4 million people in Cape Town are down to just 28.5% usable water as unprecedented drought grips South Africa

Photo citizen.co.za
Dam storage levels are at 38.5%, with usable water at 28.5%.

The City of Cape Town's engineered rationing intervention is starting to have an effect on consumption but water usage must be reduced further.
Consumption is at 585-million litres of collective usage per day.
The City activated water rationing as part of the implementation of its Critical Water Shortages Management Disaster Plan.

It must be noted that theoretically everyone should have water but that the duration of the outages would depend on the water usage for the area and whether it is within the water restriction levels.
The City supplies sufficient water to an area, but if the demand is too high then those in high-lying areas or high-lying properties will experience some outages.

The City, therefore, appeals to those in lower-lying areas to reduce usage to assist in terms of outages in the higher-lying areas.
Service will be restored as soon as demand decreases to within the limitations of Level 5 water restrictions.

'The City continues to install water management devices on the properties of delinquent water users. Almost 7,000 have been installed to date.
In addition, emergency augmentation schemes are progressing.
It is foreseen that between 130- and 240-million litres per day will be at some stage of production between December 2017 and May 2018.
This includes land- and sea-based desalination, water reclamation, and groundwater abstraction projects, if all goes according to plan.

"It must be noted that reducing consumption is non-negotiable, irrespective of augmentation projects coming online.
We ask all water users to support us and to help us to get through this unprecedented drought which is affecting large parts of South Africa as well," said the City's Mayoral Committee Member for Informal Settlements, Water and Waste Services; and Energy, Councillor Xanthea Limberg.

If an area is using water above the daily limitation, the pressure will be reduced to the required level to force consumption down.
When consumers reduce consumption, the pressure is restored.

Credit to thebigwobble.org

http://www.thebigwobble.org/2017/10/with-summer-yet-to-arrive-4-million.html

The IMF Lays Out The Global Financial Crash Scenario

Why The Next Stock Market Crash Will Be Faster And Bigger Than Ever Before

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

US stock markets hit another all-time high on Friday.

The S&P 500 is nearing 2,600 and the Dow is over 23,300.

In fact, US stocks have only been more expensive two times since 1881. 

According to Yale economist Robert Shiller’s Cyclically Adjusted Price to Earnings (CAPE) ratio – which is the market price divided by ten years’ average earnings – the S&P 500 is above 31. The last two times the market reached such a high valuation were just before the Great Depression in 1929 and the tech bubble in 1999-2000.

Some of the blame for high valuation goes to the so-called “FANG” stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), whose average P/E is now around 130.

But there’s something different about today’s bull market...

Simply put, everything is going up at once.

Leading up to the tech bubble bursting, investors would dump defensive stocks (thereby pushing down their valuations) to buy high-flying tech stocks like Intel and Cisco – the result was a valuation dispersion.

The S&P cap-weighted index (which was influenced by the high valuations of the S&P’s most expensive tech stocks) traded at 30.6 times earnings. The equal-weighted S&P index (which, as the name implies, weights each constituent stock equally, regardless of size) traded at 20.7 times.

Today, despite sky-high FANG valuations, the S&P market-cap weighted and equal-weighted indexes both trade at around 22 times earnings.

Thanks to the trillions of dollars printed by the Federal Reserve (and the popularity of passive investing, which we’ll discuss in a moment), investors are buying everything.

In a recent report, investment bank Morgan Stanley wrote:

We say this not as hyperbole, but based on a quantitative perspective… Dispersions in valuations and growth rates are among the lowest in the last 40 years; stocks are at their most idiosyncratic since 2001.

So, ask yourself… With stocks trading at some of the highest levels in history, is now the time to be adding more equity risk?

Or, as billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman notes… “When securities prices are high, as they are today, the perception of risk is muted, but the risks to investors are quite elevated.”

Volatility – as measured by the Volatility Index (VIX) – remains below 10 (close to its lowest levels in history). For comparison, the VIX hit 89.53 in October 2008, as the market plunged.

We haven’t seen a 3% down day since the election. And if that holds through the end of the year, it will be the longest streak in history.

And this false sense of security comes just as the main driver of this bull market – the trillions of dollars global central banks printed after the GFC – is coming to an end.

Markets saw around $500 billion of accommodation in 2016. And “quantitative tightening” should suck about $1 trillion out of the markets in 2018… That’s a $1.5 trillion swing in two years. And it’s a major headwind for today’s already overvalued markets.

But that’s just one issue. Remember, we also have…

Slowing global growth, record-high debt, potential nuclear war with North Korea, a rising world power in China, and cyber terrorism (just to name a few of the potential pitfalls) …

Still, investors continue to put money to work without a care in the world.

And more and more of that money is being invested with ZERO consideration of market valuation – thanks to the rise of passive investing.

Through July 2017, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) took in a record $391 billion – surpassing 2016’s record inflow of $390 billion.

According to Bank of America, 37% of the S&P 500 stocks are now managed passively.

Investors in these passive index funds and ETFs pay super-low fees in return for an automated investment process. For example, any money invested in a passively-managed S&P 500 ETF is equally distributed (based on market cap weighting) across the 500 S&P companies… So, companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon get the biggest share of that money.

The result… as this dumb money rushes in, the biggest stocks get even bigger – despite their already ludicrous valuations.

And the biggest players in this field are amassing a tremendous amount of power.

Vanguard, which introduced the world’s first passive index fund for individuals in 1976, has $4.7 trillion in assets (around $3 trillion of that is passive).

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and owner of the iShares ETF franchise, is approaching $6 trillion in assets. And only 28% of BlackRock’s assets are actively managed.

Passive funds owned by these two firms are taking in $3.5 billion a day.

Bank of America estimates Vanguard owns 6.8% of the S&P 500 (and stakes of more than 10% in over 80 S&P 500 stocks).

And as long as the money keeps flowing into passive funds, the bubble keeps expanding.

At a time of exceptional market risk, more and more money is being managed without any notion of risk.

But what happens when these uninformed and value-agnostic investors have to sell?

Humans are emotional creatures. And when we do finally see that 3% (or even larger) down day, investors will rush for the exits.

And the computers will pile on the selling (every model based on historically low volatility will completely break when volatility spikes).

But when the wave of selling comes, who will be there to buy?

As these passive funds dump the largest stocks in the world, we’ll see an air pocket… nobody will be there to hit the bid.

And when the drop comes, it will come faster than anyone expects.

So, while most investors are ignoring risk, I’d advise you to use this record-high stock market to your advantage…

Sell some expensive stocks to raise cash. Own some gold. And allocate capital to sectors of the market that haven’t been blown out of proportion thanks to the popularity of passive investing. That means looking at smaller stocks and stocks outside the US.

Even if stocks go up for another year, which they may, it’s simply not worth the risk to chase them higher… Becausethe downturn will be devastating.

CREDIT TO ZERO HEDGE

he Economic Crisis Will Start This Year & Last For 5 Years Clif High

Putin Shocks the World With Transhuman Super Soldiers

5 dead after Typhoon hits Japan

Typhoon Lan traveled out to sea early Monday after hitting Japan's east coast, killing at least five people.

The powerful storm brought 100 mph winds as it struck Shizuoka Prefecture and dumped more than 30 inches of rain in 48 hours, beginning Sunday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. A gust of 164.5 mph was recorded in Okayama province.

The deaths included a man and woman who officials said drowned in their cars, a man who fell from a construction site scaffold, and one who fell from his boat. Another was hurt after he was caught in a mudslide, Japan Today reported.

More than 200,000 people were ordered to evacuate by the country's Fire and Disaster Management Agency, with 2.2 million more homes under advisory to evacuate.

The typhoon, which struck Taiwan before turning north toward Japan, was the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane, according to the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.

The storm weakened as it passed east of Tokyo, with little disruption to Monday morning commuters. Still, more than 100 flights were canceled by Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways. The Tokaido Shinkansen commuter train from Osaka to Tokyo was delayed, as were some local commuter trains.

Tokyo-area manufacturing facilities, notably those of the Toyota, canceled shifts Monday.

Credit to UPI

Air Force preparing B-52 bombers for 24-hour alert status

The U.S. Air Force is preparing to place its fleet of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since 1991 amid escalating tensions with North Korea, the military branch's chief of staff said in a report Sunday.

Defense officials denied to Fox News that bombers were ordered to go on 24-hour alert, but Gen. David Goldfein told Defense One it could happen.

“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Goldfein said. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

Credit to Foxnews