Italy and beyond.
Why these massive outpourings of discontent for government policies are being ignored in the Japanese press is a real curiosity. Here is a screen capture of NHK News English site. As you can see, not a word about it mentioned but there is a story of vital interest about Brazilian students sending letters to survivors of the Tohoku disaster!
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW
And here's a screen capture of the Japanese language page. Nothing about protests in Europe:
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW
Let's see: Something about the Hague Conventionmember stateswelcoming something called "the Buddhapolicy," Asia's largestexhibitionofNaval Weapons, specialtrains, JapanesechildreninBrazil... Oh! There's demonstrations! No. No. Those are in Thailand. Nope. Nothing about demonstrations in Europe.
Quite odd, don't you think?
MISH SHEDLOCK posts this: "SOL TV has a continuous direct broadcast from Puerto del Sol in Madrid, where today's gathering has just started."
The summer of 2011 has started. It's going to be a very hot one too. Got gold?
Here's a map and more information about the global insurrection against banker occupation. There's even an event planned in Tokyo today!!! http://www.thetechnoant.info/campmap/
