China Conducts Test of Ultra High Speed Missile

China’s military last week conducted the first flight test of a new ultra-high speed missile vehicle aimed at delivering warheads through U.S. missile defenses, Pentagon officials said.

The test of the new hypersonic glide vehicle was carried out Jan. 9 and the experimental weapon is being dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The hypersonic vehicle represents a major step forward in China’s secretive strategic nuclear and conventional military and missile programs.

The new hypersonic vehicle was detected traveling at extremely high speeds during the flight test over China, said officials who discussed some details of the test.

The hypersonic craft appears designed to be launched atop one of China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and then glides and maneuvers at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound from near space en route to its target, the officials said.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the test but declined to provide details.

“We routinely monitor foreign defense activities and we are aware of this test,” Marine Corps Lt. Col. Jeffrey Pool, the spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon.

“However, we don’t comment on our intelligence or assessments of foreign weapon systems,” Pool said in a statement. “We encourage greater transparency [by the People’s Republic of China] regarding their defense investments and objectives to avoid miscalculation,” he added.

The United States, Russia, and China are all engaged in a hypersonic arms race. All three nations are developing high-speed aerospace vehicles. India is also developing a hypersonic variant of its BrahMos cruise missile.

Hypersonic weapons use cutting edge technology for flying and maneuvering at ultra-high speeds in space and air. Future weapons will include powered and unpowered hypersonic vehicles fired from the last stages of ICBMs and submarine missiles, and from the bomb-bays of strategic bombers. Hypersonic cruise missiles and surveillance drones also are expected.

The military advantages of hypersonic craft include precise targeting, very rapid delivery of weapons, and greater survivability against missile and space defences.

Credit to Osnetdaily.com

New Rocket Expands Russian Space Launch Capabilities

MOSCOW, January 14 (RIA Novosti) – The maiden mission of a new Russian lightweight rocket was a “huge success,” the director of the factory that built the launcher said Monday.

“This is the first modern Russian rocket in the lightweight class with liquid rocket engines,” Alexander Kirilin said in an address to workers at the Progress Factory in the Volga city Samara.

The Soyuz-2.1v rocket lifted off from Russia’s northern Plesetsk space center on December 28. It can carry up to 2,800 kg of payload into orbit and is powered by rocket engines left over from the Soviet Union’s lunar program.

The Soyuz-2.1v was specifically built for Russian launches, Kirilin told RIA Novosti.

“However, considering the large demand for launching small satellites, we have already received a number of requests from potential international customers about the possibility of using the rocket for launching commercial payloads.”

The rocket, which also featured a brand new upper stage, performed flawlessly in launching a pair of radar calibration spheres and the small student satellite Aist, Kirilin said.

Russia also launches smaller payloads on rockets made from decommissioned nuclear missiles.

RIA Novosti

China cloning on an 'industrial scale'

The technology involved is not particularly novel - but what is new is the application of mass production. The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves. The facility produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year: China is exploiting science on an industrial scale.

Two technicians insert a fibre-optic probe to locate the sow's uterus.
A third retrieves a small test-tube from a fridge: these are the blastocysts, early stage embryos prepared in a lab. In a moment, they will be implanted.

The team can do two implantations a day. The success rate is about 70-80%.



Some of the animals are clones of clones. Most have been genetically modified.

The point of the work is to use pigs to test out new medicines. Because they are so similar genetically to humans, pigs can serve as useful "models". So modifying their genes to give them traits can aid that process.

One batch of particularly small pigs has had a growth gene removed - they stopped growing at the age of one. Others have had their DNA tinkered with to try to make them more susceptible to Alzheimer's.

Back at the company headquarters, a line of technicians is hunched over microscopes.

This is a BGI innovation: replacing expensive machines with people. It's called "handmade cloning" and is designed to make everything quicker and easier.



Again, a comparison for scale: a recently-launched UK project seeks to sequence 10,000 human genomes. BGI has ambitions to sequence the genomes of a million people, a million animals and a million plants.

Wang Jun is keen to stress that all this work must be relevant to ordinary people through better healthcare or tastier food. The BGI canteen is used as a testbed for some of the products from the labs: everything from grouper [fish] twice the normal size, to pigs, to yoghurt.

BGI clones and sequences
1) anything that tastes good
2) anything with industrial use - raising yields, for example, or benefits for healthcare.
3) anything that is cute [like Pandas]



Credit to NextbigFuture.com

Israeli minister insults Kerry over so-called peace plan

An Israeli minister has insulted the US Secretary of State John Kerry over his plan for the so-called peace process.

Based on Israeli media reports, Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Ya'alon said on Tuesday that Kerry’s proposed plan was not worth the paper it was written on.

Ya'alon reportedly made the remarks in private conversations with other Israeli officials.

He also accused Kerry of being naïve, implying that he is a nuisance.

Kerry’s proposals for the so-called peace process include a security plan for the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

Under this plan, Israeli forces must withdraw from the Jordan Valley. 

Credit to Press Tv

Attention Sheep: Your Inaction Is Destroying Your Children

Sometimes I wish I could be a sheep. If I could, I would be in better shape and would probably still coaching college basketball and I would get to sleep in more. However, I cannot be a sheep because I have a family and I know the children of this nation have no future unless the adults stand up and take back what we have lost.

Mark my words America, if we do not defeat the banksters who have hijacked our government, our children are going to be condemned to a life of poverty, hopelessness, shorter lifespans and abject misery.

When you sheep are watching reality TV or playing fantasy football, do you ever think about your child in the next room who needs your help because the globalists have stacked the odds against them?

 A Rudderless Generation

Growing up is filled with challenges, disappointments, excitement and anticipation of the future. Growing up should contain some measure of enjoyment and the self-satisfaction that the pride in our own personal growth can bring. However, for too many of our soon-to-be young adults, life is filled with misery, disappointment and a sense of hopelessness.

Society is responsible for providing an environment which fosters growth and the freedom to explore one’s limits. And for decades, America produced children which surpassed the accomplishments and life-style amenities of the previous generation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. At one time in this country, parents formed the backbone for child development along with teachers and clergy. Today, the influences on our youth are not what they should be. Today’s sheep have largely forsaken their duty as parents.Take a look at what children say about the influences in their lives.

Today, where do these influences come from? A Gallup Poll from the late1950′s asked teens to rate their biggest influences on their attitudes and lives and they listed these variables in the following order:

1. Parents       2. Church     3. Teachers   4. Peers   5. Media

Fifty years later, this same survey produced the following results:

1 & 2. Peers and media are in a virtual tie  

3. Parents   4. Teachers   5. Church

(information derived from a conference presentation on child safety sponsored by the state of Arizona in 2006).

Something Is Terribly Wrong

Increasingly for our young people, the world is not a safe place. In many areas of the country suicide has replaced car accidents as the leading cause of death. There are an estimated 8-25 attempted suicides for each suicide death. Therefore, the suicide rate is only small representation of the hopelessness being experienced by the younger generation. The misery index in this country for our young people is off the charts.Since 1968, suicides for people aged 15-24 have risen over 300%. This is a global phenomenon as suicide in now the second leading cause of death United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many countries of Western Europe. Russia, Vietnam and India are experiencing similar increases. What is the number one reason why teens are killing themselves? The straightforward and simple answer is that they have a foreboding sense of hopelessness. Life is bleak and meaningless and all their cell phones, IPADs and X-Box games can not fill the void of emptiness.

Hopelessness is the number one predictor of suicide.

This Is Not the Way It Is Supposed To Be

Traditionally, when teens grow into adulthood, they begin to learn that they have a measure of control over their life. Through trial-and-error, teens gain knowledge and acquire the tools necessary to solve their problems in the best way that they are able.

In the past, when we felt hopeless, we pulled through our crises with the resources we had at our disposal and with the support from friends and family. Increasingly, that support has all but eroded. For teenagers, their overwhelming sense of hopelessness is enough to cause them to take their own lives. Most teens who survive suicide attempts say that they tried to kill themselves because they were trying to escape a situation that seemed impossible to deal with, or they were trying to escape overwhelming feelings like rejection, guilt, anger, or sadness in which they lacked any significant degree ofcontrol.

We Have Forsaken Our Young Veterans

When many of our young men cannot find opportunity and/or meaning in their life, they often join the military. However, the opportunity afforded these young warriors is not what it used to because when the government is done using them, this government vilifies them as they cast these young men aside like a pile of garbage.

One cannot watch a sporting event or a newscast without some praise being made in relation to our brave young warriors. Despite the glorification of our troops, a U.S. military veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes, or at the rate of 22 per day. When a young man or woman enlists to defend their country, they are idealistic. However, when serving one of their many tours in Afghanistan, they are ordered to guard the opium fields and to not fire upon the drug lords as they pass through military checkpoints. It is easy to understand that these young people can quickly lose their sense of duty and retreat into a lonely world where they trust nobody and their only goal is to survive. When they are discharged from the service, they return to a nation which has a destroyed economy along with corrupt leaders who make the veterans question their service to their country. Most veterans, as in past wars, are riddled with guilt for the traumatic acts of survival that they had to engage in. However, unlike most of our past wars. they come to learn that their service is a charade and they do not serve the American people and our national interests. Rather, they come to know that they serve the stockholders of the oil companies, Goldman Sachs and the corrupt elite that run this planet. Just ask Pat Tillman’s family.

Children and veterans see through the deceit faster than the rest of us who are blinded by television and mainstream media propaganda.

What Is the Solution?

Teenagers and veterans are the canaries in the mine. By their suicides, children and veterans are telling us how badly our society stinks. The solutions for these mental health issues does not lie within individually treating depression and accompanying suicidal symptoms. The problem I am describing here is the system, not the individual in its causation. Our new-found collectivist society is the culprit which is robbing our children of their freedom and self-determination.

It is inherent for humans to be free and without freedom, life becomes meaningless. The New World Order controls society with its mindless entertainment with everything from American Idol, to the Oscars, to the NFL, and the propaganda machines of the networks and in our public schools are working overtime in an attempt to get children to accept their place in the NWO with an accompanying loss of freedom in the name of serving the “greater good” of collectivism. And all of this is possible because we live in a nation, not of men, but of sheep.

Our children and our veterans are telling us that they do not want to live in this world and neither should you. I am not endorsing suicidal behavior. However, It is only a matter of time until all of us feel the same pervasive sense of hopelessness. IF you do not care about living in the squalor, filth and moral decadence that is the NWO, then maybe the welfare of your children should jolt you into action.

Conclusion

The hopelessness spreading across the country and planet is approaching epidemic levels. The adult sheep of this nation have made their bed and they should lie in it. But what about their children? I find it incomprehensible that any parent would not fight for their children’s survival.

Maybe if our teens saw their parents standing up to the tyranny and immorality, they might see a ray of hope in their future. Maybe, if the sheep demanded that our government reach out to our vets instead of incarcerating and drugging them for incorrect political views, perhaps they would want to rejoin society upon completion of their service. Maybe if the sheep collectively grew a backbone and took our world back from these moral degenerates, we could live out our lives in the manner that our creator intended.

What’s A Good Sheep to Do?

Start now! Pick out one cause that you can get behind and put everything you have into that cause. Whether it is the End the Fed movement, or forcing term limits on Congress, it does not matter. Do something, do it with others so our numbers can grow, before it is too late for you children.

Credit to The Common Sense 

Why Is Goldman Sachs Warning That The Stock Market Could Decline By 10 Percent Or More?

Why has Goldman Sachs chosen this moment to publicly declare that stocks are overpriced?  Why has Goldman Sachs suddenly decided to warn all of us that the stock market could decline by 10 percent or more in the coming months?  Goldman Sachs has to know that when they release a report like this that it will move the market.  And that is precisely what happened on Monday.  U.S. stocks dropped precipitously.  So is Goldman Sachs just honestly trying to warn their clients that stocks may have become overvalued at this point, or is another agenda at work here?  To be fair, the truth is that all of the big banks should be warning their clients about the stock market bubble.  Personally, I have stated that the stock market has officially entered "crazytown territory".  So it would be hard to blame Goldman Sachs for trying to tell the truth.  But Goldman Sachs also had to know that a warning that the stock market could potentially fall by more than 10 percent would rattle nerves on Wall Street.

This report that has just been released by Goldman Sachs has gotten a lot of attention.  In fact, an article about this report was featured at the top of the CNBC website for quite a while on Monday.  Needless to say, news of this report spread on Wall Street like wildfire.  The following is a short excerpt from the CNBC article...

A stock market correction is approaching the level of near certainty as Wall Street faces a major paradigm shift in how to achieve price gains, according to aGoldman Sachs analysis.

In a market outlook that garnered significant attention from traders Monday, the firm's strategists called theS&P 500 valuation "lofty by almost any measure" and attached a 67 percent probability to the chance that the market would fall by 10 percent or more, which is the technical yardstick for a correction.

Of course Goldman Sachs is quite correct to be warning about an imminent stock market correction.  Right now stocks are overvalued according to just about any measure that you could imagine...

The current valuation of the S&P 500 is lofty by almost any measure, both for the aggregate market as well as the median stock: (1) The P/E ratio; (2) the current P/E expansion cycle; (3) EV/Sales; (4) EV/EBITDA; (5) Free Cash Flow yield; (6) Price/Book as well as the ROE and P/B relationship; and compared with the levels of (6) inflation; (7) nominal 10-year Treasury yields; and (8) real interest rates. Furthermore, the cyclically-adjusted P/E ratio suggests the S&P 500 is currently 30% overvalued in terms of (9) Operating EPS and (10) about 45% overvalued using As Reported earnings.

There is a lot of technical jargon in the paragraph above, but essentially what it is saying is that stock prices are unusually high right now according to a whole host of key indicators.

And in case you were wondering, stocks did fall dramatically on Monday.  The Dow fell by 179 points, which was the biggest decline of the year by far.

So is Goldman Sachs correct about what could be coming?

Well, the truth is that there are many other analysts that are far more pessimistic than Goldman Sachs is.  For example, David Stockman, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan, believes that the U.S. stock market is heading for "a pretty rude day of awakening"...

"This (2014) is the year of the end game. The party is over. We are now just at the point where they are rounding up the Wall Street drunks who are swilling on the fifth consecutive seasonally maladjusted phony recovery. That will become evident in the weeks and months ahead. Then I think the markets are going to have a pretty rude day of awakening."

For many more forecasts that are similar to this, please see my previous article entitled "Dent, Faber, Celente, Maloney, Rogers – What Do They Say Is Coming In 2014?"

There are also some other signs that we are rapidly heading toward a major "turning point" in the financial world in 2014.  One of those signs is the continual decline of Comex gold inventories.  Someone out there (China?) is voraciously gobbling up physical gold.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent article by Steve St. Angelo...

After a brief pause in the decline of Comex Gold inventories, it looks like it has continued once again as there were several big withdrawals over the past few days. Not only was there a large removal of gold from the Comex today, the Registered (Dealer) inventories are now at a new record low.

And of course the overall economy continues to get even weaker.  The Baltic Dry Index (a very important indicator of global economic activity) has fallen by more than 40 percent over the past couple of weeks...

We noted Friday that the much-heralded Baltic Dry Index has seen the worst start to the year in over 30 years. Today it got worse. At 1,395, the the Baltic Dry index, which reflects the daily charter rate for vessels carrying cargoes such as iron ore, coal and grain, is now down 18% in the last 2 days alone (biggest drop in 6 years), back at 4-month lows. The shipping index has utterly collapsed over 40% in the last 2 weeks.

So does this mean that tough times are just around the corner?

Maybe.

Or perhaps things will stabilize again and this little bubble of false prosperity that we have been enjoying will be extended for a little while longer.

The important thing is to not get too caught up in the short-term numbers.

If you look at our long-term national "balance sheet numbers" and the long-term trends that are systematically destroying our economy, it becomes abundantly clear that a massive economic collapse is on the way.  Our national debt is on pace to more than double during the Obama years, our "too big to fail" banks are now much bigger and much more reckless than they were before the financial crash of 2008, and the middle class in America is steadily shrinking.  In other words, our long-term national "balance sheet numbers" are worse than ever.

We consume far more wealth than we produce, and our entire nation is drowning in a massive ocean of red ink that stretches from sea to shining sea.

This is not sustainable, and it is inevitable that the stock market will catch up with economic reality at some point.

It is just a matter of time.

Credit to Economic Collapse

Police Arrest Street Preacher in Scotland for Calling Homosexuality a Sin

Scottish police arrested Tony Milano, a U.S. preacher and former Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff, for breach of the peace and for using "homophobic" language in the condemnation of sin.

"It is indicative of the suppression of the freedom to speak and live out the words of Jesus Christ in public and present the teachings of the Bible," Andrea Minichiello Williams, chief executive of the British organization Christian Concern's Christian Legal Centre, said about the arrest Wednesday night.

Milano's colleague, Pastor Josh Williamson of the Craigie Reformed Baptist Church in Perth, pointed out, "Tony wasn't focusing just on homosexual practice it was about all sin."

Milano, the second street preacher to address lunchtime shoppers on Wednesday, was preaching about sin in general. He then turned to mention sexual sin, including adultery, promiscuity, and homosexuality.

As Milano started preaching about sin, a woman reportedly yelled at him, shouting that her son was gay. Williamson said she tried to smash the camera he was using to film Milano's preaching. The woman threatened she would get the preachers arrested, and proceeded to call the police.

The police arrived as the street preachers were packing up, and the woman kept shouting at Milano. "The female officer saw we had a camera and lunged for it," Williamson recalled. "Then the male policeman grabbed it and threw it in the police van."

According to Williamson, the male officer interviewed the woman and her friend, and then immediately arrested Milano, without questioning him or explaining the reason for his arrest. "I asked why he was being arrested and was told it was for a breach of the peace and for using homophobic language," Williamson reported.

Williams noted that the incident "adds to the number of arrests of Christian street evangelists for preaching from the Bible," and warned that it was a sign of the suppression of religious freedom.

Milano was arrested for a similar "crime" in London last July. "The officers that detained me specifically said the concern was the use of 'homophobic hate speech,'" the retired deputy sheriff told Christian radio talk show host Frank Sontag during a segment on KKLA. Christian Concern helped him avoid paying a fine and receive a "caution" after he was detained.

"I was expositing 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, where the apostle Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to abstain from all forms of sexual immorality," the street preacher explained. "I began to preach from that text by describing different kinds of sexual immorality, from addiction to romance novels to pornography, fornication, sex outside of marriage, lust of the heart, lust of the mind, lust of the eyes and homosexuality."

While spending seven hours in jail, he said police interrogated him about his faith in Jesus Christ. "I was asked if I believe homosexuality is a sin," Milano recounted. "I was asked what portion of the Bible I was reading. I was asked that if a homosexual was hungry and walked up to me, would I give them something to eat."

Milano explained he began street evangelism eight years ago when he realized "that I love myself more than I love lost people." He admitted that "I was more concerned about me than where they would spend eternity – I was more concerned about what they thought of me instead of what they think of Christ."

"There's nothing more loving we will do for another human being than explain to them that God's wrath abides upon them and that same God that will send them to hell is also the only that can save them from self through faith in Jesus Christ," Milano declared.

Credit to Christian Post

¨Unequivocal' cell phones cause cancer

In Our Day What Do You Have To Offer?

My friends, as we look out of the window today at America what do you have to offer its inhabitants? Please do not tell me that you have optimistic conservative values to offer them, for this nation abhors and despises these principles as a vampire does light (John 3:19-21, 2 Cor. 4:3-4). Conservatism (moral and fiscal) is the best ideology for this fallen world for it is based on the moral absolutes instilled into the creation by Almighty God at it's creation (Gen. 1:31). When moral absolutes are adhered to, a people or nation will find a healthy society, peace and safety for its inhabitants to dwell in (Isa. 32:17) but when despised and rejected there is only to be found anarchy, lawlessness, violence, hate, rage, poverty, envy, lewdness, war and godlessness... ever destroying and ever corrupting until nothing is left (Gen 6, Rom. 1:18-32).

If you know the Lord as your Savior DO NOT get caught up in or distracted by political debates (Right vs Left.. etc) for any sane remedies which can slow down our EXPONENTIAL national deterioration have long expired.

My friends, please hear me... If you know the Lord as your Savior DO NOT get caught up in or distracted by political debates (Right vs Left.. etc) for any sane remedies which can slow down our EXPONENTIAL national deterioration have long expired. Leave those fights AND debates for the conservative spiritually dead Rush Limbaugh's, Sean Hannity's, Mark Levin's and Michael Savage's who are lost and know not the Savior, for the Day of the Lord is indeed closer than we ever can imagine and zero remedies now are to be found (Matt. 24, 2 Thess. 2:3-12, Rev. 6-19). Does this appraisal sound like a defeatist attitude to you? Well... it is far from it. We now (as believers) are to choose the proper hill to fight on and as Noah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel of old we are today to speak only of the Savior and the Day of the Lord which is at our door.
 
Some examples;

A ninety year dying old man does not need to hear a delusional optimistic message that he will get better and that all things will be well for him when he is in the hospice unit and is ready to die. He needs only to hear that his end is soon and that Almighty God has a wonderful hope and saving solution for his soul if he should choose(John 1:12, 3:16-17, Acts. 4:12,16:28-30).

Those upon the Titanic did not need to hear optimistic remedies of how to fix a doomed and sinking ship but rather man the life boats and if you missed the life boats, Almighty God has provided a Savior for the world beyond that awaits us if you should so choose.

We as a nation - at the absolute end of our journey - do not need to tell people to hope in a lawless agenda which is offered by both political parties. The political fall-out and consequence of our past and present have fully saturated and ravished our inhabitants beyond all repair. The EXPONENTIAL technology of our day is EXPONENTIALLY accelerating our rot as a people and Satan's "Do as thou wilt" godless philosophy is the ideology of our land from top to bottom. Eventually, Conservatives who know not the Lord as their Savior will be wiped out by the fallout of our nation's implosion and those who survive will enter into the Day of the Lord (Matt. 24, Rev. 6-19).

The EXPONENTIAL technology of our day is EXPONENTIALLY accelerating our rot as a people and Satan's "Do as thou wilt" godless philosophy is the ideology of our land from top to bottom.

We started this blog six years ago and we have seen everything that the Lord has laid upon our hearts to tell you come to pass here in America. Our nation's plagues have never gotten better but only EXPONENTIALLY worse! If you have eyes to see and have been following the Spirit's leading in these trying days then you will understand what we are trying to convey to you. If you have not, then this message which we have put before you will sound like the crazy foolish babblings of a Christian end times zealot and kook.

My dear friends, may we all play the man/women that our Savior has called us to be and do our part as a child of God seeking the Father's will for His glory, ever redeeming to time for indeed our day is evil(Eph. 5:15-16). Use our nation's crises and soon demise to cause people to think and let them know that there is always an ETERNAL wonderful hope in Jesus Christ; for all the prophecies which speak of the end times which are to be found in Almighty God's Word are are about to become REALITY to this godless demonically drunken world and when that time does come they will know that God's messenger was sent unto them (Rev. 6-19). God speed for God's glory!

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

DJP I.F.

Credit to The Ignorant Post

Meet "Smart Restaurant": The Minimum-Wage-Crushing, Burger-Flipping Robot

With a seemingly endless line of talking-heads willing to ignore essentially every study that has been undertaken with regard the effects of raising the minimum-wage; and propose what is merely populist vote-getting 'benefits' for the ever-increasing not-1% who benefitted from Ben Bernnake's bubbles - we thought the following burger-flipping robot was a perfect example of unintended consequences for the fast food industry's workers. With humans needing to take breaks, have at least 4 weekend days off per month, and demanding ever-increasing minimum-wage for a job that was never meant to provide a 'living-wage', Momentum Machines - a San Francisco-based robotics company has unveiled the 'Smart Restaurants' machine which is capable of making ~360 'customized' gourmet burgers per hour without the aid of a human. First Jamba Juice, then Applebees, next McDonalds...

As Brian Merchant ( @bcmerchant ) explains (via The Burning Platform blog),
Meet the Robot That Makes 360 Gourmet Burgers Per Hour




No human hand touched this hamburger. It was made entirely by robots


.

One robot, rather—a 24 square foot gourmet-hamburger-flipping behemoth built by Momentum Machines. It looks like this:



The San Francisco-based robotics company debuted its burger-preparing machine last year. It can whip up hundreds of burgers an hour, take custom orders, and it uses top-shelf ingredients for its inputs. Now Momentum is proposing a chain of ‘smart restaurants’ that eschew human cooks altogether.

Food Beast points us to the Momentum’s official release, where the company blares:

“Fast food doesn’t have to have a negative connotation anymore. With our technology, a restaurant can offer gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices. Our alpha machine replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does everything employees can do except better.”

And what might this robotic burger cook of the future do better than the slow, inefficient, wage-sucking line cooks of yore?
It slices toppings like tomatoes and pickles only immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible.
…custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison ground after you place your order? No problem.
It’s more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour.

Furthermore, the “labor savings allow a restaurant to spend approximately twice as much on high quality ingredients and the gourmet cooking techniques make the ingredients taste that much better.” Hear that? Without all those cumbersome human workers, your hamburger will betwice as good. For the same cost.
I don’t doubt this is where we’re heading; robots are making inroads in manufacturing, farming, and they’re doing more domestic work around the house, too. Yeah, robots are taking our jobs, and it’s not a question of if, but when and how. Economists often treat the service industry as some last bastion of downsize-proof labor, but, clearly, robots will make sandwiches and take orders, too.

A future where we can get gourmet burgers, cheaply and on the quick, sounds pretty nice. But that future will also have structural unemployment, unless we start taking major strides to rethink and reform how we work in a world where robots are doing much of the heavy lifting. If we can, with robots flipping all the burgers, and the right social policies, maybe at least asemi-techno-utopia is on the way…

Of course, in a world of de minimus capital costs (courtesy of an apparently job-creating-mandated Fed), why wouldn't the McDonalds of the world adopt such a strategy. The outcome, as we explained before, is all too obvious...

What happens after that should be clear to everyone: more unemployment, lower wages for the remaining employees, worse worker morale, but even higher profits to holders of capital. And so on. Because in a world in which technology makes the unqualified worker utterely irrelevant, this is what is known as "progress."


Credit to Zero Hedge

We Will Be Told Hyperinflation Is Necessary, Proper, Patriotic, And Ethical

Submitted by Patrick Barron via The Ludwig von Mises Institute,

Hyperinflation leads to the complete breakdown in the demand for a currency, which means simply that no one wishes to hold it.Everyone wants to get rid of that kind of money as fast as possible. Prices, denominated in the hyper-inflated currency, suddenly and dramatically go through the roof. The most famous examples, although there are many others, are Germany in the early 1920s and Zimbabwe just a few years ago. German Reichsmarks and Zim dollars were printed in million and even trillion unit denominations.

We may scoff at such insanity and assume that America could never suffer from such an event. We are modern. We know too much. Our monetary leaders are wise and have unprecedented power to prevent such an awful outcome.

Think again.

Our monetary leaders do not understand the true nature of money and banking; thus, they advocate monetary expansion as the cure for every economic ill. The multiple quantitative easing programs perfectly illustrate this mindset. Furthermore, our monetary leaders actually advocate a steady increase in the price level, what is popularly known as inflation. Any perceived reduction in the inflation rate is seen as a potentially dangerous deflationary trend, which must be countered by an increase in the money supply, a reduction in interest rates, and/or quantitative easing. So an increase in inflation will be viewed as success, which must be built upon to ensure that it continues. This mindset will prevail even when inflation runs at extremely high rates.

Like previous hyperinflations throughout time, the actions that produce an American hyperinflation will be seen as necessary, proper, patriotic, and ethical; just as they were seen by the monetary authorities in Weimar Germany and modern Zimbabwe.Neither the German nor the Zimbabwean monetary authorities were willing to admit that there was any alternative to their inflationist policies. The same will happen in America.

The most likely trigger to hyperinflation is an increase in prices following a loss of confidence in the dollar overseas and its repatriation to our shores. Committed to a low interest rate policy, our monetary authorities will dismiss the only legitimate option to printing more money — allowing interest rates to rise. Only the noninflationary investment by the public in government bonds would prevent a rise in the price level, but such an action would trigger a recession. This necessary and inevitable event will be vehemently opposed by our government, just as it has been for several years to this date.

Instead, the government will demand and the Fed will acquiesce in even further expansions to the money supply via direct purchases of these government bonds, formerly held by our overseas trading partners. This will produce even higher levels of inflation, of course. Then, in order to prevent the loss of purchasing power by politically connected groups, the government will print even more money to fund special payouts to these groups. For example, government will demand that Social Security beneficiaries get their automatic increases; likewise for the quarter of the population getting disability benefits. Military and government employee pay will be increased. Funding for government cost-plus contracts will ratchet up. As the dollar drops in value overseas, local purchases by our overextended military will cost more in dollar terms (as the dollar buys fewer units of the local currencies), necessitating an emergency increase in funding. Of course, such action is necessary, proper, patriotic, and ethical.

Other federal employee sectors like air traffic controllers and the TSA workers will likely threaten to go on strike and block access to air terminal gates unless they get a pay increase to restore the purchasing power of their now meager salaries.

State and local governments will also be under stress to increase the pay of their public safety workers or suffer strikes which would threaten social chaos. Not having the ability to increase taxes or print their own money, the federal government will be asked to step in and print more money to placate the police and firemen. Doing so will be seen as necessary, proper, patriotic, and ethical.

Each round of money printing eventually feeds back into the price system, creating demand for another round of money printing ... and another ... and another, with each successive increase larger than the previous one, as is the nature of foolishly trying to restore money’s purchasing power with even more money. The law of diminishing marginal utility applies to money as it does to all goods and services. The political and social pressure to print more money to prevent a loss of purchasing power by the politically connected and government workers will be seen as absolutely necessary, proper, patriotic, and ethical.

Many will not survive. Just as in Weimar Germany, the elderly who are retired on the fruits of a lifetime of savings will find themselves impoverished to the point of despair. Suicides among the elderly will be common. Prostitution will increase, as one’s body becomes the only saleable resource for many. Guns will disappear from gun shops, if not through panic buying then by outright theft by armed gangs, many of whom may be your previously law-abiding neighbors.

Businesses will be vilified for raising prices. Goods will disappear from the market as producer revenue lags behind the increase in the cost of replacement resources. Government’s knee-jerk solution is to impose wage and price controls, which simply drive the remaining goods and services from the white market to the gangster-controlled black market. Some will sit out the insanity. Better to build inventory than sell it at a loss. Better still to close up shop and wait out the insanity. So government does the necessary, proper, patriotic, and ethical thing: it prints even more money and prices increase still more.

The money you have become accustomed to using and saving eventually becomes worthless; it no longer serves as a medium of exchange. No one will accept it. Yet the government continues to print it in ever greater quantities and attempts to force the citizens to accept it. Our military forces overseas cannot purchase food or electrical power with their now worthless dollars. They become a real danger to the local inhabitants, most of whom are unarmed. The US takes emergency steps to evacuate dependents back to the States. It even considers abandoning our bases and equipment and evacuating our uniformed troops when previously friendly allies turn hostile.

And yet the central bank continues to print money. Politically-connected constituents demand that it do so, and it is seen as the absolutely necessary, proper, patriotic, and ethical thing to do.

Credit to Zero Hedge