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A Built-In Bias For More Financial Manias, Panics And Crashes

A weekend topic starting with the Associated Press. “Buy a home right now. Or if you own one already, refinance it. And if you have spare cash, buy some stocks. And if there’s a bubble in prices, don’t worry. It’ll get fixed later. Simply put, that’s the new message from the powerful Federal Reserve. The central bank just revised the goals of its monetary policy. So save the economy by borrowing at low-low-low rates and put your cash to work! Even if you have to pay record high prices for real estate or shares on Wall Street.”

“Now, rock-bottom interest rates seemingly forever may confuse some of you. I have answers to a few questions you might have. Q. Who made the Fed king? A. That ‘Hamilton’ musical? It was THAT guy.”

“You see, the Fed has a tough job as the arbiter of interest rates, setting the proper ‘lubricant’ for the economy. It’s a juggle of job creation vs. inflation. Q. What changed? A. The Fed claims it cannot find evidence that the cost of living is getting out of hand, based on its review of inflation rates. ‘A robust job market can be sustained without causing an outbreak of inflation,’ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in announcing the new policy Thursday.”

“I applaud the Fed for stepping into the leadership vacuum. But this extended ‘free money’ policy makes little sense. In fact, the Fed fears overall pricing power may be on a long-term decline and warns the economic illness called ‘deflation’ can be hard to cure. Obviously, the board members haven’t shopped much lately, especially for a home.”

“Yes, soaring real estate or surging stock prices might juice the economy. Of course, then … the Fed would see inflation! Q. You mean, the Fed creates a bubble … only to burst it? A. Let me have professor Jim Doti of Chapman University answer that. ‘The unprecedented monetary stimulus we’ve already had will in the long run — maybe one to two years — lead to higher interest — including mortgage — rates. That, in turn, will likely burst the bubble.'”

“Q. C’mon, Jon. The Fed’s smart people! A. In June 2005, as a housing bubble brewed, then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said this to Congress: ‘There can be little doubt that exceptionally low-interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes, and hence on home mortgages, have been a major factor in the recent surge of homebuilding and home turnover, and especially in the steep climb in home prices. Although a ‘bubble’ in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.’ History can repeat itself.”

From Market Place. “The trucking industry can shed light on what consumers will be demanding in the future. And right now, trucking companies are providing an early warning signal about sectors of the economy that are weakening. There’s a grocery store and wholesaler called Sahadi’s in Brooklyn that imports and sells products from the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Pat Whelan runs logistics for Sahadi’s. Over the last couple months, he said he’s been getting a lot of unsolicited emails from trucking companies.”

“‘Just randomly, constantly, asking for cargo,’ Whelan said. ‘Do you have anything, do you have anything, do you have anything?’ One, I think, was like two or three times a day.’ Whelan said he’s never even heard of these trucking companies. Watching his inbox fill up with these emails, he said, is troubling. ‘When you see them constantly looking for cargo, that means they’re not getting their normal cargo,’ Whelan said. ‘So, what did they lose? What’s not shipping?'”

“One answer? Food supplies to restaurants. Mike Kucharski is the vice president of JKC Trucking, which operates over 200 refrigerated trucks from the Midwest to the West Coast. He said shipping foods to restaurants, hotels, and bars used to make up nearly half of his business. ‘We’re about 35% to 45% down,’ Kucharski said. ‘What these truckers are doing is they’re searching to haul anything.'”

“William Villalon, CEO of APL Logistics, an international supply chain company, said he sees signs that other sectors of the economy are recovering, too. For instance, auto parts are moving, a sign that people will be buying more vehicles. ‘You’re seeing a spike in forest products, because housing starts are up,’ Villalon said. ‘Because demand is up.’ But Villalon said the real question is whether that increase in demand is sustainable.”

From Outdoor Online. “Mike Bennett, the city manager of Fruita, Colorado, was camped out at 18 Road, a popular mountain-bike trailhead, when I called him on a Tuesday morning last spring. Over the howl of desert wind, he told me that the place was pretty much empty. ‘I’m staring around in the dispersed area, there’s no one here,’” he said.”

“In 2020, as COVID-19 cases climbed across the country, Fruita and other outdoor hot spots across the West began telling people not to come, shutting off the valve to tourism. While some businesses like bike shops stayed busy with locals, lodging revenue dropped by more than half, hitting the city’s bottom line. Fruita has grown to count on a booming outdoor recreation economy after shifting away from the bust of oil and gas (when oil- and gas-industry prices dove in 2014, the result of a supply glut and reduced demand, sales-tax revenue in Fruita dropped 90 percent)—and it isn’t alone in its dependence on tourism.”

“And now, because they’re so often dependent on a single-source seasonal economy, recreation towns across the country are suffering. Lamoille County, Vermont, home to ski areas Stratton and Stowe, saw unemployment rise to 25.4 percent in April after the ski season abruptly shut down the month before.”

“That same month, in Cheboygan County, Michigan, where boating and fishing drive business, unemployment was a dismal 41.2 percent, the highest in the country. Simultaneously, Grand County, Utah, home to Moab, a destination often held up as the model for a thriving recreation economy, was at 26.9 percent unemployment.”

“The narrative about the stability of tourism is proving to be false. ‘I think the analogue to the extractive economy is dead-on,’ says Megan Lawson, an economist who leads outdoor recreation, economic development, and demographics for Headwaters Economics. ‘I don’t want to be doomsday, but it is bleak right now, so we have to think about outdoor recreation as another economic specialization that’s vulnerable to boom-and-bust and think about long-term diversification.'”

“‘Tourism is boom-and-bust, and this is the first time it has been bust in those communities for a long time,’ says Jordan Smith, director of the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism at Utah State University. ‘So many wanted to move into recreation as fast as possible, they didn’t put as much thought into what that might mean long-term or the resilience of their economy when something like that happens.'”

From Stuff New Zealand. “Yet again, the housing market has outperformed all the understandably doomy and gloomy predictions of double-digit falls in the face of the worst economic crisis the world has seen since World War II. It seemed a sensible thing to say, given New Zealand’s housing market is the best performing in the western world in the last 30 years, relative to incomes, rents and after the effects of inflation are stripped out. Prices have quadrupled in real terms since 1980, and have tripled relative to incomes in the biggest cities.”

“Usually, when an asset market is ‘irrationally exuberant,’ as the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan termed it, there is some shift in supply or demand, or some external shock, that punctures the collective delusion and the market returns to equilibrium. Put simply, it’s too big to fail and everyone knows it, and can bet on this market being the first to get bailed out by the Government specifically, and voters more generally. Just as it did during the GFC, the Reserve Bank extended emergency credit lines to banks and slashed interest rates to support both the financial system and the economy.”

“The Government and the banks then agreed to a six-month residential mortgage deferral scheme in late March, which nearly 60,000 borrowers used to delay payments on $20.2 billion worth of mortgages. The Reserve Bank also immediately removed restrictions on high loan-to-value ratio lending and postponed plans to force banks to hold more capital. Then it pledged not to introduce negative interest rates before March 2021 because it would have been too painful for the banks.”

“This month it went further and said it was planning to print money and lend it to banks at negative interest rates, which would allow fixed mortgage rates to fall as low as 1.5 per cent early next year. The Reserve Bank’s own studies show that could pump another 20-30 per cent into house prices.”

From Post Media in Canada. “The chief executive officer of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has taken aim at a Vancouver realtor through Twitter, accusing him of offering bad advice and saying there should be a law against them. Realtor Owen Bigland posted about the return on deposit when you buy a house and it goes up in value, ending ‘Leverage is how true wealth is built. You need to get your money working.'”

“A few hours later, CMHC chief executive Evan Siddall responded, asking, ‘Sigh …. Because in your made-up world, house prices only go up. This kind of investment advice is like selling penny stocks because they’re cheap. You DO realize leverage works just as powerfully when prices go down … or were you not alive in 2008-2009?'”

“Siddall continued tweeting on Bigland’s comments: ‘A lesson in leverage for @owenbigland and the Trees Grow to the Sky crowd: including transaction costs and fees you pay him for bad advice, a (first-time homebuyer) with 5% down is underwater from day one. 85:1 leverage (that’s what’s available) results in asymmetric losses when prices fall,’ he wrote. ‘More self-serving advice from @owenbigland: he says a rented home isn’t a roof over your head … AND he seems prepared to guarantee that if you buy a house you’ll have a job for life … unemployment (e.g., as a result of a pandemic) will never force you to sell your house!!'”

“‘Including transaction costs and fees you pay him for bad advice, a #FTHB with 5% down is underwater from day one. 85:1 leverage (that’s what’s available) results in asymmetric losses when prices fall.— Evan Siddall ‘There should be laws against people like @owenbigland giving this kind of irresponsible financial advice.”

The Canadian Press. “New Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem took to the international stage Thursday to call for central banks to better engage average citizens, saying that the pandemic has heightened the importance of communicating directly with an often skeptical and misinformed public. Speaking at the Jackson Hole Symposium, Mr. Macklem said that central banks need to shift their communications focus from ‘transparency with markets’ to ‘engagement with the public.'”

“‘This heightened interest is an opportunity, and it is critical that we do not squander it,’ Mr. Macklem said. ‘Let’s make this another legacy [of the crisis] – a deeper relationship between the central bank and its citizens.'”

The Wall Street Journal. “Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve on Thursday released a long-awaited review of its policy framework, and it’s a mixed bag. On the upside, the central bank will no longer throttle the economy whenever ‘too many’ Americans have jobs. On the downside, the Fed may never raise interest rates again. The Fed was overdue to rethink how it pursues its dual mandate of full employment and price stability. Most obviously, the two goals no longer appear to conflict in the way monetary economists once assumed.”

“Having effectively admitted it no longer fully understands the relationship between economic growth, employment and inflation, the Fed still promises to decide in real time when its healthy above-target inflation has become dangerous. If the central bank gets this wrong, it could be forced to raise rates much higher, much faster than it would want.”

“The more glaring problem is the long list of questions the Fed didn’t review. The most important is Mr. Powell’s observation, offered without elaboration Thursday, that business cycles now end in destructive financial crises. The Fed thinks this is a regulatory problem to be solved with stricter capital rules and stress tests.”

“It might instead ask whether its preference over two decades for ‘looking through’ rising asset prices such as oil, gold and housing to keep rates low is contributing to financial instability instead of economic growth. Without exploring this question, the Fed has adopted a strategy with a built-in bias for low rates. The result is almost certain to be more financial manias, panics and crashes.”

“There are other unanswered questions. For instance, the Fed now assumes that the economy’s natural rate of growth, and thus its natural interest rate (‘r-star’ in the lingo) are in a natural decline for demographic or other reasons. Mr. Powell cites this as a justification for the Fed’s new symmetrical inflation target.”

“Well, what if there’s nothing natural about falling growth because the Fed’s policies are causing it? Research suggests sustained low rates can dent an economy’s growth potential by steering investment to unproductive uses, sustaining zombie companies, rewarding corporate financial engineering instead of capital expenditure, and contributing to asset booms and busts. It’s a shame the Fed has decided to double down on its low-rate, quantitative-easing bets before such a self-examination.”

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This Post Has 200 Comments

  1. ‘Let’s make this another legacy [of the crisis] – a deeper relationship between the central bank and its citizens’

    1. ‘shift their communications focus from ‘transparency with markets’ to ‘engagement with the public’

      Hey Tiff, here’s some engagement from a citizen (not “yours” BTW).

      A big F^^^ YOU!

    2. a deeper relationship between the central bank and its citizens

      I’m not “your citizen.” You don’t own me, b!tch.

    3. a deeper relationship between the central bank and its citizens’

      They seem to slip up and drop the mask more and more lately. Soon we will be the central banks’ “subjects”

  2. ‘including transaction costs and fees you pay him for bad advice, a (first-time homebuyer) with 5% down is underwater from day one. 85:1 leverage (that’s what’s available) results in asymmetric losses when prices fall’

    This article is worth reading in full.

    ’85:1 leverage (that’s what’s available)’

    Sound lending!

    1. I admit I was surprised to see an unsolicited Twitter war between a Canadian government official and a private citizen. US government officials almost always engage the public through formal channels. That’s part of why Trump’s tweeting was so unsettling.

      Bonus points that the gov official pnwed a Realtor®.

      1. The REIC in Canada is fighting back very hard. Royal LePage (the largest realtor chain) CEO called the CMHC Head all sorts of disparaging names, the banking (although not the CEOs) piled on.

        Very interesting – almost like they were 14 year olds coordinating their mean girl attacks.

        Go Evan – it is hard to tell the truth

      2. I would guess he knows there’s a major crisis with bank failures coming soon, and he’s trying to cover his backside for PR.

  3. “You see, the Fed has a tough job as the arbiter of interest rates, setting the proper ‘lubricant’ for the economy. It’s a juggle of job creation vs. inflation.”

    By that measure, the Fed has succeeded. Low inflation (less than 2.0%, often near zero) and low unemployment prior to the pandemic.

    So Biden says that Trump benefitted from the continuation of the great Obama economy. And Trump, who correctly noted that things were NOT great four years ago now says that they ARE great, but only because he is great.

    But there is a third thing. The Fed has decided the third thing is to preserve the financial system, unlike in the 1930s, and that means preventing asset prices from falling. It has also decided the third thing is NOT preventing the wages, salaries and other compensation of virtually all Americans from falling, since that helps to keep inflation and employment low.

    The problem is something no one has talked about. Who is business, all over the world, going to sell to, and with what money? Borrowed money? Printed money? What happens when people get old without savings, and the federal government is paying so much for debt it can’t fund Social Security and Medicare anymore?

    Generation Greed hopes it will be gone by then, and doesn’t care.

    1. “By that measure, the Fed has succeeded. Low inflation (less than 2.0%, often near zero) and low unemployment prior to the pandemic.”

      – “Low inflation” as measured by government metrics. These under report true inflation. The definition of inflation is an increase in the money supply. There’s plenty of inflation there. The CPI is grossly manipulated. Example: “Owners equivalent rent.” To see true inflation, just look at things you need: healthcare, housing, higher ed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this. The trend accelerated in August 15, 1971 when the U.S. left the gold standard. Now no restraints on borrowing and spending . Ctrl p, brrrr!, etc.

      “But there is a third thing. The Fed has decided the third thing is to preserve the financial system, unlike in the 1930s, and that means preventing asset prices from falling.”

      – The key principle is that Central Banks are pro capital (banks and corporations). Pro capital means con labor (workers and wages). The Fed is the head of the banking cartel; a private, unelected, and unaccountable entity. Congress looks the other way, since they’re all about self-enrichment and part of the problem. The incestuous relationship between the Fed, Government/Treasury and industry is allowing concentration of wealth in these sectors. Globalism is its name. Since it’s a zero-sum game, that wealth is being extracted (strip-mined) from citizens, workers.

      – Globalism already peaked before the CCP virus pandemic. The extremely lopsided system favoring globalists predictably resulted in a huge backlash in nationalism and populism. The extremes are going to have to be unwound. Don’t expect this to happen overnight. An excellent start would be to end Central Banks and return to sound money, but not enough yet aware of the real problem.

      “Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency…and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It’s not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.” … Alan Greenspan, ex-US Federal Reserve Chairman, August 23, 2011

      “Fiat money eventually always goes back to its intrinsic value – zero” – Voltaire

      “The tendency of an inconvertible paper money is to create fictitious wealth, bubbles, which by their bursting, produce inconvenience.” – Lord Liverpool

      “Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through its excessive quantity.” – Nicolaus Copernicus

      “We’re essentially continuing a system where profits are privatized and…losses socialized,” – Nouriel Roubini

      “Betting against gold is the same as betting on governments. He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history.” – Charles De Gaulle, Leader of the French resistance during WWII and 18th President of France

      “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” – Mark Twain

      1. Pension funds are generally run by clueless gamblers, but as public awareness grows of the Fed’s debasement of the currency, at least one pension fund is diversifying into gold. I only hope they are buying and holding physical precious metals as opposed to the fake paper gold “held” by some of the supposed precious metals EFTs. When the Fed’s Everything Bubble implodes, many other pensioners are going to wish their funds had not gone all-in on the Fed’s asset bubbles and Ponzi markets.

        From Bloomberg:

        Ohio Pension Fund Adds Gold Allocation to Hedge Risk, Inflation

        Aug. 27, 2020, 2:09 PM

        The $16 billion Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund approved a 5% allocation to gold to help diversify its portfolio and hedge against the risk of inflation.

        The change was approved as the first step in an ongoing asset review that was presented to the board on Aug. 26, the fund said in a statement.

      2. The trend accelerated in August 15, 1971 when the U.S. left the gold standard. Now no restraints on borrowing and spending

        Consider that cause and effect may be reversed here. By the time the US went off the gold “standard” there was already too much fiat to sustain convertibility. Said convertibility only applied to other countries by that time anyway. An American couldn’t walk into a bank and ask for physical.

    2. Unfortunately, despite the inference of the adage about history not repeating itself implies, it actually is more of a cycle. Cycles repeat. Humans keep making the same mistakes. The details may change though and definitely the increased numbers of people make for greater impact of decisions made. Which groups benefit by the new Fed focus and who dies? The trouble with how governments of most type work, definitely including the U.S. is short term gain, especially in front of an election, is what the game is about. The Fed isn’t immune and certainly most every corner of government previously somewhat protected from politics is in the mud pit. Another opportunity to realign wealth. It isn’t looking good for the 99%. The distinction of having a thriving middle class as a strength is increasingly ignored. Basic citizens have a liquid asset called a Vote between campaign time and voting day. In between we get a whole lot of impacts courtesy of the wealth and influence aggregates (PACS, 1% donators, industries who “can’t fail” etc). Trump has not, is not and won’t be a leader looking to fix what is wrong. I get the wish it were so. Since in reality we only get two Party choices in this Country it definitely sets things up for fantastic claims for and against either side. The Dems are not pure Socialists any more than the Republicans are-your choice of label. Labels and extreme rantings against “the others” are a waste of thinking. One day very soon we’re going to need our best thinking caps on to find real answers for the huge problems we keep building up (a bubble).

  4. A member of a pro-Trump “Patriot Prayer” caravan that rolled into Portland was shot dead by a BLM-Antifa gunman last night. It’s one thing to rally to the defense of people in towns and cities threatened by BLM-Antifa rioters and looters, but it’s another to come in from out of town looking for a confrontation. The people of Portland installed far-left “leadership” that has allowed BLM-Antifa mobs to run wild, so let that city deal with them on its own.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/portland-shooting-leaves-1-dead-as-pro-trump-group-clashes-with-blm

    1. “…but it’s another to come in from out of town looking for a confrontation.”

      Were they protesting peacefully?

  5. “Yes, soaring real estate or surging stock prices might juice the economy. Of course, then … the Fed would see inflation!

    We have a homelessness epidemic, and growing social unrest due in large part to young males having zero prospect of ever being able to own their own home or provide for a family. Then these gold collar criminals at the Fed double down on monetary policies that have benefited only the wealthiest 1 percent. I believe this is by design, as the Fed’s globalist oligarch accomplices have an agenda of radicalizing disaffected young people and deploying them as useful idiots to spread the instability they are fomenting.

  6. Realtor Owen Bigland posted about the return on deposit when you buy a house and it goes up in value, ending ‘Leverage is how true wealth is built. You need to get your money working.’”

    Cigarettes have warning labels saying they cause cancer. Why don’t realtors carry “LIAR” warning labels?

    1. “Realtor Owen Bigland posted about the return on deposit when you buy a house and it goes up in value, ending ‘Leverage is how true wealth is built. You need to get your money working.’”

      – Realtors need to be careful with financial advice. They’re salespersons only; not investment advisors. There’s no fiduciary responsibility. Anything other than house/shack buy/sell info. is a huge conflict of interest. This is the norm, but open to litigation by the perspective buyer/seller for any losses.

      – Caveat emptor. A house is an illiquid, depreciating asset with high carrying costs. Any other perspective may have an ax to grind.

  7. August 21, 2020

    ‘A group of former Federal Reserve staffers, including economists, lawyers and bank presidents, sent a letter to U.S. senators Thursday asking them to reject the nomination of Judy Shelton, one of President Donald Trump’s picks for the Federal Reserve Board.’

    ‘The Fed alumni said Shelton, who has advocated for a return to the gold standard and questioned the need for the central bank, has “a decades-long record of writings and statements that call into question her fitness for a spot on the Fed’s Board of Governors.” The letter, which is still open for signatures, was signed by 44 former Fed staffers as of Friday morning. The list included former vice chairman Alan Blinder and at least three previous Fed bank presidents, including Richard Fisher, former president of the Dallas Fed.’

    “The Fed has serious work ahead of it,” the former Fed staffers wrote. “While we applaud the Board having a diversity of viewpoints represented at its table, Ms. Shelton’s views are so extreme and ill-considered as to be an unnecessary distraction from the tasks at hand.”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-former-fed-staffers-urge-rejection-of-trump-nominee-shelton-over/

    What we have here is a dishonest system. There are thousands of empty headed people working for the federal reserve, and they can’t stand to sit in a room with someone who disagrees with them?

    ‘advocated for a return to the gold standard and questioned the need for the central bank’

    1. What we have here is a dishonest system.

      What we have is a criminal private banking cartel. I can fully understand why this cabal of racketeers would recoil at the prospect of an honest banker and potential whistle blower joining their fraud syndicate.

    2. What we have here is a dishonest system. There are thousands of empty headed people working for the federal reserve, and they can’t stand to sit in a room with someone who disagrees with them?

      Not only that, they won’t even tolerate honest questions from the media. Danielle DiMartino-Booth who used to work for the FED was asked why the FED NEVER faces any scrutiny or tough questions from the media. She said it’s not tolerated, and the media knows that. These people are above reproach because they’ve created a system where they are completely unaccountable and operate with impunity.

      1. I was going to say that there was also somebody who was fired for doing just that. Imagine that – getting fired for doing the job you were trained to do. The entire Jackson Hole/Davos sh!t show should be eradicated. These cucks need to be broadcasting from Motel 6 where they can see the devastation all around that they have caused and be around the people they have ruined. Although Motel 6 these days is priced somewhere near the good hotels of yesteryear.

      2. These people are above reproach because they’ve created a system where they are completely unaccountable and operate with impunity.

        Thomas Jefferson warned us about this. Of course now he’s being cancelled.

        We owe every soldier who served to defend this country, especially those who gave their lives, an apology.

    3. ‘A group of former Federal Reserve staffers, including economists, lawyers and bank presidents, sent a letter to U.S. senators Thursday asking them to reject the nomination of Judy Shelton, one of President Donald Trump’s picks for the Federal Reserve Board.’

      https://www.ft.com/content/46c4b186-8308-11e9-b592-5fe435b57a3b
      Federal Reserve
      Fed candidate slams bank’s ‘Soviet’ power over markets
      Trump pick Judy Shelton questions if Fed should set interest rates

      “How can a dozen, slightly less than a dozen, people meeting eight times a year, decide what the cost of capital should be versus some kind of organically, market supply determined rate? The Fed is not omniscient. They don’t know what the right rate should be. How could anyone?” Ms Shelton said.

      “If the success of capitalism depends on someone being smart enough to know what the rate should be on everything . . . we’re doomed. We might as well resurrect Gosplan,” she said, referring to the state committee that ran the Soviet Union’s planned economy.”

      “She also said the Fed had become so influential that it unnaturally drove investment decisions and affected financial markets. “It’s the distorting aspect of the Fed that is the worst aspect — it’s a wag-the-dog situation. People are fixated on the Fed and are making money by arbitraging, trillions of a second after the latest FOMC announcement,” she added.”

      https://gnseconomics.com/2020/08/28/the-fed-and-the-looming-capital-market-meltdown/
      The Fed and the looming capital market meltdown
      2020-08-28
      by Tuomas Malinen

      “We are unfortunately now in a situation where we cannot speak of “markets” anymore. The Fed has nurtured a dangerous, centrally controlled financial system, á la the Soviet Union. Like its ‘role model’, monolithic systems always fail, as the complexity of financial interactions and the economy will eventually overwhelm the central planners.”

      “When the repurchase agreements (or “repo”) market blew up on the 16th of September, 2019, it sent a strong message. Leverage and risk-taking, supported by decades of recurrent—or nearly permanent—easy monetary policy and meddling of the Fed, had reached a tipping point. On the morning of the 16th, the big ‘Primary Dealer’ banks simply refused to provide overnight loans in the repo-market, and rates shot up.”

      “These measures stemmed the fall—but at an extreme price. In the end, the Fed ended-up backstopping U.S. Treasury markets, corporate commercial-paper and municipal bond markets and short-term money-markets. It effectively became the financial markets of the US.”

      “Those who had feared that the creation of the Fed would eventually lead to the “socialization” of the economy were proven correct.”

      “While the Fed can, in theory, buy practically every distressed financial asset and become the new Gosbank while simultaneously subjecting itself and the hapless U.S. taxpayer to gargantuan losses, it will be unable stop the banking crisis.”

      – I’m seeing more articles like these. People are (slowly) waking up to the reality that the real destructive force in the U.S. and global economies is the Central Banks, aided and abetted by Washington and industry. More populism, please!

      “When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

      “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control of governments by controlling money and its issuance.” – James Madison

      “I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. … You are a den of vipers and thieves.” – Andrew Jackson, 1834, on closing the Second Bank of the United States; (unabridged form, extended citation)

    4. The more I read about the wall of opposition to Shelton’s nomination, the more I am convinced that the Federal Reserve Board needs the diversity of perspective she would bring.

      If her views are as outlandish as claimed, won’t the other FRB members be able to contain them in open debate?

  8. “‘This heightened interest is an opportunity, and it is critical that we do not squander it,’ Mr. Macklem said. ‘Let’s make this another legacy [of the crisis] – a deeper relationship between the central bank and its citizens.’”

    “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” — Henry Ford

  9. well, to put into perspective, it’s like an entire hospital focusing their efforts on providing care for terminally ill people while leaving all the young people, that have a future, in the street to die because there is no one to take care of them.
    Based on whatever I can remember about economics, the investors are those who save from what they earn, and then invest that into something productive, new tool, new technologies, better software, etc.
    In Powells economy, investors are those who borrow money at zero interest and then speculate inflating assets beyond reason.
    I’m sure there are smarter people on this blog that can explain better what I mean, but and economy cannot be based on speculation and inflating assets. Those are just toxic side effects of an unregulated economy. It seems to me that everyone focuses on side effects these day and not or the real economy.

    1. Around ten years ago somebody pointed out fed guys used to talk about moral hazard a lot and they completely stopped, as if it no longer exists. Well it does exist:

      ‘The housing market has outperformed all the understandably doomy and gloomy predictions of double-digit falls in the face of the worst economic crisis the world has seen since World War II. It seemed a sensible thing to say, given New Zealand’s housing market is the best performing in the western world in the last 30 years, relative to incomes, rents and after the effects of inflation are stripped out. Prices have quadrupled in real terms since 1980, and have tripled relative to incomes in the biggest cities’

      ‘Put simply, it’s too big to fail and everyone knows it, and can bet on this market being the first to get bailed out by the Government specifically, and voters more generally. Just as it did during the GFC, the Reserve Bank extended emergency credit lines to banks and slashed interest rates to support both the financial system and the economy’

      ‘…Then it pledged not to introduce negative interest rates before March 2021 because it would have been too painful for the banks’

      So where’s the SJW hate on banks when it’s lining your pocket?

      ‘The Reserve Bank’s own studies show that could pump another 20-30 per cent into house prices’

      It’s all there for anyone to see. If idiots like this in New Zealand think the shack market can’t fall, where does that idea come from? Pretty obvious IMO.

      1. Mr. Powell appears to be confused of why with all the money printing there is no inflation. You really don’t need to be that smart to figure it out. It’s because all that money goes into the pocket of very few, probably 10% of the 1%s. They take that money and export it into offshore accounts, buy foreign assets in fiscal paradises, buy assets here, and speculate on Wall Street. Very few use it anymore to invest in the real economy, and no money ever makes it to the 99%.
        If you need to know what the real inflation is, you can’t just count prices of things made in China and Vietnam. You need to look at the real things. Things that people need for real: Hosing, gas, education, health care. Does anyone believe that cost for those things did not rise at 10% Y over the last 10 years?
        Gas is at 3.20 where I live, and the demand is close to 50% compared to a year ago, and crude at 40$. What happens when demand goes back to 80%? 90$ crude and 6$ at the pump?

        1. “Mr. Powell appears to be confused of why with all the money printing there is no inflation. You really don’t need to be that smart to figure it out.”

          Careful…. You’ll draw out the Fed Apologists and moonbats with that comment.

        2. Your gasoline example is an easy one…refineries match production with demand to maintain pricing, that’s all. It took some time to reduce production and draw down the oversupply, thus the drop of prices early on in the Big Shutdown. Now that a new balance has been struck the prices have been rising to get production back into the “normal” profit range.

        3. “Gas is at 3.20 where I live, and the demand is close to 50% ”

          How much of that price is tax ? In CA its probably about 1 dollar per gallon.

          1. How much of that price is tax ? In CA its probably about 1 dollar per gallon.

            Imagine how much your power bill would go up if we got away from IC engines, everybody was driving EVs, and the local tax authorities lost all that gas tax revenue. Not to mention the fact that the grid is already overburdened.

          2. Oh, but you can charge your vehicle during off-peak hours! At off-peak rates! We’re all going to save thousands and save the planet too!

            🙄

  11. ‘The biggest disappointment for the Prime Minister, and many Japan observers, is that the third-arrow reforms to reshape an economy hobbled by low productivity, a rapidly aging population and a rigid labour market, have proved elusive.’

    “Abenomics has singularly failed to deliver Japan the domestic conditions that would spark higher growth beyond more reliance on external demand,” said Brian Kelly, managing partner at Asian Century Quest.’

    ‘Japan’s potential growth rate, which used to exceed 4 per cent in the 1980s, slid to near-zero last year from around 1 per cent before Abenomics began, according to BOJ estimates.

    “Structural reform, or the third arrow, has been the declaring failure of Abenomics,” said Samuel Tombs, chief U.K. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.’

    ‘COVID-19 also dashed a grand experiment of Abenomics that aimed to turn around Japan’s “deflationary mindset,” in which companies and households hold off on spending on expectations that low growth and wages will persist.’

    ‘The economy stumbled to a record contraction in the second quarter that shrank nominal gross domestic product (GDP) to 507 trillion yen ($6.3-trillion), around levels marked in 2013 and far distant from Abe’s 600-trillion-yen target.’

    “Japan’s economy may have performed better after Abenomics, but not enough to change public sentiment dramatically,” said Yoshiki Shinke, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. “With the pandemic, we’ll likely see growth fall further. With many legacies of Abenomics wiped out, we know now there was no magic wand to fix Japan’s chronic woes,” he said.’

    ‘Moreover, with the BOJ having exhausted its tool kit to achieve its elusive 2 per cent inflation target, policy makers face the challenge of seeking to revive the economy with a dearth of ammunition. Japan’s huge debt also limits room for big fiscal spending, which may keep any economic recovery weak, analysts say.’

    “Japan failed to normalize monetary and fiscal policies when the economy was in better shape,” said former BOJ board member Takahide Kiuchi. “Now, it’s paying the price.”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-abenomics-fails-to-deliver-as-japan-braces-for-shinzo-abes/

    ‘we know now there was no magic wand to fix Japan’s chronic woes’

    Have any of you ever seen a magic wand except for movies?

    1. The people in rural Japan i.e. anywhere except Tokyo or major cities do not like Abe’s policies. No benefit for them. The main group that benefited from Abenomics is the real estate / construction industry. From my observation, all policies by Japan after the bursting of 1980’s bubble were to avoid proper valuations for those industries that had speculated in real estate including banks, major manufacturers (with close stakes in banks and insurance companies). The losses were never realized. The gains in stock market never happened to offset the real losses on their books. It seems all the policies for over 30 years were a slow drain on real wages, which stagnated or went down compared to bubble years. There is stealth inflation in Japan on food items and household goods (appliances etc.) that are more expensive compared to America.
      This is why I think Fed policies are headed that way. It is easy for the Fed to make that decision since there is a precedent – Japan. And more importantly, no one that made the decisions in Japan were held accountable either at their central bank or in the political field. Bernanke decided to save himself and the agency rather than endure short term pain and the criticism that comes during a recession. IMO, academicians should be making policy decisions.

    2. ‘Have any of you ever seen a magic wand except for movies?”

      It seems as though Unlimited Quantitative Easing and Modern Monetary Theory have been sold to the public as the monetary policy equivalents of magic wands.

      Nobody seems willing to acknowledge that both amount to redistributing the slices of a shrinking pie.

  13. WHAT IS THE FED?

    The Federal Reserve, “the Fed”, is the central bank of the United States of America that was created in 1913 by Congress. It is a banking cartel that has a government-granted monopoly on the creation of money and credit. The Fed literally loans “money” (Federal Reserve Notes) into existence. Federal Reserve Notes are paper promises backed by nothing of intrinsic value and they are only functioning as money because the government forces them on the public through legal tender laws. Federal Reserve Notes are referred to as dollars but are not. The definition of a dollar is a weight of silver (371 grains). To put it simply, the Fed is a group of banks running a national criminal counterfeiting racket with the protection of the government.

    http://ENDTHEFED.ORG

  14. ‘Do you have anything, do you have anything, do you have anything?’ One, I think, was like two or three times a day.’ Whelan said he’s never even heard of these trucking companies. Watching his inbox fill up with these emails, he said, is troubling. ‘When you see them constantly looking for cargo, that means they’re not getting their normal cargo,’ Whelan said. ‘So, what did they lose? What’s not shipping?’

    ‘I’m staring around in the dispersed area, there’s no one here’

    ‘And now, because they’re so often dependent on a single-source seasonal economy, recreation towns across the country are suffering. Lamoille County, Vermont, home to ski areas Stratton and Stowe, saw unemployment rise to 25.4 percent in April after the ski season abruptly shut down the month before’

    ‘That same month, in Cheboygan County, Michigan, where boating and fishing drive business, unemployment was a dismal 41.2 percent, the highest in the country. Simultaneously, Grand County, Utah, home to Moab, a destination often held up as the model for a thriving recreation economy, was at 26.9 percent unemployment’

    ‘The narrative about the stability of tourism is proving to be false. ‘I think the analogue to the extractive economy is dead-on,’ says Megan Lawson, an economist who leads outdoor recreation, economic development, and demographics for Headwaters Economics. ‘I don’t want to be doomsday, but it is bleak right now, so we have to think about outdoor recreation as another economic specialization that’s vulnerable to boom-and-bust and think about long-term diversification’

    It’s a little late to be talking about diversification. Look at these unemployment numbers. If we could just buy more shacks that would solve what exactly? Plus these tourism jobs pay crap, and even that’s gone.

    I said last spring this shutdown stuff was playing with fire. Well they done F-ed it all up alright.

    1. I said last spring this shutdown stuff was playing with fire. Well they done F-ed it all up alright.

      Lockdowns, Coronavirus, and Banks: Following the Money

      The lockdowns have proven to be a powerful instrument of social control. This attribute is becoming very attractive especially to some politicians. They have discovered they can derive considerable political traction from hyping and exploiting the largely manufactured pandemic panic.

      https://www.unz.com/article/lockdowns-coronavirus-and-banks-following-the-money-2/

      1. “… in the autumn of 2019 the economy was already starting to falter. Fortuitously for some, the new virus came along at a moment when it could be exploited as a scapegoat. By placing responsibility for the economic debacle on pathogens rather than people, Wall Street bankers and federal authorities are let off the hook. They can escape any accounting for an economic calamity that they had a hand in helping to instigate.

        “A presentation in August of 2019 by the Wall Street leviathan, BlackRock Financial Management, provides a telling indicator of foreknowledge. It was well understood by many insiders in 2019 that a sharp economic downturn was imminent.

        “At a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole Wyoming, BlackRock representatives delivered a strategy for dealing with the future downturn. Several months later during the spring of 2020 this strategy was adopted by both the US Treasury and the US Federal Reserve. BlackRock’s plan from August of 2019 set the basis of the federal response to the much-anticipated economic meltdown.”

        1. “At a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole Wyoming, BlackRock representatives delivered a strategy for dealing with the future downturn.

          B…b…but the MSM told me when the elites meet at Jackson Hole, it’s to formulate new ways to show their great benevolence toward the proles, not to come up with new ways to shaft us and steal our hard-earned money and assets.

      2. If I’m a Megabank on the hook for untold billions in sh!tty subprime loans that I knew were going to eventually require a bailout in order to erase my losses, it’s certainly politically convenient to have a pandemic come along which requires preemptive bailouts as a remedy.

        It’s reminiscent of the fire that burns down a condemned property, just before the owner collects a large insurance claim.

    2. this shutdown stuff

      It was clearly a very bad mistake. It is clearly still a bad mistake and “they” can only double down, never admit making a mistake. So few people are dying we have been mind warped into being afraid of “case” test statistics. Take Hawaii for example, or even better France. A huge increase in cases but no deaths. This requires more restrictions on people, apparently only for the sake of the restrictions themselves.

      All of this was beyond a mistake months ago.

      1. Blame the Democrats and Big Pharma. We had a potential treatment as early as April, and it’s been squelched.

        1. Wouldn’t what you suggest be not only unprofitable, but also illegal for the companies involved?

          Your pet conspiracy theories don’t make it through my crap filter.

          1. There’s plenty of evidence and physicians supporting the use of HCQ and saying this very thing. Consider that your filter is full of crap fed to you by the MSM.

          2. HCQ was a very political issue in the states. We know what the MSM’s agenda is. Other countries were more concerned with saving lives.

      2. Deaths lag cases.

        And for the record, we’re up 182,611 U.S. deaths, with the number steadily increasing by thousands a week, and the polulace in collective denial.

        1. One of the youtubers I follow is an anti-masker. Some of the commenters there STILL don’t grasp that masks are there to cover the sender, not protect the receiver. Or, they are refusing to grasp it. Sample conversation:

          Yokel #1: You have less chance of dying from COVID as you have dying from the clap.
          Me: If you have the clap, do you wear a condom to not spread it to the woman, or is it her fault for getting it?
          Yokel #1: The clap exists. This virus doesn’t.
          Yokel #2: The woman should be asking the questions to protect herself.

          🤦‍♀️ You know, the libs can be exasperating, but sometimes, the other side… 🙄

        2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

          “Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.”

          1. What is it about the U.S. being #1 for COVID-19 cases and deaths that is so hard for an engineer to grasp?

          2. It does when you consider that ~10% of cases are long-haulers with possible permanent damage.

            Of course it would be helpful if these long-haulers got some actual medication, like say, HCQ or IVERMECTIN to help them out, instead of being told “take two Tylenol and call me in 3 months.” Hmmm, with treatment given early enough, maybe some of those long-hauls could be prevented.

            Everyone else can re-open, but I am not emerging from semi-hermithood until a) I have a 10-minute home test and HCQ/IVM in hand or b) I am forced to return to the office, or c) I am safely vaccinated. Here’s hoping my N-95s hold out that long.

          3. my N-95s

            Are they still difficult to buy?

            I still have some difficulties from a hockey injury in HS. I wouldn’t wish long term chronic problems on anybody.

            …so hard for an engineer to grasp

            The US is by far the leader in the world for testing. No brainer that we win the “cases” trophy. We are not alone at the top in cases per population, which is really more noteworthy. This is one dimensional thinking though, which offers no guidance on risk assessment now and going forward. In NY the recorded deaths have essentially been at zero for months. Risk here is zero at present. We still have plenty of tests and plenty of new “cases”. It is irrelevant if the bug is not fatal (here/any longer).

            Late bloomer states will have to get through their two or three months. They told us it can’t be stopped, only slowed, right?

            I wouldn’t be shocked if only 10% of the recorded dead actually died of a Covid bout, pure and simple. I know from close experience that if your immune system is down any infection can hasten the end. Some say that half the deaths in NY were already in nursing care facilities. Go figure.

            My point is that the hysteria long outlasts the local infection. This is stupid. This is a major inconvenience for me personally, and for my lover on the other side of the St. Lawrence River. I don’t care if others want to hide under their beds until whenever. I volunteered to do home grocery deliveries back when we were told to expect the Black Death. After the first month I reckoned the risk to me was on the order of 1:10,000. I have a risk of 1:20 of dying anyway, driving on the highway or sitting on my porch. I accept both risks pretty much. If I am sick, I always stay home. I don’t believe that anyone having survived an infection of this crap is forever a Typhoid Mary.

            I tend to avoid people even in regular flu season, but I do not intend to convert my life into a display of fear of living. I hate seeing my country impoverished by such cowardice. I hate seeing my handicapped daughter held prisoner essentially without visitors for half a year & etc.

            This may be so difficult to understand. Maybe not.

            BTW, daughter will now be allowed to spend a weekend with me!

          4. It’s also quite plausible that the U.S. official case count and death toll are undercounts. This is evidenced by unaccounted deaths in the overall 2020 death toll which are best explained as undiagnosed (and untested) COVID-19 cases.

          6. N-95s are still unavailable, but I managed to score a couple small boxes at HD in mid-February. If I go out once a week, I can rotate between two masks for a couple months with no issues. Or I can bake them in the oven. I’m rotating two, with 8 more in reserve. Plus I have a box of anti-viral surgical masks. So I should be ok for a while.

            I agree with P-bear that the case count is low, especially the early case counts. If we had had unlimited testing in March and counted the mild cases that we counted in July, my guess is the March wave would have been 4-5 times higher than the the July wave. And then you need to multiply that by some factor to include all the VERY mild and/or asymptomatic cases.

            Deaths might be undercounted, but not as much as cases. Because deaths were occurring 2-3 weeks later than the cases, by the time people died, that 2-3 weeks was long enough to get test kits to the hospitals. Some folks are looking at the total deaths in 2020 compared to 2019 and broadly assuming that those excess deaths were due to COVID.

          7. “N-95s are still unavailable, but I managed to score a couple small boxes at HD in mid-February.”

            If you work anywhere near drywall finishing you have to have an N95 mask or better. The dust from the dried joint compound contains talc, gypsum and silica will end your working career early.

          8. excess deaths

            The fear mongering continues. Our friends at the CDC have reported about 160,000 excess deaths. These numbers are “estimated” and “adjusted” in ways not clearly explained. Also not explained is why the threshold for excess deaths is about 1,000/week lower than last year. Kind of strange as the actual mortality rate has been inching upwards about 1% each year lately. Over the past 20 weeks this disparity adds up to about 30,000.

            In round numbers, 3,000,000 people die in the US every year, +/- 50,000. The medical experts over at Marketwatch (I think based on a NYTimes piece) claim 16,000 more excess deaths occurred than attributed to the “with Covid” numbers. This is obviously lower than the normal noise in the numbers and is contradicted by the available official statistics.

            Also contrary to what bastions of truthfullness like the NYTimes report, the guys over at Medical News Today warn that 35% of the excess deaths are not due to Covid, but rather due to the lockdowns.

            “indirect mortality — deaths caused by the response to the pandemic. People who never had the virus may have died from other causes because of the spillover effects of the pandemic, such as delayed medical care, economic hardship, or emotional distress.”

            – Prof. Steven Woolf

          9. anywhere near drywall finishing you have to have an N95 mask or better

            N95 may be acceptable for short and incidental exposure to dust. However, if you wear a 95% filter for 20 days of exposure it’s like wearing no mask for one entire day. Most people who work regularly around hazardous dust wear a P100 mask and take other precautions.

          10. Agreed. We used to set out several drywall dust air filter machines in addition to an industrial mask when pulling CAT5-6 cable up in false ceilings. The dust was so fine that it would wick the moisture from your hands; apply Lubriderm every day.

          11. The dust was so fine that it would wick the moisture from your hands; apply Lubriderm every day.

            Wouldn’t that just make a paste?

        4. Deaths lag cases.

          On April 7th there were 34,082 new cases reported. On April 21st there were 2,748 deaths were reported.

          On July 24th there 78,586 new cases reported. On August 7th there were 1,333 deaths reported.

          I’m having a problem with these numbers. Over double the reported cases with less than half the deaths as before. Where are these big death spikes we’re supposed to fear, that the media has been yammering about 24/7? The answer: THEY DON’T exist. A lot of the new deaths are probably not even COVID.

          WE’RE BEING LIED TO.

          1. Lied to? No. Scientific method and medical advancement is operating as standard:

            1. People wearing masks and distancing –> milder and fewer cases overall.
            2. More testing –> more detection of mild cases –> higher case count despite fewer cases overall.
            3. Better medicines as we learn more –> fewer deaths.
            4. “Big death spike:” based on tendency of coronaviruses to die off in summer and return in fall. This virus lasted all summer. That, along with masking and distancing, stretched out the big death spike over time. This is also known as “flattening the curve.” You may have heard the phrase.
            5. Flattening the curve buys time for more medications and not overwhelm hospital system –> fewer deaths.

            See, I could explain it without lying even once.

            When I was attending my blue-collar high school, I was mildly surprised at how many people barely made it through biology and “business math” didn’t even attempt trig or chemistry, don’t bother with physics or pre-calc. They either couldn’t or didn’t want to take the classes which taught them scientific method. Now I hear the same thing: “I don’t want to try to understand the explanations so I’m going to cop out and play victim.” They must be my old classmates.

          2. See, I could explain it without lying even once.

            Yet you are more of an emotional creature than a cold logic creature.

          3. See, I could explain it without lying even once.

            But your explanations aren’t scientific, they’re merely opinions or hypotheses.

            You talk about “fewer cases overall” when I showed you higher deaths with fewer cases, and that there are more cases now than back when deaths peaked.

            There is no proof that a lower inoculation leads to a milder case.

            You talk about “better medicines” when you’re the one who’s been yammering away about the medical profession withholding the only treatment that could save lives.

          4. OR the numbers are tallied in a manner which causes the day to day count to fluctuate a lot.

          5. ‘When I was attending my blue-collar high school, I was mildly surprised at how many people barely made it through biology and “business math” didn’t even attempt trig or chemistry, don’t bother with physics or pre-calc.’

            Sounds like we may have attended the same high school.

            Then again, maybe not. Since the time when my friends and I graduated, mine went on a long downhill slide which culminated in its deacredidation. And for good measure, Michael Brown attended for a while before his shooting in Ferguson ignited the Black Lives Matter movement.

          6. “Where are these big death spikes we’re supposed to fear, that the media has been yammering about 24/7?”

            What kind of ‘spike’ would you consider big? 100 deaths a day? 1000? 10,000? 100,000?

            Note that fewer than 800 people worldwide died during the entire SARS outbreak of 2002-2003, none in the U.S.
            The outbreak nonetheless led to near panic in the North American Chinese immigrant community and those who came in contact with it.

            The U.S. COVID-19 situation is way beyond this, and the collective denial and confusion over the situation is drowning out the reality.

          7. Re: high school. Turns out John Roberts’ wife was a classmate of mine. The newsletter a few months ago had a few pictures of her touring the school. Puzzled why she looked familiar.

          8. I showed you higher deaths with fewer cases

            How do you know how many total cases there REALLY are? Are you God? The number of cases counted is a function of the number of tests. I am explaining why differences in testing can generate a case count that is either a little less than, or a lot less than, the actual count.

            You talk about “better medicines” when you’re the one who’s been yammering away about the medical profession withholding the only treatment that could save lives.

            The “better medicines” are anticoagulants and steroid drugs that doctors are using in hospitals, instead of ventilators. These drugs are being used LATE in the disease progression and are saving lives. The medicines that I am “yammering away about” are HCQ and IVM, which are to be used EARLY in the disease progression. Not only would they relieve suffering of home patients, they would “save” lives by arresting the disease to where a patient never needs to be hospitalized in the first place. We need ALL of these drugs.

            You may not believe in inoculum theory, but that’s okay, I still do.

          9. There is no proof that a lower inoculation leads to a milder case.
            Research is rarely done on human challenge infections with influenza, but it has been done. See this: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/60/5/693/291415
            I’ve neither the time nor inclination to dig deeply into inoculum size vs. severity of illness, but the researchers of influenza all seem to take as a given than a bigger dose of influenza virions causes more severe disease, and that there is a threshold below which a person won’t come down with influenza. Of course there is “no proof” of this dose/response phenomenon in COVID-19, but there is no reason to think it infects humans on principles that greatly differ from those of other much better known infectious agents.

          10. infects humans on principles

            Grandmother used to say that children who were not allowed to play in the dirt were more likely to get sick.

  15. ‘One thing that’s not working for San Francisco is harboring the homeless in hotels during the pandemic. Many shocking stories have been reported since the program started in April, including police busting a meth lab at the Civic Center Motor Inn. Of the city’s 125 homeless deaths thus far in 2020, 17 percent have occurred at the hotels in just five months, where at least one was a suicide and 15 were drug overdoses. Dr. Barry Zevin, medical director of street medicine and shelter health for the Department of Public Health, told the San Francisco Chronicle “after a string of deaths and near-fatal overdoses,” each hotel now has “Narcan on every floor, along with safe syringe disposal, safe injection kits and test strips that can determine if fentanyl is in a substance.”

    ‘In other words, the city is providing plenty of tools for using illegal drugs. What seems in short supply are treatment options. Instead, the health department aligns with the Drug Users Union, which, according to their website, seeks “to create a safe environment where people can use & enjoy drugs,” and the Harm Reduction Coalition, which is really about harm enabling — meaning the hotels have essentially become city-sanctioned, taxpayer-funded drug dens.’

    ‘Besides being unsustainable, the hotel model is outrageously expensive. The Marina Times crunched the numbers and found that, based on 2,500 occupants at the city-estimated $250 per room per night, the annual rate would be $225 million. The mayor is hoping federal taxpayers will pick up 75 percent of the tab, but what she doesn’t mention is that rooms provided to those who don’t meet strict criteria (over 65, underlying health conditions) will not qualify for reimbursement, prompting Human Services Agency Director Trent Rhorer to say housing all of the city’s homeless in hotels “would not be fiscally prudent.”

    ‘On the other hand, a scaled-up estimate for the village shows it would cost $75 million per year for 2,500 people — and that’s before residents start contributing.’

    https://www.marinatimes.com/2020/08/is-saving-san-francisco-a-priority-for-politicians/

    Jeebus…

    ‘the health department aligns with the Drug Users Union’

  16. Not good for $MRNA.

    KEI asks DOD to investigate failure to disclose DARPA funding in Moderna patents

    Luis Gil Abinader has taken a deep dive into Moderna’s surprising practice of never declaring government funding in its 126 patents and 154 patent applications, despite having had funding from multiple federal agencies.

    One outcome of his research is a 25 page report (RN-2020-3) on Moderna’s failure to report funding from DARPA, and a request by KEI to DOD and DARPA to remedy this, including by taking title to patents where disclosures should have been made.

    “The obligation to disclose federal funding in patent applications has been subject to presidential executive orders, statutes, regulations and contracts, including those cited and quoted in Abinader’s report. The disclosure clarifies the public’s rights in the inventions and the obligations on the entity getting the money, on everything from the government’s worldwide royalty free license to the public’s march-in rights, obligations to make inventions available to the public on reasonable terms, and additional safeguards that can be exercised by a government inclined to do so.”

    1. Ask Dr. Felcher, I mean Fauci. Err, I’m sure he’s unavailable for comment. Has anybody investigated his investments?

      1. Earlier this summer as I was exiting a parking lot in Denver, at dusk, I saw a young woman holding up jumper cables, indicating she had a dead battery. I stopped to help her out, and noticed she had an array of lefty stickers on the back of her Forester. I didn’t care, figuring her politics are her business and I didn’t feel like getting into a political discussion. But in hindsight I wish I would’ve told her that she was being assisted by someone “from the other side” who was not going to let political differences stop me from helping her out of a jam.

      2. That nutcase without a shirt doesn’t look very BLM in the picture to me.

        I wonder if he just got off a bus from somewhere else, after having been put on a bus by local authorities elsewhere?

      3. Thee.🍊jesus proclaimed: “… only I can fix it! ”

        $eems to be taken his time on “fixing.it” … $ad

        1. $eems to be taken his time

          Most Democrat governors and mayors have declined the federal assistance that he has offered.

          2. It’s also logically inconsistent calling him an authoritarian while simultaneously claiming lack of leadership.

          4. Ye is the one makin’ claim$, eye merely quoted thee.🍊.me$$iah

            Take yer rationalization’$ to his appointed Apostle$.

            (speak clearly iffin’ yer wearing a deeth.👾.mask.)

    2. “The horrific attack took place at the train platform for the Q train at Lexington Avenue and East 63 Street around 11am on Saturday”

      1. Yeah. Broad daylight on a crowded subway platform. If the thugs are getting that brazen, imagine what things must be like after dark in places where victims are more vulnerable. The scum obviously feel they can prey on people with impunity.

        Call me Nostradamus, but I foresee the “COVID-related” exodus out of NYC is going to turn into a stampede. How much for your luxury skybox, Mr. Wall Street grifter?

    3. COVID is not impelling the exodus; it’s enabling the exodus. Without COVID, we would have been much slower to shift to a work@home paradigm, if at all. No w@h, no exodus.

  18. BREAKING NEWS

    SUSPECT IN MURDER OF TRUMP SUPPORTER: “I’M 100% ANTIFA ALL THE WAY”

    Paul Joseph Watson
    AUGUST 30, 2020

    Suspect in Murder of Trump Supporter: “I’m 100% Antifa All the Way”
    IMAGE CREDITS: VIDEO SCREENSHOT.

    The suspect in the murder of a Trump supporter on the streets of Portland last night posted “I’m 100% Antifa” on his personal Instagram page.

    A man is heard on camera yelling “we’ve got a Trumper here” before two gunshots blast out.

    @JackPosobiec
    Enhanced video of Portland shooting

    Suspect in Murder of Trump Supporter: “I’m 100% Antifa All the Way”
    IMAGE CREDITS: VIDEO SCREENSHOT.

    The suspect in the murder of a Trump supporter on the streets of Portland last night posted “I’m 100% Antifa” on his personal Instagram page.

    A member of the Patriot Prayer group, which was involved in counter-protests against Black Lives Matter and Antifa last night, was gunned down at 8:45pm near Southwest Third Avenue and Alder Street.

    A man is heard on camera yelling “we’ve got a Trumper here” before two gunshots blast out.

    Leftist protesters then celebrated the murder, hailing that they’d taken out the “trash”.

    https://www.infowars.com/

    1. Are Democrats generally fine with white Trump supporters getting murdered for their political views?

      #WhiteLivesDontMatterNoMore

      1. I knew they would start killing Trump supporters.

        Some of these Commie Thugs really think they are in a Revolution. The mayhem insurrection is in short to destroy America and take over by some kind of Commie State . The fact that the Dems are letting them run wild is playing with fire.

        They aren’t going to stop.
        This is where I though the Dem Party was so stupid to embrace this far left stuff.

        Basically they should of told Bernie Sanders he had to run as a third Party. Sanders always declared himself a independant .Because they are so greedy for votes they created this situation.

        So these thugs are Bernie Sanders followers. These are the brainwashed Commies of Bernie like AOC is.
        So I’m just saying that this is the result of Bernie Sanders grassroots movement. I’m sure other factions have joined in by now, like the homeless .

        Didn’t people wonder why so many young and dumb people were following this old Commie Bernie Sanders.

      1. Maybe there’s still a spark of human decency in some of these people.

        It takes time for some of the brainwashed to realize their movement has been hijacked.

  19. Seems like Andrew Jackson was able to relax the financiers’ stranglehold on the U.S. economy.

    Which candidate is more like Andrew Jackson?

    2. “Which candidate is more like Andrew Jackson?”

      The one that didn’t allow thee Neo.American $ociali$t $tephan Munchin’$ unaccountable di$tribution of x9++ Trillion ‘💲💰💲💰💲💰💲💰💲💰💲💰💲💰💲💰💲💰 … i$ a $tarting point.

      + Pu$h.over Powell, @ Thee.Federal.Re$erve, to provide a U$ Treasury’$ back$ide, “UNLIMITED+ly!”

  20. The Financial Times
    Coronavirus business update 30 days complimentary
    The Big Read Property sector
    Pandemic exposes ‘severe stress’ in commercial property financing
    Mortgage-backed securities fill a funding gap but as delinquencies rise investors are bracing for losses
    © FT montage; Dreamstime
    Joe Rennison in London
    August 29 2020

    Over the course of 150 years, America’s oldest continuously running hotel has never been closed for this long.

    Yet, as stay-at-home orders took hold in March, all but one of the 1,641 rooms at the Palmer House Hilton in the centre of Chicago began to empty out, with the hotel eventually suspending operations on April 28 for all except a single long-term resident.

    Its wide marble staircase now leads down to a near silent lobby after Hilton, which manages the property on behalf of the real estate investment firm Thor Equities, furloughed more than 90 per cent of the hotel’s 900 staff.

    The fate of the property is not only emblematic of the severity of the crisis emerging for the hotel industry but also of the pressure building across the commercial real estate sector — from small-town malls to sky-high office blocks — hitting one of its primary sources of financing; the $1.4tn market for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

    “I don’t think anyone foresaw the devastation that Covid would wreak on commercial real estate and the CMBS market,” says Lea Overby, an analyst at Wells Fargo who has covered the sector for almost two decades.
    …

  21. “I applaud the Fed for stepping into the leadership vacuum. But this extended ‘free money’ policy makes little sense. In fact, the Fed fears overall pricing power may be on a long-term decline and warns the economic illness called ‘deflation’ can be hard to cure. Obviously, the board members haven’t shopped much lately, especially for a home.”

    House and stock prices are not part of inflation, as those are assets. Or so I have been told by our lords and masters of finance at the Fed. And they can use their free money to buy alot of agreement among academic economists with their policy positions, and hire said academic economists to serve as puppets and mouthpieces.

    After a few decades of laundering inflation into asset prices, it gets old.

  22. ‘The unprecedented monetary stimulus we’ve already had will in the long run — maybe one to two years — lead to higher interest — including mortgage — rates. That, in turn, will likely burst the bubble.’

    Does this view assume the Fed will not engage in yield suppression, or that the measures will fail?

  23. ‘There can be little doubt that exceptionally low-interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes, and hence on home mortgages, have been a major factor in the recent surge of homebuilding and home turnover, and especially in the steep climb in home prices. Although a ‘bubble’ in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.’

    We went from signs of froth in some local markets to awash in foam from sea to sea. And now we’re collectively deep underwater in the foam.

  24. “Having effectively admitted it no longer fully understands the relationship between economic growth, employment and inflation, the Fed still promises to decide in real time when its healthy above-target inflation has become dangerous. If the central bank gets this wrong, it could be forced to raise rates much higher, much faster than it would want.”

    Here’s a dumb hyothesis: An economy drowning in Unlimited Quantitative Easing monies no longer obeys the ordinary rules of self correcting market behavior covered in economics and finance textbooks and research publications.

  25. “The more glaring problem is the long list of questions the Fed didn’t review. The most important is Mr. Powell’s observation, offered without elaboration Thursday, that business cycles now end in destructive financial crises. The Fed thinks this is a regulatory problem to be solved with stricter capital rules and stress tests.”

    I guess nobody on high suspects a policy of Unlimited bailouts available at the moment of crisis might contribute to imprudent financial decisions during boom times that expose the economy to severe crises?

  26. “Well, what if there’s nothing natural about falling growth because the Fed’s policies are causing it?”

    We all know that step one to getting out of a hole is to STOP DIGGING.

    But the moment the Fed stops digging at an ever increasing rate, bubbles long in the making could collapse spectacularly.

    It’s quite a conundrum!

    1. If they don’t stop digging, they’re going to dig their way to China. China will be happy to oblige us with their currency.

  27. SHOCK VIDEO: MAN TRIES TO PUBLICLY RAPE WOMAN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT IN NYC

    Crime and killings skyrocket in New York City after Mayor de Blasio defunds police, releases criminals

    Jamie White | Infowars.com – AUGUST 30, 2020

    The brazen attack occurred 11 AM Saturday at the Q train subway station at Lexington Avenue and East 63 Street.

    The 25-year-old victim said she was waiting for the subway when the man approached her, pushed her down, and began sexually assaulting her.

    Shock Video: Man Tries To Publicly Rape Woman In Broad Daylight In NYC
    IMAGE CREDITS: SCREENSHOT/YOUTUBE.

    Disturbing footage captured in New York City shows a man shoving a woman to the ground and then trying to rape her in full view of the public in a subway station.

    The brazen attack occurred 11 AM Saturday at the Q train subway station at Lexington Avenue and East 63 Street.

    The 25-year-old victim said she was waiting for the subway when the man approached her, pushed her down, and began sexually assaulting her.

    The woman reportedly began screaming, prompting bystanders and witnesses to intervene and record the assault.

    “Hey, get off her!” a person yelled in the video.

    The man is then seen getting up and shrugging the assault off like he did nothing wrong.

    The NYPD confirmed that the incident was an attempted rape on the woman.

    “The individual then climbed on top of the female and attempted to rape her, but he stopped when a crowd of bystanders formed,” New York Police said in a statement.

    https://youtu.be/G0CCdbE8kXY

    1. Is this an unusual occurrence in a Democrat controlled city where the police have been delegitimized?

      1. Lets add up the numbers. I see a lot of propaganda, and have seen it for the past 10 years here. From everyone.

        How many Great Plains states do you have to add together to equal the population of NYC? And are people reporting every attempted rape and assault in any one of those states over the past week on the HBB?

        I mean, look at what DeBlasio is doing to Oklahoma!

        https://oklahomawatch.org/2019/08/28/rape-counts-keep-rising-even-as-police-clear-fewer-cases/

        And look at at what DeBlasio did to that child in OKC!

        https://ktul.com/news/local/oklahoma-man-accused-of-murdering-young-daughter-prosecutors-release-horrific-details

        No, I’m not a DeBlasio fan. But let’s not be ridiculous.

  29. A weekend topic starting with the Associated Press. “Buy a home right now. Or if you own one already, refinance it. And if you have spare cash, buy some stocks. And if there’s a bubble in prices, don’t worry. It’ll get fixed later. Simply put, that’s the new message from the powerful Federal Reserve. The central bank just revised the goals of its monetary policy. So save the economy by borrowing at low-low-low rates and put your cash to work! Even if you have to pay record high prices for real estate or shares on Wall Street.”

    – Great sarcasm/satire/parody article on the Fed. Source article link here:

    https://www.ocregister.com/2020/08/27/fed-buy-a-home-save-the-economy/
    Fed: Buy a home, save the economy
    “A robust job market can be sustained without causing an outbreak of inflation,” – Fed chairman Jerome Powell.
    By Jonathan Lansner | jlansner@scng.com | Orange County Register
    PUBLISHED: August 27, 2020 at 3:15 p.m. | UPDATED: August 28, 2020 at 12:01 p.m.

    “Buy a home right now.“

    “Or if you own one already, refinance it. And if you have spare cash, buy some stocks.“

    “And if there’s a bubble in prices, don’t worry. It’ll get fixed later.“

    “Simply put, that’s the new message from the powerful Federal Reserve.” [Oz: “Fear me not good people of Oz, fear me not. For it is I the great and powerful Wizard of Oz!” – Don’t forget the previous dot com and housing bubbles didn’t end well either…]

    “Cheap money is not a fad, people. Mortgage-rate cuts, for example, gave house hunters 25% more buying power in less than two years. That’s not ending soon.”

    “So save the economy by borrowing at low-low-low rates and put your cash to work! Even if you have to pay record high prices for real estate or shares on Wall Street.“

    “In fact, the Fed fears overall pricing power may be on a long-term decline and warns the economic illness called “deflation” can be hard to cure. Obviously, the board members haven’t shopped much lately, especially for a home.“

    Q. So how will this help the unemployed?

    A. Interest rates can only go so far in tweaking the economy. Cheap money is far more useful for society’s haves than its have-nots.

    Q. So 0% motivates folks who can afford to borrow and invest. And that benefits the rest of us?

    A. Here’s what Ali Wolf, a real estate analyst for Meyers LLC told me.

    “What I’m afraid of with their actions is that they are not only going to create a wealth gap between people but also companies. The big companies are the ones that have excess access to capital markets. That doesn’t translate as well to the mom and pop shop in your local strip mall.”

    “Q. So I should buy a house and/or stocks?”

    “A. The theory is that enough people buy houses or stocks (a new vehicle would be swell, too) … that spending could generate enough economic momentum to cure the current business doldrums.”

    “Yes, soaring real estate or surging stock prices might juice the economy.“

    “Of course, then … the Fed would see inflation!”

    “Q. You mean, the Fed creates a bubble … only to burst it?“

    “The unprecedented monetary stimulus we’ve already had will in the long run — maybe one to two years — lead to higher interest — including mortgage — rates. That, in turn, will likely burst the bubble.”

    “History can repeat itself.”

        1. Well, @ 17 he has many year$ & ample opportunitie$ to win the $uper.lotto or collect ma$$ive amounts of $ocial.media.fund$ that can be pur$ued bye aggrieved parties$ liaryer$.

          O.J. $impson Faces $58 Million Wrongful Death Damage$ After Relea$e from Jail

          July 21, 2017 by Joseph Ax and Dan Whitcomb

          O.J. Simpson will walk out of prison in October after nine years behind bars, but he is far from free of his financial woe$.

          The 70-year-old football star, who won his release from a Nevada parole board on Thursday after serving time for a botched robbery, is likely to remain shackled to a multimillion-dollar wrongful death civil judgment stemming from the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

          Their families should be able to stake their claim to at least a portion of Simpson’s future earning$, whether he write$ a book, appears on a reality televi$ion $how or sells autograph$, legal experts said.

          Simpson was acquitted of the murders two decades ago during the so-called “trial of the century,” though his reputation – built atop a Hall of Fame football career as well as years as a popular pitchman and actor – suffered permanent damage.

          Despite the not guilty verdict, a civil court jury found him liable for the deaths and awarded $33.5 million in damages to the victims’ families.

          That judgment, which was renewed in court two years ago for another decade and enlarged to about $58 million, remains largely unpaid. And David Cook, a longtime attorney for the Goldman family, said he would not abandon efforts to collect.

          1. Was it Nicole Brown Simpson or Ron Goldman that was a convicted child molester who attacked O.J.? Which one of them chased O.J. down and beat him with their skateboard? And all this time I was completely unaware that one of them survived the attack after pulling a gun on him and stating their only regret was not emptying the mag into him when they had the chance.

            Apples and O.J.

          3. I remember that day pretty well. As I recall CNN said that day was mostly peaceful for those folks.

          4. I remember that day pretty well.

            I was stuck on the freeway that day. Have I mentioned my FIL worked for OJ’s defense team and had experience with Michael Baden?!

          5. “…is likely to remain shackled to a multimillion-dollar wrongful death civil judgment stemming from the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.”

            On what planet does this logic work? He was acquitted of the murders, yet faces a multimillion dollar ‘wrongful death’ civil judgment over the murders he didn’t commit?

            I need an attorney to explain the logic to me. I don’t get it.

          6. Either none of you have 17 year old kids, ( & don’t know how to be a parents) or y’all figure that ALLOWING yer kid to take a loaded AR-15 into a chaotic next.state.over scene of rebellion is hunky.dory. “please.help.these.folks” is a American.thing.of HEROIC.GLORIOUS right.of.passage into Adult.hood!!!!

            Well, eye reckon you’re just down.”right” “dead.on” in this parental guidance.

            Me laughing @ such “judgements”!

            (Basically, eye think yer liars & cowards if so)

          7. 17 year old kids

            Not that it matters, but I was 13 or 14 when I passed my hunter’s safety course in NJ. It’s basically an open carry permit for minors.

            Can you still join the Army at 17?

          8. I need an attorney to explain the logic to me.

            Different evidentiary standards
            Criminal prosecution: beyond a reasonable doubt
            Civil suit: preponderance of the evidence (think 51%)

        2. Compared to what I’ve seen, his case of TDS is relatively mild. He must have been wearing a mask and got a lower inoculum. 🤪

          1. Some of the most severe cases of TDS manifested here on the HBB apparently inflict steadfast Trump supporters.

    2. Hopefully the rule of law will trump media hype surrounding his case, not to mention the threat of heightened levels of BLM rioting and looting if he walks away with misdemeanor charges.

  32. I accepted an offer on the Encinitas property this morning. Given this year’s low inventory, we set a much higher price than what I was contemplating pre-COVID. Had the detached cottage been an ADU, it probably would have sold at that higher price. Investors are still out there. The accepted offer is 95% of the pre-COVID expectation. The buyer is a 37yo maxillofacial surgeon using a physician’s loan with 10% down. He’s got dental and medical school bills to boot. My agent already spoke with his loan officer so I don’t expect the financing to fall threw. There’s no need for a 1031 exchange at this point.

      1. down 5% since March?

        I would not use this as an example for any generalizations or calculations. It’s a unique property in a highly non-conforming area with lots of speculation.

  33. ok so here in the US this ‘housing bubble’ over the past 20 years has had the oversight and sponsorship of both Republican and Democrat Presidents and 4 different Fed Reserve Presidents. and the ‘bubble’ is truly a global phenomenon as this blog correctly points out with affordability an issue everywhere in the world. house price to income and rent to income continue to become ever more expensive because income is not accelerating at 6+% a year… but how many countries have demonstrated that at the first hint of a housing crisis they circle the wagons and reflate no matter what? so going forward i think ‘nothing will change’ … it will just take increasingly more (effort, $, financial engineering, etc.) … and this will exacerbate the burden on the ‘average’ person/family … no matter who’s in charge in any country in the world.
    so you can try to play this as a ‘wait until the great collapse’ and then put your money to work … but that seems like a low probability occurrence. another play is to lever up with OPM using a firewall legal structure and simply ride it … there’s still a massive amount of SFH stock that could be bought blindly by PE, minimally maintained, and rented back to these ‘average’ folks … plenty more juice to squeeze … like no joke …

    1. so going forward i think ‘nothing will change’ … it will just take increasingly more (effort, $, financial engineering, etc.) … and this will exacerbate the burden on the ‘average’ person/family … no matter who’s in charge in any country in the world.

      If the money ain’t there, the money ain’t there. There’s no such thing as somebody paying a bill every month that they have no money for.

    2. “…the ‘bubble’ is truly a global phenomenon as this blog correctly points out with affordability an issue everywhere in the world.”

      The financialisation of residential property is one of Wall Street’s many gifts of financial innovation to the rest of the world.

      Case in point: Early in the growth of the subprime-fueled U.S. housing bubble to ginormous size, Germany’s housing prices were low and stable.

      Fast forward two decades, and you discover the Housing Bubble contagion spread there, and they are saddled with the double whammy of unsustainably high housing prices and negative bond yields…a sort of banker’s purgatory.

  34. I looked the other day at Poway sales for single-story homes between $1-2M. Generally speaking, homes originally listed between $1-1.5M sold above list price while homes originally listed between $1.5-2M sold below list price.

  35. Bloomberg headline:

    “California Moves to Consider Reparations for Slavery

    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (DON THOMPSON)
    August 29, 2020, 5:28 PM PDT Updated on August 29, 2020, 5:44 PM PDT

    ‘If the 40 acres and a mule that was promised to free slaves were delivered to the descendants of those slaves today, we would all be billionaires,” Bradford said. “I hear far too many people say, ‘Well, I didn’t own slaves, that was so long ago.’ Well, you inherit wealth — you can inherit the debt that you owe to African-Americans.’ ”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/?sref=k23feCm1

    (May be behind a paywall)

      1. What they did with Chinese might qualify.

        Did someone whose family was in Scotland “inherit” a debt?

      1. “California Moves to Consider Reparations for Slavery

        With what money? I thought they were broke?”

        Raise taxes what else , income tax to 16% and a wealth tax and if that doesn’t do it ( it won’t ) higher sales taxes, utility and gasoline taxes.

        1. About a year ago the Mexican government suggested that Spain owed Mexico reparations. Madrid told AMLO to go pound sand.

    3. And the former slaves also inherited wealth, so that would need to be subtracted from the debt.

  37. I’d say that the 1% should pay. The vast majority of population never really benefited from slavery. Their lives were just as hard then as now.
    And then you probably have a endless heirs of immigrants whose lives were just as miserable as slaves. Irish, Germans, Italians, Poles, Russians, squished in dormitories like rats. Whys should those pay?
    I’m a socialist, and I believe we should do our best to help, but demanding reparations? Reparations is what started Second World War.
    How about all those still mill workers? how about the miners? And everyone that was exploited to the blood at end of 19 century? Should those get reparations? They helped build up this country and payed with their health and lives. Every generations suffered in their own way.
    Do you believe that millions of students in debt over their ears should also ask for reparations? In the end they are slaves for life, and victims of a fraudulent system.

    1. Reparations is what started Second World War.

      That isn’t even close to being true. Nazi Germany never paid and the Weimar Republic deliberately failed to pay what was owed, making token payments.

      The German economy easily could have handled the reparations. The French did it after the Franco-Prussian war.

      Furthermore the peace imposed by Imperial Germany on Russia was far, and I mean FAR worse, than the peace imposed by the Allies on Germany.

    2. I’m a socialist, and I believe we should do our best to help, but demanding reparations?

      Empty your own bank account if you want to “help,” but f**k off with your expropriation of other people’s money for your pet causes.

    3. “Do you believe that millions of students in debt over their ears should also ask for reparations?”

      For what reason? They made their choices when they decided go sign on the dotted lines. If their choices turned out to be wrong then that’s on them.

      “In the end they are slaves for life, and victims of a fraudulent system.”

      True that they are slaves for life but not true that the system is fraudulent.

  38. Facts don’t matter. It’s all about the Narrative, and the Narrative says that ALL white people benefited, ALL white people are racists and thus evil, and that ALL white people should pay. Brainwash people starting in kindergarten and they will agree that they are responsible for something they had nothing to do with.

    1. It’s been my point for months now that it was only a small percentage of the White population in history of USA that benefited from having slaves, ( the rich, plantation owners, etc ).
      The general population was just struggling to survive.

      Also slavery, wars and conquering was a World wide evil that no Country was pure in.
      Do Blacks absolve their own African Slave Sellers that captured their own people to sell to the World at the time?
      Regular people historic wise were usually the victims of the ruling class or the one percenters. You see that the white wage earner had to fight and fight for something more than slave wages in the USA. (Look at the Guilded Age where whites we’re nothing more than slaves, – 1850- 1915.

      So, my point is that if you think that Whites didn’t have to fight the oppression and exploiting of the the Rich Class your mistaken.

      Blacks or any race are the beneficiaries of this historic class struggle to uplift the working man/ women to something more than a slave by low wages.

      It’s class warfare rather than racism that is screwing people. Globalism really screwed the working class in the USA. The racism narrative is simply the Money Looters trying to take the heat off themselves for their Looting and wealth extracting of the American Pie, along with all the rigged financial systems like Globalism, monopolies, etc., etc.

      1. Money Looters trying to take the heat off themselves

        Worse than that, it is an opportunity for more looting on their part.

        What’s really ironic is that not only those with white European descent would be paying, everyone would be paying, including Asian, Aboriginal, even the Blacks. The Looters would take large six figure incomes off of the skim.

  39. Tomorrow$ escapade$ of $tock.market.$plits might well fill my prepared rai$ed bed$ with fertile $oil of nutrient$ of ma$$ive blo$$oms of fruit$.of.promi$ed profit$.

    Go Apple!, Go Te$la!

    Alway$ have enough harve$t, that $ome might go mi$$ing!

      1. Wrong, cheering the type of mulch being dumped into the rai$ed bed$ of Market$.

        (nothing.to.do.with.$tock.$peculation$.nor.potential.gain$)

    2. The Plunge Protection Team (PPT) looks set to make an early appearance this morning. That’s never a good sign. What do you suppose is going to happen to these Ponzi markets when they run out of Greater Fools or the Fed is forced to curtail its massive daily injections of “stimulus” financial crack cocaine?

    1. Until they hit apogee. Then they go fall back down to earth.

      At some point the economic free-fall of the real economy is going to catch up to the Fed’s debt- and QE-fueled Ponzi markets and asset bubbles.

  44. The globalists must’ve sent out a memo to their media and Democrat stooges over the weekend, because I’ve noticed The Narrative has suddenly been updated. Now the Democrats and their MSM adjuncts have switched from calling the riots “mostly peaceful protests” to admitting they are actually riots, but blaming them on…you guessed it…ORANGE MAN BAD!!

    The mental gymnastics the MSM and Democrats have to execute to contort logic and facts to fit The Narrative must be exhausting.

    1. The Narrative

      We’re in an abusive relationship. Resistance to violence is immediately denounced as violence.

  45. If you’ve ever wondered who is organizing, bankrolling, and directing the wave of violent BLM-Antifa riots sweeping the U.S., all you need to do is follow the money to the Usual Suspects. Of course, the DoJ and FBI are turning a blind eye to these domestic terrorist masterminds and enablers since they are also major contributors to the Democrat Party.

    https://capitalresearch.org/article/tides-center-takes-control-of-black-lives-matter-global-network/

    CRC also revealed that Thousand Currents’ board of directors included Susan Rosenberg, a former member of the communist Weather Underground—which planted bombs across the United States—and convicted domestic terrorist who served a 16-year sentence in federal prison for possession of 740 pounds of unstable dynamite stolen from a Texas construction firm in 1980.

    Rosenberg was described as a “human and prisoner rights advocate” on Thousand Currents’ website. Thousand Currents removed the webpage(archived) for its board shortly after CRC published Rosenberg’s connections to armed violence and terrorism.

    1. Boo Randy, yes to you last two posts above me .

      BLM is a Commie Group that uses the “racism”, theme to overthrow America . Anything they can do to break down the current structures like Police is their objective.
      They are really Communist that want to overthrow the USA.
      Taking down Statues, erasing history, undermine law and order, canceling culture, is the classic playbook for Communist.
      First they have to get into the education system to brainwash the youth, which they have been successful in doing so.
      I cringe everytime I see one of these looter rioters raise up one arm which is their Communist gesture between themselves.

    2. “By formally joining the vast Tides nexus, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation plants itself squarely in the professional activist camp. Far from an organic movement of concerned grassroots volunteers, it’s clearer than ever that BLM Global Network Foundation is just another creature of left-wing politics.”

      Are these our benevolent and peaceful Dems?

      1. These left-wing nutjobs are sh!tting the bed at every turn. Their own policies are what will drive voters away in droves, not some opposition candidate.

  46. With the rise of Mom and Pop landlordship during the growth phase of The Housing Bubble, the stage was set for the “landlords versus tenants” political battles now playing out in many corners of the world during the COVID-19 financial collapse.

    1. The situation in Britain sounds little different from that in California.

      The Economist
      Housing
      Generation rent grows up

      The shift in housing tenure towards renting creates a problem that Conservatives find hard to handle
      Britain
      Aug 29th 2020 edition
      Aug 29th 2020

      “IDEALLY,” WROTE George Orwell in “The Road to Wigan Pier”, his account of pre-war poverty, “the worst type of slum landlord is a fat wicked man, preferably a bishop, who is drawing an immense income from extortionate rents. Actually, it is a poor old woman who has invested her life’s savings in three slum houses, inhabits one of them, and tries to live on the rent of the other two—never, in consequence, having any money for repairs.”

      When Orwell was writing, almost 60% of Britons rented their homes from private landlords. After the second world war the private rental sector (PRS) shrank to insignificance, thanks to the rise of social housing and the subsequent liberalisation of mortgage lending. But rising house prices and the need for a substantial deposit have reversed the trend (see chart).

      As renting has grown, renters have changed. Back in the mid-1990s around one in 20 families with children lived in the PRS. Now more than one in five do. More than half of all private renters are now over 35. A form of tenure once confined to urban centres and university cities has spread to the suburbs and small towns. Some of the fastest growth in the five years to 2017, the most recent period with reliable data, came in places such as Purbeck and Hertsmere.

      That presents the Conservative Party with a problem. Since Lord Salisbury espoused “villa Toryism” in the 1880s, it has been the party of home-ownership. Margaret Thatcher gave this purpose new vim by selling off social housing. The notion that home ownership makes people conservative, by giving them a stake in the social order, is embedded deep in the Tory soul. But economics and politics both argue for measures that favour renting. A large rental sector encourages mobility and thus helps promote growth. At the same time, today’s renters are the kind of people whose votes the government wants.

      That long-term conundrum is overshadowed by the acute problem that the crisis has created. Housing charities estimate that some 200,000 private tenants have slipped into rent arrears over the past six months. In the early days of the pandemic, the government put in place a temporary ban on evictions from rental properties that was due to expire on August 24th. Three days beforehand, it extended the moratorium for another four weeks.

      This hand-to-mouth decision-making suggests that the government is struggling to deal with the problem. That’s partly because Britain has not only a lot of tenants nowadays but also a lot of landlords. While one in five English households rents privately, more than one in ten households own more than one property. Most landlords let fewer than five properties. For most, their rental property is a substitute for a pension or a supplement to one. They tend to be the older, better-off voters who make up the bedrock of Boris Johnson’s political coalition—the contemporary equivalent of Orwell’s old ladies.

      But landlords are outnumbered by tenants, many of them families, whom British housing policy has taken little trouble to accommodate. Labour governments have focused on social housing, Conservative ones on home-ownership. Renting is treated as a waiting room in which future homeowners spend some of their 20s before knowing the joys of being responsible for their own boiler.
      …

  48. While a lot of forces were operating in the last 2o years , it’s only been in the last 4 years that they have come out in full display.

    For some reason Trumps election triggered them showing their true colors ,where they might of been more covert otherwise.
    It’s very interesting to me how power obtains their goals, and this is especially true when those powers are what I think are evil or destructive or self serving or freedom taking.
    Everybody knows how much I hate the Commie power grab we are witnessing.

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