83 million still on Medicaid

 Down from 94 million but up from 65 million before the pandemic.

Story.

In obscure economic news, the death economy really boomed in 2021 for some reason

 

Florida has been the left's target since the pandemic began because it was an early adopter of lockdown skepticism under DeSantis

Newsom is just full of it, as usual. 

U.S. coronavirus cases have been stuck at 103.44 million for six months in 2023

 

HHS: Two percent of Americans have taken the latest COVID booster

 Reported here.

Increased risk of stroke in older adults from COVID booster and flu vaccine received at the same visit

 

US Treasury yields making new highs for this cycle as of Oct 19, 2023

Massive Treasury issuance to pay for massive pandemic spending has driven yields higher.

 

It's the law of supply and demand: Increase the supply of US Treasury debt and the price goes down.

 

Previously issued securities paying lower interest rates drop in price because they are much more plentiful in comparison with the new issues paying higher rates which investors demand.

 

Who wants 'em?

 

Banks are estimated to be stuck with these dogs in quantities approaching what the Fed has let roll off, which is what they also must do. The collateral backing banks, insurance companies, pension funds, et cetera et cetera et cetera, suffers.  

The Federal Reserve Bank's role as a big buyer in the bond market has been curtailed since 2Q2022, removing its big price support role. As of 3Q2023 the balance sheet is down $768 billion as securities mature. That's about $51 billion rolling off per month, and no net buying to replace it.

 

The Fed has also raised the Federal Funds Rate to an average of 5.33 to combat inflation.

 

So yields have risen for such reasons to these records for this cycle to date, but it's all predicated on the US Treasury having to dilute the supply:

 

1MO 6.02 5/26/23 (debt ceiling disagreement)

3MO 5.63 10/6/23

6MO 5.61 8/25/23

1Y    5.49  9/27/23

 

2Y 5.19 10/17/23

3Y 5.03 10/18/23

5Y 4.95 10/19/23

7Y 5.00 10/19/23

10Y 4.98 10/19/23

 

20Y 5.30 10/19/23

30Y 5.11 10/19/23.

In the aggregate as of Oct 20 yields are up a net 22% year over year to an average of 5.25692 from 4.30846 when all the wizards of smart said they couldn't possibly go any higher without breaking something.

They're still saying that.

 

US pandemic debt orgy described as fiscal slippage lol

It's so indicative of our degeneracy how economic profligacy must not be described that way in this day and age where anything and everything is great, awesome, and epic but that.

Oh well, at least they still pay a modicum of respect with huge, swelled, and deluge.

If only all that cash were a tsunami, inundating the shore with ruinous inflation.

 

 

 

CNBC, here:

. . . investors are also pricing in surprising economic resilience alongside fiscal slippage.

 The U.S. federal government ended its fiscal year in September with a fiscal deficit of almost $1.7 trillion, the Treasury Department announced on Friday, adding to a huge national debt totaling $33.6 trillion. The country’s debt has swelled by more than $10 trillion since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, prompting a deluge of fiscal stimulus to help prop up the economy.

New Zealanders and Americans were vaccinated at about 84% and 81% of population respectively, but Americans died of COVID-19 at a rate 6 times higher

 And no one seems to be the slightest bit interested in how or why.

It's a scandal. 

Meanwhile a so-called conservative coalition has now taken over in New Zealand after Jacinda Ardern resigned earlier this year.

 

You can fool only 24.44 million people all the time

 

November 5, 2024: Groundhog Day all over again

 

Democrats' 2024 Magic Bullet: Mass Mail-In Voting

Kristin Tate, The Messenger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2020, only about a third of Americans voted at a physical polling location on Election Day. The 2020 election represented the first time in American history that more than half of the electorate voted on a day that was not Election Day. The expansion of Election Day to “Election Month” brought out a number of lower-propensity, and arguably lower-information, voters who cast their ballots by the millions. Young people increased their voting share sharply in the last election.

In some states, the changes were even more dramatic. Between 2016 and 2020, New Jersey saw its share of mail ballots increase from just 7% to an astounding 86%. The partisan lean should be no more surprising. Among voters in Pennsylvania who voted by mail, 76% went for Joe Biden. In Maryland, it was 81%. In the crucial state of Georgia, Trump received just 34% of the mail-in ballots.

The 2020 trampling of precedent under the guise of an “emergency” was especially pronounced in critical states such as Pennsylvania, where officials were ordered to count mail-in ballots that arrived within three days after the election toward the final result — even those that did not have a postmark. The move undoubtedly had a massive impact on the swing state’s outcome. ...

By codifying mail-in balloting, it is likely that Republicans will be at a constant disadvantage in voter turnout. GOP voters tend to show up at the polls on Election Day. Democrats effectively harvested millions of votes in 2020 for their candidates.

 

Cumulative COVID cases in the US have been stuck at 103.44 million for three months, effectively meaning zero per month

 There were about 22.4 million cases added to this data between about May 9, 2022 and May 9, 2023, when just 12.49 million Americans received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine at the same time.

So few vaccinations. So few cases.

🤔

About 118,230 Americans died of COVID year over year on May 9, 2023 as well. Deaths also have been stuck: At 1.13 million May 8, 2023 to Aug 23rd, now over three months.

Let's check in on Nordic COVID champion Sweden

Still the leader lol!

Drill for oil and eat your King Oscar sardines, folks.

 

Parents prepare to send their kids back to the failed public schools

 In the national sample of 13-year-old students, average math scores fell by 9 points between 2020 and 2023. Reading scores fell by 4 points. The test, formally called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, was administered from October to December last year to 8,700 students in each subject.

Similar setbacks were reported last year when NAEP released broader results showing the pandemic’s impact on America’s fourth- and eighth-grade students.

Math and reading scores had been sliding before the pandemic, but the latest results show a precipitous drop that erases earlier gains in the years leading up to 2012. Scores on the math exam, which has been given since 1973, are now at their lowest levels since 1990. Reading scores are their lowest since 2004. ... The federal government sent historic sums of money to schools in 2021, allowing many to expand tutoring, summer classes and other recovery efforts.

But the nation’s 13-year-olds, who were 10 when the pandemic started, are still struggling, Carr said.

More.

The dollar's purchasing power has collapsed 16.2% since the onset of the pandemic hysteria, down another 0.3% in July 2023

 

Core and services inflation remain well above pre-pandemic levels

 

Don't be fooled: Dollar purchasing power fell again in June 2023 as the US orgy of pandemic spending has now devalued the dollar by 18.9% since April 2020

Aka inflation.

 

Public school education in the United States continues its decades-long freefall, accelerated by pandemic closures and a system obsessed with sexual grooming

 The decline in math scores last year was the biggest in the past 50 years, according to newly released federal data. ...

The lowest-performing students scored at levels last recorded in the 1970s, when the assessment began. ...

Test results from earlier this year showed that U.S. history scores among middle schoolers are also falling — dropping to the lowest levels ever recorded since the assessment began in 1994. 

More.

Lesbian couple still obsessively testing and masking, even outdoors, and up-to-date on their jabs, has COVID-19 land at their door anyway

 

In the past two years, my partner and I have taken more at-home COVID tests than we can count. After our first test in 2021, we obsessively checked every few seconds to see what the indicator would reveal. Longest 15 minutes ever.

We’re up to date on our vaccinations. We still mask up in stores and on public transportation. We recently attended our first concert in three years and though most of our fellow concertgoers at the outdoor venue weren’t masked, we were. Still we swabbed our nostrils a few days later. Both negative.

So it never crossed our minds as we were about to leave town for the Memorial Day weekend that we would get anything other than the desired result. My COVID test was negative. Hers was positive. A second test confirmed the first.

More.

World Health Organization declares global public health emergency over today, a week ahead of the US

WHO declares end to Covid-19 global public health emergency

The spread of Covid-19 is no longer a global public health emergency, the World Health Organization declared Friday.

“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva.

“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before Covid-19,” Tedros said. “It’s therefore with great hope that I declared Covid-19 over as a global health emergency.”

Nearly 7 million people have died from the virus worldwide since the WHO first declared the emergency on Jan. 30, 2020, according to the U.N. organization’s official data. Tedros said the true death toll is at least 20 million.

The WHO’s decision comes as the U.S. is set to end its national public health emergency on Thursday.

Tedros said there is still a risk that new variant could emerge and cause another surge in cases. He warned national governments against dismantling the systems they have built to fight the virus.

“This virus is here to stay. It’s still killing and it’s still changing,” he said.

But the WHO chief said the time has come for countries to transition from an emergency response to managing Covid like other infectious diseases. ...

“Covid-19 has been so much more than health crisis,” Tedros said. “It has caused severe economic upheaval, erasing trillions from GDP, disrupting travel and trade, shattering businesses and plunging millions into poverty,” he said.

“It has caused severe social upheaval with borders closed, movement restricted, schools shut and millions of people experiencing loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression,” Tedros said.

More.