(USDA) Indian centrifugal sugar production in marketing year (MY) 2016/17 (out-year) is revised down by six percent to 23.9 million metric tons (MMT). Despite higher sugar production in Uttar Pradesh, lower than anticipated sugar production from Maharashtra and Karnataka will further push overall production levels below last year. Assuming normal sugarcane yields and a net decline in planted area, overall sugarcane production during the out-year is now revised lower to 324 MMT from 4.57 million hectares. Commercial trade will be minimal.

California Dreamin: If memory serves, the sugar move in the early seventies went from some 2 cents to some 66 cents. (I believe I know the guy that bought that all-time high tick).

Translating this to “now”, per the bureau of labor statistics inflation calculator, 2 cents in 1973 equals $11 cents now.
And 66 cents in 1973 are equal to $3.63 now.

Therefore, I’m now looking for a sugar move to $3.63. The Presidential debate is over, time for another whisky -
$ 3.63 HA

All you heavy Orange Juice drinkers may want to stock up - in case it makes "all time" new highs..

Charts are up-to-date

Daily Charts are up-to-date

Brexit cost investors $2 trillion, the worst one day drop ever

(CNBC)Worldwide markets hemorrhaged more than $2 trillion in paper wealth on Friday, according to data from S&P Global, the worst on record. For context, that figure eclipsed the whipsaw trading sessions of the 2008 financial crisis, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.

Charts are up-to-date

Dry Bulk Shipping To Witness Steady Progress Moving Forward On The Back Of Growing Trade Volumes Says BIMCO

“We are still worried about the sustainability of freight rates in the years to come. Our main worry is that demolition activity will slow down as the BDI improves. If shipowners slow demolition of ships considerably, the fleet will keep growing. This will widen the fundamental imbalance further because we forecast the demand side to grow slowly in the coming years. In order to reverse several years of adding capacity in excess of demand growth, we need to develop a multi-year trend of negative fleet growth. BIMCO assess the current utilisation rate of the dry bulk fleet at the low end of the 70s”, said the report.

Baltic Dry Index and Overview are up-to-date

Baltic Dry Index and Overview are up-to-date

BDI and Overview are up to date

Baltic Dry index and Quick Overview are up-to-date

Where in this cycle are we? - (YOU?)

Zombie ships send maritime freight into worst crisis in living memory Cheap debt, the China slowdown, and a glut of ships have seen the Baltic Dry Index plummet to its lowest level in more than 30 years

Mercator to exit dry bulk shipping business due to downturn  
Mercator decides to exit dry bulk cargo business carried on by its Singapore unit by way of divestment as part of its ongoing portfolio-restructuring exercise

 Baltic Exchange Capesize index in new low


 Opportunities are emerging to tempt those with strong nerves..

Quick Overview is up-to-date

Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is up-to-date 

New low :(

QUICK OVERVIEW

• The whole world is on edge “again” so global stocks had a miserable start to the year – the worst ever.

• China’s stock market lost almost 10% for the week, causing trading to be suspended twice.

• Fears of a wider Sunni-Shia conflict are increasing

• North Korea keeps rattling nukes, and South Korea put its military on alert

• America’s economy added 292,000 jobs in December, better than expected.

• Inflation in the Eurozone is unchanged at 0.2%. Forecasters had expected a rise.

• Sweden, also battling low inflation, has a benchmark interest rate of -0.35%.

• Car manufacturers in the US had the best year “ever” – selling 17.47 million vehicles.

• Iron Ore prices continue depressed

• APX spot electricity rates are at a 15 year low

• Rubber continues to sink

• Total U.S. Rail carloads are down 20.3 %

• YoY Coal Rail carloads are down 35.3% YoY

• The Libor - Fed Funds Spread is beginning to look interesting “again”.

• Our opinion of Dow Theory is currently bearish. IT will return to a bullish stance if the Dow Industrials close above 17919 “and” the Dow Transports close above 8292.

• Dow Divided by CPI pulling back to breakout point.

• The CPI adjusted S&P hasn’t made new highs “yet”..

• When vied from this angle (lt DJ log) things look quite benign “so far”- especially if one includes dividends..

• The next short term S&P Cycle low should show up around Jan. 22 - perhaps!

• The S&P Vix Ratio is in green territory - perchance it’ll get a bit greener?

• Gold Bugs: buy XAU versus Gold?

• % of world markets with 5 week average above 20 week average
• % of world markets with 6 month average above 24 month average

• ( WSJ) 40% of millennials have used a pawnshop or payday lender.

• Brazil's inflation rate soaring to 10.7% a 13-year high

• U.S. home values gained $1.1 trillion; renters paid record $535 billion in 2015 T .

Charts are up-to-date

Charts are up-to-date

QUICK OVERVIEW

• (The Economist) November was another strong month for America’s labour market. The economy added 211,000 jobs, according to data published on Friday; figures for September and October were revised up. The unemployment rate stayed at 5%. The healthy report makes an interest-rate rise this month look all but certain. This week Janet Yellen, head of the Federal Reserve, hinted that an increase was on the way.

• (The Economist) The European Central Bank headed in the other direction, though not as far as expected. On Thursday, the ECB pushed its deposit rate further into negative territory, from -0.2% to -0.3%, and promised to extend its bond-buying programme by six months, to March 2017. But markets had anticipated more. European share prices fell and the euro rebounded from recent lows.

• Xi Jinping, China’s president, told other world leaders in Paris that their talks mark a “new starting-point” in tackling climate change, his own capital was stewing in a pea-souper of smog. Yesterday Beijing’s air-quality index topped 600: “Hazardous…everyone may experience…serious health effects”.

• The Debt held by U.S. farmers in 2015, expressed in proportion to net income, is estimated at 6.3 to 1. One has to go back to the 1980s to find another 6 to 1.

• (Zillow) With the majority of renters in the largest metros putting about 30 percent of their monthly income toward a rental payment, saving money for a 20 percent - or even 10 percent - down payment is extremely difficult. First-time homebuyers and millennials are left trying to find other ways to break into the housing market, turning to friends and family for financial help. In 2014 alone, 13 percent of home purchases were bought using a loan or gift from friends or family for the down payment

• Euro Zone third-quarter GDP growth slowed to 0.3%.

• (Economist) The taxation of multinationals is getting an overdue shake-up. At the G20 summit in Turkey this weekend, the leaders of the world’s biggest economies are expected to approve the biggest overhaul in decades. The OECD drew up the new standards (snappily entitled “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”) over two years. They are intended to make country-by-country corporate reporting more transparent, and to close loopholes that allow multinationals—particularly technology and drug companies with lots of easily movable assets, such as intellectual property—to shift profits to tax havens. The OECD thinks the reforms could help governments claw back more than $200 billion a year. Approval is all but guaranteed: the G20’s finance ministers have already given BEPS the thumbs-up. The next stage is to implement the reforms. But doing it uniformly won’t be easy: national parliaments will want to bend the rules.

• (Economist) ExxonMobil was sent a subpoena by New York state’s attorney-general, requiring it to hand over documents regarding what the company knew about climate change, and when. The state is asking whether Exxon was forthcoming with its investors about the results of its own decades-long research into carbon emissions’ effects on the atmosphere—and the liabilities faced by the world’s largest publicly traded oil company.

• China has decided to end its decades-long one-child policy, the state-run Xinhua news agency reports. Couples will now be allowed to have two children. Condom shares fell, however shares in companies that make diapers, strollers and baby food have been bolstered. However, the policy shift will make no difference to the workforce for almost 20 years when China will be in the full grip of a demographic crunch.

• To boost more coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, 23 new intercity rail lines will be built by the end of 2030, according to the company that will make the investment.

• China announced plans to build a nationwide charging-station network that will fulfill the power demands of 5 million electric vehicles by 2020.

• The European Union predicted that 3m more migrants could arrive by the end of 2017.

• Almost half of investors surveyed by E*TRADE expect a market downturn.

• (Spiegel) Ahead of the planned lifting of Western sanctions against Iran, businessmen from around the world are visiting the country, and as one group from Germany discovered, there is no shortage of opportunities

• The Bank of Japan’s main inflation gauge dropped for a second consecutive month as the effects of low oil prices continue to take a toll, keeping Governor Haruhiko Kuroda distant from his 2 percent inflation target. Consumer prices excluding fresh food declined 0.1 percent in September from a year earlier

• Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes fell unexpectedly in September, a warning sign that the housing market recovery may be stumbling. The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, dropped 2.3 percent to 106.8, the second lowest reading of 2015.

• Condos are appreciating faster than single-family homes in markets across the U.S., especially where job markets are thriving or urban renewal is underway, according to Zillow® Condos in the U.S. are appreciating at a rate of 5.1 percent, compared to the 3.7 percent appreciation among single-family homes. YoY Iceland's fish catch decreased by 6.7 % in September

Interesting Chart of the U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate

  There are an estimated 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring each day..
  A Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) study estimates that 55% of the decline in the LFPR
   from   the end of 2007 to the end of 2014 was entirely due to demographic reasons.

Daily charts are up-to-date

QUICK OVERVIEW

• Lazaridis added that “in the case of the Capesize and Handysize vessels, this looks to be a double gain, as we only need to see a similar rise in interest as the one noted last year during the same period in order to generate an equal improvement in freight levels, given as the fleet size of both these size segments has remained overall unchanged during the past 12 months. Taking the same consideration for Panamaxes and Supramaxes things aren’t as rosy, as their respective fleets have shown a notable increase since then. Nevertheless, things have been more positive for these size segments thanks to the improving demand from India which is driving bigger interest in the Pacific for these vessels. As such it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to place a base case scenario of the Baltic TCA rates in the Supramaxes and Panamaxes surpassing at some point the US$ 10,000/day mark before the year closes, while Capesizes should easily reach the US$ 25,000/day mark”, Allied’s analyst noted.

• The Federal Reserve is still expected to raise U.S. interest rates in December but signs the labor market may be in a soft patch have dented confidence the central bank will pull the trigger, according to a Reuters poll

• Eurozone’s trade surplus in August declined more-than-forecast from the previous month, as exports declined and imports increased, figures from Eurostat showed Friday.
• The seasonally adjusted trade surplus fell to EUR 19.8 billion from EUR 22.4 billion in July. Economists had expected EUR 22.1 billion surplus.
• Exports dropped 1.3 percent from July, while imports grew 0.2%

• Factory output fell in September for a second month as high inventories and lukewarm demand from overseas customers kept American producers bogged down. The 0.1 % drop at manufacturers, which make up 75 % of all production, followed a revised 0.4 % decrease the prior month, a Federal Reserve report showed .

• China's role in helping revitalize infrastructure and financial investment across Africa is gaining momentum ahead of the forthcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit set to be held in South Africa in December, Kenyan expert said.

• China increased its holding of U.S. Treasury securities in August, while Japan cut its share.

• U.S. recession a little more likely? The probability that the world’s biggest economy will enter a recession in the next 12 months jumped to 15 %, its highest level since October 2013, according to economists surveyed Oct. 2-7 by Bloomberg. ...

• (MW) Federal Reserve officials now seem open to deploying negative interest rates to combat the next serious recession even though they rejected that option during the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2009 and 2010. “Some of the experiences [in Europe] suggest maybe can we use negative interest rates and the costs aren’t as great as you anticipate,” said William Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, in an interview on CNBC.

• Finance leaders from the Group of 20 largest economies backed an international agreement to limit tax avoidance by multinational corporations. The international effort, which represents the most wide-ranging overhaul of tax rules in decades, is meant to curb revenue losses from companies keeping profits overseas.

• MoM German exports slumped by 5.2% in August, pushing down the trade surplus, adjusted for seasonal variations, to EUR19.6 billion ($22 billion), the Federal Statistical office said . That was the steepest decline in German exports since January 2009, an economist at Destatis said.

• The Bloomberg US Consumer Comfort Index improved to 44.8 in the period ended Oct. 4, pushing above this year’s average, from 43. The measure has advanced 4.6 points over the last three weeks, the biggest gain for any comparable period since May 2009.

• Britain’s Construction output plunged by a monthly 4.3% percent, its biggest fall since December 2012, contrasting with a median forecast for growth of 1.0 %.

• China’s retail sales growth slowed during the week-long National Day Holiday, Ministry of Commerce data showed, adding to concerns about weakness in the world’s second largest economy.

• The bond market isn’t buying what Feds Janet Yellen is selling on inflation. While she reiterated last week that the Fed expects inflation to gradually rise back near 2% - bonds are demonstrating this is bs..

• U.S. consumer confidence rose in September to 103.0 from a revised 101.1 in August. Forecasters had it dropping to 96.0…

• (MarketWatch) -- U.S. house prices rose 0.6% in July, led mostly by western markets including Portland and San Diego, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite released Tuesday. After seasonal adjustment, prices slipped 0.2%. Over the last 12 months, prices have climbed 5%, led by 10.4% growth in San Francisco and 10.3% growth in Denver.
• Fourteen cities reported greater price increases in the year ending July 2015, and every city saw price gains.
• U.S. New-home sales rose 5.7 % last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 552,000m - that is the strongest pace since February 2008, near the beginning of the Great Recession.

• According to the most recent weekly data from credit card data tracking website CreditCards.com, the national average for U.S. credit card interest rates is 15% So, unless this is paid off - it'll double every 4.8 years (rule of 72)
• According to a report from the Federal Reserve in July, revolving debt rose to $914.6 billion, up $4.3 billion MoM. This is the highest level of consumer-carried debt since December 2009, implying a YoY growth rate of 5.7%.

• China’s top government-affiliated think tank has lowered its growth estimate for 2015, saying the economy is unlikely to deliver the 7% annual growth. It now expects growth of 6.9%

• Goldman Sachs released a September 22 research note that predicted that coal will decline and never come back. “Peak coal is coming sooner than expected,” the investment bank concluded.

•  “ Germany’s wages rose 2.7 % YoY

• Dry bulk market fundamentals are still grim despite funds buying into dry bulk firms

• To provide complete care for its residents, Chaseley Trust — a venerable British nursing facility housed in an ornate seaside mansion — offers amenities such as a movie theater, a gymnasium and a pool table. It also, from time to time, invites prostitutes and strippers to provide their services to residents.

Charts are up-to-date

Some that could be of interest:

• Vix ratio ROC
• S&P Cycle (short term low tomorrow?)
• DJIA CPI adjusted  -  is back to 2000 level  
• XAU    and what a dog it has been (support?)
• NYSE new weekly highs - can it go lower?
• Investors Intelligence
• Gold / Crude ratio

•  And if you want to scan all charts, one right after another, you can do so easily here

QUICK OVERVIEW

• U.S. gains 173,000 jobs in August; unemployment 5.1%

• The uncertainty over whether the  Fed will raise interest rate in two weeks still holds although the August jobs report showed the U.S. unemployment rate fell to the level the Fed considers to be full employment.

• U.S. hourly wages rise 0.3% in August, up 2.2% YoY

• Iranian consumers crave US and other western goods, endangering Chinese and Indian foothold.

• U.S Factory orders rose 0.4% in July

• U.S. construction projects rose 0.7% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.08 trillion, the highest level since May 2008.

• U.S. Pending Home Sales, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, marginally increased 0.5% to 110.9 in July from an upwardly revised 110.4 in June and is now 7.4 percent above July 2014.

• U.S. economy grows 3.7%  in Q2

•  In the euro zone Germany has the lowest unemployment at 4.7% Greece the highest at 25%
• France is at 10.4%

• South Korea's export plunged 14.7% YoY

• YoY Macau's GDP shrank  by 26% in Q2. Casino revenues are down some 40% - all thanks to a crackdown by China on corruption.

• The dry bulk shipping market will remain in recession due to contracting demand for iron ore and coal, and any recovery is not expected until 2017, according to the Dry Bulk Forecaster report published by global shipping consultancy Drewry.
• Falling demand and oversupply has severely impacted commodity values, with iron ore and coal prices in virtual free fall.

• Less than 60 bulkers were contracted in the first seven months of 2015, a drop of 91% YoY, and down from more than 1,200 in full year 2013. Combined with the firm pace of deliveries, this has led to a 20% decline in the bulkcarrier orderbook since the start of 2015..

• Mario Draghi says Europe  is ready to counter China slowdown and Brussels will use the tools at its disposal to prevent a broader crisis.

• August was the worst month for British retail sales since the global financial crisis of 2008. Accountancy firm BDO said its monthly high street sales tracker (HSST) showed a 4.3% YoY fall in August sales — the biggest drop since November 2008 and the sixth monthly dip ...

• Indian economy grows by 7% in first fiscal quarter.

• Euro-zone jobless rate improves to 10.9 % in July

• Philippine inflation at record low of 0.6% in August

• British construction PMI up slightly to 57.3 in August

• YoY global house prices rose 0.1%, so reports London-based property agent Knight Frank - the weakest rate of growth since the final quarter of 2011. Hong Kong-led with a 12-month increase of 20.7%, followed by Turkey (18.5%), Estonia (13.4%), Luxembourg (13.2%) and Ireland (10.9%). China, with a price decline of 5.7%, ranked 52nd on the list, while house prices in Greece, Cyprus, Ukraine and Dubai dropped by 5.9%, 6.5%, 12% and 12.2% respectively.

• (MW) Oil futures pared losses after data from Baker Hughes released Friday showed that the number of active oil-drilling rigs fell 13 to 662 as of Sept. 4. The total active rig count, which includes natural-gas rigs, was at 864, also down 13 rigs. Compared to last year, the total rig count has fallen by 1,061, with the oil rig count down 922.

• Interested in Tech? take a look at INTC's presentation in Berlin

• The Donald said the stock market rout was caused by "poor planning" and allowing China and Asia to dictate the agenda. "This could get very messy!" he said. Trump is leading in polls to be the Republican presidential nominee.  - Sarah Palin is planning to be  energy secretary in the Donald's administration.

Killing the European Project
Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.) The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.

EU Demands Complete Capitulation From Tsipras In addition to requirements to cut pensions and raise sales tax, which Tsipras accepted last week, the memo demanded that officials from Greece’s creditors return to Athens with full access to government ministers and a veto over relevant legislation, according to the document. Euro-area leaders also want Tsipras to transfer as much as 50 billion euros ($56 billion) of state assets to an independent Luxembourg-based company for sale and make him fire the workers he hired in defiance of Greece’s previous bailout commitments.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: ..
Instead they were confronted with a text from the creditors that upped the ante, demanding a rise in VAT on tourist hotels from 7pc (de facto) to 23pc at a single stroke. Creditors insisted on further pension cuts of 1pc of GDP by next year and a phase out of welfare assistance (EKAS) for poorer pensioners, even though pensions have already been cut by 44pc. They insisted on fiscal tightening equal to 2pc of GDP in an economy reeling from six years of depression and devastating hysteresis. They offered no debt relief. The Europeans intervened behind the scenes to suppress a report by the International Monetary Fund validating Greece's claim that its debt is "unsustainable",..

(This from a country that has never repaid its debts. See Piketty )

Charts are up-to-date

QUICK OVERVIEW

• The German government signaled a tough line towards Greece on Monday, saying it saw no basis for new bailout negotiations and insisting it was up to Athens to move swiftly if it wanted to preserve its place in the euro zone. With opinion towards Greece hardening in Germany’s ruling coalition. (This from a country that has never repaid its debts. See Piketty )

•  (Krugman)..even if the creditors were making sense.What’s more, they weren’t. The truth is that Europe’s self-styled technocrats are like medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients — and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding.

•  (Hellenic Shipping News)A new record year in dry bulk demolition under way? The monthly average for the first six months in 2015 is 3.3m DWT. In 2014 the first half year averaged at 1.33m DWT per month. April 2015 saw 5.36 million DWT being retired from active service, which was the highest on record ever for a single month. 
•  Overall confidence levels in the shipping industry fell during the three months to May 2015 to a level equal to the lowest rating recorded in the past seven years. Respondents complained predominantly about low freight rates and overtonnaging 
•  The shipping industry is experiencing the biggest dry bulk market recession since the 1980s. The uncertain global economic outlook and the increased imbalance between supply and demand have lead to historical low freight rates .The downturn seems to continue until 2017 if a viable equilibrium is not achieved.. 

•  China is capable and confident it can maintain the capital market stable and sound, said a commentary of People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China
•  China's central bank cut both the requirement reserve ratio (RRR), the amount of reserves banks required to hold, and benchmark interest rates on Saturday. The central bank cut the RRR for commercial banks serving rural areas, agriculture and small businesses by 50 basis points (bps). The RRR for finance companies, or non-bank financial institutions, will be lowered by 300 bps, the PBOC announced. Benchmark interest rates have also been cut. Interest rates for one-year lending and deposits are cut by 25 bps to 4.85% and 2% respectively. 
•  China's economy will grow by 6.93% YoY in the second quarter, said a report by the National Academy of Economic Strategy. 
•  Surging investment by Chinese companies in U.S. research labs is yielding a fast-growing trove of patents, part of a push to mine America for ideas to help China shift from being the world’s factory floor to a driver of innovation.. 

•  Previously owned U.S. homes sold in May at the fastest pace since November 2009, driven by first-time buyers and indicating budding momentum in the residential real estate market. 
• Closings on existing properties, which usually occur a month or two after a contract is signed, rose 5.1% to a 5.35 million annualized rate. 
•  Home rental prices are climbing across much of the United States " with the biggest gains coming from not from New York or San Francisco but Jackson, Mississippi, and Portland, Maine (Zillow) 

•  The volume of world merchandise trade increased modestly in the first quarter of 2015, with growth in both exports and imports registering slower growth than over the previous six months 

•  (Paul Krugmann)And something that even startled me: 47 percent said that they would not have the resources to meet an unexpected expense of $400 — $400! They would have to sell something or borrow to meet that need, if they could meet it at all. 

• Global carbon dioxide levels break the 400ppm milestone 
•  India's Poor cannot pay for 150 years of pollution by the West says India's coal minister as India ramps up coal production to reach its target of 1 Billion tons of coal by 2020. 

•  Some top international doctors and public health experts have issued an urgent prescription for a feverish planet Earth: Get off coal as soon as possible. 

• EU plans to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals found in pesticides have been dropped because of threats from the US that this would adversely affect negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), according to a report in The Guardian. Draft EU regulations would have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that have been linked to testicular cancer and male infertility. 

•  Canada’s political landscape has undergone a seismic shift with the election of a left-wing government in oil-rich Alberta. 

• (Moody's) Company Total Cash $U.S. Billions: 
• Apple $178.0 Dec. 27, 2014 
• Microsoft $90.2 Dec. 31, 2014 
• Google $64.4 Dec. 31, 2014 
• Pfizer $53.6 Dec. 31, 2014 
• Cisco Systems $53.0 Jan. 24, 2015 
• Oracle $44.7 Nov. 30, 2014 
• Johnson & Johnson $33.1 Dec. 28, 2014 
• QUALCOMM $31.6 Dec. 28, 2014 
• Medtronic $31.1 Jan. 23, 2015 
• Merck  Co. $29.2 Dec. 31, 2014 

•  A Gallup survey from 2013 found that libraries are not just popular, they’re extremely popular. Over 90 percent of Americans feel that libraries are a vital part of their communities. Compare this to 53 percent for the police, 27 percent for public schools, and just 7 percent for Congress, and you’re looking at perhaps the greatest success of the public sector.

Piketty: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.

Bernanke and the Inflationistas There’s something about inflation derp that goes straight to the ids of certain people — largely, one suspects, angry old men, though it would be nice to have hard evidence on the demographic. And they will keep regarding the Journal as the place to get the truth no matter how much money it costs them.

The TPP: Toward Absolutist Capitalism

There are many excellent arguments against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), two of which — local zoning over-rides, and loss of national sovereignty — I’ll briefly review as stepping stones to the main topic of the post: Absolutist Capitalism, for which I make two claims:
1) The TPP implies a form of absolute rule, a tyranny as James Madison would have understood the term, and
2) The TPP enshrines capitalization as a principle of jurisprudence.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.