Greece Becomes First Developed Country To Default To The IMF

From Zero Hedge:

*IMF SAYS GREECE FAILED TO MAKE PAYMENT DUE TUESDAY
*IMF BOARD INFORMED THAT GREECE IS NOW IN ARREARS

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-30/these-are-greeces-5-possible-paths

The Greek situation ontinues:Greek Capital Controls Begin: Greek Banks, Stock Market Will Not Open On Monday; Ignoring Tsipras Plea For Calm, Greeks Storm ATMs, Stores, Gas Stations

From Zero Hedge:

Update: GREEK BANKS TO REMAIN CLOSED UNTIL JULY 6 : KATHIMERINI
Despite the reassurances from any and all elected (and unelected) officials, given the run on bank ATMs in Greece has turned into a stampede, it is not surprising that the CEO of Piraeus Bank just announced Greek banks would remain closed for at least one week; further as reported yesterday, the Greek stock market will also remain closed.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-28/greek-capital-controls-begin-banks-remain-closed-monday

From Zero Hedge:

Just a few hours ago Greek PM Tsipras addressed his nation imploring then to "remain calm" and reassuring them that their "deposits were safe." It appears the Greeks did not believe him. Many were wondering where the Greek bank lines were for the past several months. Turns out the local depositors were merely waiting until just after the last minute to withdraw their funds... horde gas... and stack food. Greece, it appears is Venezuela - the new socialist paradise.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-28/ignoring-tsipras-plea-calm-greeks-storm-atms-stores-gas-stations

And while they were eating he said, “Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”Deeply distressed, they began to say to him,“Surely it is not I, Lord?”He said in reply,“He who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me. The Son of Man will proceed as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.”Then Judas, his betrayer, said in reply,“Surely, Lord, it is not I?"

Matthew 26:24

Your Next Hardware Project Might Be Biological, and Other News from the Solid Conference

From Makezine:

O’Reilly Media held its annual Solid conference this week in San Francisco. It’s an annual show  covering “Hardware, Software & the Internet of Things.” We found it eye-opening, informative, and occasionally controversial. Here’s some of what we heard at this year’s show:

Joichi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, explains why he’s excited about synthetic biology

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Joichi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, explained that code is now being used for genes that can be printed into bacteria.

He predicts that a Moore’s law for biology is taking hold, accelerating biotech at five or six times the speed of internet or hardware innovation. In fact, he says, you can now do bio experiments in your kitchen that two decades ago would have won a Nobel prize. From his vantage, the future is in the convergence of hardware, software, and biology.

http://makezine.com/2015/06/26/your-next-hardware-project-might-be-biological-and-other-news-from-the-solid-conference/

Getting Started with Sprout by HP

From Makezine:

HP’s Blended Reality

We’ve been using the clunky mouse and keyboard in front of a display for more than 30 years. Despite this fact, most computer manufacturers are content to focus on making computers faster and smaller, rather than addressing the elephant in the room. The desktop computer is long overdue for a redesign, one that enables us to rethink the way we do work. We need to bring the ease of interacting with people and objects in the physical world into the digital world. This is the heart of the vision HP calls “Blended Reality.”
HP’s Blended Reality is an innovative approach to the way we interact with computers. It’s a way to merge the physical world that we live in with the digital world that we work in. With new ways to bring physical objects into the digital workspace, HP’s Sprout is poised to change the way that we interact with computers and each other.

Futuristic Hardware

The HP Sprout is far from your average desktop PC. Sitting atop the 23-inch LCD touchscreen is a device HP calls the “Illuminator,” containing a 3D scanner, a DLP projector, and several high-resolution cameras to capture images, depth, and more. The image of a digital workspace is projected from the Illuminator down onto an integrated Touch Mat. This turns the Touch Mat into a second display that is touch-sensitive and able to track up to 20 independent points at once. This unique combination of integrated hardware sets the Sprout apart from other desktop PCs and gives us a glimpse into HP’s vision for a new, immersive computing platform.

Innovative Software

Of course, hardware is only as good as its software, and the Sprout doesn’t disappoint. The Sprout runs on Windows 8.1, making it every bit as powerful as your average desktop computer, but the included Workspace software platform is the environment where HP’s vision of Blended Reality begins. From here, you can launch apps to scan documents, take photos, capture 3D objects, and collaborate on projects with remote friends or co-workers.

http://makezine.com/magazine/getting-started-with-sprout-by-hp/

WSJ: Early Tesla Motors Investors Raise $400 Million Impact VC Fund

From the Wall Street Journal:

More high-quality entrepreneurs are starting mission-driven businesses, he said. At the same time, a new generation of consumers cares more about who is involved in making products and how a company makes a product or service they pay for. As concepts such as fair trade and transparent supply chains are becoming increasingly important to businesses, Ms. Pfund said, such impact investing makes more sense.

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/06/23/early-tesla-motors-investors-raise-400-million-impact-vc-fund/?mod=WSJBlog&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Forbes: South Korea At A Crossroads

From Forbes:

South Korea, long-time US trading partner and home to several major tech industry giants, is at a crossroads. In the space of the next few months, the country will choose between a path that leads toward an autocratic and arbitrary trade regime like China’s or to a more transparent, open, and fairer system like those of Western Europe and North America.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/06/22/south-korea-at-a-crossroads/

New Yorker: "Playdate"

From the New Yorker:

Any parent of a four-to-x-year-old will likely understand this week’s cover. Most everyone else will probably be confused.
Minecraft is a video game invented, in 2009, by Markus Persson (a.k.a. “Notch” to the seven hundred trillion humans who play it), as a sort of intuitive reimagining of the landscape of his Swedish childhood, but with zombies. Simultaneously writing and releasing the game, like a sort of wakeful brain surgery, Persson and his staff coded while an algorithmically increasing number of players sent suggestions, found bugs, and played and played and played Minecraft, before the full version was released, in 2011. Then the whole genome of the project sold to Microsoft last year, for two and a half billion dollars. (Concerned parents can view the fascinating documentary “Minecraft: The Story of Mojang” for more info.) Persson recently became notable to the over-forty set for buying a seventy-million-dollar house in Los Angeles (he only very recently became the owner of an automobile, and appears, like me, to dread human contact), and he no longer works on the game.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cover-story-playdate

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." 
Ephesians 6:12

WalterIsaacson “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution”

From Adafruit blog:

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens.
What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
In his masterly saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page.
This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It’s also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative.
For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators shows how they happen.

https://blog.adafruit.com/2015/06/21/adafruit-in-walterisaacson-the-innovators-how-a-group-of-hackers-geniuses-and-geeks-created-the-digital-revolution/

Arduino Announces Manufacturing Partnership with SeeedStudio

From Makezine:

Hot on the heels of Arduino’s announcement of a manufacturing partnership with Adafruit, and the creation of the Genuino brand, at Maker Faire Bay Area last month. Today at Maker Faire Shenzhen Massimo Banzi and Eric Pan announced a partnership with SeeedStudio to produce Arduino boards using the new Genuino brand in China and other Asian markets.
The announcement also gives us our first look at the Genuino branded boards, which appear to be identical to the traditional Arduino branded boards — the only obvious being that they are a slightly different colour of teal. Interestingly the silkscreen on the new Genuino Micro board notes that it was “co-designed with Adafruit.”

“Arduino is very popular in China but the brand is used heavily without permission. Genuino allows the market to clearly identify which products are contributing to the Open Source Hardware process.” — Eric Pan, SeeedStudio

 http://makezine.com/2015/06/20/ardunio-announces-manufacturing-partnership-seeedstudio/

Open Source Prosthetic Hands Focus on Function and Personality

From Makezine:

A month or so back, a Japanese company called exiii publicized its HACKberry 3D printed myoelectric prosthetic arm. With the help of Wevolver, an online platform for project documentation and sharing, exiii shared the plans as open hardware, encouraging Makers and hackers to build their own versions. Last week, upon reading a request by a reddit user for workout regimes for his recent-amputee brother, Wevolver’s Cameron Norris responded by offering the poster’s brother a custom printed aluminum version of HACKberry.

The arena of prosthetic limbs is one of many examples of the way 3D printing and other increasingly accessible DIY technologies are helping drive innovation. From fashionable wear on the runway at Maker Faire Bay Area to Nicolas Huchet’s adaptation of the InMoov arm for his own hand, printed prosthetics are beginning to flood what was once a highly expensive medical device market with DIY options that are not only affordable, but customizable and even fun.
Exiii’s version focuses on precision, as well as open hardware — Wevolver maintains a repository of the project plans and code.




Exiii does have a more agile, more expensive version that is not open source, a device called Handiii that incorporates a smartphone to process the EMG (electromyographic) data. “The purpose of disclosing HACKberry is to accelerate the development,” says Yamaura. “We have to improve its quality (particularly its durability) with the developers around the world.”

http://makezine.com/2015/06/16/open-source-prosthetic-hands-focus-function-personality/

American Billionaire Takes on Samsung

From Bloomberg:

Paul Elliott Singer could not have picked a bigger fight in South Korea. The American hedge-fund manager said he would oppose a proposed merger within Samsung Group, thereby laying down a challenge to the country’s most powerful company and its richest family.
Predictably, all hell has broken loose. The local press has attacked Singer as a meddling pariah, casting doubt on his motives and advocating more protection for domestic companies. The Korea Economic Daily went as far as calling on regulators to investigate Singer for insider trading or other illegal activities, despite the absence of any evidence.
Yet the support for Samsung is hardly unanimous. Hundreds of minority investors are banding together to back Singer and, perhaps more importantly, the government has stayed neutral. The billionaire is doing more than raising questions about one deal: He’s set off a debate about the privileged position the industrial titans known as chaebol have held in Korea -- and whether they should keep getting special treatment.

“Samsung and South Korea are at a crossroad,” said Kim Sang Jo, executive director at Solidarity for Economic Reform and professor at Hansung University. “If Samsung sticks to its old ways or if South Korea stirs up a nationalistic movement against Elliott, foreign investors’ interest in South Korea will sour.”
The chaebol have held a special place in the country ever since they helped rebuild the economy after the Korean War. They were given explicit government support and protectionist policies as the country modernized and became the fourth-largest economy in Asia. Samsung is as revered in South Korea as Apple Inc. and the founding Lee family is effectively royalty.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-11/u-s-hedge-fund-takes-on-korea-inc-in-clash-with-richest-family

PetroYuan Proliferation: Russia, China To Settle "Holy Grail" Pipeline Sales In Renminbi

From Zero Hedge:

Two critically important themes which have far-reaching geopolitical and economic consequences came together recently when it became apparent that Gazprom had begun settling all crude sales to China in yuan. This marked the intersection of yuan hegemony and the death of petrodollar mercantilism. Now, the trend continues as Russia and China will de-dollarize hundreds of millions in natural gas settlements.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-17/petroyuan-proliferation-russia-china-settle-holy-grail-pipeline-sales-renminbi

How to make a simple Electric Circuit

From implicityfromClutter



This project is very conceptual and gives children of age group 10-12 years a flexibility to try out different ways to generate the current and what can be done using that current. We tried to buy very less items and use stuff from house and made a working electric circuit out of it. The 2 most important pieces to check the conductivity of current in a simplest and safe way is a battery and a small LED lamp as shown in pictures.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-simple-Electric-Circuit/

An Insider’s Guide to Shenzhen Manufacturing

From Makezine:

The Chinese have a saying: “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it can catch mice.” While often attributed to the late Chinese leader and architect of economic reform, Deng Xiaoping, it is older. But it is fitting that people attribute it to Xiaoping because it was his push for a more pragmatic, results-based approach to economics and politics that gave birth to the mutant urban marvel that is Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city that’s become not only a global mass market electronics manufacturing juggernaut, but also a place where tiny startups flock to incubate their products and get them to market as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Shenzhen is a relatively new Chinese city purpose-built to cater to electronics manufacturing. If you’re serious about taking any type of consumer electronics product to market — robots, microcontroller-based projects, mobile phones, laptops, internet appliances, 3D printers, etc. — there is only one city where you need to be, and that’s Shenzhen.

So, how do you get started exploring manufacturing opportunities in Shenzhen? “You buy a ticket,” says Bunnie Huang, matter-of-factly. Huang, the engineer and Maker’s Maker behind such products as the open-source laptop Novena and Chumby, the enigmatic internet appliance, has been helping others break into business with Shenzhen for years. “So, you go and you look around,” he says. “And you look around some more. You make calls, establish connections. You take like a week, and essentially, you speed date the factories of Shenzhen. Going to the factories gives you a good sense of what’s going on, the conditions there, the media that you have to work with, the manufacturing processes.” He adds: “It also gives you new ideas. You see things you didn’t know were possible in the manufacturing process and that gives you ideas for what you can do with your product that you hadn’t considered before.”

http://makezine.com/magazine/making-in-shenzhen/

Can an Algorithm Determine Art History’s Most Creative Paintings?

From Hyperallergic:



Two computer scientists have developed an algorithm that measures creativity in visual art. At the end of the month Ahmed Elgammal and Babak Saleh, an associate professor and PhD candidate, respectively, in the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University, will present their paper “Quantifying Creativity in Art Networks” at the International Conference on Computational Creativity, chronicling the results of their attempt to create a computer algorithm that tabulates the originality and influence of paintings. The results are mixed; Johannes Vermeer, Claude Monet, and Georgia O’Keeffe fare well, while Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Albrecht Dürer, and Camille Pissarro compute as comparatively uncreative. A closer look at Elgammal and Saleh’s methodology offers clues as to why.
Their algorithm was developed by using computer vision technology to assess the visual characteristics of the 1,710 artworks in the Artchive database and 62,254 works on WikiArt. They focused specifically on paintings, and even more specifically on “Western paintings,” while “removing genres and mediums that are not suitable for the analysis such as sculpture, graffiti, mosaic, installation, performance, photos, etc.” Analyzing the images from the two databases, the algorithm isolated a certain number of visual concepts (as many as 2,659) in each artwork based on the presence of depicted objects like crosses, horses, faces, and so on. The algorithm, in other words, was calibrated for representational art, which explains the off-the-charts creativity readings generated by abstract art from the early 20th century.
More telling, however, is the definition of “creativity” the pair used to guide their research. “Among the various definitions of creativity it seems that there is a convergence to two main conditions for a product to be called ‘creative,’” they wrote. “That product must be novel, compared to prior work, and also has to be of value or influential.” Consequently, the algorithm promoted works that boasted unprecedented visual features as evidence of their novelty, and championed those it deemed “influential” if those original features reappeared in later works. For instance, a Dürer portrait from 1514 scored very low on the algorithm’s creativity scale, while Kazimir Malevich’s “Red Square” (1915) was found to be one of the most creative artworks of the last 600 years. Little allowance is made for artists working in established genres or with frequently recurring subjects like, for instance, most religious paintings. The algorithm champions newness, not sustained excellence in a specific genre.

http://hyperallergic.com/214306/can-an-algorithm-determine-art-historys-most-creative-paintings/

Bloomberg Businessweek: What is Code?

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

The World Wide Web is what I know best (I’ve coded for money in the programming languages Java, JavaScript, Python, Perl, PHP, Clojure, and XSLT), but the Web is only one small part of the larger world of software development. There are 11 million professional software developers on earth, according to the research firm IDC. (An additional 7 million are hobbyists.) That’s roughly the population of the greater Los Angeles metro area. Imagine all of L.A. programming. East Hollywood would be for Mac programmers, West L.A. for mobile, Beverly Hills for finance programmers, and all of Orange County for Windows.
There are lots of other neighborhoods, too: There are people who write code for embedded computers smaller than your thumb. There are people who write the code that runs your TV. There are programmers for everything. They have different cultures, different tribal folklores, that they use to organize their working life. If you told me a systems administrator was taking a juggling class, that would make sense, and I’d expect a product manager to take a trapeze class. I’ve met information architects who list and rank their friendships in spreadsheets. Security research specialists love to party.
What I’m saying is, I’m one of 18 million. So that’s what I’m writing: my view of software development, as an individual among millions. Code has been my life, and it has been your life, too. It is time to understand how it all works.

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/

HP Announces New Sprout 3D Scanning Platform

From Makezine:

Today, HP has some exciting new announcements for those interested in 3D scanning using their Sprout platform.
The Sprout by HP is a ground-breaking piece of computing hardware that incorporates a touch screen, all in one desktop computer with a projector, capture surface, an Intel RealSense 3D camera, and a 14 megapixel traditional camera. These features allow users to capture real-world content and then interact with it digitally in a way that was never possible before.

HP’s New Sprout 3D Capture Platform

http://makezine.com/2015/06/11/hp-announces-new-sprout-3d-scanning-platform/

How South Korea's DRC-HUBO Robot Won the DARPA Robotics Challenge

Kudos to Team KAIST.

From IEEE Spectrum

Photo: DARPA

This robot won the DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015.

On Saturday, Team KAIST from South Korea emerged as the winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) in Pomona, Calif., after its robot, an adaptable humanoid called DRC-HUBO, beat out 22 other robots from five different countries, winning the US $2 million grand prize. The robot’s “transformer” ability to switch back and forth from a walking biped to a wheeled machine proved key to its victory. Many robots lost their balance and collapsed to the ground while trying to perform tasks such as opening a door or operating a drill. Not DRC-HUBO. Its unique design allowed it to perform tasks faster and, perhaps more important, stay on its feet—and wheels.

“Bipedal walking [for robots] is not very stable yet,” Jun Ho Oh, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology who led the KAIST Team, told IEEE Spectrum. “One single thing goes wrong, the result is catastrophic.” He said a robot with a humanoid form has advantages when operating in a human environment, but he wanted to find a design that could minimize the risk of falls. “I thought about different things, and the simplest was wheels on the knees.”
DARPA decided to organize the DRC after the Fukushima accident in Japan, hoping to advance the field of disaster robotics. The DRC Finals called for teams of semi-autonomous robots and human operators to work together in a simulated disaster environment. The robots created by universities and companies for the competition varied widely in size and shape and include legged robots, wheeled robots, and hybrids as well.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/how-kaist-drc-hubo-won-darpa-robotics-challenge

52nd Anniversary of John F. Kennedy Address To the Nation On Civil Rights 11 June 1963

From Jesse's Cafe:

I remember seeing this broadcast live on one of the three black and white network television channels that evening.

We take a lot for granted now, and tend to romanticize 'the good old days.' There were some good, and some bad. For they were just days, from which we made what we could from what we had and what we could bring.

There were severe racial tensions, an abundance of obvious injustice and inequality, recent memories of WW II and Korea, and a real and continuing fear of nuclear war. These were presences in our young, daily lives. And of course I was there for the rebellion and idealism of youth. Where is it now. Not in the young now, but in us.

We have lost a little ground on equality perhaps. And as our founding fathers themselves noted in their older age about the new generation, there certainly remains the need for a continuing commitment to the principles on which we have established this Republic.




http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2015/06/52nd-anniversary-of-john-f-kennedy.html

People and Power: The Technology Threat

From Naked Capitalism:

A two-part Al Jazeera documentary examines how technology is hollowing out former mid-range skill, middle income jobs, and how that process is set to intensify over the coming decade. My brother and sister-in-law, who are both in outsourcing, say the studies they’ve seen on the number of jobs expected to be displaced come up with mind-bogglingly high estimates.
The documentary acknowledges that Luddites in the past have worried about workers being threatened by the march of technology when in fact growth has led to more jobs. But things aren’t that simple. The first two generations of the Industrial Revolution led to lower standards of large swathes of the population. And the prognosis for lower and even many higher skilled workers now is grim, with experts saying that they see the potential for substitution of workers as far greater than in other periods of technological advances.
Needless to say, these forecasts explain the reluctance of the top wealthy to continue to support public education. They don’t anticipate needing as many skilled workers. Moreover, well educated under-employed citizens would make for a more effective opposition.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/06/people-and-power-the-technology-threat.html

The Global Monetary Phenomenon That Almost No One Is Seriously Discussing

From Jesse's cafe:

I wish to present, in just a few charts, a remarkable monetary phenomenon that almost no one is discussing publicly.

As you can see below, the central banks of the world, largely those of the West led by the US and the UK, were net sellers of gold throughout the 1990's and through the turn of the century.

As the Bankers to the world's reserve currency and sole global superpower, the Western central banks will make no major international policy decisions without the involvement of the Treasury, and especially the Federal Reserve and its constituent global banking machinery including the behemoth

Banks and the SWIFT system.

Gold purchases by central banks, at least those they were willing to publicly acknowledge, turned positive by 2010 at most.

The pundits did not expect this change to continue, as is shown in the 'forecast section' for 2012 and after in this first chart from RBC/Bloomberg below.

This chart shows most clearly perhaps how the Western central banks stepped up their gold selling attempting to control and then crush the price of gold, driving it down to a low of $250 in 1999-2001.

Interestingly enough this came to be known as Brown's Bottom. England, under the leadership of Gordon Brown, then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, very publicly sold 400 tonnes of its sovereign gold starting in late 1999 and 2001, reportedly to bail out some of the Banks who had gotten over their heads on short sale positions.

The largest net sales amount of gold reserves was in 2005, as the central banks attempted to dampen the price of gold which had risen from $250 to $450. This selling was co-ordinated under the Washington Agreement, which was a so-called gentleman's agreement amongst some of the Western central banks, first created in 1999 and thereafter revised and extended in 2004.

The banks included the ECB, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK. Although it was not a signatory, the Federal Reserve was obviously involved. In August 2009 this agreement amongst 19 central banks was extended for another five years.

Spun positively by the financial media as 'good for gold,' this coordination of selling was designed to allow the Banks to coordinate their efforts, and not clumsily disrupt the markets as the Bank of England had done in 1999, allowing them to manage their sales and announcements for a smoother effect on price.

As can be seen on the chart below, the central bank gold selling was unable to obtain traction, and the price of gold continued to rise as the Banks began to taper off their attempts to control the price through outright physical selling which seems to have had its last hurrah in 2007 as noted by Citigroup.

"Official sales ran hot in 2007, offset by rapid de-hedging. Gold undoubtedly faced headwinds this year from resurgent central bank selling, which was clearly timed to cap the gold price. Our sense is that central banks have been forced to choose between global recession or sacrificing control of gold, and have chosen the perceived lesser of two evils. This reflationary dynamic also seems to be playing out in oil markets."

There are other non-bullion instruments which the central banks may employ to manage the price of gold which include strategic leasing, derivatives, and the use of proxies to influence markets in the manner in which certain financial entities have been recently exposed to be manipulating many other global prices and benchmarks, over periods of many years. Yet there is still a great deal of denial over the central bank attempts to manage the price of gold relative to their currencies, despite an abundance of circumstantial, historical, and direct evidence.

This simple chart more vividly portrays how the forecasts of declining purchases of gold by central banks after 2011 were wrong-footed.

Since that time, central bank purchases have risen to 48 year highs.

Here is my own depiction below of the sea-change called 'The Turn' in global central bank purchases of gold.

This turn coincides with what I along with more important others have called the currency war, most notably in a bestselling Chinese book published in 2007 by Song HongBing called Currency Wars (货币战争), and a book published in Nov. 2011 by Jim Rickards by the same name.

This is different from the 'currency war' which the financial media likes to portray, as the devaluation of national currencies to obtain competitive advantage, is more of an artifact from the 1930's. This new currency war involved a rethinking of the US as the global reserve currency, an unusual condition for a fiat currency which has been in place since at least 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

From the end of WWII the Bretton Woods Agreement had set up the US dollar reserve as a proxy for gold, redeemable at least by other central banks and their governments. After the closing of the gold window the world was pushed into a scenario of central monetary authority it had not experienced in recorded history: a single country, through a semi-public banking entity controlled the issuance of the world's global reserve currency unencumbered by a hard reference to some neutral external standard.

This currency regime has been maintained by military and political power, informal agreements, treaties and trade sanctions, between 700 to 900 foreign bases of power and influence, and the indirect control of key global resources such as oil, the so-called petrodollar.

I certainly cannot predict where this will end, except to point to the example of past endeavours such as the London Gold Pool, and suggest that absent draconian government actions, market forces tend to overcome and overwhelm such efforts over time.

As I have forecast for many years, at least from 1999, the natural objective of a global fiat currency regime is a unipolar, or quite possibly a multipartite global government that is more centrally directed oligarchy than sovereign democracies.

The relationships of the various countries with the central authority in the evolving Eurozone are an approachable example on a small scale, a test run for the inverted totalitarianism, or neo-corporatism, of the bureaucrats and their corporate sponsors, to be a bit extrapolative. Although I think that the TTP and TTIP are glaring signposts along the way.

One particular point of frustration has been how slow on the uptake so many economists and financial commentators have been in thinking through the various monetary schemes that they promote. I doubt if they understood where they were leading that they would support them, even as their objectives are thought to be good.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2015/06/the-global-monetary-phenomenon-that.html

장하성: 가계부채 문제, 정부 생각보다 심각하다

Professor Chang points out what I've been saying on this blog all along: the significant problem of rising household debt.  Stimulus won't work.  Real estate bubble won't help.  Period.  Employment and median income boost are the answer.  How Korea could do that has been addressed many time.  The current administration doesn't seem to get it, though.

한국 경제로부터:

5일 한국금융학회 신임 회장으로 선출된 장하성 고려대 경영대 교수(사진)는 “정부가 생각하는 것보다 가계부채 문제가 심각하다”며 “가계소득이 늘지 않는 상황에서 빚만 증가하는 것이 가장 큰 문제”라고 말했다.

고려대 경영대 학장과 한국재무학회 회장, 한국증권학회 부회장 등을 지낸 장 교수는 이날 금융학회 정기총회에서 25대 회장에 선출됐다.

그는 “가계의 가처분소득 대비 부채비율이 계속 늘어나는 것이 문제”라며 “금리 인상에 대비해 가계소득을 늘릴 방안이 필요하다”고 말했다. 또 “부동산경기 활성화를 통해 경기를 부양하겠다는 정책이 빚을 늘리고 있다”고 지적했다.

가계부채 규모는 지난 1분기 말 기준 1099조3000억원으로 증가 속도가 빨라지고 있다. 가처분소득 대비 가계대출 비율은 지난해 말 기준 164%에 달한다.

금융당국의 기술금융 확대 정책과 관련해선 “담보 위주의 대출 관행에서 벗어나야 한다는 방향은 바람직하지만 기술력뿐 아니라 미래 사업성을 더 크게 평가해야 한다”고 했다.

 http://media.daum.net/economic/others/newsview?newsid=20150606050026757

"And behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the world."
Matthew 28:20

Greek Banks On Verge Of Total Collapse: Bank Run Surges "Massively" As Depositors Yank €700 Million Today Alone

From Zero Hedge:

While the Greek government believes it may have won the battle, if not the war with Europe, the reality is that every additional day in which Athens does not have a funding backstop, be it the ECB (or the BRIC bank), is a day which brings the local banking system to total collapse. And another day, or two, like today, and it may all be over: According to banking sources, the Greek bank outflows on Friday soared to 700 million Euros from 272 million Euros on Thursday.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-05/greek-banks-verge-total-collapse-bank-run-surges-massively-depositors-yank-%E2%82%AC700-mill

Confused Economists Ponder Missing Wage Growth "Mystery"

From Zero Hedge:

Although we solved the "mystery" of America's missing wage growth some three months ago, the central planner/ Ivory Tower crowd is still confused. WSJ has taken the time to lay out nine prevailing theories from some of the country’s ‘finest’ economic minds...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-05/confused-economists-ponder-missing-wage-growth-mystery

Recent Advancements Improve 3D Printed Pharmaceuticals, Chocolate, and Hearts

From Makezine:

3D Printing Pharmaceuticals

Researchers in London are working on a way to 3D print pills. The shape and surface area of a pill are surprisingly important in how the drug is released into your system, so their idea is that specifically-shaped pills could meet a specific patient’s treatment needs. And futurists point out that one day, it might be possible to print drugs — or even dangerous things like viruses — at home.

Lenovo Takes On Fabrication

Consumer electronics giant Lenovo used the inaugural Lenovo Tech World Conference in Beijing to show some of the company’s first 3D printers, suggesting that they may be looking to move into the increasingly crowded market. One initial focus, surprisingly, might be culinary: a model on display printed out detailed models of chocolate.

Printing In Color

Irish developer Mcor Technologies is using selective deposition lamination to print crisp, vividly colored objects out of precisely-cut layers of paper, adhesive, and inkjet ink. The finished models are basically paper, not plastic or metal, but provide incredible texture and detail.

Printing For Surgeons

 

Doctors at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital are using 3D modeling and printing to replicate the cardiovascular anatomy of patients who need to undergo challenging operations. Using the models, surgeons can imagine each step of the operation in 3D, before even cutting into a patient. Nicklaus Children’s Hospital isn’t the first to use similar technology to prepare for surgery, though the technique is still young.

DARPA To Develop Additive Manufacturing Standards

To help ensure the quality of additive manufacturing, a new DARPA program will develop standards and techniques for measuring the strength and performance of 3D printed materials.
“The Open Manufacturing program is fundamentally about capturing and understanding the physics and process parameters of additive and other novel production concepts, so we can rapidly predict with high confidence how the finished part will perform,” said Mick Maher, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

Metal Printing Gets A VC Boost

3D printing outfit MatterFab raised $5.75 million in a Series A fund led by GE Ventures to continue work on its technology for printing metal. MatterFab plans to “disrupt” traditional manufacturing by optimizing the design of individual components. For example, they say that redesigning an airplane’s belt buckle to weigh slightly less could save $275 per year in fuel per buckle, adding up to millions annually. The new funds will be used to bring the company’s 3D metal printer to market.

http://makezine.com/2015/06/02/recent-advancements-improve-3d-printed-pharmaceuticals-chocolate-hearts/

What Is Daum Kakao And Why Did It Buy Path?

From TechCrunch:

It isn’t often that a company in Asia acquires a U.S. rival, particularly one that has surfed a wave of hype in Silicon Valley. But that’s exactly what happened this week after Path announced the sale of its flagship app to Korea’s Daum Kakao.
The deal is undisclosed, but, as an real acquisition involving two consumer messaging apps, it is notable, particularly as the mobile messaging space transitions from a period of hyper growth to one of consolidation and services.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/29/what-is-daum-kakao-and-why-did-it-buy-path/

Kyle Bass Was Right: Texas To Create Own Bullion Depository, Repatriate $1 Billion Of Gold

From Zero Hedge:

Most investors have heard Kyle Bass' rather eloquent phrase, "buying gold is just buying a put against the idiocy of the political cycle. It's that simple." However, what few may remember was his warnings in 2011, suggesting the University of Texas Investment Management Co. take delivery of its gold - as opposed to trusting it in the 'safe' hands of COMEX massively levered paper warehouse. Now, as The Star Telegram reports, Texas is going one step further with State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione asking the Legislature to create a Texas Bullion Depository, where Texas could store its gold. The goal is to create a secure facility that would allow the state to bring home more than $1 billion in gold bars that are owned by UTIMCO and are now housed at HSBC in New York.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-01/kyle-bass-was-right-texas-create-own-bullion-depository-repatriate-1-billion-gold

From Money To Psychology, Japan Reveals The Basis Of Economic Policy Corruption

From Zero Hedge:

At some point in the middle of the last century, economics of money shifted to economics of psychology. Abenomics is the perfect example of this faith-based policy. The Japanese economy, to any clear mind, took a huge turn for the worst under Abenomics yet its practitioners are still, somehow, given the final word on judging its performance, meaning that the mainstream still, somehow, subscribes to the religion.

Instead, in what matters most, real wages have shown absolutely no tendency toward everything that was expected. When starting QQE more than two years ago, it was fully intended that by now real wages would not just be rising but rising steadily and robustly. Japanese workers have suffered the opposite.

The reason for that is the very way in which the unemployment rate is misleadingly “happy”, connecting wages to what really looks like a still-gathering recession. In the past few months, when this post-tax recovery was supposed to materialize, Japanese businesses have been degrading their labor force, shifting a huge proportion at the margins out of full-time and into part-time. The Japanese still don’t do mass layoffs, instead they just cut hours strenuously while maintaining the “happy” unemployment rate.


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-01/money-psychology-japan-reveals-basis-economic-policy-corruption