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)

If people dishonestly try to claim the secession of the traitorous confederacy wasn't based on slavery, remind them of what it's founders and leaders said about it at the time.

"Our new government foundations are laid, it's cornerstones rest, on the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
-confederate vice president Alexander H. Stephens cornerstone speech explaining the basis of the confederacy

Kinda lost me when he claimed wind creates 11g CO² per kwh with no reference, calculations, or explanation.
Wind energy production is zero emission.
Are they including every gram produced by every step of construction and estimating a short lifespan, but not doing the same for nuclear, which takes exponentially more resources to build, run, fuel, store waste, and dismantle?
I also have a problem with him saying more expensive, higher profit natural gas plants have better prices because they're much HIGHER than nuclear prices per kwh.
He seems to ignore the spent fuel disposal/storage costs, which are significant in both cases, but while the natural gas plants don't pay for their waste (massive amounts of CO² and methane), nuclear has no choice.
Diablo canyon refurbishing was canned after Fukashima, because it's got all the same dangerous issues of being in an active earthquake/tsunami zone right on the coast with no way to shield itself from tsunamis. Before Fukashima, they totally planned to revamp and continue operations.
His levelized cost of electricity slide conveniently ignores the cost of environmental damage caused by fuel production/use.
Include all costs, coal is worst, followed by natural gas, then nuke, hydro, wind, and solar cheapest. Geothermal is great, but only in areas where it can be easily tapped, which are few and far between.

In short, his vast oversimplification and inconsistencies in what's included in his cost basis make his conclusions relatively meaningless, imo.

1) Do you see protesters practicing social distancing? Hint, they aren't, because the virus is a liberal hoax to bring down Trump. So moronic, but fine as long as they're only infecting each other. Open businesses and they'll restart the outbreaks and restart the clock on quarantine, wasting all the gains of the last 6 weeks.

2) open or not you'll have no tourists. Tourism is on hold for the moment, and large gatherings too. Casinos would have to rebuild themselves first, they are designed to make social distancing impossible. If no tourists guarantees failure, they Damn well better prepare for failure, because there are no tourists.

3) if they go to work and force a second, longer, more strict quarantine, all that happens anyway plus a few tens of thousands more dead.

4) agreed, and the black and white choice made solely on the basis of improving the economy must ignore the obvious health risks that themselves threaten the economy further. Opening early sets us back months, back to the start of stay at home orders, back to before the economic crash and massive losses, but without first restoring the market or economy. Do you think the economy can handle another crash? Because that's what you'll get if Trump and Trumpsters open before the minimal guidelines have been met....two weeks of declining infections and deaths. Those are Trump's guidelines, probably insufficient, but better than the "we'll be the control group in a pandemic experiment....and better than Trump himself who abandoned his own recommendations days after releasing them and now supports protesters. *facepalm

I think he believes he gets to keep that blood money from Saudi Arabia.

As for his South Korea claim....there is no agreement for them to pay a dime next year, because Trump could only negotiate a 1 year extension to the 5 year payment plan Obama negotiated. Contrary to Trump's ignorant lies, for >3 decades the cost sharing agreement has been negotiated on a 5 year basis with S. Korea paying the U.S. yearly, but Trump has been incapable of negotiating and today there's no payment agreement at all. Only 4% of South Koreans support paying what Trump's demanding, making his current near $5 billion demand (a 400%+ increase from last year) a clear deal killer....which might end our cooperative agreement with another ally.
Japan's cost sharing agreement is up for renegotiation next year, expect the same level of absolute failure in those negotiations and the loss of another ally and the loss of more US influence in the Pacific.

*promote exposing the ridiculously easily debunked lies being used to hide the total failure to negotiate successfully.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-make-korea-pay-more-for-security-trump-has-to-show-his-shopping-list-11578393004

I feel like people have lost their grip on reality a touch. It really does seem like some don't understand the restraints of a physical location. Unfortunately this video is my reality on a daily basis, although not quite to the point of riots.

Agreed.
Our government is designed to preclude monarchies.
If a president can't be indicted no matter what, they are a defacto monarch, and there's absolutely nothing to stop them from declaring themselves president for life and simply refusing to vacate the office, or from ignoring all law with immunity.
How a memo, not a law, describing one person's misinterpretation of the law has been used to grant Trump blanket immunity, contrary to the actual law and the basis of our government, is beyond me. It should be removed and never brought up again, except as a cautionary example of democracy threatening activities to avoid. Any official using it to shield anyone from prosecution should themselves be prosecuted.

THNX

I do believe it is.

If my world is not very habitable in the first place and I have the option of setting fire to some rainforest to build a farm, sell me some clean air and Orangutang habitat in exchange for good karma and poverty, please.

On the other hand if I make decisions that impact hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis without much recourse to anything in particular (party line? military commanders? local clans? religious leaders?) what does a teenagers speech on the opposite side of the planet change for me? Its just completely off the playing field of making important decisions.

I hear her cry, now calm down and look for ways to actually improve the situation, please.

Suing Argentina for breaking childrens rights? Not bad, human rights cases were actually a good method to fight communist regimes in the 70s and 80s. Just a very slow grinding method.

Ok...i should have said "all but guaranteed under all BUT the most wildly optimistic projections". Got me.

Since, time and time again, the UN "collaborative summary" has had to be revised upwards, and recent measurements show current melting rates it claimed won't be seen until 2075 in Greenland, yes, I have a low opinion of their political/scientific consensus...but the scenarios I mentioned are not the most extreme I can find, just the most likely if you look at data rather than projections based on the conglomeration of incomplete, cherry picked, and non peer reviewed science as well as full scientific studies.

The IPCC does not carry out original research, nor does it monitor climate or related phenomena itself. Rather, it assesses published literature including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute on a voluntary basis to writing and reviewing reports, which are then reviewed by governments.
They are not the scientific community, they are an international political body chaired by an economist that makes suggestions hopefully based on real honest science, but not necessarily.


There is plenty of consensus that the IPCC estimates are low....NOAA gives up to a 2.5M rise estimate for RCP8.5...the no mitigation, business as usual model we are outpacing already. Based on their numerical system, we're looking at RCP 10+ because emissions are rising, not flatlined, certainly not lowering.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2018/06/15/is-the-ipcc-wrong-about-sea-level-rise/#712580f03ba0

Considering Carrey's talent and predisposition for imitating Nicholson on a weekly basis, a fairly accurate deepfake could be just cut-and-pasted out of his Living Color days...

@newtboy
@BSR

Think of it a bit like this (quote from Wilde)

"...surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not p. 3cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it"
--------------
And allow me to pop this out:
"the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves"
--------------


This is a stark/bleak example. I don't personally agree with it entirely. As I said, I bring cereal for my students and it's there and free and available unless I don't have time to get to the store or unless I myself am out of pocket change to buy extra food.


I don't ENTIRELY disagree though ----> Which is not to say that I agree.

I would say, YES there are structural changes that need to take place, but I also believe that assistance needs to be there to handle some kind of transition period while a problem is realized.

ALL of that being said

Here is a perfect example of a societal ill in our current system that needs to be addressed. It's a disgusting by-product of a structurally unsound student loan system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9NaPDtAmU


Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1017/1017-h/1017-h.htm

@BSR

I already donate regularly to my local children's hospital, give any spare change I have to people you describe, and work at an inner city school where I keep boxes of cereal (it's cheap and vitamin packed and the kids like it) because my students come up to me on a somewhat regular basis hungry.

But as an individual, it's easy to act alone. To combat what one considers bad-public-policy, one must join the conversation.

What are you really asking me to do here? Someone posts some racist memes and I'm to keep my mouth shut because it won't do anything. I do not agree.

I can act alone, but to change policy it starts by having conversations about perceived ills in society. Forgive me but keep your stoic silence to yourself and I'll keep talking if the spirit moves me.

@BSR

I already donate regularly to my local children's hospital, give any spare change I have to people you describe, and work at an inner city school where I keep boxes of cereal (it's cheap and vitamin packed and the kids like it) because my students come up to me on a somewhat regular basis hungry.

But as an individual, it's easy to act alone. To combat what one considers bad-public-policy, one must join the conversation.

What are you really asking me to do here? Someone posts some racist memes and I'm to keep my mouth shut because it won't do anything. I do not agree.

I can act alone, but to change policy it starts by having conversations about perceived ills in society. Forgive me but keep your stoic silence to yourself and I'll keep talking if the spirit moves me.

When I was in Belgium a couple of years ago, I visited a farm where they're still pulling WW1 iron out of the ground on a daily basis. "The Iron Harvest" it's called. Finding WW1 shells is so common that farmers in the area just collect them and put them at the end of their roads for the disposal guys to pick up.

The truly scary part is that somewhere in Belgium, there's about 87,000 kilos of high explosives, which was supposed to be used to blow an enormous hole in the German trenches became lost when the Brits had to fall back. To this day, no one knows where the explosives are. In 1955, lightning hit a similar "lost mine" and pretty much leveled an otherwise dull field of vegetables.

Article about these lost mines here: https://simonjoneshistorian.com/2017/05/01/lost-mines-of-messines/

I'm curious to know what you drive the family around in now? Does it by chance have advanced safety and driver-assistance features (standard in Teslas)?
But you're right to be fearful, those dummies getting thrown around is quite violent. Automobiles are probably the most dangerous things we expose ourselves to on a daily basis. I've known more people that have died from auto accidents then from heart disease and cancer.