Sunday, February 16, 2025
Friday, February 14, 2025
Former S&P sovereign bond unit executive who participated in the Obama era 2011 credit downgrade basically calls Trump's America a banana republic, and DOGE not a proper government department
WSJ: What about DOGE’s accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system?
Kraemer: We don’t have all the details of what they took and on what basis. It seems highly irregular. People from a department, which is not even a proper government department, that have gone and gotten access to data, that we have to assume is quite, I should say sensitive, which doesn’t belong in the hands of unelected individuals.
WSJ: Have you ever seen anything like this before?
Kraemer: Yes, I think I have seen this. Regimes that don’t respect checks and balances. But they tend to be more in the emerging markets. This is exactly what sets rich and poor countries apart, right? It’s the qualities of institutions, the rule of law, the transparency of decision-making.
So have I seen this? Yes. But have I seen it in an advanced economy, in an OECD member country? No, I have not.
The whole thing is here.
Three House Republican chuckleheads, but I repeat myself, want to waste everyone's time impeaching Trump's enemy judges
Pure grand-standing from:
Republican Eli Crane (AZ-2)
Republican Andrew Clyde (GA-9)
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14).
House GOP leaders have not weighed in on the calls to impeach the judges — and the chances of such an effort succeeding in their removal is close to zero.
It would take near-unanimous support from House Republicans to impeach a judge if Democrats do not support the measure, and support from Democrats would be required to clear the two-thirds threshold to convict on impeachment articles in the Senate.
More.
Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?
-- Luke 14:31
Beer-swilling surrender monkey SECDEF Pete Hegseth stands by his original comments yesterday and doubles down on them today
No return to pre-2014 borders for Ukraine.
No NATO membership for Ukraine.
No US troops for Ukraine (like Biden ever wanted that).
J. D. Vance is proving himself to be a very intelligent imbecile
Earlier in the week there were no good guys nor bad guys in the Ukraine War:
Later in the week the Russian army is invading European countries en masse:
Everyday actually:
Holy cow, a seventh prosecutor resigns over the renegade DOJ attempt to toss the Eric Adams case
A seventh federal prosecutor resigned Friday over the Department of Justice’s controversial order to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
The prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, in a blistering letter to top DOJ official Emil Bove, said “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion” to dismiss the Adams case.
“But it was never going to be me,” wrote Scotten, who had been the lead prosecutor in Adams’ case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
On Thursday, Scotten’s boss, acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon resigned in protest over Bove’s order to toss the case. ...
Scotten is a Harvard Law School grad, who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq in the Special Forces. He also served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Roberts’ fellow conservative was sitting on a lower court.
More.
The new Attorney General Pam Bondi is really working overtime to accumulate obloquy.
Banana Republican Donald Trump denies meddling in New York Mayor Eric Adams case as 6 top prosecutors quit over DOJ dismissal order
... After Sassoon refused to dismiss the case Thursday, the matter was reassigned to John Keller, the acting head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, who then also refused to dismiss the case and quit, NBC reported. ...
Acting DOJ criminal division chief Kevin Driscoll also resigned Thursday after refusing to accept the Adams case.
At least three other senior officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section quit after that following a meeting with the deputy attorney general. ...
Sassoon had been the lead prosecutor at the fraud and conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former head of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March to 25 years in prison.
More.
US District Judge Amir Ali orders resumption of foreign aid disbursements in place before Trump took office
. . . the latest blow to the administration’s sweeping efforts to halt international aid. ...
The judge said in his ruling that the administration has not yet “meaningfully contested detailed and credible evidence of harm to countless American businesses, ranging from shutting down programs, to furloughing and laying off employees, to shuttering altogether.” ...
More.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
A libertarian wants you to know that accumulated losses in a war are "not sensible", as if war were ever sensible
"Here, let's look at this completely irrational thing and apply some logic to it now that we're down 28 points in the fourth quarter".
Their tidy little world of dollars and cents makes no sense, either.
Imagine Winston Churchill saying this after Dunkirk.
The GOP controlled US Senate has confirmed both Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr
The only Republican with the courage to say No was Mitch McConnell.
The lunatics control the asylum.
Thirteen paragraphs in we learn that last month's wholesale price headline was, well, total fiction
Which means that this headline is what then?
Producer prices report points to softer Fed inflation measure than feared:
A gauge of wholesale prices rose more than expected in January ... Over the past year, the all-items PPI increased 3.5%, well ahead of the central bank’s objective. ...
“Wholesale price growth came in slightly higher than expected for January, and the read for December was adjusted upward,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance site NerdWallet. “In other words, inflation at the producer level remains high, and one concern is that this inflation could ultimately be passed along to consumers.”
Revisions to the December numbers also complicated the inflation picture, with the gain now put at 0.5%, compared with the 0.2% increase previously reported.
Last month's headline: Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.
As usual, the truth is under the hood of the polished headline, or maybe next month's polished headline.
Nothing looks soft to me in the measures shown below, which are the not-seasonally-adjusted ones.
Overall producer prices are up 0.7% in Jan 2025, and 3.5% year over year. Core producer prices are up 0.5% in Jan 2025, and 3.6% year over year. At least until next month.
The billionaires never say, Raise taxes now or face an economic heart attack
The word "tax" appears nowhere in this story.
Ray Dalio is worth $19 billion.
“Make sure that you really know what you’re doing and you’re practical,
and do it on … the conservative side, because you know, how much can the
cutting actually be?”
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Elon Musk is the biggest federal government teet sucker in history, the wealthiest man in the world on the backs of American taxpayers, and the biggest hypocrite about it
The hypocrite:
The grifter:
Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.
And don't forget the benefit of the government coin in the till for every Tesla purchased:
The beer-swilling surrender monkeys of the Trump administration have just caved to Putin
The art of the cave.
The art of the deal would drop NATO membership for a return of the occupied lands, but no, let's concede EVERYTHING for . . . what exactly?
A cessation of hostilities?
These people are a joke and a disgrace.
In Jan 2025 the average price of utility natural gas is 49% more than the 2017-2020 average
The average price of utility natural gas was $1.04 per therm 2017-2020.
In Jan 2025 it costs $1.55, 49% more.
Since about 10% of natural gas production is diverted to LNG export for big profits, most of the increase is related to diversion of natural gas from heating to electricity production because of the lunatic policy of retiring massive amounts of coal electric generation capacity.
It makes heating your home much more expensive, and keeping the lights on much more expensive at the same time.
Thanks for nothing, green energy assholes. It's 22 degrees F and snowing in Grand Rapids, MI.
Nine basic foods posting new all time high average prices in January 2025 according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank
Round steak $8.28/lb
Eggs $4.953/doz
Frozen OJ $4.48/12oz.
Coffee $7.019/lb
Sugar $1.011/lb
Ice Cream $6.459/half gallon
Steaks, all $10.905/lb
Table wine $14.035/liter
Beer $1.813/pint
Everybody's favorite food inflation indicator, eggs, made another new all-time record high average price in January 2025: $4.953/dozen
Sorting for the 100 largest flocks of egg-layers affected by H5N1 bird flu since 2022 which have had to be destroyed, as of this morning I count in excess of 21 million chickens destroyed to stop the spread so far in 2025 alone.
At 3.258% in Jan 2025, the rate of core cpi inflation year over year is still 65.8% worse than the annual average 2017-2020
At 3.258% in Jan 2025, the rate of core cpi inflation year over year is still 65.8% worse than the annual average 2017-2020.
The rate has been going sideways since Jul 2024, seven months.
The Fed has failed, the Congress has failed, and the Executive has failed. They all suck at their jobs, which is to say they're doing great! They're bloodsuckers after all.
All figures are the not-seasonally-adjusted figures.
The 2017-2020 average was 1.965%.
The 2024 average was 3.4%.
The 2021-2024 average was 4.48%.
The percent change in Jan 2025 was +0.56986%, which since Jan 2021 is the third worst Jan out of four.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Steve Bannon pleads guilty to one count of first degree scheme to defraud in New York in plea deal to avoid trial and jail
Trump pardoned Bannon on the federal charges literally at the 11th hour in January 2021, but not Bannon's partners, who all went to the big house.
New York State went after Bannon separately.
... Bannon and three other men were accused of pocketing donations, while
the group managed to build a paltry three miles of fencing along the
southern border. ...
GOP trainwreck Nancy Mace accuses ex-fiance in US House floor speech, adultery with whom almost made her late for a prayer breakfast in 2023, of recording sex acts with her and others without their consent
Rep. Nancy Mace accuses ex-fiancé and associates of assaulting her and raping others in House speech
... Saying she was going “scorched earth,” Mace detailed how, in November
2023, she says she “accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous
crimes against women imaginable. ..."
The prayer breakfast incident occurred in July 2023:
Nancy Mace tells prayer breakfast she told fiancé ‘we don’t got time for that this morning’
Maybe she'll change it to an "S" now?
Monday, February 10, 2025
Literally the very last line in this story
Trump announces plan to stop making new pennies, citing production costs
In the U.S., discontinuing the penny entirely may require congressional approval.
I got Elon Musk's Grok to admit that the penny underpins the dollar system and allows it to be more precise, and that for saving $192 million on annual penny production, reprogramming all the accounting software would conservatively cost $5.5 billion LOL
Eliminating the penny would take only 28.6 years to pay for itself ha ha ha ha ha.
The cash consumer will pay the cost of the Trump-Musk penny-elimination gambit: Is it the harbinger of a coming cashless tyranny?
 |
| "The Amish have been galvanised to head to the polls and turn the battle ground red." |
The little guy voted for Trump, so naturally Trump is going to screw the little guy, the Amish in particular.
And not mentioned in the story below is the deep resistance to eliminating cash among the denizens of America's survivalist communities. They see this as a control issue, and a potential threat to freedom because you control the cash in your pocket, but not the digital currency in your account. Cross the authorities somehow, and your account can be wiped out with a keystroke.
We already have experienced lawful gun owners and gun businesses being de-banked over gun ownership, among other culture war issues contested by liberal elites using economic coercion.
Meanwhile The UniParty has devalued the 1913 dollar to three cents. If you've only got one, eliminating the penny means you've now got bupkis.
How does the observation go? It's always the Republicans who actually advance the liberalism which the people resist when the Democrats are in control.
Every. Damn. Time.
To the extent rounding up occurs more frequently than rounding down, cash consumers would be paying the price for the cost efficiency Trump and Musk are seeking, said Ajay Patel, a professor of finance at Wake Forest University School of Business. ...
. . . people at the bottom of the economic ladder will probably feel the penny pinch the most.
“The individuals paying for this benefit will be those who purchase products and services using cash and will continue to do so going forward because they are either unbanked or unable to access debit or credit cards or a digital wallet,” Patel said. ...
Laura Maike, of Burton, Ohio, notes that the Amish will feel the pinch right now.
“Here in Northeast Ohio’s Amish country, we still use pennies regularly,” Maike said of her area, which includes thousands of generally cash-using Amish. “How would this work for cash-only transactions? It would be impossible to give exact change as the purchaser or seller.”
More.
Meanwhile, there is real money: $2,905.98 the ounce, the seventh record gold price this year
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| gold content: about $542 at today's high |
Gold prices jumped more than 1% on Monday to hit a record high, as safe-haven demand surged on fears of a global trade war after U.S. President Donald Trump announced new tariff plans.
Spot gold was up 1.3% to $2,897.99 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,905.98 earlier in the session — its seventh record this year.
U.S. gold futures rose 1.2% to $2,923.1.
“The precious metal is set to retain its upward bias, as long as President Trump’s policy threats continue to stoke fear and uncertainty through global financial markets,” said Exinity Group chief market analyst Han Tan.
More.
PM Update:
Spot gold surged 1.5% to $2,903.53 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,911.30 earlier in the session.
Mad King Ludwig bans the penny
Congress has the exclusive power to coin money and regulate its value, not the president, according to the US Constitution.
But since all coin and currency is worthless, thanks to Congress, does it really matter anymore?
The thieving Roman emperors infamously diluted the value of coinage from time to time by reducing the amount of gold and silver contained in the coins.
Since we had real money once upon a time, our founders didn't want one man potentially messing with the money, so they put Congress in charge, because they really did think a president could become a tyrant.
But our perfect, holy founders who supposedly thought of everything never anticipated that the Congress itself would become the thieving bastards, the naifs.
The 1913 dollar is now worth three measly cents, but even that Mad King Ludwig will now take away.
If we were a free people, we wouldn't put up with this.
The principle remains, even if the circumstances have changed.
Trump takes aim at ‘wasteful’ government spending by ordering end to penny production
But at least one analyst on Wall Street expects that the penny’s days are numbered. TD Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg said the halt will [be] likely to pass judicial review, leading to a shortage in the coin.
“We believe this order would survive judicial review, which is why this is likely to occur,” Seiberg wrote on Monday. “We worry about this leading to a shortage of pennies, which could force merchants to pay banks more for coins. It also adds legal risk for merchants and banks. That could create the crisis needed to force Congress to act.”
In the aggregate US Treasury yields averaged 4.408 on Friday, Feb 7, still ahead of the Daily Federal Funds Rate of 4.33 set by the Fed in December
Relative to each other by duration, bond yields on average normalized at the beginning of December, and notes on average in mid-December.
Last week the spreads narrowed as bills on average rose a little bit in the aggregate and bond yields fell.
The 20-year bond was the yield leader at 4.75 while the 1-year bill was the yield laggard of all the issues at 4.25.
The fixed rate 30-year mortgage averaged 6.89 last Thursday.
Global coal electric capacity hit 2,175 gigawatts in 2024
China added nearly 31gw of new coal electric capacity in 2024 and India nearly 6gw while the US retired almost 5gw, according to the story:
. . . U.S. exports of coal have been rising steadily to satisfy growing global demand for the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, even though its domestic consumption has decreased.
On top of that, the world’s coal capacity reached a new record high of nearly 2,175 gigawatts in 2024, data from Global Energy Monitor showed on Feb. 6. Coal capacity is the overall power output that can be generated from coal-fired power plants. ...
More.
According to Electric Power Annual for 2023 at the US Energy Information Administration, existing US coal electric capacity is down to 193gw, behind natural gas at 572gw and ahead of wind at 148gw. Nuclear is still a distant fourth at 100gw from 93 existing utility-scale generators.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
PEW: 54% of Americans express unfavorable views of Elon Musk
Here:
Musk is viewed more negatively than positively overall. More than half of Americans (54%) express unfavorable views of the billionaire, while 42% view him favorably.
- 73% of Republicans view Musk favorably, while about a quarter (24%) view him unfavorably.
- Just 12% of Democrats rate Musk favorably, while 85% view him unfavorably.
Hakeem Jeffries should welcome a government shutdown on March 14 because Trump is now a bad faith president who oversteps Congress' power of the purse and can't be trusted
Really, Democrat leadership is looking at it all wrong.
Just shut it down and go home. That's what Democrat legislators have had to do in many states. Might as well try it in Washington.
In fact, put out a general call for all Democrats to refuse to cooperate everywhere in the country, like the communists do in Italy and France.
Don't go to work at the factory. Don't go to work at the school. Shut down all the government offices everywhere. Don't go to work anywhere. Snarl transportation on land, sea, and air. Empty the shelves at the grocery stores. Cancel all the doctor appointments. Let 911 ring and ring and ring.
Call a general strike.
Shut the whole goddamn country down until Trump agrees to play by the rules. Get mad as hell and refuse to take it anymore!
... House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, have been in talks about how best to use the funding deadline to counter Trump. But some top Democrats worry that even if they won policy concessions, Trump would only ignore the law — as they believe he has in some of his initial assaults on federal agencies — so a knockdown, drag-out battle and potential shutdown could be all for naught.
“If the foundational role of Congress is the power of the purse, why would we ever believe them again on an appropriations deal?” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. “It’s going to be harder for us to work together because it’s harder for us to trust each other.” ...
“We’re not going to keep on bailing him out,” added Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who is among a growing faction of Democrats who are ready to stare down Trump in a shutdown fight. “We’re not a cheap date.” ...
“If Senate Democrats don’t have the gumption to do what is
necessary in this moment, I believe that House Democrats will,” Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said. Asked whether the
confrontation could lead to a shutdown, she insisted her party wouldn’t
be to blame and the price of Democratic votes should be “very high.”
More.
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Trump's deportation fantasies hit the big brick wall of reality
Meanwhile at ICE, Vitello told agents in January to
aim to meet a daily quota of 1,200-1,400 arrests. According to numbers
ICE has posted on X, the highest single day total since Trump was
inaugurated was just 1,100, and the number has fallen since that day. On
Tuesday of this week, arrests of immigrants were over 800, according to
a source familiar with the numbers. But last weekend, there were only
about 300 arrests, another source told NBC News.
In order to fulfill Trump’s Inauguration Day promise of “millions and millions” of deportations, the Trump administration would have to be deporting over 2,700 immigrants every day to reach 1 million in a year.
And, as NBC News has reported, arrests do not always equal immediate detentions, much less deportations. Of the more than 8,000 immigrants arrested in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, 461 were released, according to the White House.
More.
They were supposed to end catch and release on day one. They can't do even that.
Scandalous: Republicans subscribe to Politico Pro just like everyone else lol
... records from USAspending.gov show Politico payments totaling only $44,000 from USAID during fiscal years 2023 and 2024. ...
In
total, 38 Republicans in the House spent over $300,000 on Politico
subscriptions in the first nine months of 2024, and committees led by
Republicans expensed almost $500,000 of Politico subscriptions in the
same time period, a Washington Post analysis shows.
The
day before the mini-scandal erupted, the White House’s Office of the
National Cyber Director signed a $35,000 contract for a Politico Pro
Premium subscription for 15 users, according to government records. ...
Throughout
the day Wednesday, Musk and other Republicans claimed that USAID alone
had spent millions on Politico over the past 12 months.
But
that characterization is false, according to a senior executive at
Politico who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private
internal data. The entire federal government spends more than $16
million on Politico subscriptions, the executive said. Those payments go
to Politico Pro and other professional offerings from the
Axel-Springer-owned publisher, which offers some subscriptions and
licensing deals that can reach five figures. ...
More.
Obama appointed judge, Paul Engelmayer, issues sweeping order banning Musk and his allies from accessing the US Department of Treasury payments system
A federal judge in New York temporarily restricted the ability of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access the Treasury Department payment system, saying that doing so was necessary to prevent the potential disclosure of sensitive and confidential information.
The early Saturday order by Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, precludes officials without proper background checks and security clearances from accessing the payment system through at least next Friday, including political appointees and special government appointees. It also orders any prohibited person who has had access to the records since President Trump’s inauguration to destroy them. The judge set a hearing for Friday.
Some 19 blue-state attorneys general filed the case Friday evening, saying that Musk’s DOGE initiative risks interference with the payment of funds appropriated by Congress.
Engelmayer said the states were likely to win on arguments that the Trump administration exceeded its authority in allowing broader access to the payment system. He also said the states faced irreparable harm without court intervention for now, including “the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” ...
Well thank God.
None of these people have security clearances. The say so of President Trump is not a security clearance.
Friday, February 7, 2025
America has always produced outstanding 19 year olds, like Audie Murphy of Kingston, Texas
When Audie Murphy was 19 and two days after he had already been wounded in the legs, he stood alone on top of the burning wreckage of a tank destroyer for an hour gunning down 50 German soldiers with a machine gun that still worked, for which he won the Medal of Honor. It happened in Holtzwihr, France, 26 January 1945.
A boy we all looked up to.
Trump appointed judge Carl Nichols stops 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on administrative leave tonight
During the hearing, Nichols questioned DOJ attorney Brett Shumate
about why the Trump administration needed to place 2,200 USAID workers
on leave so quickly.
“What is the urgency of this?” the judge asked.
“The President has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID,” Shumate replied.
I'll say.
Buying co-president Elon Musk's Starlink terminals and funding Melania Trump's and Ivanka Trump's pet projects is corruption of the highest order.
Doubly inconvenient: USAID spent $1 million on Elon Musk's Starlink terminals for the Ukraine War which MAGA opposes
What is the world coming to?
A Democrat with multiple credit card balances owed, including one for $1.2 million, should fit right in as a cabinet secretary overseeing spending of money we don't have
Kennedy’s credit card balances range between $610,000 to $1.2 million in accounts that carry interest rates of 23.24% to 23.49%, the filing shows.
Financial experts interviewed by CNBC said balances that high are unusual.
“That’s a truly massive amount of credit card debt,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.
Maybe he can borrow some fashion money at lower rates from Kash Ap Patel at the FBI, if they ever confirm him.
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