Demographic Dysphoria Looms As Doctors Discover Sperm Counts In Western Men Plummeted Nearly 60%

Population growth is responsible for the majority of GDP growth...so a downturn in population growth matters...particularly when population growth shifts from wealthy or developing nations to the poorest.  I"m not describing something that may happen in the future...I"m describing what has already happened that is continuing to send progressively larger tsunamis swamping the world economy and has the central bankers doing everything and anything to try to sustain the unsustainable.

Which means, as Econimica"s Chris Hamilton recently noted, the next business cycle recession will be unending and is very likely to run years into decades and perhaps a century or more.  A declining population already indebted with record debt and zero interest rates will consume less...meaning overcapacity and excess inventories will never be fully cleared before the next downturn...and on and on and on.

But the absence of a growing consumer base isn"t just a US issue...this is a global problem.  The annual growth of the 0-64yr/old population of the combined OECD nations (most the EU, US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, S. Korea, Australia / New Zealand) plus China, Brazil, and Russia show the growth that has driven nearly all economic growth has come to an end...and begins declining from here on. 

And when importers are shrinking, exporters have no one to export to...and on and on and on.  The depopulation we are now facing is not simply a demographic issue that so many believe; the end of growth is the start of the SHTF scenario in which we now find ourselves.  While this situation offers short term nirvana to investors, the economic repercussions are ultimately disastrous.

And it may be about to get even worse.

As TheAntiMedia.org reports, According to a new analysis published Tuesday, sperm counts in Western men have plummeted nearly 60 percent over the last four decades. Though researchers say the specific drivers behind the trend will require further scientific investigation, current data suggest a link between the sharp decline and living in the industrialized world.

“The results are quite shocking,” Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Guardian. Levine led the international team of researchers, who examined 185 individual studies conducted between 1973 and 2011.

The analysis, published in the medical journal Human Reproduction Update, additionally revealed that on average, Western men’s sperm concentration — the number of sperm within a semen ejaculate — is falling 1.4 percent a year. Added up, that calculates to an overall drop of more than 50 percent since the early 1970s.

“This is a classic under the radar huge public health problem that is really neglected,” said Levine. The team notes in its report that recent studies have shown an association between poor sperm counts and overall morbidity and mortality.

Unlike with Western nations, the team found no similar trend among the male populations of less-developed countries, such as those in Africa and South America.

“Therefore,” the team writes, “sperm count may sensitively reflect the impacts of the modern environment on male health throughout the life course.” Researchers acknowledge, however, that far fewer studies have been conducted in those nations and that more data needs to be compiled before a final conclusion can be drawn.

While the scientific community seems to agree that the Western trend is likely being driven by a confluence of factors, one member of the team, Professor Shanna Swan of the Ichan School of Medicine in New York, told the Independent that the lack of declining sperm counts in less-industrialized nations is something that can’t be ignored.

“The fact that the decline is seen in Western countries strongly suggests that chemicals in commerce are playing a causal role in this trend,” she said.

Just as startling as the trend, says Professor Richard Sharpe of Edinburgh University, is the fact that it shows no sign of slowing down. Speaking to The Independent, Sharpe, who was not involved with the research, said:

“As the authors point out, the continuous nature of the decline is of as much concern as the decline itself, given that we still do not know what lifestyle, dietary or chemical exposures might have caused this decrease.”

Calling the trend “real beyond any reasonable doubt,” Sharpe says that with more and more women wanting to have babies later in life when conception is considerably more difficult, there now exists a “double whammy for couple fertility” in Western societies.

“Therefore, looking ahead,” he said, “I can only conclude that couple infertility is set to increase. Hopefully, this new study will serve as a wake-up call for health and research authorities as well as for the public, and for young people in particular.”

HOW GOOGLE FRAMES OUT, PAYS FOR, AND GETS GOV'T TO BE ITS BITCH

Intro - Beware the Holding Funnel

Originally on marketslant.com

What can one say. This is how business is done. And what is scarier it is now being done by firms with all your data. So, the next time you use your club card for a discount at the market, ask yourself : "Does Shop-Rite really want to make less money?" With shopping habits and data, real time pricing will come, and once they know your buying habits, look out.

Prices of things you buy most can change as you enter the store. If you doubt that, search for an Uber  car, then re-search it. We"ve  found  that the price can vary widely over minutes. From $80 to $140 LGA to Greenwich CT. The explanation given  us is "traffic and car availability" . That is Uber  changing price based  on car demand which effects car supply. 

Watch, Google will be part of the move to real time price changes in those fancy new cashierless markets with phone apps that help you  find what you want. "Those crackers you like so much are right at the end of that funnel shaped aisle. You can"t miss it them - Soren  K. Group

New Evidence Reveals an Extreme Level of Corruption

Written by Josie Wales for theantimedia.org

 In September of 2011, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt testified before Congress that Google was not manipulating search results to favor its own shopping service (it was). Schmidt also denied allegations that the company was a monopoly, citing a research paper written by David Balto, former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission. What Schmidt neglected to tell the Senate Judiciary antitrust committee was that Google had funded that research paper.

And that’s not the only one, according to a recently published report by the non-profit, non-partisan watchdog organization, the Google Transparency Project, which identified “329 research papers published between 2005 and 2017 on public policy matters of interest to Google that were in some way funded by the company.”

What’s more, the academic research funded by Google covered “a wide range of policy and legal issues of critical importance to Google’s bottom line, including antitrust, privacy, net neutrality, search neutrality, patents and copyright.”

GTP’s report reveals a shocking list of sources that Google paid off. They include:

“[A]cademics, think-tanks, law firms, and economic consultants from some of the leading law schools and universities in the country, including Stanford, Harvard, MIT, University of California Berkeley, UCLA, Rutgers, Georgetown, Northwestern Law School, and Columbia.”

Internationally, GTP reports, “Google-funded studies were written by academics at some of the most prestigious universities in Europe, including Oxford (U.K.), Edinburgh University (U.K.), Berlin School of Economics (Germany), Heinrich Heine University (Germany), and KU Leuven (Belgium).”

The Wall Street Journal took their research a bit further, and what they discovered is astounding. WSJ reported:

“Some researchers share their papers before publication and let Google give suggestions, according to thousands of pages of emails obtained by the Journal in public-records requests of more than a dozen university professors. The professors don’t always reveal Google’s backing in their research, and few disclosed the financial ties in subsequent articles on the same or similar topics, the Journal found.”

University of Illinois law professor Paul Heald neglected to disclose the $18,830 he received from Google to fund “an idea on copyrights he thought would be useful to Google.” When he was questioned in an interview about his failure to mention his sponsor, Heald replied, “Oh, wow. No, I didn’t. That’s really bad. That’s purely oversight.” The professor also claims the money had no influence on his work.

Google has paid anywhere between $5,000 and $40,000 per paper, and the number of studies surged the highest in 2012 when the company was being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission and European regulators for antitrust violations. At least 50 studies on antitrust issues authored between 2011 and 2013 were bought and paid for by Google.

[EDIT- Some Examples from the site - Soren K]

?

for complete list or click HERE

According to a former employee and a former Google lobbyist, Google officials in Washington compiled wish lists of academic papers and then searched for willing authors to complete the desired work. Google often provided working titles, abstracts, and budgets for each proposed paper. Upon completion, they were pitched to government officials. The former lobbyist told the Journal that Google would “sometimes pay travel expenses for professors to meet with congressional aides and administration officials.”

Google’s massive influence on academic research should come as no surprise given the former CEO’s openness in discussing the company’s hand in writing legislation. At the Washington Ideas Forum, Schmidt described his experience working with the U.S. government, revealing that “The average American doesn’t realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists…and it’s shocking, now, having spent a fair amount of time in the system –  how the system actually works.”

Shocking is an understatement. It’s absolutely terrifying how the system works. A multi-billion dollar company with a monopoly on the internet not only writes the laws, but funds academic studies to shield them from further laws that might prevent them from becoming even more dangerous, all while harvesting private data from over a billion people and developing AI technology that allows two neural networks to communicate using inhuman cryptographic language indecipherable to humans.

And the executive chairman of this disturbingly powerful corporation is a man who has stated that Google’s famous “Don’t be evil” slogan was “the stupidest rule ever.” This is the same man who told an audience in Washington, D.C., that “We don’t need you to type. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

What could go wrong?

theantimedia.org

Read more by Soren K.Group

"Traders Got It Wrong Before The Election, And Continue To Get It Wrong Today"

In light of the only thing that matters for markets (that would be Donald Trump for those who have slept through the past three months), here are some salient thoughts from the latest weekend notes by One River Asset Management"s Eric Peters, whose uncanny ability to put a unique spin on events in third person continues to impress.

Beep Beep: “The world got caught in its own trap,” said Roadrunner, the market’s biggest equity volatility trader. “Traders got it wrong before the election, and continue to get it wrong today.” The VIX touched 10.50. “You see the tweets, the media battle, illegal voters, conspiracy theories, Mexican feuds, European taunts, border walls, fake news, and lies,” said Roadrunner, looking left, right, up. “But be careful what you watch. There is only one thing that doesn’t lie, and that’s the price,” he said. “Look where the price is, what it’s telling us.” 

“VIX tells you that there’s someone in charge who’s not a madman,” continued Roadrunner. “He speaks and acts like he’s crazy, but the market is wiser than all of us, it’s smarter than everyone combined.” He paused, contemplating our new surroundings. “Barnum and Bailey closed just ahead of the inauguration. How could they compete with this circus?” The wall is a show. Our world is now theatre. We’re all extras. “Of course at some point vol will explode, but for the moment the market is saying maybe America First will work.”

“Dollar rally doesn’t seem close to done,” said Roadrunner. “As rates head higher, they’ll hurt equities.” It won’t be Goldilocks forever. “When vols fall to these levels it’s because people got too long and slowly get squeezed out.” We’ve begun to see the first signs of animal spirits returning, but not of the intensity to signal a bull market high. Volatility is cheap, pretty much everywhere, though of course it can always go lower, for a time.

“What I’d like to see is a scramble for S&P calls before I get really bearish,” said Roadrunner, and darted off.

Next follows an interlude on human hypocricy:

“My wife screamed today, hysterical,” he said. “Said she’s giving a ton of money to Greenpeace. So I asked why? Said she’s going to help anyone that opposes this man. I almost asked how that’ll help, but knew better than to argue. I left for work, then a biz dinner. Told the story, and turns out I’m not alone. Everyone’s wives are wearing pink hats. They took buses to the DC March. They’re excited, angry, outraged. And I dare not tell her that no matter how much she gives to Greenpeace, we’re richer, because this man made us a fortune on our bank stocks.”

Finally, some observations on why this time may be different:

“Complete garbage,” cried the professor from Edinburgh University. “I’m appalled by what’s being published in Science,” he continued. You see, some Ivy League nerd claims to have created a miraculous super-conducting material. “It’s the first time solid metallic hydrogen has existed on Earth,” boasted the pioneering Harvard scientist. He’d inserted hydrogen atoms into a synthetic diamond anvil at a pressure of 495 gigapascals; which any moron knows is equivalent to bench-pressing 5mm earth atmospheres. Do that at -270 Celsius and magical things happen – Presto! - hydrogen atoms share electrons, creating a crystal lattice, just like a metal. But the Edinburgh propeller-heads are skeptical. They demand more proof. Rightly so. These kinds of breakthroughs are rare, they transform the economy, society. And they’re happening more often now than ever before.

You connect 7.48bln hungry humans, stand them atop the shoulders of giants, compress them into a shrinking planet, warm things up a few degrees, and magic happens. ISIS happens too. All sorts of unexpected things happen. Like quantum computing, the rise of robots, green energy, declining birth rates, shrinking labor forces, growing inequality, secular stagnation, rising nationalism, anti-globalism - a return to policies made famous in the 1930s, with utterly disastrous consequences. But these things we already know. Yet global equity markets continue to rise. Despite chants of America First, emerging market equities are inexplicably outperforming on the way up. The VIX index grinds to levels seen only during periods of supreme calm. Perhaps something else is happening here. Something less pernicious. Positive. It’s vital to keep an open mind. After all, it may be the first time solid metallic hydrogen has ever existed on Earth; and our countless other innovations, accelerating inexorably. “Complete garbage,” cry the economists, political scientists, appalled, with history firmly on their side.

But humanity has never experienced a time quite like our present.

And with that, here"s looking forward to tomorrow"s new all time highs in the S&P 500.