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Dead Pigs, Ducks And Now Black Swans: China's Animal Apocalypse Crosses Into The Twilight Zone
First it was thousands of dead pigs floating in the Shanghai water supply (at last estimate over 16,000), then a thousand dead ducks were pulled from a river in the Sichuan province, and now, pushing the meme beyond even its most grotesque boundaries, we learn that five black swans were found floating lifeless on the pond of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, traditionally inhabited by a bevy of black swans. From Danwei: "The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made. How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage."
Ok, maybe there is no deep symbolism mystery to this latest black aflocalypse, which may be explained simply by unprecedented local pollution, unless of course many more "fat tails" continue keeling over in a very literal sense.
However, just when it appeared safe to discard the latest media reports of mass animal aquatic burials, an odd wrinkle appears, one which may tie the proverbial animal apocalypse room together.
Recall that as we have discussed repeatedly, the biggest bogeyman facing China is the importation of blistering hot money sourced by Bernanke and his printing brethren. While China may (or may not) be able to temper real estate inflation which has been the preferred target of inbound capital, the one place the Politburo certainly can not afford a price surge is in the cost of its most popular food product: pork. Should this key diet staple become unaffordable to the hundreds of millions of domestic consumers, the Arab Spring would seem like a balmy walk in the park inside a gated community. Which means that no matter what, the price of pork (and to a smaller extent soy) has to be kept as low as possible, especially with the upcoming delayed aftereffects of last summer's US corn drought which led to a mass liquidation of animals, especially pigs. Recall from last September that "The "mass liquidation" of animals - which Rabobank said will pick up pace in the beginning of 2013 - will contribute to food prices hitting new highs. The cost of pork is expected to rise at the fastest pace - by 31% by the end of June next year." Algos may have forgotten about this very key fact, but China sure hasn't.
So what are the Chinese behind the scenes powers doing about this potentially massive problem? Ironically, they may just be those responsible for the mass pig slayings witnessed in recent weeks. From Wantchinatimes:
The recent incident in which thousands of dead pigs were found floating in Shanghai's main river has further hit pork prices in China, with the sector already experiencing falling demand, according to local media reports.
Weekly data from the country's Ministry of Commerce released on March 20 showed that wholesale prices of pork has fallen for four consecutive weeks as of March 17, with the accumulated decline over the period touching 8%.
Pork prices in the country were undergoing a seasonal decline after Chinese New Year, but the recent scandal has rotted demand, Chinese business news site Caixin said.
Even United States Treasury secretary Jacob Lew ordered vegetarian dumplings instead of dumplings stuffed with pork when he dined out during his recent visit to China.
The Chinese government's guidelines on official conduct, including the restrictions imposed on holding official banquets, is another factor affecting pork demand, driving down prices to levels resembling a crash, Caixin said.
Figures posted by industry information website Soozhu showed that average hog prices dropped to 12.5 yuan (US$2) a kilogram on March 19, and the pace of its decline touched a near-decade high.
The National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planner, said it is closely monitoring pork prices and would intervene if the market downturn persists.
E-commerce giant Alibaba's website covering the agricultural sector said pork has seen three market cycles during the past decade, with each cycle becoming shorter and price fluctuations becoming steeper.
Pig farmers began expanding capacity two years ago when pork prices surged, leading to the current situation of excess supply, local reports said.
Crush prices through revulsion about potentially spoiled meat? Not a bad plan, and one which so far may have worked. However, how long before the mean reversion wave sets in, and the deferred consumption of pork comes back with a vengeance? What happens when the artificial reduction of pig supply leads to a surge in prices once demand goes back to normal as the locals forget all about the recent floating pigs?
How much longer will the Politburo then be able to pretend there is no inflation in the one country where the food component as a percentage of overall CPI is a whopping 30%, compared to under 8% in the US?
And what happens to those key inflationary offsets once the rampant inflation wave strikes back with a vengeance? Recall that is was soaring Chinese inflation in early 2011 that set off the great scramble for gold as the local population was buying the shiny metal hand over fist, in the process pushing the price of gold from $1300 to $1900 in nine months.
The question then is: will the fading of the floating pig scandal from the collective memory be the inflection point when Chinese food inflation finally explodes, and takes the price of gold with it, and concurrently is the gating factor that forces the PBOC to demand at the next G20 meeting that the liquidity spigots in the "developed nations" be promptly shut or else.
It is surprising how much may depend on the fate of a few floating dead pigs: so much so that the concurrent death of black swans makes so much more sense, both literally and figuratively.

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If inventories are getting so bloated that producers are dumping their shit in the river... that means demand "downstream" must be falling dramatically. Greenspan in his book "The age of turbulence" recounted how he predicted the recession of '58 by noticing bloated steel inventories industry-wide, signalling dried up deman by construction. So are inventories of these fuckin animals so high compared to demand that they are being dumped in the river? Is this a hint of a coming downturn. Is it different this time? It is my opinion that NO.
So what do pigs, cars and black swans have in common?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-17/where-channel-stuffed-german-cars-go-die
geez.. just asking - it's not like it's real money or anything.
Brack Sran Arert!
Haha, fuck you, China! The sooner you collapse, the better for the rest of the world.
Seriously dude, you need to crack open a history book and get your brain cells working on more than just kiddie porn.
Think you are eating pork. Guess again. Don't eat yourselves....literally.
So there was an article somewhere about the "New Calamari" which is really a pork sphincter muscle sliced into real thin rings and....
Chinese black swans or burned chickens?
Wait for it pussy.
All enjoyed the favor of resto.bar.
I am unable to detect humans being feed to humans.
chinks and jews destroying to world one baby and jewbuck at a time.
I am still trying to guess who thought there was any price significance to Treasury secretary Lew the jew ordering vegetable dumplings instead of pork.
Pigs, ducks, swans, what's next, people? Oh, wait.
hmm.. that's a tasty looking nutritious bit of green..
soylent.
Would that be New Calamari Tossed Salad?
pods
Suck my dick. Oh, wait, you're not a bitch--you're a faggot; nevermind.
I live in the "other" China, you stupid shithead. The only thing that will inspire me to party harder than the collapse of the PRC will be the collapse of your USuckAss.
Ah, as I guessed. You are definitely college material.
May I suggest University of Pheonix online?
You moron: go ahead and waste your own time pursuing paper degrees. Running my own business requires nothing of the sort.
On a side note, listen to this amazing song and relax. Support Indie Music !!!
http://wallstreetfool.com/2013/03/28/song-of-the-day-junip-line-of-fire/
Was one of the black swans later identified as Nassim Taleb????
The first one to die was named Bradley Manning.
During the USA's 1930s Depression, ag prices fell below the cost of production. Photos of milk cans being dumped in a ditch and hogs being buried in a trench were published, showing the plight of the small farmer. Does the mass dumping of farm animals show a similar market collapse in China or were the animals diseased and unable to be sold, requiring the cheapest disposal possible?
16,000 dead pigs in the middle of the river is a noteworthy event, biological or economic. Neither is good.
I suppose the only sensible reaction to take is to say IDK.
no deflation here, can't have falling asset prices,,,,no good
Ship them to the UK, they are down to dog and chicken blood..............
Dumping 16000 pigs in a river doesn't sound like disposal as much as a message...
To bad it wasn't 16000 banksters. That's the message that needs sending........
It only just occurred to me late as it iz to the hog story.. what are the odds that this hog slaughter is some form of biological warfare designed to ramp food inflation ? and on the outside chance that it is who would be so inclined to attack China this way?
Prolly noone on their continent.
"Kill all the Black Swans and the country is saved!"-Wang Chung Krugman
wait til the chinese pull 16,00 dead bloated bankers from the river......
Now that would be something to see...or St. Paul walking across them to the other side ;-)
we no longer need manufacturing,,,,,,,, do people meet at bars anymore? i constantly have girls sites on each side advertising girls and guys from any country i do and try to click on all the ads to help fund zero hedge.
marquette and arizona are #winning
american eyedol- couple of things you could do about those ads you get.
1.Quit going to porn sites before cumming to ZH.
2.Continue going to porn sites before cumming to ZH but clear your cookies first.
3.Use adblocker
This has been a public service announcement.
frikkin' newbs
4. Take a quick look at the cuties and
5. then click on the icon for the Enjoy Reading add-on.
+1 nmewn
Thats another thing Yen, some have completely lost their sense of humor.
Socio-economists (like Krugman) are the worst...they never had it to begin with ;-)
Speaking of which, has anyone checked the autopsy reports for polonium?
Not in the last 138 days ;-)
The winds?Nice catch. I never thought of that possibility.
How come no post on the Korean situation?
MSM Blackout.
Son there.
we always have mystery missles launch, cyprus is kind of new ground for everyone, along with all kinds of dead animals. Think new
so the author thinks china will FALL if the people starve...?...hasnt he read chinese history....../sarc
china is very sound right now but eventually we are all a bug on a windshield
30 million in the early 1960s and nothing happened. And that was back when the population was under 600M.
Mao took 100,000 people on the Long March, 90% died along the way, and the people were inspired by this.
The real black swan will come out of nowhere....and no one will be prepared for it........not even us
Wrong. You don't know what the black swan is by definition... but you can prepare for it's effects... by prepping.
whats the difference between dead animals in water supply and wheat in the states that makes me deathly ill after i eat it,,,,
I know!
You know you aren't supposed to eat rotting carcasses floating down river!
pods
I'm surprised there has not been a story on Zerohedge about the fields of GMO grass in Texas that mutated from drought and now produce cyanide.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57459357/gm-grass-linked-to-texas-ca...
EDIT: hybrid, not GMO, and old story, its just making the rounds again for some reason, my bad.
i am expecting a full-scale thermonuclear war. there i said it.
According to Snorra edda, there is a place called Urdarbrunnur where three witches called Urdur, Verdandi and Skuld decide the fate of men and gods.
All swans also come from this place, big and small.
http://www.visir.is/risafugl-a-flugi-yfir-reykjanesbae/article/201212051...
Some say that Skuld is also a Valkyrie.
"aflocalypse"
Oh my, Tyler, how droll.
I approve of this pun!
1 black swan policy
We shall see thousands of dead silverbugs in the not so distant future.
I'll give you an up arrow just to see you go away...
i think he means that silver while a great investment and maybe it goes to $100.00 but if interest rates normalize at the same time what would you rather have a $100 silver coin or $100.00 gaining 5.6% in the bank as it should be.
i have no idea where silver goes maybe 50.00 maybe $1000 not much demand if rates ever normalize
greenspan teach us this in is gold standard speech u would have run on banks
I think he means, filling out complicated forms, having your financial movements tracked 24/7 by pencil necked geeks & paying taxes on that 5.6%...of which, the 5.6% has already been devalued by 10% before he puts his signature on a line that subjects him to perjury even though one can't be compelled to testify against himself.
Prolly just me tho.
But they cannot raise rates.
let's see how many ZHers rise to take your bait. MBD may mind-fuck people but at least he is clever about it.
I just stated a fact. With the current weak performance of silver, you won't be surprised to see many silverbugs enjoy a loss of wealth and savings.
...an I'll up arrow you again.
Fucking troll, at least keep with the topic. You should've posted something about how lean hog-bugs are going to lose their shirts.
Those hogs jumped in the river because they were long silver?
Bought all mine under $5 asshole. What weak performance?
Don't feed the troll. He gets paid by the down arrow.
Somebody who tells the truth is a troll??
You used to have decent posts. Now you're just another MillionDollarBaby. What happened?
Not at all. But history would prove your argument otherwise.
Up to the point of PonziCollapse, I'll exchange Jewbux for silver at almost any price. Post Ponzi, 1 oz. of silver will buy 2-3 days of food at a farmers' market. Jewbux will buy nothing.
Yup.
A fair chunk of mine is plain old canadian silver coinage that my dad set aside before they started making slugs and another good chunk is canadian mint and olympic sets that were gifts. So quite a bit of my little stash is from back in the day when a silver dollar and a paper dollar were equals.
(edit: And I have continued the 'tradition' of accumulating silver {and gold}.)
But back to the topic ... what was it again?
Something about how many dead animals can be pulled from a river or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Or something ?)
And then there is the copper penny hoard too.
Going to need a pallet jack for that soon ;)
Loss of wealth? What are you talking about. My ounce of silver today will be the same ounces tomorrow. The only difference is that their cost denominated in joobux will be different (down according to you). I'll probably just buy more...I'm not using the fiat anyway so what's the difference between fiat sitting around vs silver/gold sitting around?
As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage.
Just another case of what happens when everybody owns everything and nobody owns anything. Fuck. This isn't complicated. Its just another predictable result of central planning best personified by this statement: The National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planner, said it is closely monitoring pork prices and would intervene if the market downturn persists.
Can't coordinate pig production but we still beleive government can coordinate efficient resource allocation by fucking with interest rates - the most important price signal of all. Fuck I hate government. Oh. Happy Easter ZH'ers.
Real Easter isn't until May 5th.
Does that mean no tequila?
pods
Jack Jew don't dig on swine-unless it's kosher
Someone was confused about what a "black swan event" actually was.
I'm out. Wars get started over 'Religious Sects' dividing salt. Have fun folks.
They will only fight over the eyes and the tongues.
Taleb hates black swans (the real ones).
After he used the metaphor, people kept sending him pictures of the beasts, stuffed black swans, etc.
Like many from the middle East, he is... opinionated.
They are ugly ducklings.
right-because no one in the rest of the world is ...opinionated. also-he is a ...christian- not a ...muzzy- if that affects your neocon stereotype at all
My, aren't we touchy. His family was Christian (Greek Orthodox). He describes himself more in terms of Baal worship/Canaanite. Likes to think of himself as a very old soul. Here's what I was talking about. Another term might be "eccentric."
When dining in a new restaurant he either
A - orders what the fattest person in the room is eating.
B - chooses something from the menu at random.
Is that not passing strange?
PS. I am many things, but never a neocon. They want a large government. I would prefer almost no government. People get weird ideas from a comment or two, or sometimes alcohol.
Thanks for the background on Talib, and for not being a neocon.
They were probably murdered, black swans have been getting a lot of bad press lately, im not supprised.
They actualy might have been killed by white swans, thats quite a controvertial theory, though not beyond the imagination. A black swan landed in a lake not far from my house, and the white swans treated it like shit, it seems racism is alive and well throughout the animal kingdom.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20721742
I think the real question on everyone's mind is: "But do they bring down property values?"
If Obama had a swan...
Oooooo, nice. +1 for you sir.
The black swans formed two gangs and killed each other.
China, a horrible blend of statism and crony capitalism is proving to be as corrupt as anyone, anywhere in the world. I often wonder if they will ever have clean water again. I think they are poisoning themselves on purpose like our fine folks at Monsanto do to us. Who benefits from poisoning the people? Plenty!
wait til they frack the shit out of the US and see how pleasant our fresh water supplies become
Oh my. Shouldn't you blame your parents for the vaccinations responsible for your horrible Autism?
Ogallala Aquifer is fucked!!!
"At a time when much of the world is looking with a mix of envy and excitement at the recent boom in USA unconventional gas from shale rock, when countries from China to Poland to France to the UK are beginning to launch their own ventures into unconventional shale gas extraction, hoping it is the cure for their energy woes, the US shale boom is revealing itself to have been a gigantic hyped confidence bubble that is already beginning to deflate." ~ William Engdahl
This is like some bizarre omen shit out of old roman times or the fucking hobbit trilogy--dead fucking black swans, are you kidding me? We're all gonna die.
and, since no ('Merikans) died... it's old news now, a yawner, except for geeks like me: the day with the near-miss asteroid & simultaneous (NOT forseen) meteor over Russia. Mere coincidence, I'm sure.....
I wanna hear more about Samwise Gander.....
The U.S. 1/8 black president gets oily and goosed daily while the world floats belly up down the river.
When I go to bed at night I hope to wake up in a better world.
No luck so far.
It seems that every time I wake up I think I must be dreaming when I observe the madness.
Thank ..fill in blank... for ethanol!
So is that old Stephen Foster ditty Way Down Upon the Swiney River or Swanee River?
actually it was pee dee river, but that didn't sound so great.
China is like America in the 50's and 60's. An industrial powerhouse making just about everything- including toxic waste products. Just like America the easiest place to dump stuff is in water. It will take s Zlove Canal and Earth Day in China to turn that around. I am not optimistic we will see that- or that we will see clear skies over any Chinese city. But maybe that is why China is building ghost cities-- when the current ones become too polluted, the population can move to a new empty city.
That is an excellent point. I remember growing up up north we had dead fish swimming around us in a well populated city beach front as kids, we just pushed them aside. I feel sorry for the common people of China, they will learn what we learned the hard way...if they're lucky.
" You don't shit in your own backyard".
dead fish tell no tales.....nor do they swim.
So sorry - plenty of apartments but no water, no electricity, no food, and no jobs. Welcome to your new home.
Heard it was due to a "slack won" event in korea.Oh dear,did I say that?
What I wanna know is how the fuck the r's become l's and the l's become r's?
You know how messed up that is?
Jack Loo ordering vege------there's breaking news.
How did they die?
Abe's alibi is he was having dinner with his pachinko partners the night the swans died.
Ii he Silky vis the job of the guys without signs for tanks the farmer accept the paper for his produce.
Killshot September 2015 get rid of your fiat before then and prepare.
How do you know that's the month and year?
North Korea is behind it.
Five dead black swans. A sure sign of a financial apocolypse!
Their banks are sitting on massive bad debts. They are inching for a fight if all hell breaks lose in the financial sector. They just sent 4 warships to the coast off Brunei and Malaysia. They have territorial disputes with many neighbors around them.
China will have a surprise when it finds how many nations it has antagonised. If they don't drown in their own excrement first or suffocate with their pollution, they can see how far India and Japan and Indonesia and USA and Russia will go to hold their head under water
Here's to reading those entrails.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that these were originally white swans, who sadly took a wrong turn, and found themselves flying through the Shanghai "air"...
The rich chinese are busy remitting to offshore accounts in Singapore.
Reminds me of Cyprus.
16000 dead pigs in a river is a disaster....16000 banksters...mmmmm
A start...
How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one?
___________________________
Man-made disaster? 'Americanism' in China, quick.
No one is better than 'americans' to drown that fish of man made disaster...
As soon as the Chinese move to 'americanism', suddenly, the possibility of man made disasters will drop to zero, 'americans' can not cause that stuff, they are just ants in the larger world.
Another good reason to adopt 'americanism', and move forward humanity.
Normal pig diseases. Only reason they ended up in the river was because the underground trade in dead diseased pigs was clamped down on hard. 3 people were executed not too long ago and as such, no one was willing to take the risk to buy them. So, into the river they went. Called it from the very beginning, it was a good thing that they ended up in the river and not on the market.
Mix them with a bit of horse and Western food processors would have branded them and pushed them down the retail chain
Horse is old news, now the west is getting into dog-meat curries and the like. How long before they are buying up gutter oil? A year give or take?
"Normal pig diseases." Like H1N1?
I haven't been following this too closely, because I figured that if these pigs were real bad news, one of my MSM-zombie friends would have been telling me how all of FB was ablaze with "THE NEWS."
Now ducks and black swans? H5N1?
How about this for a black swan: A nice little transmutagenic coinfection. Could just be a coincidence though.
Pigs die all the time. All 16,000 of the pigs were basically tracked back to one guy who was probably a middle-man. Go buy dead pigs from farmers, then sell them on to buyers. No one was willing to buy, so they got dumped. A handful of pigs dying isn't anything out of the ordinary, and on the numbers that China does on pork, 16,000 is hardly even a handful.
Today's Special:
Happy Family Soup
Pork Fish Swan.
The swans knew something about the pigs and they were ready to go public.
The chicons know how to handle unrest. Never forget under Mao they murdered 65 to 85 milliion Chinese in the name of their great leap forward.
OT/
Here is a theme that needs to be further addressed here on ZH in the light of these articles :
Death Of Peak Oil - Business Insider
More Scientific Evidence Linking Fracking and Earthquakes « naked capitalism
Here we are in the heart of the real economy and its vital energy thread!
Cesspool.
The first thing that comes to mind:
HAARP