Wednesday, February 12, 2025
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.
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