The purchasing power of the US dollar is down 9.4% since Joe Biden was elected in November 2020, just sixteen months ago

 

Percent change from a year ago is shown

 

From 38.4 to 34.8 on the index = 9.375%.

From the spring to the summer of 1933 when FDR confiscated gold and devalued the dollar from $20 to $34 (70%), the decline in this index was 5%, and then 14% by 1940.

 

Fox News freak show hires man now known as Caitlyn Jenner to normalize perversion

The former Olympic gold medalist [Bruce Jenner] and reality TV star will provide commentary across Fox’s programming and platforms. Jenner will make her first appearance on Hannity on Thursday evening.

“Caitlyn’s story is an inspiration to us all,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said in announcing the hire. “She is a trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ community and her illustrious career spans a variety of fields that will be a tremendous asset for our audience.”

More. 

 

He doesn't need the money.

This is simply more libertarianism normalizing perversion in order to co-opt conservatism.

Same as Glenn Beck, Matt Walsh, Dennis Prager, et alia normalizing "conservative" homo Dave Rubin or Pete Bootyjudge's "husband". Let's throw Stephen L. Miller in for good measure, even if he thinks it matters that he won't go as far as saying with the trans nuts that some men can get pregnant. Not one of us.

Gold fanatics never mention the potentially bad tax news

 The war in Ukraine has pushed more investors into gold, which some see as a “safe haven” in volatile times, and fueled a price rally.  ...

And because the IRS classifies metal coins as collectibles, ETF investors face the top 28% tax rate that applies to all collectibles when they sell shares.

 

The IRS outlined this thinking in a 2008 memo. (While the memo doesn’t carry the weight of official law, accountants have largely accepted its rationale, Lewis said.) ...

 

Stock investors generally pay one of three tax rates on their profits — 0%, 15% and 20%, the top rate — based on their income. These rates are preferential with respect to an investor’s regular income tax rates, of which there are seven (10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%).

Conversely, the capital-gains tax rate on collectibles aligns with these seven [ordinary income tax] rates, up to a 28% maximum. That means an investor whose annual income puts them in the 12% tax bracket would pay a 12% tax rate on their collectibles profits; an investor in the 37% bracket would be capped at 28% on their collectibles profits.

Read the whole thing.

What idiot blames waning vaccine effectiveness on the bad behavior of vaccinated people?

 The Qatar study people, apparently:

The vaccine's weakening protection may be due to people's behavior, the study authors noted.

"Vaccinated persons presumably have a higher rate of social contact than unvaccinated persons and may also have lower adherence to safety measures," they wrote. "This behavior could reduce real-world effectiveness of the vaccine as compared with its biologic effectiveness, possibly explaining the waning of protection."

The studies were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

Like my tetanus shot wanes in effectiveness because I went on a bender last weekend.

 

If the damn thing works, it works. Pfizer's vaccine clearly isn't a vaccine.

 

A golden opportunity to blame SPREAD on bad behavior wildly missed.

 

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-07/studies-show-power-of-pfizer-vaccine-starts-to-wane-after-two-months

To California oil is like slavery and must be banned everywhere

But Californians see Texas as a mortal threat not merely to their state’s business model and way of life but to humanity itself. Drilling is killing. Texas cannot be allowed to be Texas because if Texans get their way, the planet will superheat, destroying us all. You may think that’s ridiculous hyperbole, and maybe it is, but Californians believe it and will not be talked out of it. Hence peaceful coexistence is, for them, possible only on their terms.

The Golden State is no longer down with living and letting live but must impose its will, against the express wishes of others, in fundamentally transformative ways. There’s a word for that.

But Michael Anton can't see how this is just like Lincoln in the North imposing his will on the South in 1861. A Lincoln worshiper in denial.

California is nothing if not Lincolnesque.

Claremont Review of Books,  here.

Jason Lewis on the Rush Limbaugh Show this week was lighting his hair on fire about inflation

Jason Lewis' remedy for inflation, which came in at 5% year over year in May, actually 4.9%, is the standard remedy: The Fed should raise the interest rate, which is effectively zero at the moment and has been for some time.

Aggressive low-interest-rate policy has been the rule since 2002, with the brief escalation from 2005-2007 during the housing bubble being the exception. Over those 19 years through 2020, the average effective federal funds rate (DFF) has been 1.36%.

Contrast that with the 19 year period previous to that, from 1983-2001, when the DFF averaged 6.27%.

That should have kept inflation under control, right?

Well, no.

Under the low interest rate regime we've had an average annual change in CPI of just 2.01%. For the previous period with the higher DFF we had higher inflation, 3.24% per annum on average.

All inflation is bad. At 2% per annum the value of your pile of assets is cut in half in 35 years. At 3% it's closer to 20 years.

What kind of conservatism is it to advocate for either one?

Real conservatives believe in sound money. Less unsound money won't do.

The evidence is the two things, the fed funds rate and CPI, aren't correlated.

And CPI is rightly mocked because its components do not capture the inflation which has infected the cost of education, health care, housing, stocks, gold, intellectual property, et cetera in our life times.

It's the purchasing power of the dollar which has continued its inexorable decline which is the problem. We haven't had a sound dollar policy since the advent of the Great War in 1914. The desire for an independent monetary policy conducted by a Federal Reserve from 1913 came at the price of the ongoing robbery of the wealth of the people. World War couldn't have been financed without it, nor the Welfare State after it.

It's hardly a coincidence that political conservatism has been in retreat from the same time. You make a lie of the money in your pocket, you make a lie of everything else, too. Slowly at first, and then suddenly.

This American swindle will not continue forever.

 

In the just 5 months since Joe Biden won the mail-in vote, the purchasing power of the dollar has already declined by 1.56%

 

The Great War, depression, gold confiscation, dollar devaluation, fiat money, More War, and inflationary monetary policy all have done a real number on the dollar long before this, so it's understandable if no one really notices anymore. 

We're witnessing a seemingly infinite division in a race to the bottom. 

Sad to listen to Mark Steyn give know-nothings the golden EIB microphone today to blanket the country with bilge

We had a lawyer call in from Michigan, where I live, to complain about the governor's tyranny, failing to mention the 1905 Supreme Court precedent her lawyer cites which permits her actions to protect the citizenry. The lawyer must have gone to the same school as convicted Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Then we had a caller from Georgia tell us coronavirus infections are much more widespread according to results from several states using antibody tests, never mentioning that all of these antibody tests are unreliable and NONE of them are approved by the FDA.

That caller also said everything was improving in Sweden when the truth is quite the opposite. Sweden embarked on herd immunity early and is now reaping the whirlwind with 2,355 deaths and a mortality rate of 12%, more than twice that of the United States.

But yeah, let Georgia be Sweden.

I guess the Rush Limbaugh supporters in Georgia must know coronavirus will ravage the black enclaves of Atlanta, decreasing the surplus population.

How the US acquired so much gold in the first place

Immediately following passage of the [Gold Reserve] Act [of January 30, 1934], the President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the statutory price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. This price change incentivized gold miners globally to expand production and foreigners to export their gold to the United States, while simultaneously by devaluing the U.S. dollar it reduced deflation. The increase in gold reserves due to the price change resulted in a large accumulation of gold in the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, much of which was stored in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The increase in gold reserves increased the money supply, lowering real interest rates which in turn increased investment in durable goods.

The only thing saving industrial production in this country since 2007, up less than 5%, has been fracking to mine oil and gas

It has had little to do with Trump or Obama either way, political support or no political support.

The only thing giving an additional recent boost to oil and gas was the 2015 bipartisan agreement to end the oil export ban, signed by Obama.

Industrial production from all mining categories is up almost 17% 2015-2019, and a whopping 53% 2007-2019.

Industrial production from coal mining, a subset of this like oil and gas, is down over 39% since 2007, and 21% since 2015 despite Trump's promise to restore the industry. Industrial production from base metals mining is up less than 3% since 2007. Industrial production from gold and silver mining is down almost 15%.

Industrial production from crude oil mining is up a whopping 140% since 2007, and from natural gas 79% from 2007 through November 2019 on an average basis.

Otherwise it's a sorry picture.

Industrial production from manufacturing is down 1.3% 2007-2019, despite Trump running on bringing manufacturing back to the United States.

And industrial production from electric and gas utilities has grown a paltry 2% 2007-2019.

It's all mining of crude oil and natural gas.

If the anti-capitalist climate kooks get their way, we're all in big trouble.

In North Korea Jane Fonda and her "responsible ethically harvested gold and sustainable diamonds" would be executed by dropping a dozen mortar rounds on her glam head

Yeah right, media in the 1980s was a golden age

America was so innocent in the 1950s.

The Greatest Generation was like no other.

The American Founding was a miracle.

We have to get back to the authentic Christianity of the first century.

Oh the glory that was Greece and Rome.

Whirlpool deletes offensive, bigoted ad contrasting successful POC with loser whites

The company that once gave lots of blacks decent middle class jobs in Benton Harbor, Michigan, but ended all that in favor of cheaper POC labor abroad.

Liberal Republican Fred "Light Bulb" Upton is their golden cuck, grandson of the founder of the company and member of Congress continuously since first elected in 1986.

 

Gold looks good compared to negative-yielding bonds because its 0% yield plus the cost of holding it can still be less

.

.

The gold break-out began in May with an average price of about $1284 the ounce. Yesterday's London PM Fix was nearly $1526, to put gold up almost 19% over the last three months.

US on its way to becoming a net exporter of oil, dominating global oil market and securing the dollar as global reserve currency

Note to Chris Irons: This is not bullish for gold.

The US is about to send a lot more oil into an already oversupplied world market: 

“It will be 4 million barrels a day by six or eight months. Four million barrels a day is a lot bigger than the North Sea as a whole. That crude oil is going to go everywhere. It goes to Asia, Europe, to India,” said Edward Morse, Citigroup global head of commodities research. “If the U.S. gets to 6 million barrels a day in three years, it will be hands-down the world benchmark.” ... 

“Add on the amount of petroleum products that are exported and add on the amount of natural gas that is exported. The U.S. becomes the biggest hub for energy trading in the world,” said Morse. “It has dramatic implications for the U.S. dollar.”Morse notes there are those who doubt the dollar’s future as the global reserve currency. But in a scenario where the U.S. grows into an energy powerhouse, “the dollar becomes more entrenched.”The U.S. had been the world’s dominant oil producer, prior to World War II. “This will be back to the future for the Gulf Coast,” said Daniel Yergin, IHS Markit Vice Chairman. Yergin said the U.S. would not have had the opportunity to increase production as much, were the law not changed in 2015 to allow for U.S. oil exports.

Treasury bonds are the most expensive they have been in over sixty years

All "asset" classes are near-record expensive: bonds, stocks, gold, housing, college education, health insurance policies . . .. 

Cliff Asness, here:

So, the bottom line is, as measured by real bond yield, U.S. Treasury bonds are really frickin’ expensive. Measured by the slope of the yield curve they are really frickin’ expensive. But, measured by the average of these two simple variables, they are 60+ year just about record-low frickin’ expensive. This result is not caused by, but is certainly exacerbated by, the (perhaps) surprisingly uncorrelated nature of slope and real bond yield, thus making both so low and at the same time considerably more surprising.

This is . . . pure gold

LOL, Mexico soccer fans ruin Gay Pride Month at Rose Bowl, shout "Puto!" with abandon

Rose Bowl and Concacaf allow anti-gay chants throughout Mexico’s Gold Cup match

Mexico fans chanted the homophobic ‘puto’ chant repeatedly at the Rose Bowl with no consequence.

By Cyd Zeigler@CydZeigler Jun 16, 2019, 12:31pm PDT

Cook County Illinois Inspector General's investigation may have new Democrat Governor Pritzker taking classes from former Governor Rod Blagojevich in prison

Source: Feds Probe Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, First Lady For Property Tax Appeals On Gold Coast Mansion:

The county watchdog said all of that amounted to a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers out of more than $331,000. ...

The property tax scandal picked up steam just a month before the November 2018 gubernatorial election, when the Chicago Sun-Times published news of a confidential memo from Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard. ...

The confidential Sept. 28, 2018 report by the inspector general characterized the Pritzkers’ tax appeal as a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers. Blanchard also connected the scheme to possible violations of state and federal law, including perjury and mail fraud.

 

GDP per capita in Trump's GREATEST ECONOMY EVER is less than half of what it used to be

Something went terribly wrong after the year 2000, and no one has fixed it, least of all The Golden Boy.