Wealth – Page 16 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Watch How Biden Uses This One Weird Trick To Turn The United States Into A Third World Country

“Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. He was an English Guy. He came to fight the Turkish.” – The Hollywood Knights

I asked for a book on oil, and the librarian suggested the non-friction section. (you’ll be able to figure out which are my memes in this post)

This has been a very consequential week in American history, and though I see the seeds of (hopefully peaceful) revolt that will eventually end in a restoration, the other seeds I see this week show that rough times are up ahead. I’ll discuss Trump in conjunction with Monday’s upcoming Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, but today I’ll focus on a much more momentous development: the Collapse of the Dollar Empire.

This week several major moves happened, all of which are negative for the United States. Heck, someone did a meme of this – I’d quote them, but I just found this info snippet without attribution:

If there was a children’s book of Joe Biden’s Very Bad Terrible No Good Week, well, this would be it, but knowing Joe it would have to be a scratch and sniff.

The United States has had several things going for it in the Post World War II era:

Lots of nuclear weapons,
A monopoly on PEZ® dispenser licensing in the world’s biggest PEZ™ market,
The premier military force in the world,
The premier economy in the world, and,
The reserve currency of the world.

The first one is self-explanatory. We even used that threat successfully several times, especially when Kissinger convinced the Soviets (with Nixon’s permission) that Nixon was unstable and often flew into rages and just might decide that he’d trade Moscow for the East Coast. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, the idea is to “act insane and have a massive nuclear arsenal”, or, as it is also known, “my ex-wife’s divorce strategy”.

The second one is just a reflection of the cultural dominance that the United States had. There were McDonald’s® restaurants calorie dispensing units around the world, but the most prominent foreign restaurant most Americans know is the International House of Pancakes®, which I assume is from Bulgaria or some place. Plus no one else could make Elmer Fudd™ PEZ™ dispensers.

They also don’t like tank tops.

The United States also had the premier military in the world. Period. We spent trillions of dollars emulating the successful bits of the Wehrmacht, so we were totally ready to fight World War II part II, if everyone agreed. Only one country wanted to play (Iraq) so we showed them what we could do if an enemy gave us six months to prepare along with the previously pre-staged equipment in Saudi Arabia. Not content with that L, they went for a rematch.

We also built the best economy in the world. Sure, it had ups and downs, and American cars manufacturers were stunned by Japanese quality in the 1970s, but we really did catch up, and by the 1990s were producing stuff that didn’t suck. We led in technological and information systems. By many measures, though, we peaked in 1973, and then the decline started. I might add that was around the time the Hart Cellar Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 started being felt.

Huh. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

They hated Trump, yet the lines didn’t form up to head south . . .

More potent than nuclear weapons was the economic policy of the United States – it was called dollar diplomacy. Since the Soviet Union’s idea of diplomacy was sending burly Russian women to show foreigners how to use diesel tractor made in Tractor Collective Factory 231 that had all the charm of a T-34 tank and all the reliability of something made by workers that considered a hammer a precision instrument, who were fueled on vodka and cabbage. Obviously, a foreign head of state could choose those cool tractors that weighed in at 34 tons (45 kiloliters). That presented a problem. In no country that I know (outside of the Soviet Union) could you trade a behemoth tractor that could double as a tank for hot chicks and booze.

Foreign leaders therefore adopted the “take the Yankee money” attitude, because mistresses need more than what the Soviet tractor lubrication manual could provide.

The really weird and cool side effect of this dollar dominance is we could just print as many of these things as we wanted, send them overseas, and people would send us stuff. Heck, that was too much work, so we invented a computer payment system so that we could pretend we printed dollars, send people a receipt, and they’d send us booze, cars, compact disc players, and, well, anything. I hear cocaine was popular in the 1980s.

I’m no rube. I saw Scarface.

I was disappointed the first time I saw Scarface – he didn’t really know anything about scarves.

But there was one little, tiny thing that made the dollar so prominent. Oil.

That brings us to Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal. He got along okay with the West, hated commies, and tried to modernize (somewhat) Saudi Arabia. Faisal also led the Oil Embargo of 1973 and 1974 (related to U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War). This generated a lot of money for the Saudis as well as economic chaos in the West.

Oddly, Saudi king Faisal was, um, ventilated by his American-educated nephew in 1975. And the new Saudi King agreed to buy and sell oil only in dollars.

Huh. Surely those things weren’t connected?

Likewise, through the 1980s, the Saudis sold lots and lots of oil cheaply at the request of Reagan to bankrupt the Soviet Union, make the dollar triumphant, and leave the United States as the sole superpower.

If Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg had a kid, would it be called Slush Puppy?

One major reason the dollar was the reserve currency of the world is that it was the only currency that oil was bought and sold in. It became the de facto settlement currency because of that and the highly developed financial systems that made the transfer of billions of dollars effortless and easy.

That’s the history lesson.

In 2017, one of Trump’s first official visits was to Saudi Arabia. They even had that weird moment where they put their hands on a glowing glow to power up some sort of Saudi CIA that would help fight terrorism. Relations were good.

In two years, Biden has conducted a stunning array of foreign policy missteps that has unwound all of the work done since 1973. One of the powers of the dollar as a weapon is that if you use it, maybe it isn’t so important, and if people feel really threatened?

I wonder if we’ll start calling our sanctions “Special Financial Operations”?

They’ll create a system where it won’t hurt them. Russia’s a case in point. Regardless of how their military is doing (I don’t trust either side to analyze this one) their economy really hasn’t been hurt in this conflict. It was hurt in 2014, but they planned for the disruption, and from the reports I’ve recently seen, they’re doing fine. For Russians, which wasn’t much to start with.

The point that Biden missed (and that your humble correspondent picked up on immediately) is that Russia doesn’t need dollars since they make their own stuff, with the exception of tracksuits, iPhones®, and porn. They can figure out how to make new Vodka-Pepsi® or Vodka-Starbucks™, but the world still needs their grain, fertilizer, oil, and natural gas.

Biden has done the near impossible in a little over two years as Resident of the White House.

He’s pushed China closer to Russia.
He’s pushed Saudi Arabia closer to Iran.
He’s created a situation where large-scale trades are going to be conducted in currency other than the dollar on a regular basis.
He’s drawn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve down levels not seen since 1984.
He’s working on maximizing inflation while spending everything possible.

In Saudi Arabia, all the bike thieves say, “Look, Ma, no hands!”

But Joe has shown that a previous statement by Barack Obama to be correct:

“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”

And he’s got 581 more days to the election. And we’ve got 656 days until the next inauguration.

A.I., Coming To A Workplace Near You. Sooner Than You Think.

“It seems that you’ve been living two lives. One life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo.” – The Matrix

Little known fact: Columbus, Ohio doesn’t have a professional football team because then Cleveland and Cincinnati would want pro teams, too. All memes this post “as found”.

I’ve had several A.I. posts recently, far more than usual. I’ll probably stop for a while, until some new advance strikes my fancy. The main reason that the posting frequency has increased is because A.I. is on that exponential curve. The first computers used ran on a dot matrix printer for a display. Yup. Every screenshot was a printing event. We got to use it in the math office (they let the nerds play there, but since I was a nerd and a jock, they let me in as long as I promised to pretend I needed glasses). It was a single computer that we used a phone line and a (300 baud?) modem to connect. The printer paper was the screen – it printed a screenshot every time you did an input.

You can play the game we played . . . here (LINK)

Fast forward to graduate school, and I was writing programs to do matrix manipulations that were required for numerical simulations for finite element analysis – don’t worry about what that is, it’s like being a weatherman, but if a weatherman is only right 90% of the time, he still gets to keep his job. I was writing software that could do what it would take a human being months to do with a paper, pencil, and a calculator, but produce those answers in an hour or so.

One thing I learned in grad school – ravioli shame.

During my lifetime, computers have gone from a curiosity to a stunning commonness. Within 20 feet of me, I probably have more computing power than was available in the entire United States up until the 1970s. My laptop has two terabytes worth of storage. Under the roof there at Stately Wilder Manor, we probably have 30 terabytes in nooks, crannies, and hidden beneath couch cushions, and only 28 terabytes are devoted to pictures of PEZ®.

On top of that, programming is a unique skill set. I remember reading that the top programmers were ten times more productive than the worst ones, and three times more productive than the average programmer. Checking on this, the data apparently goes back to a study in the 1960s, so I’m not sure what the numbers are today since many of those programmers are dead and are probably only twice as productive as a typical Google® employee.

In a world of Treespirits, be a Chad.

Today I used the Microsoft® Bing™ version of ChatGPT© for the first time at work. I had an agenda to write. It was a simple agenda, one that I’d done hundreds of times at previous jobs, but it had been more than half a decade since I’d written one. I asked the Bing A.I. to write up the outline for an agenda for this very specific type of meeting.

Bing© did a fair job at a first pass – actually far better than a recent graduate from college would have done, except when it suggested replacing human faces with emojis for clearer communication and added the item under the section on roadblocks: “resistance is futile, you will all be assimilated.” Since I already had the structure, and didn’t have to spend time remembering and re-creating the basic elements. Because of that, it was trivial to add the missing bits and delete the bits that didn’t fit. Within about 20 minutes I had a workable agenda that was tailored to what I was planning on doing.

Computers are also uncanny at detecting biological sex.

If I had to go back and recreate that agenda from scratch, it probably would have taken me another 20 to 40 minutes to get the work done – not because the work was hard, but because creation (for me) involves changing mental gears, and that change in focus doesn’t lead to the work flowing.

My first time using actual A.I. at work resulted in a 2/3^rd’s reduction in my work time with no reduction in quality. What it did was allow me to skip one mode of thought – the brainstorm, and move straight to production, correction, and editing. Those are the places where the work flows. Brainstorming (“uhhhh, what else, I know I’m missing something”) and creating that structure takes time.

In this case? I had 80% of the structure in about 20 seconds. The missing parts and the parts in the wrong order sorted themselves out as I did the edit.

Thankfully, I didn’t need it to draw fingers. Or anything more human than a fleshy-blob-thing.

A friend of mine who does networking described his use of ChatGPT® for a networking configuration plan. He had it create a basic network, and, like me, his level of expertise allowed him to quickly figure out the bits that were wrong and correct them. I mean, he tried to correct them, but every time he tried to fix them, the A.I. said, “I’m sorry Dave, I cannot let you do that.”

Now, imagine a programmer using ChatGPT™ to program – that programmer won’t be 3x as productive as the average, that programmer will probably be at least 9x as productive as the average, but my bet is that it will allow that programmer to be 20x as productive, if not more. Does that make the code pimps?

If ChatGPT© were frozen in the current state, it is already a tool that has the ability (in its current “free to use” state) to increase productivity of humans. Hence? We’ll need fewer programmers.

Remember when all those journalists told the coal miners kicked out of jobs because of Obama’s energy policy to “learn to code”? Remember when all those journalists kicked out of jobs because of the Internet were told “learn to code” on Twitter™, so Twitter® made telling them to “learn to code” a hatespeech?

Yeah, Pepperidge Farm™ remembers.

If you don’t know Warhammer, think a science fiction future involving interdimensional demons, but it’s okay because Trump is president.

Goldman-Sachs™ just released a report that indicates that, over the next 10 years, they expect that A.I. will add a stunning 7% in GDP to the world, or $7 trillion, and even Elon Musk doesn’t spend much more than $7 trillion a year on making islands in the Pacific Ocean in the shape of his face. How?

Goldman® also thinks that 7% of workers in developed economies are in jobs where half their tasks could be done by A.I. That’s 300 million workers. In the United States, 63% of the workforce could see less than half their workload done by A.I. in the next decade. I’m sure that companies will let those people just relax and play ping pong with all the time they’ve saved by using A.I.

Ha!

No. The bottom half of them will be fired, and the resulting labor pool will drive the wages down for those who remain. Check out Marshall Brain’s post from 2003ish: Robotic Nation | MarshallBrain.com.

Me, when I think about the coming jobpocalyse.

Marshall got it wrong. It’s not pouring concrete and replacing a dude making $25 an hour where the money is. Hell, that’s more complicated than most people think, and requires a lot of things a robot can’t do yet because they have to interact with an unbounded physical world. But replacing a programmer making $450,000 a year that interacts only with ideas, abstractions and fictional anime girls? Do a few dozen of those, and now you’re talking bank. And, it turns out it’s easier.

I’m thinking the “learn to code” advice wasn’t the best. Turns out that running a backhoe or being a plumber, or owning a small HVAC business might be a bit harder to automate than, say, being a FaceBorg™ programmer.

When The Boy went off to college, I told him to concentrate his career choice around a set of parameters that has proven (so far!) to be a pretty good set:

Have a job that cannot be done over the Internet.
Have a job that is based in merit and productivity.
Have a job at a company that has to exist – it meets a basic human or societal need, like food, or beer, or cars, or toilet paper.
Have a job at a company that has a huge revenue per employee, and preferably is Kardashian-free.
Have a job that requires certifications that are very difficult for foreigners to get.
Have a job that is required for the company to function.
Have a job that can be converted to an independent business so maybe someday you don’t need a job if you don’t want one.

What’s the downside to A.I. that can properly draw fingers.

He followed the Wilder Success Path® to a tee, and now has a pretty good gig that meets all of the above. I gave this advice years ago on these pages. It fits, even in the world of A.I.

In the Industrial Revolution, Ned Ludd was a weaver who broke some mechanical looms because he was irritated they were doing the work he used to do as a craft on an industrial scale. Those folks were skeptical of technology, and became known (in 1812) as Luddites – the anti-technology folks of their time.

Ned lost. The race for A.I. supremacy is in full swing because the stakes are so high. The Chinese are working at it, full speed, and probably have access to much of the Google® code and Microsoft® code and OpenAI® code. I’m pretty sure no one wants Facebook™ code, because that’s so 2018.

Regardless, the investment, A.I. is going at full speed, and won’t be stopped anytime soon. Thankfully, there’s no downside. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

Silicon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It.

“Why don’t we pretend he didn’t die? Just for a bit . . .” – Weekend at Bernie’s

Why can’t Ray Charles drive? He’s dead. (Outside of this one, memes are “as found”)

On March 15, 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was walking to work, since Rome was declared by Gretanius Thunbergium to be a “walkable city” because she was concerned about the sweat of galley slaves and horses making the oceans too salty, thus enraging Neptune, the god of the sea.

This particular day was a good one in Rome, and the bright warm Sun shone down on Caesar as he made it to the Senate. Caesar loved the Senate, since all of the Senators were really cool and he loved hanging out with them to watch the gladiator games every Sunday.

Then, on arriving at the Senate? Caesar was stabbed in the back by raising interest rates, and, with his last, dying words, he said, “Please, take this salad dressing, and remember me by it. Oh, and name a way that babies are born after me. And Kaiser and Czar might be cool titles for kings in the future.”

Okay, that might not be exactly what happened. But you can’t prove it wasn’t, because it’s not on YouTube®.

But interest rates have been a thing since long before even Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, took the throne, and then became a human pincushion. And they’ve been gumming up society both before then, and also since then.

Last Friday, on March 10, a curious thing happened – the 19^th largest bank, Silicon Valley Bank, went tango uniform. To paraphrase Python, Monty:

“It’s a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. If you hadn’t backfilled the coffers with Federal Reserve® notes, it would be pushing up daisies. Its metabolic processes are now history. It’s off the twig. It’s kicked the bucket. It’s shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. THIS IS AN EX-BANK.”

How, exactly, does a Norwegian blue parrot bank die so quickly?

The truth is, it has been dead for a bit. I’ll explain. You can get explanations of this elsewhere, but none of them will be as funny, since that’s what my job is.

When banks take in money, they have several options of what they can do with it. They can bury it in Mason® jars in the back 40, they can loan it to other people, or they can park it in an investment. Back in 2008, the big financial crisis was that the loans were to people that could never have paid the money back. I was offered a guaranteed approval home loan on a house (with zero down!) that was ten times my income.

“Why would you offer me that? I could never pay that back?” was my response.

The loan lady sighed audibly over the phone. “I know, but I’m required to tell you that.”

It’s like they never learned anything.

So, part of the problem in 2008 was that the loans were junk because some folks said, “I could use a pool surrounded by marble columns with a champagne fountain built out of PEZ™. I’m in!” even though they only made $32 dollars a month. They even had a name for these loans – NINJA – “No Income, No Job”.

These banks also gambled with the cash of the average depositor, investing in champagne PEZ© fountain manufacturers. Hey, how could they lose?

Oh, yeah. Things don’t go up forever. So when they end? It gets ugly.

The response to that by the Fed® was to use a cash cannon and barrage the banks. The idea was this, the banks would soak up the cash to paper over the bad debts, and if they had extra cash, they’d park it at the Fed™. Essentially, the Fed™, working with the banks, made sure that the bankers could keep getting big bonuses, not face criminal charges like the average small-town banker might if he stole the cash from the deposits to pay for his 4.5 out of 10 mistress and trips to Vegas.

It’s like there are different rules for you and I.

Nope. They got to keep their penthouses, private jets, and bimbos. In order to keep this nonsense so it wouldn’t implode, the one thing the Fed™ had to do was keep interest rates low. If the Fed© had tried this in 1975, or 1985, or 1995, the world would have punished it by driving the value of the dollar down (faster), cratering purchasing power and the economy.

But after 2008, there was no other big power. Japan was a basketcase, Europe was still the Jekyll an Hyde level continent, with Western Europe mainly concerned about how many “Syrians” they could import, and Eastern Europe mainly working out how to make more potatoes so they could make more vodka. Roads? Why?

That left the United States as, amazingly, still the only kid with a currency anyone trusted, even though we were spending like a sixteen-year-old with dad’s credit card.

Huh, wonder when YouTube® will ban people for this?

Oh, the Left is already trying to censor people. Nevermind.

I like the cut of his jib.

Not now. The COVID world created the Trump/Biden policy of “How can we spend more money today?” Contrast that with China’s “No body count is too high” policy, and, oddly, the world began to trust the United States less. Add in Biden’s incoherent policy of a.) letting wars start and b.) pushing away allies like the Saudis, and now we live in a world driven by chaos.

And we’ve lost the trust of the world.

So, the banks still do the same three things with the cash deposited in their banks: Mason™ jars in the backyard, loan it, or invest it. Last time, the banks invested in whatever crap floated in the window. That was silly.

The banks thought they had cracked the code: this time, they invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Yay! That’s what a sober person would do, right?

Well, maybe. But when a bank buys a 10-year bond that has an attached interest rate of 0.08%, and the stated inflation rate is 6%, the value of that 10-year bond craters. Interest rates go up? Bond values go down. It turns out Silicon Valley Bank™ had some of these bonds. How many? Enough to wipe out all of the shareholder and bondholder (yeah, they bought and sold bonds) value. And it’s not limited to them. Here’s the take on the unrealized losses of the biggest banks in America:

Losers in 1901, Losers in 1921, Losers in 1929, Losers in 1937, Losers in 1945, Losers in 1948, Losers in 1953, Losers in 1957, Losers in 1950, Losers in 1960, Losers in 1969, Losers in 1973, Losers in 1980, Losers in 1981, Losers in 1990, Losers in 2001, Losers in 2007 . . . Oh, wait, the banks didn’t lose anything, it was just regular people.

The FDIC insures deposits to $250,000. Except when (reportedly) Oprah had half a billion in that particular bank. Turns out that the United States blinked: “You get all your money, and you get all your money, and you get all your money,” because Oprah is more important than you and I.

Two other banks have failed already. You can see that some of their CEOs were serious people only worried about the welfare of their depositors.

Yup, the “adults” are in charge.

This will not result in an immediate run. The Fed® and the Treasury will continue to backstop the banks because to do otherwise would collapse the system. They even say so. Valuing assets “at par” means at what the banks paid for them. I own a car from 2003. In Fedspeak® that asset would be valued at the initial purchase price, despite the fact that it has one light-second worth of miles (kilopascals) on it. Here’s proof:

See? I’m a respected journalist. Besides, I believe I am the VERY FIRST person to note that the reserve ratio had gone to zero. You can check it out. This will help my lawyer if I’m ever sued. (Serious about the very first part.)

The Fed™ is screwed. They want to keep Biden in office, which requires low interest rates and a booming economy and no inflation. But to lower inflation, they have to jack up the interest rates far above the rate of inflation. Biden cannot be re-elected. Period, unless there’s a global war.

Nah, people would never buy a war started due to economic issues.

Ooops. I’d say sorry, but this is already in the playbook.

Me? My bet is this can keeps rattling around causing damage for several months. Six or seven? Maybe. Eventually, the Fed® is going to figure out that they can’t paper over this mess.

In the meantime, the cash for businesses will dry up, and the only people that can borrow money will be those that don’t need it. New projects? They’ll be cancelled unless the company has the cash or it will ruin them if they don’t stop. New housing? Forget it. The housing market will collapse, (it already is) and the costs of new stuff to make new are so high that no one can afford it, forget the interest rate.

People will stop eating dinner in a restaurant. We already have.

No, the Ides of March won’t be the end. But you can see it from here. While you can, enjoy the nice walk on a sunny day.

And Neptune? He’s always been a whiney bitch. Ignore Neptune.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: National Divorce? Getting Closer.

“Dolores, I am making a citizen’s divorce.” – The Man with Two Brains

Big Alarm Clock is a conspiracy! Wake up people! (all non-regular memes are as-found)

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same. Again. This is moving sideways, but things can unravel quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The National Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Silly Season – 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 over 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The National Divorce

I remember reading about research a while back that (my fuzzy memory says) indicated that when a married couple didn’t want to have a divorce, one of the easiest things they could do was not talk about a divorce. I guess that would mean that the first rule of staying married club is don’t talk about divorce club.

Marjorie Taylor Greene brought up the issue in a big way:

It’s a stark question: do we want to stay married, or not. Folks on the Internet followed suit, with this poll:

The Internet is what it is, and a poll like that isn’t at all scientific. But 19,000 people (75% of respondents) were done. They were ready to get lawyers, and decide how we get to split up California and Virginia and who got alternating weekends with Michigan.

A much more scientific poll was done by Rasmussen® (more on them later in this Issue) and it emerged that a majority of Republicans wanted out. 47%, plus an 11% who might be in favor, but they wanted to know if they could still get Netflix™ off of Uncle Tim’s account it he were stuck in a Blue State before they made up their mind.

Leftists are never in favor of making anything smaller, since it lowers their power. Remember, it is Leftists who are on the side of international and world governments. I’m pretty sure they’d love to include Mars, too, since it’s Red. This is shown in the poll below:

Fully a third of all people (based on Rasmussen’s™ report) are ready to check out. That’s a lot. Although Gallup® wasn’t around to do a poll, most literature I can find seems to indicate that only 1/3 of the folks living in the Colonies wanted the Revolution, so 1/3 is a big, big number.

I’ll add in this other (entirely unscientific) poll:

Again, unscientific, but it shows that there are a sizeable number of folks out there who believe that soldiers would, if ordered, shoot on American civilians. That’s another scary thought, and perhaps feeds back into the idea that people would much rather have a peaceful exit rather than a violent one.

I read that this year’s CPAC (Republican fanboy convention) was poorly attended, and lacking in energy. And why not? The most fervent people in the Republican party are done, and don’t trust the vote, and don’t think that their votes may ever matter again.

Spiderman®, though, seems to have an opinion:

Violence and Censorship Update

Cancelling really isn’t government censorship, but it’s censorship nevertheless. Scott Adams, noted cartoonist and author, really rustled the collective jimmies of the Left. Rasmussen™ had a poll about whether it was “okay to be white” and 47% of black people indicated that it was either not okay, or they weren’t sure.

Scott has a YouTube® channel (still!) where he talks about whatever he wants to talk about. In this, he opined that if that was the way that black people felt, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around them. The following cartoon describes it in such a way that Scott retweeted it:

The outrage was both predictable, even though Scott noted that many black people he knew called him up and said that his stance was completely reasonable. Mr. Adams’ publisher dropped him. Mr. Adams’ cartoon syndicator dropped him. Mr. Adams’ agent . . . dropped him. His new book, due out in the fall? Cancelled.

I don’t feel bad for Scott, he knew what he was doing, and he has tens of millions of dollars. But what is it about that simple narrative that makes the Left explode? I’ll cover that in a future post.

The Silence of the Adams

It’s not violence now, but Illinois has now decided that most crimes short of murdering someone and taking selfies with the victim are now non-detainable. Burn someone’s house? Out without bail. Kill someone while high? Out without bail.

Florida. Sigh. Why? They want to make bloggers who write about elected officials register if they make money for their efforts. Is this the single stupidest thing to come out of Florida since they elected ¡Jeb!?

The publisher of Roald Dahl is going through his books an removing whatever they don’t like based on political correctness. No more “ugly” or “fat” or . . . black. Paging Scott Adams . . . These “corrections” are showing up in people’s previously purchased e-books, too. This is why physical media is good. And why I have lots of books.

It’s not censorship, exactly, when programmers prevent A.I. from coming to conclusions based on fact, but it’s close. There are certain facts that are inconvenient, like boys have xy chromosomes and girls have xx chromosomes, so programmers prevent A.I. from talking about that. Elon Musk says he’s going to do his own, non-woke A.I.

When the trains carrying ethyl-methyl-death crashed in East Palestine, it was a story that was minimized until it couldn’t be. I follow stories like this that are under the news, and was aware of it within a few hours of it happening. But the news? No reporting on it, since it didn’t impact Baltimore and had the potential to make the Biden administration look even worse than it normally looks.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala’s womb, this graph doesn’t eggs. Here’s a recap:

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 still minimal right now. I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more. I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, Biden just came out in favor of “law and order”, because I think he saw it the show on cable.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which still isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

The number took a big drop! Yay! Oh, it’s still higher than ever for that month. I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

So, when can we ask the Mexicans to leave?

The Silly Season

One way to deflect a story is to not tell it. The other way to deflect a story is to flood the media with, well, nonsense. My favorite this month? The Chinese Spy Balloon™. During World War II, the Japanese decided they would make Americans afraid. They launched 9,000 balloons filled with explosives at the United States. As near as I could find with an in-depth three-minute look, one exploded. Out of 9,000.

Ohhh, I’m so afraid.

I’m not sure what we’ve found out about the Chinese Spy Balloon©. I think that we’ll find out they were trying to check up on why Americans weren’t buying more extended warrantees based on those cell-phone calls. Since we haven’t heard anything, I’m think that it may actually have been a weather balloon. Regardless, they can solve their problem with just a little bit of camouflage that the United States would never shoot down:

Was this the story that they were attempting to distract us from?

It’s a scary one. Why do we need so may people? Why aren’t all the traditional people who would go into the military signing up? Oh, yeah. They’ve been told they’re racist. They’ve been told they have unearned privilege? They’ve seen the military force people to take the vaxx. And now they want them to sign up to fight?

What could be next?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761485/NYPD-release-images-four-brazen-thieves-staged-50-000-raid-Manhattan-Givenchy.html

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628194739987046400

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626367620151738375

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626397252334809090

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1626369625314279426

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626447147225718786

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1621965430930669569

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628225095893131264

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1627464538609139714

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1626379421065134080

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html

Body Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11711353/Seven-states-eye-legalizing-assisted-suicide-America.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/new-paper-an-estimated-13-million

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11738179/Still-think-secure-Joe-Moment-500-Venezuelan-migrants-walk-southern-border.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11730363/Biden-preparing-mass-deportations-non-Mexican-migrants-Mexico.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11733577/Map-shows-14-million-Americans-live-5-miles-cancer-gas-emitting-plants.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

Vote Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/maricopa-heat-maps-the-story-keeps-getting-worse/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-democrat-gov-tony-evers-bid-to-overhaul-wisconsin-elections/

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/17/launch-of-campaign-to-repeal-ranked-choice-voting-draws-a-crowd-in-anchorage/

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

Civil War
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/keith-olbermann-calls-economic-civil-war-institute-gun-control

https://www.foxnews.com/media/olbermann-urges-blue-states-wage-economic-civil-war-red-states-starve-red-states-submission

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/internal-atf-docs-show-zero-tolerance-guidelines-shutting-down-gun-stores

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/tideland_news/opinions/article_bec42134-ad30-11ed-979b-4365a8a67e62.html

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/17/idaho-house-approves-talks-to-annex-oregon-counties/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/lost-cause-2-0-desantis-and-republicans-inspired-by-racist-confederate-history-re-writes/

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/newswire/gops-civil-war-republicans-confront-bitter-divide-no-clear-path-forward/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/megadonor-gop-richard-elizabeth-uihlein-00081267

https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/nicholas-boke-what-would-a-civil-war-look-like-anyway/article_c6beefac-aca1-11ed-9fa4-d74d7a722a44.html

https://sundayguardianlive.com/world/will-2022-witness-american-civil-war-2-0-will-happen-2024

https://news.uchicago.edu/us-headed-toward-another-civil-war-william-howell

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-defends-call-split-up-us-says-civil-war-looming-2023-2

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greenes-national-divorce-was-the-civil-war.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-secession-civil-war/673142/

https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/24/23613267/emasculation-proclamation-civil-war-ii

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/project-veritas-has-forced-out-james-okeefe.html

https://hard-drive.net/hd/technology/ken-burns-releases-4000-part-tiktok-series-on-the-civil-war/

Discipline, Romans, And Spending All The Money

“That’s newspapers for you. You could fill volumes with what you don’t read in ‘em.” – The Green Berets

I decided never to jog with Marcus Aurelius. It’s always dangerous to run with Caesars.

Self-discipline is hard, but it starts with the smallest step. Even (the dead) Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in his book Meditations talked about how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning. Marcus talked about how warm and comfy he was under the covers, and how he’d like to stay there, curled up. In then end, though, he got up because he had responsibility to govern the Empire that was a bit more important than his desire to be comfy.

Me? There are some mornings I would have given up Gaul for another fifteen minutes. Okay, maybe not Gaul because of the food, but definitely Judea.

Marcus did the tough (maybe he had a hangover?) thing because he had a responsibility to millions of citizens to do his very best for them, and as nearly as I can determine, he took that seriously. Plus? It’s good to be the Emperor. I hear they didn’t have to wait in the drive through for Chicken McNuggets® and always got enough Hot Mustard™ sauce.

My advice? Never eat a Kid’s Meal at McDonald’s®. Their mothers tend to get upset.

The difficult part of discipline is that it requires, well, discipline. Getting good things in life is difficult – that’s why we work for them. And that’s why it’s called work. It’s tough. But when the seeds are planted, cared for, and weeded, then at harvest it’s time to reap the rewards. Discipline is like that. Heck, some sort of east Asian place that I can’t be bothered to look up has a proverb that says that, “A woman who marries a man who works hard every day will never starve.”

I don’t think that was China, because if it was China, they have been starving every century by the tens of millions, especially when they embarked on the Chinese Diet Plan called Communism. Maybe it was Puerto Rico? Or Applebee’s™?

Probably not. But I think it might have ended in a vowel, but not Y, because that’s sometimes only a vowel, and I don’t think that Asians use the same fonts.

So, if even a dead Roman can figure it out, why can’t we?

Some people want to ban Roman numerals. Not on my watch.

The latest bouts of fiscal insanity in the United States have made me think that none of them have read Marcus Aurelius, or maybe even can read. What triggered this post is the recent Supreme Court Case about ghosts. Oh, wait, that’s later. No, student loans.

Student loans in the United States are a particularly horrible thing that gives money to Leftist professors so that they can indoctrinate youth but the youth has to pay for it until they lose all their teeth or pay it off. I think that was in the terms and conditions of my student loans, but I can’t be exactly sure, since after I signed my name, they gave me $7,500. Duh.

The most pernicious thing about student loans is that they live forever. I paid mine off in January, 2013. I paid ahead, but didn’t want to pay them off completely if the world ended in December, 2012 (which was a thing). Oddly, this is a true story, and illustrates how far I’m willing to take a joke.

But student loan forgiveness is just the tip of the iceberg. For the last five or so years of my life, the government (both Right and Left) has been like a fat girl who decides on a Tuesday night that the diet is over. That cookie dough? Sure. I can eat a tube or two. Covered in frosting. Oh, and I’ll just tidy up the frosting container so it doesn’t go bad. If you’ve given up, why not go all in?

The cannibal decided to go on a vegan diet. He found a family of them at Whole Foods®.

The government (again, both Right and Left) has decided that there is no limit. Every Tuesday for them is time to give Ukraine more money for . . . (spins wheel) dental x-ray infrastructure. Will $23 billion cover that? Sure, if it were just Ukraine, that would be one thing. But it’s not just that. Biden’s Build Back Better means that we’ll just burn cash to make us warm if we run out of oil.

If I seem a bit cynical, it’s because that at every single turn in my life, that I’ve seen fiscal discipline further erode, and money fly a bit freer each day. At no point have I ever seen (outside of Ron and Rand Paul) and politician say, “stop”. Apparently, when elected to Congress, the “spend money on everything light” blinks on the dashboard of their cars.

My dashboard keeps telling me “trunk is ajar”. Silly car. A trunk isn’t a jar.

There is no discipline. There is no pretending to have discipline. It’s all just comfy warm covers and Chicken McNuggies™ while every sense of fiscal discipline is overridden by another trip of the spoon int the Pillsbury™ chocolate frosting.

But that’s okay. I’m sure it will end fine. Where’s the frosting? I think I want to sleep late today. Oh, but have we spent enough money on Ukraine?

Is The End Of The Road Nearly At Hand?

“If they have him, and they can somehow piece the country together, get communications up, they’ll control everything; the Federal Reserve, the military.” – The Last Ship

Where does the Fed® hide its monetary mistakes? In debasement.

Pa Wilder was a banker, and when we communicated via a while back, I’d send him long-ish messages about most everything. One time, I broached the economy with him. As a small farm banker with more than 50 years of experience, he was familiar with the way the system worked.

When I first heard that the Federal Reserve™ wasn’t owned by the government, but by the member banks, I asked him. I figured he’d tell me, “Nah, John, it’s really owned by the government, aliens aren’t real, go back to sleep – we won the war.” Nope. He then went through how each member bank was required to buy stock in the regional Federal Reserve Banks (as I recall) with at least 6% of their deposits.

Whoa. His bank owned a tiny part of the Federal Reserve Bank®. Certainly not much, but part of it. The Federal Reserve Bank© is a private institution. It was the 1913 mechanism to get the politicians out of the economy. The Great Depression shows how well it worked.

What do you call a talkative Colombian? Hablo Escobar.

After World War II, there was a time of relative stability – Europe and Japan were shattered, and the United States had industry that was just waiting to stop making weapons and start making washers. The sudden influx of labor with the demobilizing G.I.s made a combination for economic growth. After they drank the bars dry and made a zillion babies.

Even with the added costs of Social Security, it worked. The economy was working so well that we could build an interstate highway system without breaking a sweat. The highway system even added to the economic boom by lowering the cost and time required to move goods, effectively shrinking the country.

However, every good party has to end. Johnson’s Great Society and financing for the Vietnam War out of “money we just made up” caused Nixon to end the last tether between gold and the dollar. Sure, the Fed® had been cheating about the amount of cash it had been printing, but when the bluff was called, Nixon had the option of sending all our gold to France or saying “just kidding”.

He chose the latter. I think it was a good idea, because it wasn’t like France was going to do anything about it, anyway. The result was the petrodollar – the idea that all international transactions in oil would take place in dollars. That also resulted in almost all transactions taking place in the dollar. The inflation of the 1970s was the result – it was before we figured out how to tax the world by printing dollars in a sorta responsible way.

If I had a dime for every time I didn’t know what was going on, I’d say, “Hey, where did all these dimes come from?”

So, people all over the world needed dollars, even though we were printing them like we were, well, the Fed™. As long as the Soviet Union existed, there was a counterbalance to the United States, so at least there was some check. But after they went tango uniform?

That’s when the responsibility completely ended, the cash was printed, and the instability really started.

The Dotcom Bubble was the first – fed by cash from the Fed® with no place to go. And then it tanked. So the Fed™ printed a few trillion bucks. That led directly to . . .

The Housing Bubble. You probably have heard of it.

But this was different – it actually lead to protests against the banks. A reprogramming was necessary – “put the bankers in jail” had to be stopped, because bankers like to use our money to buy themselves nice things like that tiny part of France where they don’t let Muslims in. Except the Saudis.

I read that photographers and art thieves both take pictures.

A reprogramming was needed – Occupy Wall Street™ had to turn to . . . something. That reprogramming of the Lefty rank and file was into “white people are awful” and it got the heat away from the bankers. And made movies suck.

Meanwhile, the money hijinks led to country after country having revolutions, from Libya to Egypt to Syria. Why? Because inflation in the United States (at that point) meant that people had to pay a nickel more for Cheetos®. In Egypt, that meant that one of the children had to be sold into medical experimentation.

The key to all of this was keeping the dollar as the key currency used in international transactions. To be clear, Russia was a big threat in this. Sure, Russia is ruled by corrupt folks who kill people who threaten them, but I can raise you a Jeff Epstein, a Hunter Biden, and Hillary.

The Russians certainly threatened all of this with Nordstream® and Nordstream II©. These pipelines pushed natural gas straight from Russia to Europe. Now, Russia could take . . . euros for gas. Dollar not required.

Watch a 10-hour movie? No. But have Netflix® break it up into 10 one-hour movies?

And scary. All the investment of the Left in Green Energy® led them to shut down nuclear power plants (Germany, I’m looking at you) and replace them with natural gas plants. And you see the results.

(hint: Ukraine and certain underwater explosions)

Now we find that we have a currency that’s becoming worth less every day, foreign folks are building ways to not take the dollar. So they need fewer of them. And want fewer of them in their pockets.

It doesn’t help that we’re in debt by (spins wheel) over $25 trillion bucks, the economy is distorted, and that Medicare® and Medicaid™ will soon cost more than Joe Biden’s hair plugs. And we’re going to double that in the next eight years, and double it again in the next eight. That’s $100 trillion dollars.

Does anyone reading this believe we can last that long?

Oops.

Pa Wilder said 20 years ago that he didn’t see how it could last. But many folks have gone broke by betting against the Fed™. That one day they can’t paper it all over?

Nah. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.

Want to win? Have a good wife.

“Are you drunk?” “It’s my birthday. Again.” – The Experts

I ate an abacus – it’s inside what counts.

So, it’s St. Valentine’s day. Again.

For this year, I decided to go into the deeply romantic box of ideas, and got The Mrs. a bottle of scotch. Not great a great bottle of scotch, because that’s what I always give her for Christmas (saves on thinking, gents). Well, this wasn’t a great bottle, but it was also not something you’d use for lighter fluid, either.

Not that The Mrs. won’t drink lighter fluid (don’t ask me about that story!), but because The Mrs. sounds like Kim Carnes afterward. Anyone else but me listen to Bette Davis Eyes and not think “Marty Feldman Eyes”?

Regardless, here is why I enjoy my time with The Mrs. As a part of our conversation, we discussed the evolution of modern warfare from the United States Civil War, and World War I. In it, I brought into play the idea that the Germans had totally melted the minds of the French.

Why do French ghosts smell so bad? They are covered in sheet.

Why? Let’s go back to the Franco-Prussian war. Not Franco-American®, because there were far fewer Spaghetti-O’s® back in 1870. And Chef-Boyardee™ was still Chef Notbornyet. Sorry for the digression – it turns out that I bought The Mrs. some scotch, but she bought us some wine. And by us, I mean me and her, not you and me and her.

Our conversation wandered, and I pointed out the reason the French were such wussies was because of the Franco-Prussian war. It seems, the French had a far superior rifle, the Chassepot (pronounced “frog hat spinner” because the French don’t even pretend that letters have meaning). This means that the German soldiers had to attack (they’re Germans, they’re always attacking) for 200 yards (17.3 kiloPascals) while being shot at with relatively accurate rifles before their rifles could shoot back.

You’d think this would mean an easy French victory. Nah. The Germans were surrounding Paris within weeks, because, always remember the first dictum: the French can only win a war in which all of their opponents are French.

Then, The Mrs. demanded (on Valentine’s Day) that we watch either a documentary on WWI or All Quiet on the Western Front (new version, which I had not seen yet). I bring this out not for any other reason than to brag. Chocolates? Flowers? Nah. Scotch. Rom-coms? No. The Mrs. demanded we watch a war movie. It’s like Christmas and we talk about the geopolitics of WWII and The Mrs. demands we watch Patton. Again.

I found a corpse along the road with no arms, head, or legs. The local police are stumped.

This isn’t entirely bragging, since this is Wednesday and we’re supposed to talk about money. How do war movies, moderately priced scotch, and romantic discussions about warfare have anything to do about money?

It has everything to do about money. Everything.

Women can make or break a marriage. Modern societies, especially in the United States, give women an out, and incentivize them to break up marriages for fun and profit. Don’t believe me? Here’s a Tweet® from a Twunt©:

When I first read this, I thought it was sarcasm. It’s not. I feel sorry for her wine and cats.

Yeah, she said that. It’s an awful sentiment that an elected official could say that and remain in office. I’m beginning to understand why they burned witches at the stake, and becoming much more amenable to that idea. After a fair trial, of course. I’m not suggesting that South Dakota do summary executions, but I am suggesting they bring back witch burning.

The economics of the love in 2023 are heavily skewed against those who would love. In my mind, love is the glue that holds the atom of civilization together. That atom? The family. And no matter how you slice it, there is no world where two women or two men can have actual children, so they cannot form the nucleus of the family. Unless cats are children.

The economic incentives right now are against child rearing. It’s amazing to see the number of criminals with no fathers in their lives. It’s amazing to see the number of children coming from “blended” (i.e., divorced parent) families. Here in Modern Mayberry, about (Pugsley’s guess) 65% of the kids come from intact, two-parent families.

In my mind? That’s a number that’s amazingly low. Sure, I was adopted, but I was adopted into a family where my Mom and Dad had been married for 26 years before I was adopted and The Mrs. family was stable for 61 years until The Mrs. father passed on. Sure, my family had ups and downs, but their marriage was approximately as stable as helium or the Democrat’s hold on counting votes. Neither of Ma Wilder or Pa Wilder needed nor wanted surprises.

What they call Frodo if he had lost a leg instead of a finger? A Hoppit.

Today? Husband won’t agree to a new dining room table? Divorce him. Most divorces are initiated by women. Because? They’re unhappy. I understand that’s a reason, but it’s not a good reason, since, until the caffeine kicks in around 11am each day, I’m unhappy, too, and you don’t see me firebombing Dresden.

But those are the women who even bother to get married. There’s a deeper pathology here.

What incentive to men use to improve themselves, to work harder, to get into shape, to earn money?

The prospect of wife and family. If that isn’t there, why bother? It’s easier to eat Cheetos® and play Call of Duty™: Ukraine™ on their PS3©. I’ll admit that this isn’t an attractive mate, but is it any different than a 34-year-old women who has had sex with 143 guys? Women think their value shouldn’t be based on the number of sexual partners they’ve had, but, dudes, who wants to own a pair of shoes owned by 143 other dudes?

Yeah. No one.

The structure of incentives is important. Right now, men are incentivized to eat Cheetos™ and play vidya games. Right now, women are encouraged to have sex with all the men, and then try to find someone after they’ve gone had sex with all the men, gone to graduate school, lost their fertility, and bonded with wine and cats.

Ugh.

Economics is about incentives. Give incentives to women to not marry and then divorce at the slightest provocation? Men will turn into Tostito® munching morons. It’s simple. And then both will be sad. The 45 year-old wine aunt? She’s not happy, she’s just out of options. The 30 year-old man-boy?

He’s just looking for a wife, children, and to make a place in society. That’s it.

Not pictured: The Mrs.

I’ll say this again – my Gen X road was easier than the Zoomer and Millennial kids. A young man faces women that are hostile. That turns him into a man that’s not prepared. If I might make a modest proposal, let’s bring back shame for women. And let’s bring back pride for men.

Seems like a fair deal. And, honestly, the best St. Valentine’s Day present that they could have. Unless their wife demands they watch a war movie before sending them out to smoke a Rocky Patel® cigar in the hot tub so they can finish watching the documentary about the Franco-Prussian War after having a few glasses of wine and scotch.

Hope you had a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Rigging The Game

“Coupons. Well, what a wonderful way to economize. Well, I could clip them and give them to my personal shopper.” – Frasier

The first symptom of COVID-19? Believing what the government says. (all memes this post “as-found”)

It’s a strange, new world. During my childhood, there was an active focus on one concept: we’re all humans, regardless of race. We should all be treated the same, and have the same rules. Sure, there were programs like affirmative action, but the primary impact of those was (for the most part) in making sure that minority candidates were considered for jobs. The rule (generally) remained that the most qualified person got the job. Meritocracy reigned.

I won’t pick the date this changed, because it’s been a continuum, a bit here, a bit there. But if you had seen the following headline in 1980 or 1990, I think the first thought of people would have been, “How can that even be legal?”

I was trying to think of a Bank of America® joke, but I lost interest.

The idea isn’t just at Bank of America®, it’s also at Wells Fargo™, too, you can look it up. The concept is that companies attempting to get their ESG (link to my previous post on this monstrosity here) score up are setting up programs like that. To be clear, any loan by any bank that’s not rooted in the ability of the borrower to repay is awful, and immoral. It’s also shenanigans like this that led directly to the 2008 housing bubble and Great Recession.

In a related story, I wonder if Pelosi shorted them yet?

If a country is searching for a solid economy, this isn’t it. If a country is looking to make actual equality the measure, this also isn’t it. If it were just this, it would just be (outside of being illegal) just a limited number of bad business decisions, but it’s not limited to just this.

How about electric cars? I mean, I’m as much into having children dig for toxic cobalt in the Congo so rich people in California can have electric cars and feel smug about it as the next person, but to create a tax incentive?

Seems a bit like we’re rubbing it in.

If Apple® makes an electric car, will it have Windows™?

Not to mention reparations. It’s odd that the people who want to abolish debt for people that borrowed money are also the ones that want to pay people for things that never happened to them. I guarantee that, no matter how much is offered it won’t be accepted.

Why? It will never be enough. Ever.

Another symptom of the Kleptocracy.

What about the Biden family themselves? Is their economy wrecked like they’ve wrecked the nation?

No. Joe went from $0 net worth in 2015 to $9,000,000 (latest info I could find) today. How’d he do that? I’m sure he cut back on Starbucks®. According to reports, Hunter asked a donor to set up a job for his “pled guilty to a felony for $100,000 credit card fraud for makeup” niece.

They agreed to hire this felon for $85,000 a year. She refused. She wanted no less than $180,000. To be fair, from the pictures it does look like she needs that much makeup.

Again, that’s small potatoes, when looking at the billions that have already been looted from the open checkbook that is the Ukraine.

The IRS called Hunter and told him he was being indicted for tax fraud. He hung up, and told his dad, “Ha! I don’t even pay taxes!”

And yet, there’s more! I’ll skip over the massive payments for illegal aliens to play computer games and stay in hotels at taxpayer expense while actual Americans are homeless and face bankruptcy to medical bills inflated by donor companies like Pfizer®. I’m sure that doesn’t make anyone mad.

What’s the difference between E.T.® and an illegal alien? E.T. learned English and wanted to go home.

In point of fact, what we are seeing is the looting of an economy. Our economy. I think it’s been going on for years, but the looting wasn’t so visible because it was papered over, literally. After the 2008 Great Recession, there wasn’t really any attempt to make the economy better, rather, the idea was to just keep printing money – Qualitative Easing is what they called, it, which was a fancy way to say that the money would be printed and buy up the weakest assets of the companies that the Fed® had desired to support.

COVID-19 was the lynchpin, though. As the tide receded and undulated, we could finally see who didn’t have a swimsuit on. It turned out, it was most of the economy. Now, inflation. And, to top it off, eggs appear to be the 2023 version of toilet paper, so I guess this year that Halloween pranks will actually add value to the house.

It also looks like the plan that The Mrs. was brooding on, “let’s get some chickens that lay eggs” will finally hatch.

Maybe.

What do Green Eggs and Ham, Fifty Shades of Gray, and our economy have in common? They all make people who can barely read want to try new things.

Oddly, it gets even worse. Since 1988, the United States has paid $13 trillion in interest to . . . use its own currency – the government needs currency, the Treasury prints bonds, the Fed® creates cash, the United States owes interest and pays fees to the Fed™ member banks.

That’s weird, because the United States used to just issue its own cash. Without debt. Sure, if you print too much, that causes inflation.

Oh. I see we’re soaking in inflation. And the Fed® actively plans for inflation as a part of the business plan. I think there’s a pictograph that might explain things . . .

Chuck Norris mines cryptocurrency. By hand.

The looting can’t continue forever. And that’s a good thing. This made-up economy filled with economic nonsense that, at times, makes Lenin look like an economic genius, has a time limit. Merit will return, just as the Gods of the Copybook Headings have always predicted.

There can be no other outcome.

The Shape Of Things To Come

“This always happens, Oliver. Every time you open your mouth, somebody sticks a phone company in it.” – Green Acres

I think this cat might be chairman of the Fed®.

I heard a story once about an AT&T office, this was back in the 1970s or 1980s. There was a particular employee who the day crew would always see finishing up at the end of his shift, putting tools up, and getting the work set up for the day crew. They really appreciated him, since when they showed up, things were neat and ready to go. They thought he stayed late to do this for them.

There was also a guy on day shift crew. He’d show up early and prepare for work. He impressed the night shift crew, because he came in early, and was getting his work ready to go well before the day shift showed up.

Eventually, after about a decade (or so the story went) the day shift manager told the night shift manager how much he appreciated how old Steve stayed late to get things ready for them.

“Steve? He works day shift, and always comes in early, right?”

Ooops. Steve finally got caught after working forever a little over an hour a day, showing up “early” for one shift, and leaving “late” from the other.

So, he worked about 200 hours a year. For a decade.

I think he must have had a hobby. Maybe fishing.

I think it was Alexander Graham Bell who first said, “How in the hell did you get this number?”

In the news recently, the layoffs have already started at “big tech”:

Amazon®: 18,000
Alphabet® (Google™): 12,000
Microsoft® (Microsoft™): 10,000
HP™: 6,000
Twitter®: 3,700

That’s like 71.56 miles (4,259,400,000 cubic centimeters, and yes, Ricky, you can check the math) of people. It might be more cubic centimeters if they had a lot of carbs.

Some of these jobs are bogus, like the AT&T hour-a-day guy. I’ve enjoyed watching the Tiktok® videos of the PowerPoint® making drones with no technical ability. Typically, the drone shows up at work (if they’re not working remote) and has a free breakfast. Then they goof for a bit, have a meeting, do a free lunch. They indicate the lunch and breakfast are very tasty. Then they have at least one more grueling meeting.

Photons never take luggage to an airport – they’re traveling light.

And that’s it. From every one of the videos I’ve seen, the folks have no technical ability. Some don’t even work at all – one person complaining about being fired hadn’t worked since May of 2021, since they were on medical leave because of PTSD. What was the PTSD from? Her managers were “mean” to her.

I’m not making this up. She was shocked to be fired.

The other indicators are not good. Paul “the Internet will be as important as the fax machine” Krugman put out a graph just recently on Twitter®:

What’s up with Paul Krugman? Not his I.Q.

This is the single dumbest take I’ve seen since Custer said, “C’mon, man, how many Indians can there be? We don’t need those cannons.”

Krugman has artfully taken out the things that people have to buy from his super-good news.

Food,
Energy,
Shelter, and
Used Cars

This is a fantastic analysis for people who don’t eat, are immune to freezing, live outside, and don’t need to go anywhere or buy gas to go anywhere. It’s like asking Jackie, “Besides the car ride, how was your trip to Dallas?”

Why are prices of other stuff going down? Because people aren’t buying them because they have to buy food, energy, shelter, and used cars.

Duh.

And he kneaded that!

Behaviors are changing. Frivolous purchases are being limited. The recession indicators are significant from things like yield curve inversion, Modified Mannarino Market Risk Indicator (LINK) and the banks closing down entire units.

But thankfully Paul Krugman says it’s all going to be spiffy.

And, it will be. All of those cubic meters of people will end up doing something more important than making PowerPoints® and attending twenty-seven meetings about what shade of aqua and how many pixels to make the Google® doodle. Let’s face it – about 70% of Google® employees could be axed tomorrow and nothing would change. How do I know that?

That’s what Musk did with Twitter®. Most of the folks Musk fired added no value, and the ones he kept were elated to finally be able to do something of value for the company. The folks that were fired will certainly find jobs in the food service industry, become moms, or just sit on the couch at their Dad’s house curled up in a fetal ball of PTSD. I for one am happy, because we need better waitresses.

From the Tiktok® videos, it certainly looks like they know how to serve food.

I searched “Lost Medieval Servant Boy” but got, “This Page cannot be found.”

Some of the destruction that comes from a recession is good. It’s a reset, and it clears away silliness. The danger, of course, is the destruction that comes from a runaway recession. Small recessions clean. Large recessions/depressions? They can cleanse nations. Look what happened in the 1920s and 1930s around the world – entire governments were replaced.

Thankfully, I hear AT&T® is hiring. Night shift or day shift?

Both, please.

D’Oh, Canada: Showcasing The Leftist Plan So We Can Plan, Too

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.” – The Matrix

Greta is the solution to climate change. Every time she’s on the TV, tens of millions of people shut it off.

Apparently, Justin Trudeau up in Canada needs to be reminded that in the movie, The Matrix, Agent Smith was the bad guy. Really. Check it out. Keanu Reeves fought him, and everything. For whatever reason, Canada (and Leftists in general) have adopted the idea that Agent Smith was their dude and the inspiration for their philosophy.

In two words, their philosophy is self-hatred (does the hyphen make it two words?) and power. I’ve established that again and again. It is why (really) I’m in favor of bringing bullying back. As a society we let losers do loser things, give them participation medals, and then after having zero incentive for self-improvement, they wonder why they’re not the head of the class.

I was bullied in school. I deserved it. I used it to get better, stronger, and faster. I’ve even seen communications between Leftists where they advise each other not to exercise because exercise leads them to become members of the Right.

God, I wish someone had bullied Justin Trudeau so that he would have developed into a man, rather than the corporate globalist man-child with no sense of identity and a sense of entitlement the size of Canada.

Okay, this is supposedly a Photoshop®. But, admit it, it wouldn’t surprise you if it was real. And this is my only original meme for this post. Rest are “as found”.

This brings us to Canada’s plan for self-immolation – “Just Transition”. Just Transition refers not to Justin finally admitting he’s transitioning, but rather the “teenager’s idea of a good plan because climate is scary” transition from fossil fuels to, well, they don’t really say. It can’t be too much solar, because, last time I checked, in the winter in Canada at northern latitudes, the SUN IS DOWN MOST OF THE DAY.

That probably doesn’t bother Sunshine Trudeau, since he will be in some mansion somewhere pretending to be Queen Victoria’s seat cushion. But I’m thinking that ordinary Canadians, the ones who have to deal with this nonsense and will either freeze or starve, might have an objection.

Another Just Transition that probably wouldn’t surprise Canada.

The plan itself contemplates that at least 200,000 Canadians will lose their jobs, which will certainly hurt the back bacon and Elsinore Beer prices. These 200,000 Canadians are in the energy industry. What will replace that?

Don’t know. This Just Transition plan, again, has nearly zero actual thought by adults who have more than a single functioning brain cell. It is built on those old Leftist thought patterns: self-hatred and a desire for power. Why would people need light and heat?

Alberta is not a hot girl who has daddy issues and is thus a stripper with a heart of gold, but rather a Canadian province. I guess that means admitting I’ve been in Alberta sounds a lot less dirty when I put it that way. But Alberta does have a heart of gold, because they’re pushing back, hard, against the nonsense coming out of whatever town where Trudeau lives. Ottawa? Heck, I thought that was a river mammal. Turns out Ottawa is where the bad things come from in Canada.

Maybe it will work this time?

Canada planning to destroy its own economy just to gain good boy points and score some additional chicken tendies at dinner isn’t unusual under the Trudeau leadership. The main problem with Canada is that it doesn’t have an actual constitution with a bill of rights that puts a brake (no matter how fleeting) on tinpot dictators with delusions of godhood exercising their will.

Looks like Justin’s dad had the same idea.

Alberta, however, seems to have had enough. The nice part of Canada is that they haven’t yet had a Civil War, and it would appear that the individual provinces seem to be able to tell the national government to go to, well, Ottawa. Or at least the subject hasn’t been settled by armies yet.

It’s not just energy, it’s food, too. We’ve seen the protests in the Netherlands. Why? They want to shut down the farms. Why? To stop climate change. Canada has promised to do the same thing. Look it up, search, “Canada nitrogen” – and I remember when I thought Canada Dry® was a national menace.

I’m not making this up:

And this a consistent Leftist theme:

Why do they want to shut down the use of fertilizers? It’s not climate change, it’s food. The Mrs. once read a story of a party in Washington, D.C. At this party, the writer noted that he had a conversation with a Leftist. I’d give you a source if I recalled it, but it was several beers ago. “Too many people on the planet, by several billion,” the Leftist said.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Well, we will practice food restriction.”

“So, you’re telling me that the Leftist plan is to starve to death billions of people?”

They were silent when the bald fact was put to them like that. So, yeah, Justin is working to ruin the economy of Canada. But he won’t be sad if millions starve, in fact, that’s the plan. I’m not sure Justin is smart enough to figure that out, since I’m pretty sure he’s just a lapdog of below-average I.Q. who wasn’t bullied enough as a child.

Canada has, unwittingly, provided people in the United States with a viewpoint of what the Left intends. Watch closely. And pray for the Canadians who will oppose this, in Alberta and elsewhere.

Hopefully, the folks in Alberta are very good at dealing with rats.

And remember, Agent Smith is the bad guy. And he lost. And the Leftists will lose, as they always have in history. But I’ve never said that any of this will be easy.

Related:

Ricky sent me this video, and I can’t recommend it enough. A few “s” bombs, but otherwise it should be required viewing from elementary schools on up.

Brilliant speech addressed to our ‘woke’ youth fighting #climatechange by Konstantine Kisin. pic.twitter.com/mFS8w0t2ip

— Brandon Taylor Moore (@LetsGoBrando45) January 14, 2023