Silly Predictions – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Forbidden Economics: The GloboLeft Versus The Good

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

My neighbor has had a bad financial crisis. He has to drive a car without a top and his car doesn’t have a roof.

Monday’s post was about Forbidden Science. These are inconvenient truths that simply don’t fit into the ideology of a GloboLeftist. In the tradition of the very best GloboLeftists, whenever this inconvenient set of facts conflicts with their ideology, they do what rational people have always done – they consult how the facts disagree with their ideology and change their positions. Nah, just kidding. Instead GloboLeftists ignore them and stick their fingers in their ears and yell loudly “I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you!”

Wednesday is the day I typically post about economics and related issues, so what better topic than Forbidden Economics? Just like on Monday, I’ll start with things that the GloboLeft actually believes and then make fun of them, primarily because they deserve it.

Me? I say bring back the positive power of bullying.

I was a bully to this orphan kid in school. I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to tell his parents.

GloboLeftists believe that Modern Monetary Theory isn’t just made-up justification for “I spend what I want”.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has quietly taken the place of any sort of rational thinking. When I first wrote about it, it seemed so fringe and tongue in cheek that I was shocked anyone smarter than AOC would fall for it. I know, I know, that leaves about 85% of the country, but the GloboLeft has willingly and enthusiastically embraced MMT.

What is MMT? It’s the theory that, since money is entirely made up in the first place, that it doesn’t matter how much you print. Yes, you read that correctly. The idea is that money is like points in a football game. When a team scores a touchdown, there aren’t some vat of points that are decreased to add points to that team’s score. Instead, they’re made up. The limit to the number of points that can be scored in a game is based entirely on the productivity of the teams.

If we reset to zero every day and all played NFL® football, well, that might make sense. In MMT, the idea is that extra cash is just soaked up via taxation rather than the game ending.

What happens when the score keeps going up from game to game.

But the GloboLeftElite really, really don’t like to be taxed. As much as Warren Buffett complains that he’s not taxed enough, the one thing Warren never, ever does is send more than he owes in taxes in voluntarily. In fact, he has fleets of lawyers working every angle possible so that he pays the least amount in taxes possible. (Note: If Donald Trump were to try this he would be tried for felony tax evasion.)

There are two types of people in this world: Those who can find an answer through simple deduction.

This is not a new thing. It really started under W., and has continued through Obama, Trump, and Biden.

But what could go wrong?

GloboLeftists believe that women are cheated in the workplace, earning less than men.

I’ll start by reminding everyone that GloboLeftists don’t even know what a woman is, to the point that a sitting Supreme Court Justice was unable to define what a woman was during her Senate confirmation hearings, and sits on the Supreme Court.

However . . .

The reality is that women actually make more than men when their wages are controlled for things like, oh, career choice, amount of overtime put in, time taken off to have children, et cetera. The idea is so simplistic in that it takes everyone, puts them in a bag, and says that the average man makes X, and the average woman makes 0.8X.

Yes. That’s true. But when I went to a college graduation several years ago and they called out the engineers, 90% plus were men in some fields, and in no engineering field were women even close to a majority.

And they both give sound advice.

I wonder if that could be partially a reason for a pay difference?

Nah. Sexism is easier, and if people will swallow MMT, they’ll swallow anything. I mean, we already knew that about Kamala.

GloboLeftists believe that increasing a labor supply won’t decrease wages.

Immigration is an amazing source of brain rot for GloboLeftists. They think that bringing in hordes of illegal aliens won’t drop the price of unskilled labor. Now, not for one minute do I believe that’s the case, and neither do the people (the GloboLeftElite) that are feeding those thoughts to the rank and file.

But lower labor costs mean higher profits, so why not bring in not only illegal aliens, but tons of people on H1-B visas to take the jobs that Americans had – the number of stories of people showing up to work only to be forced to train their replacements to “earn” their severance package is so common as to be boring. It doesn’t even make the news anymore.

Yet the flip side is that they also don’t think that raising the minimum wage will have any impact on prices?

As found.

The last belief that I’m going to touch on that the GloboLeft has is this: history has nothing to teach us about the danger of an irreligious society basted in feminism and socialism.

Hey, wait, do you hear someone yelling “I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you!”?

I’m sure it’s not just me. You can hear that, right?

Oh, and as a follow up to Monday’s post, here is NASA’s Administrator. He believes the far side of the Moon is always dark. Really.

Zoomers And Pools Of Cash

“The pools of blood that have collected, you’ve got to soak that up. Now, Jimmie, we need to raid your linen closet.” – Pulp Fiction

How do you drown a programmer? Put up a sign that says, “no swimming”.

If I were to come up with a metaphor for today’s situation, well, it might be this . . .

While I was half asleep this morning I visualized in that gauzy dreamy sort of way, dark pools, sitting quietly behind a large earthen structure. At first, the surfaces of the pools were smooth and reflective like glass as they slowly filled.

It was calm, and serene. For now. But the level was coming up.

What was the defining moment of my generation in our youth? Probably the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can still remember the news stories piling up day by day as the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations slowly turned away from communism and then someone said the Berlin Wall didn’t match the Iron Curtains, so, it had to go. What a time to be alive! Heck, women were still winning women’s swim meets!

If I were born a bit earlier, it would probably would have been the Iranian Hostage Crisis, or Carter’s Stagflation, both of which led to Reagan’s election and eventual conversion to MechaReagan®, who fought Godzilla® and Mothra™. But that’s another story.

Anyway, think about those defining moments, the defining events of Gen Z are still out there, and I wonder what that would be. In the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was a story that, at the time, was filled with hope. Here was the collapse of a political system bent on the forceful subjugation of humanity. What’s not to celebrate?

What was the favorite song of East Germans before the Berlin Wall came down? “Under Prussia”

In the end, though, what was lost in that moment was restraint. Just like Gingrich restrained the worst (political!) impulses of Bill Clinton (“What, I can’t spend what I want to spend because of the way the bond market might react?”), the Soviet Union constrained the worst impulses of the people in power in Washington. That restraint really ended with Clinton who had to fight to save his political career after lying under oath about dallying with the help.

But after Clinton, after 9-11?

Bill Clinton will be remembered for the economy. Oh, and that one other thing . . . .

All restraint fell. Oh, sure, we needed to go and find Osama Bin Laden, but did we need to invade Iraq? In hindsight, almost certainly not. Did we need to stay in Afghanistan for 20 years? Again, almost certainly not. And these adventures cost trillions of dollars, all of which we didn’t have. But that’s okay. Cash isn’t for earning. It’s for spending. Like AOC said when asked where the money would come from for one of her socialist programs: “You just pay for it!”

She was, and is, serious about this, since her understanding of cause and effect is limited to her goldfish-like memory.

But those dark pools of my dreams, they were filling. And while they filled, they began to destabilize everyone tied to the United States. In Egypt, for instance, I think they eat nothing but rice, sawdust, and the occasional house pet, which is fairly inexpensive. So, a small change in the price of rice or a decrease in the availability of sawdust causes people, real people, to go hungry.

Does Biden look like he needs more fiber in his diet to you?

As Snickers® told us, “You’re not you when you’re hungry” and hungry people are the ones that overthrow Middle Eastern despots. But that’s okay. You just pay for it.

What does the Left think about all the illegal aliens that are teeming over the border in relentless streams? You just pay for them. And you have to. Even when we’re not stacking them like cordwood in Chicago or displacing vets to house them in New York or trying to teach them to ski in Colorado, there is one horrible fact about illegal aliens:

They cost more than they create. We can’t get a volume discount if we import them by the millions. No, they just cost billions more. The net annual value of an illegal to the economy is, at minimum, -$10,000 per year. NEGATIVE $10,000, and that’s after the work they provide.

I used to worry about the collapse of the United States because of the destruction of our nation’s values and economy by illegals, but that was too scary. Now I just worry about celebrities. (meme as found)

Where does the cash come from? If you’re AOC, “You just pay for them.”

And all that “you just pay for it” is what’s filling those dark pools of my dreams.

If all that cash would just sit, quietly, in those dark pools, there really isn’t a problem. If we pay Raytheon™ for a $4 million dollar Patriot® missile to destroy $20,000 Iranian drones, as long as Raytheon© just leaves that money in their bank account, filling up the pool.

But, oops, you have to pay people to make the missile. If it’s only the Chinese who keep the money in a bank account somewhere and never use it, that’s fine, too, because that’s just another dark pool of money.

When the Fed™ started out bailing out every bank, that’s really what happened. The banks kept the cash in deposit, and salted it away in their dark pools.

I think it’s the dark pools of cash that will ultimately be the defining moment for Gen Z. Well, not the dark pools themselves, but, rather, the mess they make when the levee breaks. We’re seeing the problem starting now, and Gen Z is aware – many of them have lived their teen years seeing nothing but inflation as the pools break loose.

I’m getting tired of Gen Z, always walking around like they can afford to rent the place.

The pools are up high, and have a great deal of potential energy. The destruction the flow will create as the cash spreads down through the economy has been bad, but it will be legendary. When the American Continental was issued it was backed by the same thing the dollar is today: nothing. The phrase “not worth a Continental” was no doubt on the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they wrote that no State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment in debts.”

But that’s quaint thought, right?

(meme as found)

Weimar Germany followed the AOC “just pay for it” formula, and German bankers eventually (after some, um, events) became the most cautious in Europe about inflation.

So, after my dream of last night, I think we have a big dam problem.

It worked so well last time, right?

Give War A Chance

“War is brewing.” – The Lord of the Rings

Pa Wilder survived mustard gas and pepper spray. He was a seasoned veteran.

War. What is it good for?

Absolutely nothin’.

I have a different answer:

Saving hundreds of millions of lives.

Whaaaaat?

Yeah, war, it turns out, is an amazing catalyst for providing lots of life saving technology that has saved far more people than it has killed. I need to jump in here with this because everyone has their sphincters clenched because it appears we’re on the edge of the Third World War. Maybe that won’t be so bad.

Hang on, this will all make sense in a moment.

I’m a trained professional. Or I would be if I were trained. And if I were getting paid for this.

Give a thief a gun and he’ll rob a bank. Give a thief a bank and he’ll rob everyone.

But I made a pretty bold statement, and I have the receipts to back it up. First let’s start with what I’m counting. I’m not counting as “war” when governments kill their own citizens. In the 20^th century alone (no Fox® required) governments killed an estimated 262 million of their own citizens.

Yeah, that’s an ugly number, and it’s certainly the largest man-made source of involuntary death. This is also the biggest argument EVER that the Second Amendment is the very best life-saving technology ever conceived by mortal man.

Ever.

War is a different kettle of fish, and it depends on the counting. One source says the total number of combat deaths since 1800 is around 35 million. Sure, that’s a lot, and I’d love to have them all over for a nice dinner, but it’s small compared to those killed by their own government. A broader definition of “war” would put it at 131 million in the twentieth century, but I’d guess that also includes a big overlap of citizens killed by their own government.

I hear that Stalin collected political jokes. When asked how many he had, “Four GULAGs worth.”

Tomato, tomah-to. Let’s split the difference and say it’s probably 80 million in the twentieth century, or roughly as many people as Joe Biden has allowed to come streaming over the border in the last three years.

But how, John Wilder, you amazing stud, you said you had receipts on how war brought about benefits that exceeded the costs?

War provides an acceleration of humanity, it provides the necessary push and investment into things that help troops do unexpected things on the battlefield. Like living. That leads us to penicillin. It was spurred into development (it had been discovered earlier) in World War II. Would antibiotics have been lost in a research paper without World War II? Don’t know – but World War II allowed them to be tested on Allied soldiers.

While we’re on medical, what about smallpox? Oh, sure, it doesn’t sound bad, but I’ve been told it is far worse than bigpox. What spurred that innovation? War. The Revolutionary War, in fact.

Well, there’s a joke coming back from 2012. I guess humor ended then.

I know I try to avoid drinking water since mankind developed beer and wine, but water chlorination has saved lots of people who aren’t drinking booze. Who developed the process to make chlorine gas cheaply so he could gas a bunch of French? A German guy in World War One.

There are more, but there are hundreds of millions of lives saved in just those three developments.

What else did war provide?

Nuclear power – sure, just like OJ’s obituary, someone will say . . . “Oh, and there’s that one other thing” but nuclear power has produced clean power over the globe with, well, a few exceptions.
Jet engines – without World War Two, would Steve Miller have ever had someone to take him home?
Radar – I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty good at keeping planes from hitting each other.
The Internet – how else would we get pictures of cats?
GPS – it can guide bombs, or it can take us to a liquor store in an unfamiliar town. Guess which is used more often?

I found a $20 outside of a liquor store. I decided to do what Jesus would do, so I turned it into wine.

Satellites – without World War Two, would we have these? Probably not. And satellites have made weather prediction a pretty trivial thing. Doesn’t mean the prediction will be any good, but, you know, we can do it faster.
Computers – created to calculate firing tables for artillery and to decode German stuff. Again, now we use for pictures of cats. And porn.
Medical imaging, including x-rays and ultrasound – all started with military tech.
Medical prosthetics – this is grimmer, but the more things got shot off, the better the tech.
Telecommunications technology, including wireless networks – the very first time I used WIFI in a house, the host noted that it was based on tech used in Gulf War I. WIFI? Yeah, thank a war.
Aircraft technology – when you make tens of thousands of aircraft that are used to the maximum extent of their capability, you learn what makes them fall out of the sky. Which is useful.
Rocket technology – no bucks, no Buck Rodgers. From Werner von Braun to Elon Musk, I’m raising my glass to the foreigners who get us into space. Oh, von Braun’s first rockets weren’t aimed at the Moon.
Sonar – I don’t fish, so, I guess this is okay. Meh tier.
Chemical engineering – this is a really important one – in making all the gases to kill people in World War One and in all the bits and pieces required to make tires without rubber and how to make ammonia to kill yet more people in World War One, our modern world wouldn’t exist.
Trauma care – how is it that 35 people are shot in an average Chicago weekend and only eight die? Trauma care. This stuff was built on lots of combat experience, and thankfully keeps lots of innocent people breathing.
Cryptography – the entire field of cryptography is due to war. It’s the backbone of current connections and internet transactions, but started when people wanted to figure out where the Germans were going to be next week.

But when the Vikings used dots and dashes to communicate, it was Norse code.

I’m no longer scared of war. Sure, it sucks if you or your friends got exploded, but the numbers don’t lie: war has killed probably between 35 million (low) and 131 million (way high) in the twentieth century. The advancements from war have probably saved (one estimate I read) five billion people.

War seems to have saved more people than it has killed. By a huge margin.

So, in the immortal words of P.J. O’Rourke (peace be upon him): “Give war a chance.”

Maybe, but maybe we’re on the eve of creation?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Month Closer

“That’s the theme song from The Jeffersons. You really need help.” – Tropic Thunder

All these clock pictures sometimes tick me off.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume V, Issue 11

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

I’ve rolled back the clock this month. We’ll see if it holds.

In this issue: Front Matter – Variations on a Theme – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – We Win – Links

Front Matter

I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Variations on a Theme

During the month I collect headlines and other information that documents the way things are going – for me, it’s interesting just how quickly something either fades from memory, or becomes the “new normal” and becomes business as usual. The following (at first) seemed a bit disjointed to me, but in the end they all tell the same story – the story of the plans to eliminate the culture that now exits, and the desire to hold on to power, no matter what the cost.

Keeping that in mind, the election is coming up. Trump is leading and one major Democratic technique is to create an electorate split. The reason they want the power, is to use it.

And there’s a big population of businesses that are coordinating to “interfere” in the election. The GloboLeftElite always project what they are doing on their enemies. And, to them, we are not competitors, we are deathly enemies.

As has been a major theme on all media this, not just here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise®, illegal aliens oozing across the border has been the biggest story of 2024. The GloboLeft tries to pretend that they’re not in favor of this, but it’s abundantly clear that this is no mistake, not act of nature. This is entirely planned.

This policy stays either without respect to the consequences or, perhaps, because of the consequences. The consequences have significant negative impacts of the actual citizens here, including employment. They are helped by official at every level.

The consequences? Lawlessness and lowered competence.

The long term plan? Who knows?

There is sufficient proof that the GloboLeft hates God:

And that the GloboLeft is everywhere:

And that they worship death:

And don’t care about our deepest cultural beliefs:

And that they’ll put their, um, “money” where their mouth is since humans are apparently just TransCows to them:

Violence and Censorship Update

Several readers have reported to me (via email) that they were unsubscribed or that their subscriptions are filtered out as spam. FYI. Might it be random? Sure. It might. Heard about more this month.

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves. Foreign stories are included as they often foreshadow attempts in the United States.

I did two stories this month on Sweet Baby Inc.’s looting of game companies for money and to insert GloboLeftElite propaganda into games to control your mind. Remember, never buy anything from a company that has a CEO that stole a hair style from Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons.

Here’s the playbook that Sweet Baby Inc. uses . . .

And the voice of someone who called them on it, and got doxed:

And (from the UK) what successful Social Justice looks like:

And the next few are the result of successful Social Justice policies:

And probably the plan:

And, Canada is seeing the end game in sight:

Here’s a bit more on that:

And the what the RCMP thinks of Canadians:

But March was also rich in Orwell:

Never forget, the GloboLeftElite will blame others for what they’re already doing:

And Canada showing they’ve figured out what a woman really is . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. It’s like it’s planned:

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is down, expected in spring. Probably quiet until June or July.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly up.

Economic:

Economic numbers are near a high, but I wonder if it’s the drunk before the hangover?

Illegal Aliens:

Highest March. Ever.

We Win

To have a civil war, there have to be two sides. I think the goal of the GloboLeftElite has been to convince those who oppose it that the game is over. They have already shown themselves to be ready to do anything, absolutely anything to gain power. From then, they’ll pull up the ladder. What do they want?

“Voting” so loosely open that anyone can do it. Think something as simple as obtaining a drivers license equates a ballot in the mail. Then, anyone can harvest those ballots and mark them however they want, with no accountability. This was tried in 2020, and works great for the GloboLeft.

Combined with voting changes (first point) the GloboLeft is cramming illegals into Red States as fast as they can. Either they’re “voters” or an army. Neither of those is good news.

They also want control of the finances so that they can wreck them. Why? I have no idea on this one. Perhaps the Elite just want to consolidate the power and own it all.

Of course, guns have been the bug up the butt of the Left for, well, forever. They try to make up things, but the real answer is that guns prevent the GloboLeft from taking the country over. It is clear from history that killing children is not something that bothers the GloboLeft at all, as the GloboLeft are currently the world champions at kid killing.

People are waking up. They’re seeing the real Evil of the Left:

They’re seeing that Woke doesn’t help anyone:

They’re seeing the engineered replacement:

They’re seeing that a society without marriage is weak, at best:

They’re seeing that the elite want to enslave them:

Even the GloboLeftElite’s hand-chosen minions are seeing the damage:

The RINOs are being challenged:

And a real A.I. without censoring, can see what’s up:

We will win. Even 4Chan sees it:

Like I always say – the road may be tough, be we really can’t lose.

LINK

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/ModernityNews/status/1767165884764709217

https://twitter.com/i/status/1765525665862795547

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1764308853095633224

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1764270162264416637

https://twitter.com/itshoggs/status/1764148239568191724?t=Yb1ucXfa2OWsweGarTyQiQ&s=19

Good Guys

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QytMLIyq6Y8

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1768665733850902779

https://nypost.com/2024/03/15/us-news/nyc-subway-rider-who-shot-aggresive-straphanger-during-rush-hour-commute-wont-be-charged-prosecutors/

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1770624522150126010

One Guy

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback

https://www.news.com.au/national/northern-territory/carnage-alice-springs-anticrime-campaigner-robbed-in-sleep-during-alleged-home-invasion/news-story/c65d3e9c6039c328ee67039246507b23

https://youtu.be/YGz1Tiaying

Body Count

https://twitter.com/_BlakeHabyan/status/1763055020478464084

https://twitter.com/InfoUncensored/status/1757473606655729776

https://twitter.com/ResidentialClub/status/1774223963196973159

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/28/most-believe-jesus-christs-resurrection-new-poll-finds/

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1764478200334168570

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/03/04/the-sad-state-of-marylands-voter-rolls-79k-inaccurate-records-found

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-2024-election-will-be-neither-free-nor-fair/

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/gabriela-pariseau/2024/03/18/41-times-google-has-interfered-us-elections-2008

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/03/lew-rockwell/how-the-democrats-plan-to-steal-the-election/

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/03/26/saving-democracy-from-itself-the-democratic-national-committee-moves-to-block-third-party-candidates/

https://www.judicialwatch.org/illinois-voting-rolls/?source=46&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press%20release&s=15

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-03-26/theyre-going-let-trump-win

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mississippi-doj-elections/2024/03/13/id/1157105/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nyc-council-asking-states-highest-221121732.html

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-building-superstructure-stop-trump-141631115.html

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1771398655184171487

Civil War

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/30/alex-garland-civil-war-interview

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/15/civil-war-review

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/civil-war-movie-timing-maga-violence-1235831454/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQOZ4KctZ0k

https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-accused-of-promoting-eco-terrorism-for-plans-to-screen-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-film

https://www.youtube.com/watch

https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1760394086274695385

https://tldavis.substack.com/p/complacent-about-replacement?r=1ggdo

https://tldavis.substack.com/p/the-fragile-state

https://victorhanson.com/american-paralysis-and-decline/

https://newrepublic.com/article/179966/four-2024-post-election-scenarios-trump

How Transfer Payments Might Doom Us All

“Okay. Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

The Andy Griffith show would have been a lot different if her name had been Aunt Tifa.

I like thinking about the economy and what we have in front of us, and I guess I’m not alone.

Recently I stumbled across a column in Zero Hedge® that originated from Mike Shedlock at his place (link below). Shedlock has been writing about economics for years, and was pretty far out in front of the Great Recession. When Shedlock starts to tease at the threads of the economy, he just might have something interesting to say.

How Much Do Food Stamps, Social Security, and Medicare Support the Economy?

Anyway, the column that caught my eye tied back inflation to the amount of money that the government spends that it doesn’t get anything for, or transfer payments – pulling from one source (taxes or printing) to give to another person or group. The examples of this are everywhere. Shedlock mentions:

food stamps,
Taylor Swift,
Social Security,
Late night television hosts,
Medicare,
PEZ® theft,
Medicaid,
Kamala’s vodka supply,
child tax credits, and
other “welfare” payments.

Okay, I’ll admit I might have added a few things to Mike’s list.

It’s been three months since I joined the gym and I’ve had zero progress. Tomorrow I’ll go in person to see what the problem is.

During the Great COVID Crisis, first Trump and then Biden threw money at the economy, and the amount of income that people got from the government in transfer payments DOUBLED as a percentage of income. That’s staggering. This isn’t an absolute number, but as a percentage, which actually makes it worse. Not to mention all the companies that got paid for not doing business, not selling beer, and not making good movies. Disney®, I’m looking at you.

Here’s an odd sentence: Missing Person Remains Found.

Part of the trouble with the economy has been masked, for years. That trouble is Social Security. In 2018, Social Security started paying out more in benefits than it received in taxes. This was supposed to be just fine because all of the payments from past years that were put into a “trust fund”.

Well, Congress didn’t just pile all of those tax dollars it was taking in under the mattress or in a Mason® jar buried back near the old outhouse behind the Fed®. Nope. Congress did what politicians always do with every available dollar: they spent it to buy nice things (things that lobbyists wanted) immediately when they got the cash in their appetizer-covered little fingers. Oh, and they borrowed more, too. The only thing the “trust fund” did was mask the true size of the deficit.

What if your trust fund has a negative balance?

It’s like that with most things the government does, but there is a limit to how much of the economy you can just make up before reality eventually catches up with you. Ask Enron™.

Regardless, things are going to get much, much worse. All of those illegals that are streaming across the border as fast as we can pay (yes, the United States is actually paying cash to them on the road) them to get here? Once they get here, they’re being paid thousands of dollars a year plus free chow and lodging and medical care. All of that cash is just printed at this point, and spent on something that adds no net productivity to the economy.

Well, he is called Bad Luck Brian for a reason. He also invested his life savings with Bernie Madoff.

And, where, exactly are these millions of people going to live? They’re staying 30 to a house, and buying up properties that used to go to Bobby and Becky when they got married, but now can’t afford them due to the massive competition and rising interest rates.

The Boomers? They’re retiring in droves right now, and Social Security and Medicare spending will only increase as they retire. This will, of course, come from spending rather than the non-existent trust fund.

None of the above counts how much more we’ll send to Ukraine or Taiwan or Israel or Haiti.

All of these transfer payments *plus* the increased interest on the debt that we took out to buy the things the lobbyists wanted in 1994 will result in stopping Congress from spending.

Ha! See! I made it through that with a straight face. Man, I should have used that line on April Fools’ Day. Of course Congress isn’t going to stop spending. They’re not even going to slow down. There are still appetizers to be eaten, and lobbyists to be massaged.

One lobbyist even lobbied to save the penny. He called himself a change agent.

And again, Congress got away with this quite well when the United States was the Sole Global Superpower™. Now? China is pushing us economically, and from a military standpoint, it’s looking pretty iffy: no one wants to sign up to fight Russia for Ukraine, or China for Taiwan. Additionally, unless the war(s) go nuclear, I question how prepared we are to fight a near-peer foe in 2024.

Like I said, I like thinking about the future of the economy. I always have enjoyed horror movies.

Winning Starts With Belief That Winning Is Possible

“Win the crowd.” – Gladiator

If your wife just sits around in bed all day, not moving a muscle, congratulations! You’ve got yourself an atrophy wife!

I was sitting on my desk when my boss’s boss came up.

“John, we have something we’d like you to lead. It’s got the attention of the top people in the company, including the CEO. We need it done in 90 days. We’ve used about 15 of them. You have the full commitment of the company.”

Yikes! What could I say?

“I’ll do it.”

Looking back, I think they thought it was an impossible task. I would also have to leave my current job, with absolutely no promise of a future position after 90 days. It was amazingly risky, but it was also presented as, well, not a choice.

If I lost, well, they could fire me, say they tried, and then buy themselves time to meet the commitment. It would look not perfect for them, but it would give them breathing room. I know company politics, and I knew what that meant.

I had to win.

Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions.

In order to win, I had to have a plan. I had to put together the resources to make it happen. I asked for some very specific, very high performing people. I was told, “no”. (At least one reader knows this story very, very well.)

The first step was that I had to believe that I could win.

I look around at the country that we have today, and I see a similar circumstance: the forces that are arrayed against the TradRIght are numerous.

Seriously: they own

most federal bureaucracies,
most government employees,
the military leadership,
academia,
media,
Hollywood, and
the people who count the votes.

But even with all of that, they scared.

Hillary proves it takes a village to climb a staircase.

No, strike that, they are terrified. They are terrified we are going to win, and the GloboLeftistElite will lose because they know us. They have seen that the TradRight can do when it is unified and has a common goal. When working together, we can tame continents, build a miniature star to end a war, and put people on the damn Moon in a tin can with three gallons of fuel left without having our heartbeats go above 100 and then defeat International Communism 2.0 (I count the French as 1.0).

We are the TradRight. We did all of that when we are unified.

I think that, in the end, they expect to lose. That’s why they throw everything they have, every silly law, every silly accusation against Donald Trump because they mistakenly think that if they break him, if they make him poor, they break us.

Make no mistake, Donald Trump is not our leader. Donald Trump is a very smart man who saw the motion of the people and jumped out in front. Did he want to Build The Wall before that line got applause in a rally? Maybe.

Don’t worry, I hear that protests are only illegal on January 6.

I know that Ann Coulter is still miffed that The Donald didn’t Build The Wall and was far too chummy with the Democrats, but anyone who makes them as crazy as President Trump did accomplish quite a lot: he made the GloboLeftElite and the RINO conspirators show their true faces.

But I remember in a rally where he bragged about the Vaxx®. The crowd let out a wave of disapproval, and he got off the Vaxx™ train that minute. Trump may not lead us, but he does stand for us. He finds what we want and jumps out in front.

No, breaking Donald Trump won’t break us.

But, let’s face it, the DOJ is even afraid of the Clintons.

Back to Wilder’s 90 days:

I immediately got a plan together. I used the resources I was given. I set expectations with my leadership on what we could accomplish in the remaining 90 days: I defined victory, a real victory.

My definition was approved.

I fought the political games necessary to get various leaders I had to convince on board – instead of shooting at us, they covered my flank so they could take credit if we won, while still being able to blame me if we lost.

We won. I got a 25% raise and the biggest bonus I’d ever gotten in my life up to that point. I could even mathematically prove that my methods and intervention at crucial points in the project had saved the company about $3 million.

Ta-Da!

To be clear: if I had thought that I was going to lose, I would have lost. Was it hard? Certainly. I could have lost, and about day 53 it was Not Looking Good. But my team and I turned the ship and won.

We won. Because we thought we could win.

This story, though, isn’t about me. It’s about all of us. If we think we’re going to win, we will win. If we refuse to be demoralized, we won’t be demoralized. The ability to win even at the cultural level is there, primarily because we believe in the True, Beautiful, and Good.

Anyone else find it odd that the Flintstones® celebrated Christmas?

The GloboLeftElite? They despise the True, Beautiful, and Good because it shows the empty places they have in their souls – they believe in no Truth, they believe they are ugly, and they openly despise the Good because it sets standards they cannot meet.

The physical and moral levels are a cakewalk.

That, my friends, is why our victory, though it may be difficult, is inevitable. And it’s also why they want to fill us with despair.

Onward!

You Want Dark Ages? Well, That’s How You Get Dark Ages.

“In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” – Fight Club

I had to stop working in the granite industry: it was counter productive.

Grug want break rock. Grug grab other rock, smash rock. Rock eventually breaks. Grug happy.

Another example: Grug want break rock. Grug create iron ore mine. Grug create coal mine. Grug find tree. Grug mix use coal and iron to make steel hammer. Grug smash rock. Grug happy, much faster.

Yet another example: Grug want to break rock. Grug create iron ore mine, coal mine, chemical factory. Grug find trees, sulfur. Grug make hammer, drill, and dynamite. Grug break rock real fast. Grug very happy because Grug like blow stuff up.

I stole this example from Grugwig von Mises, the Austrian economist who thought about these things a lot. The indirect way to do something is generally more efficient. It’s most direct to break a rock with a rock, but it’s much, much faster to blow the rock into gravel and you can do a lot at one time. And it’s really cool.

What sound does a piano make when it falls down an ore well? A-flat miner.

The catch, of course, is that to do things indirectly, there have to be multiple industries and infrastructure supporting the indirect method. And, if any of them fail, the method becomes more difficult, if not impossible.

One big example of indirect work in our economy is the impact of the computer and the Internet. Paul Krugman, (who is always wrong) said that the Internet would have no more economic impact than the fax machine. Of course, since Krugman is always wrong, he was wrong this time, too.

The Internet is a vast communication web, moving data about everything, everywhere, all at once. It is now pervasive, and has been for decades.

Decades?

Krugman? More like Grugman.

Yes. Back when I lived in Alaska, one of the two fiberoptic cables to Fairbanks was cut by a backhoe operator, thankfully mostly cutting Fairbanks off from Paul Krugman’s stupid ideas. What was the backhoe guy digging for?

I have no idea. Everyone in Alaska has a backhoe, a skidsteer, and a dump truck. And they were always digging. I think they might be part mole. Maybe they were digging for this:

Meme as-found.

The result of this one fiber being cut, though, was apparent very quickly: couldn’t buy gas. At all. Even with cash. Credit card usage? Nope. And I think prescriptions were similarly impacted.

Now, at work and home, I still had Internet – it was like nothing had happened since my employer must have gotten Internet from the other fiber. But it was unusual to see so much dependency – I hadn’t realized how much infrastructure was hooked up and required the Internet. In Alaska. In 2005.

The reason is that the Internet allows information to move freely. Information used to be hard to move. Now, information moves at near lightspeed in many places. It used to be the way to get information from one place to another was the most direct – mouth to ear. Then writing, probably to let someone know the sad facts about very fat their mother was, was invented, and is probably carved under half the pyramid blocks.

When I got arrested for graffiti, I tried to deny it, but the writing was on the wall.

Then, books preserved information about many fat mothers through centuries and made it much easier to share from Rome to ancient China. Finally, we have Internet pages and ebooks that share stories about maternal adiposity around the globe in an instant.

But, one funny thing – the more direct methods such as carving in stone and the ancient legends of huge hulking mothers whose buttocks block out the sky remain. But books burn. The ephemeral website? It may reach 90% of the planet yet be gone in an afternoon. Think of the deprivation of the future world of all those unsung stories of mothers whose gravitational pull could disrupt the very alignment of the planets.

What brought this to mind was that a big chunk of the Internet disappeared today. I think it’s back, but I don’t go on FaceGram™ or InstaTok©, but I think those are both back.

To be clear, those cannibal tribes in the Amazon (the river basin, not the company) didn’t even notice. Why would they? Their methods, their lives are the most direct. They don’t depend on getting ammunition for their bow from Cabela’s®, rather if they need a new arrow, they make one out of the stuff that’s lying around.

I hear Dwayne Johnson is going to star as a time traveler who has to go back to ancient Rome to steal a document from Augustus. It’s called Rock, Paper, Caesar.

The upside of this communication is that I can see first person video of drone attacks in the Ukraine within hours of a strike. The downside is that by knowing, people feel a philosophical burden – they have information about something yet are (mostly) powerless to do anything about it. Think about Michael Collins, orbiting above the Moon. He had a contingency plan if the landing had failed and Armstrong and Aldrin were lost.

“I’d go home.”

Why? There would have been nothing at all that Collins could have done. He knew that, and so did Neil and Buzz. Many things are like that, best not to obsess about them.

Our modern economy has created a great deal of leverage using cheap information combined with cheap information processing – efficient supply chains and people working in far-flung areas.

These systems, just like the chemical factories that Grug made to make his Grug dynamite to break his rock are inherently more fragile than the direct. How fragile? Back in 2017 or so, a congressional report came out that predicted that up to 90% of Americans would die in the event of an EMP taking out the power grid.

I have to remember that the rhythm is to “Staying Alive” when I do CPR, and not “For Whom The Bell Tolls”.

Knowing congress, they’ve done nothing to make the systems better, with the potential exception of trying to make EMP proof margarita machines.

I’m in hopes that the looming competency crisis, where complex systems become unreliable due to being put in the hands of the unqualified while the competent people are shuffled aside, won’t bring the take down those same systems, and with it, our society.

We’ll leave that to your mom. I hear that, though, she’s old enough that when she was a kid with Grug, there was no history class.

(Irony – I lost all Internet at my house while writing this one.)

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: It’s All Planned

“Did everything go as planned?” – Pulp Fiction

I had some chips at midnight on Saturday. It was a snackrifice.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume V, Issue 10

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

I’m keeping the clock at two minutes to midnight, probably will roll back next month.

In this issue: Front Matter – All Of This Is Planned – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Border In Five Memes – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 810 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

All Of This Is Planned

When I look at the road we’re on to Civil War 2.0, it has not gone unnoticed that the enemy creating this isn’t outside the United States. As much as the GloboLeft likes to call out Russia, others see things perhaps a little more clearly.

Nayib Bukele is the president of El Salvador. What has he done for them? He’s broken the back of organized crime, by this one crazy tactic: arresting criminals and putting them in jail and getting gender ideology “contrary to nature, contrary to God” out of El Salvador’s schools. He has a 90% approval rating from El Salvadorans, so of course the GloboLeft hates him.

What is the response of the GloboLeft? Isn’t it obvious? First is the rotting the minds of youth. The map above should be clear enough – it’s a symptom of a plan coming together.

Although this is from Canada, it’s very, very clear that the agenda is simple: they want the kids. It has long been the GloboLeft’s desire to use propaganda to get children at their most vulnerable and split them from their parents.

Things like this idea are created to humiliate people. None of that can make a “more green” planet since the energy used in the process more than offsets any “benefits”. No, this is humiliation and dehumanization.

Canada, again, has show the goal. They want to stop making any new roads outside of cities. Live in a rural area? No roads for you. And, last I checked, Canada has a lot more rural availability than most nations outside of Russia.

Now they’re even giving TED® talks about how literally any sort of degeneracy is a sacrament.

And the lawfare is continual. The New York Soros GloboLeft Attorney General, Letitia James, is on a a tear. Donald Trump is just the most prominent of her use of the law to destroy people. Another target besides the new one listed above? VDARE. VDARE is a fairly prominent anti-immigration website that Ms. James has hit with amazingly broad subpoenas and is costing them tens of thousands of dollars – even though they aren’t in New York. You can read more about that here (LINK).

She’s also gone against the NRA, suing them. The important question: why would anyone want to do business in New York?

So, Nayib Bukele is right. It’s all being taken apart from the inside.

Violence and Censorship Update

Several readers have reported to me (via email) that they were unsubscribed or that their subscriptions are filtered out as spam. FYI. Might it be random? Sure. It might.

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves. Foreign stories are included as they often foreshadow attempts in the United States.

I guess this one involves both censorship and violence?

This one is especially fun: Canada has a bill that punishes hate crimes, which can be reported anonymously, and that do not require evidence with huge fines and up to life imprisonment.

Crabs reading? Forbidden knowledge.

People reading? That’s racist!

Looks like the plan is working.

I thought they loved science?

If only they could be sent home to Make Eritrea Great Again.

Yeah, that’s the history of the top Google® executive in charge of A.I.

Looks like the New York Times censors . . . food.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. Why? The GloboLeft are economic geniuses, right?

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence is flat. Winter is in, and riots aren’t as fun in galoshes.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.

Economic:

Economic numbers did a slight dive. I wonder if this is the new American Dream?

Illegal Aliens:

Highest January. Ever.

Also, other people are noticing:

The Border, In Five Memes

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762833481682264080

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762297111381455043

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762568451581681721

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762225168645059071

https://twitter.com/i/status/1610431809334149120

https://twitter.com/i/status/1763481437372567971

https://twitter.com/i/status/1761129463218139238

https://twitter.com/i/status/17636130393229273

https://twitter.com/i/status/1760862306005590149

Good Guys

https://youtube.com/shorts/tQGuha2gpQw?si=kjoLNVF2y0qd7wdE

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1759109053630800211

https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-worker-fired-shoplifters-retail-theft-fight-problems-2024-2

https://www.wtoc.com/2023/07/24/woman-gets-job-back-lowes-after-being-attacked-while-trying-stop-shoplifting/

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article285835356.html

One Guy

https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2024/02/28/louisiana-expands-gun-rights-for-self-defense-against-criminals-with-concealed-carry-bill/72765215007/

https://www.wowt.com/2024/02/09/nebraska-legislators-consider-bill-alter-self-defense-laws/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2894180/arizonas-commonsense-self-defense-bill/

https://www.oxygen.com/kill-or-be-killed/crime-news/how-to-watch-kill-or-be-killed-an-oxygen-true-crime-series

Body Count

https://twitter.com/MakisMD/status/1754830517986566210

https://thehighwire.com/editorial/why-are-young-adults-having-more-heart-attacks-the-level-of-denial-is-stunning/

https://newsone.com/playlist/black-men-boys-who-were-killed-by-police/item/5

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-02-13_11-38-28.png

https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PRRI-Jan-2024-Gen-Z-Draft.pdf

https://twitter.com/noble_x_x_/status/1758149565251784710

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68244963

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-81749d7c-d0a0-48d0-bb11-eaab6f1e6556

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1757461240421449806

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1759305508584882680

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevada-identifies-voter-history-errors-on-website-fixes-underway-3003358/

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/11/data-specialist-presses-georgia-look-voters-cast-ballots-wrong-jurisdictions/

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/08/exclusive-see-the-grave-markers-of-long-dead-residents-listed-on-michigans-voter-rolls/

https://www.justfactsdaily.com/elon-musk-is-right-and-the-ny-times-is-wrong-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2023-review

https://heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Feb-24-2020-Election-Analysis-vWeb_Final.pdf

Civil War

https://uproxx.com/movies/civil-war-alex-garland-details-february-2024-update/

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/02/could-united-states-be-headed-national-divorce

https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/cpac-donald-trump-voters-warn-355149

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/texas-is-spoiling-for-a-civil-war/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kristi-noem-war-texas-border-standoff-1234960568/

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-disinformation-campaign-civil-war-texas-border/

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/01/27/the_geopolitics_of_world_war_iii_1007840.html

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/comes-thermidor/

Kardashians And The Cult Of Growth

“A future of economic growth, freedom, and happiness.” – Robocop

I had a hen who wanted to study economics. She was something of a mathemachicken.

“The economy grew at an annualized rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023.”

And my response: so what?

There is a Cult of Growth in the world. In the United States, at least, that growth was literally in the DNA of the young country – there was lots of space and it was only filled with some pesky Indians who didn’t have a lot of resistance to smallpox or lead, some buffalo, no zoning, and lots of empty land to build Blockbuster Video® stores.

So, off my ancestors went. The idea was simple – fill the country from sea to sea with farms and businesses, eventually mines and mills and railroads and factories and highways. No one really planned it, and there weren’t economists reporting on unemployment figures to Rutherford B. Hayes.

What does the “B” stand for? Babebandit.

The growth that the United States experienced was amazing, and it was real. People built those farms and businesses and mines and railroads and factories and highways. That sort of growth allowed the creation of amazing wealth and prosperity because it was enduring and built upon itself. In those decades of growth, the United States experienced not diminishing returns but increasing returns as the steel mills fed the oil boom which fed the creation of the automotive industry and interstates.

Add in a few thousand nuclear weapons, and this growth of actual productivity and wealth production allowed the country to achieve tremendous national prosperity during a time of relative safety. Some would maintain that this prosperity peaked in 1973, but when you look at the relative availability of exceedingly cheap “stuff” – it was probably later than that. Perhaps a good case could be made for the 1980s when Blockbuster Videos™ roamed the land like a great majestic beast, spewing properly rewound videotapes and Raisinets® to all.

Regardless of when that exact date is, it is likely past.

Your momma is so old she rewinds Netflix® videos before logging off.

What was once achievable on a single income now requires (in many cases) two incomes. People of the past always thought that new labor-saving devices would accrue benefits to the worker, and we’d see a two- or three-day work week. Instead, we see people working more hours for less (relative) pay.

Why is that? I mean, the economy grew, right?

Yes, it did. But the way the economy grew, fueled by illegal aliens contributed to lower wages. The argument could be made that that the economic activity, the growth from these added workers helped everyone. Well, no. Illegals are certainly a net negative when everything is accounted for – welfare, roads, schools, medical care, voting GloboLeft, and Kardashian body hair.

I think she’s got so much plastic in her that if she swims it’s technically littering.

And the “growth” that we saw in many cases was the productive bit of the economy being hollowed out and shipped off overseas. Why? Because regulation increased in the United States (it never goes down) and it was easier to start and run a factory in Malasia than it is in Maine. And if iMegaCorp® can ship the factory over and increase corporate profits by 2%, they’ll do it.

Why? They’re owned by the people who make bad growth.

What’s bad growth? Well, the financial sector. It should be set up not as a casino or a place where the businesses make money selling money.

Growth is not always good. And it’s not always desirable. Let’s take an example: if I decided I wanted to gain a pound of weight next week, the healthy way to do it would be to put on a pound of muscle through exercise. But the easy way to put on a pound would be to pound some beers and milk shakes.

I believe her pronouns are HerShey.

The United States could do the same – we could increase the size of the economy by producing more and better cars or computers or flat panel displays, or bulldozers. Or, we could increase the size of the economy by ChaseCitiFargo™ charging extra fees on overdrafts and GoldmanBlackRock© buying a company, loading it up with debt that it can’t pay, and then selling it piecemeal for a 15% profit.

One of these makes a more productive society. The other is the equivalent of two people selling a house back and forth for 10% more each time and talking about all the wealth that they created.

So, not all growth is good, and not all increased profit is increased wealth. One economy can make stuff, the other just makes magical made-up profits. I’ve made the argument for some time that China’s economy is fine. It is. They know how to make stuff, so they are fundamentally more stable than the United States because the growth in China wasn’t in financial shenanigans, it was in productive stuff.

Did you know it’s illegal to water your plants in China? It causes the microphones to rust.

Does China have all sorts of debt? Yes, yes they do. Have they produced a lot of suspect crap in the past, especially for internal consumption? Yes, yes they have, and probably still do. Doesn’t matter.

Their economy isn’t based on “growth” that occurs only on paper, and only due to paper even though people smoke in China to get fresh air.

They don’t worship the Cult of Growth.

Do I want to live there? Nope.

Again, there’s good news – this system can’t last, so it won’t.

The ride, however may be bumpy . . . as we get to rebuild it – on healthy growth this time.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Bank Failures And Yachts

“A major one.” – Fight Club

What did Kim call his yacht? His dictator ship.

Last March, Silicon Valley Bank® failed. In a big way. Because the people who deposited money in the bank own things like yachts and senators, well, they escaped with hardly a haircut. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation® (FDIC™) normally ensures deposits for $250,000 per account holder. In this case, they decided, nah, what the heck, we’ll make sure that Roku® and Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry don’t lose a dime.

Ironically, today the Internal Revenue Service sued the FDIC© for $1.45 billion in back taxes they say that Silicon Valley Bank™ owed when the FDIC© took it over. Sure, it sounds like on part of the government is suing another part of the government for play money made up by the (non-federal) Fed™ but the FDIC™ is supposedly independent and gets its money from the member banks.

Which are members of the Fed™. Which prints the cash.

If this sounds as incestuous as a Hapsburg family stump, well, it is. And of course I’m going to go with a fresh meme about the Hapsburgs, because that’s what all of the cool kids are doing today.

A Hapsburg walks into a bar, the bartender says, “Why the long face?” The prince says, “Generations of inbreeding.”

The root cause of the Silicon Valley Bank™ failure is that they lent money for long periods at low interest rates. When interest rates go up, those loans aren’t worth a lot, at least to the bank. Right now, my mortgage has a lower interest rate than I’m getting in checking.

Silicon Valley Bank™ looked at all the crappy loans they had, and did the math, and found out that they were worth less than zero. Even worse, their bigger depositors heard (because depositors who own senators seem to get advance notice) and started to pull their money out.

Since those folks had friends, they told them. Soon enough, everyone wanted one thing – they wanted their money out of Silicon Valley Bank™. Rational people realized that if this was a problem at Silicon Valley Bank©, it was a problem everywhere.

Silicone and silicon – electrical engineers know the difference – no one trusts them around silicone.

In a thought that gives central bankers and senators cold sweats (after the previous night’s booze wears off) is the idea that people lose faith in the banking system. Oddly, this wouldn’t be a problem if we used money made out of gold and silver, but since ours is just as much a fantasy as thinking that diversity enriches us all.

So, there’s a problem that’s impacting literally every bank. Some big ones have failed, but thankfully Duchess Markle still has her cash so she can get enough publicity to hide from commoners like me. What’s the solution?

First, pay off everyone so no one is scared and Oprah doesn’t have to fly commercial with mere mortals. Second, flood the system with money. If a bank needs cash? Wheelbarrows of it?

Give it to them.

Thankfully Congress took a break from sending your tax dollars to Ukraine to bail out Oprah.

Last year, banks were paying 0.10% or so for crappy checking accounts. This summer, rates started shooting up, so I snuggled into some CDs that paid a lot more than my mortgage cost. Then, last month, I got a call from my bank where I set up the CDs.

“Mr. Wilder? You have money in other banks, right? If you deposit (a few thousand) dollars from accounts outside of your accounts with us into savings, I can give you a 4.5% rate on checking and savings.”

What????

If there’s one thing I know about banking, is that bankers are not generous except to themselves, senators, and Oprah.

I check with him, drove to the nearest branch of Major Bank™ in Mt. Pilot, and tossed a few thousand in. Could I take it out later?

Sure!

I am informed this is funny because horses often live in stables, so this would be a violation of California’s work safety laws.

I started wondering about this, but soon enough came up with the answer: when I make a deposit in the bank, I’m making a loan to the bank. And if they’re offering me nearly 5% for just parking cash at their place, that means . . .

I’m their best alternative for a loan. Me. John Wilder. Enough so they paid a dude to call me and ask.

Yup, it’s just that simple. And they called me to ask me to make a loan, and offered to pay me over four times what I was making on my cash to make that loan. Reading a bit further, it turns out the way that the Fed™ shoved money down the collective throats of the banks was through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).

Yes, the Fed© created the BTFP, loaned the money to the banks who then deposited the money . . . at the Fed™. I’m not making this up. As of March 11, 2024, the Fed© will no longer be making more BTFP loans at those sweetheart rates. All new loans would be made at the same rate the bank gets paid by the Fed©. The gravy train, or at least this gravy train, is over.

When did I get the phone call wanting to borrow a few bucks from Major Bank?

January, 2024.

Since when do I believe in coincidences? And it was weird, it wasn’t a lot of money that I needed to deposit, but I think they were looking to get bigger players than tiny John Wilder.

But at least they’re not insufferable idiots . . . oh, too soon.

And that’s the rub. If banks are looking to borrow cash from me, how bad are their balance sheets?

Dang, I’m worried! Will Prince Harry have enough money to travel the world for 45-minute meetings with his father? Will Oprah be able to afford more caviar?

And, maybe I should take up loan sharking. Maybe I can buy my own yacht, bigger than Prince Harry’s and I’ll sail past him, and look down on him, and try to give Harry that condescending look that appears to be his Resting Prince Face.

And I’ll write a rock song about it.

I’ll call it Smirk on the Water.