Category: Goobermint

Should we be surprised anymore?

Biden has nominated an anti-gun activist to be solicitor general

Joe Biden nominated David Chipman, an anti-gun fanatic, to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (although, thankfully, he withdrew); Tracy Stone-Manning, an ecoterrorist to head the Bureau of Land Management; Kristen Clarke, an openly anti-White racist and anti-Semite, to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division; and Rear Admiral Ann Phillips (ret.), someone with zero shipping experience, to serve as the next U.S. Maritime Administration administrator.  That’s why it shouldn’t come as any surprise that his nominee for solicitor general is a fanatical anti-gun activist who participated in the simultaneously abusive and farcical Mueller investigation.

The National Association for Gun Rights sent out a press release detailing the problem with Elizabeth Prelogar:

The National Association for Gun Rights is opposing the nomination of Elizabeth Prelogar to the office of Solicitor General.

“Elizabeth Prelogar represented radical gun control group ‘Everytown’ and clerked for anti-gun Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan,” said Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights.

The Solicitor General argues the government’s position on cases before the Supreme Court, and as such, should fight for the Constitution, including the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

The office is so powerful that the Solicitor General is sometimes referred to as the “Tenth Justice.”

“Given Prelogar’s history advocating for organizations opposed to the Second Amendment, there is no way any U.S. Senator who supports protecting and restoring the Second Amendment should vote for her. If she’s confirmed as the next Solicitor General, her tenure will be an unmitigated disaster for the Second Amendment,” said Brown.

It’s not just Prelogar’s opposition to the Second Amendment that is a cause for concern.  Immediately after her nomination, Ken Sondik wrote at the Spectator that she is a solid partisan leftist when it comes to every hard fought matter in today’s political world:

Continue reading “”

Unvaxxed Seattle Police & Fire Dept Officers Fired, Several Go Feed the Poor

Be prepared to defend yourself and your family because it’s going to be a long time before a cop can get there. That’s not alarmist talk. That’s a reality.

~ Mike Solan, President, Seattle Police Guild

The enormous number of talented, experienced, dedicated workers who have been forced out of their jobs over a dictatorial president’s and some governor’s mandates is heartbreaking. It’s what this administration wants. It feeds into their ultimate goal. They want disobedient people gone.

According to the Seattle Times, 127 people have  “separated from employment” at the WSP, including 67 troopers, six sergeants, and one captain.

The Police department has already lost 300 officers, leaving 1000.

The city wants the police gone completely so this is probably fine with them. It will become a 3rd world hellhole.

Maybe BLM or Antifa can take the jobs.

 

Yellen Backs Down on IRS Snooping on Americans’ Bank Accounts

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen has relented in response to backlash over a controversial proposal by Democrats that would have allowed the IRS to gain information from any American bank account with more than $600 of activity in a year.

The measure initially came to light as a part of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Trying to head off concerns from moderates, Democratic leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers have desperately marketed the bill as being completely paid for with no substantial effect on the deficit or national debt.

Continue reading “”

Biden secretly flying underage migrants into NY in dead of night.

Planeloads of underage migrants are being flown secretly into suburban New York in an effort by President Biden’s administration to quietly resettle them across the region, The Post has learned.

The charter flights originate in Texas, where the ongoing border crisis has overwhelmed local immigration officials, and have been underway since at least August, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Last week, The Post saw two planes land at the Westchester County Airport, where most of the passengers who got off appeared to be children and teens, with a small portion appearing to be men in their 20s.

Westchester County cops stood by as the passengers — whose flights arrived at 10:49 p.m. Wednesday and 9:52 p.m. Friday — got off and piled into buses.

Some of them were later seen meeting up with relatives or sponsors in New Jersey, or being dropped off at a residential facility on Long Island.

A Post analysis of online flight-tracking data suggests that around 2,000 migrants nabbed after sneaking into the US from Mexico have arrived at the airport outside White Plains on 21 flights since Aug. 8.

NY post page one

Records show some of the planes touched down between midnight and 6:30 a.m. — when a voluntary curfew is in effect — with two arriving from Houston at 2:13 a.m. and 4:29 a.m. on Aug. 20.

The clandestine nature of the operation raises questions about how the White House is dealing with a recent surge in unaccompanied minors.

The most recent figures from US Customs and Border Protection show that just during July and August,  37,805 unaccompanied minors were caught entering the US from Mexico — sometimes after being abandoned  by professional  smugglers known as “coyotes.”

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
On the rare occasions that he comes to the cameras to deliver remarks, most often he finishes speaking, turns around abruptly, and returns to the recesses of the White House.

It’s an apt image presented by an administration that is usually very concerned about visuals and symbolism.

Biden is leaving the lasting impression that, as he does to members of the press, he is simply turning his back on the American people.

Biden on Energy Crisis: Begging Others to Save Him From Himself.

President Joe Biden is drowning in a sea of crises of his own creation, and Americans are the ones who are paying the price.

There’s an ongoing humanitarian and national security calamity at the southern border.

Thirteen U.S. service members are dead, and an unknown number of our citizens remain stranded in Afghanistan following Biden’s disastrous withdrawal.

COVID-19 is still rampant, despite Biden’s promises that he would defeat the virus, while his vaccine mandate has divided the country.

Americans are not taking the millions of jobs available and the economy is stalled, as many have chosen the option of being paid by the government to stay home instead of working.

Biden’s administration failed to identify the growing supply chain disruption, which did not occur overnight and threatens to further strangle the economy. Labor shortages are a contributing factor, including a lack of truck drivers to help unload ships and transport goods (see the above point about workers not accepting available jobs).

And energy prices continue to rise, helping to drive mounting inflation and hurting Americans—especially those with moderate or low incomes—at a time when the economy should be hitting its stride coming out of the pandemic lockdowns.

It is on the costs of energy where Biden’s failures are most starkly visible.

On his very first day in office, Biden scrapped the Keystone XL pipeline, killing 11,000 jobs in the process and making good on his campaign promise to be hostile to the fossil fuel industry.

Continuing his assault on natural resource development, Biden suspended oil and natural gas leases in Alaska.

Former President Donald Trump had propelled America to energy independence, but Biden has purposely squandered it. His policies are designed to reduce domestic production of petroleum, meaning we have become necessarily more reliant on foreign sources.

Biden’s approach has been an economic disaster.

Continue reading “”

NYSRPA Case Exposes Biden’s Anti-Second Amendment Bias, Vindicates Opposition to Garland

Further evidence of Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s contempt for the Second Amendment has emerged in recent weeks.

On September 21, the solicitor general of the U.S. (an office of the Department of Justice that reports to the Attorney General) filed a brief on behalf of the federal government supporting New York’s may-issue carry licensing regime in the U.S. Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. That same day, the solicitor general filed for leave to participate in oral arguments. The court granted this leave on October 12. Therefore, on the November 3, the American public will be treated to a verbal presentation of the Biden administration’s disdain for the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense outside the home.

New York’s may-issue carry licensing scheme requires applicants to demonstrate that “proper cause exists for the issuance” of a license, in addition to the standardized requirements attendant most carry permitting regimes (certification in firearm safety training, no serious criminal record, etc.). This structure grants unfettered discretion to government officials to determine who may bear a firearm outside the home for self-defense. In many parts of New York, the “proper cause” regime is used to effectively bar law-abiding individuals from exercising their rights.=

According to the Biden administration, New York’s discretionary approach to administering a Constitutional right “does not violate the Second Amendment.”

Rejecting the Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Biden administration’s brief noted, “A court should uphold an arms regulation if it is validated by text, history, and tradition or if it satisfies intermediate scrutiny.” Of course, the Heller decision did not contemplate a tiered-scrutiny analysis for Second Amendment cases.

Under tiered-scrutiny analysis, a government regulation that impacts a right is examined under one of three rubrics. The severity of the test depends on which right is impacted. Under the lowest tier, rational basis review, the government only needs to prove that the regulation has some rational connection to furthering a government interest. Intermediate scrutiny requires the government to show that a regulation furthers an important government interest in a manner related to that interest. Strict scrutiny requires a regulation to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest.

The subjective nature of this mode of analysis enables judges to come to decisions that align with their preferred policy preferences rather than the law. This may be why Justice Antonin Scalia eschewed such an approach in Heller.

Moreover, in arguing that restrictions on the Second Amendment right should only face intermediate scrutiny, the Biden administration is making clear that it views the right to keep and bear arms as a second-class right. Under a tiered-scrutiny approach, regulations that implicate fundamental rights are reviewed with strict scrutiny.

Of course, the Biden administration’s entire argument should be irrelevant in light of Heller. As NYSRPA’s reply explained,

Heller held that the Second Amendment protects “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” 554 U.S. at 592. And it explained that the term “bear,” as used in the text, means to “wear” or to “carry … upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose … of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.”

Continue reading “”

That’s the equivalent of losing a whole 8 hour shift of police….in a city nicknamed ‘ChIraq’ because more people were being killed and wounded than in Iraq during the war there. ‘Spicy Times’ indeed and you can bet the chaos will be livestreamed

More than a third of Chicago police officers defy city vaccine mandate

About 4,500 Chicago police officers didn’t report their vaccination status by October 15 as mandated by the city, officials said Monday.

That means roughly 35 percent of the city’s 12,770 officers could be placed on no-pay status in the foreseeable future.
The Chicago Police Department had the lowest response rate of any department in the city, but of the about 64 percent who did report, the majority of officers say they are vaccinated, according to data released by the city. Specifically, 6,894 indicated being vaccinated while 1,333 reported they have not.
Those who said they are not vaccinated are required to opt into twice weekly testing for Covid-19 until the end of the year to remain in compliance with the city policy.
The city required employees to be either vaccinated or test two times a week by October 15, and then report their status by that same deadline. Those who did not report their status risk being put on unpaid leave.

Continue reading “”

ATF Delays Another Public Information Release That Would Prove Biden Lied

Washington, DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- It took the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives more than three months just to acknowledge receipt of a simple FOIA request. Quite the work ethic they have there – 106 days just to reply to an email!?

That’s crazy slow, even for the ATF. Most federal agencies work a lot harder to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, which by the way has been law since 1967. ATF, not so much.

Why the shenanigans? The ATF has data that proves Joe Biden lied. They could access the information with a couple of keystrokes, but instead of complying with federal law, they’re playing games. The lie they’re covering up isn’t Biden’s biggest or boldest, but it defames more than a few friends of mine, so it needs to be debunked.

I have no doubt the ATF is trying to keep a low profile when it comes to Biden, especially since his nomination of David Chipman resulted in such a thorough public thrashing and a stunning national embarrassment. But this saga started in June, long before Chipman imploded when Biden was looking for a scapegoat he could blame for skyrocketing violent crime rates in big cities run by his fellow Democrats.

The pressure to do something was great. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was under fire for her city becoming more dangerous than a Friday night in Fallujah. The bodies stacked up three-deep on Chicago street corners had to be someone else’s fault. The public and the press were starting to question Lightfoot’s competence. Riding into the rescue, Biden found the perfect group to blame – “rogue gun dealers.”

These “rogue gun dealers” Biden alleged during a press conference, were those Federal Firearm Licensees who “willfully” transferred a firearm to a prohibited person, and/or who refused to cooperate with a tracing request from the ATF.

To verify the Biden’s spurious claims, I emailed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the ATF, seeking the numbers of gun dealers, by state, who, over the past three years, have been prosecuted for willfully transferring a firearm to a prohibited person and/or for refusing to cooperate with a tracing request from the ATF.

If Biden was right, hundreds of rogue FFLs should have been arrested, especially in and around Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and other large metros.

However, we all know what the ATF will find: nothing. There will be a mere handful of arrests, out of the approximately 60,000 licensed gun dealers currently operating throughout the country.

The reason? Federally licensed firearms dealers are a law-abiding bunch. They’re not going to suddenly go rogue and start selling guns to prohibited folks. Biden knows this. The ATF knows this. All they need to do is fork over the data and the public can know this too. Instead, the ATF is going to make things difficult and delay the process, at least according to an email they sent last week.

“For your information, this office assigns incoming (FOIA) requests to one of three tracks: simple, complex, or expedited. Each request is then handled on a first-in, first-out basis in relation to other requests in the same track. Simple requests usually receive a response in approximately one month, whereas complex requests necessarily take longer,” the email states. “At this time, your request has been assigned to the complex track.”

This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.

If you’ve ever listened to him during a committee hearing, Ted Lieu being a moron pops out at you in about 2 seconds.

Ted Lieu Lashes Out After DOJ Pushes Back Against Biden’s Advice to Prosecute Bannon

Representative Ted Lieu lashed out on Saturday after the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to follow President Joe Biden’s advice to prosecute Trump political adviser Steven Bannon and others who defy subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot.

Biden said Friday that he “hopes” the committee holds former Trump aides accountable and the DOJ should prosecute those who refuse the panel’s subpoenas. Determined to strike an independent tone, the department quickly made clear that it would not be influenced by the White House.

“The Department of Justice will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop,” DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said in a statement.

Lieu, a frequent critic of former President Donald Trump, expressed frustration at the slow-moving process of enforcing congressional subpoenas on members of Trump’s inner circle.

“CONGRESS SHOULD NOT NEED TO DEPEND ON ANOTHER BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT TO ENFORCE OUR SUBPOENAS. PERIOD. FULL STOP. We need to pass the inherent contempt bill by [Reps. Jamie Raskin, Madeleine Dean, Joe Neguse, Val Demings and David Cicilline] and me. Just like courts, we have our own contempt authority,” the California Democrat tweeted.

Lieu reintroduced the Inherent Contempt Power Act in April, which would enable Congress to independently enforce subpoenas and other congressional actions by directly levying penalties against those refusing to comply.

Continue reading “”

CCRKBA: ‘KING COUNTY, WA MURDER SPIKE TYPIFIES NATIONAL GUN CONTROL FAILURE’

BELLEVUE, WA – Authorities in Washington’s King County—epicenter of the Northwest’s gun prohibition movement—are alarmed at the continued rise in gun-related homicides and shooting incidents, but nowhere has anyone acknowledged that gun control laws they have supported are an utter failure, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“Nothing more clearly illustrates gun control lack of success than the situation in King County,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “It is reflective of the national trend revealed in the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2020, showing murders up by 30 percent nationwide. If restricting the gun rights of law-abiding citizens worked, this should not be the case.”

Gottlieb recited the recent failed history of the Seattle-based, and billionaire-backed gun control crusade beginning in 2014 with statewide Initiative 594, requiring so-called “universal background checks” for all gun transfers. This was followed in 2015 by Seattle’s adoption of a special gun control tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition, which has never achieved the revenue forecast of $300,000 to $500,000 annually, and has only driven business out of the city. In 2018, Seattle’s wealthy anti-gun elitists pushed through another statewide gun control initiative, again contending it would reduce gun-related violent crime, but the exact opposite has happened.

“Let’s look at the embarrassing data,” Gottlieb suggested. “According to the report, this year’s 73 gun-related homicides in King County so far have already surpassed last year’s total of 69, and there are still more than two months to go in 2021. Last year Seattle saw 52 murders, and the year before that there were 35. Seattle’s gun tax took effect in 2016, and that year the city reported just 19 murders.

“Statewide,” he continued, “gun control has likewise failed. In 2015, the first full year after I-594 was passed, the state reported 209 slayings, of which 141 involved firearms, according to FBI data. Last year, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the state saw 302 murders, and their data shows 178 involving firearms. FBI data for 2019 shows 135 homicides involving firearms, so that’s quite a jump.

“Instead of using this data to push for even harsher laws,” Gottlieb said, “it is time for the gun prohibition lobby, not just in Washington but across the country, to admit their agenda has failed. It’s time to scrap extremist gun control laws and try something else like supporting our police and locking up violent criminals.”

Comment O’ The Day

“It is interesting that the group that claimed Trump was an instrument of Russia are actually putting people in power that believe the completely failed economic system of the Soviet Union should inspire what we do in the US.”

Biden Comptroller pick Saule Omarova refuses to turn over Moscow State University thesis on Marxism
Sen. Pat Toomey claimed Omarova removed the thesis from her recent CV

President Biden’s pick for Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is facing a hard fight over her past comments and studies as she refuses to turn over her thesis on Marxism while a student at Moscow State University.

Saule Omarova was born in the Soviet Union in what is now called Kazakhstan and graduated from Moscow State University in 1989. She has pointed to the USSR’s practices as recently as 2019, when she tweeted about the gender pay gap, citing the USSR as a better model.

U.S. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey, R-Pa., last week asked Omarova to turn over a copy of her thesis – in both English and the original Russian – for review by the committee no later than Oct. 13. Her thesis, titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” remains an item of interest to some members on the committee.

Saule Omarova

Ms. Saule T. Omarova, Professor of Law and Director, Jack Clarke Program on the Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions and Markets, Cornell University.

“While it appears that you have deleted any reference to your thesis in the version of your curriculum vitae (CV) that is currently available on the Cornell Law School website, the paper appeared on your CV as recently as April 2017,” Toomey wrote on Oct. 6.

Omarova had not complied with the request as of Thursday, Oct. 14, a spokesperson for Senate Banking Committee Republicans claimed.

“Ms. Omarova has time to attack Republicans in an interview with the Financial Times, but she can’t bother to comply with a Banking Committee requirement that nominees— regardless of their political party or ideology—submit copies of their writings,” said Amanda Gonzalez Thompson. “We certainly hope she reconsiders so Senators have the information necessary to fulfill their constitutional duty to advise and consent on appointments.”

Thompson argued that such requests are a common part of the vetting process, and other candidates have faced similar requests from committees in the past.

Omarova spoke with the Financial Times in an interview published Thursday in which she claimed that Republicans find her an easy target to “demonize” because she is “an immigrant, a woman, a minority.”

“There is definitely a different standard applied to someone like me,” Omarova said. She asserted that she believes some of the criticism leveled against her is racist in nature.

Toomey stated in no uncertain terms during a committee hearing last week that he does not believe her country of origin factors into consideration for her nomination.

“I also pointed out that some of the most wonderful, loyal, and greatest Americans that I’ve ever met are Americans who happen to have been born and raised behind the Iron Curtain and come to this country,” Toomey said. “That fact of her background has no bearing whatsoever on my judgement about how profoundly misguided the policies she has advocated are and it is perfectly appropriate for us to examine those policies.”

Republicans have targeted past comments by Omarova in which she praised the USSR economic model, citing it as an example of a system that the U.S. should look to for inspiration.

“Until I came to the U.S., I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world,” Omarova wrote. “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’”

A number of officials have written to voice opposition to Omarova’s nomination, pointing to other comments she has made in which she laid out her intention to reshape “the basic architecture and dynamics of modern finance.”

Omarova did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

 

Parent: School Board Association, DOJ Use Same ‘Communist Tactics’ I Saw Growing Up in Maoist China

A Virginia woman says the National School Board Association (NSBA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are enacting similar strategies to the ones she experienced when she was a student during China’s Cultural Revolution before immigrating to the United States.

“When I was in China, I spent my entire school years in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so I’m very, very familiar with the communist tactics of how to divide people, how they canceled the Chinese traditional culture and destroyed our heritage,” Xi Van Fleet told Fox News. “All this is happening here in America.”

“Now they are labeling parents and concerned citizens like me as domestic terrorists,” Van Fleet told Fox. “What that can do? You may lose your freedom.”

Her comments come on the heels of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s October 4 memo, which announced the DOJ would be using federal resources to investigate “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland’s memo goes on to say.  

The memo came soon after the NSBA sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting help from federal law enforcement regarding frustrated parents that the NSBA equated to “domestic terrorists.”

Van Fleet told Fox News that she believes the tactic is meant to intimidate parents.

“I think it’s intimidation, no doubt about it. They called them racists for a long time, but that did not work,” said Van Fleet. “So, they have to upgrade to domestic terrorists.”

Continue reading “”

Southwest CEO backs down, will not fire employees who refuse to get vaxxed

Chalk this up as a major victory for personal autonomy and liberty!  Even while refusing to admit that resistance to vaccination had anything to do with the massive disruption to operations that occurred last weekend, Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines, backed off from earlier policy and announced that employees who refuse to receive COVID gene therapy “vaccines” will not be terminated.

Debra Heine reports at American Greatness:

During an interview with ABC News Tuesday, Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, stated that no employees will be fired over the company’s vaccine mandate. However, the airline announced on October 4 that all 56,000 U.S. Southwest employees needed to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 24, or face termination.

The CEO also told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that there was “no evidence” that any type of demonstration against the mandate had contributed to the massive service disruptions over the holiday weekend. Over 2,000 Southwest flights were cancelled, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded.

Technically speaking, Kelly is correct: there is no evidence because even if pilots (and other employees) were calling in sick or using vacation time, or refusing overtime, they would not say so — i.e., provide “evidence” — because doing so would amount to a confession of violating the law with an illegal work stoppage.  So, yes, there is no evidence, but Kelly’s reversal of policy, backing away from termination for failure to vax, is hard to explain otherwise.  And it is a major reversal:

The CEO told employees last week that the airline had no choice but to comply with the regime’s vaccine mandate.

“Southwest Airlines is a federal contractor and we have no viable choice but to comply with the U.S. government mandate for employees to be vaccinated, and — like other airlines — we’re taking steps to comply,” Kelly said.

As Debra Heine points out, Southwest and every other private employer has an out:

An executive order was issued last month requiring all federal employees to get vaccinated, but no executive order, or federal regulation has yet been issued for private companies. Joe Biden on September 9 unveiled his draconian plan to force all private businesses with more than 100 employees to make their workers get inoculated with the experimental COVID vaccines, or face weekly testing. A month later, no official guidance on the alleged mandate has been issued by the White House, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), or the Department of Labor.

Here is a three-plus-minute video of the interview:

Continue reading “”

Nothing is Real: A Visual Journey Through Market Absurdity

When it comes to modern markets, risk assets and the now normalized yet twisted tango of fiscal and monetary policy gone wild, it’s safe (rather than sensational) to simply confess that nothing is real.

As I recently watched BTC drop by 16% in one hour from $50K to $43K, only to reach back up to $46K in 20 minutes, my 20+ years of Wall Street experience watched with bemused yet experienced awe at what amounted to just another day of leverage, emotion and institutionalized front-running as the big money whales in crypto pulled off yet another media and SEC-ignored pump-dump-and-pump trade.

In short, the unreal has simply become business as usual.

Real Education vs. Surreal Facts

By 1997, I had graduated from a steady, iconic and expensive list of higher educational institutions which emphasized critical thinking, objective data, historical context and basic math.

But had I told a single professor back then that one day we’d see the simultaneous occurrence of Treasury Yields at 1.35%, and

Negative treasury yields occur when nothing is real in the economy.

….an “official” YoY CPI (inflation) growth rate of 5.4%, and

Inflation is soaring.

…an S&P reaching all-time highs above 4000,

Traders announce "Nothing is real!" as equity valuations repeatedly hit record levels.

…despite negative annual GDP rates, and

GDP is falling

… consumer sentiment tanking,

Consumer sentiments tank as consumers catch on that nothing is real.

… it’s likely they’d ask me to return my diplomas.

Why?

Because everything I (and all the rest of us) had been taught long ago was that rising risk assets reflect healthy economic growth, vigorous natural demand and a robust confidence in continued productivity and hence free-market price discovery.

That, at least, was the “reality” that nine years of secondary (post high-school) education gave me before I began my first toe-dip into the public exchanges (i.e., asset bubbles) of 1999.

Continue reading “”

Hypocrisy O’ The Day

Medicine for me, but not for thee.