“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.
Bank of America™ and Wells Fargo© were among them.
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.
Brandon is going for a new track record in burning it all down.
Clueless dupes and dullards who made the state their mommy are in for a rude shock.
Just find a way to survive the terminal madness of Peak Stupidity.
By any means necessary.
The sane voters choosing bad orange man drove them over the edge and now they are out for revenge.
External enemies are taking advantage as they drop off a Trojan Horse at the Panama canal.
The local Fundamental Transformation features cock fighting rings in basements, grow houses and suburban homes getting sprayed with 100 rounds in a case of mistaken identity, all in a Red State.
Forward! Sí, se puede
And that’s the case: everything speeds up as the flames get bigger. Even the folks on the street know the score.
Operatives (and psychopaths) Leon Trotsky (formerly Lev Bronshtein) and Vladimir Lenin (formerly Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) were recruited and funded by the Zionist banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (New York City) with Jacob Schiff being the primary go between.
Trotsky was brought to America where he was treated like royalty, receiving training, large sums of money, and a small contingent of mercenaries with which to eventually meet up with Lenin, who had been exiled from Russia, but conveniently given passage across the border in a German passenger train.
“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
Yup. That only cost a few hundred million dead.
Right as rain John! and your taste in gold is impeccable!
Well, not my meme, but I’m not going to argue!
As for the “Zero Down”, I’ll agree to that if BOA moves LeRoy or Pedro next door to Brian Moynihan or Hugh McColl in Charlotte. The Eastover Neighborhood would love that. Pedro raising goats in front of his $3MM house & LeRoy smoking crack out back.
Sounds like you need to set up a collection . . .
Thanks for the gold vs. fiat meme. It always feels good to laugh out loud.
The Pope visited Congo recently, so the cobalt kids are in the news with their 15 minutes (figuratively, not literally) of media focus. Take a good look at these photos as you scroll on thru your smartphone daily routine.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11668015/Devastating-photos-cobalt-mines-Democratic-Republic-Congo-power-Apple-Tesla-more.html
https://www.mining.com/electric-vehicles-surpass-phones-as-top-driver-of-cobalt-demand/
Black Lives Matter. If not while digging cobalt in the Congo, then while cheating at Princeton.
https://twitter.com/zedragroup/status/1388478586454171649?lang=en
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2023/01/princeton-honor-code-first-gen-low-income-justice-system
“Ohhh… You cursed brat! Look what you’ve DONE! I’m melting! Melting! Oh… What a world, what a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?!”
Ahhh, the Congo. If there was a place that made Ukraine (even during war) look good, it’s the Congo.
Congo: the wingman of nations.
From your keyboard to the ears of the Copybook deity’s.
“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.”
But the average Joe will be the one that suffers most as the “Elite” continue to enjoy flying all around in their private jets lecturing to poor Joe about his “Carbon Taxes”.
In short, you and I are screwed as the robber economy like a drunk on a long stairway staggers and falls, sometimes a step, sometimes to the next HARD landing.
Protect your family. Avoid distractions like proxy wars and he said-she said media while DOING your Prime Directive of protecting your family.
Maybe invest in sunblock 3000 for when the crazies NEED some canned sunshine when Ukraine fails to hide their failures again.
Again, but the man on the street is waking up. More on that later, but it is happening.
We sweat blood working to scrape together enough cash for a tiny down payment on our first house back in the day, beloved wife and me. Passed on vacations, made do with used furniture, shopped around for discounts, lived frugally. Ya know, did the young, poor White thing.
Somehow, it is considered denigrating and racist to expect black and brown people to do the same. Live within your means? Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat.
There was an SNL skit many years ago in which Eddie Murphy dressed up in ‘whiteface’ to see what life was like for us privileged types. IIRC, a black is seen being refused a loan at a bank, but White Eddie is told he can have whatever he wants, nothing down, and he does not even have to pay the loan back. This was considered ‘dark humor’ when the show aired. Once again, however, life imitates art, only the real privilege has devolved to those “historically underserved” communities, according to the well-established official policy otherwise known as the soft bigotry of low expectations.
And, again, $450 a night isn’t enough.
This long ago stopped being about a thriving economy and has become just a way to loot resources from the dwindling supply of suckers who work for a living.
Yup, the Looter Class is in charge. They really don’t care, as long as they don’t have to work.
John, I am sooooo glad you didn’t mention the line from the crash of 2008 that absolutely Infuriates me.
I know that it is there, and the people that used it are still running things, but I am so grateful you didn’t mention that phrase. Because just hearing it or seeing it in print really sends me around the bend.
So again, thanks for having the restraint and good manners to not say “Too big to fail”, it ugh….
ARRRRGGHGGHHHHI said it….
OK, I’m better now,
Since you and I grew up in a system that no longer exists, we think that companies would strive for better employees using Merit and equality to guide them so that the company (and therefore the employees) can succeed.
Then TPTB replaced “Equality” with “Equity” and companies that had the right friends in right places not only didn’t have to make a profit, but actually used those “friends” to punish their competitors and ensure they won.
Also Bank of America can die in a fire (I will laugh and supply firewood)
MSG Grumpy
Me? I think “too big to fail” is too big to exist.