Pedro's Corner

Praise Odin.

motion to praise odin, sustained.

Next order of business: The Central Bank Conundrum

From Seeking Alpha’s Wall street Breakfast:

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note is ticking lower, down 2 bps to 2.59%, as investors await a policy decision by the Federal Reserve. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to keep rates steady and lower its “dot plot,” boosting U.S. stock index futures overnight by 0.2%. Jerome Powell has also signaled an announcement on when the Fed will end the runoff of its $4T portfolio later this year, as well as disclosing the right combination of Treasurys to hold.

The problem with central bank rates is that there is no one in particular that is directly affected by whether they make a profit or not. We are obviously all affected in terms of the inmense amount of money this involves, how it alters the dynamics of markets, but there are no direct stakeholders in them turning a profit. Or, put another way, private capital is not invested in them making a profit. So you understand, it’s not that investors don’t understand the benefits for the economy as a whole of the Fed raising rates, it’s just that there is no way for them to capitalize on it. Higher rates only means less money, so their stocks go down and other stocks go down and it is a big problem for everybody.

This is really why it’s so hard for the fed to raise rates without sending the whole thing spiraling. Even though many studies suggest these rates feed all the wrong kind of company, what they call “zombie” companies that basically produce nothing and make money on the rate differential, nobody can afford for all prices to suddenly raise. Unless perhaps people could themselves make money off of higher Fed rates directly.

It’s obviously tricky, because without central banks we have no recourse in the case of market crashes, but this situation is a little crazy. There ain’t no free money, no free lunches, and we all pay for these low rates. Sayn’?

More from the Wall Street Breakfast:

Two indicators for how trade-sensitive sectors are faring in Europe reported quarterly results today. German carmaker BMW (OTCPK:BMWYY) warned of significant profit falls in 2019, while announcing a sweeping €12B cost savings plan to help offset higher tech investment and currency costs. However, French luxury goods house Hermes said it had not observed any change in sales trends so far this year after posting a 15% rise in net profit for 2018 to €1.4B.

I like what this says about the state of things.

And finally, when socialism strikes:

Attempting to soften the blow from a damaging political crisis, Canada’s government has presented a pre-election budget that offers over $10B in new, short-term spending, spread across a range of constituencies. It also plans to increase federal bond issuance by almost 20% next fiscal year to C$119B ($89.1B). After leading the G7 in 2017 with growth of 3%, Canada’s economic expansion slowed to 1.8% in 2018 and is expected to remain below 2% over the next two years.

Tf. Let them build the fucking pipeline.

Dutch Senate elections today. A new party, Forum voor Democratie, an intellectual antiglobalist party, got 10 out of 75 seats, making it the second largest just after governing VVD. I was one of the votes they got.
This is quite unusual.
The coalition government is now short a few seats in the senate.
And it wasnt as if Rutte was entirely useless even. He sustained a quite crafty international politics attracting much of the Brexit fallout, now apparently 90 percent of European transactions run through this country. He also subtly pointed out to Trump that that nice tower in San Fransisco belongs to a Dutch insurance company.

minority report
youtu.be/Kfgw79mfgIg?t=491

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_for … etherlands

That renewable energy / organic whateverthefuck hippie shit is more dangerous than you might think. As I say this, I am actually a fan of both, lol, but as science and fun shit, not policy or much less ideology. As those two, it is a vast, vast danger to our markets and our freedom. The referendum thing is also sketchy, but might be better than the oligarchy that crops up from Europe style party coalitions.

But the pluses far outweight that. Smart motherfuckers if judged by the wikipedia. I’m for it.

Though really, I have to see where they stand on geopolitics, and no amount of “we stand here or here” will do. Actual posturing and participation will determine. I actually think geopolitics is about 90% of what governments are accountable for and what direct my vote.

Actually I don’t vote. Fuck the bastards. But you get the point. They get my moral support.

Try to understand where I come from. In terms of direct democracy and relying on votes on specific issues, Chavez was one of the most democratic motherfuckers ever. They didn’t need to start cheating until way after he died. Well they cheated in terms of like utilization of state resources, but not directly.

It’s sketchy. But you know what? It’s like Bannon says. I can drop the noise for the signal. Let’s just see what the signal is.

Good luck, I hope it goes well. We could use a new ally. The way you have described Holland to me, the political atmosphere, it would be. Well, great. Just great.

I’m trying to do some more research, but these dudes seem relatively underground. Can’t find much in English.

How science works and how science does not work:

Here let’s agree for a moment with Jakob when he says science is NOT about consensus.

Science works when it is an almost hobby level activity between super nerds or for single individuals that just have a passion for it and the capital and free time to pursue it. Then it is concievable that an essencial ingredient will be there: intellectual honesty. When you do something for the passion, because you find that something awesome, you ar naturally intellectually honest. What matters is the thing. now I do think that consensus is still what science is about in the sense that what is fun about it is that it is replicable, to be able to find a point of consensus between intellectually honest super nerds, to use a term. Not that the point is to agree with eachother, but that being that you both or all are just in it for the thing, the awesomeness of the thing, than if you can get them to agree that something or other, it is because they notice the thing too and it is awesome. Like Jakob said, it is about you can have a method or a weapon, something outside of the person who figured it out. Something a like minded, intellectually honest nerd can agree on.

The problem is when, like now, science is about political power, about substantiating narratives with facts or, as they are now known, “facts.” You don’t need to be a nerd, and certainly not intellectually honest, to be a willing and invited participant in what they still somehow call science.

I also think the decrease in awesomeness and wonder in physichs since Einstein is due to a decrease in the quality of the Nerds. The God particle is a substantially less awesome idea than something moving so fast that its energy becomes mass and also it travels into the future.

Quantuum entanglement IS pretty cool. But the more I hear about it, the more I think it is a blend of popular mythology and pseudo-science. Invariably when you ask a quantum physician, they will tell you “oh they are just nice illustrations of some math you can never understand.” Big E would never have said that. For him, it worked BECAUSE it made sense.

Having data you don’t understand and gluing together some ideas isn’t science. Science is a coherent theory that explains all your data. Why Newton and Einstein had no problem, or would have had no problem with new data eventually proving them wrong. They were each, and in Einstein’s case still is, the supreme science until a new all-encompasing theory emerges that leaves no weird holes.

So they are entangled. What does that mean? They spin the same way. What spins? It’s maths, there is no actual thing and no actual spinning. Oh get the fuck out of here.

I like also the idea that Einstein actually DISproved the theory of the atom. The atom, as we know, from that Greek dude, is the idea of a irreducible, unbreakable final level of small. Einstein was like “no, you can break it. Here, let me show you how.”

Like when they went out actually looking for the Higgs Boson. To see if the theory was true. Do you imagine Galileo ACTUALLY needing to perform experiments to know if he was right? Or Newton? Or Einstein?

What a shit theory.

I guess quantum theory is still just the wake of destruction, confusion and chaos left from the meteoric collision that was Einstein.

I guess Einstein is still also the first truly anti-christian scientist. Newton still had a lot of that stench on him, that Jesus stench. That makes Einstein all the more difficult to get over and make sense after.

With Newton there was still “God made a perfect world so like the balance and whatever nothing is ever lost our Lord made sure.” With Einstein it’s like… You can’t even imagine a God retarded enough to come up with some shit like that. “Wait so if you go the speed of light miles per hour plus one you what? The fuck did you just say about time?” Lol.

Einstein’s God would be one that doesn’t really care about humanity as a whole, or even notice them, only the few Select nerds like himself. It is easier for a camel to walk through the neck of a man than for an idiot to feel wonder.

The party - forumvoordemocratie.nl - has as one of its main point that it won’t go along with the climate “science” and rejects the plan that exists to renovate half of Dutch houses for a total of over a trillion euros to banish use of gas and oil and rely solely on earth-warmth, which would mean all sorts of such extreme isolation so that it may become illegal to open windows. Such plans to transform this country into a prison camp that could last millennia do exist. But it looks like this may not be the direction we will actually head in.

The opposition to this evil climate bullshit, the horrible hubris of it calling itself “science”, is growing.
The FvD now actually turns out to have become The largest party, with 13 out of 75 seats, trailed by VVD with 12.
Incredible.

Very smart dudes.
In his acceptance speech, Thierry Baudet said the Owl of Minerva has descended upon our land.

That goes from any foreign country, reasonably. About 90 percent of my interest in US elections is geopolitical. No… thats not entirely true. The US is a special case, whose domestic politics are highly relevant to my soul. But for any other country, it is only reasonable to care most for their geopolitics.

Still goes for US too. Main of many things thing I love Trump for is eradicating isis. Also why I loathe all those who oppose him beyond any loathing Ive ever done.

Yes it is interesting. Since Trumps victory things have been looking somewhat better here. Proletarians and just in general, real people everywhere love Trump, and this country has a lot of them apparently. I don’t believe any honest working class person could not love Trump.

Anyway his Win gave us all courage.

We have had several Referenda in recent years, which always turned out against the governments proposals, and they were invariably ignored. For example, we voted against a EU constitution, against association with Ukraine, and we always vote antiglobalist-antifascist. Finally they just abolished the whole right to call a Referendum.

In the meantime our football team scores 1-0 against Belarus in the first minute.

It is an actual thing, an angle. But yeah, a geometric thing.
It is experientially verified that entangled particles can be controlled non locally through each other.
VO explains this quite simply by the primacy of values. Spin is a basic value. Value-ties beat timespace ties. This is a fact in my experience too. Telepathy works that way.

Exactly.

It was another dude who discovered radioactivity, meaning the spontaneous breaking of atoms, some guy called Ernest Rutherford.

I read Galileos diary, in it is the moment where he discerns the moving things around Jupiter and concludes they are probably moons, and from there concludes that the Earth is probably turning around the Sun.

We are talking about different things here - theory based on experimentation, like basic astronomy and chemistry, vs desperate attempts to design experiments to match some metaphysical theory, like String Theory or the statistical approach to the Standard Model which causes all kinds of bizarre assumptions.

VO explains QM in terms of Relativity. Namely, by showing that a quantum is also a reference frame, and since you can’t measure a quantum from within that quantum, uncertainty as to either its momentum or location is a given.
So, the quantum is a self valuing which sets its own terms for timespace calibration.

Right.

Yes, like the Earth. Its existence. The Earths existence is not a matter of consensus. Any human consensus is a matter of the Earth existing.
Science is earth, it is just the case. Consensus is only important in establishing things which aren’t simply the case as the case anyway.

Whereas it is impossible to convince someone with an intellectual conscience to be such a participant.

This whole climate hustle has been cause to the popping up of a remarkable number of “scientists”.

I agree.

Its fucking gay is what it is.