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)

Eratosthenes actually knew from local lore that the sun shone directly down a well at modern day Aswan, in Egypt, on the summer solstice. On the same day at noon he measured the sun's angle using a vertical stick at Alexandria.

Well explained here: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/solar-system-and-earth/knowing-solar-system-earth/a/eratosthenes-of-cyrene

American presedential candidates are two senile old men, where one of the doesn't even know where he is half of the time. The funny part is that could describe either of them lol. Who would have thought the modern rome imploding could be so entertaining to watch. Keep it up guys, your doing great...

Yeah, it was weird to see all these modern stuff but still awesome. I don't care as long we continue this space stuff!

I love how Trumpists like Lil Bobby here think Trump gives a rat's ass about them. Literally, they are sealing their own fate by supporting these lying, sycophantic self-promoters. All Trump is doing is enriching himself and his billionaire cronies. He's cutting your retirement, destroying your planet, and forcing you to work harder to get what you should already have. It's disgusting. I wish they would wake up and stop being sheep. Stop watching legacy news and actually try fact checking any single thing on which Trump or his buddies make claims. This is truly the most devastating time in modern history. In every metric.

nice, but also somewhat painful to see them using manual labour: how much better could they do, using more modern techniques to make the same soap?

Maybe for average cars, but that's not true when it comes to old Broncos or Jeeps. In the early 70's, they built them like tanks (heavy and slow), especially with the roll bar option properly installed, Broncos even had a thick full tube frame, not just a C channel, not unibody, and definitely no plastic.

Granted, the safety systems were lap belts and nothing more and the steering column would spear through your chest in a head on crash while the bare metal dash cracks your passenger's head, even stock they tend to roll, the fuel economy is non existent, and top speed is well under 2/3 what modern cars can produce (good thing since the brakes are sub par), but the cars themselves are nearly indestructible (I have one of each). I've dropped my jeep frame 3+ ft onto solid rock, it chipped the rock (and maybe my spine). ;-)
Late 70's early 80's that all changed, mostly for the worst.

A good way to get a feel for the difference between modern and older cars is to play BeamNG. Crash an old car at speed in that and it will get destroyed while a modern car will hold together.

Oh man, that's a hard question.

Classic Doom is probably the smarter game, in how it uses its weapons and monsters as puzzle elements.

But modern DOOM is just so goddamn metal.

Ultimately classic is the more important game and its' mulitplayer laid the ground work for online FPS, but in terms of what I'd play today... DOOM all the way.

Do you prefer classic or the modern DOOM more?

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The most badass-est movie reviews of all times!

Even though, for me, the rebooted PotA series is the better of the modern blockbuster series. Honestly, not trying to be a troll and fan flames here, but I do like this series far more than the Marvel Avengers series. Most X-Men, Deadpools, Daredevil & Punisher (on Netflix) are great, just not the ones connected to the Avengers.

If so many people think God wrote a book IMHO it becomes relevant to study it at least superficially just so you can co-exist and communicate with all these people.

The stories in the book are mostly not history but the book itself and how it came to be certainly is.

Seriously if God is omnipotent and knows everything this book of his shows a strong sense of humor rather than much intelligent design. Like having bits and pieces garbled by running them back and forward through ancient humanoid versions of modern day OCR, machine translation and political censorship.

I love the Septuaginta bit (not in this video) where mythically 70ish scholars were secluded for 70ish days and each came up with his own Greek translation and they were all mythically identical. Where in reality the translation took decades, was a team effort that garbled the texts to appease current rulers and added whole new books.

these modern fascists getting so much momentum in this age. It's being normalized. Like torture was normalized under Bush and Obama