“Pirate Ghost would suggest that a pirate died and became a ghost, but a Ghost Pirate is a ghost that later made a conscious decision to be a pirate.” – South Park
What decongestant does the Federal Reserve© ban? Sudafed™.
Most of the time when a train story hits the news, it involves the comically overloaded trains in India. The typical headline in a newspaper (back when those existed) was on page 7, and went something like this: Train Derails In India, 471,320 Dead. The news story was typically right near, “Local Cat Makes Good!”
It’s been a while since I saw much about trains in the news. Imagine my interest when I found out that people were hopping on trains in Los Angeles (Translation From Spanish: Tarp City) and looting them. What the Corsairs from Compton Boulevard are looking for is . . . merch. Amazon® packages. Best Buy™. Nike©.
If Amazon® delivered by drone, for these folks that would just be skeet shooting, with prizes.
It’s really piracy on the rails. Mobs attack the slow-moving trains and proceed to loot them. They’ll load up on televisions and laptops and video game systems and almost everything that you can order online. Except for books. And, probably, work boots.
The fact that this is tolerated is a symptom that Los Angeles is now, officially, the Somalia of the West Coast. There appears to be no effort to stop the mob, and no effort to arrest any participant. Recent news reports would indicate that an ax-murderer, after arrest, would be given his (oops, California!) xir ax back after getting booked and not even have to post bail.
But try to smuggle a plastic straw in? It’s off to Workers Leisure and Re-Education Camp #495 for you.
When you think about it, using a straw is just like snorkeling in reverse.
The fact that land pirates are actually a thing in 2022 means that, in Los Angeles at least, the rule of law has broken down completely in areas. Thankfully, that hasn’t translated to other parts of the country, right?
Well, about the Federal Reserve® . . .
It’s not as if the Fed™ governors have been caught in a scandal where they unethically traded stocks. Oh, they have? Dallas Fed© President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed™ President Eric Rosengren and Fed® Vice-Chairman Richard Clarida all resigned in disgrace after trading based on future Fed© decisions that hadn’t been made public?
Say it isn’t so! Oh, wait, it’s completely so. Apparently, the Fed© treats their “management” of fiscal policy just as seriously as the Watts Porch Pirates treat their “management” of Amazon® freight logistics.
Well, at least they’ve done well with the economy, preserving the purchasing power of money over time, right?
Of course . . . not.
I’d point out how bad this graph is, but somehow I don’t feel as sad with this one.
In reality, monetary policy since the Fed™ started has been to make your cash worthless, over time. You can see what a great job they’ve done since 2000. In effect, the Fed© has been in your bank account, robbing it bit by bit, just like the Hollywood Buccaneers have been boosting freight out of the train yard. They just leave a bit less trash.
But certainly, they’ve been operating now as a sober bunch.
Ha!
No! They’ve taken every Fed® interest rate record since 1955 and smashed it! They are, absolutely provably, so drunk on Jack Daniels® that they can’t feel their collective jaws. They are knee-walking, porcelain-grabbing drunk.
Wolfstreet.com called them . . . The Most Reckless Fed® Ever. (LINK)
They put together a nice graph (below) that shows that if you take the Fed™ funds rate (what they charge to borrow money) and subtract inflation, we’re at a LIFETIME level of irresponsibility. The Quantitative Easing (ahem, helicopter cash) and Stimulus Bills (ahem, more helicopter cash) have pushed inflation up.
The reckless bit is on the right. No, farther right. Yes, farther.
So, all of the “Fight for $15” folks are quiet now, because whatever the minimum wage is, $15 is attainable doing temp work. Everyone not making big bucks? Inflation is eating the raises of most people. So who’s winning? I mean, besides the insider traders at the Fed™?
People who own stuff. Inflation makes cash worth less, and eventually worthless. Owning things makes sense in a world where cash is becoming worthless. Who owns things? Rich people. They’ve done very, very well. Why is Tesla®, which made 936,000 cars last year, has a market cap of $1.1 trillion dollars. Doing the math . . . that has Tesla© worth $1,175,214 . . . per car they made.
Huh? Honestly, it’s not a stock: it’s a meme.
I guess people have to buy something. Notice that Elon himself was selling his stock to convert it to (temporarily) cash to convert it to . . . stuff. Even the tax hit wasn’t enough to deter him – he might well have the biggest tax bill of any individual in history this year.
Why? Do you sell a stock that you think is going to go up? No. You sell a meme. And let’s not talk about how the Fed© has force-fed banks billions of dollars to prop them up and increase their profitability.
I hear he wears Space-Axe® body spray.
So, we have pirates looting railcars to take home blenders and game controllers. We’re not stopping them.
We also have much, much bigger thieves – the Freebooters of the Fed™ who have done their very best to, first by inflation, then by recession, to drain trillions of dollars of savings of average Americans, and it doesn’t even get higher up in the newspaper than an Indian train accident.
Looks like the D.A. isn’t prosecuting these guys, either. Guess they haven’t tried to smuggle any plastic straws . . . at least then they’d get sent to Workers Leisure and Re-Education Camp #495.
Union Pacific sued Brandon back in October and now this.
Now UP is saying that they will stop service to the glorious people’s republic of Los Angelestan.
I saw Venezuela while watching those videos with family and knew that the Long Marchers of the CPUSA ordered it as part of the burn it all down by any means necessary plan.
The purging will get more vigorous as time goes on and the Kalifornication locusts are spreading in all directions to destroy your state, plan accordingly.
The Weather Underground Government abomination is at WAR with all traditional Americans.
I’m betting U.P. does not stop – Los Angeles is the primary port in that area.
“Watts Porch Pirates”
That’s horrible! Hard to stop laughing though.
===
I’m starting to think there is something to the theory of ‘breakaway civilizations,’ that there are entities with so much money and influence they are like a sovereign nation but without territory. One candidate is the CIA, which has made trillions (yes, $T) in the drug trade over the decades, as well as their regular budget. If one was an entity with trillions of dollars and a need to control people while still remaining hidden what would you do? Pick some mediocre shlub to be your front man, and pour billions into their media and tech companies. This would explain why there are so many mega-corps that have massive influence yet have never been profitable, who are lead by dim bulbs.
https://gizadeathstar.com/2021/10/the-right-questions-about-theranos-finally-asked/
===
From my pinned Gab tweet:
[Bah, apparently some combination of ctr-‘whatever key I just hit’ posts the comment]
“U.S. central bankers not only regularly leak secret information about monetary policy, but the leaks are so predictably timed that a savvy investor without access to the leaked information could make money just by buying stocks in certain weeks.
That is the bottom line from new research by University of California Berkeley professor Annette Vissing-Jorgensen and colleagues, presented on Saturday at a conference attended by central bankers from around the world.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/11/22/the-federal-reserve-leaks-price-sensitive-information-enabling-stock-market-profits/?sh=6ab1abd43c0d
“European Central Bank-published study found suspicious trading ahead of seven regular U.S. economic releases, saying information leaks probably helped traders make more than $160 million in profits in two markets over six years.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-02/ecb-paper-finds-suspicious-trading-in-u-s-economic-indicators
“Government agencies routinely allow pre-release access to information to accredited news agencies under embargo agreements. Using high-frequency data, we find evidence consistent with informed trading during embargoes of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) scheduled announcements. The E-mini Standard & Poor’s 500 futures’ abnormal order imbalances are in the direction of subsequent policy surprises and contain information that predicts the market reaction to the policy announcements. The estimated informed trades’ profits are arguably large.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304405X16300812
Strangely, the search terms “economics paper, market reacts before federal reserve announcement” for 1995-2017 pops up most of the above articles on the front page of duckduckgo, but nothing on google…
The above is from about 30m of research, I’m sure there is plenty more out there.
Corruption . . . all the way down.
Good thought – and if those kinds of dollars are in their slush funds, what is beyond their power?
John, the Trains of Los Angeles are shocking – not only just that it is happening (although, to be fair, it is Los Angeles) as the simultaneous shock and silence of the supporters of the major party in California, who both deplore it and at the same time have no idea why it is happening. I suppose it does not surprise me: these items are thought of as belonging to “someone else”, mostly large companies that in the modern parlance are greedy and can afford to take the hit. Honestly, I expect to see insurance companies begin to start to either hike premiums or refuse to insure rail bound materials.
At the same time, one can find (easily ) on the Social Media pictures of people having the time of their lives in The Land of Mouse. Same relative geographic area, two entirely different experiences.
Thanks for the shout out to Wolf Street. I find him to be a rather reliable and thoughtful commentator on the economic madness of our time in the midst of a great deal of commentary that is neither reliable nor thoughtful.
The train raids could (really) a dozen other things – society and the rule of law is just breaking down . . .
Great post, John. As far as the Fed goes, Biden is following the old Star Wars trope: “It could be worse (Kaplan, Rosengren and Clarida)” followed by “It’s worse (Raskin, Cook and Jefferson)”.
Raskin : ….regulators must ‘incentivize a rapid, orderly, and just transition away from high-emission and biodiversity-destroying investments’…
Cook: …worked with U2 frontman Bono to lobby the White House to cancel developing world debt; her work at Michigan State has included investigating how segregation, lynchings, and race riots from 1870–1940 reduced the total number of patents…
Jefferson: …after growing up in Washington, DC, focused his research on poverty reduction. “We live in a society where the individual and household are on their own”…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10401311/Meet-Bidens-woke-Fed-nominees.html
This is indeed the new blood with the guts needed to pull a Paul Volker and raise the interest rates up to 20% for as long as necessary to get 7%, actually 15%, inflation under control while concentrating solely on the Fed’s dual mandate of full employment and stable economic prices while avoiding more helicopter money and associated wokeism.
https://www.chicagofed.org/research/dual-mandate/dual-mandate
Oh, wait, not even Paul V could do that today with a $8T Fed balance sheet and total American economy debt north of 350% of GDP. This ain’t the 1980s, where there was still some runway left to achieve economic takeoff. In the 2020s, the only option is brace for impact.
At least even the Dems shot down Soviet-born Biden nominee Omarova as Comptroller of the Currency (head regulator of the banking system)…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10188847/Bidens-comptroller-currency-nominee-said-wanted-oil-gas-companies-bankrupt.html
The best guess now is that Biden’s current Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu may get tapped to move into the job permanently and regulate the Nation’s banks. He’s not a former Young Communist, just a climate change warrior:
https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2021/11/is-the-sky-really-falling
And the Biden nominee hits just keep on rolling:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10281783/Bidens-picks-FCC-FTC-accused-political-old-tweets-resurface.html
People like the Supremes and Manchin and Sinema get the spotlight, but it’s the bureaucrats and the ingrained policies they implement that wield the long-term power.
Agreed. Few people realize just how true it is that “personnel is policy.”
I’ve always been of the opinion that if you can’t explain an economic theory using an analogy involving a desert island, sea shells, and coconuts that it’s BS. However I’ve recently heard some theories on interest rates vs. inflation that basically means we’re screwed that still makes sense in spite of not being explainable with references to Gilligan’s Island episodes. Basically, if you compliment Maryanne then Ginger gets jealous and cockblocks you with Maryanne but if you compliment Ginger then Gilligan will accidentally set the island on fire.
Compared to today’s politicians. economists and businessmen, the gang at Gilligan’s Island looks incredibly wise. That is very, very scary.
Even after all these decades I can hum the melody and remember the chorus from the scene above. When I was a kid in the 1960s, Gilligan’s Island was my first exposure to Hamlet. Everybody gotta start somewhere.
https://www.readwritethink.org/sites/default/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson372/PoloniusExcerpt.pdf
Ditto . . . Hamlet to the tunes from Carmen. A twofer!
And *THAT* is the problem. The economy wasn’t hollowed out back in 1990. Now the debt is just so very, very large . . . those tricks won’t work.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2022/01/point-of-order-slick.html
says it better than I can.
This isn’t an L.A. DA problem.
90 cars/day is looting a RR car every 15 minutes, 24/7.
On one short section of track.
For three months, FFS.
When the FBI says a woman gets raped every 15 minutes, that’s a law enforcement problem.
When it’s the same woman every single time, somebody was asking for it.
And I mean laying-back-with-her-legs-splayed-open-and-no-panties-on-with-a-taxi-meter-on-the-nightstand asking for it.
(Feminuts: spare me your outraged shrieks. IDGAF.)
UPRR has been utterly derelict in doing much of anything to protect their own cargoes, and attempting to palm this off on the local DA – after private drone video pulled UPRR’s pants down, and the media spanked them publicly for gross incompetence – is industrial grade BS by the metric f**kton.
If this was a prosecution problem, UPRR would’ve released the video themselves, weeks ago, and been way out ahead of the story.
The rail piracy narrative they’re attempting to sell now is a pure, unadulterated CYA op, and full of more crap than the diapers of sextuplets after stewed prunes and applesauce.
No sale.
I’ll note that this problem was picked (not quite at random, mainly for humor value) to illustrate just how big the Fed problem is. That being said.
It isn’t only a U.P. problem. But, yeah, it does start with them. How many of the U.P.R.R. cops are willing to go to jail (unjustified use of force, etc.) to pick up a looter that would be recycled for a minor property crime in hours?
That problem is a system problem. Yup, starts with the RR. But the woke DA magnifies it.
It’s not a “minor property crime”. That’s like calling the Hindenburg explosion an “unplanned landing”.
18 USC §1951
18 USC §1991
18 USC §1992
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I
Chapters 95 and 97 specifically.
Racketeering, rail theft, train robbery, derailing a train, and aggravated terrorism, good for from 1 year to LWOP in the federal pen, with 20 years in maximum security being the typical train robbery sentence specified. + 5 years if a weapon was used, and + death penalty if anybody involved dies.
UPRR knows this, and if they’d had any cops, they would have started taking the miscreants to the feds for prosecution, instead of to the nutless D.A. in Los Angeles County.
Blaming the local D.A. was simply a CYA smokescreen to cover their incompetence and deliberate dereliction of their duty to safeguard their own cargoes, after laying off those very police officers, in a year when – by their own admission – they made record profits.
https://www.up.com/media/releases/4q21-earnings-nr210120.htm#:~:text=Reported%20net%20income%20for%20the,profitable%20year%20ever%20in%202021.
QED
The lies and coverup after the original crime are always the worst offense.
UPRR management should be prosecuted by the SEC for malfeasance.
Those Fed crimes have teeth to them. Be interesting to see if a Fed prosecutor had the guts to follow through. Agreed: the UPRR has primary fault.
I’ll comment on this a bit farther down. (I also commented at his place).
Trains used to have their own system of police. They were treated like sovereign countries, similar to Indian Reservations today. Stories from hobos were that they policed with an iron fist.
Maybe that is the answer: Have U.P. deed their tracks in L.A. over to the Navaho with the provision that losses shrink to zero. There would be some cappin’ and bustin’ happening.
They still have their own police, and federal arrest powers that predate the FBI.
They’re simply utterly derelict in providing for their own security.
When you stack a fresh treasure chest on your front porch, every fifteen minutes for three months, and leave it unattended, it’s not the local D.A.’s fault when you get robbed every single time.
Or, have the U.P. police show up. There are issues with this, however. How many of them are willing to do 25 to life in a use of force case?
Way back in the day, early 80s in the suburbs of Chicago, I had some ‘acquaintances’ that robbed trains. They would break into freight cars in the yard and steal jeans, or a new and expensive thing called a VCR… available ‘down the street’ for $100 new in box, iirc.
I also knew some ‘kids’ who had a train siding in their back yard. They couldn’t stop robbing the trains, no matter how many times they got caught. They would hop on, break into the enclosed car carriers, break into the cars and steal the floor mats, radios, and wheel covers. They’d throw those things off the train and go back to pick them up later. IIRC, a certain sized deep socket will open the doors on the ends of those car carriers enough that a skinny kid can get inside. They would work their way down the train doing thousands of dollars in damage and theft.
All those crooks were in mortal fear of getting caught by the bulls- the rail cops. They had a brutal reputation. It didn’t stop them from stealing when the bulls weren’t around, but it did make them cautious, and they often used scanners to avoid the cops.
It’s been going on a long time, but not as widespread or as brazen as in LA.
n
(the enclosed car transport railcars were developed to protect the cars from theft and vandalism (because teen boys would stand by the tracks and throw rocks trying to break windows on the vehicles) but they made it SAFER for the crooks to steal because they couldn’t be easily seen while robbing the cars. Unintended consequences.)
(check out Hobo Shoestring on youtube for a modern rail rider, and some lessons on austere living in the modern age.)
Nick, thanks for the suggestion! Hobo Shoestring has an epic beard!
The Africans-Living-In-America looting the trains are doing the best they can but compared to the massive looting of the wealth of the working people in America, they are rank amateurs.
Yup. The Fed has it down to a science.
What I get out of this, if I want something bad enough and don’t have the cash is to get it off a train… that is fine, except in South Dakota, the trains are usually traveling faster then 5mph… I guess I could move out to LA and become one of the oppressed albino brothers…
Hehe, or, just throw burning logs in front of the freight trains. Something tells me that will end up in a prison sentence in South Dakota.
I can envision solutions to the rail thievery, and the Fed. The solutions would work, but I doubt many could stomach the brutality.
Try us.
I would react to the ceremonial beheading of the board of directors of the Fed, and the decoration of local fenceposts and gates with their heads, about the same way Union Pacific reacts to the serial looting of their trains hereabouts.
The solutions to almost all of our problems are obvious. The issue is that the reason there are problems is that those problems benefit those in charge in some way.
Ohh, the solutions generally arrive when people can’t stomach the reality.
” Fed™ governors have been caught in a scandal where they unethically traded stocks.”
Remember back at the start of the Obamanation when someone raised a stink about congresscritters trading on information about laws they were going pass? Then they made a big public exhibition about passing a law to make congresscritters have to follow the same laws on insider trading as all of us peons?
And then once the spotlight was off, they went off and rescinded that law?
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734/how-congress-quietly-overhauled-its-insider-trading-law
Ah… old days… good times… Just as crooked as always, requiring 24/7 oversight.
Your graph about how much the purchasing power has gone down since 2000 is good. Now extend it back to the creation of the Fed in 1913, and a dollar is worth about 3 cents from 1913.
Here’s why we’re doomed. As of 2020 there’s absolutely no incentive for anybody but The Fed to buy US Treasury Bonds. They’re losing (at least) 5% per year!!! Raising the Fed Funds Rate even back to breakeven, much less profit, is economic suicide.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2022-01-20_09-31-31.jpg?itok=UKzaaVoK
Our fractional reserve fiat system totally depends on somebody having the willingness to take on new debt to create new money. When the 2008 housing market lost the ability to take on new debt, Obama switched it over to student debt to keep the system from imploding. At today’s insane 350%+ of GDP debt levels there is simply nobody but the Fed left who is able to take on new debt and keep the ball going.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2022-01-20_09-31-51.jpg?itok=qp_W-2oY
We’re outta runway. Brace for impact.
“Brace for impact” brings back memories. That was the last announcement from the C130 pilot when landing on an unlit runway using NODs. They had to kind of feel that last 30 feet down. And it was accurate.
Yup – this one might jar your fillings.
Yup – the Fed is the source of our current problems – the party has gone on far too long.
Sorry, SiG, but you’re still off by about 267%, and 15 years.
A dollar from 1913 is currently worth 1.12¢, not 3¢.
(In 2020, it was worth 1.17¢. In 1990, it was worth 5.4¢, for comparison.)
It hasn’t been worth 3¢ since 2007, when gold jumped above $689/oz.
Gold now: $1840/oz. (Spot price today in NYFC).
Gold in 1913 (when every dollar in circulation was backed by gold): $20.67/oz. (US Official Price for over a hundred years, until FDR ended gold-backed US currency)
Ratio of change over that time: (1840 ÷ 20.67) = 89.01790033865506
$1.00 ÷ 89.01790033865506 = $0.0112336956521739, which rounds to $0.0112, or 1.12¢.
QED
The dollar is falling faster than you can keep up with, and it costs more in ink, paper, and energy to print than it’s worth, in real terms.