The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center released their January 2014 solar data, and it has one small surprise, the 10.7 radio flux is the highest ever in cycle 24, the other metrics, not so much.
SSN has been about where the much adjusted prediction line says it should be for the last four months.
The 10.7cm radio flux hits a new high.
Meanwhile, the Ap magnetic index continues its slump as it has since October 2005, bumping along the bottom.
lsvalgaard says:
February 8, 2014 at 12:24 pm
“many examples of such disconnected cylindrical magnetic tubes. This has been known and understood for decades and is not special or unusual and has nothing to do with your ‘Protostar0′”
Here some examples:
http://wso.stanford.edu/synoptic/WSO-S.1953.gif
http://wso.stanford.edu/synoptic/WSO-S.1837.gif
http://wso.stanford.edu/synoptic/WSO-S.1690.gif
They obviously [for good reasons] occur near polar field reversals.
This is not a worthy member of your ‘collection’, or perhaps just as bad a member as your other ones.
lsvalgaard says:
February 8, 2014 at 12:24 pm
..If you watch this animation http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-SS.gif of the current sheet neutral line on the source surface you will see many examples of such disconnected cylindrical magnetic tubes..
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Very nice Dr. S., 1977 thru 2007. Could we slow it down a bit and add 2008 thru 2014? Probably a flatter looking neutral line, over a longer period of time, with fewer and smaller cylindrical magnetic tubes, by comparison with other solar maximum periods.
thank you
Carla says:
February 8, 2014 at 4:16 pm
Very nice Dr. S., 1977 thru 2007. Could we slow it down a bit and add 2008 thru 2014?
One day I might do that, but for now it suffices to show that NONE of us need to rethink our perception of the HCS.
“No sales, no jobs”
Policy, the step you are missing is “no production, nothing new to sell”. The savings and deferred consumption is the step most often left out by people who believe in consumer spending as a formula for prosperity with no other inputs.
“The politicians—our congressmen—appropriate spending in the economy through Congressional appropriation bills: roads, bridges, airports, Hoover Dam, education, telecommunications infrastructure, scientific research, Space Program, et cetera, et cetera. Unless the government spends first, there is no new money possible in the economy (”
You give the politicians waaay too much credit. They would much rather spend on Solyndra than the Hoover dam. A lot of telecommunications infrastructure came from the telephone monopolies which could dedicate huge amounts of money to basic and applied research. Roads would be empty without private R&D and investment.
Solyndra is a perfect example of the kind of stupidity that results from bad science and especially bad engineering lining up with political correctness. I have an ordinary flat panel that works at acute and obtuse sun angles far better than Solyndra’s curved panels. Why? I accidentally drilled into the tempered glass surface and fractured it into a million pieces. I lacquered over the pieces and they are still stuck in place. The drawback, like Solyndra, is I get about 1/2 the current as an identical unbroken panel next to it at 90 sun ange.
You say: “Last year the Fed returned nearly $100 billion to the US Treasury, destroying its existence in the process. It’s basically a tax on the economy. ”
A drop in the bucket. Last year the Fed financed about a trillion worth of deficit spending. The spending was mostly wasted, doing nothing much for the economy. Helped in some ways, but in other ways it creates artificial demand for resources that could be used more productively elsewhere. For example a new and unneeded highway in WV courtesy of the WV pork barrel Senators takes asphalt away from small projects where the difference in cost means the difference in doing the project or not.
The real problem is that way in which the money was created. By using monetary inflation, the Fed undermines confidence in the future of the currency and makes it impossible for the economy to recover. This is because people are not going to risk locking money into long term investments when the Fed can unleash a 3 trillion dollar flood of reserves at any moment.
Policycritic (February 7, 2014 at 7:43 pm) “[Think this will be my last on this topic. Too much weekend stuff.]”
Really? You will never troll another thread with your ridiculous Keynesian quasi-sociialsm? That would be great, but I kinda doubt that’s going to happen.
OK. No jobs, no sales. That better?
Not arguing the politics. Only talking about the congressional and accounting process at the federal level.
The Fed financed nothing. The US Treasury spent it into existence out of thin air. The definition of the deficit is what the federal government spends minus taxes, the amount by which a government’s expenditures exceed its tax revenues. No jobs, no taxes.
You don’t understand how the monetary system works. No one spends the reserves. Maybe another voice will convince you…from the dailypaul site. This guy has it right. “How Banking Actually Works In Fiat World.” http://www.dailypaul.com/279537/how-banking-actually-works-in-fiat-world [This is banking, not the federal govt.’s high-powered money.]
I am not talking theory or socialism, marxism, or free markets. I am not talking Republican, Democrat, Independent, or any other political party. Nor am I talking about how I would like things to be.
I am discussing the differences between federal accounting (both sides of the ledger) by the issuer of the currency vs. accounting for State govt/Local govt/Businesses/Households (both sides of the ledger) by the users of the currency in a fiat world with a floating exchange rate, which is present reality. Not the gold-standard detritus you insist on bringing up. The laws of double-entry accounting rule, whether you like it or not.
Thanks for the link, but it is gibberish just like a lot of things you post. You are then forced to cling to red herrings like the gold standard which I really could care less about. Your absolutely ludicrous idea that governments should simply print and spend is morally wrong because it destroys the value of the currency. Gold has nothing to do with it.
The Fed action will end in a disaster in one of two ways. The most likely outcome is a couple decades of deflationary stagnation like Japan since businessmen can’t trust the currency and therefore can’t make any long term investments. The other outcome is that the economy drops below the level needed to sustain the Fed’s deflationary actions. At that point the politicians will go with the Zimbabwe option and start to hand out money for wages which quickly initiate wage-push inflation.
Since, like the earth’s climate, the economy is never in equilibrium, there will be various ups and downs driven primarily by carry trade and commodity bubbles. But all those bubbles do in the long run is hollow out the economy.
Eric1sceptic,
Here, knock yourself out: US Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Quite possible, but not because “businessmen can’t trust the currency.” It will be because the president and congress don’t understand federal monetary operations, and the accounting difference between how the federal government works and the state & local govts/businesses/households work.
Not possible unless our politicians introduce a fixed exchange rate or change the currency to a convertible to (metal or something) currency.
The Fiscal Service is mostly just an agency of accountants. On your second point, it is true that the President and Congress mostly have no clue, but they are mostly willfully ignorant since that suits them as politicians. Finally you say that going Zimbabwe is “Not possible unless our politicians introduce a fixed exchange rate or change the currency to a convertible to (metal or something) currency.”
It is true that Zimbabwe had a fixed exchange rate, but that was for a very simple reason explained in this news clipping “The official rate is used for government transactions, but is also a hugely lucrative opportunity for senior officials in Robert Mugabe’s regime, who are entitled to use it exchange the virtually worthless Zimbabwean currency for US dollars.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1562485/Zimbabwe-abandons-fixed-official-exchange-rate.html
They didn’t abandon the fixed exchange rate but kept bumping it up a couple orders of magnitude at a time to try to keep up depreciation on the black market. Classic hyperinflation. But you seem to think that could be caused by “convertible to (metal or something) currency”
Again, you are obsessed with the gold standard, but it has nothing to do with that situation nor ours and would certainly not be the cause of hyperinflation, in fact the opposite is true. Zimbabwe overvalued their currency by 1000x in that news article and 1,000,000x later on. Convertibility to fixed value commodities would not have allowed them to do that.
In our case the Fed has artificially inflated the value of Treasuries so that they sell for double or triple what they are really worth. Foreigners buy them for two reasons, they are trapped in some developing country’s bubble currency (thanks to carry trade) and want a quick exit. And/or they are speculating on a temporary profit assuming that the Fed will buy Treasuries from them (greater fool theory, where the Fed is the ultimate greater fool). The main problem with that policy is that it overvalues dollars which doesn’t help our deflationary psychology, so people postpone purchases and the economy sputters. I’m sure you will agree with our current deflationary psychology and its consequences even though your solution, politicians printing and spending, is unbelievably wrong.
At the same time the economy suffers from a lack of real investment since it is all locked up in extremely overpriced gold and other commodities. That is because either deflationary stagnation is inevitable (as the paragraph above) or inflation is inevitable (the paragraph above that). There is no magic happy middle in between those two because of Fed and federal policies. We need to (1) stop printing to buy treasuries and (2) lower corporate taxes (highest in the world) and eliminate inflation (long term cap gains) taxes.