http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21814325

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/16/eurozone-cyprus-anger-idUSL6N0C81DL20130316

http://pawelmorski.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/cyprus-a-brutal-lesson-in-realpolitik-2/

System cameras shipment (thousands of yen):

System camera shipment (USD, used average course per month):

Average unit price (thousands of yen):

Average unit price (USD):

DSLR and mirrorless cameras shipment (thousands of yen):

DSLR and mirrorless cameras shipment (USD):

Average unit price for DSLR and MR (thousands of yen):

Average unit price for DSLR and MR (USD):

PC shipments in Western Europe totaled 12.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013, a decline of 20.5% from the corresponding period of 2012, >according to Gartner.

"The first quarter of 2013 brought the worst quarterly decline in Western Europe since Gartner started tracking PC shipments in this region," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Wide availability of Windows 8-based PCs could not boost consumer PC purchases during the quarter. Although the new Metro-style user interface suits new form factors, users wonder about its suitability for traditional PCs - non-touchscreen desktops and notebooks."

All PC segments in Western Europe exhibited on-year declines in the first quarter of 2013. Mobile and desktop shipments fell by 24.6% and 13.8%, respectively. Shipments to the professional PC market declined by 17.2%, while those to the consumer PC market decreased by 23.7%.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer both recorded declines of over 30%. However, despite seeing its consumer notebook volumes halve during the quarter, HP remained the market leader.

In the first quarter of 2013, the mobile PC market accounted for 62% of PC shipments in France as volumes decreased by 26%. "One reason for the decline was a drop in netbook shipments, which represented less than 1% of all notebook shipments in France during the quarter," said Durand. The decline in desktops, of 24%, was less steep than that of mobile PCs

Via: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130516PR204.html

via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-05/no-manufacturing-jobs-more-waiters-and-bartenders-ever

Only system cameras:

Only compacts:

Difference betweem EIA data and BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management).

Overall forecast

With coal it is also not all good

Just few pictures showing some fundamental things causing financial (and not only) issues.
Also perfectly explaing why goverment want so badly to have as much gays (married, preferably) as possible.
Nothing to do with rights, just as method to reduce population.

More good charts at http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG-update2013_long_18_03_2013.pdf

Fiscal 2013 was a year highlighted by several financial and operational achievements. Our successful performance was driven by solid marketing, innovative new products, disciplined manufacturing execution and strict financial management. All of our achievements aligned directly with our great strategy, which is underpinned by a focus on our core firearm business. We achieved record annual and fourth quarter net sales and profits from continuing operations, as well as substantial improvement in our gross margins. Performance gains over the year were driven by strong consumer demand for our products, which we believe is due to heightened awareness paired with our ability to significantly increase our manufacturing capacity. Full year sales growth of nearly 43% was driven in large part by our increased M&P production. Demand remains strong across our product portfolio, and we excelled in a very dynamic market environment by remaining focused on executing our key strategic growth initiative.

Smith & Wesson earnings call transcript

Via : http://seekingalpha.com/article/1521272-smith-wesson-holding-management-discusses-q4-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript

Few key things required for such strange system to work:

• Lots of young people with low amount of old people
• Exponential grouth of population
• Exponential grouth of energy and resources available
• many more similar things

problem is that all requirements are not met now.

Why the system is still working?

Few simple things:

• Big corporations who have main money going via offshores and special tax rules and returns. Each year they become even bigger.
• Manual money injection system, where banks and goverment structures provide high marginal contracts and non returnable (in reality) credits to guys they know and like.
• Direct tax returns and special goverment programs for smaller businesses

My personal view is that whole modern tax system must be eliminated and replaced with unusual approach to accounts and sole national bank.

On June 13, the Polish government eliminated the 8-hour working day, a right which was won in 1919. The government supposedly is trying to make Poland even more "competitive" for capitalists who want to earn more through exploiting the poor worker protection in the country and the scandalously low wages.

This is a major attack to the working class, smuggled by with little notice of the world press and little protest of the collaborationist unions. Poland is the laboratory for the introduction of the worst neoliberal dismantling of workers rights and the working class lived up to their masters' expectations by keeping at work, begging for crumbs from their masters' hands. If it went so smoothly here, one wonders where they will strike next.

The elimination of the 8 hour day is accomplished by increasing accounting periods for calculating the average amount of hours worked for the whole year and by also introducing flexible working hours. In the past, you had to have a certain resting time between your shifts and if your shifts were moved from day to day, it could be considered outside your normal working time. You would then be entitled to overtime pay. The new rules allow bosses to impose much longer working days, so long as if some other time of the year they cut the hours. For workers in some industries and areas, this could mean long days for all their working time, and a few months of idleness, instead of stable working hours. It is also not clear what rights workers who are hired temporarily (for example for 6 months) would have under this scheme. What is clear is that already for many years, Polish employers openly defy whatever rights workers still have and nobody wants to crack down on them.

Via: http://libcom.org/news/poland-does-away-8-hour-day-15062013

United Kingdom now produces only 40% of the energy it did in 2000.

Via http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-14062013-BP/EN/2-14062013-BP-EN.PDF

Germany’s dash for coal continues apace. Following on the opening of two new coal power stations in 2012, six more are due to open this year, with a combined capacity of 5800MW, enough to provide 7% of Germany’s electricity needs.

Including the plants coming on stream this year, there are 12 coal fired stations due to open by 2020. Along with the two opened last year in Neurath and Boxberg, they will be capable of supplying 19% of the country’s power.

In addition, 27 gas fired stations are due on line, which should contribute a further 17% of Germany’s total electricity generation. (Based on 2011 statistics, total generation was 575 TwH).

After being ordered to shut their nuclear reactors due to uranium shortage, country is going in the right way delivering readicactive particles directly to citizens lungs.

Short period of exponential rise in available energy and resources made new stratum. Parasitic Stratum.
Parasitic stratum started to eat available resources with constantly insreasing amount. But increasing at linear rate.
Situation changed as exponential growth stopped.
And after stopping in many areas started to require more and more resources to just keep at present level.

Problem is that parasitic stratum still eat more and more resources and now this linear rate is unsustainable. If you won't be getting resources from most other stratums. :-) And this is that we can see around yourself.

Each day patasites around the world look more and more inadequate to present situation.

But having power, armies and mass media they keep things under control.

• The eurozone is now in the midst of its longest recession ever. Economic activity in the eurozone has declined for six quarters in a row.
• Italy's economy has now been contracting for seven quarters in a row.
• Industrial production in Italy has fallen for 15 months in a row. It has now fallen to its lowest level in about 25 years.
• The number of people that are considered to be "seriously deprived" in Italy has doubled over the past two years.
• Consumer confidence in France has just hit a new all-time low.
• The number of unemployed workers seeking a job in France has hit a brand new all-time record high.
• Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole has just hit a brand new all-time record high of 12.2 percent.
• Youth unemployment continues to soar to unprecedented heights in Europe. In Greece, 62.5% of young people are out of work, in Spain it's 56.4%, then Portugal with 42.5%, and then Italy with 40.5%.

Via: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/18-signs-that-massive-economic-problems-are-erupting-all-over-the-planet

Via:

• http://www.minexconsulting.com/publications/PAPER%20-%20Recent%20trends%20in%20gold%20discovery%20NewGenGold%20Conf%20Nov%202011%20FINAL.pdf
• http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/mining-costs-gold-price-floor-120320125

Worldwide PC shipments are now expected to fall by 7.8% in 2013 according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker

Notebook vendors will wait till July before ramping up their orders in preparation for the back-to-school demand, a delay of about 60 days as compared to the usual practice in previous years, probably because the vendors are conservative about market demand.

In the first quarter 2013, worldwide server shipments declined 0.7% on year, while revenues declined 5% from the first quarter of 2012, according to Gartner.

Let's look at http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

Average annual hours per worker in 2011:

• Greece - 2032
• Spain - 1690
• UK - 1625
• Germany - 1413
• France - 1476

Fresh data showed industrial production in March fell 7.6pc from a year earlier, dropping for the 15th consecutive month. New orders fell 10pc.

Country’s industrial output fell back to levels reached in 1979 and continue to fall.

The EU expects Italy’s economy to contract by 1.3pc this year, pushing the debt ratio to 131pc of GDP. Many private forecasters fear far worse

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10069752/Italys-industrial-output-falls-back-to-1970s.html

As nowadays the right to health care depends on the number of days that someone has worked during the previous year, the long-term unemployed and the uninsured workers lose their access to health care. In the meantime, the health services offered to the general population have been reduced, since several public hospitals and prevention centers have been shut down as a result of the cuts (40%) in the health and welfare budget, combined with the introduction of increased fees even for the insured patients. These problems, combined with the critical situation of the public hospitals still functioning (many suffer by tragic shortages in personnel and even in basic material, such as medicines, disinfectants, bandages etc.) and the inability of many citizens (mainly pensioners) to pay the much increased share for their medicaments, has led even the EU’s Centre for Disease Control to warn against an imminent outbreak of viral infections, hospital viruses, contagious diseases, HIV etc.

The rapid decline of the heating oil consumption is another indication of the ongoing extreme pauperization of the population: compared to 2011 (a year that was marked already by a first sharp decrease in heating oil consumption), there is a 75% decrease of the consumption in December 2012, despite the cold spell in the biggest part of the country. A large part of the population is suffering today by cold because of the unforeseen successive increase of taxes imposed on heating oil by the Troika and the government, which resulted to the sharp rise of its price (average prices per liter 2009: 0,57 euro, 2010: 0,71 euro, 2011: 0,91 euro, and in 2012: 1,37 euro).

The hunger is spreading rapidly all over the country, especially in the urban areas, for the first time since the era of the Nazi occupation. There are no available data on national level, but the case of the Diocese of Neapolis and Stavroupolis (two suburbs of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece) is a characteristic example: in 2010 the soup kitchens of the Diocese offered meals to 1.387 destitute and homeless citizens, in 2011 to 2.445 citizens, and in 2012 to 5.223 citizens. Another example is the desperate call of teachers’ unions in several regions of the country, informing the authorities that many pupils arrive hungry at school, with constantly increasing cases of daily faint of pupils in the classrooms due to hunger. Moreover, the hospital doctors’ association has announced that a constantly increasing number of infants are brought to public hospitals with severe stomach upsets – the reason is that their parents cannot afford to feed them with the (very expensive) baby milk and other infant feeding products; instead, they buy the cheapest products for adults.

According to the European Commission itself, between 2009 and 2011 Greece has suffered the most violent drop in “real household disposable income”: the Greek households lost 17% of their real disposable income, while the other Southern European households counted income losses ranging from 5% (Ireland) to 8% (Spain). And the data for 2012 are yet to come… Most of the Greek workers and employees, both in the private and in the public sector (as well as the pensioners), have lost 30% or 40% or even 50% of their income during these nightmarish three years. And, yet, they are considered as the "lucky" ones, since they continue to have a job! A job that now is paid € 586 (gross!) per month, while those under 25 receive a monthly salary of € 511 (always gross!). The reality is even worse, though: In the private sector, many employers are blackmailing the workers and employees and oblige them to accept “salaries” of € 300, of course without any social insurance. On top, many employers (including “established” multinational firms and big enterprises) are not paying even these ridiculous salaries during many months. Thus, they transform their employees into hostages who continue to work without payment, hoping to receive sometime at least a part of their due salaries.

http://international.koel.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=178:social-aspects-of-the-greek-drama-and-the-struggle-for-a-way-out-1412013&catid=14:other-documents&Itemid=13

The Greek government said Monday it will use emergency powers to prevent protesting teachers from disrupting university entrance exams this month. Civil servants' unions retaliated by calling a 24-hour strike for Tuesday.

It is the third time this year that the conservative-led coalition government has used the emergency civil mobilization order — a measure normally reserved for natural disasters and other times of national crisis — to end a labor dispute in the crisis-hit country.

More than 2,000 teachers — some dressed in army fatigues to mock the order — and left-wing unionists held two separate, peaceful protests in central Athens late Monday.

Tuesday's nationwide strike is expected to close schools and disrupt public services. Civil servants' union officials told the AP on Monday that the union was also planning a work stoppage Thursday and a series of public protests.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said the government decided to use the civil mobilization order against the teachers under its "moral obligation" to safeguard the May 17-31 exams for school leavers and university candidates.

Via: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/greece-emergency-power-striking-teachers-19166051

Now one remember them to use emergency power to help teachers by butchering banks? No? Strange.

This guys are working hard :-)

With more than 6 million people unemployed for the first time, Spain's jobless rate shot up to a record 27.2% in the first quarter, the National Statistics Institute said Thursday, in another grim picture of the recession-wracked country.

The agency said the number of people unemployed rose 237,400 the first three months of the year, a 1.1% increase from the previous quarter. The number of people out of work stood at 6.2 million, first time the number has breached 6 million.

yet

Anti-government protestors would stage another attempt to "Surround Congress," just 24 hours before the latest round of economic and fiscal reforms, which will almost certainly include further spending cuts, are to be announced by the government of Mariano Rajoy.

In reality it is all completely pointless. I mean here asking elites to stop destruction of middle class. This guys really never understand good words.

The US economy will officially become 3 per cent bigger in July as part of a shake-up that will see government statistics take into account 21st century components such as film royalties and spending on research and development.

Billions of dollars of intangible assets will enter the gross domestic product of the world’s largest economy in a revision aimed at capturing the changing nature of US output.

Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told the Financial Times that the update was the biggest since computer software was added to the accounts in 1999.

“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” said Mr Moulton.

GDP will now include:

1. Research & Development
2. Artistic Originals
3. Pension Accounting among other items

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-21/us-gdp-will-be-revised-higher-500-billion-following-addition-intangibles-economy

In the late sixties the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter advanced an appar- ently paradoxical principle, named since then after him, which can be summarized as follows: //Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he reaches his level of maximum incompetence//

If you do not have Peter's books, get them and read.
They contain much more than only this principle.
They are about fundamental things - monkeys natural habit to form hierarchies and are very useful in life.

Our computational study of the Peter principle process applied to a prototypical organization with pyramidal hierarchical structure shows that the strategy of promoting the best members in the PH case induces a rapid decrease of efficiency, while it works well only if members would ide- ally maintain their competence at each level, an hypothesis that, although in agreement with common sense, seems in practice very unrealistic in the major- ity of the real situations. On the other hand we obtained the counterintuitive result that the best strategies for improving, or at least for not diminishing, the efficiency of an organization, when one ignores the actual mechanism of competence transmission, are those of promoting an agent at random or of randomly alternating the promotion of the best and the worst members. We think that these results could be useful to guide the management of large real hierarchical systems of different natures and in different fields.

Via: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.0455.pdf

Slightly more fun math.

Knowledge is Power. Time is Money.

Work/Time = Power

Now make substitution:

Work/Money = Knowledge

or

Work/Knowledge = Money

The less you know, the more you get :-)

I'll ignore ultra liberal fluff, as it is just waste of time, but set of proposed solutions from smarter ones is quite typical.

Most popular one is reindustrialisation and moving manufacturing back to Europe and US. Combined with some sort of customs fees preventing competition with foreight goods.

Issue here is that current crisis is fundamental, tightly connected to population numbers, automatization, energy, land and resources available. Plus extreme complexity of current systems and products. Reindustrialization, unfortunately is not solution for all this problems.

Usually target country has enery deficit, trade deficit, issues with working force, issues with logistics due other sectors also moved away. Worst things here is that it needs big amount of energy and resources, and this, in turn could mean life level drop. In global scale in means less efficient energy usage (due to reducing scale and concentration and also due to bigger consumption standards of new workers) and increased complexity. Such approach could work perfect on the left slope of energy curve, with big amount of cheap energy. And we saw exactly this. Now it won't work.

You can also try to make most of population work in small firms that use old primitive approach requiring many unskilled workers, but it'll require more energy, more land and more resources. Only easy solution is to reduce population on large scale.

Another popular idea is regulation of commercial banks. Issue here is misunderstanding of banks role. Banks in their current form had been made to solve fucking rabbits problem. Potential(!) resources and possibilities had been so vast that most effective approach was to just "make" money via multiplier and lend it to everyone who could use them. As this is not the case now, system stopped working properly. And use of any usual measures won't run it again. So, commercial banks will be destroyed. Corporations hope that they'll be in charge of superbanks, as if it won't happen most of them will share commercial banks destiny. I am almost sure that this attempt will fail.

Unemployment rate is already 26pc and lay-offs are continuing at an alarming pace. Labour specialists AML Afi-Asempleo said the economy would shed 300,000 jobs over the first three months of this year.

The ratio of unemployed to the number of jobs available has risen to a record 107.

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9925876/Italys-companies-face-slow-death-as-credit-crunch-deepens.html

Google's Motorola Mobility unit is to shed another 1,200 jobs or 10 percent of its workforce as the smartphone maker tries to return to profitability, Google said on Friday.

The lay-offs come on top of the 4,000 jobs cut at Motorola Mobility in August as Google seeks to make more smartphones and fewer simple handsets.

Via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-google-motorola-idUSBRE92707C20130308

Personal income decreased $505.5 billion, or 3.6 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $491.4 billion, or 4.0 percent, in January, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $18.2 billion, or 0.2 percent. In December, personal income increased $353.4 billion, or 2.6 percent, DPI increased $325.7 billion, or 2.7 percent, and PCE increased $14.8 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.

Real disposable income decreased 4.0 percent in January, in contrast to an increase of 2.7 percent in December. Real PCE increased 0.1 percent, the same increase as in December.

Via: http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm