Here.
Monday, January 13, 2025
COVID-19 in the US is at an historic low for this time of year
COVID-19 in national US wastewater analysis:
12/28/24: 04.75
12/30/23: 13.28
12/31/22: 10.99
1/1/22: 17.17
California's prison inmates tasked with doing the job Governor Gavin Beavis Newsom won't do: Removing the timber and brush ahead of the wildfires but after it's too late
Absolute lol.
Gavin Newsom faced a recall election, but survived to prove in this new case that he more than deserved it. Just incredible stuff there in California.
28 paragraphs in.
Los Angeles wildfire deaths rise to 24 as more fierce winds are forecast
Along with crews from other states and Mexico, hundreds of inmates from California’s prison system were also helping fight the fires. Nearly 950 prison firefighters were removing timber and brush ahead of the fires to slow their spread, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The practice is controversial as the inmates are paid little for dangerous and difficult work: $10.24 each day, with more for 24-hour shifts, according to the corrections department.
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Neither of these guys won a tectonic election: I can't believe we're still talking about this
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| 49.71% |
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| 50.73% |
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| Oh, we'll have to wait . . . for pigs to fly |
US Treasury yields are steepening and by duration are normalizing
This is actually a good thing.
Longer dated securities should pay more than shorter, unlike most of 2024 when Bills paid far more.
Bills yields on average on Friday match the Daily Federal Funds rate exactly, falling in tandem with it in 2024 from the 5.33 range to 4.33 now. They've been pretty stable at this level for five weeks now.
The fall in Bills yields actually ran in front of the Fed decision to make the first rate cut in September by many months.
The fall commenced after May when the Fed announced it would institute a slight decrease to its tighter money policy through balance sheet operations involving UST beginning in June.
Bills yields fell hard for four months into September even as core inflation year over year remained flat at 2.7% over the period. Investors locked in higher but rapidly disappearing return.
Yields on Notes and Bonds also plunged, but against most predictions they rebounded in the face of the Fed rate cuts, which is quite amusing. Longs got their lunch eaten.
The simplest explanation is that longer dated securities anticipate more inflation, and the Fed simply pushes on a string. Bond vigilantes demanded more return for the rising risk.
People who didn't appreciate fixed income turning into a casino like the stock market hid out in cash and did just fine. VMRXX returned 5.24% last year.
There are over $6 trillion in T-bills outstanding at the end of 2024 vs. $2 trillion to start 2018, out of a total of approximately $28 trillion total UST outstanding.
Unfortunately for buyers of houses and cars, long money is going to cost you more, as yields on Notes and Bonds climb again in anticipation of recalcitrant inflation and increased deficit spending under Trump.
The average four year new auto loan was 9.36% and the 30-year mortgage 6.93% last week.
Juan Merchan releases another convicted felon onto the streets of New York
Stay away from 5th Avenue people.
What is the world coming to?
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Friday, January 10, 2025
Full time employment as a percentage of population fell to 49.33% in December 2024 and 49.65% for full year 2024
It's been a five month slide in 2024 from the peak of 50.26% in July.
Peak annual for this cycle was in 2023 at 50.21%.
The Trump I annual peak was in 2019 at 50.38%.
Previous to that, full time as a percentage of population peaked in 2006 under Bush 43 at 52.3%, and the mother of all peaks was under Bill Clinton in the year 2000 at 53.55%.
Somebody needs to fix this.
I don't think it will be Trump II.
Sad!
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| 49.33% December 2024 |
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| 49.65% Full Year 2024 |
Your reminder that average real return from stonks sux
S&P 500
August 2000 -- August 2024
4.90% per annum
August 1976 -- August 2000
10.49% per annum
Thursday, January 9, 2025
Well of course LOL: New Apostolic Reformation wackos supporting Trump may be evolving into pro-immigrationistas
Christianity has always meant liberalism. It is one of the religion's many bastard children.
This is from an Atlantic story reproduced here:
On the day after the election, I went to Life Center, the NAR church where Elon Musk had spoken a couple of weeks earlier. The mood was jubilant. A pastor spoke of “years of oppression” and said that “we are at a time on the other side of a victory for our nation that God alone—that God alone—orchestrated for us.”
The music pounded, and people cheered, and after that, a prominent prophet named Joseph Garlington delivered a sermon. He was a guest speaker, and he offered what sounded like the first hint of dissent I’d heard in a long time. He talked about undocumented immigrants and asked people to consider whether it might be possible that God was sending them to the U.S. so they could build the Kingdom.
“What if they are part of the harvest?” he said. “He didn’t send us to them; maybe he’s sending them to us.”
It was a striking moment. Life Center, Mercy Culture, and many other churches in the movement have large numbers of Latinos in their congregations.
Stocks markets are closed and mail won't be delivered today in honor of Jimmy Carter, because everything came to a halt under him, too
OK, bond markets are open today, because SOMEONE has to pay for the 44% increase in the national debt which was racked up under Jimmy Carter.
Stonks soared, nominally, under Jimmy at 11.81% per annum on average January 1977 to January 1981, but because inflation was so terrible, 10.43%, real return for the S&P 500 clocked in at only 1.25% per annum during his presidency.
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Drudge's poorly paid help calls one of the most destructive firestorms in memory from the LA Times story "the most distructive in history" lol
The LA Times doesn't lose its cool when reporting the news, but Drudge does.
More than 1,100 homes, businesses and other buildings have burned and at least five people are dead in wildfires scorching communities across Los Angeles County, making this one of the most destructive firestorms to hit the region in memory.
Always, always, always read the sources.
Anarcho-tyranny in Pacific Palisades Fire: No water in some fire hydrants
From the Los Angeles Times here:
“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Caruso said. “The firefighters are there [in the neighborhood], and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning. ... It should never happen.”
A spokesman for the Department of Water and Power acknowledged reports of diminished water flow from hydrants but did not have details on the number of hydrants without water or the scale of the issue.
In a statement, the DWP said water crews were working in the neighborhood “to ensure the availability of water supplies.”
“This area is served by water tanks and close coordination is underway to continue supplying the area,” the DWP said in its statement.
Providing basic fire fighting resources is a bare minimum function of local government, at which this very wealthy community is obviously failing, mirroring California government's overall statewide failure to reduce wildfires.
State Farm stopped insuring roughly 30,000 homes in California in the summer of 2024, in part due to the danger to its business there from catastrophic fires in communities where multi-million dollar homes are common, and too commonly go up in smoke.
You'd cut your losses, too, if you suspected the locals had become as hopelessly bad as the one party state under Gavin Newsom.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Batya Ungar-Sargon: Musk changed the subject to 10-year old UK grooming gangs scandal on X to change the subject from his unpopular H-1B visas stance
Look! Over there! A deer!
Story here.
Britain, Starmer, England: 14, 15, 20. H-1B nowhere to be found.
This headline would have been written whether Kamala Harris won or Donald Trump
Experts say high food prices are here to stay. Here’s why
“Once food price goes up, it tends to stay up,” said Claudia Sahm, a chief economist at New Century Advisors. “The inflation may come back down, so you don’t see the big price increases. But outside of widespread depression, we don’t tend to see prices falling across the board.”
Sahm exaggerates because she knows there is almost no likelihood of real food price declines coming, but it wouldn't take a depression.
The last time we had actual food price deflation, on a sustained basis, was in the 1950s, with 1959 being the last time at -1.6%.
But yes, the biggest declines come during depressions, which are hardly desirable for the overall damage they do.
In 1921 this index hit -24%; in 1931 -17.5% and 1932 -16.8%.
But what good are low prices when you don't have a job? You'll still have to make those lard and dandelion sandwiches to get by because bologna will still be too expensive.
Monday, January 6, 2025
Idiot Trump doesn't realize that the same liberal fools who voted in Trudeau would vote in Democrats here
They'd vote liberal like most of the northern and northeastern United States.
Elon Musk is William Butler Yeats' worst, who are full of passionate intensity on top of being completely full of it
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Sunday, January 5, 2025
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Elon Musk steps up his relentless war against free speech on his own platform, urges users to block comments from all unverified accounts, which is just people who won't pay
Thanks to this prick.
I can still remember the many accounts which claimed how outraged they were that they now had to pay to keep their verification blue check marks, but now they all pay.
So, non-paying accounts will soon experience more of being unable to reply because everyone will fall in line, effectively making the platform the little toddler's echo chamber.
Oh yeah, and he wants nothing but happy talk, too.
Friday, January 3, 2025
The powers that be had a little talk with Norman and Self, who changed their votes to Mike Johnson, making him Speaker of the House 218-215-1
Hard turd Thomas Massie can't be flushed.
Chip Roy (TX-21) was silent for Mike Johnson, then 13 minutes later voted for him because he did not want to be "that guy" lol
Matt Gaetz is not in the House today, that's why we have 434 not 435. He resigned after winning re-election.
That vote could have come in real handy right about now, but no, FL-1 had to have a prima donna in the House.
Others not voting for Mike Johnson:
Keith Self (TX-3)
Ralph Norman (SC-5)
Thomas Massie (KY-4).
Buh bye Debbie Stabenow
Comrade Slotkin replaces Stabenow as the now junior senator from Michigan. Senator Gary Women Love Peters is also present for the swearing-in.
Buh bye Mitt Romney
Romney stands by as Utah Senator Curtis (blocked in the photo by Kamala Harris) is sworn in today.
Watch here.
Toddler billionaire throws tantrum, strips critics of paltry incomes earned on X in bid to shrink platform to his size
Elon Musk Defends Stripping Critics of Monetization Amid Free Speech U-Turn
Musk continued to receive even more backlash after he doubled down on his stance, endorsing a post which suggested Americans were too “retarded” to be hired for skilled positions and warning his critics in an expletive-laden rant.
Thursday, January 2, 2025
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