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Monday, July 22, 2024

2024-07-22

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


Economic and Market Fare:




Bubble Fare:

***** Hussman: You’re Soaking in It

On Tuesday, July 16, our most reliable gauge of U.S. stock market valuations hit the steepest extreme in U.S. financial history. We cannot, and do not, assert that this places a “limit” on speculation – even the previous January 2022 peak slightly exceeded the high of 1929. In our investment discipline, valuations are not enough. The uniformity or divergence of market internals is critically important (particularly following our 2021 adaptations), and we also attend to syndromes of extremely overextended market conditions. Our discipline does not rely on forecasts, scenarios, or projections of market action. Instead, we try to align our investment stance with observable, measurable market conditions as they change over the market cycle. Still, there’s a very rare set of market conditions extreme enough to deserve a “warning.” As Madge said in the old Palmolive dish soap commercials, “you’re soaking in it.” ...........................................





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Five reasons to question the frenzy behind the technology


Huber: Walter Schloss, Nifty Fifty, Current Market Valuations and Opportunities

I was going to say there is good news and bad news, but like the wise turtle from Kung Fu Panda says, “there is just news, there is no good or bad”. This post has my thoughts on how I see current market conditions and the opportunities it’s creating (which is the good news part).

With the S&P 500 trading north of 25 P/E and many of the world’s great companies trading at 40 P/E or higher (Costco is now at 55 P/E!), I think we could be at valuation levels that might lead to disappointing results for these stocks over the next 5-10 years, even if the businesses continue to do well (which I expect many of them to do).

A cut from 40 P/E to a more normal 20 P/E is difficult to overcome over even a long period — a stock that grows earnings at 12% annually for a decade would lead to just a 4% annualized return in the stock if the multiple fell by half over that time. Most of the world’s best businesses today will not grow at 12% annually over the next decade (though a very select few might). It’s far more rare than people realize, especially for companies that grew this fast or faster over the previous decade.

I wrote a post recently about how the largest tech companies are looking very different than they were just five years ago. If the AI spending boom slows down or if demand for AI proves to be somewhat less than expected (or takes longer to materialize, which is what happened in the late 90’s telecom/internet boom), then some of these companies will have excess capacity and lower returns on capital. They became great stocks in large part because their ROIC’s were sky high coupled with a starting valuation of 10-15 P/E in many cases (AAPL, META, MSFT and GOOG all traded around this level or cheaper at times last decade). Now we’re faced with the opposite: much more capital intensive businesses with much higher starting valuations closer to 30-40 P/E.

These are truly great companies and many of them will have continued strong fundamentals. I’ve owned stock in a few of these over the years and I’ve never been opposed to mega-caps, but as a group, I think these stocks have become much riskier. Durability in an investment comes from paying a price that is far less than the stock is worth (a margin of safety). Fragility comes from doing the opposite. Stocks of the world’s best companies can fall into either of those two groups depending on price.

So what’s an investor to do?

The good news is there are lots of opportunities to find great value outside of the mega-caps currently (see a few examples in my recent archives). I think there is an interesting valuation gap emerging between the largest 25-50 stocks and everything else. This has happened numerous times in the past where the large high-quality stocks became expensive while bargains existed elsewhere, most famously in the early 1970’s and the late 1990’s. Both of these periods were followed by a multi-year correction where the expensive stocks fell and the cheapest stocks soared. ...........

I recently re-listened to this guest lecture he gave in 2008. Sometimes it's helpful to go back to basics. Schloss was focused on downside protection, which he prioritized through investing in stocks that traded below an easily identifiable net asset value (he often used tangible book value) and that also had great balance sheets. He used the numbers and ran an insurance type approach that utilized the law of large numbers approach where any one stock might not work out, but “if you have 15 to 20 of them”…

It's amazing how simple Schloss's strategy was and how well it worked. He must have mentioned 10 times "I don't like to lose money"  ...........


Universa’s Mark Spitznagel, who has made billions from past crashes, sees last hurrah for stocks before severe reckoning

............... But now he sees a major selloff approaching with stocks potentially losing more than half of their value. Yet predicting even approximately when the market will crash is a lot harder than hedging a portfolio against it—many would say impossible. In the same way that so many fund managers and strategists always sound optimistic, scary talk sounds like a shrewd marketing exercise for someone insuring against tail risk.

“I think we’re on the way to something really, really bad—but of course I’d say that,” joked Spitznagel in an interview this week. ...............

Spitznagel predicts an even worse shakeout than a quarter-century ago because the excesses are more extreme—the “greatest bubble in human history.” High public indebtedness and valuations make a Washington-led rescue harder to pull off. He sees today’s benign slowdown in inflation overshooting and says the U.S. economy could enter a recession by the end of the year.

The ominous language Spitznagel uses to describe the macroeconomic situation is a “Mega-Tinderbox-Timebomb.” ...........



Vid Fare:

Charts:
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(not just) for the ESG crowd:



Pettifor: Global Economic Governance: What’s “Growth” Got to Do with It?
An obsession with growth has generated massive inequality, undermined global economic stability, and weakened faith in democracy. Reversing these trends requires reining in the power of financial capital and managing global trade flows.



Geopolitical Fare:

Genocide Monster Drops Out, Endorses Fellow Genocide Monster

President Biden has caved to mounting pressure to drop out of the presidential race due to widespread concerns about his obvious neurological decline, bowing out and endorsing his exact ideological clone Kamala Harris. Apparently the consensus is that he’s too demented to run for president, but is not too demented to actually be president for the next six months.

And hell, whatever man. This means nothing and changes nothing, other than perhaps arguably somewhat diminishing the likelihood of a Republican empire manager being sworn into the White House in January. Harris differs from Biden only in voice and appearance, and has been an enthusiastic supporter of Biden’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza over the last nine and a half months.

Harris, assuming she wins the nomination, will campaign on the promise of continuing Biden’s incineration of Gaza, continuing Biden’s “ironclad” support for Israel, continuing Biden’s proxy war in Ukraine, continuing Biden’s escalations against Russia and China, continuing Biden’s expansion of the US war machine, continuing Biden’s facilitation of ecocidal capitalism, and continuing Biden’s dehumanizing policies of worldwide exploitation and imperialist extraction. If she gets into the White House the face of the operation will change, but the operation itself will not.

And the same will be true if Trump gets in. Every few years the US empire has this weird little festival where it pretends the government is changing hands and will now begin operating in a way that is meaningfully different from the way it was operating before. But then exploitation continues, the injustice continues, the ecocide continues, the wars continue, the militarism continues, the imperialism continues, the propaganda indoctrination continues, the authoritarianism and oppression continues.

The behavior of the empire is no more changed by getting a new president than a corporation is changed by getting a new secretary at the front desk of its main office. 

Much will be made of Kamala Harris’ race and gender. Much will be made of the fact that she is not Donald Trump. Much emotion will surround her campaign. And then, whether she wins or loses, nothing much will change. ........



Sci Fare:




tweet pic of the Week:



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Sunday, July 14, 2024

2024-07-14

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


Economic and Market Fare:


The evidence supporting multiple Fed rate cuts is now solid. 

As I've been documenting for at least the past year, shelter costs, as calculated according to the BLS's flawed methodology, have been artificially raising reported CPI inflation. Abstracting from shelter costs, the year over year change in the CPI has been less than 2% for 10 of the past 13 months, and in June it was 1.8%. This clearly meets and exceeds the bar that Powell set this week, thus opening the door to multiple Fed rate cuts that could begin as early as the July '24 FOMC meeting, and will almost certainly occur at the September 18th meeting and at subsequent meetings. .................

In sum, the Fed has no reason to not lower rates soon. The market fully expects the first rate cut to come at the September FOMC meeting, and another 1 ½ cuts to come by year end. I don't see why the Fed can't move sooner and more forcefully. Inflation has been licked, and interest rate sensitive sectors of the economy are really hurting. Lower rates would provide welcome relief, and it would take a whole lot of cuts to add up to any meaningful stimulus. 

Cutting rates now would not be playing politics, since it would not boost the economy by any reasonable measure before the November elections; it would instead be a responsible move to avoid further damage to the economy.


we'll see

If you have been waiting for a tell, wait no longer. The great rotation is here. ...........


The tailwind of freakishly loose monetary policy is now over

........... Yet the boom in private markets since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, especially in the big buyout category, was built on ultra-loose monetary policy. Most of the returns came not from enhancing the efficiency of portfolio companies, but from selling assets at ever-increasing market multiples and through leverage, which increases the return on equity relative to the return on assets.

Today multiples are down, financing costs are up and balance sheets are weaker thanks to that leverage. Payouts to investors are low as managers are reluctant to sell assets and crystallise returns while multiples are depressed. As for private debt, its growth has been substantially driven by regulatory arbitrage, with banks facing tougher regulation since the financial crisis .......



Bubble Fare:


...................................................... The end of the cycle will only come if moneymaking applications of AI have not arrived by the time of the next economic slowdown. In an environment of falling profits, investor tolerance for expensive, low-return experiments will disappear and the AI boom will end. Many people describe Nvidia as selling picks and shovels for the AI gold rush. It’s a good metaphor. But if no one discovers gold before the next recession, the rush will end abruptly.



Charts:
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(not just) for the ESG crowd:





Outages from Albania to Texas show how electricity networks aren’t ready for climate change.




At the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday the US president referred to Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin”, referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump”, and said he is “following the advice of my commander-in-chief” on important military decisions. 

This man’s brain clearly does not work. It is done. Finito. No mas. Dementia has sunk in the rear naked choke, and Joe Biden’s neurology is tapping. 

Americans are watching live proof that their country does not require a president with functioning gray matter in order for decisions to get made and policies to be enacted in the Executive Branch of the US government. The wars and militarism have ticked on uninterrupted, the authoritarian agendas keep getting rolled out, and the same political status quo continues to be advanced. You could not ask for more conclusive proof that for all the fuss that gets made about US presidents and presidential elections, it is nothing more than a figurehead position for an empire that is not actually run by its official elected government. ....................

The “moderates” and “centrists” of the western world are in reality violent extremists, and not just violent extremists but the most murderous and destructive extremist group on the face of this planet. Not one group on Washington’s list of designated terrorist organizations has a body count that’s even a tiny fraction of what the US empire has racked up just in the 21st century alone.

This is the political ideology that Biden has aligned with throughout the entirety of his far-too-long career, from when he was just a baby swamp monster elected to the Senate at the age of 30 all the way until now as he watches all the cognitive flotsam and jetsam of his decades of Beltway soul-selling blur together like oil paints on the palette of his ruined cerebral matter.

This is who Joe Biden is. This is who western liberals are. They are the carnage, starvation and disease in Gaza. They are the biosphere strangling to death under the boot of ecocidal capitalism. They are the nuclear missiles being rolled into position around the world. They are a dying brain and a dying heart on a dying world of their own making. 

Hopefully the death of this toxic, omnicidal ideology won’t be too far behind the death of Joe Biden.



People who still believe that the news media tell them the truth and that their nation and their world work pretty much the way they were taught in school are just as brainwashed and deluded as any QAnon cultist. The only difference is that their delusions are much more widely shared, and that the mechanisms used to brainwash them are much more high-budget and sophisticated. The mainstream worldview is really just a mass-produced artificial psychosis.

It’s actually difficult to wrap your mind around the scale and pervasiveness of the mountain of lies upon which this dystopian civilization is built. You think you’re starting to get a read on things, then you gain more knowledge and insight and realize it goes so much further than you thought. You start pulling on one thread, maybe some obvious lie about Iraq or Palestine or whatever, and the whole thing just keeps unraveling and unraveling and unraveling. Before you know it you’re staring at a society that is not just riddled with untruth, but actually woven entirely from the fabric of untruth. 

Everything. How your nation really works. How the world really works. How capitalism really works. What politics really are. What the media are really used for. What laws are really used for. What wars and militarism are really used for. What ideology is really used for. What religion is really used for. What culture is really used for. What rules and etiquette are really used for. It’s all made-up narrative all the way down, and all of those narratives are made up by the powerful, in the service of the powerful. ...........................


Democratic Party delegates must choose one come August.

............ Over the past eighty years there has been a lockstep partnership of both mainstream American political parties to use the democratic forms of the American nation state as a vehicle for militarized economic and strategic “full-spectrum dominance.” This political consensus has produced a neoliberal transnational culture of permanent war within which prospects of an authentic international, universal, and democratic peace have been all but destroyed.  ...........


Project 2025 As Warmed-Over Reaganism, Bretton Woods Revisited, Rio de Janiero's "Narco-Pentecostal" Gangs, Srebrenica and "Genocide", A Wife's Revenge

The populist tide that Donald Trump rode into the White House in 2017 was held back by a series of coordinated actions involving mainstream media, Silicon Valley, and what we call the “Deep State”. Whether via media hysteria, the “Trump-Russia” conspiracy theory, or intelligence officials pushing the falsehood that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinfo”, the Trump administration was effectively neutered from its first day up until its last.

This only tells us one part of the story. The other part involves that administration’s unforced failures that came from within. One thing that liberals and NeverTrumpers got right is that Trump was never presidential material, even if he has a wealth of executive experience in the business and entertainment worlds. This is not to say that all US Presidents have been made of that special ‘material’, but they all have had the organs of state at least not openly working to sabotage him.

It’s also no secret that staffing the Trump administration ended up being a complete disaster. Due to inexperience, naivete (or even negligence), “vetted” individuals were placed into positions of power to either try and steer the Presidency along the “accepted” course laid out by previous administrations, or to sabotage any efforts to try and chart a new path. ............



“Dangerous, diabolical, and dastardly” is how Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader, just described the so-called “Project 2025” planning document that all liberals have now been commanded to light their hair on fire about and run around in circles screeching how it portends some imminent apocalyptic MAGA takeover. 

........ What would be far more surprising is if the Heritage Foundation, which drafted the document now being wailed about by every Democratic pundit, had not maximally ingratiated itself with Trump — in fact, the Trump Administration’s embrace of the Heritage Foundation was already well underway during his first term. But now liberals, desperate for a campaign pivot amidst Joe Biden’s cognitive implosion, are using their usual overwrought melodrama to hype “Project 2025” as slam-dunk proof that Trump obviously represents an Existential Threat To American Democracy™ or whatever. What they curiously fail to mention is that the document is robustly aligned with many of the liberals’ most sacrosanct priorities. ...............



............ When Washington declares war on something, it invariably produces more of it. This seems perverse until you realize that wars on abstractions are simply how managerial bureaucracies extend their bases of power. A war that can never be won is a war with job security. A war that gets worse the longer and harder you fight it is even better, because this generates growth.

......... Meanwhile, the war on multipolarity seems in general to be doing a fantastic job of generating more multipolarity.

The longer Washington wages its cowardly war against Russia, China, Iran, and I guess now North Korea, the more Washington’s standing in the world is reduced. I say ‘cowardly’ of course because the war is not waged openly: formally, no war has been declared by Washington or any of its core NATO allies against any of the obvious belligerents. It’s all done through proxies which Washington pays to train and arm and die on its behalf, funding it all with a money printer whose brrrring has gotten defeaning. Or it’s done through sabotage; let’s not forget Nordstream, which kicked the legs out from under Germany’s, and therefore Europe’s economy, in perhaps the most breathtakingly cynical act of strategic sabotage against a supposed ally that one might imagine. Washington doomed Europe in order to ensure that Europe would stay attached to Washington. The whole world sees what Washington is doing of course, and is frightened lest it happen to them, but also disgusted that it happens at all; the latter emotion is becoming increasingly dominant, however, because Washington is becoming less frightening every day. ...................

............ While AI clearly works, strictly speaking, and will undoubtedly prove useful in the future, we can all see already that machine governance just isn’t going to work. The most advanced existing model can’t even formulate the tedious elements of a standard preschool literacy program correctly. When the hype bubble bursts – and it will, as all bubbles do – it will probably take the stock market with it, given that NVIDIA is the only thing propping the markets up right now, along with the last desperate hope of the global managerial class to hold on to power.




TDS (Trump Deragnement Syndrome) Fare:


I can hardly look at social media right now. I increasingly loathe the instantaneous hyper-emotional reactions, the fact-free assertions, the self-serving conjectures. Look, people are obviously going to have an emotional reaction to an event as momentous as an attempted assassination of a former and potentially future President. .........

I think the civic health can be damaged by a proliferation of poor public reasoning. .........

By “poor public reasoning” I mean making conclusory statements devoid of established fact, based on what you on some level want to be true, rather than what is true. ...........


Things got very, very close to being very, very bad.


It is dangerous to shoot at the King, and miss



.................................................. The mass psychosis of totalitarianism has been induced many times throughout history, and as Joost Meerloo, in The Rape of the Mind explained: “It is simply a question of reorganizing and manipulating collective feelings in the proper way.” The general method by which the members of a ruling elite can accomplish this end is called menticide, with the etymology of this word being ‘a killing of the mind.’

............ Never before in history have such effective means existed to manipulate a society into the psychosis of totalitarianism. Smartphones and social media, television and the internet, all in conjunction with bots that spread propaganda and algorithms that quickly censor the flow of unwanted information, allow influencers to easily assault the minds of the unwary. The addictive nature of these technologies means that many people voluntarily subject themselves to a non-stop bombardment.



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The western political-media class hasn’t been this sympathetic and supportive toward Trump since he bombed Damascus.

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I can’t wait til Trump is president so Democrats can remember that genocide is an inexcusable evil.

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The imperial narrative managers of the mass media have successfully paced the ongoing Gaza genocide from a front page story at the center of attention to something bad we just hear the occasional story about, like global warming or poverty. It’s still happening as ferociously as ever, but if you’re getting your information about the world from mainstream sources you are now only peripherally aware of this while your attention is directed to far less consequential things.

The picture the mass media paint of the world is night and day different from life as it actually is. It’s as different from reality as any other work of fiction, not so much because it directly denies reality or makes up whole cloth lies about it, but because it so drastically misrepresents what’s going on through the manipulation of public attention.

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Democrats have been babbling about what a decent and honest person Biden is while defending the decision for him to stay in the presidential race. This is ridiculous. Biden is not and has never been a decent person; he’s easily one of the worst human beings on this planet. And what’s funny is that his dementia has probably made him a softer, gentler person than he used to be. The world might be even uglier than it is now if he had his old brain.

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There’s a quote by Noam Chomsky which you absolutely must understand if you want to be able to make sense of political discourse in the west:

“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.”

Regardless of your feelings about Chomsky, nothing about our information ecosystem will make sense to you without understanding and appreciating this quote. Until you get this and hold it at the forefront of your awareness, you won’t understand western politics, punditry or political debates.



Tweets


also, a vid:

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Pics of the Week:



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Tuesday, July 9, 2024

2024-07-09

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


Economic and Market Fare:

The misallocation of capital in the economy will fuel inflation



Tweet Fare:



Bubble Fare:

The AI bubble is reaching a tipping point. Navigating what comes next will be essential.



MMT Fare:

2: "Sahm Rule" triggered?:
3: not yet:
but:
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(not just) for the ESG crowd:


How did adoption of renewable energy become the drug of choice to treat the disease of climate change? No one knows.

Wind and solar energy policies evolved over several decades without planning, leadership, effective communication, or stakeholder engagement. There was not—and is not—any vision, resource allocation, communication strategy, governance structure, or change management plan.

In other words, none of the elements for a successful transition have been considered or implemented. That’s why emissions and temperatures keep rising. We’re on a trip to Abilene led by a clown car of energy-blind politicians. ............

.................................... It seems that our flawed proxy for a global energy policy misses a critical point: renewable energy, while beneficial, is predominantly applicable to electric power generation, which accounts for a mere twenty percent of overall energy consumption, and only about thirty-five percent of total carbon emissions. This oversight reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the broader energy needs and consumption patterns that drive modern economies. ...................

Promoters of renewable energy rarely mention its cost but never miss an opportunity to state that it’s the cheapest form of energy. It’s not but that misses the larger issue that the approach is simply not working. The energy transition is imaginary. .................


Elite climate hypocrisy is not sustainable



Geopolitical Fare:


.............. America’s in serious decline and this clusterfuck is just a symptom of the elite’s inability to govern effectively. This problem should have been dealt with before it blew up, but everyone was pretending there was no problem, despite dozens of clips of Biden’s decline making the rounds. The strategy was denial, denial, denial. “The Emperor’s clothes are the most beautiful in the world!” ............



............................. And this is what America’s public discourse has come to. 

No shame, no embarrassment in these mainstream quarters for having foolishly overinvested in an unqualified political figure because the Democratic machine settled on Biden four years ago for reasons few of us will ever fully understand. And none for covering up Biden’s unfitness for office in the years since he was elected. I have already noted the instant flood of post-debate editorials and opinion pieces calling for Biden to resign or be removed. And, to go with them, we are now served as many news stories suddenly reporting that, yes, the infirmities not heretofore mentioned were a long time coming.  

What does this overnight volte-face tell us? If you know how to read these things,  it will be obvious: Too many mainstream reporters and editors, having little respect for themselves or their profession, to say nothing of their readers and viewers, were consciously, purposefully withholding what they knew and now they report what they have all along known because they have been told it is all right to do so.  ......................

.................... I come to the case of Kamala Harris. I am astonished there is any such thing as the case of Kamala Harris, to be honest. A woman and a woman of color and an Asian–American woman all in one: This is where “identity politics” leads, I say to those who fell or still fall for it. It leads to a political mannequin who is by all appearances visionless. She so far gives no indication she harbors even a single conviction not subject to opportunistic change or abandonment.  ........................

More important than any such miscalculation, can we read a Harris nomination as anything other than an admission that the Deep State now runs the United States and the president is not much more than a figurehead preserving the illusion of American democracy? ..............


Oh No, Now The US Has To Stop Imprisoning Ex-Presidents For Their Crimes!

Everyone’s acting shocked and outraged at the Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump and other former presidents are largely immune from criminal prosecution, as though presidents getting prosecuted for their crimes is something that’s been happening this entire time.

It’s like oh wow you’re saying powerful people won’t have to abide by the same rules as normal people in America anymore?

Guess they’ll have to release all those former US presidents who’ve been imprisoned for their war crimes and crimes against humanity now. Thanks a lot, Supreme Court.

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It’s hilarious how the liberal commentariat is freaking out not because their president is a dementia patient but because they’re not sure if a dementia patient can win an election. ...........

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Israel is a material manifestation of an argument the west has been having with itself for generations, between its older genocidal settler-colonialist values and its purported values of modern times. Between the values of justice and egalitarianism we’re taught to value in school, and the fact that the west is still a savage and murderous civilization that hasn’t transcended its barbarity in the way it thinks it has.

The reason Israel has remained in this half-in, half-out state of ethnic cleansing with regard to the Palestinians is largely because the western backers upon whom Israel’s existence depends won’t fully get behind a 19th century-style extermination program to purge the land of an inconvenient population. Because the west remains a psychopathic and bloodthirsty civilization it still supports mountains of Israeli depravity, but because of the values it claims to uphold it also lacks the public consensus to go all-in on a final solution to the Palestinian question.

So until now Israel has remained in a kind of stasis, with Palestinians existing in this odd half-purged condition and continuing to resist as any population would under such circumstances. And now we’re at the point where the west is basically being told, “Either shit or get off the pot.” Either commit to the full-blown elimination of the Palestinians via genocide or ethnic cleansing, or change course and actually start standing by the values you claim to stand by for the first time in your miserable existence. Either commit to the savagery of your genocidal past, or commit to a real civilizational transformation.

Gaza is asking us a very important question about ourselves. Our answer will set the course for the future of our entire world.






Sci Fare:




Other Fare:


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Monday, July 1, 2024

2024-07-01

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


Economic and Market Fare:




On June 25th the Fed released the May '24 data for M2 (the release is scheduled for the fourth Tuesday of each month for the previous month's data). There were no surprises.

The M2 story as I tell it goes like this: Beginning shortly after the economy was put into Covid lockdown by overzealous and panicked officials, Washington flooded the economy with some $6 trillion worth of "stimulus" checks in an attempt to mitigate the pain. The public, having no ability or desire to spend this bonanza in an era of extreme uncertainty, allowed the money to accumulate in their bank accounts, thus swelling the M2 numbers but having little impact on the economy. Then, as the economy began to slowly return to normal beginning in early 2021, the public began to spend their bonanza, having little or no desire to let trillions of dollars sit in bank accounts paying little or no interest. Extra, unwanted money began to inflate prices and fuel a return to economic growth. The Fed was slow to realize this, waiting for almost a year to begin (slowly) raising short-term interest rates in an attempt to entice people to hang onto the money. But the damage was done, with the result that the economy was flooded with almost $5 trillion of extra demand (i.e., about 28% more M2 than usual) that enabled the price level to rise by about 20% or so.

Today the economy is once again functioning normally, growing at about a 2% pace. The excess of M2 has been largely worked off, and what remains of above-target inflation is an artifact produced by estimates of shelter costs that seriously lag reality and are questionable at best (see this post for a more detailed explanation). The M2 wave crested two years ago, and ex-shelter inflation has been 2.1% over the past year, well within the Fed's upper limit of 2.5%.

The big inflation episode is essentially over, but the Fed is once again slow to figure this out, and thus reluctant to lower interest rates. Meanwhile, high interest rates have all but crippled the housing market (30-yr mortgage rates at 7% are prohibitive at a time when wages are failing to keep pace with prices). Commercial real estate prices have tumbled over 20% according to figures compiled by the CoStar Group, and there is lots of talk about a coming wave of bankruptcies. Floating-rate loans taken out at 3% interest rates are resetting sharply higher, to the dismay of borrowers already suffering from stagnant real wages. The dollar is king of the hill these days, thanks to world-beating interest rates, but this is squeezing commodity producers as well as the offshore profits of major industries..........



Bubble Fare:


Cisco Systems was the most valuable company in the world at the peak of the dot-com bubble in March 2000. Its stock price had reached a high of $80.06 per share giving the company an enterprise value (EV) of $548 billion or 5.5% of US GDP and 37 times sales. Investor exuberance over tech stocks was high. The future economic promise of the Internet for the world economy was strong, but the forward earnings growth rates implicit in tech stock valuations were not achievable. Stocks had overshot. Tech earnings were getting ready to inflect sharply downward in the course of the normal business cycle. Cisco’s stock price would fall 89% over the next two-and-a-half years. The stock price has yet to return to its prior high in the 24 years since. Advancements in AI technologies today portend enormous productivity benefits for the long-term growth of the economy, just like the Internet did in 2000. But valuations among the leading technology companies are even more stretched today than they were then implying future earnings growth rates that once again should prove impossible to achieve. For instance, Nvidia recently earned the most valuable company in the world status with an EV of $3.3 trillion, a record 11.7% of total US GDP at its recent peak on June 18, more than twice as high as Cisco’s achievement in 2000. It also has an even richer multiple of 41 times revenues. We think it has impossible future growth expectations to live up to.

Valuations Shockingly Stretched vs. the Economy at Large

But it is not just Nvidia. When we look at all of the largest ten tech stocks’ combined EV relative to GDP in 2000 vs. today, the valuation is also about twice as big, over 60% compared to about 30%. The basic law of economics that we postulate works like this: Valuation comparisons relative to GDP matter because the economy at large can only grow so much and there is only so much total economic spending to go around to drive the earnings and stock price multiples of competing free market enterprises, and a lot more than just 10 companies are gunning for this market share.

Furthermore, just like the Internet proved to be, we believe that AI is a highly disruptive technological innovation, that will allow new companies to rise by attacking the monopolistic business models of the entrenched tech giants. Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian Economist called this process “creative destruction”.  ........

Valuations Relative to Underlying Fundamentals also at Record Highs

Many will argue that underlying fundamentals are much stronger for the leading tech companies today than we were at the peak of the 2000 bubble. But if the fundamentals, such as profit margins and earnings growth rates are unusually strong, we should be suspect of the potential sustainability of that condition, and thus should be stacking a low multiple on top of it, not a historically high one. AI capital investment spending growth is likely already cresting at an unsustainable rate because most of the companies doing that spending are simply in a race to invest in AI infrastructure but do not have a viable business model for getting a return on that investment. This is just like with the Internet infrastructure spending in 2000. This is how tops in the business cycle are made. Meanwhile, valuations relative to fundamentals such as earnings, cash flow from operations, revenues, and book value for the entire S&P 500 are as high as they have ever been, levels that coincided with large cap growth stock market tops in 2000 and late 2021.

........

Policy Makers Forced to Give Up on the Fight Against Inflation

The recent report on the US trade balance shows a continued and substantial decline, primarily driven by a significant increase in imports. At first glance, this might seem irrelevant. However, when a country also runs a fiscal deficit exceeding 6% of GDP, we believe a trade balance deficit approaching 4% is certainly noteworthy. The reality is that the US now has a 10% twin deficit, worse than during the Tech Bust and not far from the depths of the Global Financial Crisis.

This is a critical issue at the heart of funding risks for US Treasuries, forcing the Fed to increasingly resume its role as the primary financier of government debt. This is why, despite the inflationary pressures that have driven the drastic shift in market expectations from seven rate cuts to now only two, we believe several more interest rate cuts are indeed more likely than not. The central point for this view is that the potential benefits of cutting interest rates to alleviate surging debt service payments are beginning to outweigh the fight against inflation. To put this in perspective, three Fed cuts could reduce the annual cost of federal debt by one-third. In that sense, today’s environment is remarkably similar to the 1940s.

Back then, when the debt problem was as severe as it is today, the Fed had to set aside inflation concerns to focus almost solely on the government’s ability to service its debt through yield curve control measures. However, today’s inflation problem is arguably more entrenched than it was then. Two main differences are that, in the 1940s, we were at the tail end of a highly deglobalized macro environment with the end of World War II, and the US monetary system operated under a much more disciplined policy with the dollar strictly pegged to gold. Today, the situation is almost the opposite. Geopolitical risks continue to escalate, the money supply appears to be in an unending increase, government spending is on a reckless path, and global economies desperately need to rebuild their infrastructure capabilities in a historically constrained commodity environment. This serves as a strong reminder of how hard assets will likely re-emerge as a key alternative for investors in the coming decade.


***** Hussman: You Can Ring My Bell

With the market nearly 20% off its highs, it is rather easy to say that stocks are in a ‘bear market.’ However, this type of label is simply a snapshot and says nothing about future prospects for the market. The stock market is now fairly valued. We expect that many investors, particularly short sellers, will realize several months from now that they sold at wholesale. Reestablish a 100%, fully invested position.
-John P. Hussman, Monthly Market Letter, October 12, 1990
Over the following 25-year period, the annual total return of the S&P 500 averaged 10.1%

So yes, we believe that the crash risk of the market is extremely high. The short term, however, is unclear. Nothing in the market is certain, but we don’t know any other way to approach the market than to ask “What are the conditions now?” and “How have those conditions historically been resolved?” In this case, we have only one answer.
– John P. Hussman, Monthly Market Letter, March 7, 2000

Last week, we noted in our weekly market comment that the market has recruited enough ‘trend uniformity’ to shift the Market Climate to a favorable condition. As usual, we don’t forecast, we identify. Our view is not that stocks must advance, nor that the economy must expand. Rather, current conditions match those that have historically generated favorable market returns, on average.
– John P. Hussman, Monthly Market Letter, May 12, 2003

Given my general avoidance of forecasts, there are very few situations when I would state my views about the market as a “warning.” Unfortunately, in contrast to more general Market Climates that we observe from week to week, the current set of conditions provides no historical examples when stocks have followed with decent returns. Every single instance has been a disaster.
– John P. Hussman, Examine All Risk Exposures, October 15, 2007

Probably the best way to begin this comment is to reiterate that U.S. stocks are now undervalued. Last week, we also observed early indications of an improvement in the quality of market action, and an easing of the upward pressure on risk premiums. In 2000, we could confidently assert that stocks would most probably deliver negative total returns over the following 10-year period. Today, we can comfortably expect 8-10% total returns even without assuming any material increase in price-to-normalized-earnings multiples. Given a modest expansion in multiples, a passive investment in the S&P 500 can be expected to achieve total returns well in excess of 10% annually.
– John P. Hussman, Why Warren Buffett is Right (and why Nobody Cares), October 20, 2008

I may as well just say it. Based on the present combination of extreme valuations, unfavorable and deteriorating market internals, and a rare preponderance of warning syndromes in weekly and now daily data, my impression is that the speculative market advance since 2009 ended last week. Barring a wholesale shift in the quality of market internals, which are quickly going the wrong way, any further highs from these levels are likely to be minimal. In contrast, current valuation extremes imply potential downside risk for the S&P 500 on the order of 50-70% over the completion of this cycle.

Emphatically, nothing in our investment discipline relies on a market peak, and every element of our discipline remains open to a change in market conditions that would encourage a more constructive outlook. We just don’t see those conditions at present.

As our long-term readers know, I try to avoid statements that sound like forecasts. Our investment discipline is not to forecast, but to identify – to align our outlook with prevailing, observable, measurable conditions. Given that the S&P 500 just set a record intra-day high of 5505.53 on Thursday of last week, suggesting that the bubble has peaked is extreme, even for me. Still, as I observed at the 2000 and 2007 peaks, we don’t know any other way to approach the market than to ask “What are the conditions now?” and “How have those conditions historically been resolved?” Then, as now, we had only one answer.

Taken as a whole – extreme valuations, divergent market internals, overextended market action, euphoric sentiment, tepid participation, deteriorating leadership, and other warning signs – the current set of market conditions provides no historical examples when stocks have followed with decent returns. Instead, the “nearest neighbors” are either major market peaks or extremes that preceded steep corrections.

The reason my language is so pointed is that, as Jeremy Grantham observed on the approach to the January 2022 peak, “Seriousness is flagged by the language that you use. I’ve always tried to make a big difference, but the difference is often wasted because people don’t remember what you sounded like when you were serious. The difference I’m trying to make is just the routine ‘the market is expensive,’ and the significant. The significant is three bubbles. This is serious.

Should you change your investment position here? We haven’t. Whether or not we’re at a market peak, we were already defensive based on extreme valuations, unfavorable internals, and overextended conditions. If you’re a passive investor, my intent is not to encourage you to abandon your discipline. What I do believe, however, is that this is an extraordinarily good moment to examine your risk exposures and to take them seriously. If your notion of passive investing doesn’t allow for a realistic possibility of a market loss well in excess of 50%, or a decade or more in which the S&P 500 lags Treasury bills, you’ve not only decided to be a passive investor, you’ve decided to ignore history. So, whatever your discipline, examine your risk exposures.

It’s helpful to keep in mind that anytime you change part of your investment position, there will be regret. If you sell part of your holdings, and the market continues to advance, you’ll regret having sold anything. If you sell part of your holdings and the market declines, you’ll regret not having sold more. The same is true for purchases. There will always be regret. The key is to realize this up front, and choose an acceptable level of regret. You do that by examining your exposure to risk, considering both potential returns and potential losses. That’s my main hope in writing this comment. ..............................................................



Vid Fare:







Investment Wisdom / Podcast:



summarized by Thomas Chua:

Howard Marks in conversation with Nicolai Tangen—where brilliant questions elicit a wealth of wisdom and insightful answers.

Dive into a masterclass on investing, risk management, and decision-making.


On risk management:

Risk Control: "Number one, risk control. I believe it's easy to make money in the market. That's especially true in the good years, and most years are good years. The challenge, the real skill, is to make money with the risk under control, so that if it turns out to be a bad year instead, you won't do too badly."

Risk Avoidance: "Sound risk management, first of all, importantly, is not risk avoidance. Risk avoidance usually results in return avoidance. If you want to make a good return, you have to take risk. I put out a memo last week on the subject, and I said, if you want to make money, you have to take risk. But you should not expect to make money just for taking risk. You have to do it skillfully."

Probabilistic Outcomes: "Risk means more things can happen than will happen. It's a very simple statement, but it's very true. And so you have to appreciate the fact that under any set of circumstances, a variety of outcomes are possible, and you should always allow for the vagaries of the future."

Strategic Decision-Making: "Assessing probabilities is very, very important. Structuring your bet, knowing when you have an advantage, knowing when you don't have an advantage... It's not what outcome is likely to happen, but it's is the payoff better for investing in the team that will probably win?"

The limits of knowledge:

Randomness: "Number one, randomness or luck is every place in our business. You're not dealing with physical laws like in physics or in engineering. You're dealing with, in large part, people... Processes which are basically built around people can't be predicted. So, while you can analyze and make informed decisions, there will always be an element of unpredictability."

Cycles: "Well, the world is cyclical, and everybody knows that the market and the economy and politics move cyclically. And nothing moves in a straight line where human behavior is involved. And if you were to count on it doing so, you would get into big trouble."

Illusion of Knowledge: "I wrote a book, a memo in October of 22 called the Illusion of Knowledge. There's a great historian called Daniel Borsten. He says the enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It's the illusion of knowledge. It's the fallacious belief that you know which stops you from inquiring. So I think that acknowledging that you don't know something is extremely healthy."

Contrarian investing:

Independent Thinking: "I want to stress that I don't think it's a good idea to routinely say, well, what does the consensus think? Let's do the opposite. The process has to be much deeper than that. You have to say, what does the consensus think? What do I think? What's wrong with the consensus thinking? Why did they think that way? What could make the error of their ways exposed?"

Psychological Strength: "If you want to be an exceptional investor, number one, you have to dare to be different. Your portfolio has to be different from other people, or else you can't distinguish yourself. You have to be dare to be wrong, because you have to take on these unpopular positions. And number three, you have to dare to look wrong, because even if you're right, that's probably not gonna be clear for some time. And in that period, you're gonna look wrong out a step, be criticized, feel inadequate. You have to be willing to live with that."

Advice for young investors:

Don't Aim for Perfection: "Due to the prevalence of randomness in the financial world, you can't be an investor satisfactorily if you have to be right all the time...There's nothing you can do in investing that will make you successful every time. If you're right 60% or 70% of the time, you'll be the smartest man in the world."

Embrace the Puzzle: "But investing is a great puzzle with many, many considerations that have to be peeled like an onion... You need to enjoy the process of uncovering information, analyzing trends, and making decisions based on incomplete information."

Learn from Experience: "You have to learn by watching somebody do it right. If you don't have somebody to learn from who does it right, you're probably going to make a lot of mistakes and maybe never catch on to the right way to do it. And you can read books and you can study, but I think that there's nothing like an apprenticeship for imparting the wisdom that's required to be a successful investor."



Quotes of the Week:


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When even Zandi is flagging recession risk, then it's getting serious!
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(not just) for the ESG crowd:



These 9 charts from the Statistical Review Of World Energy expose the myth of the energy transition & show hydrocarbons are growing faster than alt-energy

............ The new Statistical Review, released last Thursday, shows, yet again, that despite the hype, subsidies, and mandates, wind and solar energy aren’t keeping pace with the growth in hydrocarbons. Global hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions hit record highs in 2023, with hydrocarbon consumption up 1.5% to 504 exajoules (EJ). That increase was “driven by coal, up 1.6%, [and] oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels [per day] for the first time.” Global natural gas demand was flat, mainly due to stunning declines in Europe. Gas demand in the U.K. fell by 10%. It also fell by 11% in Spain, 10% in Italy, and 11% in France.  

Soaring electricity demand was, yet again, the big story in 2023. Global power generation increased by 2.5% to 29,924 terawatt-hours. About 32% of that juice (9,456 TWh) was generated in China, where electricity production surged by nearly 7%. The U.S. came in a distant second in power generated, with 4,494 TWh. Domestic power production dropped by about 1% last year. Power generation in India also increased by about 7% last year to a record 1,958 TWh, 75% of which came from coal-fired power plants. ..................



............... After watching Earth climate systems blow past so many threshold markers for tipping elements in 2023 and 2024, many scientists have been openly expressing worries about our chances of arresting it. Some hold out hope that a shift from the El Niño cycle to La Niña in 2025 (by no means guaranteed) will revert surface temperatures and provide a respite from extreme events. Others advocate for technofixes like all-out transition to renewables (Michael Mann, Katherine Hayhoe), nuclear power (James Hansen, Sabine Hossenfelder), or marine cloud brightening (Leon Simons, Paul Beckwith). In my view, none of those is more than a bandaid (or in the case of nuclear, a fresh wound) unless we are also willing to radically (meaning going to the root) switch the dominant paradigm to living leaner and redesigning our civilization to farm and build with carbon in all its myriad forms. .............................

............. When you experiment on an entire planet (the only one we’ve got, by the way), you may not get to find out the result of your experiments very quickly.

The scary part? You may.







Abstract
Marine ice sheets are highly sensitive to submarine melting in their grounding zones, where they transition between grounded and floating ice. Recently published studies of the complex hydrography of grounding zones suggest that warm ocean water can intrude large distances beneath the ice sheet, with dramatic consequences for ice dynamics. Here we develop a model to capture the feedback between intruded ocean water, the melting it induces and the resulting changes in ice geometry. We reveal a sensitive dependence of the grounding-zone dynamics on this feedback: as the grounding zone widens in response to melting, both temperature and flow velocity in the region increase, further enhancing melting. We find that increases in ocean temperature can lead to a tipping point being passed, beyond which ocean water intrudes in an unbounded manner beneath the ice sheet, via a process of runaway melting. Additionally, this tipping point may not be easily detected with early warning indicators. Although completely unbounded intrusions are not expected in practice, this suggests a mechanism for dramatic changes in grounding-zone behaviour, which are not currently included in ice-sheet models. We consider the susceptibility of present-day Antarctic grounding zones to this process, finding that both warm and cold water cavity ice shelves may be vulnerable. Our results point towards a stronger sensitivity of ice-sheet melting, and thus higher sea-level-rise contribution in a warming climate, than has been previously understood.



Abstract
Constraining the relationship between temperature and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (pCO2) is essential to model near-future climate. Here, we reconstruct pCO2 values over the past 15 million years (Myr), providing a series of analogues for possible near-future temperatures and pCO2, from a single continuous site (DSDP Site 467, California coast). We reconstruct pCO2 values using sterane and phytane, compounds that many phytoplankton produce and then become fossilised in sediment. From 15.0-0.3 Myr ago, our reconstructed pCO2 values steadily decline from 650 ± 150 to 280 ± 75 ppmv, mirroring global temperature decline. Using our new range of pCO2 values, we calculate average Earth system sensitivity and equilibrium climate sensitivity, resulting in 13.9 °C and 7.2 °C per doubling of pCO2, respectively. These values are significantly higher than IPCC global warming estimations, consistent or higher than some recent state-of-the-art climate models, and consistent with other proxy-based estimates.




Hansen: The World Will Cool Off – A Bit – and Other Good News!

........... The unprecedented global warming of the past year gives the impression of a supergiant El Nino (Fig. 1), while, in fact, the El Nino was only of moderate strength. However, no new physics is needed to explain this uniquely strong global warming. .............



Geopolitical Fare:


............ It’s easy to get so lost in all the emotion and controversy and discussion about the details of Assange’s case and his plea bargain that you forget to appreciate the fact that an impossible thing just happened. That this was a historic event which very few of us believed was ever going to occur — until it did. ............


................. None of this undoes the unforgivable evils the empire inflicted in its persecution of Julian Assange however, or reverses the worldwide damage that has been done by making a public example of him to show what happens to a journalist who tells inconvenient truths about the world’s most powerful government. 

So while Assange may be free, we cannot rightly say that justice has been done. .......




Julian Assange to plead guilty

Assange is free, but journalism seems more shackled than ever.

With his coerced guilty plea this week  to one felony count under the archaic, repressive, anti-democratic Espionage Act, the United States has essentially declared adversarial journalism to be a crime. To say that the plea deal will have a chilling effect on what is still actually left of independent reporting in the public interest is an understatement, given that such reporting already has been frozen out of existence.

From the news deserts resulting from the mass closures of local newspapers and radio stations and thousands of reporters losing their jobs in the process, journalism has largely morphed into a consolidated corporate behemoth whose main function is not to inform, but to indoctrinate and propagandize. Noam Chomsky called it the "manufacture of consent."


Urie: The ‘Israel Lobby’ Works for the US Military Industrial Complex
War is a Business

Since publication of John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s ‘The Israel Lobby’ in 2007, superior public relations has served as the main explanation for the outsized influence that the nation of Israel holds over American politicians. In that telling, AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other supporters of Israel built a sophisticated and far-reaching public relations machine that promotes US politicians who support Israel and punishes those who don’t.

Conceived this way, rich supporters of Israel finance public relations campaigns whereby American politicians are (legally) bribed and coerced into giving US foreign aid to Israel. This aid is then delivered to the nation of Israel, with a preponderance of the money being spent on weapons produced by American weapons producers. To the extent that the goal of ‘the Israel lobby’ is to maximize US foreign aid to Israel, it is also maximizing funding for the American MIC (military-industrial complex). ............


The Russians are livid, but it barely even makes the news here

....which is why we NEED the likes of Wikileaks:

WikiLeaks unearthed documents ranging from conflicts within the US Democrats to toxic waste dumping in West Africa



Other Fare:

he's been demented for 50 years, and finally people notice he also has dementia:

......... What this suggests is that people already kind of know on some level that the president of the United States doesn’t really run the United States, but are still mentally compartmentalized away from this reality enough to care who wins the presidential election. 

If people really believed the president runs the country, they’d be freaking out that Biden in his demented haze might order an attack on the Soviet Union or nuke Libya to kill Muammar Gaddafi or something. They’re not worried that this will happen because they know their government is actually being run by unelected empire managers from behind the scenes, and that Biden is just the official face on the operation. ................

In reality the US empire has marched along in all its usual depravity despite its official leader having Swiss cheese for a brain this entire time. They got their genocide in Gaza and their world-threatening proxy war against Russia, as well as China policy that is vastly more hawkish than that of Biden’s predecessors. The imperial murder machine hasn’t skipped a beat in its nonstop campaign of steadily increasing global tyranny.

This has happened because US presidential elections are fake and the results don’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if Americans elected a labrador retriever or a bottle of Tabasco sauce; the empire would roll forward without the slightest interruption. The wars would continue. The economic injustice would continue. The surging authoritarianism would continue. The oligarchy and corruption would continue. The ecocidal capitalism would continue. The imperialist extraction would continue.

US elections are just a diversion to keep Americans from pushing for real change in ways that pose a meaningful challenge to power, and Americans already kind of know this. ...........



No one would think of the Beltway as being a place of the naive innocents of our society.

Washington is the only ecosystem composed entirely of apex predators.

Yet, this week everyone seems to be eternally shocked by what has been obvious for years. ...........

The laptop is real, the President is really old, and Washington is really really phony.

The only thing that would be more surprising is if pundits and the press started being a lot less shocked and more honest.



Since you can't parse chaos, I'll be abandoning my old Sardonicky shtick of covering presidential debates by grabbing the written transcript and deconstructing/translating the dialogue. I'd pick out both the most outrageous or humorous lies and unintentioanl bursts of honesty and have some fun with the spectacle.

So since you cannot parody what was essentially a self-parody, let's instead deconstruct the corporate media's lockstep reaction to the "debate" in general, and Joe Biden's performance in particular.

The liberal hive-mind  was shocked, shocked I tell you, that Biden suddenly became senile. This admission comes after months if not years of ascribing his cognitive condition to "gaffes," "folksy tall tales" and their favorite standby" "Joe just being Joe." 

They're unable to cover for him any longer.  As Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes tweeted, they can't make you un-see what you just saw. .........

Biden had too much debate prep. He should have been resting his voice during the five days he was holed up at Camp David, Instead, his handlers overwound his clock, and the whole mechanism sputtered and sprung. He should probably fire his debate coaches.Or as one Youtuber joked, he should find a new drug dealer.

Of course, the media's "aghastitude" is totally misplaced. How shocking, how sad and how tragic the Biden has lost his timing this late in his career. They're reluctantly urging him to withdraw from the race - not because of his dangerous  and reckless, policies,  but because of his feeble performance on the debate stage. It's not the genocide and the proxy war on Russia and his enthusiasm for more nuclear weapons that bother them. It's that his physical and mental health are inexorably declining. .................

As in other examples of the uniform concern trolling narrative on display by the liberal media hive mind,  the editorial board goes overboard with the flattery.  Genocide Joe is a good man,  a decent man, and a good if not great president. They act as though a politician who's actually been a maniac for the whole past half-century in power developed Alzheimers overnight. They act as though he is just your standard harmless grandpa with one too many fender-benders and it is now their painful duty to relieve him of the car keys.  ................

Here's my theory. Joe will not drop out because without the power to commute his son Hunter's sentences on gun and tax charges, the young prince may not only end up in prison, but because the money spigot  supporting the whole family will dry right up.

The Bidens have always been about what's good for the Bidens. Jill and the rest would probably prefer the Joe die in office rather than live out a few more good relaxing days on the beach.



............... To believe that the President, especially a Democratic President, has or can have any kind of political independence, is to believe the kayfabe of the system.  ............

And guys: don’t be like the guy who got out of Plato’s cave, into a slightly bigger cave. Dave Rubin writes on X:
And most importantly, who has really been in charge? Because it obviously hasn’t been Joe Biden. It’s likely Obama, via his holdovers. And if that’s not treason, I don’t know what is.

Crazy.
No, it’s not crazy! You’re crazy. You’re crazy because you still believe in the kayfabe. You care so much about Washington and have no idea at all how it works. That’s crazy.

Of course no one is “in charge,” Dave. You seem reasonably cogent, though I had to fix your grammar. No one is or has been “in charge.” Since when? Since 2020? Have you considered the possibility that the right number might be—1945? ..................

In my world, there is no captain and no helm—just a figurehead. Beyond the obvious embarrassment, it doesn’t matter if the figurehead mumbles a little. Actually I think it’s great, which is why I bought that lawn sign.

Like Confucius, I like to see things as they really are. I think they should be called by their real names. Call me crazy. (They called Confucius crazy, too.)

How does anyone even think about Washington the Rubin and Douthat way? How do you think someone was “in charge”? 

...................... Truman was actually the first Joe Biden. FDR put him there so the government would run itself. During his lifetime it was the New Deal. It was his personal empire. After he died, it became the Deep State. It was no one’s empire. Everyone kept pretending. ...........



I truly could not care less who wins the US election; in my mind Dementia Meat Puppet and Reality TV Oligarch are both perfectly suitable symbols to represent the US empire. And that’s all a US president is: a symbolic representative with no real power. 

I truly do not see how anyone can still give a fuck about this bullshit. It’s so obvious at this point that the US is being run by unelected empire managers who throw up half-dead, half-brained presidential candidates to trick Americans into thinking they live in a democracy. Those empire managers are going to do whatever they want to you regardless of how you and your compatriots vote. Your electoral system is a fake plastic toy they give you to play with so you won’t interfere with the gears of the imperial machine. 

There are no answers in electoral politics. Start looking for answers elsewhere. ..........

❖

Opposing the US empire’s murderous foreign policy is where it’s at, resistance-wise. It’s where the lion’s share of imperial murder and tyranny takes place, and it’s the area the empire managers themselves place most importance on.

If you focus on domestic issues you’ll find yourself relatively well-tolerated by at least one mainstream political faction, but if you attack the imperial war machine you’ll get empire apologists jumping down your throat from all directions. This is because the ability to freely inflict mass military violence upon disobedient populations is much, much more important to the imperial power structure than domestic issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, or even issues like police brutality and economic justice. This doesn’t mean those issues are unimportant, it just means they’re unimportant to our rulers compared to the emphasis they place on unrestricted mass military violence.

War is the glue that holds together the undeclared globe-spanning empire that is centralized around the United States. The war machine is the most aggressively-protected aspect of the empire for the same reason our bodies form protective bone barriers around our most vital organs with the skull and ribcage; it’s what’s most crucial for the empire’s survival. ......


Hail to the Sniffer in Chief

...................................................... No one better epitomizes the America 2.0 version of “democracy.”


Not just mRNA: Chinese vaccines also result in a dysfunctional antibody response

................................. This is the sort of problem where it can take many many years, before we know how big the problem really is. And it’s not fair, for the people who had no idea and no way of comprehending what they were signing up for. The people who pushed these vaccines, have a responsibility to apologize to the victims, which includes millions of underage people worldwide. And they have a responsibility, to come up with a solution.

Stéphane Bancel became a billionaire, thanks to a vaccine that makes people’s adaptive immune systems treat the spike protein of a dangerous SARS virus that has killed tens of millions of people so far, as if it were a peanut protein or some pollen from trees. With all those billions, with that vast fortune, he could fund a solution to the damage that was done to people’s immune systems, or he could at least offer some financial compensation to the people affected by this error.

And this is not something you’re supposed to read about on this blog. This is something you’re supposed to read about in every newspaper. Your newspaper is supposed to be asking why the life expectancy projections have suddenly stopped going up, why the methods of calculating excess mortality have changed, why people are coughing their lungs out in the middle of summer, why the retirement age suddenly doesn’t have to be raised in my country after all. But it seems that once again, only the jester is allowed to tell the king the truth.



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