skip to Main Content
thehousingbubble@gmail.com

The Biggest Drawback Of Helicopter Money

A weekend topic starting with Fortune. “In 2005, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan told Congress that a ‘bubble in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely.’ Of course, not only had a housing bubble formed, it was nearing its peak just as Greenspan delivered that message on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told the audience that the run-up in home prices during the Pandemic Housing Boom qualifies a ‘housing bubble.'”

“‘Coming out of the pandemic, [mortgage] rates were very low, people wanted to buy houses, they wanted to get out of the cities and buy houses in the suburbs because of COVID. So you really had a housing bubble, you had housing prices going up [at] very unsustainable levels and overheating and that kind of thing. So, now the housing market will go through the other side of that and hopefully come out in a better place between supply and demand,’ Powell said.”

The Orange County Register. “Mary Daly sees the Federal Reserve’s battle with inflation as a fight to reverse a ‘stunning’ trend: Real wages – that’s pay after inflation – tumbled 9% over two years. To the CEO and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the central bank’s job of chilling 40-year high inflation is more than simply fulfilling a bureaucratic mandate to juggle high employment with a manageable cost of living. Daly, who’s been the San Francisco Fed’s head for four years, sees restoring price stability also as an issue of economic fairness.”

“Why? Because inflation is essentially a regressive tax on those who can least afford the cost. ‘That’s not sustainable for the average worker,’ says Daly, a labor economist whose writings focus on economic equality. ‘It’s like a treadmill speeding up and you’re just falling behind. I call this the indignity of inflation. It literally takes away the dignity of working because you can’t afford the things you could afford last week.'”

“Q. I think of 2020-21’s sub-3% mortgages. Did the Fed do too much — along with all the other stimulus programs that we had? A. History will be the judge. Think of where we were. We hadn’t had a pandemic in 100 years. If you literally stopped the economy, throw people out at work, and don’t provide a bridge – the economy is going to break. It’s really hard to come back from that level of devastation. So we build a bridge, and if the bridge was too long, we’ll study it to do better next time. But I would rather err on the side of helping as many people as possible than have the bridge be too short.”

Q. You’ve written throughout your career about economic fairness. What about all the wealth created by the cheap money the Fed helped create? A. I get this all the time: Does Fed policy create inequalities that we regret creating? First, we have a blunt tool, right? We can raise the interest rate, we can lower the interest rate. That’s it. We have two goals (high employment/low inflation) and a blunt tool. When we have periods of accommodative policy – supporting economic expansion – wage inequality falls and wealth inequality rises. Why? Because only a fraction of our population owns assets.”

“But you’ll never build wealth unless you have a job. So a supportive Federal Reserve policy is the way to build wealth. Right before the pandemic, we saw the wealth gap starting to narrow. Why? Because more people had enough income in their pockets to buy an asset, usually a home, and then they started to build wealth.”

From Yahoo Money. “Economists predict rates could land anywhere from 5.2% to 8% — potentially even higher than that — depending on a number of uncertain factors such as how quickly inflation fades and how the economy absorbs the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes next year. ‘Rates had never doubled in a year before,’ Freddie Mac analysts said in their October quarterly forecast. ‘If we can’t get inflation under control, affordability will get even worse,’ Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American, told Yahoo Money. ‘A house price correction will not be enough to mitigate the damage done by a potential 8%-plus mortgage rate.'”

From Reuters. “Blackstone limited withdrawals from its $69 billion unlisted REIT on Thursday after redemption requests hit pre-set limits amid investor concerns it was slow to adjust valuations as interest rates surged, a source close to the fund said. ‘The fact is that most retail investors, and defined benefit scheme investors due to de-risking strategies, are electing to reduce their real estate holdings across the board where they can as values in direct real estate reprice alongside rates normalisation,’ said Chris Taylor, chief executive of real estate at Federated Hermes.”

“Kaspar Hense, a portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management, which manages assets worth more than $92 billion, said the REIT news was an example of the risks private markets face in a rising rates environment. ‘If yields are rising, being invested in rather illiquid assets can be a challenge, just for a rather small (return) pick-up going into illiquid markets, which will suffer very significantly if yields are rising,’ Hense said. ‘That is certainly what we’re seeing here and we should really expect to happen again over the next six to 12 months as yields are rising and central banks are keeping rates higher. It will have an impact on net worth, it will have an impact on investors’ losses,’ Hense added.”

“For investors who piled into private markets and riskier assets in a bid to boost returns during years of low rates and easy cash, this could now prove even riskier. ‘The prolonged period of very cheap money and abundant liquidity encouraged some asset managers to offer relatively liquid products that invest in relatively illiquid assets. These products behave differently in a world of patchy liquidity,’ said Mohamed El-Erian, an advisor to Allianz.”

The Colorado Springs Gazette. “Colorado Springs-area home sales tumbled by more than a third in November from a year ago. This week, after months of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve in an effort to get inflation under control, the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate stood at 6.49%. Combined with home prices that had escalated by more than 10% each of the last five years, the rapid spike in mortgage rates has priced many homebuyers out of the market and led to plunging home sales, said Rick Van Wieren, a real estate agent with Re/Max Properties in Colorado Springs.”

From Money. “When Chad L.’s Atlanta home lingered on the market for a couple of months this fall, he took a drastic step to get it sold: He paid $50,000 in closing costs on behalf of his buyers. ‘The buyers wanted the house, but they didn’t have a big enough down payment to qualify for the loan they wanted,’ says Chad, a homeowner and real estate investor who asked to be identified only by his first name and last initial because he prefers to keep his real estate holdings private. ‘My covering their closing costs allowed the deal to go through.'”

“Sellers can typically contribute up to 3% to 6% of the loan amount toward the buyers’ closing costs, depending on the loan program. The concessions can never exceed total closing costs. ‘The down payment must come from the buyer,’ says Eric Mullis, branch manager for CMG Home Loans in McLean, Virginia. ‘Contributions to closing costs can be a mix coming from the sellers, the agent and the lender.'”

The Union Tribune in California. “If you know where to look, there are some big home price reductions in San Diego. The median home price in San Diego County has now dropped five months in a row to $775,000 — a reduction of $75,000 since since May. That means for-sale homes are sitting longer and, in the last two months, 42 percent have had their price reduced at least once, said Reports on Housing. An analysis of price reductions over the last 30 days by The San Diego Union-Tribune found several ZIP codes that stand out. This list contains all home types, such as single-family, condos and townhouses.”

“One group of buyers selling at considerable losses are the iBuyers, companies that started buying up as many properties as possible during the pandemic without seeing them. The idea was the market was so strong you could buy a home and turn around and sell it in a month and make a profit. It didn’t work out for many of the companies, especially Zillow. It reported a loss of $881 million in February before the market even started its downturn. It has since shut down its iBuying business. Here are some examples of homes purchased in the last year by OpenDoor, which is still the most active local iBuyer.”

12 News in Arizona. “Months after home prices in Phoenix hit record highs, the city is now entering its first buyers market in more than a decade, according to The Cromford Report. ‘It’s one of the biggest rollercoasters in the industry’s career,’ The Cromford Report senior analyst Tina Tamboer said. In November 2021, the median home sold for around $425,000. For the first half of the year, Arizona saw rapidly rising prices. The metro area was short on housing supply, and cash buyers were helping fuel home prices upward. In May, the median home in the Phoenix metro area sold for $480,000.”

“However, interest rates started to rise quickly, and housing prices dropped. Investors tried to sell, and some big-name iBuyers lost millions of dollars. Last month, the median home sold for around $425,000. ‘The median house price in 2021 was $425,000. Today, it’s $425,000,’ Tamboer said. ‘Essentially, what has happened in the last six months is the appreciation from the first six months has been erased.'”

“Most home sellers continue to make money, except those who bought a home within the last year. ‘It’s become a pretty different feeling,’ West USA Realty realtor Jeremy Fierstein said. Fierstein has been in the business for the past ten years. He says potential sellers should not worry about what they may have missed out on. ‘You can’t look in the past and think what you should have done,’ Fierstein said. To react to current conditions, sellers are offering more concessions to entice buyers. Such as buying down part of the potential interest rate. ‘Without a lot of those concessions, a lot of the buyers would not be able to afford that mortgage payment,’ Fierstein said.”

The Star Phoenix in Canada. “This is where inflation and the associated rising interest rates have really come home to roost. In the third quarter of 2022, there were 257 new home sales in the Saskatoon region, down 48.4 per cent over last year and a 63.3 per cent decrease from the 10-year average. ‘Deals collapsed as multiple buyers were not able to secure financing, even those pre-approved by the banks,’ said the report. ‘Lenders were not anticipating interest rates to rise as fast as they did, forcing them out of honouring pre-approvals and mortgage rate commitments.'”

“In other bad news, first-year interest payments on an average new single-family Saskatoon home soared to more than $17,000 (assuming a new 25-year mortgage with a 10 per cent down payment). That’s the third highest amount ever, and an 88 per cent increase compared to the same period of last year. Insert emoji of a shocked face here, because I can’t find the words. But here’s the situation in a nutshell. ‘Sales have come to a halt,’ Nicole Burgess, CEO of the SRHBA, told me. ‘Deals are collapsing. No one is buying because there is so much uncertainty. But if the population is going to grow, we need housing.'”

The Edmonton Sun. “Edmonton and most real estate markets across Canada have become more affordable in recent months, despite fast-rising borrowing costs, a new study shows. A local realtor is skeptical buyers are feeling housing has become more affordable — even in Edmonton, which is a far less costly market than Toronto and Vancouver where average home prices exceed $1 million.”

“‘The study kind of sugar-coats conditions a little bit,’ says Mashal Muhammad, realtor with Royal LePage Noralta Real Estate. ‘Sure, we’ve seen a drop in prices, but the stress test remains a challenge.’ For example, other costs — like property taxes and utilities — that factor into qualifying have not decreased, he adds. ‘So the approval process has just gotten a lot harder for many buyers.'”

“James Laird, co-chief executive officer of Ratehub.ca. agrees qualifying at nearly 7.5 per cent is a ‘major hurdle,’ especially first-time buyers. Yet he notes if interest rates plateau, affordability could see a sweet spot as prices continue declining before sales pick up and create a floor off from which prices could grow once again. ‘As we get to the spring market, if rates stay where they are, it will be interesting to watch if activity jumps and prices along with it,’ Laird says.”

From The Street. “In a 2016 blog post written for the think-tank Brookings Institution, Ben Bernanke admitted that his helicopter money reference gave him some bad PR. In fact, he said that their media relations officer, Dave Skidmore, had warned Bernanke against using the term, saying ‘It’s just not the sort of thing a central banker says.’ But Bernanke insisted, and the moniker stuck.”

“To this day, Bernanke continues to believe in the practice of helicopter money as a tool the Fed could use in response to a slowdown in the economy. His successor at the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, agreed, stating that helicopter money ‘is something that one might legitimately consider.’ Other central bankers support the concept, particularly in Europe.”

“The biggest drawback of helicopter money is the inflation it tends to ignite. And since inflation is notoriously difficult to manage, once the inflationary fires have been stoked, what’s to prevent them from growing out of control—and fostering hyperinflation? That’s what happened in countries like Argentina and Venezuela, when their central banks printed money and gave it to their governments, who in turn gave it to the people. Inflation surged.”

“Helicopter money also leads to weakened currencies, because as more and more money is printed, its value decreases significantly. It could also deter currency traders from making long-term investments if the practice is prolonged. Clearly, helicopter money is not a practice a central bank should undertake lightly.”

The New York Post. “From the left: Don’t Trust Mainstream Media: ‘I mourn’ for the news business, writes TKNews’ Matt Taibbi. ‘It’s destroyed itself.’ After the internet arrived and flooded the market with new voices, some outlets found that, ‘instead of going after the whole audience, it made more financial sense to pick one demographic and dominate it. How? That’s easy. You feed the audience news you know they will like.’ Yet when you ‘decide in advance to forego half of your potential audience, to fulfill the aim of catering to the other half, you’re choosing in advance which facts to emphasize and which to downplay. You’re also choosing which stories to cover, and which ones to avoid, based on considerations other than truth or newsworthiness. This is not journalism.'”

This Post Has 79 Comments
  1. ‘Q. I think of 2020-21’s sub-3% mortgages. Did the Fed do too much — along with all the other stimulus programs that we had? A. History will be the judge. Think of where we were. We hadn’t had a pandemic in 100 years. If you literally stopped the economy, throw people out at work, and don’t provide a bridge – the economy is going to break. It’s really hard to come back from that level of devastation. So we build a bridge, and if the bridge was too long, we’ll study it to do better next time. But I would rather err on the side of helping as many people as possible than have the bridge be too short.’

    OK so Mary has conflated the CCP virus and the housing bubble. So be it. Prepare to have a new a$$hole ripped.

    1. If you literally stopped the economy, throw people out at work, and don’t provide a bridge – the economy is going to break. It’s really hard to come back from that level of devastation.

      “Literally stopping the economy” over the sniffles was unnecessary, you c-word. You need to be snuffed out.

  2. ‘Coming out of the pandemic, [mortgage] rates were very low, people wanted to buy houses, they wanted to get out of the cities and buy houses in the suburbs because of COVID. So you really had a housing bubble, you had housing prices going up [at] very unsustainable levels and overheating and that kind of thing. So, now the housing market will go through the other side of that and hopefully come out in a better place between supply and demand,’ Powell said’

    Let’s take a little stroll back in time. When the plandemic was launched, globalist scum censorship had been put in place. Remember day after day thousands of people were de-platformed? before the 2020 election mind you. We couldn’t talk about how China sealed up Wuhan while leaving the Wuhan airport open and thousands of sick people flew all over the planet. Strange that.

    Not long after the WEF said ‘we’re never going back to normal.’ That was their plan obviously. But central bankers chimes in immediately saying the exact same thing. Including this globalist scumbag Jerry Powell. Never forget.

    Who made you king Jerry? Oh and yer gonna use our money to ‘fight’ climate change and make it is so perverts and pedophiles can fly their flag in Ukranistan! Fook you Jerry and the donkey you rode in on.

    1. Klaus Schwab’s head should be on a pike, along with all of these globalist scvm. Remember the WHO using Creepy Joe’s “Build Back Better” before Pedo Joe was even elected installed?

  3. ‘the central bank’s job of chilling 40-year high inflation is more than simply fulfilling a bureaucratic mandate to juggle high employment with a manageable cost of living. Daly, who’s been the San Francisco Fed’s head for four years, sees restoring price stability also as an issue of economic fairness’

    ‘Why? Because inflation is essentially a regressive tax on those who can least afford the cost. ‘That’s not sustainable for the average worker,’ says Daly, a labor economist whose writings focus on economic equality. ‘It’s like a treadmill speeding up and you’re just falling behind. I call this the indignity of inflation. It literally takes away the dignity of working because you can’t afford the things you could afford last week’

    See Mary is a social justice queenie. Never mind that these central bankers have been driving up the cost of shacks for decades. And when it blows up they do it again. Virtue signaling doesn’t matter in the real world Mary. What does matter is that you stupid bashtards have fooked everything up and probably on purpose to bring about yer great reset. Expect resistance.

      1. Ownership to feudalism via environmental regulation? My last personal experience in this area was my home’s HVAC system, which had to be fully upgraded when the expansion valve failed due to its current refrigerant being outdated and forcing an upgrade to R410A.

  4. Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday unveiled what drove former Twitter executives to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

    Dubbed “The Twitter Files,” Taibbi published his reporting in a thread on his Twitter account, which he said was based on “thousands of internal documents obtained by sources” from the social media platform.

    The tweets contained communications amongst Twitter employees as they grappled with how to excuse their decision to censor the Hunter Biden report.

    Musk, who has championed transparency at the company he took over in October, retweeted Taibbi’s thread, and questioned whether some of the revelations indicated potential violations of the First Amendment.

    aibbi said “The Twitter Files” tell an “incredible story” about how one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms used its powerful tools to delete tweets at the request of “connected actors.”

    The tools Twitter employees used for “controlling speech” were originally designed to combat spam and financial fraudsters, Taibbi said. But over time, staff began “to find more and more uses for these tools.”

    Soon, and at a growing rate, “outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech,” he wrote.

    Twitter’s censorship system was well established by 2020, an election year, and while both sides of U.S. politics had access, the political bias of the majority of the platform’s employees meant Democrats had more avenues to “complain” about tweets, according to Taibbi.

    “For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored,” Taibbi wrote.

    “However,” he added. “This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.”

    Throughout his thread, Taibbi shared screenshots of emails and communications between and with Twitter executives that provided a glimpse into how the system worked to censor the New York Post’s article on Hunter Biden.

    One email dated Oct. 24, 2020, appears to show a Twitter executive sharing a list of five tweets allegedly identified by people from the campaign of then-candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat.

    “By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.’”

    In order to suppress the Hunter Biden report, Twitter executives marked it as “unsafe,” limiting its spread, even blocking it from being directly shared via the platform’s direct message function.

    Taibbi noted that such extreme restrictions were reserved for content such as child pornography.

    For sharing the report, then-White House press secretary Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account, prompting a stern email from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn to Caroline Strom, who was Twitter’s public policy executive.

    Hahn demanded to know when McEnany’s account would be unlocked and why no one at Twitter informed him the company would be censoring news articles.

    “Like I said, at least pretend to care for the next 20 days,” he wrote.

    Taibbi reported that the decision to censor the report came from the highest levels of Twitter but without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

    Vijaya Gadde, who was the head of legal, policy, and trust at the company, played a “key role,” according to Taibbi.

    “‘They just freelanced it,’ is how one former employee characterized the decision,” Taibbi wrote.

    Messages between executives in Twitter’s communications and policy departments, shared by Taibbi in screenshots, show a certain amount of confusion, with a communications executive writing: “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.”

    Taibbi reported that one former employee he spoke with said that at this point, “everyone knew this was [expletive],” but that the executives decided to “err on the side of … continuing to err.”

    oel Roth, who became head of trust and safety before his employment ended in November, said the policy basis for censoring the Hunter Biden story was “hacked materials.”

    The honesty of that excuse was questioned by Brandon Borrman, the former vice president of global communications.

    “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” he asked in a message.

    In a message, former Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker acknowledges that some of the report appeared to be sourced from an “abandoned” computer, but he advised caution because they were unsure if some of it was the result of hacked material.

    Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) contacted Gadde on Oct. 14, 2020, to let her know their decision to censor the story and lock McEnany out of her account was generating a “huge backlash” in Washington, D.C.

    Gadde came back to Khanna, citing the company’s hacked materials policy, prompting Khanna to explicitly clarify that his concerns were related to the First Amendment implications of Twitter’s decision.

    “But this seems a violation of the 1st Amendment principles,” Khanna wrote, noting that if the left-wing New York Times were to publish an expose of a serious war crime, he would support their right to do so.

    “But in the heat of a Presidential campaign, restricting dissemination of newspaper articles (even if NY Post is far right) seems like it will invite more backlash than it will do good,” Khanna added.

    While Khanna expressed concern about the First Amendment implications of suppressing the report, Taibbi reported on a poll conducted by NetChoice that indicated other Democrats supported the move.

    After Taibbi published his report, Khanna reportedly said in a statement that the American constitution and First Amendment “are sacred,” and he felt Twitter’s actions violated that, “so I raised those concerns.”

    The first installment of Taibbi’s reporting exposed the censorship system that enabled Twitter executives, who are mostly Democrat-aligned, to censor a controversial story about the son of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

    Taibbi, who usually writes for his subscribers on Substack, presented his report as a series of “live tweets” on Twitter, with new paragraphs published one after another over a period of time on Friday evening.

    He noted that there was “much more to come” and promised answers to burning questions many figures—usually conservatives—have raised about issues like “shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more.”

    “These issues are not limited to the political right,” Taibbi noted.

    Musk said a second “episode” would be released on Saturday.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/elon-musk-unveils-twitters-censorship-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story-in-2020_4901498.html

    1. The outcome of the election was decided by someone other than voters. Got it.

      70 million unrepresented US citizens need to move on to addressing it with summary treason charges and executions. There are way too many holes to dig.

    2. Scratch a Liberal and you’ll find a Fascist.

      ‘Biden Team’ Requested Twitter Scrub Scandalous Hunter Biden Info Days before 2020 Election

      Caroline Downey
      Fri, December 2, 2022 at 9:09 PM·5 min read

      In an email dated October 24, just days before the 2020 presidential election, the “Biden team” reportedly demanded that Twitter scrub information critical of Hunter Biden from the site, according to a jaw dropping release of “The Twitter Files” by new CEO Elon Musk.

      Twitter staff forwarded a request from what seemed to be the Biden campaign to delete five tweets in particular.

      “More to review from the Biden team,” the message, from the first installment of the documents analyzed by journalist Matt Taibbi, read. “Handled,” was the reply.

      Hunter Biden abandoned the computer at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. It contained messages showing that then–vice president Joe Biden was introduced by his son to a top businessman at a Ukrainian energy firm “less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company,” the Post wrote in October 2020. The correspondence contradicted Biden’s claim that he had “never spoken” to Hunter Biden “about his overseas business dealings.”

      https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-team-requested-twitter-scrub-020948233.html

    3. Imagine a country where a large percentage of the populace gets its news almost exclusively from twitter. And where in the midterms, Democrats are credited with winning elections they were expected to lose because of tik tok. I would say that such a country is f’ed.

    4. CEO Jack Dorsey

      Via a Telegram channel:

      The Twitter Files also reveal that Jack Dorsey used the e-mail address jack@0.pizza as of 2020.

      In 2016, the Podesta E-mails were released littered with the word pizza in a context that doesn’t apply to food.

      Pizza is a pedophile code word that’s been identified by law enforcement.

      Why would a tech mogul like Jack Dorsey have a .pizza e-mail address?

  5. Trio of articles related to some posts above.

    Matt Taibbi, content available that is blocked without a Epoch Times subscription:

    https://www.revolver.news/2022/12/twittergate-elon-releases-twitter-private-comms-on-censorship-of-hunter-laptop-story/

    Revolver News delivers the goods on Eric Holder and Apple:

    https://www.revolver.news/2022/12/revealed-eric-holder-fingerprints-all-over-apple-trust-and-safety-department-during-2020-election/

    “An FBI agent testified to Republican attorneys general this week that the FBI held weekly meetings with Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley ahead of the 2020 presidential election to discuss “disinformation” on social media and ask about efforts to censor that information.”

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-weekly-big-tech-ahead-2020-election-agent-testifies

    The 2020 election was stolen.

  6. New York Times — U.S. Sees Little Prospect for Ukraine Talks With Putin After Biden Offer (12/2/2022):

    “A day after President Biden said he would be willing to talk with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about a possible peace agreement in Ukraine, the Kremlin offered a frosty response, and prospects for settling the brutal conflict remained as distant as ever.

    Mr. Biden said on Thursday that he would hold his first conversation with Mr. Putin since before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 if the Russian leader was “looking for a way to end the war.” But U.S. officials said that Russia, as they have previously assessed, was not prepared to negotiate in good faith, and Russian officials repeated hard-line demands that are unacceptable to Kyiv.”

    https://archive.ph/5XXiX

    Unacceptable to Kyiv? They don’t get to decide the terms of anything. Zelensky wants extortion, not negotiation.

    Moscow Times — Kremlin Turns Down Biden’s Conditions for Putin Talks (12/2/2022):

    “The Kremlin on Friday rejected U.S. President Joe Biden’s conditions that Russian troops fully withdraw from Ukraine before he speak with President Vladimir Putin.

    In the strongest suggestion so far that he would be prepared to sit down with Putin, Biden said late Thursday he would be willing to speak to the Russian leader for the first time since the Ukraine invasion if he truly wants to end the war.

    Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the Kremlin is not ready to give up the captured Ukrainian territories but remains open for talks “to achieve our goals.”

    “The United States still doesn’t recognize the new territories as part of the Russian Federation,” Peskov said.

    “This of course significantly complicates the search for some kind of mutual grounds for possible discussions,” he said.

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/12/02/kremlin-turns-down-bidens-conditions-for-putin-talks-a79573

    Russia is winning.

    1. Your federal income taxes are paying for all of this, with a healthy chunk being siphoned off by corruption and arms trafficking.

      Washington Post — After Kherson, Ukraine’s military ponders new push south and east (12/3/2022):

      “Following Russia’s retreat from the city of Kherson — the only regional capital captured by Moscow since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion — Ukrainian forces have limited options for their next big push to continue recapturing occupied territory and, ultimately, to expel the invaders.

      Much attention is now shifting here, to the southern front line less than 100 miles north of the Azov Sea, where Ukrainians are eager to sever the “land bridge” connecting mainland Russia to Crimea, which Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2014. Kyiv is also intent on liberating cities such as Melitopol and Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located.”

      https://archive.ph/kKw6M

      Linked from Revolver News:

      “The Ukrainian commander of the Svoboda battalion, Petro Kuzyk, whose unit is one of those holding Bakhmut said his soldiers are staying in trenches full of corpses, fighting in extremely cold conditions and in knee-deep water against Russia’s attacks.

      “I apologise for speaking slowly now, because I’m very cold – it’s making me dizzy. I’ve now left the first line (since I was called). I’m warming up in the car, I’m almost falling asleep, because I haven’t slept all this time. They charged yesterday, quite seriously. They felt a weakness in our defence, because (I will not name the numbers of the units, so as not to spoil their honour) there are units that are less motivated than ours. And yesterday they weakened our defence a little in the area just around the Bakhmut. Some units could not withstand this artillery onslaught and retreated.

      “This is our principle: we, the Svoboda Battalion, do not retreat. And because of that, we found ourselves in a semi-surrounded situation, and we had a lot of work to do. In addition, it is a swamp full of mud. It is very difficult to evacuate the wounded or to deliver ammunition. The trenches are constantly deteriorating, and in this swamp they must be constantly rebuilt.”

      He added: “Today is the first day without rain, but then and yesterday when it fell, all the water flowed into the trenches. And the shelling was such that it was impossible to get out of the trench, so the guys were constantly wet for a day or two. Plus the temperature is like this. Many are contused, many with pneumonia. But we hold our ground, and we defend. I see young guys standing with their teeth clenched. I would really like someone to write about their achievements, because few people in the country know about it.”

      https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/newsbits-on-ukraine-swamp-trenches-short-training-out-of-ammo.html

      Russia is winning.

      1. “Strategically, we’re now waiting for back-up, especially in artillery. They attempt some incomprehensible attacks, using what we call infantry ‘cannon fodder’. We keep destroying them, they keep on sending new reserves. According to our data, they’ve moved up more reserves…”

        Attrition means hamburger helper for the crows.

        1. their next big push to continue recapturing occupied territory

          I’ve been watching this and haven’t yet heard of a place the Ukrainians “recaptured” without the Russians having already abandoned or evacuated to focus somewhere else.

          If it’s true what the EU government says, that Ukraine has lost 100,000 dead soldiers, it cannot also be true that they are overwhelming their foes on the front lines.

    2. “The United States still doesn’t recognize the new territories as part of the Russian Federation,” Peskov said.

      According to Russian law the draft (conscription) is only to defend Russia, not the break away republics resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The recent annexation solved that problem, on paper anyway.

    3. “Russia is winning.”

      Attrition of conscript soldiers until the other side exhausts their munitions is a heck of a way to fight a war.

      1. War is hell.

        Russia is fighting to remain one of the last outposts of Christian European civilization. Ukraine and The West are fighting for the World Economic Forum, Marxism, and drag queen story hour.

      1. For those who think scoe is a typo, it isn’t.

        In this cheer It is not pronounced score but scoe or sko with a long o.

        🙂

        Go Netherlands!

  7. A reader sent these in:

    This is not oil, a meme stock or even a scam. It’s pending U.S home sales, down 40%, the most on record

    https://twitter.com/GRDecter/status/1598710436647403525

    Lumber at these prices relative to the S&P 500. We may be able to use it as firewood? 50yr RS lows?

    https://twitter.com/davevermilion/status/1598685485093687296

    Possible that the crypto crash not as contained was thought just a few weeks ago?

    https://twitter.com/NipseyHoussle/status/1598674811575832576

    That chart looks mislabeled by Ycharts. But regardless, every rental housing REIT is showing occupancy declines this year, and apartment demand on track for weakest year since 2009.

    https://twitter.com/jayparsons/status/1598681451905646599

    Dalio has been underperforming for years. Another example of selling the sizzle.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1598710807902441473

    Aaron Layman

    Replying to
    @texasrunnerDFW
    The Fed’s virtuous deflection narrative machine in action. One of the primary reasons they employ thousands of economists…to provide cover for what ever they do.
    Someone has to construct those false narratives to manufacture consent. 😉

    https://twitter.com/dfwaaronlayman/status/1598708355257798662

    More peak housing inventory lol

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1598707439594917889

    Breaking : Jobs number +263,000 vs 200,000 expectations.
    Average earnings jumped .6% vs .3% expectations💀☠️
    Blowout number🔥🔥🔥. Futures getting REKT. Bonds too.
    Fed not happy seeing these numbers.
    .75 hike back on the table?
    The volatility continues

    https://twitter.com/StealthQE4/status/1598681596546220033

    I recently spoke with an industrial broker in one of the hottest sunbelt markets in the country. He estimated 75% of the deals he’s sold over the past 2 years bought with leverage would be in technical default today due to DCR.

    https://twitter.com/Nick_Keesee/status/1598479662254260224

    The Savings Rate in the US has moved down to 2.3%, the 2nd lowest level on record with data going back to 1959 (lowest was 2.1% in July 2005).

    https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1598704824748412928

    John Wake

    Seeing a lot of real estate agent YouTube etc. along the lines of, “Now is the Best Time to be a Buyer!” The seller’s agent makes as much as the buyer’s agent but you don’t typically see agents promoting, “It’s a great time to sell!”

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1598783823906770944

    Lance Lambert

    This week, a company “in the family of iBuying” reached out to CoStar CEO Andy Florance. The company is at “the point of failure” and asked Florance if CoStar “can fund them.” Florance tells @FortuneMagazine
    he turned them down.

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1598769223563677702

    There was an investment cycle that ran for 5,485 days that quite possibly ended 65 days ago. When it unwinds, it often does so for years. And I know hardly anyone who is on the other side of the trade.
    THREAD

    https://twitter.com/JeffWeniger/status/1598775357737353216

    American Homes for Rent appears to be a net seller of houses now. Related to investors pulling out and need to liquidate?

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1598778330362556416

    Lance Lambert

    I just spoke with CoStar CEO Andy Florance. Peak-to-trough, his team thinks home prices will fall closer to -20%. “People who think a 10% drop [in home prices] are dreaming…20% [dip] is more comfortable.”

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1598768107824287748

    It’s worse than that. The total size is $125bn. The 69 is net equity. BUT their valuations are optimistic to say the least. Moreover, given the way PIRATE equity works, the debt will be mostly variable, from CLOs etc. Soon, the LTV will hit triggers where the spread goes up. FKD

    https://twitter.com/PPGMacro/status/1598752087617073152

    Here’s the average salary each generation says they need to feel financially healthy, per CNBC:
    Gen Z: $171,633
    Millennials: $133,758
    Gen X: $112,222
    Baby boomers: $78,317

    https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1598697748324241409

    Lumber prices are down 64% ytd

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1598742304839405570

    Maxine Waters will lead the congressional hearing on FTX, starting December 13…I am sure she will be fully prepared with hard hitting questions that get straight to the heart of the matter. 🤡🌎

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1598713131030794240

    Maxine Bankman-Fried

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1598840702913609738

    Something seems to have changed in the housing market. This is fine 🔥🔥🔥

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1598648172548497408

    Valerie M Brown | Vegas Realtor

    D.R. Horton, the largest U.S. homebuilder, last quarter wrote off $34 million in costs related to land and home-lot contracts it terminated or expects to terminate, the Dallas Morning News reported

    https://twitter.com/valeriebrownre/status/1598833671989252097

    Home Price Index vs. Lumber
    Friendly reminder, the chart on the right (lumber) is how parabolic charts typically resolve.
    Back to pre-pandemic levels.
    I don’t make the rules.

    https://twitter.com/texasrunnerDFW/status/1598816175747727361

    My friend has been a realtor for 25 years and he told me he’s never seen the market this bad.

    https://twitter.com/EstateLevy/status/1598800874771746818

    Rick Palacios Jr.

    Urban to suburban migration wave that helped boost single-family rental demand now normalizing.

    https://twitter.com/RickPalaciosJr/status/1598848763829030912

    The Kobeissi Letter

    JUST IN: SBF, the CEO of FTX, says he believes FTX US may still be solvent today and that all US customers may be able to be made whole. Meanwhile, bankruptcy advisors say this is the biggest case of fraud in history.

    https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1598347090815598596

    Liz Ann Sonders

    Perhaps no surprise but a parabolic spike in job cut announcements in tech industry (update thru November)

    https://twitter.com/LizAnnSonders/status/1598629745058582530

    So were all those TikTok real estate gurus from last year able to refinance at 7% and use the proceeds to buy 3 more properties??

    https://twitter.com/AjOsborne1/status/1598744615586234369

    David Rosenberg

    Fade the “no recession” narrative. Tack on the shrinking workweek, and payrolls fell 117k. The Household survey sagged 138k after -328k in Oct, the sharpest decline since March-April 2020.

    https://twitter.com/EconguyRosie/status/1598701694036152321

    US customer is strong only in nominal terms, in real terms it‘s a different story👇 Chart

    https://twitter.com/MichaelAArouet/status/1598598501000159232

    1. ‘I recently spoke with an industrial broker in one of the hottest sunbelt markets in the country. He estimated 75% of the deals he’s sold over the past 2 years bought with leverage would be in technical default today due to DCR.’

      Debt coverage ratio. I see a lot of emails from this biz. Sure now they are excited to be charging 10%, more or maybe less. But what about all those underwater guys they’ve lent to the past decade? They are in the same asset categories as today’s wanna be borrowers. ‘Falling knife’ doesn’t capture the situation. This is everything from shacks, STR up to multifamily, all types of CRE.

      1. so Blackstone is just early in limiting redemptions. Others will follow?

        I guess that all the ‘smart’ money (including pension funds) thought that they could get out when the time comes.

    2. “the average salary each generation says they need to feel financially healthy”

      KDVR — How does Colorado’s median salary compare to the rest of the country? (12/2/2022):

      “Colorado’s median salary is one of the nation’s highest, according to a new report.

      ADP Research Institute analyzed wage growth data in U.S. states and Washington, D.C. Overall, the median salary in the U.S. grew 7.6% since last November. Like inflation, wages had been climbing rapidly in the last year and have slowed in their growth in the last two months.

      Colorado’s median salary was $61,700 in November.”

      https://kdvr.com/news/data/how-does-colorados-median-salary-compare-to-the-rest-of-the-country/

      KDVR — Want a spacious Colorado home? Dream on (11/29/2022):

      “Potential homebuyers may have missed the boat on how much space they can expect in the Denver home market.

      Inflated housing prices are clashing with record mortgage rates to wipe out much of the purchasing power for median-income homebuyers.

      Buyers in several cities in Colorado, which has some of the nation’s highest real estate prices, can expect hundreds of square feet of less living space now than last year.

      In Denver, the median income will buy a home with 489 square feet less living space than last year. This assumes a 20% down payment on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

      A median income in Denver won’t even buy an average-priced condo, according to the analysis.”

      https://kdvr.com/news/data/want-a-spacious-colorado-home-dream-on/

      “This sucker could go down” — George W. Bush

      1. “Inflated housing prices are clashing with record mortgage rates to wipe out much of the purchasing power for median-income homebuyers.”

        Record mortgage rates??? Only for those with short memories. I bought a townhome in Baltimore in 1980 and the rate was 14.5%. Yes, we re-financed later, but that was what is was.

        In 1987 we bought a home in Bethesda, Maryland, at 9%, and considered it normal.

        People need to quit whining, and open a 16-ounce can of Suck-It-Up.

    3. The contest is heating up, who will go bankrupt first? Blackrock or Tether? I find it interesting that Mr. Fink was so instinctively drawn to Mr. Bankman. Are they birds of a feather? Is Blackrock going to turn out to be a scam too? Blackrock has a lot of big red flags and the world would be a better place if they failed miserably. Hopefully their mini-me blackstone goes belly up soon too. I loathe them even more than Blackrock. Both companies are run by people of highly questionable ethics to put it nicely. We should all celebrate as they burn to the ground.

    4. The Savings Rate in the US has moved down to 2.3%, the 2nd lowest level on record with data going back to 1959 (lowest was 2.1% in July 2005).

      the savings rate was quite large with the pandemic payouts … but i guess that folks are back to spending all incoming $s. Question is when will most people have spent the govt payments …

  8. Linked from ZeroSludge.

    Alt-Market — Why China Sucks: It’s A Beta Test For The New World Order (12/2/2022):

    “For over a decade there has been an open globalist obsession with the Chinese governmental model – A love affair, if you will. Many top proponents of global centralization including Henry Kissinger and George Soros have praised China in the past and hinted that the communist country is burgeoning into a major player within the New World Order. Soros expressed this exact sentiment way back in 2009, around the time that China began courting the IMF and issuing trillions in Yuan based treasury debt in order to join their global currency initiative.

    This is a reality I have been writing about for many years: China does NOT stand in opposition to global centralization under the control of western oligarchs. All they want is a prominent seat at the table when the “Great Reset” kicks off and total centralization begins. But the above information only suggests an economic relationship between China and the globalists. Does the alliance go even further than that?

    Recently, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum gave an interview to the Chinese government controlled CGTN at the APEC Summit. In that interview, Schwab praises China as a role model for many other nations. This might shock some people considering China’s economy is faltering, with their global exports plunging in 2022 and their housing market in shambles. This decline is in large part due to global stagflation, but also due to their insane “zero covid” policy which has kept the nation under pandemic lockdown for years.

    Remember all those covid cultists who were cheering for China last year? Remember when they claimed that China was a perfect example on why lockdowns are necessary and proof that they work? Yeah, those people were morons.

    China’s economy is now in freefall with their manufacturing base under extreme stress from the mandates. Furthermore, it would appear that the Chinese populace is finally fed up with the draconian conditions and are rising up in revolt.

    China continues to terrorize the citizenry with secret police visits to vocal dissenters and fleets of drones hovering above city streets monitoring foot traffic and blaring propaganda messages. Some drones even spray unknown chemicals across entire city blocks. In the meantime, China has fully implemented digital vaccine passports systems tied to public venues and retail stores. You cannot function in a major Chinese city without an up-to-date vaccine passport or a negative covid test taken every couple of weeks.

    All of these events and conditions are often treated as disconnected or coincidentally associated. No one is asking the right questions. The big question being WHY? Why is the Chinese government sabotaging its own economy with lockdowns and oppressing the population to the point of open revolt (a rarity among the normally subservient Chinese people). Why keep the lockdowns going when it is clear to the rest of the world that the pandemic is over and that the lockdowns and masks never worked to begin with?

    The country was a dystopia before, now it is something different – It is an experiment in technocratic tyranny that is being taken to the extreme. China is willing to starve, arrest, beat and even kill people who they claim they are trying to protect from the virus.

    It is no mistake that nearly every policy China is implementing is a direct copy of policies suggested by the WEF and institutions like the Imperial College of London back in 2020 at the start of the outbreak. The globalists argued that “we are not going back to normal” and that the public would have to sacrifice many of our freedoms in order to stop the pandemic. In reality, none of their policies were effective in stopping the spread, but they were very effective at suppressing the populace. And in the case of China, nothing did ever go back to normal.

    As it stands, China continues to represent a model of authoritarian dreams; a research study in mass psychological torture. Far from being a counter-point to the globalists, it is actually a globalist work in progress. Watch what happens there closely, because the evils perpetrated there will eventually be attempted here at home.”

    https://alt-market.us/why-china-sucks-its-a-beta-test-for-the-new-world-order/

    Globalists gonna globe.

  9. Grabbers gonna grab.

    Lead article on The Guardian website right now:

    “Senator Chris Murphy believes that the tide is finally turning in favor of the gun safety movement in America.

    “We’ve built a movement in this country in the last 10 years that today, I would argue, is more powerful than the gun lobby,” Murphy said in an interview for a special episode of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast.

    “I think we are now poised to rack up victory after victory for gun safety,” he said.

    Murphy’s pleas for action and growing public outrage and activism finally produced results, as the Senate this year passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). Joe Biden signed the bill in June, marking the first time in nearly 30 years that the US approved a new major federal gun law. The BSCA expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers and allocated funding for mental health and crisis intervention programs, among other initiatives.

    A number of policies demanded by gun safety advocates, including an assault weapons ban, did not make it into the BSCA. But Murphy and his allies point to the legislation, along with widespread public support for proposals like universal background checks, to argue that America is finally ready to make significant changes.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/03/us-gun-control-senator-chris-murphy-victory-after-victory

    “Gun safety” = disarm whitey.

    Disarm whitey, and then exterminate whitey.

    The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has nothing to do with hunting animals for food. It’s purpose is for the resistance to and overthrow of tyrannical government.

    1. No doubt that the WEF, the CCP, the United Nations, Money Elites, Royal Families, Banking System ,the Bill Gates, George Soros, ,the technocrats,infiltrated politicians, Club of Rome, and other groups in on the Scheme of the One World
      Order//Great Reset assault on humanity.

      First , the pre-planned scheme to launch global pandemics , to bring on medical tyranny, forced lockdowns ,forced
      injections, bankrupt small business, and loot Government coffers to be transferred to the culprits, is blatant now.
      Second, a scheme to use a Climate Change Narrative , to assault and deprive the human populations , based on a false narrative that carbons is the greatest threat to the World, is false.
      Third, a underlying de-wealth and de- population agenda for global populations .
      A further plan to assault humans with hacking them , robotizing them, and gene altering them against their will.
      A overall plan that the human populations will own nothing, they will be hacked slaves, they will eat bugs, and freedom is gone, and the psychopath dictorship rules the Globe.
      Why are we tolerating this group of unelected Terrorists Cult of Powers that want to destroy a World that functioned for their self serving take over.
      While these liars talk Communism and equity, their plan is that the Elites control all the resources of globe, as one big private party monopoly, and the human race is just killed or enslaved.
      What do you call a bottom line ideology that wants to kill off humans , hack them and enslave them, while they live in the lap of luxury, controlling all earthy resources?

      Just listen to Dr Harari talk, or Klaus Schwab, or even Dr Fauci or Bill Gates. They are a Cult of genocidal psychopaths that think the human species should be slaughtered and enslaved to save the earth for them. How can murder and enslavement and deprivation be equity? If anything they are poisoning the earth, the animals, and they are the greatest threat to humans ever. They are reckless and dangerous and need to be stopped.
      Finally Rand Paul is attacking Dr Fauci for causing 7 million people to die by funding a bio weapon with China that was unleashed on World.
      I think they actually delivered toxins globally to fake a Pandemic, and used a fake PCR test to fake out the World.
      But, the more populations fine out about the true colors of this Global Innsurrection by this fraudster terrorist Cult of powers, the more they won’t get compliance with their plans to rule the World.
      People cannot give one inch to the plans of the Globalists. Fortunately the Globalists narratives are breaking down , and you only have about 10 % compliance on the new injections they are pushing.
      No doubt they are going to try to push another lockdown and panademic, or climate change fraud in the near future as they go into the next round of WAR on humans.

  10. “So you really had a housing bubble, you had housing prices going up [at] very unsustainable levels and overheating and that kind of thing.”

    You have to give the Fed credit as an institution. They have come a long way since the ‘see no bubble, hear no bubble, speak no bubble’ Greenspan era of bubble blindness.

    1. Not really. As I posted in comments the other day, Greenspan was actively discussing the bubble in minutes as early as 2005. After his paper on mortgage equity withdrawal, reporters said ‘Greenspan used to say a national bubble wasn’t possible, now he won’t shut up about it.’ I forget exactly what year that was but he had a change of mind.

      Jerry & co on the other hand was pedal to the metal until this past spring. Think about that: full on money gusher to saying it’s a bubble in 9 or 10 months.

      Oh, and Greenspan wasn’t doing however many years of QE. This is a complete central banking clusterfook way worse than Greenspan and the only question I have is was it intentional.

      1. I don’t recall the exact timing, but I recall Greenspan claiming there was no bubble, though some coastal areas had become “a bit frothy.”

        That was long before a decade of Quantitative Easing pushed the Housing Bubble into every corner of Oil City.

      2. “…depending on a number of uncertain factors such as how quickly inflation fades and how the economy absorbs the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes next year.”

        It’s hard to find convincing evidence at this point that inflation is under control.

        1. Its not under control yet but I see evidence in my own life of prices falling. Electronics are dropping like a rock. Great time to build a pc or buy a nice tv. Housing prices are starting to fall, just turned the corner. Car prices are not rising so much and mid priced cars are slowly getting price cuts. Food prices seem to be moderating a bit. Gas in my high tax state is now less that $4 a gallon (but diesel is high still). People have less money in their pockets these days. Prices are dropping it seems.

  11. The Joe Biden economy.

    I just paid $8.92 at McDonalds for a #1 meal Egg McMuffin, hash browns, and small orange juice.

    You will eat nothing.

    1. Damn dude/it/them, stop splurging!!! You are the reason for all these inflations!

      – Janet “The Felon” Yellen

    2. “I just paid $8.92 at McDonalds…”

      Might as well call it $10 after dropping the change in the tip box with the picture of a brown kid with a cleft palate.

    3. I don’t often do that, but if I’m planning on it I take a travel mug full of OJ from home. Skip the hash and the price is more than halved.

      “Do you want that as a meal?”

      “No.”

      I won’t eat a burger from any of these joints. They do horrible things to my stomach.

  12. Linked from Townhall, a sequence of tweets from Glenn Greenwald all posted today:

    “Not only is there no evidence that the documents used by the NY Post were the by-product of “hacking” by Russia or anyone else — Twitter’s false excuse for banning discussion of the story — the NYT has confirmed that the laptop was left and never picked up at the repair store”

    “In March, 2022 – almost 18 months after the election was over and the CIA, which invented this lie, got what it wanted: Biden’s defeat – the NYT admitted the materials from the laptop were authentic and the story of how the NY Post obtained them was true”

    “More proof of the key and most-overlooked point on the controversy of Big Tech censorship:

    This is not being done autonomously by tech firms. The censorship is being coerced by the in-power Democratic Party, who explicitly wants more censorship online”

    “And, I’ll bet anything, these extraordinary documents – showing the extreme pressure and collusion between liberal Twitter execs and Dem Party leaders to censor reporting on Biden – won’t be reported by liberal outlets except to mock it and/or use DNC talking points to attack it.”

    “Put another way, it’s almost inconceivable to imagine NBC News, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post – let alone the sh*tty Brooklyn-based digital tabloids – to give voice to a single person to explain why these documents are so explosive and reveal grave corruption.”

    “All the little employees of media corporations who don’t do any reporting – just tattling on powerless citizens to get them censored – and who are the leading advocates for censorship, predictably attacking @mtaibbi and scoffing at his real reporting”

    “The whole sleazy, in-group liberal gang from NBC, Daily Beast, etc — all the censorship advocates who think censorship advocacy is somehow compatible with journalism — are furious that the the acts of their Dem Party allies in getting the Biden story censored are being exposed.”

    Another document dump of the “Twitter Files” is coming sometime today. Stay tuned…

  13. Mass Formation Psychosis.

    The Federalist — LA Health Officials Won’t Move On From Covid Because They Can’t (12/2/2022):

    “Whatever happens to community transmission, masks were always on the menu, whether people continued to wear them voluntarily or not. It doesn’t matter how many shots are on the market, how many therapeutics have been made available, or even how ineffective mandates have proved to be. The face mask has become a marker of political identity, a religious talisman remaining sacred in the most left-wing enclaves of the country. Local health officials steeped in leftism won’t give up on face masks — because they can’t.

    Within a year of the pandemic’s inception, public masking became no different than the type of passive activism embedded in gender pronoun bios: pointless in reality, but central to the user’s identity. But while a refusal to list one’s obvious pronouns might spoil a promotion or sever relationships with colleagues, refusal to muzzle could cost thousands of dollars in government fines.

    Like pronoun bios or pink genitalia hats, face coverings became the latest and most aggressive form of ritual symbolism adopted by activists who were too concerned about broadcasting their supposed virtue to care about masks’ utility. Even as the rest of the country moves on from the Faucian Covid regime that exploited public anxiety to lock people at home, California health officials aren’t ready for a post-pandemic future.”

    https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/02/la-health-officials-wont-move-on-from-covid-because-they-cant/

    I saw some freak walking around Safeway the other day wearing a K95 and plastic visor face shield.

    Mass Formation Psychosis.

  14. Under Marxism, children are property of the state.

    The Federalist — How I Lovingly Guided My Child Away From Transgenderism — And How You Can Too (12/2/2022):

    “About a year and a half ago, I noticed that my son — let’s call him Andy — was putting rainbow stickers on his phone. And a friend alerted me that Andy rebuked her daughter in a group chat for being “so cisgender.” I did some delicate digging, and it became clear: My child, then 13, was flirting with going “trans.”

    He’s not alone. The number of transgender-identifying kids is up 20 to 40 times since a decade ago, to 1.5 percent of all teens.”

    Up 20 to 40 times?

    It’s called grooming. And it’s supported by globalists and organizations like the Anti Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    “The first thing I had to do was to realize that the gender cult is powerful, and I can’t control the choices and feelings of my kid. I had to accept my limits, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. Parents are still the most important influence on their kids.

    I was lucky: My son was at a private school that did not push kids, behind their parents’ backs, into exploring alternate sexualities and getting “treated” by lifetime medicalization. If my son had been at a trans-affirming school — which means just about any public school — I would have been undermined at every turn.”

    Just about any public school?

    That is a correct statement. And when you buy a house, your property taxes are paying to promote it, and if you object, Attorney General Merrick Garland will toss you in the January 6th gulag.

    “One other piece was key: technology. Much trans proselytizing happens online, with anonymous adults love-bombing vulnerable kids.”

    Antifa groomers. See also: Marxism.

    “These adults sell the idea that acceptance can be found only in their new trans family and not in their real home. Some parents need to take drastic steps regarding their kids’ online presence. Fortunately, the screen problem was one I had been addressing for a long time, so I could be more moderate.”

    https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/02/how-i-lovingly-guided-my-child-away-from-transgenderism-and-how-you-can-too/

    And a re-post from a few months ago.

    Post Millennial — Heavily armed Antifa militants ‘stand guard’ outside Texas ‘kid friendly’ drag show (8/29/2022):

    “A “kid friendly” drag brunch for all ages was guarded against protests by armed Antifa militants carrying AR-15s. The drag event was held at the Anderson Distillery and Grill in Roanoke, Texas.

    The event called the Barrel Babes Drag Brunch was advertised as “Dancing Music and Laughs.” Journalist Taylor Hansen said that the “kid-friendly” event featured “Vulgarity, Sexualization of Minors, and Partial Nudity.”

    Kris Cruz from Blaze TV reported that Antifa militants armed with AR-15s acted as “bodyguards” and escorted attendees to their vehicles. He added that Antifa and the staff worked together to provide “protection” for attendees.

    Kruz also reported that Antifa was placed strategically during the “kid friendly” drag show and “was armed like snipers on the 3rd floor of the parking garage.”

    https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-heavily-armed-antifa-militants-stand-guard-outside-texas-kid-friendly-drag-show

    Stop noticing. Seriously, you have to STOP NOTICING, because you’re not allowed to notice.

    Globalists gonna globe.

    1. Lemme guess, 4-shots in the Starbucks Venti this morning?

      Not complaining though as I appreciate the alternate content and perspective. Realize that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if it’s a Catholic priest in a white robe or some guy wearing red lipstick, leather chaps and high heels, they both want your children for the same reasons. They’re just employing different tactics to get there.

      1. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. The abridged edition (Penguin Classics) is 795 pages and it is not an easy read. It is a dense book, written and published in the late 1700s.

        Gibbon, being an author of his time and culture, does not write explicitly about the depravity of the Roman elite. But the parallels between the early centuries A.D. and our own era in which we are living are impossible to deny.

        China and Russia will probably still exist a few centuries from now.

        The United States as we know it will not.

        1. The United States as we know it will not.

          It won’t be around by 2050, maybe not even make it to 2035

          1. It’s already not the country I grew up in.

            We absolutely can have what was to be our inheritance, but it’s not going to slide off a plate for us for free.

        2. “The United States as we know it will not.”

          Change is good, e.g., the toothless cow punchers on the open range lamented barbed wire fencing as it meant unemployment and a change in skills, working in a mine shaft or closer to town, having to bathe more often, etc., but few today would desire a return to that life.

          There’s no shortage of cast drab places to live around the planet, poorly graded roads with puddles, faded turquoise paint chipping-off, $10 boy’s and girl’s ash, hungry mosquitos, etc., and everyone living there would trade places with you in a heartbeat.

          One of our greatest strengths is a common spoken language spanning 3,000-miles across the entire country, which enables these changes to happen with an ease that is the envy of other countries.

          1. our greatest strengths is

            Our Freedom, our Constitution and our Faith. Take those away and there’s nothing special about those 3,000 miles.

          2. Common language??? Go inside a Walmart for 20 minutes and tell me what is the common language spoken there.

          3. “Common language???”

            A worker here can move 1,500-miles to another a job if need be, which is unlikely in Europe due to cast balkanization.

        3. I red the full version, cover to cover, but the best ever summary of the decline of the Roman empire is by Will Durant. Probably the best few pages at the end of the book that summarizes everything. Maybe I’ll just scan it and post it if there is any interest.

          1. “…but the best ever summary of the decline of the Roman empire is by Will Durant.”

            I’ll look it up. Thanks!

  15. “When we have periods of accommodative policy – supporting economic expansion – wage inequality falls and wealth inequality rises. Why? Because only a fraction of our population owns assets.”

    Quantitative Easing was a great recipe for increasing wealth inequality. Look no further than the big real estate investors snapping up single family residences in every corner of Oil City. This wasn’t a thing until the Fed went hog wild with a decade of Quantitative Easing.

    How come they did it for so long after The Great Recession ended? It seems like their failed attempt to fix wealth inequality made it so much worse.

    1. “How come they did it for so long after The Great Recession ended?”

      The simple answer is because they were all personally insider trading it to extraordinary returns and their bankster masters were quite happy with the situation as well.

  16. Alberta, Manitoba, and Other Provinces Refuse to Take Part in Justin Trudeau’s Gun Grab

    AWR HAWKINS
    3 Dec 2022

    Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and other provinces are refusing to take part in implementing Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s gun grab.

    On September 28, 2022, Breitbart News reported that Trudeau’s “assault weapons” ban includes confiscatory policies that required police cooperation, and that Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro made clear he would not enforce it.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/12/03/alberta-manitoba-other-provinces-refuse-take-part-in-justin-trudeaus-gun-grab/

    1. “Surprisingly honest discussion between two realtors”

      I accidentally listened to that whole thing while I was looking at other stuff, honestly didn’t mean to but I would have to agree with your call on that.

    2. “Surprisingly honest discussion…”

      Indeed, but they over-talk the issues, and they could have easily shortened the discussion down 10 to 15-min without losing content.

      1. they could have easily shortened the discussion

        They’re realtors. I’m not sure they’re capable of that.

        1. I have. He’s redundant but arguably the most honest out there on YT and he has the pulse on SoCal.

Comments are closed.