First of all a big shout out to Paul Marshall. His comment in the Financial Times “Central banks have made the rich richer” – Quantitative easing has bailed out bonus-happy banks and made the rich richer.

According to him “Banks have been the biggest beneficiaries, with their 20- or 30-times leveraged balance sheets. Asset managers and hedge funds have benefited, too. Owners of property have made out like bandits. In fact, anyone with assets has grown much richer. All of us who work in financial markets owe a debt to QE.”

Quantitative easing can be called the biggest heist of our century.

When thinking about Central banks and QE – it is great to stand still that while the central banks are printing money, actually a lot of this paper is out there and it is called “debt”. The concept of debt is strange as we eventually all owe money to the central banks. This great infographic from visual capitalist shows exactly who is in debt.

The numbers that stand out the most, especially when comparing to the previous world economy graphic:

• The United States constitutes 23.3% of the world economy but 29.1% of world debt. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 103.4% using IMF figures.
• Japan makes up only 6.18% of total economic production, but has amounted 19.99% of global debt.
• China, the world’s second largest economy (and largest by other measures), accounts for 13.9% of production. They only have 6.25% of world debt and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 39.4%.
• 7 of the 15 countries with the most total debt are European. Together, excluding Russia, the European continent holds over 26% of total world debt.

Combining the debt of the United States, Japan, and Europe together accounts for 75% of total global debt.

That is only the country debt. Do not forget private debt – credit cards, mortgages and all the other stuff we like to buy but can not afford.

Now you know that the central banks have made the guys on Wall Street much richer via QE, did you know that you make them much richer every day and you are paying the highest price possible for it? Wall Street greed is the cause of the biggest epedemic in the world: obesitas. 14% of all women and 10% of all men are obese. It is predicted that this will rise to a staggering 36% by 2030.

According to Marion Nestle (no kidding) “Wall Street forced companies to try and sell food in an extremely competitive environment and the food manufacturers had to look for ways to get people to buy more food. And they were really good at it. I blame Wall Street for insisting that corporations have to grow their profits every 90 days.”

In her book, she makes the connection what others (Eisenhower) called the industrial-military complex – only for the food industry. It goes like this: Wall Street wants more profits, the food industry needs to sell more stuff that tastes better. The food industry designs a system via marketing and sales that makes people perceive healthy food like fruits and vegetables as expensive and the government subsides cheap and unhealthy calories like corn (for sugar production). And off we go with the waste lines of the world. You should read her book – it is great!

I want to end this post with a quote from our dear friend president Obama: “Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Statement by the President on the Shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

If you look at the data from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime ,the US has a much higher rate of homicides than all but three of the 34 OECD nations.

Conclusion: if you are from the United States of America – you are have higher chances of getting killed, being fat and being in debt up to your ears.

Well, you got to love them or you just might hate them.  All the banks in the Netherlands reported good earnings, mainly due to US – the homeowners. They made a staggering 6 billion profit from interest on mortgages .

We all pay a few hundred euros per month more then for example Spanish or German house owners. It is kind of outrageous considering that the Dutch people bailed out all of the banks reporting big profits now because we pay too much for our mortgages. So what did they plan to do with all the profits? Take a good guess. They were planning to pay themselves a BIG bonus. Of course. After a public outcry, they reconsidered. Now they are not getting any bonus, they are getting a big pay rise.

And the guy responsible for watching over them says they need to pay big bonuses otherwise there will be a human capital drainage to London or other banking hotspots. I would say, let them go and please do not let them come back. Just like the Syrian warrior types, cancel their passports. Goodbye, hope to see you never again. Zalm can follow them. Instead of Zalm put Conchita in his place, but only if she shows up in her after work outfits and spanks all those naughty bankers who are even thinking about paying out big bonuses on the back of all hard working people.

You don’t know Conchita ?

In Apple’s case it is neglectable if not “ZERO”.

Last week Apple Inc. announced the best quarter in company history. They just blew it. They deserve it. They changed the world one iPhone a time. I am a big Apple fan. Our household owns three MacBooks, one MacBook Air, one IMac, Two iPhones, one iPad. With a profit margin of 40% Apple earned a few thousands just on us alone. I am using their products everyday and I just love them. I do think they do not deserve to earn 40% profit margin, they should!

Apple made $18.04 billion in profit and $74.6 billion in revenue for the last quarter 2014. Apple sold a record 74.5 million iPhones last quarter.

They know hold on to a lot of cash: $178 billion – and that is after they just have spend more than $100 billion of its cash on dividends and stock buybacks. Mind blowing.

All cool you might say, great job. If there wasn’t this double dutch sandwich with an Irish twist. Apple is paying very little taxes. According to a Senate report, Apple “avoided” paying $9bn in US taxes in one year. At present it retains 89% of its balance sheet cash outside America where corporation tax is high at 35%. As a result of international pressure, the “double Irish” system closed on 1 January 2015, although companies already using it – including Apple – can go on doing so until the end of 2020. What? Yes. Just 5 more years and Apple will pay taxes just like you and me – around 35%. Hopefully.

U.S. Senator Carl Levin:

“Its technological brilliance is dimmed by the financial engineering of its tax lawyers and executives who have stained Apple’s reputation through tax dodging. Successful corporations don’t only make money; they meet their civic obligations by paying their taxes. The EU report has increased pressure on multinational corporations to do just that.”

Just to quote Tim Cook: “We pay all the taxes we owe.“

The thing is Mr. Cook: We all pay a lot more than Apple does. Why do we have to pay more than the most profitable company in the world? Just because we can’t move our money around the world and park it off shore, have the best financial engineering at our hands?

I think it is time that Apple takes its full responsibility. Why are we paying for the roads, hospitals, ambulances, police you are also using when you need them and you are not? You might think that it is “ok” to avoid as much taxes as possible and you are not doing something illegal – but it is it ethical?

Just to put things into perspective: Apple’s market cap was $640 billion. That is more than the GDP of all but 25 countries. Number 26, South Africa, had a GDP of $596 billion in 2013, according to CIA estimates.

Systematic tax evil – brought to you by international tax laws designed for and by the banks & corporations of this world. Screw us.

” …As it stands, the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent….

…Robert Promm, Apple’s controller in the mid-1990s, called the strategy “the worst-kept secret in Europe.”…

…However, tax experts say that strategies like the Double Irish help explain how Apple has managed to keep its international taxes to 3.2 percent of foreign profits last year, to 2.2 percent in 2010, and in the single digits for the last half-decade, according to the company’s corporate filings. ”

Getting depressed that such an awesome company refuses to pay the same tax rate as all of us? Well, a new study found that in fact, corporate tax dodging has gone so out of control that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes. They researched 100 U.S. corporations that shelled out the most last year in CEO compensation. 25  of them the bill for chief executive compensation actually ran higher than the company’s entire federal corporate income tax bill. BAM. How much are we talking about? Tax havens are costing the federal treasury, by one estimate, $100 billion a year.

You read the study here. Be warned it is quite shocking material for everybody who pays taxes.

Ready for the finish? Here are a ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model that has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe.

Like my father always said: Two things in life you can not avoid: paying taxes and taking a shit. Apparently not true. Should be: Two things in life you can not avoid: paying taxes & cooperations and their CEOs just laughing out loud at us.

I stumbled upon this interesting (academic) article about CEO compensation. The reality differs a lot from our perception of what is, what it should be and what it is actually is. Well this is what life is about in essence. Always the same story. You can find the article here: How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay

The essence: in every one of the 16 countries where the professors were able to get data about the actual ratio of CEO to worker pay, the reality of the situation was far more unequal than what people had imagined. Duh.

CEOs are getting richer and richer and the gap between worker compensation (which has stagnated for the sake of shareholder value) and executive compensation (wich have gone through the roof) is bigger than ever.

I am not worried, also the CEOs will learn this important life lesson:

” Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

Obomsawin  – Native American (1972)

Harvey Wasserman sends me some information about the Diablo Canyon reactors which could lead to an American Fukushima and ruin one part of the world I fell in love with forever.

The situation is identical to Fukushima:

1. the operator of the reactors is not trustworthy (they have been fined 1,4 billion)
2. the reactor lies near five fault lines
3. the reactors violate state water quality laws
4. the reactors are vulnerable to tsunamis and fire.

I wonder who was in charge when approving  building the reactor only 45 miles away from the massive San Andreas fault and just 650 yard from the coastline. This is like asking for a major incident. Plus the reactors are not fire proof. When the reactor were build more than 10.000 people protesting were arrested. Building this reactors was outright systematic evil which is now a threat to California and maybe the rest of North America.

On August 25th while we were in Arizona, an earthquake hit California. We got lucky. Diablo must be shut down immediately, if the next quake hits Diablo, we are all doomed!

Read more over at Eco Watch!

Millions and millions people are being warehoused. And many of those are black. Are black people committing more crimes than other ethnic groups? There is no correlation between crime rates and incarceration rates.

Maybe it is just that the police is a bit more focused on black people.

And then we have Wall Street. Those guys never get searched and frisked, but they are able to “save” 19% of taxes by inventing new products that nobody will ever understand. Maps and Colt – shitty names with a lot of mathematical creativity in it. Just made to save a staggering (estimated) 6 billion but nobody really knows. It may be a lot more. Read the full story at The Guardian.

And then we have a new uprising in hate against Jews. It went so far that the largest and most popular newspaper in Germany called all citizens to stand up against hate against Jews.

During demonstrations in Holland, people were waving with swastikas flags and shouting “Kill all Jews”.

We created a world full of systematic evil. May the good forces be with us that we are able to prevent anything resembling a situation we had 75 years ago.

“It’s fantastic. It inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the 1% and say, ‘I want to become one of those people, I’m going to fight hard to get up to the top. This is fantastic news and of course I applaud it. What can be wrong with this?”

Response of the anchor “Really?” after a long pause.

There is not much one can say about such a response. Just sick from the bottom to the top.

——————————————————————————————————————–

Lieve dames, mijne heren,

Dit zijn mijn laatste dagen bij […]. Per […] zal ik als […] bij […] aan de slag gaan. Een mooie uitdaging waar ik met veel plezier en nieuwe energie aan zal beginnen!

Ik nodig jullie allemaal van harte uit om vrijdag beneden in de bar een borrel te komen drinken. Voel je vooral niet verplicht te komen. Voor degenen die wel komen en ook na 20.30u nog zin hebben in een drankje: Amsterdam kent vele plaatsen waar een afscheid op memorabele wijze gevierd kan worden.

Na bijna acht jaar trouwe dienst is het einde dan nu echt in zicht. Dat brengt je ertoe terug te kijken op de afgelopen jaren. Het dwingt je ook tot zelfreflectie. Zouden we niet allemaal eens wat vaker in de spiegel moeten kijken? Om misverstanden te voorkomen: neem onderstaand vooral met een korrel zout, het is niet kwaad bedoeld.

Het begon voor mij allemaal op […]. Groen als gras kwam ik binnen. Naïef ook. Al snel leer je de spelregels en het klappen van de zweep kennen:

– Omhoog likken, omlaag trappen: was ik denk ik niet zo goed in. Misschien had ik een te grote mond “omhoog” en was ik teveel begaan met het lot van “omlaag”.

– Vaktechniek, daar draait het uiteindelijk toch om: vaktechnisch stond ik mijn mannetje wel. Het is uiteindelijk ook allemaal niet zo heel ingewikkeld. Gewoon veel en vaak een niet te controleren verwijzing naar de Hoge Raad of wetsgeschiedenis uitbraken tijdens vaktechnische overleggen. Of gewoon lekker achteloos orakelen dat het je allemaal “niet helemaal meer helder op het netvlies staat”, maar dat “het toch echt niet zo kan zijn dat”. Niemand die je dan meer durft tegen te spreken.

– Duidelijk communiceren doen we niet aan: deze spelregel was niet zo aan mij besteed. Net zo min als de spelregel “waardering uitspreken kennen we hier niet”. En dat terwijl het uitspreken van waardering weinig kost en juist zoveel oplevert. Vanuit een kosten/batenperspectief zou dat toch moeten aanspreken.

– Tijdschrijven met de gouden vork: ging me slecht af. Ik kwam er te laat achter dat je je daadwerkelijke “time spent” maal drie moest doen om een beetje in de buurt van je (dan opeens veel realistischere) target te komen. Merlin (2.0), ik zal je missen.

– Exposure is belangrijk: ging me goed af, althans dat dacht ik. Ik besefte me te laat dat je je vooral niet moest profileren als “sociaal vaardig” en “altijd in voor gekkigheid”. Mijn tweevoudige deelname aan het cabaret met al dan niet twijfelachtige acts was dan wellicht ook geen meesterzet. Ik had misschien ook minder groeps- en studentenevents moeten organiseren en in mijn eerste jaren sowieso minder vaak op borrels moeten staan. Ik had me daarentegen vaker door kantoor moeten bewegen met uitgestreken gezicht en een interessant dossier of Vakstudienieuws in de hand.

– Dag en nacht (zichtbaar) bereikbaar zijn – hoezo privéleven: ik meende hierin uit te blinken totdat ik erachter kwam dat bereikbaar zijn op zichzelf niet zaligmakend is. Je moest vooral “zichtbaar” bereikbaar zijn. En daar faalde ik. Ik zat niet duimen draaiend tot middernacht (of vroeg in de ochtend) op kantoor naar mijn scherm te staren. Ik stuurde ook geen (al dan niet voorgeprogrammeerde) nachtelijke emails uit.

– Gebakken lucht verkopen: was een van mijn sterkere punten, hoewel ik het wel van anderen heb moeten afkijken. Maar een mens leert snel. Cliënten het bos in sturen met een onnavolgbaar twintig pagina’s tellend stukje proza. Hoe mistiger hoe beter. Onder het motto: kost een hoop en dan hebben we ook altijd nog de 6% kantooropslag. Die twintig pagina’s papier kosten immers ook wat.

Tot zover mijn zelfreflectie. Met heel veel plezier kijk ik terug op bijna […]. Ik heb veel geleerd, ik heb een geweldige tijd in zowel […] als […] beleefd en heb hier vriendschappen voor het leven gemaakt. Ik zal velen van jullie dan ook oprecht gaan missen.

If you ask me, Spain, Greece and Portugal are way ahead of us. What they are experiencing we will be experiencing faster and we will be hit even harder – we do not have anywhere to run. We are on our way to “world cero“.

How sad it will or could be, shows the Facebook post of a Spanish pal (with some nice academic degrees) – cleaning toilets in the UK. Didn’t they tell us that education is best defense against unemployment? The best thing: he is not complaining about the fact that he cleans toilets. He complains that he didn’t have the opportunity to clean toilets in Spain.

I understand him, I would rather be in my home country where the sun shines, where they have a siesta from 15- 18 and where the food tastes awesome and the girls have big brown eyes and dark hair instead of being in London, a metropolis and the center of the people who are partly responsible for the situation you are in (the bankers). He is maybe even cleaning the very toilets of some of those big shot bankers who have caused what has happend to Spain and has forced him to leave his home country and leave everything behind.

Think about this one.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/benjaserrabosch/posts/10151860752423076