38 experts say ‘climate alarmism’ has become a profit-driven religion

Tom Harris Thu Jul 9

Religion has been a force throughout history that has helped societies flourish and given people meaning, but it has also been a vehicle for fundamentalism and intolerance. A religion can be characterized by a common set of beliefs about the truth of existence, ritual practices, moral codes, and a community of those who share the same beliefs. From this standpoint, climate alarmism has become nothing short of a religion, one that has been taking over societies around the world.

The newly released book, Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs. the Net Zero Myth, is an eye-opening compilation of essays from 38 experts about the science of climate change, the fallacies of Net Zero, and the story we are not being told by the government and media.

Margaret Anna Alice, a writer focusing on propaganda and psychology, writes in her Canaries essay about how she lost her “religion” of climate alarmism, which for her had been an “inviolable belief.” She writes that “In this religion, gods such as the United Nations carve out the Ten Commandments in the form of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Agenda 21, Agenda 2030, and the SDG7 Global Roadmap for achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050.”

Additionally, “sermons” cite the “sacred texts” of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), shaming everyday citizens into believing that they are contributing to a devastating environmental catastrophe. It is only by aligning themselves with the religion of climate alarmism that they will be redeemed from their sins. Namely, by giving up their standards of living and putting their hard-earned money toward expensive projects to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) or subsidize intermittent and expensive renewable power such as wind and solar.

Just like the church in Medieval Europe, the climate doctrine is widespread and encroaches into our daily lives. Yet data corruption abounds at the IPCC and other official institutions, and for decades, few scientists have had the courage to speak out against it with their livelihoods on the line. These “heretics” are ostracized, lose their jobs, or are refused funding. But the tide is shifting. With the serious consequences of climate policies being enacted, now is the time to reveal that the climate scare is based on corruption and flawed ideology. Governments will spend trillions of dollars and drive their citizens into poverty if we continue down the route to Net Zero. IPCC contributor Mike Hulme admitted that “The debate around climate change is fundamentally about power and politics rather than the environment.” And the scientists and experts writing in Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs. the Net Zero Myth are also disseminating crucial information to help us better understand the climate and the policies that have stifled our society’s growth for decades.

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Presbyterians dump companies it says are tied to Palestinian occupation

By Shelby Lin Erdman and Ben Brumfield, CNN
updated 10:47 AM EDT, Sat June 21, 2014

A Palestinian man from the Beshr family sits on the debris of his house after it was demolished by Israeli authorities who said it was built without municipal permission on February 5, 2014 in the Arab east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

In a 310-303 vote, the church decides to pull $21 million in investments

It is backing out of Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and Motorola Solutions

It says Israel uses the corporations' products to suppress the Palestinians

The church is keeping all other investments in Israel and investing in Palestinian territories, too

(CNN) -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) is pulling millions of dollars in investments out of three U.S. companies tied to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

In a close vote at its annual assembly in Detroit on Friday, the church voted 310 to 303 to divest $21 million from Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and Motorola Solutions.

The church says Caterpillar supplies products to Israel that are used to destroy Palestinian homes, Hewlett Packard provides logistics and technology to help enforce the naval blockade of Gaza, and Motorola Solutions provides military and surveillance systems in illegal Israeli settlements.

But immediately after the vote, church leaders said the decision was not a judgment against Israel. "In no way is this a reflection for our lack of love for our Jewish sisters and brothers," Moderator Heath Rada said.

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The approved divestment proposal included a preface underscoring the denomination's longstanding commitment to peace in the region and the suffering on both sides.

"We recognize the complexity of the issues, the decades-long struggle, the pain suffered and inflicted by policies and practices of both the Israeli government and the Palestinian entities," it said.

The church also stressed it still supports Israel and that the vote was not connected to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an international campaign to punish the Jewish state over the occupation of Palestinian lands and other hotly contested issues.

Jewish, Palestinian reaction

But some Jewish organizations, even those that support a two-state solution to the ongoing crisis in the region, see the decision as a direct result of and support for the BDS movement.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, issued a statement after the vote calling it "a preference for a policy of isolation, rather than one of engagement."

"Of course, we will continue to partner with our allies within the church who are committed to a two-state solution, reject the effort of the BDS campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and work toward a just and fair solution to enable the Palestinians to achieve the state that they deserve," Jacobs said.

Palestinian supporters of the BDS movement said they are pleased with the church's divestment decision and see it as a sign the BDS movement is gaining momentum in United States.

Omar Barghouti, for one, calls the vote a "sweet victory."

"Presbyterian supporters of Palestinian rights have not only solidly introduced divestment from Israel's occupation to the U.S. mainstream, they have given the Palestinian people real hope in the face of the relentless cruelty of Israel's regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid," Barghouti said.

Not a snap decision

The church, the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, says it still supports the Jewish state.

"We have significant investments in Israel," said church spokeswoman Kathy Francis. And the church is keeping them.

The decision was not about politics, but about morals, she said. There are many Palestinian Christians in the occupied territories that the church is concerned about and obligated to support.

Francis said the church no longer wanted to profit from investing in companies that have a hand in the destruction of people's homes and lives. Instead, she said, it will now shift some of its investments into economic development programs in the Palestinian territories.

The divestment from the three companies was not a snap decision. The church has discussed and considered the issue for the past 10 years. It almost passed a divestment proposal at its 2012 assembly, narrowly voting it down by just two votes.

Francis said the vote may make the Presbyterians seem unique among American Protestants, but they are not alone.

"There are other denominations that are grappling with this," she said.

CNN's Joe Sutton contributed to this report

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Soros betting against stocks? Not likely

 By Patrick M. Sheridan @CNNMoneyInvest
February 19, 2014: 2:20 PM ET





George Soros increased his position in an investment that would profit if stocks fall. But it may simply be a smart hedge.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Hedge fund heavyweight George Soros appears to be making a billion dollar bet against the stock market. But looks can be deceiving.

Tongues have been wagging on Wall Street since Soros Fund Management revealed in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday that his fund owned 7 million "puts" on the S&P 500 (SPY) exchange traded fund in the fourth quarter. Puts are essentially a bet that the price of an asset will go down. The total value of the "puts" as of the filing date was $1.3 billion.

Soros first bought the position last year as the S&P 500 was on its way to setting a series of new record highs. So if Soros is boosting the size of an investment that many short sellers and other market bears use, then that should be big news to make investors worried about where are stocks going, right? Not necessarily.

According to one investment expert, the move may be nothing more than a standard hedging practice for Soros, whose total portfolio is worth about $11.7 billion. Insider Monkey research director Ian Dogan noted that even though the size of the S&P 500 put position increased by a whopping 150%, this may be normal given that Soros also increased his overall long position on the market by $2 billion.

Related: Soros and other hedge fund bailed on gold in 2013

To that end, Friday's filing also revealed that Soros added to stakes in several well-known stocks, such as Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Dish Network (DISH, Fortune 500), in the fourth quarter.

Another thing to remember is that the latest filing is a snapshot of what the fund held as of the end of December. We won't know what Soros has bought or sold in the first quarter until sometime in May when his firm is required to file its latest quarterly update.

A Soros representative declined to comment on the filing. But with his history of big bets, it's understandable why some investors are curious.

A little more than 20 years ago Soros made his most famous investment. He shorted the British pound and pocketed a billion dollars in the process.

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Corporate Profits Soar as Executives Attack Obama Policy

By David J. Lynch - Jan 17, 2013 12:00 AM ET



Tom Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, last week said higher taxes and a “flood of new regulations” will damage an already subpar economy. “In many ways, we’re going backwards,” he said.

Such complaints, echoed by corporate executives throughout President Barack Obama’s first term, obscure one fact: American business has never had it so good.

U.S. President Barack Obama. Leigh Vogel/WireImage

U.S. corporations’ after-tax profits have grown by 171 percent under Obama, more than under any president since World War II, and are now at their highest level relative to the size of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Profits are more than twice as high as their peak during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and more than 50 percent greater than during the late-1990s Internet boom, measured by the size of the economy.

Business leaders cite low labor costs in an era of high unemployment, the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies, and their own management savvy for the profit boom. Prosperity has come in spite of the president, not because of him, they say.

“I don’t think he deserves any credit,” John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based association of chief executive officers, said in an interview.

Economists disagree. In a February 2012 survey, 80 percent of senior economics professors said unemployment was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without Obama’s stimulus spending. A July 2010 study by Alan Blinder, former Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, said the stimulus, bank rescues and Fed policy “probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0.”

Political Confrontations

Extending the climb in corporate profits this year is expected to grow more challenging as labor costs rise with increased hiring. CEOs say they also face uncertainty over new health-care rules and taxes. Washington’s repetitive political confrontations threaten to further lengthen their odds.

For four years, American business has seen the Democratic president as a tax-and-spend advocate of big government who was intent on imposing red tape. Some criticized him for a lack of experience in business.

In the presidential campaign, business groups spent millions of dollars on Republican candidates in a bid to unseat Obama. Former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch even accused the White House of manipulating unemployment data for political advantage.
‘Clumsy Instrument’

Still, executives dislike the prospect of economic volatility even more than they dislike the president. So they’ve become reluctant White House allies in the current battle over raising the nation’s $16.4 trillion borrowing limit, which the government could hit as early as next month.

“We don’t want to reach the point where our government, in some fashion, is unable to make interest payments or is unable to pay our vendors,” said Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan. He called the debt limit “a clumsy instrument” to force spending discipline.

Donohue told Bloomberg Television on Jan. 10 that defaulting on the U.S. debt would be a “mistake” and that lawmakers should refrain from using the borrowing limit to push for cutbacks in programs.

Bond investors, who would suffer most directly if the government defaulted on its debt, aren’t worried. The yield on the 10-year note, a benchmark for everything from mortgages to corporate borrowing costs, is lower now than on Aug. 5, 2011, when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. during the last debt ceiling showdown. The yield on 10-year Treasuries was 1.82 percent as of 5 p.m. in New York yesterday.


Denting Confidence

Business leaders say a prolonged political showdown could dent consumer confidence or unsettle equity investors. In 2011, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) fell almost 17 percent in the 11 trading sessions following the breakdown of debt-reduction talks between the White House and congressional Republicans. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence readingdropped to its lowest level in more than two years.

Washington dysfunction threatens to scuttle a period of high profitability and rising share prices. Across the economy, corporations in their third-quarter earnings reports posted stellar profits.Caterpillar Inc. (CAT)’s earnings-per-share rose more than 32 percent from the same period the previous year while Yahoo Inc.’s grew 67 percent.

The S&P 500 index has risen more than 80 percent since Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, as of yesterday. That’s the biggest gain under any president since at least World War II.

Slowing Growth

The debt-limit fight comes as the economy likely is growing at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent in the first quarter, although it will expand 2 percent during the year, according to the median forecast of 91 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. At a Jan. 14 news conference, the president called default a “self- inflicted wound” that could trigger a new recession and called on Republicans “to pay America’s bills on time.”

“Investors around the world will ask if the United States of America is in fact a safe bet,” Obama said. “Markets could go haywire, interest rates would spike for anybody who borrows money.”

Many companies, including small businesses, say the White House itself is casting a cloud on the economy.

They complain about excessive regulation and a tax-first, cut-spending-later approach to deficit reduction. The administration has completed only one-third of the 447 regulations mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act, Donohue said in a Jan. 10 speech in Washington.

‘Extraordinary Confusion’

Provisions of Obama’s health-care law, which is intended to expand insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans, are creating “extraordinary confusion” for businesses, he said.

A monthly index of business sentiment maintained by the National Federation of Independent Business, was at 88 in December, a low level that, prior to the financial crisis, wasn’t seen since the 1980 recession.

William Dunkelberg, NFIB’s chief economist, said the group’s members anticipate a “pretty lousy first half of 2013.”

Corporations are holding more than $1.7 trillion in liquid assets, reflecting uncertainty over future policies. They’re investing in capital projects only 80 percent of their available internal funds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Though that figure is up about one-third from late-2009, that ratio has been below 80 percent only once since the end of 1958.

“We’re in the curious position where businesses are net savers,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics Ltd. “This net saving is a problem. It’s because businesses are too cautious.”

Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, didn’t return an e-mail asking for comment.
Spending More

Since the end of 2009, corporations have been gradually putting more money to work. Liquid assets as a percentage of total corporate assets, which peaked at 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, fell to 5.5 percent of assets by the third quarter of last year, the latest Federal Reserve data available.

That’s still above the 5.2 percent average over the past 20 years, though below the 5.9 percent Bush administration high in 2005’s fourth quarter.

Companies survived the “searing experience” of the financial crisis by becoming more efficient, Engler said. More than four years of the Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rates also opened the door for companies to pay off high-cost borrowings. Last year, U.S. corporations issued more than $1.5 trillion in debt, up from $1.2 trillion the year before.

Labor Costs

In recent years, high unemployment kept labor costs in check while output surpassed pre-crisis levels. Employee compensation rose 7 percent from the end of 2008 through the third quarter of last year. That was less than half the increase registered in either of President George W. Bush’s terms. Workers’ compensation is claiming a 54 percent share of the economy, down from 59 percent as recently as 2001 and the lowest mark since March 1955.

Through 2011, profits rose in tandem with the jobless rate. Over the past year, as the unemployment rate fell, earnings continued to climb, a trend that may be losing steam.

“It’s a maturing earnings cycle, which is going to be decelerating in 2013,” says Stephen Wood, chief markets strategist for Russell Investments with $159 billion in assets under management.

To contact the reporter on this story: David J. Lynch in Washington at dlynch27@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cesca Antonelli at fantonelli@bloomberg.net

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Fed quietly posts record $46.1-billion profit in 2009

By Jim Puzzanghera

January 13, 2010

Reporting from Washington - The Federal Reserve reported a side benefit to its massive intervention into the financial system -- a record profit of $46.1 billion last year on the central bank's investments.

But experts said that gain, which will be paid to the U.S. Treasury, could be offset by losses in the future when the central bank starts selling the Treasury bonds and other assets it has purchased in unprecedented amounts to try to stabilize the economy.

For that reason, the Fed did not make a big deal out of the news Tuesday, announcing it in a short news release, said Vincent R. Reinhart, former director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs.

"Any other entity that had record profits would have hired a band or had a parade," said Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "Why would the Fed downplay that? They don't want you to focus on the current profits because when it comes to tightening policy they'll probably get losses on that same portfolio."

Federal Reserve officials said Tuesday that they believed all the investments they made were safe, including loans to help facilitate the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns and rescue insurer American International Group Inc. But that does not preclude some losses.

The Fed's balance sheet, the value of all of its holdings, has more than doubled to $2.2 trillion as it has tried to keep the financial system afloat since the financial crisis began in 2008. Its huge investments in securities led to much of its increased profit, said Christopher S. Rupkey, chief financial economist for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

"It's the interest on over a trillion dollars of securities," he said of the Fed's profit. "They have an enormous balance sheet, and those assets are contributing more to their earnings, putting more money in the kitty for the Treasury and helping to lower the budget deficit."

But he noted the profit was relatively small given the size of the balance sheet and the $1.4-trillion federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. "It may be a drop in the bucket . . . but every little bit helps," Rupkey said.

The Fed's profit last year was $14.4 billion more than what it paid into the Treasury for 2008 and more than it has ever earned since it began operations in 1914. The previous record was $34.6 billion in 2007.

But Federal Reserve officials stressed that the goal of the central bank is stabilizing monetary policy, not earning profit. The Fed is funded by its earnings, and profit is turned over to the federal government.

"The significant increase in earnings on securities was primarily due to increased securities holdings as a result of the Federal Reserve's response to the severe economic downturn," the central bank said. As of Dec. 30, the Fed held $1.85 trillion in Treasury bonds and other securities, up from $496 billion at the end of 2008.

As the Fed stepped up its efforts to prop up the faltering financial system, it bought large amounts of securities from the U.S. Treasury and other entities, including mortgage-backed securities held by government-sponsored home loan financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were taken over by the federal government during the crisis.

Those purchases have helped push down mortgage rates. Mortgage-backed securities pay a higher rate than Treasury securities, helping account for the increased profit.

"They lend at a higher rate than they borrow. The rate they borrow at is approximately zero" percent, Reinhart said. "Central banking is a really good business, and if you have a big balance sheet you can make a lot."

As part of the $46.1-billion profit, the Fed earned $2.6 billion on currency swap arrangements with central banks in 14 countries and other investments in foreign currency. The Fed also earned $700 million from fees for services it provided to banks.

But the Fed's profit probably will decline in the future, Reinhart said, although the central bank is unlikely to post annual losses.

"The Federal Reserve is not the new Goldman Sachs. They're not a profit center for the government," he said. "Their profits are small in the scheme of things, and they should be properly viewed as offset by potential future losses."

jim.puzzanghera@

latimes.com

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Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fed-profits13-2010jan13,0,4992251.story

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