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Sunday, July 17, 2022

2022-07-17

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)

Economic and Market Fare:

Mainstream economics — the triumph of ideology over science



OK, the title might be too dramatic, but the hike of 100 basis points on Wednesday was somewhat out of the ordinary. ...



When BofA's top Rates strategist, and former NY Fed analyst, Marc Cabana speaks, investors, the Fed - and even his former Fed co-worker and repo guru, Zoltan Pozsar - listen. And what Cabana has to say now is extremely important.

On Thursday morning, roughly around the time BofA's chief equity strategist Ssavita Subramanian slashed her S&P year-end price target by a whopping 25% from 4,500 to 3,600, Cabana's rates team published a must read note, in which he wrote that the bank's rates team "is making substantial downward revisions to our rate forecasts following our US economics team’s new call for a mild 2022 recession and lower Fed funds rate path." ...


Kelton: The Pitchforks Aren't Coming
For the last two years, Joe Biden has been talking about raising taxes on large corporations and wealthy Americans. It's not happening.

Nearly a decade ago, tech entrepreneur Nick Hanauer warned his fellow billionaires that “the pitchforks are coming.” The economy was still reeling from the financial crisis, and for the vast majority of Americans, the policy response had been a near total failure. There were too few jobs, too much suffering, and way too much inequality. Eventually, Hanauer wrote, the masses would rise up.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

Many warning signs suggesting that a debt reckoning is imminent






Charts: 
1:

..... Inflation just happens to be the LAST and most widely embraced fraud. Almost everyone in the business media is a "supply sider" so they view inflation as an existential risk to corporate profits and stock prices. Didn't they fight for forty years to implode the middle class? We can't have all of that hard work unwound now. Hence they are complicit in a Fed policy error of BIBLICAL magnitude. After all, if you need people to buy your product - be that homes, cars, stocks or cryptos then what you do is you tell them that the prices are going up. No salesmen ever tells someone the price is going DOWN. 

As I've said many times, measuring inflation as a year over year rate of change while exiting a pandemic lockdown, is the height of idiocy. And now it has set off an UNCONTROLLED GLOBAL inflation hysteria.

"30+ central banks have hiked rates by at least one percentage point at one time in 2022"

policy makers are willing to countenance triggering a recession if that is the extent to which they need to shift the demand curve in order to meet this aim"

Refusing to go along with the trend is the Bank of Japan, with Governor Haruhiko Kuroda dismissing a pickup in inflation in his country as being mainly driven by commodities -- not the kind of stable price increases he’s been seeking"

Indeed. The Japanese have been doing this much longer than everyone else and they know transitory asset inflation when they see it. Thirty+ central banks are now competing to trigger synchronized global meltdown on a scale that monetary policy can't solve. 

The Fed is putting on a show as how NOT to manage monetary policy. Right now, they should be putting rate hikes on hold to give time for their recent hikes to take effect. But instead, they are ONCE AGAIN panic reacting to the CPI and leaning towards a 1% rate hike. The biggest one since Volcker imploded the economy. 

However, in the absence of wage inflation, nothing cures high prices like high prices. Consumers don't have the spending power to buy EVERYTHING at inflated prices. Money spent on higher gasoline bills must be taken from somewhere else.

Collapse is NOT the true definition of inflation.

There is NO LIE today's bulls won't believe. And no truth they will believe. They call this approach "contrarian" investing.  He who believes in the least truth wins. Currently, the U.S.-centric "TINA" ("There is no alternative") trade is oft-cited as the primary reason to own U.S. risk assets. Which is ironic, because that is exactly what I define to be the greatest single risk at this juncture - the outflows of money from the rest of the world to the U.S.

In other words, the greatest bull argument is also the greatest bear argument. Who to believe?

The people who don't believe in the truth of course. 

Here is what I see happening next:

The magnitude of this global collapse will be on such a scale that 32+ years of Japanification will end. The Japanese have been using cheap money to AVOID economic reform for over three decades. Now, the last false prophet of economic reform - Shinzo Abe was just assassinated. Coincidence? No. He and his ilk have propagated an era of monetary mass delusion. He was supposed to be a reformer but he turned out to just be another cleverly disguised stimulus addict. 

Here in the U.S., Millennial meltdown will ensure things "change". Meaning there will be no more bailouts for the wealthy. Nothing is too big to fail this time around. 

That doesn't mean the end of the world, but it does mean the end of rampant lying.

People ask what do I mean when I say that stocks will become "dead money". What I mean is that central banks will do everything possible to prevent true price discovery. And as long as they are trying to reinflate their collapsed bubble, that will zombify the stock market. It will trade in a wide slow range. 

The generational highs are in. Our lies are only "exceptional" in their magnitude. 



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

The annual chronic hunger report on how to repurpose harmful subsidies


One of the most intense heat waves in over 200 years is unfolding across Europe with temperatures rivaling those in Death Valley -- one of the hottest places on Earth.




Carbon removal is no substitute for reducing climate pollution. But it is now a necessary tool to keep temperatures in check.









Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Regular Fare:


Let’s put an end to this nonsense:

The Asian Development Banks is essentially a US proxy and the World Bank is mostly controlled by the US. Market borrowings are almost entirely from Western sources.

............ Now, the media is constantly full of stories about the Chinese Debt Trap. They’re bullshit.

..... The “developing” world is a mess because of the West, not China. It is our policies which made it nearly impossible for most nations to develop. Those policies were designed to make our coporations and banks rich and to weaken the ability of poorer countries to resist us. They were exactly the opposite of what is required to develop a country, which is almost always done behind trade barriers and by moving UP the value added chain, not by selling raw materials and crops.

..... That’s the story of most of the developing world.

And if you need to borrow money as a third world nation? Borrow it from China, not the West, if they’ll lend to you. As for the IMF, their job is to keep the payments going and keep countries in the debt trap so they can never develop and never have policies independent of the US and the West.


Unsustainability / Climate Fare:






... Biden kicking the hornet’s nest in Ukraine made energy costs rise globally—gasoline prices briefly topped $6 in California, $9 in parts of Europe—and resultant inflation, now above 9 percent, is causing shocks across the entire consumer culture. This is painful, but it is precisely the rescue remedy Earth requires as we go cold turkey on our fossil addiction.

For this reason, inflation may waffle and plateau but the emerging recession is not temporary. We have to de-grow, whatever you call it. The proxy wars, too-big-to-jail bailouts of 2008 and the Covid relief packages of 2020 are not serviceable debts. The theft of the life savings of millions of Afghans and Russians is not enough to keep up with exponential energy debt and the need to de-fossilize.

... US citizens have the highest carbon dioxide footprints of anyone on Earth. The global average is four tons. To stay on an (extremely disruptive) 2-degree path—the best we can hope for now—humans, including USAnians, must chop their personal footprints to two tons. The US cannot ask Chinese, Indians, or Papua New Guineans to cut emissions (which from the climate legacy standpoint are minuscule compared to the US) unless USAnians lead by example. The US per capita carbon footprint is 18 tons.

To get to two tons, the average Chinese could be visualized as jumping out of a window on the first floor of the building. Maybe there will be some broken wrists and ankles there. The average USAnian has to jump from the 18th floor of the Trump Tower.

.... Can Biden stop or even slow this? Not unless he has a time machine that can take him to the mid-20th century—say 1950—when these effects began to lock in. He might be able to avert Near Term Human Extinction even at this late date, but the politics of getting that done is not trending in his favor.



The hardest part of living through a time of wrenching change is that nobody particularly bothers to inform you that the times have changed and that nothing will be the same again. Certainly not the talking heads on TV, who are often the last to know. You have to figure it out for yourself if you can. But I am here to help. It all has to do with energy. Not with technology—that’s incidental; not with military superiority—that’s fleeting and largely imaginary; certainly not with any sort of political or cultural self-righteousness—that’s delusional. There is no substitute for energy. If you run low, you can’t switch to running your industrial economy on fiddlesticks. It just shuts down. What’s worse, energy sources are not even particularly substitutable for each other. If you run low on gas, you can’t just switch to coal or to dried dung, even if you are up to your neck in it.

Modern industry runs on oil, natural gas, and coal, in that order, and they can be substituted for each other in very limited ways. Furthermore, energy has to be very cheap. Oil has to be about the cheapest liquid you can buy—cheaper than milk; cheaper even than bottled water. If energy isn’t cheap enough, then all the energy-hungry industry that runs on it becomes unprofitable and shuts down. That’s the stage at which we are now in much of the world. So, what happened? Once upon a time the US produced .............

.................. The world has changed, but social reality hasn’t yet caught up with political and physical reality. This is the summer of anticipation. The winter of discontent is next. Come next spring, we will all be living on a strange and different planet.



...... For Armstrong, the concept of ahimsa is one of many examples of how ancient spiritual traditions can teach us how to regain a sense of the sacredness of nature. This matters because, as she argues, the future of our species may now depend on cultivating a Jain-like awareness of the terrible damage and harm we are inflicting on the other inhabitants of planet Earth.

... Today, Armstrong says, the “fearful reality” of the climate crisis shows that “we have to change not only our lifestyle but our whole belief system”.


...



COVID Fare:

I've continued to come across too much excellent COVID-related content (with contrarian evidence-based points-of-view!!) to link to it all
Read everything by eugyppius; el gato malo; Mathew Crawford; Steve Kirsch; Jessica Rose!
Paul Alexander, Berenson, Chudov, Lyons-Weiler, Toby Rogers are also go-to mainstays; a list to which I have added Andreas Oehler, Joey Smalley (aka Metatron) and, Julius Ruechel; Denninger worth staying on top of too for his insights, and especially his colorful language; and Norman Fenton; Marc Girardot; plus Walter Chesnut (on twitter); new additions: Sheldon Yakiwchuk and Aaron Kheriarty; I will of course continue to post links to key Peter McCullough material, and Geert Vanden Bossche, and Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya, and Sucharit Bhakdi, and Pierre Kory, and Harvey Risch, and Michael Yeadon, and John Ioannidis, and Paul Marik, and Tess Lawrie, and Zelenko, and Dolores Cahill, and [local prof] Byram Bridle, and Ryan Cole, and…
but going forward, my linking to material by those mainstays mentioned above will be reduced to key excerpts and/or essential posts



Concern over the neurotoxicity of compounds from many sources, including aluminum and mercury in vaccines, should be amplified for those who have received the spike protein-inducing jabs


Smalley: Letter from an NHS Whistleblower to NHS England regarding phase 5 of COVID "vaccinations".
In March, I shared the attempts of a courageous NHS Practice Manager to make the NHS and Chris Whitty aware of their concerns around the COVID “vaccines”.


‘People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.’

.... An official at the FDA put it this way: “I can’t tell you how many people at the FDA have told me, ‘I don't like any of this, but I just need to make it to my retirement.’”



.... Countries with national health insurance can match their vaccination registries more easily against hospital admissions and deaths, and they have consistently shown much higher percentages of Covid deaths in vaccinated people.

Still, the data from Manitoba appear to mark the first time that any government agency has actually found a higher risk of death in vaccinated people.


Were the causes deliberately obscured?


It is happening and it keeps happening, and the media can try and suppress it as much as they want. This is a “thing”.


Nass: WATCH OUT!
Phase 5 of the so-called vaccines is coming.

It is unclear how much spike will be in the new vaccines:  it might be the same amount but there could be more, twice as much as there is in current vaccines.

The COVID vaccines do not prevent severe illness or death from COVID, as claimed by our top public health liars.  Many published papers, and national data from multiple countries have now demonstrated this. Dr. Paul Marik said so in a great interview today, as well.

Stop taking any more poison.   The risks are significant and the benefits have completely evaporated.  Protect yourself and your family.





Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

Toby: The gaslighting, discounting, discrediting, outright bigotry, and hate that mainstream society directs toward people who are vaccine injured is the quintessential example of epistemic injustice.


Iannattone: The latest manufacturing of consent for mass re/infection rests on the promise that repeat infections will be increasingly mild and bad outcomes are rare. They’ve been wrong at every turn so far. Maybe this time they’re finally right? Probably not though.


Hurst: 5th booster?
It’s not vaccination anymore is it?
It’s acupuncture


...



CO-VIDs of the Week:

Geert Vanden Bossche, Covid Mass Vaccination Triggering New Pandemics and Epidemics


The CDC should be distributing these videos because they help people understand how the COVID shots work and the science behind them. But I seriously doubt that will ever happen.


In a highly "vaccinated" world, where smartphones are in everybody's hands, not even the CCP can totally black out the toll of those "vaccines"



Anecdotal Fare:

Age spectrum profiles & symptom spectrum profiles changed 2020 to 2021






Pushback Fare:

Court Blocks Biden Admin From Punishing Unvaccinated Air Force Members



COVID Conspiracy Fare:

This "vaccination" drive is but the most explicit measure now being used to wipe out all humanity, except (of course) the perpetrators of this crime beyond all crimes



Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:

GeoPolitical Fare:

A High Chance of Meatballs

The situation in Ukraine is terribly, painfully simple. Russia has been winning since February 24, and Ukraine has zero chance of turning the odds around. But Zelensky is willing to sacrifice the lives of ever more of his citizens -this now includes people up to 60 years old, and women (men can’t even leave their cities)-. Zelensky’s western backers, meanwhile, keep on promising to send him lethal weapons (remember their words 5 months ago?) and talk about defeating Putin. Zero chance. But a high chance of meatballs.

The only way out of this kerfuffle is the negotiating table. But Zelensky doesn’t like his present position on that table, and NATO doesn’t either. Z wants more BIG guns, to “improve” that position. Zero chance. But a high chance of meatballs. Meanwhile, who’s going to rebuild the country when all the promising young people are gone?





CaitOz Fare:


Two powerful leaders met beneath the hot Jeddah sun to discuss oil and killing and friendship.

One of the leaders rules a tyrannical regime which funds terrorists, murders journalists, suppresses civil rights and commits war crimes. The other, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is no better.



The International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America has released a statement opposing the US government’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, saying the billions being funneled into the military-industrial complex “at a time when ordinary Americans are struggling to pay for housing, groceries, and fuel” is “a slap in the face for working people.” The statement advocates a negotiated settlement for peace, saying continuing to pour weapons into the country will “needlessly prolong the war, resulting in more civilian deaths” and that it “risks escalating and widening the war – up to and including nuclear war.”

In response to this entirely reasonable and moderate position, the DSA is currently being raked over the coals with accusations of Kremlin loyalty and facilitation of murder and bloodshed by blue-checkmarked narrative managers on Twitter. This is because the only acceptable positions for anyone of significant influence to have about this war range from supporting continuing current proxy warfare operations to initiating a direct hot war between NATO and Russia. 

That’s how narrow the permissible spectrum of debate has been shrunk regarding this conflict: status quo hawkish to omnicidal hawkish. Anything outside that spectrum gets framed as radical extremism. As Noam Chomsky said: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” ...



Long Reads / Big Thoughts:

An unscientific look at you the audience

... Firstly in order of personality types by numbers (percentages in brackets).
  1. INTJ - Architect - 195 (20%)
  2. INFJ - Advocate - 154 (16%)
  3. INFP - Mediator - 106 (11%)
  4. INTP - Logician - 95 (10%)
  5. ISTJ - Logistician - 64 (7%)
  6. ENFJ - Protagonist - 52 (5%)
....


Satirical Fare:

Study Shows U.S. 4th Graders Now Gay At A 12th-Grade Level



Pics of the Week:



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