Deflation? Inflation? All I Want Is A Good Steak.

“Oh, my God!  The automatic pilot!  He’s deflating!” – Airplane!

I went to see a hedge fund manager at work and punch him in the face.  And then get a Quarter Pounder®.

Welcome to the next step down.  But how is this going to go?

First, there are signs that this will lead to more inflation than a Kardashian’s butt experiences in an entire season of whatever crap they’re doing on TV.  Here are some signs pointed towards inflation:

  • It’s inflation season.   That comes right after blowing up Russian pipeline season, duck season, rabbit season, duck season, rabbit season, and train derailment season.
  • $2 trillion (a number no doubt made up because it sounded good to whatever political appointee approves these things) of newly printed cash has been allocated to “stabilize” the banking system.

When Bernie Madoff stole his investors money, the Fed® didn’t backstop the investors, even though they couldn’t keep up with the compounding interest of Madoff’s lies.  That was deflationary.  But backstopping all bank customers, everywhere?

That’s more inflationary than Stormy Daniels, umm, attributes.  I heard a rumor that half of Oprah’s money was in Silicon Valley Bank®.  She got very upset when she thought that Elon Musk would be the only remaining African-American billionaire.

Everyone needs a backup.  Mars is Elon’s planet-B.

The latest announcement from the Fed® on their plans to stop inflation sounded desperate.  I imagine that Janet Yellin would offer to learn poll dancing if she thought it would lower inflation.  I think that might work, since never in the history of mankind have so many dollar bills jumped back into pockets than when Janet walks on stage.

What about things that indicate that deflation might be around the corner?

  • During the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank™, it sounds like all of their bondholders and shareholders got vaporized. So, at least $15 billion and probably closer to $30 billion in cash was vaporized faster than a hoagie at Oprah’s house.
  • The stock market is down. When the market goes down, the money doesn’t power a secret spaceship, it just disappears like my biological father did when my biological mother got pregnant.
  • When interest rates go up, housing prices go down. Why?  People buy houses based on borrowed money, and higher interest rates don’t increase the amount of money that they pay at (spins wheel) the PEZ™ factory.  Nope, it just makes the house payment more expensive, unless the price of the house goes down.  This is deflationary, because right now housing value is vaporizing like crack at Hunter’s place on a Saturday night.

The Chairman of the Fed® thought he was a magician, but he had chocolate on his shirt.  He thought he had Twix® up his sleeve.

Here’s another, weird, example.

While I was writing this, The Mrs. walked by my secluded writing spot in the sitting room, and asked me, “Hey, want a steak?”  I had a scotch already, so, that’s perfect!

“What answer do you expect me to give you?”  She cooked the steak.  This was a perfectly marbled ribeye, an inch and a half thick.  She seared the sides, and it let out a gentle “moo” as I cut into it.

What did that ribeye cost?  $12 a pound.

Why?

Well, there’s been a drought in prime cattle country.  Cattle gotta drink.

The Mrs. and her brother own the better part of a buttload of land.  The year before they got $6,000 for the hay.  They fertilized.  After Russia invaded the Ukraine, fertilizer prices spiked.  They decided to just grow whatever grew and not spend the $3,000 to fertilize it.

They made $6,000 for the hay, same as the year before even though they had half the hay this year.

Sorry if that joke was corny.

For cattle farmers, growers, leaders, ranchers prices went up, but what they got for a cattle didn’t.  Therefore?  In March of 2023, I can get a pound of the best ribeye ever to grace a cast iron skillet for $12, whereas two Double Quarter Pounders With Cheese™ would cost me . . . $12.

This is not a hard choice.

In 2024 or 2025, though, I expect that same beef to cost double or more.  I’ve been nagging my brother in law to get some cattle.

Why?

I like steak way more than the crap they serve at McDonald’s®.  So, in some places, there is deflation right now.

  • Houses.
  • I read today that there are several projects in Vegas that just received stop orders because the financing fell through.  If a project is a good idea at 1% interest and 2% inflation, it may not be a good idea while skydiving with a bag of loose change as your parachute.
  • Plans that don’t have financing. In an inflationary environment, a plan that doesn’t have financing is as useful as a waterproof towel.

There’s also been a rush towards our border of illegals that are desperate to come to a horribly awful and racist country.  Is this inflationary, or deflationary?

Inflationary.  Illegals do take jobs that are low on the pay scale, so that strawberries are 0.03% cheaper.  Is that deflationary?

Can we call Transformers® Carmen?

No.  It’s inflationary.  Illegals do make things like strawberries, lettuce, and cocaine cheaper, but they do actually cost about $10,000, each, for every year that they’re here for things like welfare, schools, roads, etc.  So a family of five?  Costs everyone at least $50,000 per year.

Where does the cash come from?

That’s the genius!  We print it!

So, inflation or deflation?

Yes.

Our currency is going to zero, probably sooner than many might anticipate.  What will go up?  In 2023, not cows.  But in 2025?  Yeah, nearly certainly.

Some things will come down – I can’t predict them all.  But the Fed™ will never stop printing.  Their choice is this:

  • Increase rates and blow up banks, the stock market, and house prices.
  • Keep rates the same and blow up the currency.

The current plan.

The currency is toast.  So is Biden’s chance at re-election.  This time next year?  I expect that we’ll see all of the above in full motion.  I predicted in 2018 that 2025 we’d see a big breakdown, and I’m not betting against that now.  Biden will likely go down as the single worst resident of the White House in history.

I only hope that this complete economic and societal breakdown will finally rid us of the scourge of Kardashians.  At least then it will be worth it.

How An Army Commercial Shows We’re Rapidly Falling Apart

“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual. But now I know why I have always lost women to guys like you. I mean, it’s not just the uniform. It’s the stories that you tell.” – Stripes

I didn’t know I was a lycanthrope.  I guess that makes me an unawarewolf.

The United States’ Army has a new ad campaign out.  The slogan, however, is fairly familiar:  “Be All That You Can Be.”  This became the slogan of the Army’s recruiting campaign back when they had to convince people to join because driving a fast car like Burt Reynolds while marrying busty blondes was a much more interesting career option.

That slogan lasted from 1980 to 2001, with “Army Of One®” was replaced by Call of Duty™ online mode.  The Air Force was encouraged by that slogan, and decided to use “Air Force Of Only One Plane®” since that was all they could afford if they decided to go with the F-35.

But things have not gone well for Big Green recently.  I heard in the last year, they actually recruited only one soldier, and he was a decoy.  I kid.  They had a goal of something like 60,000, but only recruited 45,000.  I’m guessing that’s because the other 15,000 decided that working at McDonald’s® was a better option.

Want me to stop telling Rolling Stones jokes?  You can’t always get what you want.

And, why not?  The videos showing recent Army performance have been, um, less than stellar.  From the pullout of Afghanistan, to Biden forcing troops to take the Vaxx or take a hike, it’s been bad.  The commercials for recruitment have likewise been horrific.  If it’s not good enough for the wise Latina child joining the armed forces and then looking back on her lesbian biracial parents who gave her hormone replacement therapy at age three, well, it’s not good enough for me.

I think the Army missed some real gems in going back to that old slogan.  They could have chosen some of these:

  1. Join the Army, where the camouflage makes you invisible to your ex.
  2. Join the Army, and let us take care of your social life . . . because you won’t have one.
  3. The Army: Where you can kill two birds with one grenade.
  4. The Army: If you needed a good excuse to shave your head.
  5. Join the Army: Where you’ll find that “hurry up and wait” isn’t just a saying, it’s a way of life.
  6. The Army: “You’ll learn to stay awake while standing up.”
  7. Join the Army and see the world, through the scope of a rifle.
  8. The Army: “You’ll make lifelong friends.  Or enemies.  Or both.
  9. The Army, where you can put your Call of Duty™ skills to use, just without the respawn.
  10. Join the Army, and get one free PEZ™ dispenser every year.

Why did the magician sleep at Motel 6®?  Because only he could make the stains disappear.

I mean, who traditionally makes up the Army, anyway?

Actually, white dudes.  In the terminology of today, people who were born male at birth and score low on the diversity index.  Hell, in 2023, I’m wondering when “mail” will show up as a gender – “Oh, baby, put me in the big slot!  I’m an oversized package!”

I looked up the makeup of the Army using the most recent statistics I could find.  They’re kind of murky, because they don’t break out “Hispanic” by itself.  I guess I can understand that.  Even though I’ve been described as “so Danish that’s the picture in the dictionary” I can also claim that at least 25% of my ancestors were born in Mexico.  Were they Danish?

Yeah.  Still don’t understand how they dealt with the sunburn.  But Pugsley can check that box on the college application.

2 is a prime number.  That’s kind of odd, right?

So, the stats I could find are murky.  It looks like the numbers of white people in the Army has gone down 2% in two years from 70% to 68%.  And what’s one percent?  About 5,000 guys.  So, of their missing 15,000, you could make an argument that 10,000 of them might have been white guys that didn’t join up.

I know three kids that were friends of The Boy that were gung ho about joining the military, until November, 2020.  Then?

“Nah, I think I’ll work.”

So, to recreate the idea that perhaps the Army wants white guys to join up, the reversion to the “Be All That You Can Be™” slogan was the reaction from the Army.  To be clear, they’re still using food made before 1960, ammo made before 1970, so why not a slogan that was made in 1980?

Oh, Francis, where are you now?

Enter the new video.  Where in the last few, the only thing not visible was a white guy, this video is chock full of white guys.  At one location where the video was stored on YouTube©, the comment section was more disastrous than French naval performance at Trafalgar.  I mean hundreds and hundreds of comments that, well, I’ll just post a few of them and let you draw your own conclusions.  I did not cherry pick these, and did not see a single, not one, zero positive comments.  Feel free to go give a look yourself – the video is here (LINK).

Yup, pretty bad.  Both of my sons have received text messages from Army recruiters, heck, as late as 2016, I presented to The Boy the options of West Point and Colorado Springs for colleges.  He noped out of both choices.  Pugsley is not at all interested.

I am not disappointed – rather, the opposite, and became doubly so after the decision by the Biden Administration to force armed forces members to Vaxx up.  Sure, the DOD rescinded the requirement this year on January 10, but that didn’t help the people who already Vaxxed up.  Wonder if the VA is going to cover that?

Regardless, I would hazard a guess that confidence in the cohesion of the country is lower than at any time in my life.  Perhaps the real slogan should be “Be All That You Can Binge-Watch On Netflix®”?

Scott Adams And Two Filters: The Race Filter And The Success Filter. Choose The Success Filter.

“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Return of the King

Does it make me racist if I hate the 100 meter dash? (all memes today are as-found)

Scott Adams has been more in the news in the last month than perhaps during his entire career.  I think it’s entirely on purpose, since last summer he ran a poll on Twitter® that noted that at some point he was going to retire, and he had the choice on how he was going to go out.  The winning choice was to go out with a bang.

Most golfers poll as swing voters.

And so he has.  With $50 to $100 million in the bank and after having both his comic strip and his new book deal cancelled, he found something interesting:  he was freer than he ever had been in his life.  He has all the money (none of which was in Silicon Valley Bank™ – his quote, “Why would I put my money in the 19th largest bank?”) and now he can’t lose his book deal.  It’s gone.  He can’t lose his comic strip.  It’s gone.

Scott Adams can say whatever he damn well pleases.

He also seems genuinely interested in helping black people do better.  Since Adams normally tries to look at the world through the lens of “systems” rather than goals, he ended up analyzing the normal system that black people use.  Not surprisingly, he found that the systems that they use are, well, awful.

The results have been abysmal, except for the Race Grifters and politicians on the Left.  But I repeat myself.  And, using their advice, black people are doing pretty horribly.  And they’ve been taught that white people are the problem, rather than anything else that black people are doing.  And it shows.  Here is one of the comments about Scott that I found online after his initial comments:

I don’t think Wildin (no relation) has anger issues, he has an anger subscription.

Black people thinking white people are the problem has obvious advantages for a politician.  I recall when I was in Alaska – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was thought to have lots and lots of sweet, sweet oil nestled deep in its rocky bosom.  But both the Left and Right used drilling there as a fund-raising opportunity.  No one really wanted to solve the issue, since Greenpeace® could use it to fundraise from Lefties, and Congresscreatures on the Right could use it to fundraise from ConocoPhillips®.  As long as both sides were unhappy, the money flowed.

The last thing anyone wanted to do was solve the problem.  I think the Right would be just fine if the problem were solved, but the Left makes too much money, and gets too many votes.

But Adams would like to work on the solution, which has nothing at all to do with marinating in past tales of slavery.  Adams graphed it out.  The mindset that the Left has worked to instill in blacks is what Adams calls his Race Filter.  It consists of:

  • Grievance,
  • Critical Race Theory,
  • Group Rights,
  • Spot Racists,
  • Systemic Racism, and
  • Reparations

When wearing Spandex® is a war crime.

I’ve written before about Victimhood.  If you look at Adams’ distillation of the way that race relations have been put forward to blacks, well, they’ve been spoon fed a diet of Victimhood from both their own leaders as well as every “well-meaning” Leftist.

For decades.

The problem with Victimhood is that it is nearly like a self-devouring concept.  It starts to fill every bit of a human soul with greed, envy, hate, and the idea that vengeance is the answer making the person small inside.  That’s why when “how much” is brought up in the context of reparations, the answer is simple:  no number will ever be enough.  For there to be an answer, that would mean that the black people who have given themselves over to Victimhood (and their Grifters and Leftist politicians) would have to let it go.

What do you call a magician without magic?  Ian.

Given the current relationship status, they will never let it go.  Adams made the comment that he would cease “identifying as black” and would avoid black people because of the relative dislike of white people that showed up on the Rasmussen® survey that showed that 47% of black folks didn’t think that “it’s okay to be white.”

The comments that showed up in social media responding to Scott (as shown above) tended to confirm the polls.

But Adams isn’t done.  There is another filter that he suggests can replace the Race Filter – the Personal Success Filter.  I generally use the Personal Success Filter, but I never called it that.  I endorse Mr. Adams’ thoughts entirely, and I’ll spend much more time talking about his success filters than I spent on the Race Filter, since the Race Filter sucks:

  • Replace Grievance with Happiness.

Being happy is generally the easiest thing in the world.  Most people who aren’t happy, don’t want to be happy.  It’s cold out?  I like the cold.  It’s hot out?  What a bright, beautiful day.  Circumstances don’t care about my feelings, so why should I let a flat tire make me mad?  A flat tire just is.

I had a friend in college that I’ll call Greg (because his name was Greg) who got absolutely hammered on a very large quantity of alcohol one night, which wasn’t unusual – our school was known as “a drinking school with a college problem.”  I had class with him the next morning.  I looked at him and was shocked.  He was dressed in slacks and button-down shirt.  I said, “Dang, Greg, you were smashed last night – I thought you’d feel awful.  Yet, here you are, and you look fine.  What’s your secret?”

“Yeah, John, I felt awful when I woke up, so I showered, shaved, and dressed up.  You can’t feel awful when you look great.”

Why not be happy?  Be happy.  It’s like pouring river water in your socks:  it’s easy and it’s free.

  • Replace Critical Race Theory with Gratitude.

I could go back in history and look for all of the things where I was slighted.  Where my ancestors were cheated out of something they deserved.  Where I should be third in line to be King of Wisconsin.  Why?

I’m adopted.  I was adopted by great parents, put in a loving family, and worked like a borrowed horse to make me strong.  I appreciate each and every bit of it.  I’m grateful for even the bad things that have happened to me, because those ultimately made me stronger.

Kierkegaard said that life can only be lived forward, but understood in reverse.  I look back, and I’m grateful for nearly everything that has happened to me.  And you should be, too, because otherwise you wouldn’t be the stunning example of humanity with enough taste, intelligence, and discernment that comes here every week.

What gratitude doesn’t look like.

  • Replace Group with Individual.

As groups we come together to create great things.  If Elon Musk was trying to build rockets, he wouldn’t even be halfway done with his very first one if the tried to go it alone.  So groups have their place.  But when we look to set relations based on groups, we get stupid.  Why would Michael Jordan’s kid be more disadvantaged than me?  Why would Jesse Jackson’s?  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s?

Obviously, they were born with much more privilege than me and more money than me.  Yet, in getting into college, they’d have a huge advantage over me based on just their race.  Hmmm.

When I go to work on a daily basis, I don’t look to what my group does.  I look to what I can do, what I can contribute, what I can write, what I can create.  This makes me more successful.  There is a double-edged sword here, however.  Individual makes me more successful, but faced with a group that hates a group I’m part of?

Again, these are Personal Success Factors.  Group factors may vary, and that’s another post.

  • Replace Spot Racists with Network.

In the Soviet Union, there were huge numbers of jokes (and real stories) about how the Soviets would go to great lengths to spot those that were going to undermine the revolution.  Racism had disappeared in the United States to such an extent that Race Grifters had to come up with nonsense like “microaggressions” and even redefine the word “racist” so that black people couldn’t ever be called that.

I once looked up “opaque” in the dictionary.  The definition was unclear.

It would have been better, however, to find people and make friends with them.  I have dozens of people in my phone that I call or text on a semi-regular basis.  Why?  Mainly because I like them.  I don’t want anything from them other than to be their friend.  Yet, I call them when I need advice.  And they call me when they need advice.  All of my friends plus me are way, way smarter than me.

And I like them.

  • Replace Systemic Racism with Optimism.

Let’s pretend that Systemic Racism exists.  To believe that, you’d have to ignore that 58% of NFL® players are black.  That 35% of assistant coaches are black.  That 72% of NBA players are black.  And the black actors that people pay money to see.  And the black musicians that people pay money to listen to.  And Oprah.  Also of note – race relations appear to be best in the Deep South where black people and white people have somehow figured out a way to live in peace.

If Systemic Racism does exist, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to overcome.  And the solution is Optimism.  Every day I get up thinking that things are going to be okay for me.  And, mostly, they are.  Being an Optimist means I’m disappointed sometimes, but I’m also happy, so I look for the silver lining.  Have I lost a job because of Systematic Racism?  Not that I’m sure of.  But I was told, point blank, that I wasn’t hired for one particular job because I wasn’t a woman.  I was okay with that.  And that place?  Well, it’s shut down now, and if I had started a career there, I wouldn’t have the skills I have today.

Be Optimistic.

Replace Reparations with Reciprocity.

Reparations are nonsense.  Check out the meme for the list of ludicrous demands coming out of California.  Note this:  every one of them is about “how I can get mine” rather than “how can I improve the world for others”.

“Oh, and we also demand matching t-shirts.”

I write these posts not because I get paid.  Indeed, it costs me money to write these posts beyond my time, about $2 a day.  I’m planning on increasing my revenues in the coming year by 200%.  Let’s see, twice nothing is still . . . carry the two . . . still nothing.

Reciprocity means doing things for others, not because they can help you, but because you’re not a tool.  Has Reciprocity helped me?  Absolutely.  But that’s not why I do it.

Conclusions.

I can’t fix black America.  I’m not going to try.  Every one of the black people that I know personally are okay and I get along fine with them.

Adams is trying to fix race relations in America, but I think his efforts will ultimately be futile for several reasons – the drug of Victimhood is stronger than heroin.  It is also certainly not in the interests of the Race Grifters and the Politicians.  Those are two reasons, among many.

What I can do, however is my little bit in the Universe, being a happy warrior fixing what I can, warning when I see dragons ahead.  Scott’s Personal Success Filter is a good one for anyone who wants to achieve.

And, like Scott, I’m not leaving my money in the 19th largest bank.

Oh, wait.  The 19th largest bank is gone.

Note:  Moderation may be tighter than normal (I’ve only nuked 78 out of nearly 21,000 comments)- keep it positive, folks.

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 19th 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.

Things You Can’t Say . . . 2023

“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth.  Nothing more.” – The Matrix

In reverse, The Matrix is about a guy who quits drugs and gets a job.

What opinions do you have that you can’t tell all of the other people you know?  I’m willing to bet that since you read here, you have quite a few.  I have plenty of them.  When someone doesn’t have views they can’t share, well, I think that’s probably the best definition of an NPC: always believing the current thing.  I swear, if an NPC takes over, it will be a dictator-sheep.

One of the more difficult things is keeping track of what to believe.  Scott Adams (more about him in a future post) famously noted that the anti-vaxxers were right, but there was no way that they could have known that they were right based on the evidence at the time.  I respectfully disagree.  The application of a new technology to stop a disease in a panic?  What about that says, “wise decision”?  Especially when Pfizer™ and the other “vaxx” manufacturers demanded secret language in their contracts to absolve themselves of liability.

Literally nothing about the vaxx looked legitimate.  There were more warning signs than a cocktail with Bill Cosby.

What about January 6?  The most visible icon of the January 6 “insurrection” was the face painted dude with the bison headdress.  Turns out he was led around by various security folks until they found an unlocked door for him to go through.  It’s like they picked the silliest looking person for the photo opportunity of a decade.  Yet, folks didn’t see through that, either.

Not pictured:  someone who actually broke into the Capitol.

If the January 6 protest was a real insurrection rather than people who (mainly!) were there peacefully, even observing the velvet ropes.  How did I know it was fake?  If it were a real insurrection, they’d still be there.

January 6 was political theater, and was misrepresented by nearly every news media outlet, and was also lied about by the Left every chance they got.

Am I correct in everything I believe?  Certainly not.  But I try, every time that I can, to look to the things that are True, Beautiful, and Good to be my guideposts.  Some of my calls are wrong, but with those guideposts, it’s difficult to be too far off the mark.

It is clear that if we don’t think different thoughts than those the media would put in our heads, there is something wrong with us.

When the Kardashians die, they won’t be buried or cremated – they’ll be recycled.

It’s odd, because the pushback comes the closer we come to the Truth, because that’s dangerous.  If I were to walk around proclaiming that Hillary Clinton is 40 feet tall (6 milliliters), blue, and made of cheese, people would think I was a nut and ignore me.  But when I wrote about the “vaxx” – the website came under the biggest attacks ever.

The attacks don’t come when people are silly – the attacks come when the ideas presented might make people think.  And the attacks come with a fury that is only reserved for those who have committed actual heresy.

Leftism is a religion.  Sure, some of them say they have other religions, but Leftism is generally their guiding star.  Recently Jane Fonda suggested murdering anyone who was against abortion.  And abortion is one of the greatest sacraments of their church.  No one on The View told her she was wrong, just that she shouldn’t say that in public.  And a Leftist, as long as they are a True Believer, will always be excused for amazingly horrible comments like Hanoi Jane spouted out of her wrinkly piehole.

At her age, I’m sure she casts a lot of smells.

But someone on the Right?  The guy who ran the Firefox™ project was essentially fired because he donated to a group that was against legalizing gay marriage years earlier.  Years earlier when Obama was likewise “against” gay marriage.

Now it’s microaggressions and any perceived slight that someone can make up.

There are only a couple of reasons to do this.  The biggest is the one that I think that is operative here:  they’re scared because they think they might be wrong, or that they know that they’re lying.  Again, if I go outside and tell someone who is a Leftist that they’re an idiot because their house is floating, well, they can be confident that life is okay for them because their house isn’t floating.  They know it to be true, and don’t need me to validate that for them.

Their economic ideas?  They’re upset at me (mostly) because they’re not sure they have the Truth, and they simply cannot have anyone thinking about alternatives to their ideas.  I mean, I’m totally sure that communism would totally have worked if only the average 20-year-old at Harvard® had been in charge.

I remember the time I came up with a cure for dementia.  That brings back memories!

And that, partially, is why I write the way that I do.  If you can make a great point, you can win the debate.  If you can make a great point and poke fun at the idea?  The idea itself becomes the joke.

As near as I can tell, that’s always one of the biggest crimes of totalitarian regimes:  a joke about a Communist Party official could send an unlucky Soviet citizen to the GULAG for 25 years.  That isn’t a sign of strength, it’s a sign of fear.

That is why they want to shut down the conversation – they’re afraid.  They know as well as anyone that putting a 300 pound model in lingerie isn’t Beautiful, True, or Good.  It’s hilarious.  But until we’re not afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes (and that the lingerie model needs more) you can tell that the struggle hasn’t been ridiculed enough, though that time is coming.

And then maybe we’ll all find out our secret opinions were shared by millions.  Except that one I have about motor oil, shower curtains, escalators, and garden tools.  There are places I’m not gonna go.

Why Adversity And Bullies Are Your Friends

“He’s 28 years old and he can eat a chicken sandwich. Very Impressive. Mike Fitzgibbon’s son is a nuclear physicist, and my son can eat a chicken.” – Freddy Got Fingered

I did hear what Beethoven was up to recently:  decomposing.

Adversity is important.

I’ll give you an example:  if a kid’s life has been one simple task, with no conflict and eating Cheezy-Poofs™ on the couch while Mom brings him chicken tendies and sauce and his only responsibility is making sure he can walk from his room to the bathroom, well, he’s going to be worthless.

Why?  If any little thing goes wrong, the program in the brain that says, “crap goes wrong all the time, figure it out” isn’t there.  It’s never been created.  This is why things like “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” exist – a life with an utter lack of adversity.  Again, embrace the power of positive bullying.

In my case, school sucked between fourth grade and sixth grade.  Why?  I was the odd man out.  I had moved from one small school district to another when my family moved from Wilder Ranch to our compound Wilder Mountain.  I was alone, for several reasons.  Me?

I retreated into schoolwork.  The teachers were fine.  The kids were bullies, though.  Little kids are okay.  High school kids are okay.  But there is a time in the middle where kids are cruel – kids entering adolescence have developed the ability to be mean, but they haven’t developed the capacity for empathy.  It’s like they’re communists, or Stephen Colbert.  But I repeat myself.

Communists are awful at telling jokes – they don’t stop until everyone gets it.

I also retreated into athletics.  The one place where men of different backgrounds can come together is through additional diversity – athletics.  If you tackle someone so hard that their Mom felt it, you get respect.  And that respect breeds camaraderie.  The new guy?  He hit me so hard I had to check to see if I was standing on the train tracks.

And then?  I was one of them.  I also will admit this – when the kids were bullies, often they had a point.  It was awful to be confronted with my inadequacies and shortcomings in that way, but the only thing worse would be to live in a bubble of pretty little lies, and never be confronted with the raw truth.

I think about kids who go through life and never meet a single challenge.  I’ve interacted with a few recently.  Things go bad for them?  They crumple.  Badly.  They don’t have the ability to fight back.

That’s the problem.

A bully told me I had a face only a mother could love.  Turns out I’m adopted.

I think I’ve related this story before, about a child in a Japanese schoolroom.  In the story, the child (call him Phil, which I assume is a common Japanese name, like Chuck or Dave) looked at a cocoon in the back of the classroom because I assume Japanese people keep those things there along with samurai swords and they all dress like Pokémon characters.

Phil watched the butterfly struggle to get out of the cocoon.  Phil felt sorry for the butterfly, so he helped it open the cocoon.

I guess butterflies just aren’t what they used to be.

The butterfly then plopped straight to the floor, since gravity works the same way in Japan (I hear) as in other countries.  Phil cried.  Because he was a sissy.

The teacher came to the back of the classroom and saw Phil crying.  “Phil, did you help the butterfly get out of the cocoon?”

Phil, crying in the way that only Japanese children do (I have no idea what that means, but I wrote it so I’m going to go with it.  Maybe their tears shoot out in coherent streams, like a squirt gun?) nodded.

The wise teacher put his hand on Phil’s shoulder.  “Phil, the only way that a butterfly can get enough strength to fly, is to struggle against the cocoon.  If it gets out some other way, like a can opener, it can never fly, and will die.”

Phil nodded through the tears.  Then the teacher wrapped Phil up in Ace™ bandages so he could struggle to get out.  I think.  I get fuzzy on the end part, since the idea occurred to me as I got to the end of the story that maybe Kim Jong Un keeps shooting missiles over Japan is so he can keep Godzilla® at bay, and if he stops, well, goodbye Tokyo.

I hear Kim doesn’t date, because he’s focused on his Korea.

The point is still clear – struggle is important.  My friend sent me an embroidered patch:  “The strongest steel is forged in the fire of a dumpster.”  And that’s true.  Struggle is what makes people resilient.  It is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other when our comrades have stepped aside and given up.

I moved again when I was in junior high.  I joined track, because, why not?  I was a shot putter and a discus thrower, and one day the coach told us, “Go for a run,” because the most lame sport in junior high is track, and the most lame thing in track is shot and disc and I think the coach wanted to avoid association with us.  I had been running up in the mountains because there was nothing else to do because the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, and had been putting in about six miles a day on the mountain roads.  Running was fun.

Is your refrigerator running?  If so, I might vote for it.

So, when we went running, we went for . . . about six miles.  The other shot put dudes couldn’t believe that they’d gone so far.  From that day forward, we were brothers.  We had struggled with the six miles (well, they had, but I encouraged them onward).  Struggling together, and winning, creates a bond.

On this second move, I was in with the guys in about two weeks.  “Wilder?  The new kid?  He’s okay.”

We will have challenges.  All of us.  Some of them are awful.  One of them will, in the end, kill me.  That’s okay.  I look at these challenges and resolve that I will not be afraid.  I already know that I’m going to win against all of them but one, so I might as well go into that future as a happy warrior, knowing that my winning streak will eventually end.

Whatever challenge you’re going through will end.  And you’ll win.  Unless you die, in which case I think you should blame Phil.  After all, adversity is our real strength.

But I’m not going to lose today.  And not tomorrow, either.  Though chicken tendies do sound nice.

Bulgarian Mall Lawyers, Proteins, And . . . Life?

“I remember thinking ‘Jesus, what a terrible thing to lay on someone with a head full of acid’.” – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

If you were looking for good jokes, it’s nacho day.

Wednesday is a day that I normally cover economics, but I’m going in a different direction today.  As Wilder, Wealthy and Wise has had over 300 Wednesday posts since I cranked it up in this format back in 2017, that’s 300 comments on wealth and related economic topics, something like 1,500 memes, and so tonight, I’ll only briefly talk about economics:  we’re screwed.  Pic related.

Okay, that looks like a mountain that Yosemite Sam® has to climb to catch a varmint.

Okay, with that over with, let’s shift gears entirely.  Why?  Because, why not?

Let’s talk about Life.

I’m going to start with a number.  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I wrote it out with all the zeros because that’s a lot of zeros, and bloggers get paid by the character.  I could have written it out as 1×10300, and it would have been the same, but not had the same emotional impact.  What, exactly does 1×10300 represent?

Yeah, if I divide most anything by 1×10300 I get zero.

Let’s take a step back.  RuBisCO (short for ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase, not Russian Biscuit Company) is probably the most common protein on Earth, making up about 30% of the protein in a plant leaf.  When you eat lettuce, you’re chowing down on lots of RuBisCO.  It looks like the picture below, sorta, but is much more tasty with some ranch dressing or a nice raspberry vinegarette:

When I was weightlifting I bought expired protein powder.  There was no other whey.

By Ericlin1337 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67176768

This pile of spaghetti is a mass of amino acids, but it has a really important task – it rips apart sweet, sweet CO2 so grass can eat CO2 and can grow to be eaten by a cow and turned into a ribeye.  Or so tobacco can grow and turn into a nice Macanudo™.  Or so grain can grow and turn into scotch.  A day without RuBisCO is a day without a decent dinner.

Planet Earth without RuBisCO is probably a barren rock.

If you stretched it out, it’s nothing more than a chain of amino acids that are the building blocks of the RuBisCO protein.  RuBisCO doesn’t turn CO2 into steak without being mashed together, just right.  The protein (which is just a bunch of amino acids connected up) has to be folded up.  If it doesn’t fold up perfectly, it doesn’t work.

The Japanese gang member responsible for keeping the crime boss’s beer cold is called the Yakoozie.

That’s where all the zeros come in.  The proteins that turn into RuBisCO can fold up in to make that spaghetti-looking thing in quite a few ways.  1×10300 of them, approximately.  There are more ways that single protein can fold up than there are planets in the entire observable universe.  There are only 100,000,000,000 total planets (our best guess) in the Milky Way.  Again, our best guess is that the ones that aren’t too hot (Mercury) or too cold (Pluto, still a planet in my book, screw you Neil DeGrasse Tyson) are about 300,000,000.

Now compare with the number of different ways just one protein required for life can fold and be useful.  Keep in mind, that when proteins fold wrong, bad things happen, like they don’t work.  There are even worse consequences, like having brains rot – mad cow disease is a misfolded protein that replicates in the brain and causes people (and cow) brains to turn into brain sponge.  And not the good kind of brain sponge.

Now, as much as I love Bulgarian Mall Lawyers and their ability to be tenacious in personal injury suits and ability to do rudimentary divorce work, if they’re allowed to use shotguns.  No, having Bulgarian Mall Lawyers attempt to fix a Bulgarian Mall Lawyer copy machine in their law office that used to be a Spencer’s™ gifts (right between the place that used to sell cheese and sticks of meat and Waldenbooks®) by poking at it with pencils is far more likely than having a protein folded correctly.  But let’s see a protein convince my ex-wife to sign the papers.

How do you get two Canadian brothers off a couch in a hurry?  Say, “please get off the couch.”

So, we have 1×10300 ways to fold a protein wrong, and 300,000,000 planets.  I’ll even spot you that there have been several billion years.  And billion years is a long time, almost as long as my first marriage.  But  1×10300 is so large that it’s more likely that I put in several pallets of 2x4s, drywall, nails, paint, shingles, carpet, doors, wiring, outlets, and plumbing components into a box and shake the hell out of it and get a house I could live in than have RuBisCO form.

And RuBisCO is important because it is so basic – it’s the building block for extracting energy from sunlight.  No RuBisCO?  No Nabisco™.  To top it off, it forms and folds in milliseconds inside the leaves of every tree on Earth when the temperature and chemistry is right.  We have no idea how it does this, and couldn’t computationally predict this.

This is just one protein that needs to be folded up properly for everything to work out so I can have a decent steak, scotch, and cigar.  When looking further at things like the storage of information on DNA, it starts to look like the ultimate information storage device ever created – the DNA in one cell of a typical human is over six feet (seventeen milliliters) long.  The DNA in all of the cells of your body is twice the diameter of the Solar System, but if you were to stretch all of it out, it’s unlikely you’d be able to go to work on Monday.  Each cell contains three billion base pairs of DNA, or almost the number of words in the average Stephen King novel.

RuBisCO is improbable.  DNA?  Wow.  The squish bits that make us up are at the smallest level more complicated than anything man has ever created, with the exception of the way that a VCR needed to be adjusted so it didn’t flash 12:00.

David Bowie’s VCR always flashed 12:00, too.  Time may change him, but he can’t change time.

One of the ideas of those who would contemplate that life on Earth in general, and humanity in particular, came from random chance must confront are the mathematical impossibilities of things like RuBisCO appearing at random out of only 300,000,000 planets times 8,000,000,000 years.  Further, they have to accept that the number and types of elements available for this are all, randomly, in the proper proportions and properties to support life.

This doesn’t even deal with the observed rates of genetic drift, or the creation of amazingly improbable structures like the human eye or the brain.  The brain exhibits non-trivial quantum effects, so from the smallest possible structures of humanity to the largest imaginable structures of the Universe their appears to be an intent.  Random chance cannot remotely explain what we are, and how we have been created, or this marvel we call consciousness, or what Bulgarian Mall Lawyers call, “a new client”.

It is readily apparent, based on logic and mathematics alone that there are only a few possibilities:

  • That the Universe has been created with intent and a pattern (the big G God),
  • this is all a simulation (the little g god),
  • that life (and thus humanity) was designed and seeded among the stars (which begs, by who or what?)
  • that the purpose of the Universe may be solely for the creation of the Ultimate PEZ® dispenser which may take the form of Yosemite Sam®, or
  • that there are forces that exist in realms in which we cannot yet discern through any physical means.

Random choice is out, mathematically.  Every single time I see it resorted to, it’s a kludge and requires more faith than that which would be required for God.

How else would you explain Yosemite Sam™ or Bulgarian Mall Lawyers?