It turns out that former S&P Sovereign Ratings Committee Chair John B. Chambers, who presided over the AAA downgrade in 2011, is a partisan wackadoodle

 Here commenting about today:

“The external position is about the same, but I think the governance has weakened and the fractiousness of the political settings is much worse, and that has led to government shutdowns, it’s led to fears that the government might default on its debt because of the debt ceiling, and it’s led to a failed coup d’état on the 6th [of] January, 2021.”

And here a couple years ago:

"I don’t think the chance of a default because of a debt ceiling is that high as long as the Democrats control both Congress and the White House, that won’t always been the case. That could reemerge."

 Because, this:

The Wall Street bean counter who trashed America’s global credit reputation is a New Yorker who never studied economics, majored in literature and philosophy, and has a master’s in English lit. ...

Chambers grew up outside Kansas City, Kan., and went to liberal Grinnell College in Iowa, where he was a star on the swim team, ranking eighth in school history in the 1,000-meter freestyle. After graduating in 1977 with a bachelor of arts in literature and philosophy, he went Ivy League, enrolling at Columbia University, where he got a master’s degree in English literature.  ...

S&P was found to have made an estimated $2 trillion error in its 10-year deficit projection but brushed that aside, citing instability in Washington and the fact that the deficit-reduction cuts fell short of S&P’s recommended $4 trillion.

LOL, in article supposedly touting the Cornel West threat, clueless former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader says he prefers Biden autocracy to Trump fascism

 “I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader said, according to the outlet. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

Yeah, every censored, canceled person in America agrees with that, right?

If Ralph Nader is West's friend, who are West's enemies?

The whole farcical thing is here, pretending Biden doesn't now have a record, that he won the House in 2022, and that inflation isn't crushing the worker.

Dramatic price action today for 30+ years old Vanguard Treasury funds

VFISX inception date 10/28/1991 New all time low price set today 09/26/2023 close : $9.71

VFITX inception date 10/28/1991 All time low price: $9.57 on 11/21/1994 Price 9/26/2023 close: $9.59

VUSTX inception date 5/19/1986 New all time low price set today 9/26/2023 close: $7.88 

  

 

Senator Menendez starts the week telling an amusing anecdote about all that cash found in his home, doesn't explain how the briber's DNA got on the envelope

 Sen. Bob Menendez suggests cash found in bribery raid came from ‘personal savings’

 

US Treasury yields pushed to new cycle highs last week despite another Fed interest rate pause

 Cash was about the only thing which did better week over week on Friday. Treasuries and bonds generally took a beating, as did stocks.

The UST yield curve aggregate closed up a net 1.27% week over week on 9/22, to an average of 5.0707692, the highest Friday close yet for this cycle.

Yields in the aggregate made a new high for this cycle on Thursday, for an average of 5.0915384. 

Here's the year-to-date performance for key categories using some commonly used Vanguard funds:

Treasury Market VFISX 0.66% VFITX -0.70% VUSTX -5.57%;

Investment Grade Market VFSTX 2.08% VFICX 1.32% VWESX -0.83%; 

Total Bond Market VBTLX -0.03% (+0.44% previous week);

Cash VMFXX 3.58% (3.48% previous week);

Total Stock Market VTSAX 12.95% (16.45% previous week).

 

 

Now controlled by Muslims, Hamtramck bans flags like the gay one, lesbian Attorney General of Michigan Dana Nessel calls it a national embarrassment

 Ha ha ha ha ha.

 

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is a lesbian, weighed in after the resolution passed. 

 “I ask the city of Hamtramck to use its voice to speak up for all its people, take down the wall you have now built that has made this proud city into a national embarrassment,” Nessel (D) said at a protest rally at the park across from City Hall. “Make no mistake, homophobia, transphobia are indeed forms of evil as much as Islamophobia is.”

More.

Allahu Akbar.

For a good time, call Angela: The Libertarian Party is very interested in RFK Jr for Election 2024 but not Justin Amash lol

 In July, Mr. Kennedy met privately with Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian Party, at a conference they were both attending in Memphis — a meeting that has not previously been reported.

 “He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian,” Ms. McArdle said in an interview, adding that they agreed on several positions, including the threat of the “deep state” and the need for populist messaging. “We’re aligned on a lot of issues.”

 “My perspective is that we are going to stay in touch in case he does decide to run,” Ms. McArdle said. “And he can contact me at any time if that’s the case.”

More.

Depressed stroke victim on meds who can't even dress himself tells Menendez to resign

Sen. John Fetterman is first Democratic senator to tell Sen. Bob Menendez to resign

The only reason Democrat Senator Bob Menendez didn't keep his cash in the freezer like Democrat William J. Jefferson was because it wouldn't all fit in there

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Authorities found more than $100,000 worth of gold bars in Menendez’s home, and $480,000 in cash — much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe.

More. 

 

 

 

 

"In a subsequent raid, agents found $90,000 in marked money in the freezer of Jefferson’s Virginia home."

 

Climate phony Barack Obama wanted young people to stay angry and frustrated about inaction on climate in 2021 and promptly installed a 2,500 gallon propane tank on his estate in 2022

Video of the climate phony in 2021 is making the rounds here.

 

Martha's Vineyard Times June 7, 2022

Governor Kathy Bart Simpson Hochul of New York now: ""If you're going to leave your country, go somewhere else"

 Then:

 Yikes.

What did the Hot Dog Nazi say to the lesbian?

 

"No wiener for you!"

Green Party candidate Cornel West gives Trump the edge over Biden in latest Emerson National Poll

 

Cornel West has been shaping up all summer long to be the real Operation Chaos candidate for Election 2024 in Emerson’s polling. Biden doesn’t need to worry about RFK Jr unless he, too, goes third party.

From the Emerson College Polling September National Poll here :

In a general election rematch between Trump and Biden, 45% support the former president and the current president respectively. Ten percent are undecided. When Green Party candidate Cornel West is added to the ballot, Trump holds 43% of voter support, Biden 42%, while 4% support West and 11% are undecided.

China's Marxist vision of state control and redistribution never went away

 

What is a communist? One who has yearnings

For equal division of unequal earnings.

Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing

To fork over his penny and pocket your shilling.

- Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849)

 

… it’s back, says Rudd, and Xi’s Marxist vision means greater control over the private sector, an expanding role for state-owned enterprises and industrial policy, and the quest for “common prosperity” through redistribution — all of which is likely to shrink economic growth, he concludes. Rudd is the current Australian ambassador to the United States. …

Stevenson-Yang is … one of the few who isn’t puzzled by what’s happening in China, after living there for more than 20 years. The CCP “was always going to decouple. Once the party had acquired enough power, enough resources, enough money, it was always going to decouple,” she told CNBC.

The reforms that began in 1979, she says, “were always meant to be temporary, in order to bring in more resources.”

More.

Bankruptcy estate of FTX sues Barbara Fried, Stanford Law ethics expert, for encouraging son to skirt disclosure rules

 

Very amusing.

We’re law experts, see. This is how you get around the law.

From the story,

FTX sues Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents, aims to claw back some of the $26 million in gifts and property :

The filing characterizes the correspondence as Bankman lobbying his son to “massively increase his own salary.” Within two weeks, the suit claims that Bankman-Fried had collectively gifted his parents $10 million in funds coming from Alameda, and within three months, the couple was deeded the $16.4 million property in The Bahamas.

According to the partially-redacted filing, Bankman-Fried’s parents also “pushed for tens of millions of dollars in political and charitable contributions, including to Stanford University, which were seemingly designed to boost Bankman’s and Fried’s professional and social status.” Fried is also accused of encouraging her son and others within the company to avoid, if not violate, federal campaign finance disclosure rules by “engaging in straw donations or otherwise concealing the FTX Group as the source of the contributions.”

Bankman-Fried’s parents are legal scholars who taught at Stanford Law School. His mother is an expert on ethics, while his father specializes in taxes.

Trump threw a tantrum on January 6th, blaming mommy for not stopping it is pathetic

 

Trump: Nancy Pelosi Is Responsible For January 6th

There's an old saying which says don't get in the way of your enemy while he's busy destroying himself.

And she didn't.

Trump is indeed responsible because he scheduled the event for that particular day. He could have chosen any other.

No one is responsible for the crowd getting out of control but the crowd, but Trump is responsible for the unique intersection between the crowd and the Congress on January 6th.

The Democrats’ prosecution of the trespassers has been wildly excessive, just to make an example of Trump for his childish stunt.

We are children behaving like children, and we have the government we deserve, on all sides.

 

The ugly Americans' ugly children

 

Overall, adults in the U.S. are least likely to say that kids having good manners is an especially important quality — just 52% of them said so in 2017, according to a report released this month by King’s College London. That makes the U.S. the country least likely, of the 24 countries surveyed in recent years, to believe good manners are crucial for kids.

This is a significant drop from 1990, when 76% of U.S. adults said it was a very important quality for children to possess, the data shows. …

Another factor that falls under the broader idea of kids being well behaved is if they listen to their parents or other adults. But even fewer U.S. adults said that obedience was a key quality for kids — in fact, it fell far behind in all countries compared with having good manners.

The country that values obedience the most is Nigeria with 58%, followed by Mexico and Egypt with 57% and 56% respectively. The U.S. falls into the second half of the table with 21%.

The whole thing is here.

The decline was inevitable, I suppose, with the decline of religion.

But things were already bad enough in 1958.

They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They are loud and ostentatious:

 

 

 

Trump's Miss Universe trans policy in 2012 was endorsed by GLAAD lol

 '“For more than two weeks, the Miss Universe Organization and Mr. Trump made it clear to GLAAD that they were open to making a policy change to include women who are transgender. We appreciate that he and his team responded swiftly and appropriately,” they said in a statement.'

The story from June is here.

We've had an unprecedented three consecutive years now where inflation has remained higher than the 10-year UST yield on an average annual basis, and our hapless FOMC looks set to make it four

 There were just two years of this in the 1970s inflation, and they too were consecutive.

Anyone who calls Jerome Powell an inflation fighter is an idiot, or a stooge for the status quo of inflation profiteers.

This is all on the backs of the people, but where is the angry mob?

So medicated, so drugged, and so otherwise anesthetized by bread and circuses that the elites don't even bother to hide the truth.

 

Core inflation higher than DGS10 yield in 2020, 2021, 2022 (annual average)

Core inflation higher than DGS10 yield January through July 2023 (monthly view)

Let's check in on the US Treasury yield curve and year to date performance of selected Vanguard funds

The UST yield curve aggregate closed up a net 0.68% week over week on 9/15, to an average of 5.006923, the first Friday close this cycle in the 5s.

 

As expected, fixed income isn't doing well in this rising-rate environment. Stocks have done surprisingly well this year, and even cash has beaten bonds.

 

YTD performance:

 

Treasury VFISX 0.68% VFITX -0.26% VUSTX -4.12%;

Investment Grade VFSTX 2.21% VFICX 1.73% VWESX 0.00%; 

Total Bond VBTLX 0.44%; Cash VMFXX 3.48%; Total Stock VTSAX 16.45%.

 

Other popular vehicles: 

 

$SPX 16.37%

$AGG -2.12%

$TLT -8.38%.