Two weeks ago, Microsoft set the utility space ablaze – metaphorically speaking – when we learned that the tech giant had made a deal with Constellation Energy to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, site of the worst nuclear accident in US history. Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said: “Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call. There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.” Indeed, back in April we forecast that the “Next AI trade“, i.e., going long the infrastructure that would make the AI revolution possible, would be far more lucrative than betting on the Nvidias, Dells and data centers of the world (which would also be a great trade, just not that great)…

The Next AI Trade https://t.co/3WxL99gq3L

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 2, 2024

… and so far we have been proven right: as shown below, the “Next AI Trade” as defined by us back in April, is not only up 25% in the past six months (congrats to those who put the trade on) but is the best performing AI basket YTD!

Of course: Microsoft was not the first to show that the way ahead is nuclear: back in March, Amazon Web Services acquired Talen Energy’s data center campus connected to the Susquehanna nuclear station in northeast Pennsylvania. Talen said it had sold the 960 MW Cumulus data center campus to Amazon for $650 million, setting the stage for countless similar transactions meant to provide power the insatiable AI sector, which gobbles up megawatts for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Microsoft won’t be the last either: according to Bloomberg, the last of the Big 3 megacaps, Google, is working with utilities in the US and other countries to assess nuclear power as a possible energy source for its data centers, underscoring surging interest in using atomic energy to feed the artificial intelligence boom.

“In the US, in highly regulated markets where we don’t have the opportunity to directly purchase power, we are working with our utility partners and the generators to come together to figure out how we can bring these new technologies — nuclear may be one of them — to the grid,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy at Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

She also didn’t rule out the possibility of using nuclear energy in countries like Japan.

For Google, having round-the-clock energy that isn’t intermittent is “critically important as we think about long-term growth,” Corio said.

As if that wasn’t enough to guarantee a new golden age for builders of modern electrical infrastructure in the US, last week energy Texas’ top electricity regulator had a message for Big Tech: If you want to build AI data centers next to power plants, you may have to build the power plant, too.

While it is no secret that AI developers are eager to build their data centers next to power plants to maximize efficiency and location, Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, said allowing construction near existing plants threatens resource adequacy on the grid if the data centers buy all the plants’ power. Texas has at times struggled to keep the lights on as its growing economy and population strain supplies.

“We can’t afford to lose any of our resources off the system at this point, especially given those load-growth projections,” Gleeson said in an interview at the Gulf Coast Power Association conference in Austin, where AI dominated the discussion.

Gleeson said his agency is telling data center developers they will need to supply some of their own power if they want to connect to the Texas grid within 12 to 15 months. Many of the corporations involved, he said, have among the biggest balance sheets in the world and can afford to fund construction of new power plants.

“We have to look at really the co-location issue as being a new facility coming with its own new generation,” Gleeson said.

Developers, he said, could even opt to “over build” — creating power plants that generate more electricity than their data centers need and selling the rest to the grid. “We’re happy to take it,” Gleeson said.

In short, the stellar returns of the “Next AI trade” in 2024 are just the start: as more capital is allocated to “those who provide the electricity to those who sell the picks and shovels for the next gold rush”, the basket will blow away every other segment of the market, and the biggest winners will be not those who bet on the revolutionary technology that is AI, but those who backed something much more promitive: the electricity needed to power it.

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the dust settles on his White House bid, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is focusing on his initiative, Make America Healthy Again, with the goal to turn around what he calls a chronic disease epidemic in the United States.

Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign on Aug. 23 and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee. Trump has promised to appoint Kennedy to a health-related role in a potential second term.

Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that ending his presidential campaign was a difficult decision, but it was a “necessary step” to achieving his mission.

“I prayed to God every day for the past 19 years that America’s health crisis would be solved for the next generation,“ he said. ”That is a major reason why I ran for president.”

Kennedy’s campaign platform focused on fighting “corporate capture of government agencies” and ending the chronic disease epidemic. An environmental lawyer and founder of Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy believes one issue impacts the other.

U.S. corporations, Kennedy said, have made America the sickest country in the world.

“We enriched these corporations and their captive agencies. And now they want to go and commoditize all of the things we value in our lives,” he said on a soggy afternoon on Sept. 30. Kennedy was among the keynote speakers at Rescue the Republic, a day-long rally that brought 6,500 supporters of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement to the National Mall in Washington.

Little will change until the corporate capture of government agencies is removed, he said.

“The FDA, USDA, and CDC are all controlled by giant or private corporations. Their function is no longer to improve and protect the health of Americans. Their function is to advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry that has transformed them into sock puppets,” he said at the event.

At an earlier address in Washington, Kennedy said the state of health care should be measured by patient outcomes, including chronic illness, childhood obesity, and life expectancy. He pointed out that the United States is significantly behind other countries with smaller economies, such as Italy, which has a higher life expectancy and spends less on health care.

“Today, we are an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food?” Kennedy said.

He said the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has contributed to the nation’s health care crisis by driving up insurance premiums and “making health care the largest driver of inflation while American life expectancy plummets.”

Since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy has been an outspoken critic of how elected officials and public health leaders managed the crisis.

The United States had one of the worst COVID outcomes in the world with deaths, he said.

“Our health leaders said that COVID was a pharmaceutical deficiency. This was a lie. We have the highest chronic disease rate on earth.”

Two-thirds of U.S. adults suffer from chronic health issues, Kennedy noted, and 74 percent are overweight or obese.

“When my uncle was president [1961-63], about 1 percent of the children in this country had a chronic disease. That number may be as high as 60 percent in America today,” he said.

He sees the chronic disease epidemic among American children as a form of abuse.

“Children are the most precious assets that we have in this country. How can we let this happen to them? How can we call ourselves a moral nation, the most exemplary democracy in the world, if we are treating our children like this?”

He said diseases that once mostly impacted the elderly are now increasingly common among children.

“About 18 percent of American teens now have fatty liver disease,” Kennedy stated. “When I was a boy, this only affected late-stage alcoholics who were elderly. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and old. Young adult cancers are up 79 percent, and 1 in 4 American women is on antidepressant medication. Forty percent of teens have a mental health diagnosis; 15 percent of high schoolers are on Adderall. No other country has anything like this.”

Ultra-processed foods are a primary culprit in the medical crisis impacting the young, he said.

“Seventy percent of American children’s diet is now ultra-processed, which means industrial, manufactured in a factory.”

He said these ultra-processed foods have chemicals that didn’t exist a century ago and are partly responsible for the rise in diseases in all ages.

“Many of these chemicals are banned from human consumption in Europe,” while “they are ubiquitous in American processed foods. We are literally poisoning our children systematically for profit,” he said.

“Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs, and toxic waste permeate every cell in our bodies”

At a rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Aug. 23, with Kennedy onstage, Trump announced that should he be reelected, he’d appoint Kennedy to a panel investigating the rise in chronic disease in children.

Trump said he would “establish a panel of top experts working with Bobby to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more.”

Kennedy stated: “If I’m given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years, we will watch the chronic disease burden lift dramatically.”

As part of the MAHA campaign, Kennedy is traveling around the country, delivering addresses, and appearing in podcasts and online forums.

On Oct. 8, he will join Trump, former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and multiple physicians for a Make America Healthy Again town hall.

Speculation has mounted that, if Trump wins, Kennedy might be named Secretary of Health and Human Services or the head of one of its sub-agencies.

The HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

If given the chance, Kennedy vowed to dismiss officials who lead those agencies and appoint replacements who will “turn them back into healing and public health agencies.”

The severed head of a newly elected mayor in southern Mexico was found on top of his vehicle just six days into his tenure. Footage of the gruesome scene was shared on X, highlighting Mexico as a lawless narco-state run by ultra-violent cartels. 

On Sept. 30, Alejandro Arcos was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital and second-largest city of the Mexican state of Guerrero. The newly elected mayor didn’t even last a week because, on Sunday, he was assassinated, with his head severed and placed on the top of the vehicle as a reminder to local government officials that cartels run the show. 

Story📌 https://t.co/OPKNxQ0tTM

— Trending Explained (@TrendingEx) October 7, 2024

Arcos represented an opposition coalition that included the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). His party took to social media, calling the assassination of the mayor a “cowardly crime.” PRI called for justice early this week.   

“Enough of violence and impunity! The people of Guerrero do not deserve to live in fear,” PRI wrote on X. 

Just three days before Arcos’ killing, another city official, Francisco Tapia, was killed, according to PRI president Alejandro Moreno. 

Leftist Mexico is a lawless narco-state. The ultra-violent cartels effectively run the nation. RIP Alejandro Arcos & Francisco Tapia.

“Mexican mayor assassinated days after taking office

Alejandro Arcos was killed just 6 days after he took office as mayor of the city of… https://t.co/HpYkJaMd2D pic.twitter.com/I0ezwBTFq8

— Prodigal (@ProdigalThe3rd) October 8, 2024

“They had been in office less than a week,” Moreno wrote on social media, adding, “They were young and honest public servants who were seeking progress for their community.”

Guerrero is a cartel hellhole and one of the deadliest states in Mexico. Cartels fight each other for control of drug production and human trafficking. This is one of the deadliest areas for elected public officials and journalists.

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration’s open southern borders have not just sparked the worst border crisis in American history but also empowered and enriched cartels that control massive human trafficking networks. 

Great job, Democrats. Open borders have sparked chaos on both sides of the border, along with importing the third world into America. 
 

Authored by Karl Denninger via Market-Ticker.org,

Self-rescue.

How many times do you need to see it before you believe it?

People don’t take these threats seriously and then they get either seriously harmed or die.  The good news is that technology and warning have both seriously improved in the last 100 years; those who are killed by a natural disaster are down huge, 90% or more, over the last 100 years.

Hurricanes, for example, were many times detected only on approach and thus by the time you knew there was serious trouble coming it was too late to do much in advance.  There were a huge number of them that nobody knows about at all because other than a hapless ship that wandered too close nobody ever saw the “fish spinners.”  Today we have satellites and thus anything incipient is known when it starts; this is an enormously good thing.

But there are many disasters that give little or no warning.  That it was going to rain a lot in the path of Helene was known; that a cold front was going to drop the sort of moisture it did in front of it into many of the mountain areas was not accurately forecast nor could it be.  But — that it was raining heavily in the two days previous was certainly something you could take note of.  The “set up” for what happened is very similar to what occurred in 1916 — and so was the outcome.  Similarly we can tell when there’s a risk of tornadoes in a given area today but not exactly where one will form or strike.  Earthquakes are, with few exceptions, 100% no-warning events.  You can determine you live in a seismic zone (e.g. New Madrid, San Andreas, etc.) but there is no way to know when the event will occur.

Many people believe that a “100 year flood” only happens every 100 years.  False, but even if it was true how long ago was 1916?  Uh, yeah.  No, a “100 year flood” means that there is a one percent chance each year and each trial, that is, each year, is independent just as is a coin toss and thus that one year did or did not have a flood has no bearing on whether the next year will.  To be more-accurate (I fat-fingered this originally, so this is corrected) you have a 99% chance per-year it won’t flood.  So if you live in a place that has a “100 year flood” risk over a 30 year mortgage there is a 73.97% chance you will not get flooded — and a 26% chance you will.  If you do get flooded in year 10 the risk of it happening again over the next 20 is about 18%.

That’s right — you have a one in four risk of getting hosed over 30 years of living somewhere under that threat and if you do  get hit in year ten you have an approximately one in five-and-a-half risk of getting nailed again over the next 20 years if you stay!

By the way if you’re in a place considered a five hundred year flood area the odds aren’t much better; its 99.8% likely per year you will not flood but cumulatively, over 30 years you still have about a six percent risk of getting screwed.  You probably think you are almost-certainly safe because 1 in 500 would put such events at least five human lives apart and thus “it ain’t gonna happen.”  You’re wrong.

These are mathematical facts.

Second, when and if it happens the help, whatever it, will go to the highest-density places first.  It has to because all resources are finite and thus the correct move is always to help the most people fastest and first.  This is the way triage is and its not cruel or anything of the sort; it is simply doing the best for the most you can with what you have available.  But do not mistake the fact that those resources will go there means you want to be there; if there are one million people in an area you’re one in a million and if only 100,000 can be helped you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting that assistance.  90% of the time you still go without and while the more-isolated place might not get any help for two weeks if you’re in the 90% it doesn’t matter, does it?

Concentrate your efforts on the basics of human need because in a disaster that’s what matters most and expect even in a population area to be able to self-provide for at least a week.  

The first and most-basic human need is air; if you can’t breathe it you’re dead. 

Fires and toxins are real risks, but they’re also ones that when it comes to breathable air your best option is to run at the first hint of trouble no matter where you are.

Second is drinkable water. 

Assuming you are not inordinately stressed you might make three days.  You’re probably worthless in two days and children are more susceptible to serious dehydration because their skin area is larger on a percentage basis, so they typically cannot make it past two days and are effectively useless in one day.  Do not expect help to reach you under any circumstance until roughly that amount of time and perhaps more.  Even with “local” relief that ignores exhortations to not go help personally (like here after Helene) it still will take that long because until people can get in there that’s just how it is.

Any allegedly “fresh” water source after a disaster has to be presumed contaminated and unsafe unless you have the means to treat it, and there are chemical contamination risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated in a disaster situation at all with water at ground level.  If you have a traditional hot water heater and your home or other residence is physically intact you have somewhere around 50 gallons of usable water in it.  It should still be filtered with a Sawyer and/or treated with Aquamira drops (yes, buy both well in advance!) before consumption, particularly after a few days, but it will not be full of contaminants because it was full of clean water when the system went down.  Keep a short hose around for this purpose and make sure you turn off the electrical or gas feed so once you start using it when water is restored it does not “dry fire.”  If you do not have any source of stored water (e.g. you have a tankless system and didn’t fill anything in advance) then bottled water is your next and last resort.  Everyone needs to be prepared to deal with this all the time; even if you’re on a private well if there’s no power the pump won’t work (more on that in a minute.)

Third is personal shelter from elements, which includes clothing and similar.  Enough to be out of the wind and elements (e.g. rain, etc.) is frequently enough but not always.  Being wet, particularly in wind, can nail you with hypothermia even in moderately cool temperatures and in colder temperatures it is rapidly deadly.  Some of this is beyond your control and if your housing is destroyed in adverse circumstances securing from that problem is, after immediate threats (e.g. incoming flash flooding) your first priority.  Tools of some description, all the way down to a pocket knife, make a difference — perhaps a really big difference.  Having some preparation against this (e.g. a shell rain jacket, disposable space blankets, etc.) is inexpensive and everyone should have at least some elements of that available at any time.

The last utter essential is personal protection.  It would be nice if people didn’t try to take advantage but some will.  Remember that the option to accept a “lesser injury” does not exist when there is no prompt medical care available, and there won’t be in this situation.  Exactly what you choose to do in this regard is a personal choice and I won’t go into it on this side of the blog but it is critical to remember that any significant injury can trivially wind up being fatal if you can’t get medical attention for a day or two.

The rest is very situational but these first points are not.

Expect communications by “ordinary means” to be unavailable.  This time around Starlink worked when nothing else did — if you had power available.  No power?  You’re still screwed.  And don’t kid yourself as to the requirements either; those units require quite a bit of juice, about 100 watts which is non-trivial.

Note that in an actual emergency where ordinary communications (e.g. your cellphone) are unavailable any means of transmission, on any frequency, is legal to summon aid to prevent the imminent loss of either life or property.  One of the cheapest means of doing this is any of the HAM-capable Beofeng radios — the model 5RM is one of the better options, but hardly the only one, they are entirely portable and can charge over USB.  They are not, however, waterproof — there are major-manufacturer ones (e.g. ICOM) that are up to and including being submersible but they’re a lot more expensive.  

Note that while listening is always legal without any sort of license at all it is illegal (and the FCC means it) to transmit on Ham bands without at least (for these) a Technicians license — however in an actual emergency where serious and imminent threat to life or property exists and regular communications are unavailable it is lawful to use anything you can manage to talk to anyone on any frequency.  

§ 97.403 Safety of life and protection of property.

No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available.
§ 97.405 Station in distress.

(a) No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station in distress of any means at its disposal to attract attention, make known its condition and location, and obtain assistance.

(b) No provision of these rules prevents the use by a station, in the exceptional circumstances described in paragraph (a) of this section, of any means of radiocommunications at its disposal to assist a station in distress.

In advance look up the local repeaters in your area and program them in.  Repeaters are typically located up high, have decent power and someone who is competent operating and maintaining them.  You can listen lawfully any time you want; if you can hear a repeater you can probably get to it, and the Hams that operate them will put a lot of effort into getting those back on the air expeditiously because they are one of the key means of communications in emergencies.  Also program in 146.520Mhz as a last-ditch; that is the universal North American (US and Canada) simplex (non-repeater) calling frequency and if there are Hams in the area with a radio on standby in an emergency if you’re in range they will likely be able to hear and talk with you.  The best strategy with one of these in an actual emergency, after one attempt to reach the local repeaters, is to check once an hour on the hour listening for others; remember that once the battery is depleted the radio is worthless without a charge and it takes a lot more power to transmit than receive.  Don’t waste the power you have in the unit if there is no charging source.

This is a literal $30 piece of equipment that can save your life; if you have an EPIRB/PLB that works in extreme emergencies as well but they’re expensive and these are not plus once you set off an EPIRB/PLB it is “used” as the battery will be depleted and since it sends coordinates you have to stay put once you set it off or they go where you no longer are.  Just be aware of the limitations of whatever backups you have but do have one or more.

Another thing to know: Starlink is working on direct to phone links.  How far away that is for general use (they’re testing with T-Mobile now) I do not know, but for low-bandwidth (e.g. text message) applications in the next few years this probably will be available and again is a life-saving thing if and when it enters operation.  The hardware is not cheap for “regular” and “mini” “full” Starlink kits (~$600 or so) and the bad news with them is that at present they cannot self-provision, so in an emergency you can’t turn it on if you have one stored at your location.  Starlink may eventually fix this (and should, as it makes “terminal sitting in box” a VERY useful emergency communications device) but as of right now with no way to get to the Internet separately on a non-active unit you can’t activate it.

Carbon-based fuels and all that run on them are your friend in such a circumstance.  Generators, chainsaws, heavy equipment and similar all run on carbon fuels.  Note that gasoline should be rotated at least once a year if stabilized and non-ethanol and yes, you do not want ethanol in the fuel if at all possible for this use.  If you’re even modestly away from civilization or could be cut off from power for any extended period of time two 5 gallon cans you rotate at least once a year (put them in your car and go get new fills) is an excellent emergency investment, assuming your residence survives.  Those of us who have lived in Florida know darn well that those gas cans can be life-savers when a hurricane destroys the power feed to your area.  That little generator will keep your refer and a few lights going.  Consider the inverter models if you don’t have one already and are only after real emergency use (e.g. the refer and a few lights, or your fuel-driven furnace controls and blower) — they sip fuel compared to the older “straight” models under light loads; a refrigerator cycles on and off and modern LED lights consume almost nothing power-wise.  Instead of close to a gallon an hour these will often run anywhere from three to eight hours on a gallon of fuel.  Any generator needs to be exercised, with a load on it, every couple of months for 20 minutes or so because you must know it will start if you need it.

If you’re on a well without prior planning your pump will not work on a backup generator; the starting current requirements are too high.  You can put a soft starter in and if you have a 240V capable generator you should as with one a modest generator will run your well pump.  Without a soft starter look at the label on the pump motor for “LRA” (locked-rotor amps) as that’s what the generator has to be able to deliver without tripping on a “surge” basis or it will not start it.  Microair makes a suitable unit (they have both 120V and 240V units available; there are other brands for RV use that will work for 120V pumps but most well pumps are 240V.)

In colder climates pay attention to your heat source(s) and a backup for whatever you use for heat is not a suggestion.  Heat pumps are worthless without utility power; they simply draw too much power to run reasonably on a backup generator, except perhaps on a natural-gas fueled whole-house unit.  A gas or propane furnace will run on a small generator if you have a transfer switch for it which is quite inexpensive and you should put one of those in for that specific reason even if you don’t have a larger generator and transfer switch (which are expensive) setup.

Note that just now the media is full of stories about “full time” and “in major area” response on the ground.  Its been over a week since the storm hit and had cleared off and just now we’re seeing reports of government helicopters, larger aircraft and similar supplies for relief — up until now it has all been private parties doing it because they want to help those in the area and government relief, with few exceptions, has been, like in so many other cases, absent.

In short expect that even in a heavily-populated area you are on your own for a week and had better be able to deal with that.  In a less-populated (or rural) area it will likely be two weeks or more before you have anything approaching reasonable access to relief efforts, and thus you need to be prepared for two week to a month of being cut off.  If you live somewhere that access can be seriously damaged (e.g. there is only a single mountainside secondary road that reaches your location) you need to be contemplating how you’ll deal with that if the road is seriously compromised or destroyed and either have a plan to deal with it or be prepared to bug out if there’s any possibility of it happening — even if the odds are very low.

Take this seriously folks and realize that you cannot outrun either a mudslide/flash flood or storm surge.  Surge is something you have some warning with as hurricanes are well-forecast but flash floods are in many cases akin to tornadoes and while the conditions that can lead to them are usually forecast the event itself often occurs with very little warning.  Both move at speeds that are wildly faster (double or more!) than you can run and in any vehicle if you encounter even one obstruction trying to flee it will overtake and kill you.  The only sane option is to not be there, but if you’re trapped where there’s no good way out then you have to be able to deal with whatever happened until you can either cut your way out or relief can get to you and in the first days to a week or so the most-likely people to be able to and who will help you are private individuals who live in the area — not the government in any form whether federal, state or local.

Now after you’ve read all this above and let it soak in for a bit go into your bathroom or kitchen and do an assessment of your medicine cabinet.

What happens if everything in that cabinet is gone and you can’t get more?  If you can do something about that and don’t all the above may well mean exactly nothing.

Next take off all your clothes and find a mirror in your house.  Have a good look and don’t lie to yourself.

If you have to hike 5 miles over rough terrain to get water and haul enough back for a couple of days for the people in your household can you do it?  Incidentally that requirement is roughly a gallon per person, per day and each gallon masses 8lbs so you’re talking about “rucking” 35-40lbs (with the pack) on the five-mile return if there are four people in your household.  If you have to do it, and can’t, you will die.  Or if you need to do the same thing with 3-4 gallons of gas for a generator (you do have one, right?) to run your well pump for a few days and keep the refer operating — can you?

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

A goodly part of the “strong” economy illusion derives from cherry-picking the hideously misleading numbers contained in the BLS establishment survey’s monthly “jobs” count. As we noted in my previous piece, for instance, the index of hours worked in the high-pay, high-productivity goods-producing sector has actually contracted by 18% since peaking way back in 1978, but that has purportedly been more than off-set by a 128% rise in the hours index for the Leisure & Hospitality (L&H) sector, of which 75% is attributable to bars, restaurants and other food service operations.

Alas, however, what might be termed the “great jobs replacement” caper was not remotely a case of apples-to-apples. The typical part-time, near minimum wage “job” in the L&H sector pays the equivalent $24,400 per year or just 37% of the $66,000 annual equivalent for goods-producing jobs. So in terms of economic throw-weight, or the implied market value of output and income, we have been replacing prime labor force players with what amounts to third-stringers on waivers.

But in some cases, it may actually be even worse than that. To wit, neither the BLS employment data nor the GDP accounts are without systematic bias owing to the fact that they were designed and institutionalized mainly by Keynesian economists on the government payroll.  The latter naturally equated economic output and jobs with that which their data framework measured—even as such macro-data was mainly of importance to Keynesian policy makers fiddling with the Washington-based fiscal and monetary dials in an attempt to enhance the greater economic good.

Accordingly, the Keynesian fathers of our contemporary economic data dumps didn’t care much about vast sections of the non-monetized economy including household labor, self-service activities (i.e. doing your own driving, shopping and lawn mowing) and the so-called underground economy conducted in cash and away from the tax collectors, regulators and law-enforcers.

The problem, of course, is that when economic activity migrates from the informal and underground economy to the monetized economy it gets recorded as additional output, jobs and income in our Keynesian labor and GDP accounts. In many such cases, however, no new output or income is actually being generated; it’s just being newly recorded.

For instance, between 2014 and 2023 the number of US taxi and limo drivers more than doubled from 131,800 to 264,600. But we do not believe that activity and employment in this sector actually grew at the implied 8.1% per annum rate. What happened is that the explosion of Uber and Lyft services caused many traditional self-drivers to leave their cars in the garage, and to utilize for-hire drivers instead—even, perhaps, as they played video games on their iPhones in the back seat.

Nor is this illustration a trivial matter. The chart below, in fact, tracks a huge movement of un-measured household activity that has migrated into the monetized and BLS-counted economy since the peak of goods-producing employment back in 1978.

To wit, the employment rate (purple line) for the prime working age female population (25-54 years) rose from 56.5% in Q1 1978 to 75.4% in Q2 2024. Accordingly, the work of nearly one-fifth of the prime age female population moved from the uncounted household economy into the monetized economy during that 46-year span. Self-evidently, however that did not represent new output or jobs but merely the monetization of what was already there.

Moreover, in round job count numbers this migration from the household to the monetized economy was not inconsiderable. During that span the number of prime age women employees in the US rose from 23.5 million in Q1 1978 to 48.9 million in Q2 2024. But nearly half of that 25.3 million gain was due to the rise in the female employment ratio and therefore the counting of jobs that had previously not been recorded.

In the overall scale of the US economy, therefore, these 12.2 million female worker migrations accounted for nearly 20% of the total gain in US employment from 94.8 million in Q1 1978 to 161.2 million at present.

Needless to say, the tracking of this migration of output and jobs to the monetized economy was not simple and linear, such as homemakers becoming cooks in restaurants. In some cases, women historically employed in the household (or men for that matter, too) became doctors who, in turn, employed day care workers to care for their own children and housekeepers to handle the cleaning and laundry.

Still, when you look at the three broad BLS employment categories which are closely related to household work that has become monetized, the migration of female workers from the household economy to the monetized economy is plainly apparent.

Thus, during the 46 years between 1978 and Q2 2024 total US employment grew by 1.16% per annum, which we use as a proxy for the rate of labor input growth in the overall economy. However, women employed in the three leading sectors that absorbed household work, the growth rates were far higher.

46 Year Gains:

• Women Employees in Health and Private Education (red line): +15.37 million workers and 3.13% per annum growth.

• Women Employees in Leisure & Hospitality: +6.08 million workers and 2.58% per annum growth.

• Women Employees in Other Services: +2.17 million workers and 2.54% per annum growth.

In short, the gain of women employees in these three labor market segments alone totaled 23.62 million over 1978 to 2024, thereby accounting for nearly 36% of the total gain in BLS reported employment during the last 46 years. Yet a very substantial portion of the former gain represented neither new economic growth nor new jobs.

Instead, it reflected the sweeping change in social mores during that period and in the role of women in economic life, as they moved into all segments of the paid labor force. At the same time, the household sector, in turn, became a major new employer of paid labor at restaurants, laundries, childcare centers, cleaning services, home health agencies, nursing homes etc. of what had previously been unmonetized household output and employment.

Employment Ratio of Women Aged 25 to 54 Years And Employees in Leisure & Hospitality, Health Care And Private Education and Other Services 

The implication is straight forward. The ballyhooed “incoming data” is not all it’s cracked-up to be. Indeed, bringing the analysis exactly to the current state of the US economy, one simple data set needs be noted. To wit, the contrast between the growth of Federal debt since Q4 2019 and nominal GDP tells you all you need to know.

Change Between Q4 2019 and Q2 2024:

• Public Debt: +11.63 trillion.

• GDP: + $6.75 trillion.

• Debt Growth As % Of GDP Growth: 172%.

Of course, the Biden-Harris apologists imply there is nothing to see here—just some big numbers tooling around the page. Or merely a case of Washington at work, helping the macroeconomy to move along at a goodly place.

Not exactly. During the heyday of American prosperity between 1954 and 1970, the public debt grew by a scant 2.2% per annum at a time when nominal GDP was expanding by 6.5% per year. Accordingly, the public debt rose by only 16% of the gain in nominal GDP, the exact opposite of the past four years.

Change Between 1954 and 1970:

• Public Debt: +$110.1 billion.

• GDP: + 689.0 billion.

• Debt Growth as a % of GDP Growth: 16%

Nor did such tepid fiscal stimulus mean that real growth and living standards faltered. During the 1954-1970 period, real final sales grew by 3.75% per annum or by nearly double the 1.93% per annum gain since the pre-pandemic peak in Q2 2020.

Even more impressively, during the 1954-1970 heyday, real median family income growth far outpaced the last four years as shown below. During the former period, real median family income rose from $38,730 to $65,050 in 2023 dollars or by 3.29% per annum. By contrast, the $101,700 real median family income posted for 2019 clocked in lower at $100,800 in 2023.

Real Median Family Income, 1954 to 2024

The same story holds with respect to total public and private debt. Total debt rose from $558 billion in 1954 to $1.648 trillion in 1970. The resulting gain of $1.098 trillion was just slightly more than the $700 billion rise of GDP during the period.

By contrast, during the 4.5 years between Q4 2019 and Q2 2024 total public and private debt rose from $74.9 trillion to $99.8 trillion. The staggering gain of nearly $25 trillion far-outpaced the $6.8 trillion growth of nominal GDP during the period.

In short, there is nothing organic, natural, sustainable or strong about the GDP numbers currently being posted—notwithstanding all the Biden-Harris boasting to the contrary.

Actually, the US economic is being artificially bloated and levitated by cheap debt compliments of the Fed and other central banks around the world.

As we said at the onset, it has never been true that you can spend, borrow and print your way to prosperity. And the tottering Biden-Harris Economy proves that truism in spades.

*  *  *

The truth is, we’re on the cusp of an economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

Authored by Ron Paul

Over the weekend, the Commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel to “coordinate” with the Israeli military and plan a military strike against Iran. Think about that for a moment: one of the highest-ranking officers in the US military is planning a war in a foreign country against another foreign country which will be fueled by American weapons, American intelligence, and American tax dollars.

Did that foreign country – Iran – attack the United States or threaten Americans? No, it did not. What did Iran do to warrant a CENTCOM commander bringing the weight of the US military into play to plan a war – possibly WWIII? It retaliated against Israeli airstrikes including the assignation of a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

It was the Israeli missile attack on Tehran – an unprecedented event – that set off this chain of escalation, but few would know if from media coverage. This war fever between Israel and Iran not only has nothing to do with us, but our increasing involvement actually hurts our national interests in the region.

After a deadly and futile three-year proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the last thing we need is another war in the Middle East, especially against Iran. But make no mistake, war is what we are getting. This Administration has even offered to “compensate” Israel with even more weapons and diplomatic support if they hit targets of the US choosing and avoid others in Iran.

Imagine if China sent military officials to Iran to pay Tehran to make sure some US targets were struck and others avoided. Would we consider it Iran’s war against us, or China’s war against us? Both?

Has Congress declared war on Iran or even authorized the war? No.

Has this Administration explained to us why Americans suffering after the catastrophic Hurricane Helene are on their own because we need to spend billions on a war that is none of our business? No. The neocons have wanted this war for decades and for them it’s always America last.

This war will make us less free, less safe, and much poorer. There will be no benefits at all, only downside.

Will the Biden/Harris Administration greenlight Israel taking out Iran’s oil production and other energy facilities? That would mean the average American already suffering under high inflation and an economic downturn would be paying orders of magnitude higher for not just gasoline, but everything. Consider the cost of shipping and trucking and every aspect of our lives that depends on world energy prices. It would be an economic calamity for Americans for the benefit of a foreign country. This is what they call patriotism?

If @CENTCOM is helping “coordinate Israel’s retaliation” on Iran, that is a direct violation of US law.

Unless Congress authorizes US military action, Pentagon cannot “coordinate” the “military forces of any foreign country” if “such forces will become engaged in hostilities” https://t.co/hLEkf6FgYU pic.twitter.com/k97Rr53XqP

— Just Foreign Policy (@justfp) October 5, 2024

We are sleepwalking into a catastrophic war, lulled into compliance by non-stop media propaganda. More billions will be drained from our economy and many more innocent lives will be lost in this madness. Almost a quarter of a century later we still have not learned the lessons of 9/11.

When we go abroad wreaking havoc and destruction on foreign populations who have not harmed us we create enemies who will seek revenge. We harm ourselves. And we risk blowback. The time to oppose this impending war is NOW!

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Low natural gas prices, hotter summer weather, and new generation capacity sent U.S. natural gas-fired power generation to a new all-time high this summer, on some days of which gas-fired electricity made up nearly half of total power output.  

This summer’s record-high was hit on August 2, when America’s natural gas-fired power plants generated more than 7 million megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.

The record on that day beat by 6.8% the previous summer’s record set on July 28, 2023, the EIA said.

Nine out of the ten days with the most U.S. natural gas-fired electricity generation on record occurred in the summer of 2024. Of those, six occurred in August 2024.

Overall electricity generation for the summer of 2024, June through August, rose by 3% compared to the summer of 2023. The daily average for natural gas-fired electricity generation for the summer this year also increased by 3% year-over-year, to 5.9 million MWh, according to the EIA’s Hourly Electric Grid Monitor.

“Over the past few years, the balance of sources of electricity generation in the United States—especially in the summer—has shifted to more renewables and natural gas and less coal,” the EIA said.

“As electric generation capacity from renewable sources grows, natural gas is used increasingly to balance the intermittent nature of electricity produced from wind and solar.”

So far this year, natural gas-fired power generation in the United States has soared to a record high.

U.S. power producers generated a total of 55.6 million MWh from gas-fired power plants between January and September, up by 5% compared to the same period of last year, according to data from LSEG quoted by Reuters’s columnist Gavin Maguire. This is also the highest power generation from natural gas since at least 2021.

In recent years, power demand in the United States, the single largest portion of which is delivered by gas-fired power plants, has soared and is expected to continue to surge with rising electrification and more electricity necessary to power and cool data centers.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Costco shoppers are purchasing the store’s 1-ounce gold bars at a high rate despite the precious metal’s record-high prices in recent months, according to a recent survey.

Around 77 percent of Costco outlets that sell bullion bars were sold out in the first week of October, a Bloomberg survey found.

The news outlet and financial services company said it surveyed 101 stores in 46 states that sell gold and recently restocked the precious metal.

The apparently high number of sales comes even as gold prices have surged in the past year or so. In the past 12 months, gold is up about 41 percent, going from around $1,864 per ounce to $2,640 per ounce.

According to data provided by the American Precious Metals Exchange (APMEX), the spot price for gold hit a record $2,686 per ounce on Sept. 26.

Costco started selling the 1-ounce gold bars in late 2023 in its stores and via its website, available only to members.

Since then, the company has started selling silver coins and now platinum bars and coins.

Wells Fargo in April estimated that the big-box retailer is selling up to $200 million in gold per month.

“Our work suggests there has been significant interest given Costco’s aggressive pricing and high level of customer trust,” Edward Kelly, an analyst with Wells Fargo, wrote in a note to clients at the time.

“The accelerating frequency of Reddit posts, quick online sell-outs of product, and [Costco’s] robust monthly [ecommerce] sales suggests a sharp uptick in momentum since the launch,” he added.

Meanwhile, Costco Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip told Bloomberg that gold and silver are a “meaningful part” of the company’s growth, adding that Costco is happy to have the capacity to offer those products.

“It’s a great example of our merchants constantly finding new ways to deliver uniqueness and value,” he said.

The Epoch Times contacted Costco for comment but received no response by Tuesday morning.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has warned that gold isn’t a “safe” investment because “gold and other precious metals are highly volatile and past performance is not a good predictor of future returns.”

“Like other commodities, precious metal prices rise as demand goes up, so when economic anxiety or instability is high, the people who typically profit from precious metals are the sellers,” the CFTC said.

After the success of its selling of gold and silvers, Costco recently started selling platinum bars and coins. Last week, the retail giant listed Canadian Platinum Maple Leaf coins for $1,089.99 and Swiss-made one-ounce platinum bars for $1,089.99, according to an Epoch Times review of its website.

But like its gold and silver offerings, Costco places limitations on how many bars one can purchase at a given time.

In July, Costco said it will hike its annual membership fee by $5 to $65 for the “gold star” members, and to $130 from $120 for executive members, effective Sept. 1. Company executives also recently noted that consumers are spending less during the most recent quarter.

“There’s definitely some signs that the consumer is being very choiceful in how they’re spending their dollars,” Millerchip, the CFO of Costo, said on a post-earnings call on Sept. 26.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration have been locked in disputes on when the Starship mega-rocket will blast off from SpaceX Starbase in Texas. 

After a month of delays, SpaceX revealed on X that Starship’s fifth launch could begin as early as Sunday. The initial launch date was slated for mid-September. 

Starship’s fifth flight test is preparing to launch as soon as October 13, pending regulatory approval → https://t.co/hibmw2lVv1 pic.twitter.com/Suw1kKLHiE

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 7, 2024

Since the FAA fined SpaceX $633,000 for safety violations in Florida and $633,000 for environmental violations at Starbase – while slowing down rocket launches, the private space company has moved to speed up timelines. Company execs have warned that FAA regulatory hurdles are nothing more than ‘lawfare’ by Biden-Harris admin officials.  

San Antonio Express-News noted, “Chatter of a mid-October launch began last week when a Coast Guard Notice to Mariners about the launch appeared online.” However, the FAA dismissed that, saying, “We are not issuing launch authorization for a launch to occur in the next two weeks—it’s not happening.”

SpaceX provided more details about the upcoming Starship test flight:

Starship’s fifth flight test could launch as soon as October 13, pending regulatory approval.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app. The launch window will open as early as 7:00 a.m. CT. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates.

Flight 4 was a tremendous success. A fully successful ascent was followed by the first ever booster soft-landing in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship making it through a brilliant reentry, before its own landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The fifth flight test of Starship will aim to take another step towards full and rapid reusability. The primary objectives will be attempting the first ever return to launch site and catch of the Super Heavy booster and another Starship reentry and landing burn, aiming for an on-target splashdown of Starship in the Indian Ocean.

Extensive upgrades ahead of this flight test have been made to hardware and software across Super Heavy, Starship, and the launch and catch tower infrastructure at Starbase. SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success. We accept no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only be attempted if conditions are right.

Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria must be met prior to a return and catch attempt of the Super Heavy booster, which will require healthy systems on the booster and tower and a manual command from the mission’s Flight Director. If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The returning booster will slow down from supersonic speeds, resulting in audible sonic booms in the area around the landing zone. Generally, the only impact to those in the surrounding area of a sonic boom is the brief thunder-like noise with variables like weather and distance from the return site determining the magnitude experienced by observers.

Starship will fly a similar trajectory as the previous flight test with splashdown targeted in the Indian Ocean. This flight path does not require a deorbit burn for reentry, maximizing public safety while still providing the opportunity to meet our primary objective of a controlled reentry and soft water landing of Starship.

One of the key upgrades on Starship ahead of flight was a complete rework of its heatshield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer, and additional protections between the flap structures. This massive effort, along with updates to the ship’s operations and software for reentry and landing burn, will look to improve upon the previous flight and bring Starship to a soft splashdown at the target area in the Indian Ocean.

With each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we’re on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design. By continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we’ll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s ability to access space.

Last month, Musk explained at the All-In Summit about troubling lawfare by the feds to slowdown Starship’s progress.

🚨 MUSK: “The next fight of Starship is ready to fly. We are waiting on regulatory approval 🤦‍♂️. It shouldn’t be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another.” 😂 💀 pic.twitter.com/O5mx71nAqr

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) September 10, 2024

“Lawfare costs lives,” Musk noted last week on X. 

Had the FCC not illegally revoked the SpaceX Starlink award, it would probably have saved lives in North Carolina.

Lawfare costs lives. https://t.co/FF0ugexP2g

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2024

Musk called out the fed’s “lawfare” on Tucker Carlson. 

Elon Musk warns that if Kamala Harris somehow wins the election, she will go after free speech, noting “They’ll try to prosecute X, they’ll try to prosecute me. The amount of lawfare we see taking place is outrageous.” Report here: https://t.co/4YqtxAQEcY pic.twitter.com/mM3VLcfKz1

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) October 8, 2024

All of this lawfare against Musk and his companies is because Democrats hate X’s free speech. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry said the quiet part out loud in recent days and weeks. 

Authored by Bobbie Anne Flower Cox via The Brownstone Institute,

was interviewed last week by the New York Post about an extremely important issue…a proposed amendment to our Constitution here in New York which is called “Proposal Number One” (aka “Prop One”). Though it is a statewide, New York ballot initiative (meaning it will be on the ballot for every New Yorker to vote on across the State), its consequences (if it passes) will undoubtedly ricochet across the nation. In other words, if we don’t stop it here, now, then it’s going to pass, and then it will come to your state sooner or later.

How am I sure of that? Well, firstly because historically speaking, radical policies that begin in New York tend to have a ripple effect once they take hold here. And secondly, because this proposed amendment is a Trojan Horse of epic proportions, meaning it’s not at all what the left is saying it is. As they so often do, they dress it up in word salad style so that you don’t know what it actually means. The Archdiocese in New York has come out against this proposed amendment, and the Catholic Conference including Cardinal Dolan, calls it a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

https://nypost.com/2024/09/30/us-news/ny-ballot-measure-could-allow-ill…

The radical politicians who thought this up are the same who gave us radical, failed policies such as No-Cash-Bail, Clean Slate, Raise the Age, and Congestion Pricing. They are selling Prop One as an “Equal Rights Amendment” that will protect abortion in New York, though none of those words actually appear on the ballot. Nonetheless, when you read it, it sounds “fair” – I mean who doesn’t want equal treatment for all? But in reality, if it passes, it will not give anyone any new “equal rights” since all the categories in there are already protected under our NYS laws. However, what it will do is weaken your rights, and further empower the radical politicians who run our government. Here’s how…

Let’s start with what language you’ll actually see on your ballot (either at the bottom or on the back of the ballot). This is the introductory language:

Amendment to Protect Against Unequal Treatment

This proposal would protect against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy. It also protects against unequal treatment based on reproductive healthcare and autonomy.

A “YES” vote puts these protections in the New York State Constitution.

A “NO” vote leaves these protections out of the State Constitution.

Then after that, you will see the actual proposed change to our Constitution which will read as follows:

Concurrent Resolution of the Senate and Assembly proposing an amendment to section 11 of article 1 of the constitution, in relation to equal protection

Section 1. Resolved (if the Assembly concur), That section 11 of article 1 of the constitution be amended to read as follows:

§ 11. a. No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof. No person shall, because of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed [or], religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy, be subjected to any discrimination in [his or her] their civil rights by any other person or by any firm, corporation, or institution, or by the state or any agency or subdivision of the state, pursuant to law.

b. Nothing in this section shall invalidate or prevent the adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice that is designed to prevent or dismantle discrimination on the basis of a characteristic listed in this section, nor shall any characteristic listed in this section be interpreted to interfere with, limit, or deny the civil rights of any person based upon any other characteristic identified in this section.

   §  2. Resolved (if the Assembly concur), That the foregoing amendment be submitted to the people for approval at the general election to be held in the year 2024 in accordance with the provisions of the election law.

Explanation – Matter in underscored is new; matter in brackets [ ] is old law to be omitted.

Sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? 

It’s not!

If Prop One passes, it will unleash a massive tidal wave of chaos upon our citizenry, our norms, and what we hold dear in our society.

In other words, life as you know it will no longer be the norm. If Prop One passes it can lead to:

• the weakening of your parental rights and giving the government control of your children (which is already happening in schools across the State thanks to this outrageous and unconstitutional “guidance” the Department of Education issued last year); 

• making New York a permanent sanctuary state where illegal immigrants (including criminals) can’t be deported; 

• opening the door for non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to claim a constitutional right to receive the same taxpayer-funded benefits that citizens receive (like government assistance, medicare, social security, disability compensation, subsidized health care, etc.) and could eventually include the right to vote (see my X post on that HERE);

• abolition of girls’ sports and female spaces like women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, showers, dormitories, prisons, etc. (see my X post on that HERE);

• abolition of single-sex spaces such as high schools, colleges, clubs, organizations, etc.; 

• the chilling of free speech (see my X post on that HERE); 

• the legalization of reverse discrimination (see paragraph b of Prop One noted above).

Defeating Prop One:

A terrific cartoonist, Anne Gibbons, has been creating insightful drawings about Prop One. Here’s one of her latest cartoons which captures the Trojan Horse element of this anti-American proposed amendment:

Republished from the author’s Substack