‘Locked, loaded and ready to roll’: San Andreas fault danger zones

‘Locked, loaded and ready to roll’: San Andreas fault danger zones (Source cosmosmagazine.com)

A series of small earthquakes up to magnitude 4 started popping off right next to the San Andreas fault at the end of September, giving Californian seismologists the jitters. This swarm of more than 200 mini-quakes radiated from faults under the Salton Sea, right down at the southern end of the San Andreas fault. And although the small quakes only released tiny amounts of energy, the fear was that this fidgeting could be enough to trigger an earthquake on the big fault. . “Any time there is significant seismic activity in the vicinity of the San Andreas fault, we seismologists get nervous,” said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Centre in Los Angeles.

Because despite a plethora of sensitive instruments, satellite measurements and powerful computer models, no-one can predict when the next big one will rattle the Golden State. Slicing through 1,300 kilometres of Californian landscape from Cape Mendocino in the north-west all the way to the Mexican border in the south-east, the San Andreas fault makes itself known. Rivers and mountain ranges – and even fences and roads – are offset by the horizontal movement of this “transform” fault, where the Pacific Ocean plate to the west meets the North American plate to the east. The fault moves an average of around 3.5 centimetres each year, but the movement comes in fits and starts. Large earthquakes doing most of the work, punctuating long periods of building pressure.The fault divides roughly into three segments, each of which tends to produce a big quake every 150 to 200 years. The last time the northern segment (from Cape Mendocino to Juan Bautista, south of San Francisco) released stress was during the devastating magnitude-7.8 San Francisco Bay quake in 1906, which killed thousands and destroyed around 80% of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the central section, from Parkfield to San Bernardino, has been quiet for longer still, with its last significant quake in 1857, when a magnitude-7.9 erupted underneath Fort Tejon.

But most worrying of all is the southern portion (from San Bernardino southwards through the Coachella Valley), which last ruptured in the late 1600s. With more than 300 years of accumulated strain, it is this segment that seismologists view as the most hazardous.

“It looks like it is locked, loaded and ready to roll,” Jordan announced at the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach in May 2016..

Almost all the jobs created since 2005 are temporary

Almost all the jobs created since 2005 are temporary (Source qz.com)

The conventional full-time job is disappearing.

Survey research conducted by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as “alternative work” jumped from 10.7% to 15.8%. Alternative work is characterized by being temporary or unsteady—such as work as an independent contractor or through a temporary help agency.“We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment. Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was surprised by the finding. The survey’s original goal was to quantify the size of the gig economy (0.5% and growing). The researchers were caught off guard by the tremendous growth of alternative work. There had been almost no change from 1995 to 2005. Katz and Krueger found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015—with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm. The decline of conventional full-time work has impacted every demographic. Whether this change is good or bad depends on what kinds of jobs people want. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” said Krueger. “While many of those who value flexibility and have a spouse with a steady job have probably gained.”

For graphic designers and lawyers who hate going to an office, new technology and Obamacare has made it more appealing to become an independent contractor. But for those seeking a steady administrative assistant office job, the market is grim. Women experienced an unusually large increase in the share of alternative work. They were three percentage points less likely than men to engage in alternative work in 2005, but two percentage points more likely in 2015. This is in large part because the sectors that saw the largest move towards alternative work arrangements—like education and medicine—have a high proportion of women.

 

Trump Economic Plan would send U.S. Economy to most severe recession since early 1980’s

Trump Economic Plan Would Send U.S. Economy To Most Severe Recession Since Early 1980s (Source forbes.com)
Comparing Donald Trump to Ronald Reagan is wrong and misleading. The two eras are diametrically different in most respects. Rising budget deficits, interest rates and dollar will hit U.S. economy and financial markets hard.
The U.S. economy is undergoing a clear slowdown in the last year. The industrial sector, especially capital investments, is already in the midst of a recession, and other leading sectors of the economy are exhibiting tangible signs of weakening and possibly even changing course and direction.
The automobile industry is experiencing record high inventory levels combined with a sales plateau since the beginning of the year. After a long time, used car prices are also down. Mortgage and refinancing activity is rapidly slowing and simultaneously we see weaker homes sales rates. High-end real estate markets such as New York City, Miami, Chicago and the San Francisco-Bay Area are already experiencing a precipitous price fall while the rate and scale of foreclosures increased.
Retail sales trends are close to recession-level, particularly transportation and restaurant-related businesses show significant slowdown. In fact, a majority of the six commonly defined economic engines of growth are showing signs of halting and some even reversing course. While there are indications of a somewhat surprising rebound in the last several months, it stems from unsustainable factors: An increase in exports and inventories. A more robust indicator is the unmistakable diminishing rate of domestic end-buyer sales. On the bright side, exports constitute a ray of light, but there are nearly impossible to overcome difficulties of global economic weakness, a strong dollar and the inevitable loss of competitiveness.
Global economic slowdown is compounded as the zero-interest-rate driven expansive-monetary policy’s effects dissipate, while the negative attributes of this policy grow more influential. This is a process that both inflicts current damages on the global economy and gains momentum as it progresses. Vis-a-vis Asian currencies including China, the dollar is as strong as its 2009 levels, let alone Canada, Mexico, Europe and South America. This will inexorably hurt U.S. exports, generate an increase in imports and will create deflationary pressures on the U.S. economy.

Global financial markets plunged into chaos as Italy overwhelmingly votes no

GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKETS PLUNGED INTO CHAOS AS ITALY OVERWHELMINGLY VOTES ‘NO’ (Source blacklistednews.com)

Italian voters have embraced the global trend of rejecting the established world order, but the “no” vote on Sunday(12-4-16) has plunged global financial markets into a state of utter chaos.  The euro has already fallen to a 20 month low, Italian government bonds are poised for a tremendous crash, and futures markets are indicating that both U.S. and European stock markets will be way down when they open.  It is being projected that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum on constitutional reforms will be defeated by about 20 percentage points when all the votes have been counted, and Renzi has already announced that he plans to resign as a result.  When new elections are held it looks like comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star movement will come to power, and the European establishment is extremely alarmed at that prospect because Grillo wants to take Italy out of the eurozone.  In the long run Italy would be much better off without the euro, but in the short-term the only thing propping up Italy’s failing banking system is support from Europe.  Without that support, the 8th largest economy on the entire planet would already be in the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis.

I know that I said a lot in that first paragraph, but it is imperative that people understand how serious this crisis could quickly become.

This “no” vote virtually guarantees a major banking crisis for Italy, and many analysts fear that it could trigger a broader financial crisis all across the rest of the continent as well. At this moment there are eight banks in imminent danger of collapsing, and virtually all of the rest of them are in some stage of trouble. Over the next few weeks, keep a close eye on the euro and on Italian government bonds.

If they both continue to crash, that will be a sign that a major European financial crisis is now upon us. And what happens in Europe definitely does not stay in Europe. If Europe goes down, we are going to go down too. At this point we still have almost a month left in 2016, but 2017 is already shaping up to be a very troubling year.  As always, let us hope for the best, but let us also keep preparing for the worst.

 

Russia Says its working on a drone that can imitate any sub

 Russia Says It’s Working on a Drone That Can Imitate Any Sub (Source Popular Mechanics)

A famous Russian submarine design bureau is working on a drone that imitates submarines. The drone, tentatively named “Surrogat,” could be a useful decoy in baiting a trap…or escaping one.

The Rubin Design Bureau of St. Petersburg, designer of Cold War Soviet missile submarines including the enormous Typhoon class, is working on this drone for the Russian Navy. According to Russian state media, “Surrogat” will have a deployable trailing antenna, allowing it to “realistically reproduce the physical fields of the enemy-the acoustic and electromagnetic.” The antenna will allow Surrogat to broadcast, for example, the sound made by a particular class of ballistic missile submarine, as well as the sub’s active sonar signature. Surrogat will be 55 feet long and, thanks to lithium-ion batteries, capable of operating for 15 to16 hours at a time. It will weigh approximately 50 tons with a maximum diving depth of 600 meters and a maximum speed “in excess of 24 knots.”

How could the Russian Navy use Surrogat? The drone could be useful in wartime by hunting NATO hunter-killer submarines tasked with destroying Russia’s ballistic missile submarines. Surrogat could imitate a Borei-class submarine, with Russian attack submarines lying in wait in an ambush. Any submarine attacking it will give away its own position, allowing the Russian submarines to close in for the kill.

 

Russia Pledges retalitation if U.S. bill passes

RUSSIA PLEDGES RETALIATION IF U.S. BILL PASSES (Source newsweek.com)

Russia said it would restrict the ability of U.S. diplomats based in Moscow to travel if a pending U.S. bill that would do the same to Russian diplomats in the United States entered into force. The intelligence bill, an annual measure that provides broad congressional authorization for a wide range of U.S. intelligence activities and agencies, has already been approved by both intelligence committees and the House of Representatives, but not yet by the Senate. U.S. officials accused Russia of hacking U.S. political institutions, in particular the Democratic Party, during the 2016 presidential election race, and Western intelligence officials say there has been an increase in covert Russian efforts to influence foreign public opinion in recent years. The Kremlin denies involvement in the U.S. hacking scandal. The new U.S. bill would create a special committee to combat clandestine Russian efforts to manipulate foreign opinion and tighten the rules on Russian diplomats in the United States who want to travel more than 25 miles from their official posts. They would have to give advance notice of such trips and permission would not be granted unless the FBI told Congress in writing that the diplomats had abided by the travel rules in the previous quarter. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Moscow the proposed rules would draw swift Russian retaliation if implemented. The U.S. authorities “should keep in mind that diplomacy is based on the principle of reciprocity. Put simply, American diplomats in Russia will be treated in the same way,” said Zakharova. She said the bill looked like an attempt to confine Russian diplomats to their embassy and make their work harder, and called the proposal for a special committee part of a “witch hunt” by the outgoing Obama administration against Russia.

“We are dealing with another example of clinical anti-Russian feeling,” she said. “It’s a carbon copy of a scheme used in the Cold War.”

President Vladimir Putin has said he hopes that President-elect Donald Trump can oversee an improvement in battered U.S.-Russia ties, something the wealthy American tycoon has said he is keen to bring about.

 

 

The US military now sees Russia as its biggest threat

The US military now sees Russia as its biggest threat (Source Business Insider)

Russia’s increasing military activities around the world have unsettled top US military officials, who say they are reshaping their budget plans to better address what they now consider to be the most pressing threat to US security. “Russia is the No. 1 threat to the United States. We have a number of threats that we’re dealing with, but Russia could be, because of the nuclear aspect, an existential threat to the United States,” Deborah James, the secretary of the Air Force, told Reuters in an interview at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum.

James, the chief of naval operations, Adm. John Richardson, and the Pentagon’s chief arms buyer, Frank Kendall, all voiced growing concern in interviews late on Saturday about Russia’s increasingly aggressive behavior.

Their comments come as the Pentagon finalizes a classified security assessment for President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to both pump up US defense spending and build closer ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

European diplomats fear Moscow could use the time before Trump’s inauguration to launch more offensives in Ukraine and Syria, betting that President Barack Obama will be loath to respond forcefully so soon before he hands off power on January 20.

Kendall said US policy had been centered on threats in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East but had become more focused on Russia. “Their behavior has caused us … to rethink the balance of capabilities that we’re going to need,” he said.

None of the officials gave details about how the concerns would affect the fiscal 2018 budget request, but defense officials have pointed to the need to focus on areas such as cybersecurity, space, nuclear capabilities, and missile defense, where Russia has developed new capabilities in recent years.

 

 

 

Scientists record biggest ever coral die-off on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

Scientists record biggest ever coral die-off on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (Source Reuters)

Warm seas around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have killed two-thirds of a 700-km (435 miles) stretch of coral in the past nine months, the worst die-off ever recorded on the World Heritage site, scientists who surveyed the reef said.

Their finding of the die-off in the reef’s north is a major blow for tourism at reef which, according to a 2013 Deloitte Access Economics report, attracts about A$5.2 billion ($3.9 billion) in spending each year.

“The coral is essentially cooked,” professor Andrew Baird, a researcher at James Cook University who was part of the reef surveys, told Reuters by telephone from Townsville in Australia’s tropical north.

He said the die-off was “almost certainly” the largest ever recorded anywhere because of the size of the Barrier Reef, which at 348,000 sq km (134,400 sq miles) is the biggest coral reef in the world.

Bleaching occurs when the water is too warm, forcing coral to expel living algae and causing it to calcify and turn white. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops and the survey found this occurred in southern parts of the reef, where coral mortality was much lower.

While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover.

 

 

 

 

 

6 million Americans have stopped paying their car loans

6 million Americans have stopped paying their car loans, and it’s becoming a ‘significant concern (Source Business Insider)

Hedge fund manager Jim Chanos has said the auto-lending market should “scare the heck out of everybody,” while the auto-lending practices of some used-car dealerships has been given the John Oliver treatment on TV.

It’s a topic we’ve been paying attention to as well. In a presentation in September at the Barclays Financial Services Conference, Gordon Smith, the chief executive for consumer and community banking at JPMorgan, set out some eye-opening statistics on the market.

Now the New York Federal Reserve is taking a closer look at the market. In a blog published Wednesday on the New York Fed’s Liberty Street Economics site, researchers highlighted the deteriorating performance of subprime auto loans and set off the alarm.

“The worsening in the delinquency rate of subprime auto loans is pronounced, with a notable increase during the past few years,” the report said.

To be clear, the overall delinquency rate for auto loans is pretty stable, and the majority are performing well. There are, however, signs of stress in the subprime market segment, which has seen rapid growth. Here are the key numbers from the report: The subprime delinquency rate for the trailing four quarter period moved to 2% in the third quarter. The only other time it was 2% or more was in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Subprime auto loan originations hit $31.3 billion in the third quarter, down from $33.6 billion in the second quarter. Bank and credit unions originated $9.5 billion in subprime auto loans in the period, a record high. Outstanding subprime auto loan balances now stand at $280.2 billion, a record high. For perspective, the pre-crisis high was $249.5 billion, in the fourth quarter of 2007. In other words, the subprime delinquency rate is creeping up, while the subprime market is ballooning in size. The Liberty Street Economics post, written by Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw, said:

“The data suggest some notable deterioration in the performance of subprime auto loans. This translates into a large number of households, with roughly six million individuals at least ninety days late on their auto loan payments.”

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump could face ‘impeachment issues’ as soon as he becomes President

Donald Trump could face ‘impeachment issues’ as soon as he becomes President, legal experts warn (Source independent.co.uk)

Donald Trump could be impeached on his first day in office due to conflicts of interest that would arise from him running the country and maintaining his business at the same time, legal experts have warned. Steven Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University, told MSNBC on Monday that because the President-elect does business in various countries, he could have an “impeachment issue” because there are “foreign states basically paying money to the Trump Organisation by using their hotels.”

Professor Schooner said: “The contract [with the General Services Administration] specifically says that no elected official of the United States government can share or benefit from the lease. It’s a 60-year lease with the GSA but the language is unequivocally clear.”

In order to open Trump International Hotel in Washington, Mr Trump entered into that contract, explained Mr Schooner, pointing to this as grounds for impeachment.

The law professor added: “The unequivocal message so far from the Trump Organisation is that ethics, conflicts of interest … in terms of ethical behaviour just don’t matter.”

It is not the first time law experts have warned Mr Trump that he could face breaching the constitution when he enters office with things as they stand.

On Sunday two top law professors urged Mr Trump to divest from his new hotel in Washington DC after it was allegedly used to entertain and give a sales pitch to foreign diplomats, potentially violating the US constitution as soon as he enters office

They warned he could be in breach of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from buying influence with federal officials or receiving special treatment.

The clause states: “No person holding any office of profit or trust under” the United States “shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

During his campaign Mr Trump agreed that, if elected, he would leave his businesses to be handled by his children.

In January, the businessman stated: “If I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company. It’s peanuts. I have Ivanka, and Eric, and Don sitting there. Run the company kids, have a good time.”

But since his presidential victory, his children have been seen sitting in on meetings and working with his transition team, indicating there will not be “necessary separation” between the future president and his business interests.

Professor Schooner added that as long as the Trump family are in ownership of the business there would not be “necessary separation”, and he did “not expect the Trump Organisation to do the right thing”.