Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

The cause isn't united either.

Another part of the problem is you have a lot of people like @newtboy who really DO mean defund the police by the dictionary definition. Those folks are mixed in with the protesters who mean 'reform' when they say 'defund'.

That's all to be expected though when you see the systematic failure of the national police force that is out there. When the number of bad actors in the force becomes too many, includes sheriffs and their deputies, and sees various police chiefs and police union leaders(not toe mention Presidents) defending the bad actors, the people that rise up in anger aren't going to be a uniform centrally organized entity.

As Dave Chapelle refers to it, these are the streets speaking for themselves. The public can't be expected to hold a single, uniform and documented solution that they are marching for. It is unfair to the point of dishonesty to try and discredit the protestors as a 'mob' because their calls for reform aren't consistent enough or well messaged enough. The presumably better educated, smarter professionals running the country(from the bottom to the top) are the one's whose job it is to find a good solution. More importantly, it's also their fault for failing to enact solutions to the problem before the public outrage hit the levels it has.

No....with a "but".

I was disturbed in the 70's about how people were changing the planet, but didn't yet understand the climate portion of that issue would be the most disastrous. (In my defense I was under 10).

I became concerned in the 90's-2000's when the scientific conclusions became overwhelmingly certain that CO² and other greenhouse gasses were destroying the atmosphere we relied on.

My concern quickly turned to anger at the realisation that people as a group were more inclined to argue over minutiae and ignorant theories and money rather than tackle the apocalyptic problem.

Soon that was mixed with depression at the realisation that it was too late even if we gave up CO² and methane today because the climate is slow to react and we had passed the point of no return and were actually still accelerating towards the cliff and arguing over the correct radio station for flying.

Today I'm at acceptance that humans will destroy the biosphere and likely themselves in the process, and have to be content with the knowledge that I didn't make it much worse (or at least made an educated effort to not make it worse), I likely won't live to see mass famine and water wars where I live, and didn't put anyone else in the horrific position of having to live through the worst. (No kids).

Feel better? ;-)

True.

No we don't...some, like the president, never punish themselves, that requires empathy and a conscience. Not everyone has those traits.

We had a video of elderly on a seesaw recently that proves wisdom doesn't automatically come with age. ;-)

I'm ahead of the game then...I broke decades ago.

Mmmmmmm....hammock.

Yes, anger can be an excellent motivator. Focusing that motivation for good, that's the hard part.

Ok, sure, but the voices in my head aren't usually good company.

True, but you have that right. Really, I just like the line, I don't think of it as life instructions, just something funny.

If only we could transform it into electricity, we would be in an energy glut overnight!

If you wait for them to fall, 1/2 are lost to the dark side. It's totally prudent to give them a shove in the right direction while they're still moveable, imo.

Only you can do whatever you are going to do.

Justice shumushtice. We all punish ourselves in one way or another.

With age comes wisdom.

We are all created to break.

Passion can cancel lazy if lazy is a problem. Sometimes you need to be lazy in order to operate a Pawleys Island hammock.

It takes practice and confidence to harness and transform the raw energy that anger brings. Anger in the right hands can be a gift. Anger does have a purpose. Everything has a purpose. If you don't know what the purpose is then you can create a purpose for it.

You don't need to be social. You can be part of a crowd all by yourself. You're right about the marches. I'm with you on that one.

Saying you've got a right to hate is misleading. Hate will slowly destroy you and others if you mishandle it.

You can't get rid of hate. You can only transform it if you choose to.

EDIT:

Don't be looking for those that are on the fence. Those that fall (break) will be looking for you.

What am I going to do? Honestly, probably little besides offering moral support and trying to convince those on the fence or in areas under siege which side the scales of justice SHOULD tilt towards.
I'm old, broken, lazy, quick to anger, I live in the boondocks, and I'm pretty anti social and hate crowds. Marches are not where I belong.

That's my hate, I've grown it from seed. Why do I have to get rid of it? ;-)
In the words of Petrus T Steel, "this is the United States of America, and you've got a right to hate who you want, so let's start busting heads!" ;-)

But BLM movement is not as homogeneous as white supremacists in a sense that black kids doing it would be doing it intentionally to mislead and divert anger(if that was their motive). Meanwhile BLM movement isn't exclusively black people. It is ABOUT black people, but it's not exclusively BY black people. Seeing defaced buildings like that I wouldn't associate it black people. I would associate it with BLM movement, regardless of the race.

It was that the white girls were vandalizing using black lives matter during a protest over black lives lost and telling all the black people telling them to 'stop because they aren't helping' that they don't matter and neither does the fact that black men, not white women, will be blamed for the vandalism, wasn't it?

If they were black, at least the right subset would be blamed....this seems kinda like if black kids tagged a synagogue with swastikas to stoke anger at white power nazis [and or white people in general].

Newt, you've already lost.

You didn't lose with Trump in 2016, but with California's Prop 13 in 1978.

The goal of the Neocon movement was to decimate American public education because they knew that an educated population would never vote for the kind of shit they were selling, and because teachers (being educated and all) were a powerful Democratic voting block. Defunding public education was a win/win for them.

It worked beautifully.

The teacher's unions were starved. Public schooling imploded. We went from the most educated populace in the world to the point where 50% of the population can't find their own country on a map.

Then the real screw-job started with the wealth transfer. Unions were busted, jobs were moved overseas. The safety net that kept millions from abject poverty was dissolved ("welfare queens", "food-stamp cheats"). The Middle Class began to evaporate with about 10% climbing up the ladder and the rest being dumped into the street.

For people like me -- people with high-end skills and a college degree -- that shit worked out great. But people who aren't as lucky? Kinda sucks being them. So they got madder and madder. Luckily, there were dark-skinned people that this rage could be directed at. That good ol' American racism? That shit pays dividends if you play it the right way.

Now you have an increasing number of poorly educated people living in poverty with grievances. Hey, guess what -- we have a new tool to focus all that anger and it's called FOX News! They can show you whose dastardly plan it was to keep your poor, white self down on the farm while those FUCKING LIBERALS live it up in the cities!

Lather, rinse, repeat.

See Newt, people like Bob aren't an anomaly, they're the intended end result of a very well-conceived long-term plan by extraordinarily smart people who understood Chomsky, Orwell and Lasker better than you ever will. Bob is now the norm and you are the exception.

Go ahead and vote in Biden or Warren or even Sanders: it doesn't fucking matter because you can't vote out entrenched stupid. No matter who is sitting at 1600 Penn Ave, Bob is sitting in front of his computer, seething and being stupid. He's not going anywhere. He's not going to see things differently and he's damned well not going to get any smarter.

There's a shit-ton of Bobs in this country and their numbers are growing daily. What're you going to do with them? Put 'em in a camp somewhere? Shoot 'em? You cannot have Bobs and the America you want. That leaves you with exactly two choices: you pick up your gun and shoot them, or you pick up your passport and leave. It's one or the other. You might not like the taste of this shit sandwich, but you're going to eat it whether you like it or not.

Also, you think Bob's a little kooky? Go visit 4chan's /pol/, visit whatever 8chan became, visit the comments section of Zero Hedge, read the comments on FOX's YouTube videos: those motherfuckers make Bob look like a goddamn bastion of rationality. Those people, the ones who're yelling at their screens and pounding out febrile screeds? They're armed. They hate you. They want to kill you. The only reason they haven't is because they haven't reached critical mass yet. Give them a couple of years of post-Covid economic collapse and they'll get there.

I'll never forget the most important lesson a Holocaust Survivor taught me: "The smart Jews left first".

Good luck; see you in Lyon.

yeah. it's a blast when it's just talk and no consequences. it was just fun for them, now it's not. how sad for them.

there are predictions that this virus could last into the spring of next year. combine it w/the next flu season this fall and Fox just might have to carry on this tone for over a year.

from anger, venom, and spittle to careful, thoughtful, and measured words? geez. what a loss.

Kind of you, thanks.

The best you can do for me is be grateful for those that offer you help or kindness and express it, and not develop a sense of entitlement and expectations that others owe you favors and handouts, or an obligation to put themselves at risk. The more people that do that, the better.

Unfortunately, I have all too often gotten the opposite from those I've offered assistance, kindness, trust, or even familial benefits/ treatments. More often than not, my kindness is mistaken for weakness, and met with demands for more rather than thanks for what I gave/did, and abusive anger when I balked. My faith in humanity has been ground into the dirt and peed on consistently enough, even by family, that it's maybe not completely dead, but is on life support and declining. To keep it alive, I must now be extremely selective about who I put myself out for and how.

I sincerely hope you don't have the same experience.

No. Not that part.

I'm talking about something you may not be aware of about yourself called projection.

"Projection is a psychological defense mechanism in which individuals attribute characteristics they find unacceptable in themselves to another person. For example, a husband who has a hostile nature might attribute this hostility to his wife and say she has an anger management problem."

As far as being right, that remains to be seen. And that's only about Trump winning. Truth stands on it's own.

He can do anything but control his anger.

So you didn't look? It's clear in the photo, and there are plenty of zoomed in versions that are unambiguous. Google image it.

Because being a speed addict explains all the other bat shit crazy shit he's done, and the 3am rambling rage tweeting, the manic paranoia, the inability to form a cogent thought, inappropriate anger, stubbornness, etc. It's not a bit trivial imo. It could be a great reason to insist on random drug testing for presidents.

There's also multiple recent reports that one of his doctors from the 89's-90's was convicted of overprescribing speed to his patients...a Dr feel good. The hippy doctor admitted he was a front, not his main doctor, and admitted he didn't write the medical opinion of Trump's health he produced, Trump did.

That seems like some sexist bullshit.
If he had slapped and shoved her during an argument, charges likely wouldn't be dropped just because she didn't want to press them. If he had defended himself from her physical attack, he would surely be arrested and likely still face charges.
If you touch someone in anger, you deserve a battery charge. Period. The law is not supposed to be different for different sexes.