Wholly New, Says King Cuomo, of the Opening of La Guardia Terminal

I just read this article where the following is stated:

With the opening of the 840,000-square-foot building, the overhaul of La Guardia will be more than halfway complete. At the east end of the airport, Delta Air Lines is building a replacement for another terminal that is scheduled to open by the end of next year.

When everything is finished, it will amount to the first wholly new big-city airport in the country. The last major airport to open was Denver International Airport 25 years ago, Mr. Cuomo said.

I remember landing in the Denver Airport just about 25 years ago, not long after it was completed.  It was really a nice terminal and everyone marveled at the brightness provided by the natural light, the very cool fabric, tent like, roof, the huge shopping area which made the place feel like an open, airy mall. (Of course the entire interior had to be renovated and rebuilt to support the farce of "enhanced airline security" introduced after 9-11, a project still on going today).  Twenty five years ago!  Can you imagine?  It has been 25 years since a major city has built a "wholly new" airport?  

I find this NYT statement hard to comprehend.  Actually, I think the language is the problem.  Language in the US has migrated to become something I call "the commercial truth", or language specifically stated to give the reader, listener, viewer a specific impression or idea that negates any and all of what any rational person would understand as "truth" and replaces "truth" with a narrowly defined, often totally unrepresentative perspective of such "truth". This has become the norm. I think people who live in "free open democracies / societies" would consider this complete bastardization of language as "propaganda" but here in America people are completely and utterly incapable of seeing or understanding this. We take for granted that if you see a shiny floor in a TV commercial with a bottle of X cleaner in the foreground, the implication is that floor cleaner cleaned the floor, even though that is never specifically stated and there is just as much a chance not only was the floor not cleaned with the implied product but the entire image has been enhanced to make it look cleaner then it really is, if the floor actually exist at all!.  The same can be said for this NYT article.  If you take what the article states at face value, you would think not an airport in the US has been substantially upgraded, renovated or had new terminals built in the last 25 years.  Having said that, unless you fly frequently and know where new terminals have been built or substantially renovated  it is not easy to find a concise list of airports in the US that have been substantially rebuilt or renovated or "wholly new" built in the last 25 years.  So who would question this ridiculous statement?

My "local" airport, Washington Regan National Airport, built a New Terminal which opened in 1997.  At that time the older terminal still existed and was in use.  It was a great chance to see what still existed at most American airports and what a new terminal could be!  I have been to a few other cities that have rebuilt, renovated or added brand new terminals their airports as well.  But overall many American airports are still not unlike the now "old" La Guardia, cramped, ugly, with miles of drywall and drop ceiling in drab environments. 

On a side note: I find one of the images featured in the Times article especially funny reading "Mosaics display iconic New York Scenes" and there is a colorful food cart mosaic in the image... Yea, the Giuliani inspired banning of food carts back in the late 20th Century ("because they are viewed as incompatible with their vision of luxury New York") is now "iconic art".  Anyone who has visited NYC over the last 30 years will definitely notice the difference in Manhattan.  Along with the banning of food carts, it also seems they banned blacks and other people of color cause you would think America was 95% white if that is where you spend your time.  So with the complete transformation of Manhattan as a playground for the global elites (not unlike other international cities over the last few decades), why did it take so long to upgrade one of it's main airports?  And why are so many others so much in need of transformation as well?  These are the billion dollar questions indeed.

So now we have a beautiful new terminal and no passengers.  "Iconic" art of street vendors?  I foresee in the very near future many more street vendors as the economic collapse brought on by the closing down of the global economy will force millions of Americans, especially our recent immigrants, to live just like their counterparts in the developing world, where the only place they can make enough money to exist day to day is on the street.  But hey, I love street food culture so maybe we will gain from this economic collapse after all.

As for the airports, I have an inkling feeling we may have to live with many of the old structures for a while.

Follow up to "Participants will Emerge" June 2019 Part 3

Here we go again. 

With a very questionable future for an economy that has just been "put on hold" for 3 months globally, mortgage interest rates are back to all time lows.  The Fed has ramped up, or lets say tripled down on its bailout of the "Financial" Industry.  Now we all know that in the midst of what was supposed to be the longest expansion in history accompanied with extraordinarily low unemployment (well officially) that the Fed was completely and utterly unable to "normalize" interest rates or it's balance sheet as witnessed in September of 2019.  The policies adopted at that time created the perfect climate for the stock market to rocket to record highs by early 2020. After the Fed decided to perpetuate the bubble in the Private Equity / Hedge Fund / Shadow Banking world that month after already admitting it could no longer raise interest rates months before we got Part 1 of a pro-cyclical bailout driven to prop up over levered speculators.  The COVID-19 shutdown BS perpetuated by the squeamish global elites and billionaires the world over created the perfect storm for Part 2 (or you could say Part X since this has been going on for over a decade now).

The current political leadership followed through with their promise to the corporate elites to dramatically reduce taxes (part of the reason the idiot was tolerated I am sure) during what was supposed to be a "Great Recovery" in the economy, including the lowest unemployment on record, a 10 year bull stock market, corporate profits that were setting records and buybacks that were setting records instead of using the economic growth cycle to re-balance the finances of the public coffers.  Instead the decision was made to follow through with political promises and dramatically increase the public debt during an economic growth period that brought "peacetime debt levels" close to those only comparable to war time numbers. To top it all off, massive stimulus was passed by congress and more was promised, infrastructure and the like.  Meanwhile the asset bubble created in the Financial Industry had become completely unsustainable. The search for "yield" to pad the pockets of all those folks who already control over 80% of the global "wealth" had resulted in leverage not seen since just before the crash of 2008-9. 

So the follow up on the "Participants will Emerge" theme was reawakened when I decided, in this stupid interest rate environment, to look into refinancing a mortgage with 75% equity simply to lock in a rate for 15 years to make sure when the fiat system implodes I'll have a fixed rate on my then worthless mortgage.  NO PARTICIPANTS EMERGED.  That's right.  An online search through one of the largest aggregators of mortgage companies with those who desire a mortgage only resulted in one bank willing to do a refinance.  When I finally was matched by some call center person to a "mortgage lender representative", who incidentally acted like this was her first ever deal, we did not get past some stupid questions about terms and whether I knew what my "credit score" was, which I could give a rats ass about.  When I told her "I pay my bills so I am sure it's fine lets just move forward," she hung up!  The second search for a VA option resulted in one lender as well who when I spoke to her on the phone, as soon as I said it was a refinance, she said, "We are not doing refinances right now".  I was like, "OK why?"  Well I don't have to tell you why, you likely already know.  The banks are up to their eyeballs dealing with people who DON'T WANT TO PAY THEIR MORTGAGE RIGHT NOW (which she would not say) but she did say "due to the drop in interest rates..."  Well I know what that means.

Nobody in their right mind will refinance a house at 3% for 15 years when the economy was just sent off a cliff and nobody knows if it will recover, when, how strongly and BTW we have millions of calls from people who DON'T WANT TO PAY THEIR MORTGAGE RIGHT NOW. 

OK so there you have it.  No Participants have yet emerged after 12 years Mr Federal Reserve Chairman and Treasury Secretary.  No Participants willing to buy mortgages at your artificially low rates outside of YOU and the federally sanctioned, technically insolvent, Fannie and Freddy.

At what point do you think "Participants Will Emerge" now?

Capatilism is Alive and Well: Riots Be Damned

Maybe it is not politically correct to make this observation but when I see video of protest turning to looting, my faith in capitalism is higher then ever.  I mean, who really has any conviction about some big drunk black man trying to pass a fake $20 bill for some cigarettes getting suffocated to death by an abusive white cop when there is nothing but a piece of glass between you and the Swarovski jewelry or Nike shoes, or just about everything you can get your hands on in that Target?

I have been telling everyone I can get some attention from since like March that this COVID-19 BS is nothing but the liberal elite and billionaires squeamish fear of an untimely death from what was nothing more then a nasty virus.  However Gates et al promoted the virus as "the pandemic virus" they should fear enough to shut down the global economy less their cushy privileged lives (or in the case of the billionaires their exuberant lives) be lost.  I saw this for what it was, weak pathetically uninformed politicians caving to this fear mongering by the global elites and I knew, just like the global PR machine that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there was nothing I or any other person of reasonable mindset could do about it.

So now, after sending a shock-wave through the global economy for some 10-14 weeks the real ramifications are starting to play out.  The global reset is beginning.  The stock market is soaring, the rich have just received the largest direct transfer of wealth ever experienced in the history of humanity and central control over the creation of "currency" and it is high time "I" get some to.

I mean really, what's $600 / month in extra "unemployment" benefits unless you actually have access to unemployment benefits?  What's $1200 of helicopter money if you don't file taxes in the first place.  And even if you are getting both, all you have to do is turn on your TV to know that the 1% are making so much damn money in this totally flawed and corrupt financialized BS "capitalist" system we are living under, when the chance arises, you are gonna take what you can!

If I owned a Target store in that kind of environment, why not just open the doors, put a sign "free" out and provide shopping carts to make the process less destructive.  What are you loosing?  90% of what you sell is produced and purchased for pennies on the dollar in sweatshops in parts of the world most people (and I mean most people) could not even point out on a map.  And that goes for just about everything sold by the our oligopoly economy where some 80% of just about every category of goods is provided by 5 companies or less (those same companies that made out like champs in the Pandemic BTW).

All the posturing and posing and acting out anger at "police brutality" is getting old.  The US is such a drug infested, gun infested, delinquent infested, unhealthy nation consisting of all three tiers of development / life, no level of "police training" in the end will alleviate the reality that every so often someone is going to film excessive force and the loss of life.  To run around with some banner of righteousness in this country is as hypercritical as saying on one hand Americans care about the environment while on the other hand knowing 70% of the personal use vehicles sold in America are trucks (or whatever marketing name you put on it)... The ills of this nations history towards the black man run deep.  The ills of our failed capitalistic system is running deeper by the day.

However, the sales pitch of blatant materialism that props up our highly leveraged (well almost entirely leveraged) failed capitalist system is alive and strong as ever.  Just listen to the celebration of materialism / capitalism in the popular music of the same people who would go about looting.  God Bless Them!  They get it!  They are those who are the capitalist best friends!  They are the ones who have bought hook line and sinker just about every capitalist message that has been sold directly to them for decades!  They are the hope that the system can continue to perpetuate until every last resource of the planet has been consumed and returned to the earth as toxic waste.

Let them loot! Open the doors!  For every item they walk off with, it's cost is only a tiny fraction of what the oligarchy was going to sell it for anyway.  Just let the Fed print the money to refill the inventory just like they print the money to replenish Wall Street (banks, private equity, hedge funds, shadow banks etc.).  It will cost a fraction as much as handing out real money and result in way less damage, fires, violence, police expenses including all that anti crowd ammo, fuel and burning police cars, and to top it off, there will be less anger and animosity growing at authority and police because of it.  Just make it "Christmas" say thank you for supporting our capitalist system and call it a day.  That's all they want anyway...

 

ETF Products and Incompetent Fed

Last year (2019), before there was any news of "COVID-19" some large real estate funds in the UK has to stop withdraws.  Most of this was continued spillover going back to Britain's Exit from the EU which has been a slow train wreck for the commercial property market now for years.  These halts on withdraws started a conversation about the elephant in the room: ETF's in the US that hold long dated corporate debt of all kinds yet advertise themselves as "liquid".  Well so much for that.  Not only is advertising "liquid" totally misleading and should be illegal outright. Many found out that in reality these products should not be in existence at all. Yet they are and now the Fed is endorsing these misleading funds that should be banned.

ETF products are as the acronym states: Exchange Traded Funds.  Now, why on earth would the SEC have ever allowed, especially after the lessons learned during the last financial crises in the Money Market Industry (where those idiots managing money market accounts were buying long dated securities that became illiquid during the "crises") ETF's that hold long dated securities to advertise themselves as "liquid"?  The Money Markets had to be bailed out even though the Money Market Industry was SPECIFICALLY NOT INSURED and was clearly stated as so.  But then WTF?  Every Tom, Dick and Harry back then could get a quick banking license so they could put the US Taxpayer and the Fed on the hook for their survival... I could go on about that BS but you all know that history.

Here today we have an entire "industry" run by the largest "grey" banking organizations in the US, uninsured, speculating, monoliths. They are uninsured custodians to Trillions of Dollars.  They create ETF products, many of which "invest" or buy long dated debt with short term money given tho them by "investors" who want access to markets they have no business being into in the first place. These criminals, I mean grey monoliths, claim (and pay lots of money to PR organizations that promote them) to show, they "provide liquidity" to an industry that previously was not traded on exchanges at all. Yea, well when the market is expanding / rising and money is flowing in they rake in huge profits and grow their ETF's exponentially. Then when people want to "sell" these supposedly "liquid" Funds during a market correction, they cry "liquidity crises" and run to the Fed.  WTF?  And the Fed has been all to accommodating for OVER 10 YEARS NOW to these idiots.  The Fed IS the entire credit market now.  I don't give a damn if they are buying fractions or just a billion here and there, it adds up to tens of billions of "created" dollars chasing otherwise illiquid "assets" where the money simply flows to the only "liquid" place left in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE of our supposedly capitalistic "markets", the stock market.  Buying ETF products by the Fed is a crime against the American People, Period.  They are buying these "products" with money given them by the Criminal Assh)L@ running the Treasury right now and the dweebs who shut down the country and created the bill that allocated the money in the first place.  But that is another topic of discussion.

How these ETF products can continue to perpetuate in the market is beyond belief.  They should be frozen to new investors and be wound down immediately then closed and no "fund" or "money market" or any other "product" should every be allowed to exist that advertises itself as liquid when everybody in the damn universe knows this is not the case.  In addition, the Fed needs to stop buying indiscriminately any and all credit products in the name of "providing liquidity" again!  The Market is a Market and "liquidity" has been stressed for some time now DUE TO THE FED's distorting crises based policies that have continued for over 10 years that CREATED an environment that so encouraged leverage that without a complete and total "reset" of the entire financial system, we are in serious trouble of the likes that humanity has never seen.

Incompetent FTC

The FTC in the United States has been completely incompetent for several decades now and just like any Ponzi or plunder scheme, it takes a crises to expose it. I have been railing for years how outdated the FTC is.  How their use of economic theory that is at least a century old / outdated should have been trashed a very long time ago.  Their decisions over the years to allow the US economy to become pretty much an oligarchy have been the most instrumental in American history and at this point.

I have been hearing for weeks about the lack of basic supplies, really basic supplies, to the health care industry.  I have heard NOTHING about why these supplies are in short supply.  I have read about how some of the shortages have been made up on a small scale but NOBODY is asking, "Hey, why or how did every major industry end up having so few suppliers?"

There is no way I am going to cover this topic in depth here. It is dissertation material.  However any idiot (who does not work for the FTC obviously) that has been alive at least 50 years has seen this process unfold even if they can't "see" the supply chains and producers disappear as obviously, they have seen it in their interaction with the world every day on at least the retail front.

While the FTC has been applying way out dated "rules" to every merger let's just look at a basic example, DIY or Home Improvement sector.  Mind you, what I say here goes for every industry the consumer touches and every supply chain, wholesale channel, manufacturing etc.  When top end, ie; retail, mergers happen a great deal of repercussions happen down stream.  These repercussions have been completely overlooked and utterly missed even though the same dynamics happen over and over again.  The mergers create immediate oversight of suppliers.  The desire for "economies of scale" mean the merged retailer looks at it's supply chain and tries to reduce costs, first by pitting suppliers against each other then eventually by offering monopoly positioning of the winner's products on their shelves.

What happens in this scenario?  If you make locks and have served say a tri-state area or some regional area for decades it is likely your existence is due to the consolidation of even smaller producers in the generations before you, before your product was mass produced in your factory.  Now you have a "market" that has served the retailers in your market, hardware stores, home improvement stores and the like. After a retail merger your company gets a call asking you to compete for continued access to the stores you previously served (along with other suppliers / competitors who operated in your market as well). The demands for cost reductions are pretty steep.  In order to be able to meet these demands you are going to need to increase output; get your cost of production down.  To do this quickly you call your competitors, who are getting the same demands from the retailer.  A merger is created and new investment to increase production / reduce costs between the suppliers.  This also creates another down stream effect on the providers of inputs to these manufacturers and down whatever chain exists in the making of your product.  For a while you win continued shelf space.

Meanwhile, the newly merged retailer is trading on the message of more variety, lower prices etc. to their customers and touting this great benefit to the idiot regulators who look at the market from a national perspective and sign off due to their outdated useless academic "models".  What happens over time?  Simple answer, desire for increased profits creates additional pressure on suppliers.  Retailer decides to shrink the number of suppliers over time going through additional rounds of requests for lower cost product.  Suppliers are forced to merge again, consolidate production more.  This further drives out the down-line supply chain.

Next, additional retail mergers and buyouts.  Those DIY retailers that serve regional markets start to merge. Private Equity firms step in and demand mergers or selling out to new "national" players in an ever drive to increase profits and squeeze out competitors.  FTC sits back and watches this slow train wreck.  Consumers see fewer choices on the store shelves.  Slowly the lower priced competitive products begin to disappear, being replaced by the mega suppliers who by now have merged, bought out competitors and managed to restructure to supply the entire nation from a much smaller supply chain.

Most manufacturing has been off shored by the surviving companies as the retailers go to them and say "hey, some factory in China can get me this product for $.05 cheaper".  Now this small margin would not mean so much in the past but now we are talking about thousands of locations where a nickle means millions of dollars when selling an item on a national scale.  Of course the final step is straight out monopoly shelf space where the retailer goes to bed with the suppliers to guarantee a designated profit on every item sold.

Monopoly shelf space, guaranteed profits, where to go next?  Increase prices, lower quality to squeeze more profit out of each unit of sale and most importantly, now you have monopoly suppliers with a "predictable" demand selling to oligopoly retailers all production is coming from one or two factories somewhere on the planet, ordered months or years in advance, sold into a radically shrunk supply chain, while engineers spend all of their research dollars figuring out how to cut costs and effectively dumb down products to increase margins.

I could go on, like explaining how these dynamics also mean sales forces look to the developing world to decimate any and all local production by flooding markets with their cheap mass produced products made in sweatshops by workers under some authoritarian regime as the markets in the developed world stagnates along with the population. But I will stop here.

Now apply the above dynamic to everything the consumer touches... Remember 2009 when the infrastructure spending bill resulted in shortages of seemingly simple products like the paint to put lines on roads?  Well now we are seeing how fragile this new dynamic is.  We (the FTC allowed) the total decimation of  manufacturing, driven by the consolidation of retail, producers, suppliers etc. and we now have the resulting repercussions. With now a full 70% of the US economy driven by consumer expenditure it does not take a genius to see how the incompetence of the FTC in allowing the rapid consolidation of every sector of the economy has created a recipe for disaster not only for the future of our nation's well being as a producer of goods, but now as a consumer of goods as these dramatically reduced supply chains have exposed the food supply in the same way.

Where are the MSM "reporters" or "anchors" that are asking "why are there only 2 companies in the country producing XYX?"  "Why are there 3 or 5 companies supplying 80% or more of our food on any given level, from retail, to production to distribution?"  Where are we as a nation when everything has been relegated to oligarchy?   I don't see the questions being asked.  Why, the oligarchy pays the MSM.  They would not challenge them. Nor would the incompetent government agents we have "elected" or those heading up the government agencies that have overseen this progress for half a century as they round trip from government to industry in just about every category of "regulation" the government has.

So now the "government" has to step in and procure basic supplies and force other companies to produce products because there are mass shortages of necessary supplies of, well, just about everything needed to meet the needs of the medical community.  Why don't we just ask the FTC?

Wake Up America?

I was recently referred to this article in an email.  It's by Gates, Bill Gates, the one we all know.  It seems it's been floating around and referred to by quite a number of publications.

Gates IS the anti-Christ right now.  He is THE DEFINITION of the problem we are in.  He is 15% of WHO budget and 85% of it's mouthpiece. He is the mouthpiece of the billionaires and his foundation has the influence of a nation.  He is one of the most frightening people alive!

 

This is the biggest piece of PR I have ever seen coming from Gates.  He knows he is the MAN NUMBER ONE in the drive to shut down the world and this is his "excuse / justification" letter to the world to cover his ass.   I don't even have to pick it apart as I intended.  I can see it for what it is.

I was in Asia for 6 months from August to March.  The Chinese and other parts of  SE Asia were fighting a pig pandemic, bird pandemic and then a people pandemic.  The pig and bird ones were extremely deadly on those populations. There were quarantines all over Asia and Millions of pigs were killed in China and other countries.  It was a huge disaster (and still is).  In the Philippines there were restrictions on travel, transport etc on pigs.  Huge!  They were lucky the bird diseases were not present.  

Where is Gates in recognizing these pandemics?  Are they not relevant? Do these pandemics that massively affect food supply and need huge investment by governments to track them, cull massive herds of animals and quarantine entire regions and countries to control these pandemics not instructive of what needs to be done? Are they not exactly what we should be focused on and learning from?  Why does he not even discuss what we have learned from these other animal diseases?  OMG I am just fuming right now.

He is defending himself to the hilt in this letter!  Reading it is like a summary.  It is a waste of time.  Sorry I have been reading alot about this virus and associated situations around the world and trust me, this virus is not anything like what he is talking about.  Ebola, yea, MERS, yea, the earlier version of SARS, yea, HIV, yea... This NO WAY.  They missed it.  Sorry, this was a huge mistake and he is trying to justify his panic and destruction of the global economy.

Sorry, I know enough about many of our self important billionaires and they don't often have the common sense of a doorknob. The amount of influence in the US government by billionaires and their think tanks are a direct example of how completely dysfunctional a nation can be when these idiots run it.  I don't give a damn how many billions he made by accident, luck, the network effect or whatever you want to call it.  That does not give him the right to shut down the world.  He is in his bubble and he has been instrumental in derailing the progress of 40 years of efforts by every international organization on the planet to reduce poverty.  Even though many of those efforts are blatantly fraudulent, self serving, useless and downright detrimental to the people they are supposed to serve, at least with half a century of offshoring our dirty industrial production we have managed to lift a couple billion people out of poverty (while keeping our own stagnant at best). Though with the global population exploding over that time the absolute numbers from a practical standpoint are still precarious at best.  Where is Gates in recognizing how badly he has f&*%ed things up?  There is NO RECOVERING from what he has done for tens of millions if not billions of people who tomorrow are starving, relying on menial handouts from their governments to survive! 

You know what kills more people in the world then all disease put together?  Poverty. What has Gates done?  Think about it.  More people in the Philippines will die from ulcers this year then this stupid virus.  You know why?  They are to poor to afford the medicines produced by the multinationals that have been pumping out the same medicines for years and continue to increase the prices every damn year no matter how long the technology has been around or how cheaply they can be produced.  It is about profit.  Where is Gates on talking about this?  He is in bed with big Pharma.  He is one evil billionaire bastard who we would be better off if he would just go self-quarantine for the next 10 years!  

The Medical Industrial Complex of America is near 20% of our GDP. This is up from 5% 50 years ago.  How is this even possible?  We are the most medicated people on the planet by a factor of 5x or more.  We pay 4-10x what other nations do for every damn thing we get in return for our money in medical care and there are NO statistics that show we are better for it! In fact with the opioid epidemic of the last 20 years (70,000 dead a year) we have metrics that have worsened.  Add the fact we are the guinea pigs of the world to the Industrial Agricultural Complex with the horrible health effects to show for it (digestive issues are a virtual epidemic here, along with preventable diabetes, hypertension etc.) and we are arguably the sickest population of any industrial world as well.  

Then what do you see on Mass Media?  Glorification of medical workers.  NO MENTION that its THE Medical Industrial Complex that bankrupts more people in the country then any other source, that steals billions form taxpayers by overcharging for these absolutely ridiculously useless "health plans" under the "Government Health Plans" that are nothing but massive middle man HMO's that rake billions out of the system and fuel huge profits. The billionaire CEO's, the massive buy backs, the idiots that run the FTC allowing mergers for years to the point there are just a few companies left that manage and run everything from wholesale drug sales, retail drug sales, insurance, health maintenance organizations, corporate health plans, actual medical services and hospitals; all integrated into giant oligopoly companies!  These firms will not even do business where they can't guarantee huge profits, they just walk!  Add big pharma..Don't even get me started there!  And these IDIOTS could not handle this virus!

Why has NOT ONE "reporter" called out the industry on this?  Why do you see nothing on this?  Cause the billionaires in the Medical Industrial Complex are HUGE advertisers for the oligopoly media and huge financiers of our politicians and there is NO WAY in hell either will embarrass the industry that feeds them.  Instead there are millions of dollars in PR money to fog the public and give them another round of "hero" BS to cheer on... Look back just over the last 20 years... 9/11, solders are heroes and Military Industrial Complex gets a "blank check" to invade everywhere and anywhere to "kill them terrorists"  What do we have now?  $11 trillion in debt directly attributable to their adventures around the world, drones killing indiscriminately, thousands of dead and maimed Americans and tens of thousands dead everywhere we went, almost all of that money spent killing people that literally live in mud huts!! And nobody calls them out!!! NOBODY! Then financial crises... Do we get angry and go after the criminals?  No!  Millions of dollars in PR money go in to a global campaign to glorify entrepreneurs and I could go on for pages about that distraction... Now we have this latest shit show and the PR that deflects again... Where will this BS end. When will people wake the f&%k up? 

Where is Gates in making all this obvious?  Why is the same government that says government involvement in health care is socialist taking over the procurement of necessary medical supplies?  Why are they granting billions to the industry that is stealing the life out of our people and economy and bankrupting our nation?  All this is so f&*$ed up I cannot even fathom putting it all in here!

So yea, the letter is informational and right between the lines of EXACTLY how "educated" people should be thinking (being distracted) about this shit show Gates has put on the planet cause you sure don't want people really thinking about what the f&%k is going on cause they might get right out of their chairs and away from their tiny little screens and start some kind of revolution! 

Mood Swings for Farmers

Today I am having a real hard time as I think of all those industrial farmers who use the scarce land of this earth to grow corn for the "bio-fuel" industry.  To just imagine all those acres of land potentially sitting idle... Sigh

Oh but wait!  Congress has bailed them out to!  OMG Why didn't I think of such a scheme earlier... Oh I feel so much better now, especially when I pay my taxes!  I am helping them to!

From FDA website (note the highlighted pennies given to feeding those who need it vs absolutely no details on the $16 billion).

1. Direct Support to Farmers and Ranchers: The program will provide $16 billion in direct support based on actual losses for agricultural producers where prices and market supply chains have been impacted and will assist producers with additional adjustment and marketing costs resulting from lost demand and short-term oversupply for the 2020 marketing year caused by COVID-19.
2. USDA Purchase and Distribution: USDA will partner with regional and local distributors, whose workforce has been significantly impacted by the closure of many restaurants, hotels, and other food service entities, to purchase $3 billion in fresh produce, dairy, and meat. We will begin with the procurement of an estimated $100 million per month in fresh fruits and vegetables, $100 million per month in a variety of dairy products, and $100 million per month in meat products. The distributors and wholesalers will then provide a pre-approved box of fresh produce, dairy, and meat products to food banks, community and faith based organizations, and other non-profits serving Americans in need.

On top of these targeted programs USDA will utilize other available funding sources to purchase and distribute food to those in need.

• USDA has up to an additional $873.3 million available in Section 32 funding to purchase a variety of agricultural products for distribution to food banks. The use of these funds will be determined by industry requests, USDA agricultural market analysis, and food bank needs.
• The FFCRA and CARES Act provided an at least $850 million for food bank administrative costs and USDA food purchases, of which a minimum of $600 million will be designated for food purchases. The use of these funds will be determined by food bank need and product availability.

But you know... The important part is below:

In total, $16 billion will be handed directly to farmers, of which $9.6 billion goes to the livestock industry. This funding will be given largely as reimbursements for “losses” and will not be contingent upon providing food to those in need.

Wait!  Doesn't it look like the dusted off last years bill and just copied it and renamed it?  That was $16 billion to!

From 25 July 2019 This week, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue unveiled details of the latest aid package for farmers who've lost export sales. It includes $14.5 billion in direct payments to farmers, another $1.4 billion in government purchases of agricultural commodities that will be distributed to food banks, and $100 million in loose change to promote exports to new countries. This is on top of $12 billion in aid that the Trump administration distributed last year.

Uh, what?  There was another $12 billion doled out in 2018?  I am starting to feel elated now... So much so cause this most recent bill includes lots of money for "meat" farmers cause they need it since grain prices must be crumbling now with all that corn that can't be turned into fuel...

So, by not allowing market forces to adjust in 2018 and 2019 to the lower demand from the trade war and encouraging industrial farmers (smaller farmers and organic farmers and others that fed directly into the US food supply have been largely unaffected) to alter behavior, we now are throwing tons of food away... Plus farmers cashed out on earning more then market prices adjusted with the government program!  WOW, I am so happy now... Wait this looks like good old buying votes with taxpayer money!  Hmm

Farmers will receive payments simply based on how much land they've planted with crops that are affected by tariffs, how much milk they produce or how many hogs they own. "We want sign-up to be easy for producers [and] straightforward," said Bill Northey, undersecretary for farm production and conservation, "[so] that we can get these payments to them to address the challenges that they have due to these tariffs."

In his remarks, Perdue (WAIT PERDUE?  HAHA is this the chicken farmer?)  portrayed the payments as a modest contribution toward the enormous losses that farmers have endured.

Agricultural economists, however, disagreed. "This is going to be a lot of money pumped into the Corn Belt," said Scott Irwin at the University of Illinois.

According to the new study, Chinese tariffs caused the price of soybeans grown in the U.S. to drop by $.78 per bushel. Last year's aid package, however, paid farmers more than twice that much — $1.65 per bushel of soybeans that each farmer produced.

Now I am just confused again... I was hurting, elated and now confused by all this... What an emotional swing.  I love it so much and I have not even left my kitchen table!!

Here We Go Again

We are back to the insanity of 2008/9 multiplied by 500% for what was essentially a global shutdown orchestrated by the elites, ie; those at most fear of loosing their lives, billionaires, politicians and the like, while around 6 billion people are left loosing their businesses, livelihoods and putting about 20% of these right back into poverty, reversing the well orchestrated false lifting of the bulk of them out of poverty over the last 30 years... My thoughts are below:

I have been thinking of the last 2 years where our "front line" emergency response people around the country were steadily being supplied Naloxone to keep overdose cases alive and rubber gloves to prevent any skin exposure to the chemicals they ingested that if improperly handled could kill a first responder... Yea, 75,000+ OD's a year by 2018 with a small decrease in 2019 mostly to the emergency response being able to jolt people back in the world of the living... Very little mention of the 70.000 alcohol related deaths ever made the press or the 35,000 gun related deaths 60% self inflicted, ie; suicide.  Oh, then there is the health epidemic where millions suffer digestive issues, diabetes, hypertension etc. directly related to the guinea pig effect of Americans being subjected to the worst quality food on the planet.  The "drug" industry has exploded in riches providing "solutions" to these "diseases".  Hell I get back to the US and see Narcolepsy ads on TV!  Narcolepsy!

Anyway, what is going on now with all that?  We are all chasing a virus that fortunately for most is mildly deadly.  We have shut down the global economy on a dime as the billionaires, global elite and politically powerful run scared and pull all the stops to keep from getting it, putting the livelihood of billions of people at risk.  I just read that it is likely roughly 500,000,000 people will fall back into poverty immediately, yea 1/2 billion people drop to impoverished to save the 1%... We are in dire straights but not from the virus.  We are in dire straits because the US was the only developed nation on the planet that tried for less then 2 years to normalize the Fed balance sheet and bring interest rates back to market levels in a global overly leveraged universe.  But they failed miserably.  By September 2019 the "swaps" market froze.  Underlying interest rates spiked more then during the financial crises and the Fed reversed course on a dime and cut rates rapidly and pumped $500,000,000 into the "financial system" to effectively bail out hedge funds that had been playing a game with increasing leverage to scrape a few pennies out of a system that had to low interest rates for to long and when things went the other way they got caught flat footed and had to be bailed out.  This all happened behind the scenes and almost nobody knows about it.  All they know is from that point forward all the money printing went directly to the stock market which reached all time highs by February.  Stock buyback's by corporations reached nearly $ 1 trillion a year for the last 3 years (following years of records preceding) further pumping up stock prices to enrich the CEO's and "investors" in these companies debt.  Any company could sell debt there was so much money chasing any yield above the Central Bank manipulated low rates that went on for far to long.  Investment was sluggish, regular wages stagnant and we were told there was no inflation.  All the inflation was in asset prices and for average wage earners, "health care", "education" and "rents", which by government accounts are under appreciated.

Why am I mentioning this?  Well because the debt accumulated to buy back that stock and the "off balance sheet" debt accumulated by the Private Equity / Hedge Fund Industry gambling in that same debt dwarfs that which existed in 2008 before the last financial crises and was looming over our economy BEFORE this current crises.  What has been the reaction?  US gov creates over $2 Trillion in additional taxpayer debt (10% increase in total debt in one bill) to further bail out a heavily leveraged corporate world.  Yea the couple hundred billion doled out in checks to citizens takes front and center in the mass media which is desperate to convince Americans "this time is different".

NOTE: Just like the heavy media campaign to glorify the military after 911, glorify entrepreneurs after 2009 and now glorify health care workers after this latest crises, each time no one is held to account, not the military and it's near $10 trillion in pointless wars against people in mud huts since 911, not questioning or convicting any financial firm for the 2009 crises and not one mass media person questioning why in a "developed nation" where more people go into bankruptcy over medical bills and nowhere does any human civilization spend more on medical care then the US with no positive metrics to show for it but wealthy "health care" intermediaries, billionaire CEO's and executives, wealthy on the backs of the American Citizenry.
Yet the Government has to step in to quell a crises!, the same government that claims any interference in the desperately broken health care system is some kind of a socialist... where we have laws on our books that even stop the government from bargaining for medicine and supplies in that they in the end pay for at huge markeup with taxpayer money (debt).

But in reality the Fed is also increasing it's balance sheet by $2.3 trillion immediately on as part of it's 10x leverage of $440 billion handed to them to "replace the banking system" as the banks have all but ceased ALL LENDING outside of the new government programs and they will expand to over $4 trillion over the next 9 months to "re capitalize" already over-levered corporations... Really?  Who is on the hook for all this money printing?  Taxpayers.  Who created the crises?  Billionaires and Elites.  Who gets ultimately crushed, billions of people, including billions who "social distancing" is a joke cause they live on top of each other already! 

You have to watch the short video in this link:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/09/chamath-palihapitiya-us-needs-to-let-hedge-funds-billionaires-fail.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain

It's the part where the answer to the CNBC anchor's question is "yes' when answering whether airlines should be allowed to fail.  Think about what he says... Who is getting bailed out here AGAIN.  This whole thing is as bad.  Capitalism has built an entire set of rules and ways to deal with the natural loss of value during a crises.  Those who hold the debt, those who old the equity, they loose.  That is called risk.  It is how things operate.  As of now, the Fed has jumped in, buying corporate debt directly and through ETF's etc.  They are basically funding credit markets, mortgage markets, off balance sheet debt markets and businesses that have no revenue and who have used all their reserves and taken on incredible amounts of debt to enrich those debt and equity holders over the last decade, since the last crises.  They paid each other back to the tune of trillions, further enriching themselves and stratifying the global income / wealth divide to levels never seen before in human history.  And WE ARE BAILING THEM OUT AGAIN!

Depression? Mental Illness? The US is the most medicated, unhealthy, over levered and overly financialized nation on the planet (well China and Japan and Europe all are competing for who can be the most in debt).  We were already on the edge.  This virus has become nothing more then an excuse to "reset" the debt, extend it further out to the future and to print money to buy votes.  I am so incensed by this whole thing I don't know what to do... I can't believe what I see happening every day to prop up an already failed economic system.. I went back to college to learn more and perhaps gain a voice.  I learned more, but what I learned is they were still teaching late 19th and early 20th century theory that has long become obsolete as the economic system has become several degrees separated from any theory emulating at that time.  We have no models any more.  We most definitely have no model for what to do to rescue an economy that stops on a dime, let alone a simple thing like letting interest rates rise.  Now we have stopped on a dime and we are throwing 20-30% of the population of a "developed" nation into immediate unemployment (look what can happen in less fortunate nations).  Where there is NO cash flow to pay all that debt, none. What are the effects 6 months from now, 1 year from now? The money has to be printed, to re-capitalize.  Just like in 2008, bailouts to re-capitalize all the cash that was taken out of the system, evaporated overnight?  One could do some simple math and see how about $3 trillion was removed from the financial system from 1999-2008 after the deregulation of the banking sector.  It went directly into the hands of the players in the gambling game of financial markets.  It was the largest transfer of wealth since the tech bubble of 1998 and that the largest transfer of wealth since the bond bubble in 1988 and you can trace that back to the international debt crises brewed from the oil shock in 1973 forward.  Where we are now is no-mans land.  God help us.

If you think what I write here is in the right direction, write your congress person / senator and tell them, "All the capitalist system to work as it was designed and stop bankrupting our future.  The money printing  experiment of the last 10 years proves irrevocably, it does not work.

Follow up to "Participants will Emerge" May 2017

Anyone who stumbles across this blog will quickly realize I don't write much.  I only write here when I feel like I want to "record" for my own purposes something going on inside my head.

The recent announcement that any person seeking a visa to the US will need to turn over all social media / blogs etc to the State Department for review makes me physically ill.  The US Government has no "infrastructure" or "publicly accountable agency" to act as sensor.  Perhaps the US Government should outsource this aspect of the visa review process to the Chinese...

Well that is not why I decided to write this entry.  I decided to write this because of the recent news about the mortgage agencies still in receivership after over 10 years known as Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac.  The criminal* running the Treasury Department, Secretary Mnuchin, would like to dump these institutions back on the "market" according to Bloomberg with "an explicit government backstop of Fannie and Freddie securities". 

WTF?  I know Secretary Mnuchin, from his past industry dealings, is a total criminal and would only even been on the radar for the job he holds under a real estate developer, TV personality, primadonna like President Trump, but for the most part until now I have not seen or heard an original idea come out of the guys mouth so he is pretty innocuous in his job and thus can't do to much harm.  But this?

Any idiot can see how dangerous it is to have the US Government backstop anything.  If you don't understand what I am talking about just look at the student loan situation we are in (or Medicare and Medicaid, two of the most ripped off agencies in the nation).  Having the government backstop student loans and putting "guaranteed repayment" in via whatever means the "government" has at its disposal, including not allowing student loans to be expunged in bankruptcy, meant anybody with a pulse could get one because the "industry" (meaning everyone from the rip-off criminals running so called on line universities to the loan sharks and the loan servicers, to the brick and mortar universities jacking up tuition at 3x the rate of inflation) could hand out money and earn money with NO RISK!

Well actually, you can just look at the history of Fanny and Freddy to understand that as they operated prior to the melt down, they were run by people who also thought there was NO RISK in buying sub-prime garbage.  In fact from my knowledge of those institutions at the time, they were run by second tier people and 3rd tier salaried traders who could be convinced to buy any garbage some Wall Street sales guy was selling for a couple tickets to a concert!  They were taken for fools and they did not care cause, well, they could get money cheaper than anyone and buy whatever they wanted or whatever Wall Street was hawking.  

In addition, political mandates for the GSE's to commit to increasing their low-income and moderate-income mortgage purchases to 55% was completely insane.  These were "publicly traded companies" that had to show Wall Street an increase in income every quarter like a non GSE entity would and thus had to conform to Wall Street's wishes to increase profitability as well as politicians mandates to buy sub-prime loans.  Again, it was a perfect storm for the "industry" that could lend money to anyone with a pulse knowing they had a bunch of pansies in Washington and N. Virginia (along with a bunch of Hedge Fund wantabe's financed by the banks they left to leverage up and buy the junk even the pansies would not buy) who would buy it all up!

So for Criminal Secretary Mnuchin to be touting an idea like the US Taxpayer should backstop Fannie and Freddie is not surprising. He is a legacy criminal from the subprime era.  It is however a REALLY BAD IDEA and should be dropped immediately.  In addition, why the hell did the Treasury even allow common shares to float after the takeover?  Ask yourself that question?  It should be made clear that the common stock is worthless and would be retired upon any re-float of the companies.

As of 2017 according the Government Account Office: "Together, the enterprises and the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae)—a federally owned corporation that guarantees MBS backed by federally insured mortgages—have issued or guaranteed 95 percent or more of all MBS issued annually since 2008."

Can you imagine what "mortgage market" would exist today if the above statement were not true?  Try ZERO.  No fool would buy 30 year debt at the artificially low rates the Fed continues to put out there without a government backstop. And after a couple years of trying to get rates back to market and their balance sheet back to "normal" (of course making sure there remain plenty of "excess reserves" to handle all those worthless securities still on the balance sheets of the banks as they mature), everyone cried foul! The stock market tanked, everyone panicked. The loudest complaints of course came from the guy who runs the country as he IS IN REAL ESTATE and has every interest to see rates stay low as humanly possible as does his Treasury sidekicks Mnuchin, who is the mouthpiece of the banking industry and who essentially made a couple billion dollars off the implicit guarantee / assumption of bad debt by the FDIC from the bank his Hedge Fund bought from the FDIC and Wilbur Ross, the current Commerce Secretary!  The Fed has become their whipping boy, the asset bubbles remain intact and very few people if any even know what the hell is going on.


So as I stated in my 2017 blog, where are the "private participants" who will buy mortgages or Mortgage Backed Securities at Federal Reserve below market rates of interest? The GSE's, currently owned and backed by the Treasury and Federal Reserve of course, who just announced they will stop their balance sheet roll off in September 2019!

If Congress even contemplates a real government guarantee of mortgages through the GSE's, the US taxpayer is in really big trouble.  The nation already has over $20 trillion in debt with nothing to show for it. We have unfunded liabilities over the next 30 years that will absolutely require a fundamental reassessment of what money is and how the country will pay for it's obligations.  Taking on a guarantee of something the size of the mortgage market in the US would surely be the straw that "breaks the camel's back" so to speak.  Within a few years the US Government would be totally and utterly bankrupt with a debt rating of junk for sure.

* Just google Steven Mnuchin and IndiMac or OneWest or start here: or here: or here: or here:

Participants Will Emerge... as Fed Withdraws From Mortgage Securities?

I love to read quotes by Fed Officials... Here is one I just read here on Bloomberg:

“Our capital markets are deep enough that I’m not as worried about the ability to be able to fund those mortgages,” he told an audience Tuesday at a commercial real estate conference in New York. “Price will change, and I think market participants will step up as the price changes.”

So Mr. Rosengren, why has it taken 8 years for you to think markets are deep enough to not be worried about the ability to fund mortgages?  And what rate / price change will be necessary for them to do so?  And when do you think this will be possible?

The thing is, you and your comrades over at the Fed should have allowed this adjustment to start happening 5 or 6 years ago.  Instead you have artificially propped up mortgages, holding unrealistically low rates for far to long now, so long in fact that you have allowed the creation of bubble housing prices in at least a dozen, maybe as many as 20 markets in the US.  These are not irrelevant markets, they are huge metropolitan areas where prices have already surpassed the bubble peaks of just a decade ago.  This time, YOU are the MBS market!  YOU have allowed / created the bubble and NOW you state you are confidant the "market" will pick up the slack at "adjusted prices"...

Well Mr. Rosengren, what is that price?  My guess is the highest quality mortgages in non-bubble market cities would need to yield north of 6.5% in TODAY'S interest rate environment to bring back private investors with bubble markets. Less then true AAA mortgages will need to be north of 8% for the same.

Now, lets fast forward to 2019 when YOU bubble creating Fed officials have managed to back interest rates to "normal", say long bond 6%+ and short end 2%+ where do you think mortgages need to be then to bring in participants, cause my dear Mr. Rosengren they will not be in the market before then.  How many people will have serious mortgage servicing issues then, with average auto loans at $38,000+ with 7 year terms, average college debts $100k with lifetime payoff terms, and an increasing number of mortgages going under water as the bubble you created starts to correct as interest rates jack up?  How many folks will purchase those $1 million dollar houses at 7% or 8%?

You are in a catch 22 sir.  I suggest you go very slowly and steadily now as you suggest and push congress to stop sitting on the sidelines about Fannie / Freddie and find a way to provide serious liquidity to the mortgage industry as you wonderful Fed officials start to retreat from the market.

OH, but maybe I am wrong... Maybe those "bubble" prices are actually reflecting the global loss of purchasing power of all "major currencies" as the money printing machines across the globe find the wealthiest people parking it in hard assets because bricks and mortar will not vanish like the purchasing power of soon to be highly irrelevant fiat currencies. The most reckless policies in human history, from the ponzi-scheme government debts, over extended private citizens to the reckless money printing of central banks all come crashing down...

Fed's Bull$h!t, I mean Bullard, is Thick in His Own Version of Reality

Just as I wrote after Janet Yellen's FOMC minutes from a couple weeks ago made me hysterical with their circular logic and "new normal" ideology, which is essentially impossible when every major central bank on the planet is still in "panic" mode with respect to supporting low/negative interest rates irrespective of every economic fundamental staring them in the face, Mr. Bullard come out quoted in this article as saying:

Low rates are likely over the next two or three years because the rate of return on safe assets when adjusted for inflation, has been 200 basis points lower in recent years as compared with the 2001-2007 expansion

First please help me out, now the Fed is using language like "safe assets" and comparing recent returns to the last 6 year period in history driven by market forces (albeit highly skewed, paper driven, derivative heavy, corrupted, recently deregulated debauchery of a market)... and stating that:

the U.S. is in a “high-liquidity-premium regime, in which investors are willing to pay premium prices for safe assets like government debt,”

Well duh!  The US is in a "high-liquidity-premium" game BECAUSE OF FED POLICY and the Fed's (including ECB, Japan and partly China) policies of driving and holding rates at artificially low levels, providing "ample liquidity" as they so often state, by buying all kinds of assets, hence completely distorting the "natural rate" of interest for so damn long now nobody even knows what the hell the "natural rate" is or would be if the Fed would do something as simple as start winding down their balance sheet!!!

It absolutely kills me that every few months the Fed comes up with new "buzz words" to describe what they insist are market forces at play without looking in the mirror!  Now it's the "natural rate on 'safe assets'".  WTF?  When will they get their heads out of panic mode and start to allow the market to function?

I actually thought after reading this short excerpt of Mr. Bullard's speech I should look it up in it's entirety and see if the tabloid, nearly worthless on-line rag of a "market" website actually covered what he said accurately.  Then I paused.  Do I really want to beat myself in the head with more pointless circular speak from a bunch of idiots that have completely lost track of reality?  No.  I want try and stay on this side of sanity as long as humanly possible.

FOMC Bargain With the Devil, Themselves

I just finished reading the FOMC notes released today.  I find them more humorous and frightening each time they are released.  It seems the folks who are setting monitory policy are some of the best mathematicians in the world of Economics but have the common sense of a doorknob.

This paragraph stands out:

Participants discussed reasons for the apparent fall over recent years in the neutral real rate of interest--or r*--including lower productivity growth, demographic shifts, and an excess of saving around the world. Al­though several participants indicated that there was uncertainty as to how long the low level of r* would persist, one pointed to a growing consensus that the long period of slow productivity growth and recent evidence that the neutral rate had fallen across countries suggested that r* was likely to remain low for some time. A number of participants noted that they had revised down their estimates of longer-run r* in their contributions to the Summary of Economic Projections for this meeting. Participants discussed the implications of a fall in longer-run r* for monetary policy, including the possibility that policy interest rates might be closer to the effective lower bound more frequently and for a long period, or that monetary policy was ill equipped to address structural factors such as the decline in productivity growth. A couple of participants noted that a lower estimated value for r* over the near term implied that monetary policy was providing less accommodation than previously thought. 

Followed by this:

Members continued to expect inflation to remain low in the near term, but most anticipated that, with gradual adjustments in the stance of monetary policy, it would rise gradually to the Committee's 2 percent objective over the medium term.

In fact reading this statement was like riding on a merry-go-round.  Their policies, essentially manipulating interest rates at near zero levels (along with ECB and JCB) with the thought that "cheap money" is the key to growing an economy irrespective of the multitude of other factors at play, are the most profound in the history of monitory policy.  They have held rates so low for so long they are starting to think there a new normal.  They are forcing rates down on one hand, then saying that "lower productivity growth, demographic shifts, and an excess of saving around the world" are influencing the natural rate of interest.  Help me out here.  Lets create a massive stimulative / accommodative monitory policy by doing everything possible as a Central Bank to keep interest rates low. Then after we do this for a while we will decide that the natural rate of interest has declined... And because inflation has not popped out of nowhere, we will continue doing the same thing, even though we are saying out of the other side of our mouths that there are structural, demographic and other factors affecting the natural rate of interest not recognizing those same structural, demographic and other factors are ALSO affecting the rate of inflation!!!

It's totally fricken obvious "that monetary policy was ill equipped to address structural factors such as the decline in productivity growth".  Yet they keep doing the same thing.

They say:

The Committee also decided to maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction, and it anticipated doing so until normalization of the level of the federal funds rate is well under way. Members noted that this policy, by keeping the Committee's holdings of longer-term securities at sizable levels, should help maintain accommodative financial conditions. 

Do these folks even understand the dynamics of what their policies have done to distort the economy?  Do they understand that low investment accompanied by expanding debt by a corporate America that is just taking advantage of historically low interest rates to buy back stock is a function of their policies?  Do they not understand that holding interest rated near zero for so long has created an environment where firms that produce have no need to raise prices when technology has rapidly made producing everything cheaper, that production overcapacity in this world of negative or anemic population growth in the entire developed world means they simply can't sell more, yet their cost of production continues to drop as they borrow money for nothing and continue to consolidate the production of just about everything meaning they need fewer employees and that they can actually afford to keep people they don't really need cause they are making so much money selling stuff, without raising prices, productivity is being affected everywhere?  Do the central banks not see that if they would just run down their balance sheets as securities mature and allow the market to start pricing debt again that their may still be some chance of normalization of rates without them having so terribly distorted the market that any change becomes grossly destabilizing?  Do they understand there are an entire generation of people who have nearly a decade in the workforce who have only seen zero interest rates and would not know what to do if they were in a real interest rate environment?  Do they understand what happens when the expectations of mortgage rates are 3.5-4% for so long that everyone completely
re-balances their entire living budgets on this distortion?  Is it possible the average car price of some $35k with a 7 year payment cycle is only possible because of the total expectation that mortgage rates are stuck at this level for eternity?  Do they see that inflation will not return while the price of money is zero?  Do they not see their own actions are what is driving the "new normal r*"?

Lets look at an example in rough terms.  Energy producers are facing difficult times.  For decades they had one business model, growth in demand, thus growth in investment and output along with prices.  Now they are faced with a dilemma; shrinking demand.  Households are getting more energy efficient.  From appliances, to heating and cooling systems, to light bulbs and electronics are all getting more energy efficient.  Building codes demand more energy efficiency and breakthroughs in fossil fuel recovery has dropped prices in their cost of inputs.  They are seeing lower demand, lower costs of input and very low cost of borrowing, all deflationary.  Does the Fed expect that cheap money means people will consume more energy?  Does the Fed think that cheaper money will drive up fossil fuel costs?  (Almost contrary, cheap money allowed 1/2 a trillion dollars to flow into the sector to employ technology that gets even more out of the ground, creating a surplus, driving down prices, hello!) Does the Fed think cheaper money means people will consume more energy?  Does the fed think cheaper money means all the gains in energy efficiency in every category is going to make energy efficiency reverse? (Well, for autos, the answer is YES as idiots go out and buy massive energy consuming trucks that cost upwards of $50k cause money is flowing like water and gas is cheap again, but otherwise, NO.)  So do the energy producers lay off thousands of workers and shrink their energy production and distribution?  NO. They have to maintain their networks cause there is demand, it's just lower.  Does this mean lower productivity, YES unless they do lay off workers, invest in cheaper delivery technologies and figure out how to operate in a "new normal".  Is there investment in energy production?  Yes.  Renewables. Does this investment replace the loss in investment in legacy energy? At times, maybe, other times not, end result, "anemic" growth in investment in the entire sector as a whole.  Will cheap money and low rates change these fundamental realities?  No. But the Fed fails to see this example can be applied across the spectrum of industries now.  Efficiency, technology, consolidation, weak demand driven by fundamentals and demographics etc. the overcapacity is simple to see.  Getting us back to normal interest rate environment should be a priority cause they are creating other distortions that are, over time, going to be very difficult to break from.

Another example I use is Ketchup.  I make Ketchup.  I have made Ketchup for years.  I bred my own tomatoes for efficiency so they are perfect for mechanical harvesting, have less water etc. Now I make Ketchup more and more efficiently.  The packaging I use fluctuates in price based on energy prices, but the producers have also become more efficient and I can rely on steady prices.  The distribution I have over the years includes just about every outlet possible, though I still compete for restaurant chains etc., the bottom line is my product's growth rate depends on the long run on the population growth rate, unless I can get people to start using Ketchup to run their cars or something, there is no way I can sell more.  Now, I have to show my shareholders I am growing my profits and revenues so I buy my competitors, I shrink my selling sizes at the same price, I find creative ways sell my product for more money etc. But is cheap money going to make me invest more to make my Ketchup even cheaper?  No. I have plenty of capacity at a profitable level and growth is anemic so I may revamp every few years and buy out another competitor, if any are left without me becoming a monopoly, but for now, all cheap money allows is for me to borrow money to buy back my stock, boosting my per share earnings and pay dividends, hence stock incentives for executives o now take a vast amount of the earnings further creating disparities in income levels, and happy investors who see my per share profits increasing.  But are my earnings increasing cause I am selling more or growing my business? NO.  I could go on with this scenario and show how I now buy the mustard guys, then the mayo guys then the salad dressing guys etc till the entire economy for my products is one huge oligopoly... Oh, yea, cheap money allows this kind of consolidation on the cheap, but does it hire more people?  No, it results in consolidation, loss of jobs and stagnation in investment cause growth is dependent on demand and demand for my product depends on demographics, plain and simple...

Face it, the Fed is blind. They are going around circles.  They don't understand business, just numbers. They have no common sense, just charts and theories.  They would not know how to operate dress shop or manufacturer of anything, but could give you models that assume things will be just fine if you just follow the numbers... They have no inkling that the biggest companies by market capitalization in the US now make nothing at all, just buy servers and programmers and if they represent a product, it is made elsewhere, where it's cheaper and this is called "free trade" and companies seeing the globe as their production base and customer base just like the Econ 101 textbooks teach us.  So why are they following their current policies till now? Clueless for sure.
  

Will the Real Warren Buffett Stand Up?

I woke at 3:00 am and could not sleep so I skimmed over some articles, one about Wells Fargo's CEO and the circus produced by "lawmakers" to make it look like they were doing something about one of the largest frauds committed by a FDIC insured bank in US history, the largest bank in the world by market capitalization.

And I had this thought: Why was the largest shareholder, Warren Buffett, a virtual Demigod among his Rabid Republican Guard like shareholders and championed by the inbred, corrupt political establishment, not insisting the CEO, John Stumph, walk and those in charge of the divisions responsible for 5 YEARS of fraudulent activity be fired and criminally charged, and say all this publicly?  I will tell you why, because Buffett is nothing but a 21st Century Robber Barron with a very good PR team and, as I said, a rabid army of wealthy shareholders with big mouths, hence his Republican Guard, who will defend him as if he were deity.  I don't believe any Capitalist in history has ever been so revered.  This is the same guy who owns the largest legacy electric company in Nevada that managed to get the government in that state to decimate all laws that made solar power economical.  IN NEVADA!, one of the best states in the nation to use Solar Power.  Oh wait, but Buffett has a tremendous amount of his investments in industries that benefit from legacy power ruling as long as possible.  So this is natural behavior of an industrialist with deep pockets.  Be dammed those "citizens" in Nevada who remain slaves to fossil fuels and the wishes of industrialists who are determined to keep them there... But I digress.  You can look up the many other ways our Devine Buffett has acted exactly as he should being one of the largest pariahs of our extraordinarily dysfunctional, if not downright broken, "Capitalist" system.

Back to the point at hand here, Wells Fargo is a publicly traded bank that not only has a duty to make money for it's shareholders, but as a FDIC (Federally Insured) institution, responsible for maintaining the bank accounts ie; having a fiduciary duty, to protect the deposits of millions of CITIZENS of the United States and not act recklessly with their money. 

Anyone who has grown up here in the United States knows very well through direct experience or by watching the slow train wreck that has been orchestrated by the financial industry over the last 30+ years that all financial institutions in the US put the customer first for one reason, because you, the customer, is where they will steal as much money as possible, as many ways possible from you until you are down to a nickel, then they will take that to.  Financial institutions in the US are run by legal gangsters that not only get away with every kind of fraud their accountants and lawyers and bankers can dream up, but they are backstopped and insured by the American Public in so doing.  This is shown to be true over and over again, with huge losses and crashes and bailouts and fraud schemes dreamed up and orchestrated to the point of collapse about every 8 to 10 years. 

What Wells Fargo has done for a period of at least 5 years is reprehensible in any book.  Their actions from management down to the lowly sales / customer service employees on the front line who were under extreme pressure to "produce results" are criminal, no doubt.  It is criminal for an institution insured by the FDIC to commit fraud on it's customers accounts.  Period.  If you write a bad check or present a fraudulent bank statement in trying to get a loan, you can go to jail.  The flip side is no different.  If the any person, let alone the actual bank employees "creates" accounts without permission using the information of real people, this fraud is punishable by jail.  For the bank to have simply fired people over a 5 year period for actions that were criminal, and at the same time continued to act in a way that resulted in their employees, the people on the front line, and their supervisors, continuing this activity, those in charge at higher levels are just as guilty as those who committed the actual fraudulent acts.  They are more then an accessory, they are instigators of the crimes.

I don't know why lawmakers don't immediately call upon the Justice Department, the FBI and the SEC (knowing about this level of fraud, while painting a pristine image of your bank in your annual report is also fraud) and the Attorney General of the State of California, Wells Fargo's home state, to bring charges and prosecute this bank and those involved in these crimes... Immediately!

The squeamish, weak, corrupt legislators and leaders we have at nearly every level of our government are completely incapable of taking on large institutions when basically they all forget one thing:  If the services being provided by an institution are needed, then putting that institution out of business by prosecuting their leaders simply means other institutions will provide those services or new ones will rise up and assume the provision of services quite quickly in a dynamic capitalist system.  Look at what happened to Author Anderson back in 2002.  The fact that our government has become so corrupt and inbred they are incapable of doing anything to contain the abuse of the financial industry is an atrocity of magnanimous proportion in the US.  As I write this we, the United States, have lost nearly all credibility on the political front.  We have one of the most blatantly corrupt people to ever seek the highest office doing so with ease, a person who over two separate careers, a short 14 years, has managed to use her position to "raise" over $2 BILLION and fund a $250 million a year enterprise that produces nothing.  Irrespective of what her family does with this money, it is hard for a person of this level of corruption to turn around and have anything to say about the prime minister of Malaysia suddenly having $700 MILLION appear in his bank account or any other mass corruption / theft from public coffers that happens regularly around the world in nearly every deprived nation on the planet.

And so here we are.  No word from the largest shareholder, no surprise, we all know what Buffett really is.  No action by our government, no surprise, we know how corrupt and inbred they really are.  Nobody goes to jail, just some fines get paid, yea, the cost orchestrating another get rich scheme by the PIGS that run financial institutions in the US.  It's all good.

If I were you, I would write a letter to your legislator and senator and the Attorney General of California and the SEC and the FDIC and insist that action be taken now against this bank and prepare for a complete overthrow of it's leadership if not revoking it's banking charter and or breaking up the bank and offloading it to investors or just doing as was done with AT&T and making half a dozen smaller banks around the nation and an international division and letting the market work to do what it wishes with what's left.  Meanwhile the folks who oversaw the criminal activity should all be criminally charged.


Make them take a copy of "The Vision & Values of Wells Fargo" and read it daily until they are released.

If you have in excess of $250,000 in a Wells Fargo account, move the money to another bank so your money is insured.  I don't have money with Wells Fargo or I would just flat out close my accounts, I suggest you do the same.  Vote with your feet!