Scary Real Estate Thoughts

Will you have to rent your own home to live in it someday? It's a scary though that real estate can be manipulated but it can be.

"We're in a recession"

Jim Rickards, lawyer, economist and investment banker, says we're ina recession and it's going to get worse. I agree. When you top it off with inflation, we are entering a Jimmy Carter-esque level of malaise.  No amount of denial and distraction will get the Democrats out of this hole.

When your principles are fake

 "Build the wall" is now humanitarian?  They have no principles, but also no brains. Ameme is the only way to deal with this insanity.

Sunday verse

 

Manchin must be replaced.

West Virginia, what are you doing with this guy? Stop re-electing him.  He's a Democrat, he doesn't have the interest of the people in mind. Stop supporting him!

Pelosi = Corruption.

I know I'm late to the party on Nancy Pelosi's insider trading scandal, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to echo the incredulity at her bald faced corruption. Russell Brand explains.

Is China on the brink?

 If China is on the brink, could another Tiananmen Square be in the cards for China?

It's. A. Recession.

 Janet Yellen may be the worst anything-to-do-with-economics person EVER.  It's a recession.

China's propaganda about China

 Investigative reporter, Johnny Harris exposes Chinese propaganda about how big it is.

Trudeau hates farmers too, not just truckers

 Meanwhile in Canada, more neafarious Trudeau tripe, this time copying the Netherlands:

Let me get this straight...

The 40 year high in inflation, not being problematic enough, we have very likely also fallen into a recession (we'll know tomorrow). Except they say it's not a recession, trying to alter the definition to fit their narrative. And the Federal Reserve, behind the curve on addressing inflation, was reasonably expected to play catch up and potentially raise interest rates by a full 1% this week.  Except Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chair, clearly spooked by the existence of recession, backed up a bit and raised interest rates by 75 basis points (bps) instead of the needed 100 bps (1%).  But that can't be, because there "really isn't a recession".

So that means they don't think inflation is all that bad? Right?

Or more clearly, they are all just lying to you.

Lining their pockets

 Corruption at the highest levels.

Real Estate turbulence ahead

And speaking of America being in a perilous financial predicament, is this more evidence of that? This certainly isn't something that happens during normal times.

Big trouble in big China?

We know the United States has put itself in a precarious financial predicament, but is China in financial and/or political trouble? Could be.

Sunday verse

 

Sri Lanka bankruptcy - the canary in the coal mine?

Sri Lanka has recently petitioned for bankruptcy. There are a few reasons it's come to this, but Business Insider provides a good explanation:

If you are waiting for the Biblical apocalypse, we now have pestilence/plague, war and famine all visible - that's three of the four horsemen of the apocaplypse. Could it get that bad?  Or worse?   Maybe, maybe not.  But the thing is, Sri Lanka is not alone, they are simply the first nation to hit the wall. They are the canary in the coal mine, and others may soon follow:

No pun intended, the Sri Lankan crisis is food for thought.

Amy Schumer, worst comedian ever?

I don't find Amy Schumer funny.  I think her politics and personality stink.  However I don't think she's comedically terrible, just not funny.  Maybe if she stuck to honing her comedy and set aside the political elite mentality, maybe she'd become funny. Others however hold her in even lower esteem and SunnyV2 even bothers to explain why:

It's okay to attack conservatives?

 No.  No it isn't. Lee Zeldin was in mortal danger, but the attacker is already free???

Let's Go Brandon cancer

 I wish I had more time to address this:

I think he meant to say he is a cancer, but whatever.  It doesn't matter anyway because he's going to cure it, he promised.

More inflation to come

We are on the verge of a recession that may or may not happen - we could already be in one, but we won't know for about a week. Whether we are or aren't there's still a major problem, inflation (which generally isn't supposed to be concurrent with a recession) isn't over by a long shot, as Peter Zeihan explains:

Every point he makes is spot on.  There's more to the monetary policy side of the story he only touches on, but regardless, his observations and conclusions are completely correct.

Let's Go Brandon's economy sucks

This is what happens when your economy sucks: you lose. Let's Go Brandon looks like he's going to get his party splatted like a bug in the midterm elections.  I can't see him being back running for the job in 2024, even if he wants to do so.

Meanwhile in Canada, something is amiss

Rumour has that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is looking to call a fall election shortly after forming a coalition with the socialist NDP party. That would be great news, especially if it jibes with recent polling:

If the polling is true, a fall election makes no sense unless Trudeau is finally tired of being a dictatorial scumbag. If the fall election is true, the polling must not be right.

Evironmentalist Puppets

Ever wonder why you are protesting climate change, when climate change is the natural order of the world? Who put you up to it? Unwittingly, you are profiting others.

Sunday verse

 

Manchin vs. Schumer and Let's Go Brandon

Spend, spend, SPEND!!!! So say Democrats, excluding senator Joe Manchin.

Are you ready for more pain?

 The June 2022 Consumer Price Index surged again ("unexpectedly") to 9.1%. To many Keynesian economists and their Democratic party ilk, this was unexpected.  To those of us who understand loose monetary policy and loose fiscal policy, and even those who have common sense, this was no surprise.  A four decade high inflation rate: no surprise. The more leading indicator, of inflation, the Producer Price Index, rose even higher. According to teh BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics);

The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 1.1 percent in June, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This rise followed advances of 0.9 percent in May and 0.4 percent in April. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, final demand prices moved up 11.3 percent for the 12 months ended in June, the largest increase since a record 11.6-percent jump in March 2022.

...Over half of the June increase in the index for final demand goods is attributable to gasoline prices, which jumped 18.5 percent. The indexes for diesel fuel, electric power, residential natural gas, motor vehicles and equipment, and processed young chickens also moved higher.

This is the result of an entirely preventable series of events.  Loose monetary policy since 2008 has created a massive bubble. This was compounded heavily by Democrat spending and also seriously exacerbated by Let's Go Brandon's effort to demonize and hamstring American oil and gas production.

What's worse, is if you look at the way inflation was calculated back in the 1980's, this is way, way worse than what's being reported as the worst since 1981.  This is the worst since 1947 (when it peaked at 19.7%) and soon potentially since 1920 (when it hit 23.7%).

This is not over.  Inflation will continue to rise, despite an expected 'aggressive' response from the Fed, raising interest rates by 100 bps. The Fed is responding slowly (too little) and too late. The Fed's interest rate hikes will have an effect but they will take time.  The previous rate hikes did nothing to stop the upward March of the inflation. That's because, just like the decisions that caused this, the reaction wiill take time to work it's way through the system.  On the plus side that means rising unemployement could take time to kick in. But be ready for more pain; shortages and on-going price hikes are going to continue for a while.

It's all about whose side you are on, for Whoopi

 Whoopi Goldberg, hypocrite on racism. Because it's a Democrat, Whoopi is okay with racism.

By the way, why did Jill Biden also butcher the word bodega?

Levin on January 6th committee hearings

 Mark Levin dissects the true purpose of the January 6th committee hearings.

He makes a point about the Constitutional convention.  I think every state in the Union would probably be happier if they could make their own laws unimpeded by federal oversight, even liberal states like California. Leave the Federal government to truly federal issues like national defense and other Constitutional provisions granted to the federal government. 

Years ago I suggested on this very blog a divorce at an individual level; each individual could opt into either a Democratic or Republican template on welfare, education etc. and be governed by those particular rules (with the exception of the aforementioned federal provisions like national defense which cannot be done at an individual level).  Theoretically nice, it would be pretty much impossible to institute.  But if it were scaled back to a state level, individual mobility within America might solve for the ability to live under the set of beliefs most closely aligned with your own. The overturning of Roe  v. Wade is a prime example of that; those states wishing to allow abortion have not been prevented from doing so, despite the fevered histrionics of the left.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands - a farmer revolt

A farmers' version of the Freedom Convoy in the Netherlands, this in response to crazy climate change policy changes demanded by governments. Different issue, different country, same autocratic governmental actions.

Jordan Peterson discusses communism

Jordan Peterson discusses communism.

Jordan Peterson on the Russian-Ukranian war

 Jordan Peterson's lengthy take on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it means for the West.

Sunday verse

 

Lessons from Canada's internet outage

Yesterday's massive internet outage across the country was for me, as well the rest of Canada, a great example of economic realities.  Unfortunately some people did not comprehend the lesson.  

Background 

Canada has localized internet and wireless monopolies in different areas.  This is not 100% true, but for all intents and purposes it is correct.  Several smaller carriers exist but do not have a large footprint anywhere. The largest carriers provide both wireless phone service and internet (as well as telvision and some other products like home security for example). Not only do these ISPs/carriers have monopolies in product sales but, and this seems like it is unique to Canada, but they also are the same companies that provide the hardware for these services (they own the cell towers, the cable and fiber optic lines).  There are smaller players, like my internet provider (ISP) who lease access to these lines and then compete with these larger carriers to attract cellular, TV and internet customers.

One of the large three providers, Rogers had a nationwide failure in it's internet and cellular coverage.  Some of the large banks and transaction processors as well as parts of the Canadian government were completely dependent on this ISP so the impact went beyond just their customers.  As well, ISPs such as mine, which lease the lines from Rogers, were impacted.

To further exacerbate the situation, carriers encourage bundling of products by providing discounts, so many people who use Rogers for internet could not switch to their phones and use data instead. 

The problem started yesterday at 2 a.m. in some areas and spread across the country. For most people the problem persisted until last night between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.  This impacted everything from people with medical conditions not being able to fill prescriptions to people being stuck unable to take taxis to free wifi cafes with working wifi being overrun with customers to some businesses losing thousands of dollars in business.

The Lesson

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this, for example don't bundle your products as you are more vulnerable to outages, or that Canada is way too susceptible to a hacking incident if this sort of thing if an astute hacker wanted to take advantage of it.

But the real lesson was pointed out by those who did not learn from it.  On message boards I was able to access (I'm not bundled so I could use my phone plan data), many people were calling for government ownership of telecom and internet. So wrong.

The people decrying an over-reliance and a few oligpolistic competitors provide as a solution a single provider. Not only does that make the nation more vulnerable, it puts the operation in the hands of the most inefficient monopoly out there - the government.  It reduces price competition (Canada has the highest prices in the industrialized world for internet and wireless) to zero, it reduces the available product and service selection, it decreases the need for provider responsiveness and locks the country into a solution that undoubtedly would be worse but even if there's only a chance of that, why do it?

The way to solve this problem is to open up the country to more competition; allow American carriers and new Canadian start-ups to compete in the currently monopolized regions. Split the ownership of hardware from the ability to sell the products and services, making them two separate industries.  Poor Government oversight allowed this all to happen, why would anyone think that handing everything over to them would improve anything?  My own experience of not relying too heavily on a single provider yesterday allowed me to escape complete connectivity failure.  The same holds true for Rogers; despite being offline, thet were able to tweet out infrequent and uninformative updates, no doubt using the still working Bell network to do so.  In summary, oligopolies -bad, monoplies - worse and government monopolies - horrifically bad.

Let's Go Brandon, repeat the line

 Just, ugh. 81 million people voted for this chump?  Really?  Repeat the line. REALLY???

Looks like I came back to Twitter for a false start

Assuming the Elon Musk Twitter deal really is dead, why did I come back to it?  I have no answer. Once the deal is officially dead, I'll be gone again, for now, I'll hold out just in case this is a bargaining ploy by Elon Musk.

Shinzo Abe assasinated, U.S. response worse than tepid

Shinzo Abe was from what I can tell, a very good leader in Japan.  Let's Go Brandon unfortunately, doesn't get that or anything about Asia it seems.

Musk vs. Soros?

 Is this the undercard, or the main event?

Bezos vs. Let's Go Brandon

Let's Go Brandon and seemingly everyone around him on his team, do not get basic economics.  Even leftist supporting Jeff Bezos is turning on him. I've said in the past the Left will eat itself. This is another example of that.

Happy Independence Day

 Happy 4th of July to all Americans.

Sunday verse

 

Friday fun

 Woke leftist doctors. I have not run into this myself yet.