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All posts for the day April 5th, 2023
In the next few years, the financial system will crash under its own weight in spite of and also due to the coming biggest money-printing avalanche that the world has ever experienced.
Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971 was the signal that this currency system was going to end like all currency systems in history. And for the ones who haven’t studied the history of money, let me tell you that NO FIAT MONEY HAS EVER SURVIVED IN HISTORY IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM. So with all money going to ZERO, it has never been a question of if but only of when the dollar-based currency system would die.
https://www.sott.net/article/479008-The-Everything-Collapse
Egon von Greyerz
Gold Switzerland
Sun, 02 Apr 2023
Sadly, gold is now on its way to heights which are unthinkable for most people.
To all the people who have asked me over the years why gold doesn’t go up, I have replied:
“Don’t wish for gold to go up substantially for when it does, your quality of life will deteriorate remarkably.”
And we are now at the point in the world when this is likely to happen.
Let me be clear, now is the time to protect whatever assets you have in order to avoid the total asset destruction that is coming next. More about this later in this article.
THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM WILL NOT SURVIVE
I came to the conclusion early in this century that a sick financial system was not going to survive the infestation of vermin in the form of debt that started just over 50 years ago.
Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971 was the signal that this currency system was going to end like all currency systems in history. And for the ones who haven’t studied the history of money, let me tell you that NO FIAT MONEY HAS EVER SURVIVED IN HISTORY IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM. So with all money going to ZERO, it has never been a question of if but only of when the dollar-based currency system would die.
Dalai Lama said:
“If there is a solution to a problem, there is no need to worry.
And if there is no solution, there is no need to worry”
But in this case, my view is THAT WE REALLY NEED TO WORRY.
So sadly, his wisdom doesn’t apply to the global problem that the world is now facing.
IS THE UKRAINE WAR COMING TO AN END
In early January this year I wrote an article called “OMINOUS MILITARY & FINANCIAL NUCLEAR THREATS COULD ERUPT IN 2023.”
I have covered the threat of a major war in many articles in the last 12 months for example “Will nuclear war, debt collapse or energy depletion finish the world“
Although it is too early to be really optimistic, it now looks like my prediction that Russia will never lose this war is getting closer.
Ukraine is making the Battle of Bakhmut into their Stalingrad last stand (WWII 1943).
Ukraine has committed the majority of their remaining forces to win this battle against Russia. If they lose in Bakhmut, even Zelensky believes that this could be the end for Ukraine.
Here is the Associated Press (AP) article in which Zelensky is hinting that Ukraine could lose this war –
“Ukraine’s Zelensky: Any Russian victory could be perilous.”
If Bakhmut fell to Russian forces, Putin would “sell this victory to the West, to his society, to China to Iran” Zelensky said in the AP interview.
“If he will feel some blood – smell that we are weak – he will push, push, push!”
Scott Ritter, the former intelligence officer and UN weapons’ inspector just gave this interview in which he believes that Ukraine is on the point of losing the war:
THE END OF US HEGEMONY
At the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, I and some others made the analogy with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 (which I remember well) when Kennedy gave an ultimatum to Khrushchev to withdraw the nuclear missiles pointing towards the US or face war.
In the same way as with Cuba, Russia was never going to accept Ukraine becoming a Nato country. But sadly the US Neocons have seen this conflict as the last chance to save the US military, political and economic hegemony from total collapse. Defeating Russia was the last stand for the US. But it now looks like they will fail which seals the fate of the US empire.
The US neocons forced a much too willing Europe to not only agree to the sanctions against Russia but also make direct contributions to the war both with money and equipment.
This fatal mistake by Europe and especially Germany is totally crushing the European economy. But what the US neocons never understood is that the US sanctions would affect the whole world and in particular, the debt-infested US and the West.
At the end of an economic era, unexpected events take place which will seal the fate of a crumbling empire.
THE END OF THE CENTRAL BANKER
The script for the first 22+ years of the 2000s couldn’t be more perfect as the final glutinous feast of Gargantua The Central Banker. (Gargantua – book by Rabelais 1543)
Central bankers have been the principal creators of the current crisis which had its beginnings over 100 years ago.
Significant events in the 2000s created by fallacious Central Bank policies:
- 2000-2 Market collapse: Tech stocks down 80%
- 2006-8 Subprime banking crisis: Dow down 54%, massive money printing
- 2009-21 Stocks & asset markets exploding: Dow up 6X, Nasdaq up 16X
- 2006-20 Manipulation of rates: US 10yr treasury down from 5.4% to 0.5%
- 2000-23 US Debt explosion: Up 3.5X from $27t in 2000 to $95t in 2023
- 2000-23 Global debt explosion: Up 3X from $100t in 2000 to $300t in 2023
- 2020-23 Real inflation US EU: Up from 0% in 2020 to 10%+ in 2023
The extreme moves and volatility exemplified in the table above have nothing to do with free markets. They are the manifest consequences of shameless manipulation of markets and market conditions by Central Banks. Such extreme moves could never happen if markets followed nature’s laws and the laws of supply and demand.
For example, in an unmanipulated market, it would be totally impossible for credit to expand exponentially and interest rates to remain at zero. The basic principle of supply and demand would force the cost of money up when demand for credit expands. And if there was no demand, the cost of money would obviously come down to the level where demand resumes.
If markets were allowed to follow the natural rhythm of nature, they would be self-correcting without extreme tops and bottoms.
This is so basic that a 7-year-old would understand it. But the Central Bankers choose to ignore it.
The obvious consequence of markets flowing naturally without intervention would mean that we could get rid of Central Bankers. How wonderful! No Central Banks, No Manipulation and No Extremes in the economy or markets.
Sadly, such simple solutions are the exception in history with greed and power driving man rather than reason and logic.
The bankers clearly knew what they needed to do when they met on Jekyll Island in 1910 in order to control the US and the global monetary system. At this meeting, they schemed to create the Fed in 1913 and followed the axiom of Mayer Amschel Rothschild a German banker in the late 1700s: “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”
From Amschel Rothschild to Jekyll Island to Nixon closing the gold window in 1971, the Central bankers and bankers have successfully taken control of issuing exponentially larger amounts of money and debt for their own benefit as well as for a very small elite who could take advantage.
Having created a structure that was above the law as Amschel said, they have so far been in total control of their own destiny with governments being dictated to by the central bankers and bankers. Thus in 2008, the Fed and a number of virtually bankrupt banks, including JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays etc dictated their own rescue terms to the US and other governments.
But we must remember that 2006-9 was just a rehearsal. The finale is starting now. The debt which has built up has now reached levels which means the financial system is now too big to survive.
Three US banks and one Swiss went under 2 weeks ago although two of the four were rescued temporarily at a high cost. The Swiss government could not afford to let Credit Suisse go under and is supporting the UBS takeover of the Credit Suisse at a potential extraordinary cost of CHF 209 billion.
Central banks are on standby to stop the next bank run. Many expected Deutsche Bank to be next. Governments will stop major banks from going under for as long as they can, to stop global contagion. But they will of course fail.
The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) currently has a capital of $128 billion dollars to support a total of $18 trillion deposits. So with 0.7% cover, it is guaranteed that the US government will soon need to step in as the next lot of US banks fail. Same in Europe where most EU banks and the ECB are in terrible shape.
Total central bank assets are $ 25 trillion which is less than 10% of global debt before derivatives. Default rates in coming years are likely to exceed 50% which means much more money printing to come.
ALL ASSETS ARE PRICED AT THE MARGIN – PROTECT YOURSELVES
As the current asset bubbles are coming to an end, the exit doors will be totally blocked by panicking sellers.
All assets are priced at the margin and even more so since the current asset bubbles have been created by the most gigantic debt bonanza. To take an extreme example, if there is one seller and no buyer in the housing market, the price of all houses will go to zero. The same is true for the stock market.
But as investors run for the exit, most will not get through since there will at some point be no buyers at any price.
This is how the price of stocks, bonds or property can go down by 75% to 100% in real terms. Some market observers say that this has never happened in history so it won’t happen today either. Yes, of course, I can be wrong, but what we must remember is that nor have we ever in history had a global debt and asset bubble of this magnitude. So we are in unchartered waters and conventional wisdom doesn’t apply and is just conventional without any wisdom.
In any case, investors shouldn’t worry how much their assets could decline. Instead, they should worry about protecting themselves against the risk of this happening.
Firstly investors should go as liquid as possible. Secondly, debts must be repaid. Nobody will want the bank to take their assets at a bargain price.
Short-term government bonds could offer adequate protection. But medium and long term, governments will at best destroy the value of the currency and at worst also default.
Tangible assets are undervalued and a good investment to own.
Physical gold and silver held outside the banking system is the ultimate protection just as in any crisis.
It is absolutely critical to buy gold and silver now before investors panic into these metals. There is very little gold and silver available to buy. Currently, all production is absorbed and any increase in demand cannot be met by increased supply but only by much higher prices.
But remember that gold and silver are also priced at the margin, so as demand increases, we could reach a situation when there is no silver or gold available at any price.
So my very strong advice is not to wait for the herd since you then are likely to be left with no silver or gold and no protection.
But in the end, as I have stressed, the $2 quadrillion debt and derivative liabilities, cannot be saved.
In the next few years, the financial system will crash under its own weight in spite of and also due to the coming biggest money-printing avalanche that the world has ever experienced.
Sanders joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Katie Porter, and others in questioning Cal-Maine Foods’ claim that an avian flu outbreak is to blame for soaring egg prices.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/why-are-egg-prices-so-high
Apr 03, 2023
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders this weekend renewed his call to break up agricultural monopolies after the nation’s largest egg producer reported that its quarterly profits soared more than 700%.
Cal-Maine Foods, which controls about 20% of the U.S. egg market, announced last week that its revenue for the quarter ending February 25 rose 109% to $997.5 million, while profit for the same period skyrocketed 718% to $323.2 million.
In a statement, Cal-Maine president and CEO Sherman Miller attributed the company’s soaring profits to “the ongoing epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza which has significantly reduced the nation’s egg-laying capacity.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “U.S. egg inventories were 29% lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of the year,” while “more than 43 million egg-laying hens were lost to the disease itself or to depopulation since the outbreak began in February 2022.”
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who took on agricultural monopolies while campaigning for president in 2016 and 2020—questioned Cal-Maine’s narrative in a tweet arguing that “we must break up Big Ag and enact a windfall profits tax.”
Sanders wasn’t the only congressional critic of Cal-Maine’s latest profits.
“While working families paid record prices for eggs, Cal-Maine raked over 700% more in profits—without reporting a single case of avian flu,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted on Thursday. “We need to crack down on corporate price gouging to provide Americans with relief at the grocery store.”
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who is running for U.S. Senate, wrote on Twitter last week that “corporate greed is driving inflation.”
“We need more competition to drive down prices,” she added. “In the meantime, I’m demanding answers from Cal-Maine directly.”
In February, Warren and Porter wrote letters to the heads of the five biggest U.S. egg producers expressing their concern over the “massive spike” in prices and “the extent to which egg producers may be using fears about avian flu and supply shocks as a cover to pad their own profits at the expense of American families.”
The advocacy group Farm Action earlier this year implored the Federal Trade Commission to investigate “apparent price gouging, price coordination, and other unfair or deceptive acts or practices by dominant producers of eggs such as Cal-Maine Foods.”
Previously, it was being reported that U.S. banks are facing unrealized losses of 620 billion dollars on the bonds that they are holding due to rapidly rising interest rates, but now we are being told that it is actually 780 billion dollars. And when you throw in unrealized losses on their loan portfolios, the unrealized losses that our banks are facing come to a grand total of somewhere around 1.7 trillion dollars…
Michael Snyder
April 3, 2023
If our banking system can’t find a way to turn things around, our entire economy will soon be in a world of hurt. When banks get into trouble, they start getting really tight with their money. That means fewer mortgages, fewer commercial real estate loans, fewer auto loans and fewer credit cards being issued. So it should greatly concern all of us that U.S. banks are bleeding deposits at an absolutely staggering pace right now. During the week ending March 15th, 98.4 billion dollars was pulled out of U.S. banks. That was really bad, but we just learned that things got even worse the next week. During the week ending March 22nd, 126 billion dollars was pulled out of U.S. banks…
Depositors drained another $126 billion from U.S. banks during the week ending March 22, according to new Federal Reserve data. This time the outflow came from the nation’s largest institutions.
But this banking crisis did not begin in March as many have been led to believe.
Over the past year, well over a trillion dollars has been pulled out of U.S. banks, and this has created a tremendous amount of financial stress…
The challenge the deposit outflows create for all banks is that if they raise rates on their deposits to keep customers, that could make them less profitable. But if they lose too many customers, as Silicon Valley Bank did, they give up critical funding and may have to sell assets at a loss to cover withdrawals.
Silicon Valley Bank customers withdrew $42 billion in one day, leaving the bank with a negative cash balance of $958 million.
When lots of depositors start pulling their money out, banks can be forced to sell assets in order to have enough cash.
Unfortunately, U.S. banks are sitting on a giant mountain of unrealized losses right now.
Previously, it was being reported that U.S. banks are facing unrealized losses of 620 billion dollars on the bonds that they are holding due to rapidly rising interest rates, but now we are being told that it is actually 780 billion dollars.
And when you throw in unrealized losses on their loan portfolios, the unrealized losses that our banks are facing come to a grand total of somewhere around 1.7 trillion dollars…
A study released on March 13th took a deeper look at the unrealized losses banks were likely holding. The study found that actual losses to banks’ security holdings were $780 billion, not $620 billion as estimated by the FDIC.
But the authors went deeper, rightly noting, “Loans, like securities, also lose value when interest rates go up.”
They found that total unrealized losses as of December 2022 were $1.7 trillion. In a chilling warning, the authors noted that “the losses from the interest rate increase are comparable to the total equity in the entire banking system.” We’re not out of this banking crisis. In fact, it may be just the beginning.
Ouch.
The Federal Reserve was warned not to raise interest rates so quickly.
But they did, and now they have broken our entire banking system.
In fact, Nouriel Roubini is warning that “most U.S. banks are technically near insolvency” at this stage…
Roubini also points out that the rise in interest rates has led to a decrease in the market value of banks’ other assets, and when accounting for these factors, U.S. banks’ unrealized losses actually amount to $1.75 trillion, or 80% of their capital.
According to Roubini, the “unrealized” nature of these losses stems from the current regulatory regime, which allows banks to value securities and loans at their face value rather than their true market value.
He asserts that most U.S. banks are technically near insolvency
We are in far more trouble than most people realize.
The truth is that we are not just heading into a “recession”.
What we are potentially facing is a meltdown of the entire system, and it is going to take quite a while for this crisis to fully play out.
But even now, symptoms are starting to erupt all around us.
For example, McDonald’s just decided to close all of their U.S. offices while they decide which of their employees still get to work for them…
McDonald’s is closing its U.S. offices for a few days this week as the company prepares to inform employees about layoffs as part of a broader restructuring, according to a report.
The Chicago-based burger chain said in an internal email that U.S. corporate employees and some staff abroad should work from home while the company notifies people of their job status virtually, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Like so many other big companies are doing these days, McDonald’s is going to be laying off people by email.
What a horrible thing to do.
Of course, when people get laid off they can respond very emotionally, and confrontations between management and those that have been fired can get pretty intense.
So informing people that they are terminated when they are out of the office is a way to avoid messy situations. But I still think that it is a really heartless thing to do.
There is so little loyalty in the corporate world today. You can pour your heart and soul into a company for decades, and then one day some numbers cruncher comes along and suddenly decides that you have become expendable.
We have seen so many layoffs in recent months, and many more are on the way.
And at this point, a whopping 72 percent of all Americans believe that the economy is getting worse…
A new survey shows that 83% of American adults view current economic conditions as “only fair” or “poor,” reported Gallup. In addition, 72% think economic conditions are getting “worse.”
Unfortunately, what most people don’t realize is that what we have been through so far is just the tip of the iceberg.
All of the bubbles have started to burst, and our entire system is beginning to tremble violently.
So I would encourage you to hold on tight because we have got a very bumpy ride ahead of us.
“There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan said during Davos. As we have seen in recent months, Saudi Arabia is aligning itself with China over the US.
https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/84449/the-end-of-the.html
SOURCE: MARTIN ARMSTRONG
Another oil deal has been initiated without the use of the dollar. The India Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced that their latest trade deal with Malaysia would be settled in Indian rupees. “This initiative by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is aimed at facilitating the growth of global trade and to support the interests of the global trading community in Indian Rupees (INR),” the formal statement noted.
India has benefitted from the West’s distraction from the Ukraine war. The RBI is allowing 18 counties to open Vostro accounts and has been attracting new deals in trade and manufacturing. New Delhi and Moscow have strengthened their relationship as India is not imposing sanctions. The Indian Commerce Ministry said its five-year plan is to “encourage” the use of the rupee on an international scale, while also planning to expand exports $2 trillion by 2030. Trading in rupees will also allow India to save on conversion spreads and limit the country’s dependence on the volatile dollar.
The BRICs treaty (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) remains strong and oil giants Saudi Arabia and Iran would like to join the partnership. The Saudis stated at the beginning of the year that they were open to settling trade in currencies other than the USD. “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan said during Davos. As we have seen in recent months, Saudi Arabia is aligning itself with China over the US.
The Vietnam War and other government missteps made it impossible for the US to maintain the fixed price of gold established under Bretton Woods. The USD relative to gold fell as the supply of dollars grew, pushing Nixon to abandon the Bretton Woods system entirely. US government debt was rapidly rising as confidence in the dollar plummeted. America needed an enticing way to sell its debt, and that was when Nixon convinced Saudi Arabia, the largest crude exporter, to purchase Treasurys in dollars in exchange for military aid. Hence the “petrodollar” was born. The creation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) only further enhanced the dollar’s dominance in energy purchases.
Here we are yet again amid another war and a high budget deficit. The Saudis no longer need protection from America, and siding with Western interests would be a deterrent to its international deals with countries in the BRICs alliance and some in the OPEC+. Despite the green agenda, the world cannot operate without oil. The major oil exporters are now aligning and cutting out the US as their middleman.
“The most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die.”
“It has been a well-acknowledged and accepted fact that technological, and biological products have been already developed and operating within the military complex for many years before any public awareness!” suggested another. “Are these bio-artificial intelligence human form androids already among us?”
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-04-04-demon-ai-synthetic-biotechnology-superhuman-biology.html
by: Ethan Huff
Tuesday, April 04, 2023
(Natural News) A high-profile artificial intelligence (AI) researcher is warning that unless all advanced AI systems and associated programs are immediately shut down, humanity will eventually become extinct at the hands of the life-destroying robots they are unleashing.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), wrote an op-ed for TIME magazine this week explaining the risks involved with the creation of these synthetic life forms. He wrote that:
“The most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die.”
This is a serious warning that others are now echoing as they come to the stark realization that the agenda will not stop with GPT-4 “chatbots” and other seemingly innocuous AI programs. The truth is that these AI systems are becoming possessed by demons with an anti-human agenda, and thus must be stopped immediately before it is too late.
(Related: Elon Musk and other billionaires have signed a petition calling for an immediate pause on all AI developments.)
AI systems can already be “emailed DNA” to turn into “artificial life forms,” Yudkowsky says
Like Musk, Yudkowsky wants all AI labs to immediately cease, for at least the next six months, all AI training programs that are more powerful than GPT-4. He also commented on the petition, stating that it is “asking for too little to solve” the problems posed by the rapid and uncontrolled development of AI systems.
These AI systems do “not care for us nor for sentient life in general,” Yudkowsky argues, adding that in order to survive an encounter with one, a person would need “precision and preparation and new scientific insights” that, generally speaking, humanity lacks.
“A sufficiently intelligent AI won’t stay confined to computers for long,” he added, further explaining that it is already possible to email DNA strands to a laboratory that can manufacture proteins for AI “to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing.”
It is the stuff of the Terminator movie franchise but in real life, in other words. And it is happening faster than many people realize as the media distracts everyone with just about every other topic under the sun.
“There can be no exceptions, including for governments or militaries,” Yudkowsky says about how all AI systems need to be stopped immediately.
“If intelligence says that a country outside the agreement is building a GPU (graphics processing unit) cluster, be less scared of a shooting conflict between nations than of the moratorium being violated; be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.”
How to get every country of the world on board with stopping AI could prove challenging, though. Is it even possible to regulate such a thing, especially when it is taking place in private in the remotest areas of the world outside the control or even the knowledge of law enforcement?
Yudkowsky sees AI as such a threat that he thinks it should be made “explicit in international diplomacy that preventing AI extinction scenarios is considered a priority above preventing a full nuclear exchange.”
In the comments, someone joked that “first it was aliens, then it was a zombie apocalypse, and now it’s terminator robots,” the implication being that perhaps Yudkowsky and his ilk are overblowing the AI threat.
“April Fool’s Day,” joked another.
“It has been a well-acknowledged and accepted fact that technological, and biological products have been already developed and operating within the military complex for many years before any public awareness!” suggested another. “Are these bio-artificial intelligence human form androids already among us?”
Will the world be taken over by demon-possessed AI robots? Learn more at Robots.news.
Sources for this article include: