Ramadan for the infidel

 

Ho my beer

 

Notes from the future

 Some say the revolution began when the patriots disguised as Muslim women wearing burqas hijacked 342 semis full of Bud Light and crashed them into the rivers, lakes, and oceans on the night of July 4th.

These people are defeated before they even begin

  Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbl'd o'er, should undo a man?

 

356,000 without power in the US Midwest this morning after storms last night

 

The funny thing is, I rarely get e-mails from The New York Times

 Unless it's REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT.

 

 

DrudgeReport is a willing participant in the left's objective to shape opinion through lying polls, in season and out of season

 POLL: Majority oppose laws restricting drag...

But in that poll 92% were registered voters, and of those only 29% polled were Republicans when Republican votes for Congress in Election 2022 represented 50.6% of the votes cast (54.5 million) vs. 47.8% for the Democrats (51.5 million). 

That's the trick with almost all polls, minimizing the size of the Republican opposition from the get-go in order to obtain a preordained result favorable to the left's side.

Same thing happened with this one from March 27th. Just 29% were Republicans.

POLL: Americans Pull Back from Values that Once Defined USA...

These information war operations wouldn't be necessary if Americans overwhelmingly agreed with the left on the issue du jour.

Real GDP limped along at an annual rate of just 0.9% in 2022 in today's third estimate

 

The always feckless Barack Obama makes speeches abroad for $1 million, blames threat of China on Trump when he himself failed to recognize the new threat in Xi Jinping from 2012

 The vacuum was all his.

Here's Obama:

“With my successor coming in, I think he saw an opportunity because the U.S. president didn’t seem to care that much about a rules-based international system,” Obama said, the Daily Mail reported. "As a consequence, I think China’s attitude [is], 'Well, we can take advantage of what appears to be a vacuum internationally on a lot of these issues.'"

 

It was Obama who never cared about the rules, never challenged China's military expansion in the South China Sea under Xi, and telegraphed nothing but weakness to China. 

Here's Xi Jinping as early as 2014:

Tabled by the popular ultranationalist blogger Zhou Xiaoping, the plan would authorize the assassination of blacklisted individuals—including Taiwan’s vice president, William Lai Ching-te—if they do not reform their ways. Zhou later told the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao that his proposal had been accepted by the conference and “relayed to relevant authorities for evaluation and consideration.” Proposals like Zhou’s do not come by accident. In 2014, Xi praised Zhou for the “positive energy” of his jeremiads against Taiwan and the United States. ...

But the most telling moments of the two-sessions meetings, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved Xi himself. The Chinese leader gave four speeches in all—one to delegates of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, two to the National People’s Congress, and one to military and paramilitary leaders. In them, he described a bleak geopolitical landscape, singled out the United States as China’s adversary, exhorted private businesses to serve China’s military and strategic aims, and reiterated that he sees uniting Taiwan and the mainland as vital to the success of his signature policy to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese ethnos.”

In his first speech on March 6, Xi appeared to be girding China’s industrial base for struggle and conflict. “In the coming period, the risks and challenges we face will only increase and become more severe,” he warned. “Only when all the people think in one place, work hard in one place, help each other in the same boat, unite as one, dare to fight, and be good at fighting, can they continue to win new and greater victories.” To help the CCP achieve these “greater victories,” he vowed to “correctly guide” private businesses to invest in projects that the state has prioritized.

Xi also blasted the United States directly in his speech, breaking his practice of not naming Washington as an adversary except in historical contexts. He described the United States and its allies as leading causes of China’s current problems. “Western countries headed by the United States have implemented containment from all directions, encirclement and suppression against us, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” he said. Whereas U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has emphasized “guardrails” and other means of slowing the deterioration of U.S.-China relations, Beijing is clearly preparing for a new, more confrontational era.

On March 5, Xi gave a second speech laying out a vision of Chinese self-sufficiency that went considerably further than any of his previous discussions of the topic, saying China’s march to modernization is contingent on breaking technological dependence on foreign economies—meaning the United States and other industrialized democracies. Xi also said that he wants China to end its reliance on imports of grain and manufactured goods. “In case we’re short of either, the international market will not protect us,” Xi declared. Li, the outgoing premier, emphasized the same point in his annual government “work report” on the same day, saying Beijing must “unremittingly keep the rice bowls of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people firmly in their own hands.” China currently depends on imports for more than a third of its net food consumption.

In his third speech, on March 8 to representatives from the PLA and the People’s Armed Police, Xi declared that China must focus its innovation efforts on bolstering national defense and establish a network of national reserve forces that could be tapped in wartime. Xi also called for a “National Defense Education” campaign to unite society behind the PLA, invoking as inspiration the Double Support Movement, a 1943 campaign by the Communists to militarize society in their base area of Yan’an.

In his fourth speech (and his first as a third-term president), on March 13, Xi announced that the “essence” of his great rejuvenation campaign was “the unification of the motherland.” Although he has hinted at the connection between absorbing Taiwan and his much-vaunted campaign to, essentially, make China great again, he has rarely if ever done so with such clarity.

One thing that is clear a decade into Xi’s rule is that it is important to take him seriously—something that many U.S. analysts regrettably do not do. When Xi launched a series of aggressive campaigns against corruption, private enterprise, financial institutions, and the property and tech sectors, many analysts predicted that these campaigns would be short-lived. But they endured. The same was true of Xi’s draconian “zero COVID” policy for three years—until he was uncharacteristically forced to reverse course in late 2022.

Xi is now intensifying a decade long campaign to break key economic and technological dependencies on the U.S.-led democratic world. He is doing so in anticipation of a new phase of ideological and geostrategic “struggle,” as he puts it. His messaging about war preparation and his equating of national rejuvenation with unification mark a new phase in his political warfare campaign to intimidate Taiwan. He is clearly willing to use force to take the island. What remains unclear is whether he thinks he can do so without risking uncontrolled escalation with the United States.

The cost of the Silicon Valley Bank failure to the Deposit Insurance Fund dwarfs the number one IndyMac failure, the Signature Bank failure cost will rank fourth highest ever

 SVB will cost the DIF $20 billion. Signature will cost $2.5 billion.

These are enormous sums.

Combined they represent a 17.55% hit to the $128.2 billion balance of the Deposit Insurance Fund as of 12/31/22.

Reported here and here.

SVB will rank numero uno in this list ahead of IndyMac's $12 billion.

Signature Bank will probably rank fourth ahead of Colonial Bank's $2.4 billion. The final costs are yet to be determined.

Until these two recent failures there were just six institutions in the billion dollar or higher club for DIF bailouts.

FDIC member institutions fund the DIF through FDIC-imposed assessments.

It is received opinion that these bailouts will cost the taxpayers nothing. 

It is a fact that the tax-paying customers of these banks end up paying, through high interest rates on loans and effectively zero return paid by the banks on deposits. 

The best thing which can be said about the values of present day Americans is that those who hold them won't reproduce themselves

They will die off.

We can outlast them, if we don't join them.

NORC survey reported here.

 

The poor retailers

 

Shrinking food stamp benefits for families mean yet another challenge for retailers

The State of New York is run by green energy extremists who hate your use of natural gas, same as in California and Washington

First they came for your toilets, dishwashers, and clothes washers, and you said nothing.

Then they came for your coal, and you said nothing.

Then they came for your lightbulbs, and you said nothing.

 

Because the squirrel wanted to die

 

Gold price is having fun, fun, fun now that Daddy took the T-bird away

 

King of France cancels King of England's visit lol

 The French are rioting because Macron, who lost his parliamentary majority last summer, decided to ram through his changes to the retirement system without a vote of the National Assembly.

In other words, he thinks he's king.

 

Ron DeSantis missteps, tries to weasel out of his characterization of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute"

One message for Tucker Carlson viewers, another for "neocons".

But trying to thread that needle is a fool's errand.

Ron DeSantis obviously isn't ready for this yet. No one thinks any part of Ukraine is Russian territory, especially since Russia agreed to the new borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

DeSantis could elevate himself by pointing out that Ukraine also pledged itself to neutrality in that agreement, and that Ukraine should return to that position instead of seeking EU and NATO membership.

Unfortunately, it appears that DeSantis, and the rest of the field, needs to let Trump become the candidate and lose again in order to cleanse the GOP of Trump once and for all. 

DeSantis would be better positioned for 2028 anyway, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its sixth year, at which time he can better Monday morning quarterback the whole thing. He will turn 50 in 2028. He has time. He needs time.

'Well, I think it's been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong,' DeSantis told Piers Morgan in an interview more than a week after his initial comments. ...

'What I'm referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don't think legitimately but they had,' he said.

More.

Byron York has DeSantis now trailing Trump in Monmouth poll in which DeSantis formerly had the lead

 Story.

Sounds about right

 STUDY: Americans' IQ Scores Falling First Time In Century...

Freud comeback...New generation embracing father of psychoanalysis...

Soft-on-sex-crime liberal Democrat in Wisconsin could make it to its Supreme Court on April 4

 

The Kelly commercial isn’t the first to attack Protasiewicz’s sentencing record. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, launched an ad campaign highlighting multiple convicted rapists and pedophiles who received light sentences from Protasiewicz.

More.

Worlds in collision: Jeb Bush and Pat Buchanan both go out of their way as 2024 looms to find things to like in Ron DeSantis

 Everyone is exhausted by you know who.

Piers Morgan interviews Ron DeSantis

I asked him if he was familiar with the story of Frankenstein, and he said he’d seen the movie.

“And you’re alluding to what?” he smirked, knowing full well what I was alluding to.

“Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster, then loses control of the monster, and then the monster ends up killing him,” I reminded him. “You know the parallel I’m making …”

 He chuckled. “Let’s put the country first rather than worry about any personalities or any type of individual … at the end of the day, I’m a vessel for the aspirations of the people I represent. It’s not about me — as Ronald Reagan said, ‘There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.’ ”

“That’s true,” I replied, “but you’re up against somebody who definitely cares who gets the credit, and who’s desperate to want to win back the White House.”    

More.

Byron York is crystal clear, as usual

Five things to remember about a 'zombie' Trump indictment

3) The "zombie" timing.

Bragg's indictment, if it comes, is often referred to as a "zombie" case because federal officials earlier declined to prosecute Trump on these grounds, and then Bragg himself considered and rejected a prosecution on the same grounds. Now, with time running out on the statute of limitations and to charge Trump before the 2024 presidential campaign is fully underway, Bragg has flip-flopped. The "zombie" case has been revived and is apparently going full speed ahead.

The death wish, among other things, puts the libertarian on the side of liberalism, not conservatism

 

OK, you can safely return to hating the banks now

 

The prediction of the end of humanity ain't happenin', so Greta Thunberg has deleted it

 But the internet is forever.

 

Never murder a man who is committing suicide -- Woodrow Wilson 1916

 He, meteor-like, flames lawless through the void,

Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

-- Alexander Pope

US Treasury yields have tanked 14% since March 8 amid bank failure fears

The yield curve aggregate averaged 4.674 on March 8. Now it averages 4.017.

Bills yields fell from an average 5.09 to 4.52 in nine days, 11%, after rising 6.5% in the month 2/8 to 3/8.

Notes yields fell from 4.45 to 3.55, a whopping 20%, after rising over 12% in the month after 2/8.

Bonds yields fell from 4.00 to 3.68, 8%, after rising nearly 6% in the month after 2/8.

It's been extremely difficult to trade the volatility. $TLT is up 5.31% ytd., but $AGG is up just 1.99% ytd. It is a fool's errand to invest in bonds when they behave like stocks.

Meanwhile $SPX is up 2.42% ytd.

This is my opinion, not advice.

The stocks of regional banks have taken a beating in the last ten days, but the banks are still standing

 

Today's toxic assets, if you're a bank, are AAA-rated 30-year fixed rate mortgages from 2020-2021, and 10-year and 20-year US Treasuries of the same vintage

A bank would normally keep AAA assets happily, and hold them to maturity in many instances.

Having to sell them in a rising interest rate environment is where all hell can break loose.

No one wants to buy a UST paying 0.89% when T-bills pay 4.5%, so you have to sell it at a loss to raise cash.

A bank without cash is a failed bank.

Be kind to your banker. He's not having a good week. Even if he didn't pay you interest like he should have since 2008.

 

Discount window bailout operations for banks are now officially worse in magnitude than in 2008, though not in scope

We don't have 500 bank failures.

What we do have is Dodd-Frank 2010 limits on deposit insurance not keeping up with 2023 realities.

Unless Congress steps in and helps high depositors, there will be an exodus of high depositor accounts all across the country to money center banks which have too big to fail status and an FDIC put as systemically important enough to backstop.

This would mean many local banks will come under stress and at minimum weaken local economies even if they don't fail.

We do not need the big banks to become any more powerful than they already are.

And we certainly must not weaken local economies.

The reasons in the plumbing don't matter at this point. It's too late for that.

The $250k limit has to change. The authorities at the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC are constrained by that in what it is permissible for them to do.

Call your Senator.

Call your Representative.

 

I've seen a bull market . . . A bull market was a friend of mine . . .

 

Moody's missed not only Signature Bank's problems, but Silicon Valley Bank's as well

On Wednesday March 8, Moody’s still had an A3 rating on SVB Financial, owner of the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank, as it was already collapsing for all to see. Four notches into investment grade – a very respectable rating!

More.

The CNBC oil desk isn't paying attention this morning lol

 Pretty typical over there tbh.

Women are twice as likely to be traitors

 A 2021 McKinsey study found that women leaders, compared with men at their same level, were about twice as likely to spend substantial time on collaborative efforts that fell outside their formal job.

We need less of that, not more, Heidi.

GOP candidate positions on Ukraine demonstrate nothing but groveling to the anti-war right

 And the kernel there is pretending things that are not true, the mark of an unserious country.

Nikki Haley is simply incoherent. She says we have to win this war, but without more financial assistance. 

“I don’t think we need to put money in Ukraine,” Haley said last week before an audience in Iowa. ... “This is not a war about Ukraine, this is a war about freedom—and it’s one that we have to win,” Haley said. “If we win this war, this will send a message to China, it will send a message to Iran, it will send a message to North Korea, it will send a message to Russia. If we lose this war… they said Poland and the Baltics are next, and you’re looking at a world war.”

Ron DeSantis pretends Russia never invaded and simply has a territorial dispute with Ukraine.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests—securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party—becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.

And The Daily Beast isn't wrong about Donald Trump's position, who to this day touts the myth that he is some great deal-maker who can untie the Gordian Knot:

Former President Donald Trump has said he would have let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine if he were still in the White House.

It is also the case that there is plenty of pretending on the other side, that the West wasn't responsible for the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 which ultimately provoked the current conflict.

Statesmen tell hard truths to their people. But none of ours seem capable of telling even the simple ones, including Joe Biden.

Inflation remains a big problem in today's Consumer Price Index data

Services inflation is driving inflation now, 7.6% year over year in February. In a primarily service economy that's deeply serious. Wage and salary increases have penetrated deeply into everything, driving up the cost of using the services those people provide.

Electricity inflation is running at 12.9% year over year. 

Food inflation is still running at 9.5% year over year.

Overall core inflation in this data is at 5.5% year over year, more than double than under Trump.

The fools at Moody's have just cut their outlook for American banking to negative, but don't take it too seriously

The story is here.

As recently as the end of January, Moody's had rated Signature Bank, the bank which failed spectacularly over the weekend, investment grade.

Moody's completely missed the problems with Signature.

Their sweeping warnings in the wake of this miss should be taken with a truckload of salt. They're just trying to save face.

 

You remember the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, right?

 Chickens . . . comin' home . . . to roost!

 

Studies have found the Dodd–Frank Act has improved financial stability . . .  lol

 

Total BS story about deposit flight contains zero evidence for the claim

 

The wizards of smart at Silicon Valley Bank loaded up on mortgage backed securities in the last few years, and when they needed to raise cash recently they had to sell some at a big loss

$1.8 billion.

That sparked the run.

The problems have been known for months by people like Chris Whalen.

This guy below actually tweeted out some particulars in January. This was no surprise.

Except to the federal regulators, who were completely asleep at the switch.

This is what happens when your bond portfolio is full of low-yielding securities. No one wants them when you have to sell them in the new higher interest rate environment. It's not a problem if you will "hold to maturity".

SVB wasn't very smart loading up on this stuff. Apparently they did not even hedge this otherwise foolish over-large position.

Hell, it's probably all California MBS, too. Think the outrageously overpriced homes, refinanced at rock bottom rates, of the very elite who have all their personal and business banking at SVB which is now blowing up. And all the second tier businesses and their employees dependent on them.

It's an inferno devouring their wealth from every side.

And they are screaming like stuck pigs for a bailout.

 

 

The cold-blooded commie symp and baby killer Breitbart's John Nolte recommends we forgive recently recommended murdering pro-lifers on The View

 Watch the clip.

Stuff that's been in the news since March 6th

 Xi Jinpingpong blamed the US for the first time for his domestic failures, according to the Wall Street Journal. He's a commie reactionary with Chinese characteristics. Not a good sign of what's to come.

Some cracker Republican in Florida wants bloggers to register like lobbyists, and Ron DeSantis finally came out against that, thankfully. A little late, though. Newt beat him to it.

Vivek Ramaswamy says CPAC shook him down for $$$$ in exchange for which they'd see to it he did better in the straw poll. There's no report that Matt Schlapp also asked for a reach-around.

LIBOR surpassed 5% for the first time in 15 years on Monday.

Georgia fired up a nuclear power reactor this week. The country now has 93 operating. 67 were never finished after Three Mile Island. 

A dog and her pups were rescued alive and well from a basement in Turkey more than a month after the Feb 6 earthquake. The death toll is up to 52k.

Thousands of Iranian schoolgirls are being systematically poisoned in Iran. There was a similar incident in Afghanistan during the first Obama administration. Rag-headed heathen bastards.

South Africa is going the way of Rhodesia. 

The UST yield curve aggregate made a new high 4.674% Wednesday v Fed Funds Effective Rate 4.57.

The Obama of Big Oil said peak production from 2019 will never be surpassed.

Pundits who predict inflation won't spiral like the 1970s fail to understand that the price of energy inputs is determinative. Unless energy costs come down big, we're in for it.

Cumulative deaths per million from C-19 in the US are 3,285. In Africa just 181. Follow the science.

The tide is turning on the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory of the origin of C-19 in the press.

Anthony Fauci has authored a paper in CELL which calls for better vaccines than the ones we've got, whether experimental or not. No kidding.

Silicon Valley Bank failed today, the first failure since 2020 when there were four. There was a huge flight to safety. Stocks sold off and longer dated Treasuries rallied 3.45%. The yield curve aggregate plunged 230bp, 3.82%.

Full time employment rose a little in Feb to 49.66% of civilian population. The average last year was 50.1%. 

I'm still here, I'm just bored stiff

 

Donald Trump's CPAC is TRANSPAC

 

WaPo ignores that it was Obama's war on coal which impoverished the Ohio River Valley and is now going hungry after the end of COVID-19 food assistance

A mile-long line for free food offers a warning as covid benefits end

 

In Kentucky, a state that has been hit particularly hard by the collapse of the coal industry, entrenched poverty and hunger have been generational problems that state and federal officials have struggled for decades to address. 

More.

 

Obama's war on coal began immediately after his election.

 

 

Some of the power outages in Ohio on today's national map are due to another train derailment, second one in a month there

 A third world shit-hole of problems, problems, problems.

 

US power outages get more ridiculous by the day

 

LOL, DC Mayor and President Biden both oppose DC's soft-on-crime bill, progressive Democrats, but I repeat myself, are outraged

 The crime bill passed the D.C. City Council unanimously in January. After Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) vetoed it, the city council overrode it 12-1. Among other things, the bill would eliminate most mandatory sentences and lower penalties for a number of violent offenses, including carjackings and robberies. It would also expand the requirement for jury trials in most misdemeanor cases. 

More.

Say what you will about Biden or Bowser, these two do not want to become Beetlejuice, who just lost her mayoral re-election bid because 63% of Chicagoans no longer feel safe there.

 

Sounds more and more like Joe is running, doesn't it?

 

His Energy Department last week endorsed the possibility of COVID-19 being a lab leak, followed in short order by the FBI saying the same, which the progressives still call a conspiracy theory.

 

Joe is aligning himself with where the country is on major issues like crime and the pandemic. He's running.