Solwd

A European Union drug monitoring agency is sounding alarms over rising recreational use of nitrous oxide, also known as “laughing gas.” 

“There is a general perception among users that inhalation of nitrous oxide is safe,” says the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). “Yet we see that more frequent or heavier use of the gas increases the risk of serious harms.” 

In addition to industrial uses, the gas is used as a sedative in medical and dental procedures, and as a propellant in whipped cream canisters. Classified as a depressant, it’s typically consumed by inhaling it from party balloons, and is frequently used in tandem with drugs like ketamine or MDMA. 

Inhaling it can foster a sense of euphoria, relaxation and dissociation from reality. In most places, anyone can legally buy it at a convenience store, supermarket or online — and cheaply.  

“A profitable and expanding supply chain has developed, with specialised internet stores directly promoting the gas for its recreational use or offering it under the guise of its use to make whipped cream,” says the EMCDDA. 

Listen up, going extra large with laughing gas can KILL you. #balloons #nitrousoxide #NHS @djnicholl pic.twitter.com/Yd8FfFF8TR

— SWB NHS Trust (@SWBHnhs) November 18, 2022

Commonly called “hippy crack” or “nos,” it’s become a common fixture at music festivals. According to Reuters, concerns started mounting in 2017 with the introduction of larger canisters that deliberately targeted recreational users. In the UK, nitrous oxide is now the second-most-used drug among 16- to 24-year-olds.  

The popularity of the gas is elevated by the ease with which it’s consumed and shared — usually by filling party balloons with the gas. Some users cut out that middle step, and suck it straight from the canister — risking lung injuries and cold burns.  

That’s just the start of the dangers. According to WebMD, the gas can cause lower blood pressure, fainting, heart attacks, suffocation, irreversible vitamin B12 inactivation, anemia, nerve damage, memory loss, incontinence, depression, weakened immunity, numbness of hands and feet, limb spasms and ringing ears. 

“This stuff is dangerous. Seven years ago, this was a neurological rarity, even a couple of years ago I was seeing cases maybe once a month, now I’m seeing them every week,” said Dr David Nicholl, a UK neurologist. 

The EMCDDA says the number of poisonings is still “relatively small in number,” but increasing sharply:

“In Denmark, cases rose from 16 in 2015 to 73 in 2021. In France, 134 cases were reported in 2020 — up from 10 in 2017. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, cases rose from 13 in 2015 to 144 in 2020.”

The UK Daily Mail this week shared some laughing gas horror stories: A teen with a ruptured lung, a woman with a damaged spinal cord now partially paralyzed and forced into a wheelchair. 

A road safety group says the gas contributed to 1,800 vehicle accidents in the Netherlands alone in the past three years. In January, the Dutch government will institute a ban on the purchase, sale or possession of the gas, with exceptions for its continued use in medicine and in food packaging.

Bans and limitations are under consideration in the UK and elsewhere. The EMCDDA cautions that “any response measure needs to consider the widespread legitimate uses of nitrous oxide by industry, healthcare and consumers.”

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

As the latest headlines from the FTX implosion remind us yet again of a politicized and rigged market riddled with deception, gold’s climb becomes easier to foresee.

But first, a little philosophical musing…

Modern Policy: High Office, Low Wisdom

I have often referred to La Rochefoucauld’s maxim asserting the highest offices are rarely, if ever, held by the highest minds.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than among the halls of the physically impressive yet intellectually vacant Eccles Building on Constitution Ave in Washington DC, where a long string of Fed Chairs have been un-constitutionally distorting free market price discovery for over a century.

The media-ignored levels of open fraud and inflationary currency debasement which passes daily for monetary policy (namely monetizing trillions of sovereign debt with trillions of mouse-clicked Dollars) within the FOMC would be comical if not otherwise so tragic in its crippling ripple effect to the Main Street citizen.

From Greenspan to Powell, we have witnessed example after example of error after error and gaffe after gaffeon everything from mis-defining inflation narratives as “transitory” to re-defining a “recession” as non-recessionary.

And all this while the Fed (and its creative writing team at the BLS) simultaneously and deliberately fudges the math on everything from misreported CPI data to artificial U6 employment statistics.

Pondering the Philosophically Nobel Amidst the Administratively Dishonest

To any who have pondered the philosophical pathways (as well as elusive definition) of wisdom (from the ancient Greeks to the pre- and post-modern Europeans, romantic Emersonians, tortured Russians or enlightened Confucians), one common trait of wisdom through time, culture and language is the ability to admit, and then learn from, error–as any man’s journey is one riddled with countless opportunities for teachable error.

Yet when it comes to public mea-culpas and the grand teaching moments of “I was wrong,” it seems our central and commercial bankers have failed miserably.

Infallible Bankers or Exceptional Finger Pointers?

Not only have bank leaders taken little to no responsibility for (or contrition of) their many financial, political and moral sins (think billion-dollar bailouts, a 0 in 10 record for recession forecasting or the creation of the greatest and levered asset bubble and wealth transfer in history), they have a remarkable talent for blaming anyone (Putin et al) or anything (COVID or coal) but themselves or the derivative toxins and unpayable debt piles they alone created…

In summary, it seems we are living in era of great change, great turmoil and great risk, yet also one of very little accountability, transparency and hence: wisdom.

Sustained Levels of Mediocrity

Instead, from DC to Wall Street, Tokyo to Brussels, Canada to Australia, and Brainard to Draghi, the world is increasingly led by figures (left, right and center) who are capable, at best, of little more than a sustained level of mediocrity and an over-paid repertoire of canned phrases and prompt-read platitudes rather than actual, economic savvy, candor or personal wisdom.

Such high-office mediocrity and lack of wisdom, of course, spills well beyond the centers of political power and office; in fact, it thrives with equal force in the private sector and public markets, as any who have tracked and pre and post Enron world will and do know…

Modern Dystopia: High Tech, Low Wisdom

As to more recent scandals and headlines related to the staggering blowout at FTX, enough has already been written/said of its impressive mix of fraud, leverage and corrupt (paid-for) politics for me to add more mathematical detail here.

Unfortunately, FTX’s scandalous scheming with investor money (ala Madoff) and bank leverage (ala Bear Sterns) is nothing new.

The broader sins of fractional reserve banking, historical debt levels and trillions in mouse-click monetary policies have effectively murdered honest capitalism within a rigged-to-fail financial system whose destructive consequences far outpace the FTX headlines of late.

I am thinking of 1) the leverage-poisoned MERK, compliments of Leo Melamed and Alan Greenspan in the 80’s, 2) a completely fixed paper gold pricing exchange, 3) the post Glass-Steagall (nod to Larry Summers) banking era which turned depositor accounts into levered ammunition for banks speculating like hedge-funds or 4) the open fraud (legalized counterfeiting) which daily passes for monetary policy at a central bank near you.

As Henry Ford warned, if more folks actually understood banking practices and the false idols hiding behind expert masks, the net result would be chaos.

Patterns of Fake Genuis

As for the recent chaos in the C-suites of our tech leadership, an equally clear, and all too familiar pattern of under-30 millionaire/billionaires (from WeWork’s Adam Newman to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried) is the now obvious as well as inverse correlation between so-called “technological genius” and basic human wisdom.

In short, we would be right to ask if our modern technological progress and high-office prestige has far outpaced our human wisdom.

All Piano, No Music

As Antoine de St. Exupery warned (as far back as 1944), the world is capable of producing 1000 pianos per hour but unable to produce enough worthy pianists to play them.

In short, the speed of our so-called “progress” (from computer chips, social media, Fauci-science and digital money to de-regulated margin accounts) seems to have tragically outpaced the philosophical measure of our wisdom.

Despite some wonderful exceptions from Wall St to Pal Aalto, many of our best and brightest are driven by the timeless and “human all too human” impulses of greed, FOMO, and telegraphed/photographed virtue-signaling rather anonymous good work or honest commerce.

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), for example, was a master at appearing like a Robin Hood despite having the instincts of a robber baron.

Self-Service Masquerading as Virtue Signaling

The end result is a literal “selfie culture” which, fractured by identity politics, victim narratives and resentment on the fly, has morphed into a priority of the “I” over the good of (or genuine concern for) the many.

This trend is equally true of our public and private markets.

Moral, legal and economic laws have become more and more, shall we say… “elastic” as the sins and consequences (from currency debasement to anti-trust/monopolies and cancerous debt levels) of one generation are happily billed to the next.

Such patterns of ignored decencies/rules in which a Madoff sits comically on the NASDAQ board or an SBF ironically teaches a paid-for Congress about crypto safety, are common.

Equally disconcerting is a celebrity-mad population who trusts its mandate science to Spike Lee or its crypto advice from Matt Damon. If one is financially “successful” it is assumed he is wise; that is a dangerous assumption…

Meanwhile, headline spin and financial lobbying has replaced the ideal of genuine capitalism with a kind of neo feudalism in which figures like Bezos (with easier access to capital after years of violating anti-trust principles and CEO-to-employee salary ratios) have become part of a new aristocracy rather than exemplars of democratic meritocracy or fair-priced capitalism.

Back to the Markets: What FTX Portends

Given the foregoing cynicism/realism emanating from our modern markets, there is still much we can glean about the direction of, and risks to, our current markets.

For example, it will come as no surprise that the FTX fiasco has already been spun into a positive rather than negative narrative for the BTC camp.

As to cryptos in general and BTC in particular, I have already written and spoken at length of my views.

Toward this end, and to the understandable chagrin of the crypto camp, I (rightly or wrongly) view BTC more as a speculative growth/tech stock than as a viable alternative currency or long-term store of value.

Nothing about the recent FTX blowup has altered this view.

Again (and I could very easily be wrong), I don’t see BTC as money, a view which seems to be shared by a large number of emerging markets and central banks who are loading up on record amounts of physical gold rather than invisible cryptos.

Just saying…

And to re-heat a tired yet accurate quote by JP Morgan, I (we) still fully embrace the “barbarous” notion that gold is money, the rest is credit/debt.

BTC As Market Indicator

Regardless, however, of one’s views, biases or take on cryptos, Bitcoin’s pricing still has immense relevance to modern markets, including gold markets.

In terms of US stocks, for example, BTC has been an exceptional leading liquidity metric outside of the derivatives markets or Fed-manipulated bond markets.

In other words, stock, bond and even property markets tend to behave and move a lot like BTC behaved just a short period before.

In short, and regardless of one’s pro or con take on BTC, as an asset class and market indicator, this “coin” still clearly matters.

BTC: Local to Systemic Sickness?

And perhaps more to the point: As a tanking asset class with trillions in losses, BTC, like any bleeding asset in a grotesquely over-levered system, really matters.

Why?

Because BTC’s local sickness can easily become systemic.

The risk of this systemic spread, for example, will increase if there are less and less “dip buyers” for BTC, especially when inflation factors should otherwise favor the asset.

The potential for such a low-bid trend for BTC (based on FTX-like fears of broken exchanges and hence broken TRUST) could easily and accurately portend a low-bid contagion effect in the broader equity markets in general and the already bleeding tech sector in particular.

That said, an increasingly cynical as well inflation-ravaged generation of jaded outsiders are feeling increasingly cornered, which means they have less and less to lose.

This desperation may lead to more distrust in the system and hence more buying of BTC as a modern 9and fully understandable) middle-finger to that system.

For now, let’s wait and see what the post-FTX trend will be for BTC; I personally foresee an eventual (though not immediate) rip in its price.

The Bond Market Matters

Equally, if not more importantly, the current and declining liquidity canary in the BTC coalmine, as stated above, has been a leading indicator for equal liquidity risks (and hence declining behavior) in the bond and property sectors as well.

With US debt to GDP levels above the precarious 120% level and US deficits spiking, Uncle Sam is going to need to need to find liquidity somewhere to cover its bond obligations.

One can not emphasize enough how much this bond market matters.

Hawk to Dove—A Brewing & Golden Tailwind

And as I’ve been arguing ever since Powell went Hawkish, it is my conviction that such liquidity will ultimately (and only) be found when that hawk becomes a doveand the Fed reverts to the desperate mean of relying (tragically/addictively) on the only consistent income source it has, namely: A mouse clicker at the Eccles Building.

Such mouse-clicked “magical money,” of course, has immediate as well as immense inflationary and currency (USD) ramifications, which means the pivot will have immediate as well as immense ramifications on the price of gold in USD.  

Expanding Deficits: More Tailwinds for Gold

Equally bullish for gold yet equally tragic for the US are the recent (and doubling) deficit forecasts coming out of DC.

That is, the US Treasury has already announced its borrowing amounts for the next 6 months ($1.3T), which is an indirect way of revealing a federal deficit doubling (on an annualized basis) for the same period.

For me, the implications of such added debt levels are mathematicalrather than just cynical or political.

That is, Uncle Sam simply can’t afford to pay ever-increasing debt piles of this embarrassing magnitude unless interest rates are decidedly negative rather than painfully positive.

Stated even more plainly, all debtors love (and hence eventually engineer) inflation rates to be higher than interest rates.

And since Uncle Sam (and the Fed) are not only powerfully distorted, but powerfully in control, one can easily predict what any all-powerful but debt-cornered policy hack would and will do as we stumble into 2023, namely: Seek more inflation and lower rates while simultaneously under-reporting inflation by at least 50%.

How’s that for trust building, wisdom and central bank accountability?

In the end, as wisdom dies from above, and hence trust rots from within as inflation rises and real rates go increasingly negative, Gold will do what it always does in such man-made settings—namely surge north as the USD, now artificially supported by rising rates, sinks dramatically south once those rates go dovishly in the same direction.

Defaulting Bonds, Tanking Treasuries, Rising Gold

Of course, as soon as the market collectively realizes that negative yielding bonds (the historical instrument of all debt-soaked and hence failing regimes) are effectively defaulting bonds, investor interest in US Treasuries will fall while interest in gold will rise, as is already the case:

Cynics, of course, might say that $260B in gold is a trifle amount compared to other asset classes.

Fair point.

Gold: Repressed Today, Fairly Priced Tomorrow

But here’s the rub: The central banks are (and have been) intentionally suppressing paper gold in order to take more physical delivery today before they inevitably reprice gold higher tomorrow to recapitalize their horrific balance sheets.

This trend is easy to see simply because the rigged game played by the broken actors described above is as easy to predict as their lack of wisdom is easy to measure.

As Egon and I have often remarked, the central banks are unwittingly gold’s best friend, for the bankers’ lack of wisdom and abundance of self-interest in otherwise desperate times makes them easy to track.

Or stated more simply: As the system gets more corrupt (as it always does when backed against a debt wall and a moral vacuum), gold gets more loyal.

European climate cultists upped the ante in their increasingly deranged war on fossil fuels on Thursday, bringing flight operations at Berlin Brandenburg Airport to a complete standstill for an hour and a half. 

Reuters reports that activists from the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) group entered the airport from both the north and south ends, with some glueing themselves to the tarmac. According to the group, others rode bikes around the taxiways. The trespass began just after 4 pm local time. 

“The plane is not a means of transport for ordinary people,” tweeted the group. “Most people – around 80% – have never flown. One affluent percent of the population is responsible for about half of all flight-related emissions.”

Letzte Generation demanded that the public stop using airplanes to travel, and tweeted video of its members entering the airport through a hole cut in a chain-link fence:

+++ Flugverkehr am BER eingestellt +++

Das Flugzeug ist kein Verkehrsmittel für Normalbürger:innen. Die meisten Menschen – etwa 80% – sind noch nie geflogen.
Ein wohlhabendes Prozent der Bevölkerung verursacht allein etwa die Hälfte der flugbedingten Emissionen. pic.twitter.com/Avfg5tDeqw

— Letzte Generation (@AufstandLastGen) November 24, 2022

Police detained the trespassers, but not before they caused misery for an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 travelers to and from Berlin’s primary commercial airport. In addition to those stuck in the airport or on airplanes awaiting takeoff 15 flights to Berlin were diverted to Düsseldorf, Leipzig/Halle and Dresden. 

The same group is behind many attention-seeking stunts across Europe in recent months, such as throwing food on famed works of art, disrupting a Hamburg orchestra concert by gluing themselves to the conductor’s podium, blocking road traffic, and vandalizing businesses and government buildings with orange paint. 

Letzte Generation activists have covered Monet’s Les Meules in mash potato.

The protestors then glued themselves to the floor at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam. It is unclear if the painting was damaged. https://t.co/Av2TSbR4iI pic.twitter.com/myup95RBtm

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 23, 2022

Local authorities condemned the latest stunt: 

Brandenburg Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) described the action as a “dangerous intervention in air traffic.” It was “a serious crime” that “in the worst case even endangers human life. There’s no justification for that.” He called the activists criminals. — German broadcaster RBB

Berlin police said protestors showed “they are ready to commit crimes and that the democratic framework is of no importance to this organization.”

At least one passenger stuck on an airplane maintained his sense of humor: 

Ryanair have also kindly portrayed the harrowing effects of climate change by ensuring the heat on the plane resembles a Mediterranean summer in the year 2050.

— Neil Delaney (@neilpdelaney) November 24, 2022