YOUR MONEY

Stock Markets – open capitalism or a rigged game?

If you are a small investor, picking your own stocks and bonds is probably your wisest choice.

If you rely on any, world-wide, Stock Exchange Index fund or on a diversified Mutual Fund with ‘expert’ analysts and managers, you should know the deck is stacked against you.

I have regularly bemoaned the fact sovereignty funds, derivative funds, banks and a few super rich control too much of the world’s stocks and bonds, that they in fact “control’ the world’s markets and distort Capitalism 101. In good times they can ratchet up valuations and reap billions of dollars of profit from even pennies of value changes, and if they get into trouble, all hell will follow.

David Rosenberg in his February 2, 2016 column for the Globe and Mail, “The story behind the equity-oil link”, reveals that just 7 oil- pumping countries control some US $4 trillion in market assets.

These sovereignty funds, of course, include the petrodollar states of the Arabian Peninsula as well as Kazakhstan and, surprisingly, Norway – which turns out to be the “largest sovereign wealth fund in the world”.

So, as Rosenberg points out, when the price of oil falls, these countries must withdraw money from their worldwide stock market holdings to cover their finances at home or risk huge deficits and internal social and political chaos.

Mr. Rosenberg could also have mentioned Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy and a major oil producer, which is now asking for US $3.5 billion in low cost loans from the World Bank and others as it faces a currency crisis and possibly political collapse (G&M, Feb. 2, 2016 B1).

So, world stock markets, as Rosenberg stresses, no longer reflect the realities of daily economic activity of corporations, small business and  farming of most countries.

Put simply, a few super-powerful players control the stock markets, their ‘paper value’ rises and sudden falls.

GAIA

Global Warming - has its time passed?

Is the mantra of Global Warming or Climate Change (and overuse use of these shorthand labels) waning?   Have scientists and reporters altered their mindsets?

I ask this because of 2 recent articles which avoid the above labels or find more commonplace explanations: namely, cyclical variations in normal climate .

In its Jan. 18, 2016, p. 11, "Your getting warmer" Bad News item, Maclean's magazine notes the temperature at the North Pole in late December was above zero Celsius which is  20* C above normal.  Canadian meteorologists linked this thaw to the excessive stormy weather affecting Britain and the almost spring-like conditions across North America this Christmas.  While the words Climate Change or Global Warming were not used, there is little doubt it was intended when the article's focus was on future repercusions "due to the warming climate's effect", but the loaded labels -- surprisingly -- were avoided.

At the same time,  a major drought across Africa and especially Ethiopia is causing major concern at the UN and immediate  food aid shipments are being arranged to feed 4,000,000 people . Surprisingly, Global Warming is never mentioned, just the "super cycle El Nino" which alone is blamed by USAID administrator Gayle Smith. (G&M, Feb. 1, 2016, A9).

 As anyone who has  read  this  bog recently should remember,  the super wet and torrential storms that whacked Britain and Northern Europe have universally been attributed to the super El Nino, which from its home off Peru affects temperature and rainfall around most of the world: less so in most years but far more forcefully in others --  with past recorded super cycles  in 1982-83 and 1997-98.

Put simply,  the North Pole's recent warming is an El Nino effect and the area will, as always, revert to 'normal' temperatures and thick ice.

And areas in Africa and elsewhere whose once productive soil is currently suffering from prolonged drought, parched earth and food shortages will eventually revert  as did the lands of the Bible.

 inally,  if, as geologists claim, we are are scheduled  to return to another Ice Age lasting centuries and millenia, as it has been over 10,000 years since the end of the last era when ice covered Canada, Nothern USA, Euopre and parts of Asia, lets enjoy civilization and dry land while it lasts.