The Dollar Time Is Coming To The Close - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts on gold and gangster capitalism

Malaysia to get Twentieth Century Fox theme park

Malaysian casino operator Genting's resort unit will build a 400 million ringgit ($125 million) Twentieth Century Fox Theme Park near the capital Kuala Lumpur, it said Friday.

The park -- to open in 2016 -- will be the first Twentieth Century Fox theme park with rides and other attractions based on such blockbusters as "Ice Age", "Life of Pi", "Alien" and "Night at the Museum", Resorts World Genting said in a statement.
Jeffrey Godsick, president of Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products, said the park marked the launch "of our global location based entertainment strategy".
"For the first time, audiences will soon be transported into the worlds of their favourite Twentieth Century Fox properties," he said.
Built on more than 25 acres (10 hectares), the park will feature more than 25 rides and attractions, the statement said.
It replaces an older outdoor theme park, which is part of Resorts World Genting located at the peak of an area known as Genting Highlands.
The resort, which also includes the country's sole casino and has attracted more than 20 million visitors per year since 2011, is undergoing a reportedly three billion ringgit refurbishment.
Muslim-majority Malaysia has banned gambling but allows non-Muslims to bet at the casino in Genting Highlands, on horse-racing and the national lottery.
Asia's first Legoland theme park opened last September in the southern Malaysian state of Johor in an economic hub across a narrow waterway from Singapore.

AirAsia Japan cancels hundreds of flights

 

AirAsia Japan has said the budget carrier will cancel hundreds of flights over two months before it ceases operations under the current brand at the end of October.

AirAsia Japan, operated jointly by Malaysia-based AirAsia and major Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA), will suspend 14 daily flights from September 1 to October 26, according to a company statement.
The carrier said the cancellations, which will reportedly affect 14,000 passengers, was because of a lack of planes to service all its routes.
The affected routes include flights linking Seoul to the central Japanese city of Nagoya and Tokyo to the northern city of Sapporo.
The carrier will cease operations by the end of October, just over a year after it started flying out of Tokyo's Narita airport in August.
Announcing the dissolution of AirAsia Japan in June, the Malaysian carrier cited a "fundamental difference of opinion between its shareholders on how the business should be managed, from cost management to where the domestic business operations should be based".
ANA however said the venture dissolved because it was not well known in Japan and could not register profits.
The Japanese carrier plans to launch a new budget brand in November.

It's Time To Start Taking This Global Food Riot Model Very Seriously

Source: Motherboard

You should already know the name Yaneer Bar-Yam. He’s the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute and made news for a 2011 paper tying global food prices to 2008 and 2011 riot outbreaks in Africa, and the general theory that above a certain benchmark food price, the conditions for rioting become prime. It’s not a strict cause and effect relationship—if value x, then riots—simply an observation that the probability of riots spikes at a certain point. Other things, like, say, Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire, might be the actual trigger, but day-to-day survival as it pertains to food is what allows the gun to fire.
Bar-Yam’s model has another “success,” according to a paper posted on the arVix pre-print server last week. Rioting that occurred last year during a platinum miner’s strike in South Africa—in which 34 strikers were killed by government forces—coincided neatly with a spike in the global price of maize. Stagnant wages matched with spiking food costs yields unrest. It matches well with a similar spike in 2008 that resulted in another series of riots in the country.
The graph is below is limited to South Africa and fairly self-explanatory:
Read More...

BREAKING NEWS: Amazon “declares war” on book industry

y Dennis Johnson

Is the evil clown still beatable?

Has the vicious end-game scenario we discussed just yesterday — whereby a government-sanctioned Amazon.com makes its move to cement its position as the most colossal monopoly in publishing history, and to savor the rewards — begun unfolding, and rapidly at that?
That’s what a special weekend edition of Shelf Awareness surmises. According to a report by SA editor John Mutter, late Friday Amazon, apparently to take advantage of lessened weekend attention and the company’s upcoming endorsement from President Obama …

… quietly began discounting many bestselling hardcover titles between 50% and 65%, levels we’ve never seen in the history of Amazon or in the bricks-and-mortar price wars of the past. The books are from a range of major publishers and include, for example, Inferno by Dan Brown, which has a list price of $29.95 but is available on Amazon for $11.65, a 61% discount; And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, listed for $28.95, offered at $12.04, a 58% discount; Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, listed at $24.95, available for $9.09, a 64% discount; and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, listed at $17.99, available for $6.55, 64% off ….
The discounts are far below the usual 40%-50% range sometimes offered by Amazon, warehouse clubs and other discounters and are more typical for remainders than frontlist hardcovers. In some cases, the hardcovers are priced below the Kindle editions.

At the moment, the extreme discounting seems limited to bestsellers. Still, that’s a large category, and a vital one to brick-and-mortar retailers, such as to Barnes and Noble, which has re-made itself into a chain that now consists mostly of bestsellers and merchandise, and to numerous indies that need bestseller sales to survive … which could make this potentially a devastating blow to those businesses, to say nothing of the damage it could do to publishers already feeling their books are severely under-priced.
It’s a dramatic enough move to prompt one prominent bookseller — Jack McKeown, who runs Books & Books in Westhampton Beach, New York — to tell Mutter that “It’s an open declaration of war against the industry.”
Why now? In a closing more strongly-worded than is his habit, Mutter cites McKeown and others speculating that …

… Amazon has been “emboldened” by the Justice Department‘s victory against five major publishers in the e-book agency model case as well as Wall Street’s acceptance of continued losses by Amazon for now in the expectation of retail domination–and major profits–eventually. This last point was seen most recently on Thursday, when Amazon’s quarterly results included a net loss and were below Wall Street expectations but did not provoke the usual rush to sell, as is the case with most companies whose results are disappointing.
Another possible reason for Amazon’s boldness is its apparently cozy relationship with the Obama administration–whose Justice Department pursued the agency model case, which mainly benefited Amazon. This relationship will be highlighted this coming Tuesday, when the president will give another major speech on the economy and aiding the middle class at, of all places, the Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga, Tenn. This is roughly equivalent of going to a Wal-Mart and calling for more of the kinds of jobs it offers.

All notions that echo our Friday commentary (and we couldn’t agree more with that last point — except to say Amazon takes reckless dis-concern for its labor to a level unachieved by Wal-Mart). But as the Shelf Awareness report adds, if this is indeed a sign that Amazon is playing out its end game, it’s happening much more rapidly than even we speculated, and with a dramatic dose of Amazon’s famous, always-surprising (in that it’s so unnecessary) thuggish chutzpah.
But here’s something perhaps even more surprising such a move could represent: Cause for optimism. Could this be Amazon’s first major mistake? Is this the opportunity the industry has been waiting for to galvanize opposition — and finally get the government to focus on the real monopoly in this industry? After all, this is the company’s most blatant, in-your-face flaunting ever of the prohibitions against loss-leader pricing inherent in our antitrust legislation, particularly the Robinson-Patman Act.
Then there’s the message it sends to Wall Street — “With your apparent blessing, we’re going to make our previous losses of amazing amounts of money look like nothing and really start losing some serious dough right now.”
And then there’s the way this exploits the company’s chumminess with not just the Obama administration, but Obama himself. Does the president really want to promote his jobs program by aligning himself with a company famous for stationing ambulances at the backdoors of its warehouses instead of improving working conditions, or that hires neo-Nazis to provide security at those warehouses, or that has a class-action lawsuits pending against it here and abroad for other unseemly labor practices? What happens if that association — of the president and the infamous employer — becomes an issue in itself?
Big what-if’s indeed, and not a lot of time to act on them (surely contributing to Amazon’s smugness) … and perhaps it’s the kind of thinking that comes with the mindless exhilaration of finding yourself at war, but, well, what if, indeed?
Stay tuned. The fat lady may not have sung yet.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

Empowering Citizens and Deterring Crime, One Free Shotgun At a Time

The 400 homeowners of the Oak Forest neighborhood in Northwest Houston were terrorized by 107 home invasions last year. It’s a neighborhood ripe for the picking by criminals who have no worries about being stopped in the act or even pursued by an already overworked police force.
But one Houston man has decided he’s fed up with the bullying and victimizing of innocent people and he’s evening the playing field. He’s put a plan into action that takes direct aim at the problem – in the form of 12 gauge and 20 gauge shotguns.

“We give brand new pump action shotguns…”
Kyle Coplen is offering free shotguns to every homeowner here in the Oak Forest area of Northwest Houston.
Coplen came up with the Armed Citizen Project in January, after he was disgusted by one of those break-ins when World War II veteran Albert Wood had his house broken into.
“It’s really upsetting because your home is your castle, it’s where you should feel safe.”
Coplen started spreading the word, accepting donations, and putting shotguns into the hands of every resident of Oak Forest who wants one.
“They’re easy to learn how to use. You don’t have to be an expert marksman.”
“No [I am not terrified that I am putting guns in peoples' hands]. To qualify for a firearm with us you have to pass a background check, and you have to take and pass our training course which is legal safety and tactical training.”
“For anyone who’s handled one of these, the sound of a shell being racked is the universal ‘Get Out of My House’ “

The Armed Citizens Project not only provides shotguns to those who need them in high crime neighborhoods, but trains residents on the weapons while also helping them to develop personal defense safety plans in the event they are confronted with a break-in.

Starting this August, the organization is planning to give away 500 shotguns to single moms in 15 cities across the country as part of their “Redistribution of Firepower”  initiative.

The Armed Citizen Project  is pleased to announce their latest effort to maximize the number of responsible gun owners in America; Armed Citizen Project’s Redistribution of Firepower Program.
The group’s founder, Kyle Coplen said “We see this as a buyback we can believe in, one that removes old and unused firearms from homes of existing gun owners, and uses them to create new responsible gun owners in our own communities.”
…

The Armed Citizen Project plans on training as many as 500 women nationally on August 10th, National Empowerment Day, and is arming entire neighborhoods in crime ridden cities.

Politicians and gun control advocates often cite guns as the problem, but statistics show that the highest levels of crime occur in those areas where residents have been disarmed, data that has been echoed in countries like the UK and Australia, where guns have been outlawed.
While they wrangle in Washington about what to do with soaring violent crime rates, the Armed Citizen Project has found a time-tested, simple and effective solution.

“We are empowering citizens and deterring crime, one free shotgun at a time.“

And the residents of the neighborhoods they have armed are grateful for the safety, security and peace of mind that comes with knowing they don’t have to wait critical minutes for help to arrive when violence is at their front door.
Hattip Steve Quayle, Investment Watch Blog

Fed Is Trying Like Crazy to Reflate a Phony Economy – Will They Spend $85B A Month Till I Retire?! US Dollar Soon Won’t Be Able to Buy Gold at Any Price

Fed Is Trying to Reflate a Phony Economy

Fed QE Will They Buy $85B A Month Till I Retire! Global Economic Crisis

US Dollar Collapse, Soon Won t Be Able to Buy Gold at Any Price – Bitcoin – Galt s Gulch

I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore