Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Oh! Gee! Covid-19 is heading south after all the hopeful alarums of another pre-election catastrophe
Oh my God, batten down the hatches, nothing bad coming to save Kamala Harris!
Trump and Harris agreeing on ending the filibuster rule reminds me of McCain and Obama agreeing on something inadvisable in 2008
They both interrupted their campaigns to vote for TARP on October 1, 2008, which became law on Friday, October 3, but did nothing to stop the panic.
On Monday, October 6 Jim Cramer came on the Today Show at 7am and told people who needed their money in the next five years to sell their stocks.
The S&P 500 fell from 1099 to 848 by October 27th, almost 23%, on its way to the March 9, 2009 closing low at 676 (there was an intraday low of 666 on March 6).
Over 500 bank failures marked the era fueled by these events, and more than 6 million lost their homes.
And no one went to jail.
Nothing good will come of ending the filibuster, either, not with the country this divided.
Trump has long been against the filibuster because he thinks the bar too high to get anything consequential passed in the Senate
Although the filibuster is not in the constitution, the senate filibuster rule was as old as the constitution, and it acts like the veto power of the president which is in the constitution, except it is the senate's veto over the house so to speak.
It helps keep things bipartisan, and often slows down things which haven't been thought through enough. Obviously it hasn't been foolproof.
Harry Reid eliminating the filibuster for judicial appointments worked out poorly for Democrats, Kamala Harris tells Wisconsin Public Radio she'd eliminate the filibuster to get a national right to abortion back
It doesn't occur to these people that Republicans would retaliate in kind when they regain control of both chambers of Congress, passing their biggest ideas on simple majorities.
Retiring Senator Joe Manchin said ending the filibuster would turn the Senate into "the House on steroids," which is exactly right.
Retiring Senator Kyrsten Sinema said Republicans would use the new power "to ban all abortion nationwide", which is unlikely but possible.
But still Kamala persists, because she's not too bright.
Another record high for gold at $2,639.95, now up 44% year over year
Gold prices surged to a record high on Tuesday as a cocktail of factors, from hopes of further U.S. rate cuts and China stimulus measures to elevated Middle East tensions, lifted demand.
Spot gold steadied at $2,625.25 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,639.95 earlier in the day.
U.S. gold futures were flat at $2,651.30.
More.
One year ago gold was ~$1,825.
And updated 39 minutes ago lol:
Spot gold was up 1.1% to $2,656.38 per ounce after earlier hitting a record of $2,654.96. U.S. gold futures gained 1% to $2,680.00.
Monday, September 23, 2024
FBI crime data investigation July 2023: 32% of all police agencies submitted no data for 2022, new reporting requirements to make data incomplete for years to come, and EXPECT POLITICIZATION
As many police departments are still in the process of complying with the FBI’s new reporting requirements, experts predict that the national crime data is likely to be incomplete for years to come, and will leave more room to politicize crime statistics without concrete evidence. These issues are likely to become more urgent as the country moves closer to another election cycle where crime is certain to be a potent issue: In 2024, the FBI is likely to release its national crime data just before the election.
More.
And . . . right on cue:
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Still waiting for someone to ask Kamala Harris about those price controls
 |
| "It's only been a month, bro" |
Olivia Nuzzi did more than anyone, next to the president himself in debate with Trump, to rip the mask off the no-longer-present President Joe Biden
But who is running the show right now?
And why is no one . . . alarmed?
The worry is not that Biden will say something overly candid, or say something he didn’t mean to say, but that he will communicate through his appearance that he is not really there. ...
Biden instead was cocooned within mounting layers of bureaucracy, spoken for more than he was speaking or spoken to. ...
the traveling protective pool — the rotating group of reporters, run by the White House Correspondents’ Association ...
In April . . . My
heart stopped as I extended my hand to greet the president. I tried to
make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on.
His face had a waxy quality.
-- Olivia Nuzzi, "The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden", New York, July 4, 2024
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/conspiracy-of-silence-to-protect-joe-biden.html
https://archive.ph/z0ULo#selection-1637.80-1637.190
Saturday, September 21, 2024
In April AP told us 650,000 were homeless in the US, The Wall Street Journal says the problem has grown about 10% largely on a surge in illegal aliens
The Journal’s count includes about 550,000 homeless people so far, up about 10% from what these places reported last year. The trend thus far means the U.S. is likely to top the roughly 653,000 homeless people estimated in 2023—the highest number since the government started reporting comparable data in 2007. The final count will depend on outstanding data from places that haven’t yet divulged their 2024 numbers, especially New York City, which reported the highest count last year.
More.
Friday, September 20, 2024
ROFLMAO WaPo's "most rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past [Phanerozoic] temperatures ever produced" surprises Michael Mann, says human-caused warming will not make the planet uninhabitable
The article has this response from Michael Mann:
The timeline, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the most
rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past temperatures ever produced, the
authors say. ...
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who is known for his analyses of past global temperatures, said he was also surprised by the suggestion that the planet got so warm. The finding supports many scientists’ concern that feedback loops in the Earth system could lead to much higher temperatures than most climate models predict, he wrote in an email. But it’s also possible that the data assimilation assumes too much warming and is missing factors that might forestall a runaway greenhouse effect. “While I applaud the authors for this ambitious and thoughtful study, I am skeptical about the specific, quantitative conclusions,” Mann said. ...
Even under the worst-case scenarios, human-caused warming will not push the Earth beyond the bounds of habitability.
The article, which places us today in some of the still coolest climate conditions in 500 million years, never connects the dots.
It maintains that a dramatic warming event 250 million years ago caused the largest mass extinction ever, spewing carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, 25 million years BEFORE the first mammals appeared, who breathe the OXYGEN emitted by carbon dioxide consuming PLANTS, who then in their turn THRIVED for 125 million years under EVEN WARMER conditions than that extinction event produced.
Evolution was evidently turbocharged by this warming and its carbon dioxide, but then suddenly the first humans supposedly started to evolve 6.5 million years ago at the end of 50 million years of cooling conditions, WHEN THE TEMPERATURE WAS 62.6 F*, and continued to evolve into modern humans 300,000 years ago just as temperature KEPT FALLING to the coldest point in the record (51.8 F).
How did that happen?
The study authors are worried about what warmer conditions in the future will mean for humans, but seem oddly uninterested in how humans supposedly evolved in relatively much cooler conditions.
Maybe we don't really understand the evolution of mammals. Maybe humans are much older than the record indicates, and much more resilient.
At
its hottest, the study suggests, the Earth’s average temperature
reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) — far higher than
the historic 58.96 F (14.98 C) the planet hit last year. ...
At the timeline’s start, some 485 million years ago, Earth was in what is known as a hothouse climate, with no polar ice caps and average temperatures above 86 F (30 C). ...
For most of the Phanerozoic, the research suggests, average temperatures have exceeded 71.6 F (22 C), with little or no ice at the poles. ...
But humans evolved during the coldest epoch of the Phanerozoic, when global average temperatures were as low as 51.8 F (11 C).
Without rapid action to curb greenhouse gas emissions,
scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 F (17 C)
by the end of the century — a level not seen in the timeline since the
* Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago.
Gold up 26% . . . in 2024
Gold soared above the $2,600 level on Friday for the first time, extending a rally boosted by bets for further U.S. interest rate cuts, and rising tensions in the Middle East.
Spot gold was up 0.7% at $2,605.50 per ounce, while U.S. gold futures rose 0.6% to $2,630.30. Silver gained 0.5% to $30.93.
Bullion’s latest rally got a fillip after the Federal Reserve initiated an aggressive easing cycle on Wednesday with a half-percentage-point reduction, adding to the appeal for gold, which pays no interest.
Prices of the safe-haven asset have climbed 26% in 2024, its biggest annual rise since 2010 . . ..
More.
$SPX is up 19.82%.
CNBC fact-checks Joe Biden, now that it doesn't matter
But the article name-checks Donald Trump five times because he's an opponent of Fed decisions.
There's a whole movement out there that wants to End the Fed, composed of Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, which CNBC is loathe to mention.
Many of them argue that the US 2-year Treasury Note should be the benchmark for the Federal Funds Effective Rate, not the whim of the Fed Chair and the Federal Open Market Committee, who are un-elected, well-connected, and VERY WELL PAID elites who watch out primarily for the interests of the banksters.
For example, despite the disastrous Zero Interest Rate Policy post-Great Recession, DGS2 resisted it and outran DFF throughout the period under Obama and Trump, and anticipated the recent inflationary outburst by starting to rise in the spring of 2021, a full year before the Fed moved to "combat inflation" by raising the funds rate in the spring of 2022.
Similarly DGS2 also started to fall in November of 2023 despite no change to Fed policy, anticipating the recent decline of inflation rates by almost a year.
The role of the US Treasury Secretary, AS MUCH A CREATURE of the Executive as the Fed Chair, is also huge for interest rates because the Secretary decides how to divvy up the debt securities for auction by duration.
Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been in the news for driving up the issuance in T-bills to 22% when 15% has been customary, which has contributed to longer rates falling and stocks rising, just in time for the election.
But the costs of this have been dramatic, financing deficit spending at the highest rates and driving interest payments on the debt to the third spot in the budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare.
Thursday, September 19, 2024
The value of US Treasury securities held by foreigners made another new record high in July 2024
$8.3385 trillion, but the lunatics on X are saying "everybody's selling".
Grand total net value was up nearly $128 billion compared to June, and nearly $740 billion year over year.
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