Op-Ed by Paul Plante
When I and Joe Biden both were young, assuming Joe Biden ever actually really was, young, I mean, which is not at all a given, Joe being who Joe is, a distinctly God-like being separate and apart from us mere mortals who may well have been born looking just the way he does today, white as a ghost from how pure he is in an otherworldly way, as if he came from elsewhere in the galaxy or universe and wasn’t really one of us, at all, a relevant subject we young Americans studied was known as “Stalinism,” which was the ideology and policies adopted by Stalin, based on centralization, totalitarianism, and the pursuit of communism.
Today, in our times, now that the JANUARY REVOLUTION is over and our Republic has been overthrown, and the Marxist Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been established in its place at the national level here in the United States of America with the ascension of the God-like Joe Biden into the oval office, God Help the nation, we are seeing the beginning of “Bidenism,” which like Stalinism before it, is based on based on centralization, totalitarianism, and the pursuit of communism through socialism, which takes us back in time to a speech by Nikita Khrushchev to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. on February 24-25, 1956, when Joe Biden and I were both alive and so, aware of what was going on in the world around us, or at least I was, not knowing about Joe, or being at all sure that he has ever been aware in his life of anything, where we had as follows concerning Joe Stalin and the CULT OF PERSONALITY surrounding Stalin, just as we are seeing the beginnings of a CULT OF PERSONALITY surrounding Joe Biden in our times today, to wit:
Comrades!
In the Party Central Committee’s report at the 20th Congress and in a number of speeches by delegates to the Congress, as also formerly during Plenary CC/CPSU [Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] sessions, quite a lot has been said about the cult of the individual and about its harmful consequences.
end quotes
The cult of the individual and its harmful consequences, people – we should all be giving that a lot of very serious thought after Joe Biden’s speech to the Democrats on 28 April 2021 where Joe jokingly said, “(T)he autocrats will not win the future,” when in fact with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris now in power, the autocrats have won and now own the present, which gives them total control over the future, which takes us back to Krushchev, as follows:
After Stalin’s death, the Central Committee began to implement a policy of explaining concisely and consistently that it is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god.
Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior.
end quotes
Ah, yes, people, and like Joe Stalin before him, we are seeing Joe Biden transformed into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god, and such a man as Joe Biden, who single-handedly saved the SOUL OF DEMOCRACY in America, really does know everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, and is infallible in his behavior, as he told the Democrats who love him on 28 April 2021 at the LOVE FEST they staged for him at the Capitol, where Joe told the Democrats as follows:
As we gather here tonight, the images of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol — desecrating our democracy — remain vivid in our minds.
Lives were put at risk.
Lives were lost.
Extraordinary courage was summoned.
The insurrection was an existential crisis — a test of whether our democracy could survive.
It did.
But the struggle is far from over.
The question of whether our democracy will long endure is both ancient and urgent.
As old as our Republic.
Still vital today.
end quotes
Very moving stuff, indeed, but there was no insurrection – that is horse****.
What there really was, as was said, was a Marxist Revolution and the Marxists won, and now we have Joe Biden as our leader, just as the Marxists had Joe Stalin for their supreme leader back when, which takes us back to Krushchev, as follows:
Such a belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin, was cultivated among us for many years.
end quote
And now just such a belief about Joe Biden is being cultivated among us today as we see from a Reuters article entitled “In first speech to Congress, Biden to push $4 trillion spending plans” by Nandita Bose, Jarrett Renshaw, and Trevor Hunnicutt on April 28, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping $1.8 trillion package for families and education in his first speech to Congress on Wednesday and will argue that he has restored faith in democracy 100 days after he succeeded Donald Trump in office.
“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works, and can deliver for the people,” Biden will say.
“In our first 100 days together, we have acted to restore the people’s faith in our democracy to deliver.”
end quotes
Yes, people, to save democracy in America, it took a towering, God-like figure like Joe Biden, because no lesser person was up to the task, which takes us back to Krushchev on Stalin, to wit:
The objective of the present report is not a thorough evaluation of Stalin’s life and activity.
Concerning Stalin’s merits, an entirely sufficient number of books, pamphlets and studies had already been written in his lifetime.
The role of Stalin in the preparation and execution of the Socialist Revolution, in the Civil War, and in the fight for the construction of socialism in our country, is universally known.
Everyone knows it well.
At present, we are concerned with a question which has immense importance for the Party now and for the future – with how the cult of the person of Stalin has been gradually growing, the cult which became at a certain specific stage the source of a whole series of exceedingly serious and grave perversions of Party principles, of Party democracy, of revolutionary legality.
Because not all as yet realize fully the practical consequences resulting from the cult of the individual, [or] the great harm caused by violation of the principle of collective Party direction and by the accumulation of immense and limitless power in the hands of one person, the Central Committee considers it absolutely necessary to make material pertaining to this matter available to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
end quotes
By then, of course, it was already too late.
By then, all the harm that Stalin had done in the name of Stalinism was already done.
Will we in our own future be making the same kind of evaluations of the reign of the autocrat Joe Biden long after it is too late to repair the damage?
Or is there a chance we might wake up to the reality of Joe Biden as an existential threat to our American way of life before it is too late?
Suzanne Hallberg says
Why do you write this stuff?
Note: Wut?
Paul Plante says
Hi, Suzanne Hallberg.
How are you today?
How is your day going, would you say?
Is everything well with you, healthwise, I mean?
I sincerely hope it is, because I am a compassionate humanist who cares about things like that even if nobody else does.
And when you say, “(W)hy do you write this stuff?”, the obvious answer would be because I felt it needed to be written.
Why else would you think I would take time out of my busy schedule to write it?
And if I didn’t take the time to write it, there is a good chance it might not have gotten said, which is a good reason to me to write it.
And instead of asking me a softball question like why did I write it, why don’t you instead make some intelligent commentary of what I did write?
So you think I have it wrong, somehow?
Do you think a CULT OF PERSONALITY with Joe Biden at its center as a figure to be revered and adored and adulated is a good thing for America?
Should we have a dictator for a while do you think in the mold of Joe Stalin to set things right in America once more, now that Joe has captured the SOUL OF AMERICA and is going to win the 21st Century while growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out?
And Suzanne, you seem nice – do you like Rap?
Or are you more intellectually mature so that you have graduated to Hip-Hop, instead?
Paul Plante says
And let me say here that I think this is a serious question Suzanne asked me, why do I write this stuff I write in here, and therefore, I am taking it quite seriously as it should be taken.
After having given the question many hours of serious thought, I have come to the conclusion that because of all our cultural differences in this country today, the question is difficult to answer, precisely because of those cultural differences.
I am of a generation that was taught from the time we were young to watch those in government like hawks and to question everything they said, because the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so in that context, which is important, it only stands to reason that I would be questioning Joe Biden’s supposed “leadership” after that appearance of his before the Democrats on 28 April 2021 where he laid out his agenda for the people of the United States of America, saying therein as follows:
In another era when our democracy was tested, Franklin Roosevelt reminded us — In America: we do our part.
That’s all I’m asking.
That we all do our part.
And if we do, then we will meet the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong.
end quotes
And that is exactly what I am doing in here by, as Suzanne called it, “writing this stuff.”
As Joe demanded, I am doing my part by speaking out in here, and by doing so, I am meeting the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong.
Paul Plante says
And staying with this important question posed to myself as an older LOYAL AMERICAN citizen who is not now a Democrat and never was, and never will be as to why do I “write this stuff,” which could be translated in these times today where hardly anybody can comprehend actual words written in sentences to form paragraphs to transmit rational thought and ideas as why do I bother writing, at all, to understand why I do anything, it is important, especially in this time of Joe Biden saying to the nation, “(A)sk not what you can do for your country, ask instead what your country can do for you, and think big when doing so, for the more you ask for, the more you shall receive, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” to establish some much-needed context by going back to 1961, a time when America could be said to have been truly great, if only for a moment until Democrat LBJ got in there and started lying to us and really ******* up the works with his massive ego coupled with his minute intellect and towering ignorance and started us on the downhill run that has resulted in a two-time loser named Joe Biden ascending the Stairway to Heaven into the white house as the SUPREME LEADER of perhaps 80 million indoctrinated and star-struck followers, and the Transcript of President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, where we Americans of that time, which is much different from these times that produced Joe Biden as president, had as follows to consider, to wit:
Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens:
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom –symbolizing an end as well as a beginning — signifying renewal as well as change.
For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.
end quotes
And on his first day in office, what did the AUTOCRAT Joe Biden do?
You are right when you say he scrapped all of that history as racist, which takes us back to JFK, as follows:
The world is very different now.
end quotes
And is it ever today – to the point of being absurd, a point to be further developed in here by the words of Joe Biden himself in his Address to the Democrats of America and the World on 28 April 2021 at the LOVE FEST they staged for him at the Capitol to celebrate Joe lasting 100 days in office when many in America and the world expected to see Nancy Pelosi invoking the 25th Amendment to get rid of Joe after just a couple of weeks in office, as follows:
Tonight, I come to talk about crisis — and opportunity.
About rebuilding our nation — and revitalizing our democracy.
And winning the future for America.
end quotes
Yes, people, Joe Biden is going to do all of that and lots more on top of that to win the future for America instead of Joe winning it for some other country, instead, which takes me back to the “Cult of Personality” speech by Nikita Khrushchev to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. on February 24-25, 1956, where we had as follows concerning Joe Stalin and the CULT OF PERSONALITY surrounding Stalin, just as we are seeing the beginnings of a CULT OF PERSONALITY surrounding Joe Biden in our times today, to wit:
Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never erred, that he was always right.
He never acknowledged to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made more than a few in matters of theory and in his practical activity.
In this connection, Stalin very energetically popularized himself as a great leader.
end quotes
How much that reminds me of our very own Joe Biden, who more people in the world voted for than any other American president, which takes us back to 1961 and simpler times in America when we did not have somebody of questionable mental capacity sitting within reach of the nuclear launch button, to wit:
And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
end quotes
Today, the president and vice president of the United States of America are denouncing those same forebears as racists and white supremacists and white nationalists and slave owners and oppressors of Black people to keep the Black man down, while putting forth the belief that the rights of man come from the generosity of the state, not from the hand of God, as follows:
To all the transgender Americans watching at home – especially the young people who are so brave – I want you to know that your president has your back.
end quote
HUH?
“Your” president?
Joe Biden is the president of the transgenders?
Then who is the president for the rest of us?
Or don’t we get one because we are not transgenders?
Getting back to JFK, we have:
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.
end quotes
OMG, JFK, don’t be saying that kind of **** today or you yourself are going to be vilified as a racist because the first revolution was fought by racist white supremacist/white nationalist slave owners and they were very bad people indeed, so no more of that kind of racist cant, thank you very much.
Getting back to JFK, who was no Joe Biden, he continues as follows, to wit:
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
end quotes
Those are the people who raised me up, taught me my values as an AMERICAN, and made clear to me what my duties as an American citizen are to this day, which is why I write this stuff.
Paul Plante says
And going back to 1961, a very different time in America than is the case today, and the John F. Kennedy speech which I have to say moved me as a young American citizen, he continued as follows:
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends.
United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures.
Divided there is little we can do — for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny.
We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view.
But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom — and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
end quotes
Those last words about riding the tiger are words this AUTTOCRAT Joe Biden ought to be giving some serious thought to, but since Joe seems incapable of serious thought, or thought at all, I do not think he would grasp the meaning of what John Kenndy was saying, and it is WE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE who are going to pay the price for that and the ignorance of our so-called fellow Americans who put Joe Biden into the white house to bring down the nation John Kennedy was promoting, to replace it with something Stalin was trying to build in the Soviet Union, instead.
Getting back to JFK, he continued as follows:
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge — to convert our good words into good deeds — in a new alliance for progress — to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty.
But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers.
Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas.
And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support — to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective — to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak — and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
end quotes
As I consider those words, which I heard spoken when I was young, I am forced to think how much different America was back then compared to now, where we have become, thanks to partisan rancor, a divided nation at war with itself, with no peacemaker in sight, and I have to wonder how many young Americans today even know if John Kennedy ever existed, or that America was not always such a hostile place as it has become today, thanks to the Democrats, who would disown JFK today as not being one of them because he was not the divider they need and have in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, instead, which takes us back to JFK, to wit:
We dare not tempt them with weakness.
end quotes
Which reminds me of Hussein Obama leading from behind with Joe Biden as his vice president so as to project an air of weakness as he sought to humble and shame the United States in the eyes of the world as he did when he bowed to the Japanese emperor and apologized for the United States having beaten them in WWII, which takes us back again to JFK who was no Joe Biden, to wit:
For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course — both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.
So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.
Let us never negotiate out of fear.
But let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms — and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.
Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah — to “undo the heavy burdens . . . (and) let the oppressed go free.”
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.
Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.
But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.
Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.
The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation” — a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind?
Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.
I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it.
I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.
The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.
With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
Transcription courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Bob says
Because
He’s right
About
Beedy Eye Joe
Suzanne Hallberg says
I don’t much care for either Rap or Hip Hop. Why do you ask?
Paul Plante says
Out of a sense of politeness, of course.
A way of making polite conversation in a world of very angry and confused people who may well be considered insane, if you are a Jungian, anyway.
As to Rap, which Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor are said to love, Hillary is said to be a very good rapper herself and back in the day when she was an actual presidential contender, before she became just another loser, she and her good friend Harvey Weinstein are said to have regaled the crowds at her fundraisers at The Hamptons with what they called a “RAP-OFF,” where they would sling spontaneous bits of Rap back and forth at each other, and they are said to have been able to go on in that vein for hours which is proof that Rap is for intellectuals, which is why I thought you might like it.
As to Hip-Hop, according to New York State Congressman Antonio Delgado, not only a real Harvard lawyer said to be the smartest Democrat in the “People’s House” as Nancy Pelosi calls the House of Representatives now, but the first Rapper to win a Congressional seat here in the United States of America which is a clear indication of just how far we have come from the days when Antonio Delgado might have been the slave of some Democrat down south, for him, hip hop is a philosophy to live by, the way Confucianism is to others, and Hip Hop in its purest form conveys the plight of the underprivileged.
You sound smart like Antonio Delgado, so I thought there might be a chance that you as well see Hip-Hop as a philosophy to live by, like Confucianism, but if you don’t that’s alright as well.
And not to be overly critical with you, but perhaps you would be a better contributor to the Marketplace of Ideas that is the Cape Charles Mirror if instead of asking me such a nebulous question as why do I “write this stuff,” given that I have now made some 93,000 posts on a host of subjects ranging from world hunger to world peace and pretty much everything in between, to include growing potatoes in trash barrels using pine needles as mulch, that you instead pin me down with serious questions such as why, like Joe Stalin before him, are we seeing Joe Biden transformed into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god who single-handedly saved the SOUL OF DEMOCRACY in America and who really does know everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, and is infallible in his behavior, as he told the Democrats who love him on 28 April 2021 at the LOVE FEST they staged for him at the Capitol.
Now, that would have been a good question to ask, because I truly wonder about that, myself – WHY?
I was hoping you would know, Suzanne, because as I say, you do seem very smart and knowledgeable about these kinds of things.
Paul Plante says
RAP is a major language now in America, Suzanne, the new lingua franca.
If you want to succeed in politics in America today, as Antonio Delgado has proven, you have to be able to speak RAP fluently.
This language I speak and write in is archaic now.
Such it is when it is.
Bottom line, Suzanne, if you are thinking of running for office and just being able to converse with people today, you are going to have to learn RAP or you are going to be left behind!
Like me.
suzanne Hallberg says
You surely know more about Rap and Hip Hop than I do. (I am not so knowledgeable about this music)I will have to defer to you on this topic.
Paul Plante says
Actually, Suzanne, I can’t stand Rap, which to me is incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo with such lyrics as these which have Congressman Antonio Delgado, the first Rapper to be in the House of Representatives with Nancy Pelosi, being touted as the next Obama, to wit:
I wanna ride with my niggas see them all get figures
I wanna see a righteous capitalist, if it’s possible for one to exist
Dead presidents can’t represent me
Not when most of them believe in white supremacy
Look like we only goin’ from chains to cuffs
end quotes
Based on that, he was endorsed by Obama, himself, and now he sits at the right hand of God, er, sorry, Nancy Pelosi, which is an indication to you, Suzanne Hallberg, as to exactly how powerful Rap is today as pure political expression.
As to that insipid horse**** called Hip-Hop, which Antonio Delgado calls a philosophy to live by, like Confucianism, I can’t stand that, either.
suzanne Hallberg says
I agree with you about Rap I really don’t care for the beat. If other people like Rap it’s OK with me as long as I don’t, have to listen for very long. I don’t especially like Hillary ( glad she is gone ) but it doesn’t bother me what she likes. It is a free country. Not sure what this has to do with Biden and Stalin however.
Paul Plante says
I’m not sure myself, either, what Rap and Hip-Hop have to do with Joe Biden and Joe Stalin but with these stream of consciousness kinds of things that you started by asking me why I write this stuff, which question I am not sure has to do with Joe Biden and his resemblance to J0e Stalin, that may or may not become apparent soon enough.
As to Hillary, she had her chance to come across as very fluent in Hip-Hop in order to win the BLACK votes, and she blew it big time as we see in this Daily Caller article entitled “Hillary Tells Black Church White People Must End ‘Systemic Racism’” by Alex Pfeiffer, White House Correspondent, on April 20, 2016, to wit:
PHILADELPHIA — In a visit to a black church Wednesday, Hillary Clinton told the predominately African-American audience that it is the “responsibility of white people” to end systemic racism and incorrectly stated a popular hip-hop phrase in saying we will “ride and die.”
end quotes
And that was it, Suzanne – end of story for Hillary!
She failed a critical test and that was the end of her as presidential material because she ****** up a popular hip-hop phrase at a critical moment in her campaign.
What does that have to do with Joe Biden?
Obviously, Joe did his homework better and got the phrase correctly, and now, instead of Hillary, Joe is the president, because Joe had Obama as his mentor who taught Joe how to say things so a Black person would think Joe was Black too, just a little on the pale side, whereas Hillary was arrogant and thought she could go it alone.
Talk about the gestalt, Suzanne, there it is right before your eyes.
As to Joe Stalin, and you might remember this from the seventh grade or so, on his March 20, 1956 Speech by Comrade Khrushchev at the 6th PUWP CC Plenum, Warsaw, Comrade Khrushchev [in Russian], stated as follows:
I repeat that it can be combined quite well, because where would you place Stalin?
Would you say he’s a Marxist?
Yes, Stalin, who occupied such a prominent position in the party, and possessed indisputable, colossal influence, and revolutionary abilities, and led the party in which direction?
In the direction of building a socialist society.
This is a fact.
Could Stalin have lead in a different direction?
He could have.
Could he have brought it to some other result?
I think that he couldn’t, because the party would have resisted.
But, Stalin himself was a staunch Marxist, and he was convinced that society in particular must become a communist society, and he served this society with his body and soul.
Of this, I have no doubt.
The question of the means and of the course taken, this is a completely different question.
It’s difficult to combine, but it’s a fact.
This fact already took place.
How you want to combine it, and think it through, this depends, so to speak, on your abilities.
But, it’s a fact.
We can’t say that by using such and such methods to kill people, he killed them in order to destroy the socialist regime, so that he could turn the Soviet Union towards a capitalist way of living.
It would be a silly thing to say.
It would be a lie.
Who would have believed it?
No, that’s wrong.
Here’s the whole tragedy.
Who doubted that somebody isn’t an enemy?
Stalin, of course.
But, if we look at this from the position of the liberals, then, of course, this isn’t right.
But, Stalin was a revolutionary.
And therefore, to affirm the new, we should fight with the old.
And in this struggle, comrades, we never denied harsh methods and extreme actions.
We didn’t deny it in the past, and we don’t deny it now.
Therefore, on this, Stalin was a Marxist, and he served, and used all the methods available.
He used them so that in this struggle to affirm the new, he destroyed his own people.
His own people were destroyed.
Of course it’s possible.
This was in every party.
There were always cases where someone was under the suspicion of being an agent provocateur.
Sometimes investigations and courts were used, but it later turned out that they had been honest people.
Were there cases like these?
Of course there were.
And it was the same in the Polish party.
It was everywhere.
If there’s an underground, if there’s a struggle, then it’s always possible.
And the fact that the enemy sends its agents is known to everybody, comrades.
We have the question of intelligence, methods, and abilities.
Stalin had such views, he understood it well, and tried to protect us.
And in protecting the revolution, he got to the point where, as they say, the artillery fired on its own army.
Well, I can’t say anything else.
I would be lying if, after his death, everything was blamed on him.
That wouldn’t be very smart.
We would then not have been Marxists, or we would not have understood it and explained it.
Stalin in particularly was a Marxist.
A Marxist.
We think so.
The question of his mistakes on the questions of theory, and in other instances, is not being discussed right now, comrades.
This was a man who devoted his body and soul to the working class.
There isn’t a single doubt about it.
end quotes
Joe Biden too has devoted his body and soul to the working class, there isn’t a single doubt about it.
If Hillary Clinton had done so, maybe she would be president instead of Joe.
Something to consider, anyway, and Suzanne, isn’t it nice to be able to have a quiet conversation about matters of grave importance to every American without the need for the rancor and screaming at each other now so common in political discussions?
I thought so, anyway.
Paul Plante says
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
There, people, is where the split that has led to today and Joe Biden being in the white house,
Can anyone imagine Joe Biden today saying that to people – to ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country?
Can anyone imagine John Kennedy getting elected today based on those words?
That was back in a brief period of time in this country when I would say we were as united as we were ever going to be, because not much after that, it all started going to hell big time, which is how we got to where we are in this country today.
So what were those words – ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?
Were they a directive?
Were they a command?
Was that merely advice, or just a random thought that came into his head at that moment?
And who were those words directed to?
Were they directed at Joe Biden, who graduated in 1961, the same year those words were spoken, from Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware where Joe Biden played baseball and was a standout halfback and wide receiver on the high school football team, and though a poor student, was class president in his junior and senior years, which experience set him on his ever ascending path up the Stairway to Heavcn and into the white house?
If so, then why has Joe rejected them today?
Paul Plante says
Do young people in America today even know John F. Kennedy was alive and was an American president?
Do they know anything at all about those times in America when JFK was alive?
Do they believe, as I once believed, that as an American citizen, as opposed to a citizen of some other nation, be it Zimbabawe, or Kenya, where Obama came from, or Uganda, or Venezuela, or Guatemala, where they do things quite differently, it was out duty as citizens to not ask not what the country can do for us, but rather, we were to ask what we can do for our country?
Or do they cleave to the standard of Joe Biden who is saying to the nation, “(A)sk not what you can do for your country, ask instead what your country can do for you, and think big when doing so, for the more you ask for, the more you shall receive, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?”
As to the CULT OF JOE, or incipient (in an initial stage; beginning to happen or develop) BIDENISM, let us go back to a March 3, 2021 PRESS RELEASE of Biden adulator (“The people commonly intend the public good,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 71, “but their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it”) Nancy Pelosi for this gushing praise of Joe and sycophancy (obsequious behavior toward someone important in order to gain advantage as in “Nancy Pelosi’s fawning sycophancy is nauseating”), to wit:
Speaker Pelosi. Thank you so much.
This is a very special evening for me, my colleagues, to be introducing for the very first time Joe Biden as President of the United States.
And I could – my heart could not be filled with more joy to have that occasion marked by introducing him to our House Democratic Caucus.
A special evening.
First time, Mr. President, that I’m introducing you as President of the United States to my great House Democratic Caucus.
That makes it even better.
My colleagues, as you know, our nation is blessed with Joe Biden as President of the United States.
He is an extraordinary President.
He knows how to get the job done.
When our nation faced the Great Recession.
It was Joe Biden, who led the implementation and accountability of ARRA, helping to create and save millions of jobs.
That experience serves him well with the American Rescue Plan.
When the Democratic Caucus was passing the Affordable Care Act, Joe Biden was a partner for progress in the White House.
And that experience serves him well as we face the coronavirus crisis.
Joe Biden has been a voice of reason and resilience with a clear path to lead us out of this crisis.
I’ve seen President Biden working behind the scenes, hammering out solutions for the American people.
He is a leader with the humility to seek expertise and science and the confidence to act upon it.
On the global front, President Biden is a distinguished world leader who commands the respect of the allies and adversaries alike.
On the political front, Joe Biden has campaigned with or for many Members of Congress, almost everyone in this virtual setting.
Thank you, Mr. President, for being there and for – with us and for us.
Now more than ever, we need a battle-tested, forward-looking leader who will fight For The People, a President with the values, experience and the strategic thinking to bring our nation together and to build a better, fairer world for our children.
As President, he is taking us to new heights of inclusion in the success of America.
President Biden is a leader who is the personification of hope and courage, values, authenticity and integrity.
Joe Biden is President – as President and with Democratic Majorities in the House and Senate, we will deliver bold progress For The People.
And now it is my privilege to present the [46th] President of the United States, as my children – grandchildren would say, ‘Open Biden,’ Mr. President.
end quotes
As Collins Dictionary describes it, a cult of personality in American English is a cult promoting adulation of a living national leader or public figure, as one encouraged by Stalin to extend his power, and with that gushing praise of Joe Biden as a leader sent pretty much straight from God to clean up the mess the Democrats have made of America with their disruption of our governmental affairs in order to bring down the Trump presidency, Nancy Pelosi is demonstrating the Democrats are in fact a CULT OF PERSONALITY.
Going back in time to JFK, by contrast, we have from the American Experience website as follows, to wit:
President John Kennedy took office during one of the most turbulent times in American history.
The Cold War between democracy and communism was becoming more belligerent, and the United States and the Soviet Union possessed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over.
In American cities, racial tension was rising.
Growing numbers of black Americans had begun to demonstrate for equal treatment under the law, and white segregationists promised to deny these rights, using violence if necessary.
From the first moments of his presidency, Kennedy evoked a sense of security and a spirit of idealism which reassured Americans of their nation’s strengths and inspired them to serve their country and the world.
end quotes
And stop right there a moment, people.
Despite the juvenile drivel of Nancy Pelosi above here where she touts Joe Biden to her pack of Democrats as a battle-tested, forward-looking leader who will fight For The People, a President with the values, experience and the strategic thinking to bring our nation together and to build a better, fairer world for our children, from the first moments of his presidency, did Joe Biden evoke a sense of security and a spirit of idealism which reassured Americans of their nation’s strengths and inspired them to serve their country and the world?
Or has he divided us while inspiring Americans to have the government under Joe Biden and his sycophantic lickspittle (a person who behaves obsequiously to those in power as in “Nancy Pelosi is a lickspittle for Joe Biden”) Nancy Pelosi serve them instead, regardless of the price to be paid?
Going back to the American Experience, it concludes as follows:
The idealism that Kennedy evoked did not die with him.
Although Kennedy failed to realize his promise, he left a legacy of hope to millions of Americans.
end quotes
So, people, where, pray tell, is that legacy of hope gone to today?
Does anyone have a clue?
Paul Plante says
And biting a bullet here, people, and admitting the truth, JFK, if anyone even remembers the name, is long since dead and gone now, and some would say good riddance to him and his foreign ideas with this “ask not what the country can do for us, but rather, ask what we can do for our country” horse****, which I would say having been there was rejected by more people than it was accepted by, with people saying quite openly “**** that stupid **** of doing something for the country, I’m in this for my pocket,” and anyway, on his first day in office, Joe Biden completely wiped the American history JFK represented clean off the slate as “racist” and “white supremacist” and “white nationalist,” so there is little sense in taking about JFK today, when Joe Biden is clearly saying to the nation today, “Don’t be stupid and ask what you can do for your country, be smart and instead ask what your country can do for you, and be even smarter by thinking real big when doing so, for the more you ask for, the more you shall receive, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
So since we are now in the today of the reality of Joe Biden as opposed to the yesterday of JFK, which no longer exists, and as we continue to consider the rising of the CULT OF JOE, or incipient BIDENISM here in the United States of America, which I as an older American citizen see as a very dangerous development for our liberty, to see how that is, let us go back to the March 3, 2021 PRESS RELEASE of Biden cult member and adulator Nancy Pelosi where we have cult member Nancy telling us as follows with respect to Joe, who is her hero, to wit:
This is a very special evening for me, my colleagues, to be introducing for the very first time Joe Biden as President of the United States.
end quotes
Now, keep in mind, people, that the only people in that room are card-carrying Democrats – everybody else is excluded, which takes us back to the CULT OF JOE, as follows:
And I could – my heart could not be filled with more joy to have that occasion marked by introducing him to our House Democratic Caucus.
end quotes
Her heart could not be filled with more joy?
She is the speaker of the House of Representatives, people.
Joe Biden, who she is clearly adulating, is the executive, a separate branch of our national government, and it is seventh grade civics that Congressional oversight of the executive branch is a critical part of the United States federal government’s system of checks and balances.
So when the Congressional branch is forming a CULT OF PERSONALITY around the executive as is clearly the case here before us now, based on Nancy Pelosi’s own words, what happens to the concept of checks and balances?
It goes right out the window, does it not?
And is that to our benefit as a people and as a nation to have a national government where the Congressional branch adulates the executive and sees him as someone who is a SUPER HERO like SUPERFLY who can do no wrong or do no harm through misguided policies?
Let’s develop that thought a bit further by going back to Nancy Pelosi’s gushing praise of Joe Biden where she tells us further as follows:
My colleagues, as you know, our nation is blessed with Joe Biden as President of the United States.
end quotes
OUR nation, the United States of America is now “blessed,” i.e. made holy, by having Joe Biden as president?
How exactly is it, people, that we are “blessed” by having anyone as our “leader?”
Are we like the Holy Roman Empire, now, where GOD ordains who our leader is going to be, and then blesses us by providing that leader as HE did with the case of Charlemagne?
Getting back to Nancy, the gushing praise continues as follows:
He is an extraordinary President.
end quotes
Oh, really?
That is March 3, 2021 that Nancy was saying that, and Joe did not become president until 20 January 2021, so Joe had only been in office for forty-two (42) days at that time, so what did he do in 42 days that made him “extraordinary,” a word which means very unusual or remarkable?
And there we have some serious grist for the mill from Nancy with that statement by her on 3 March 2021 to her Democrat Caucus that Joe Biden is indeed very unusual and remarkable, which statement takes us forward in time to 28 April 2021 and Joe Biden’s address to the Democrats who were celebrating the fact that Joe Biden had managed to last 100 days in office, where we had Joe telling the Democrats, and by extension, the candid world, as follows:
As I stand here tonight — just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration.
100 days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.
The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation: America is on the move again.
Turning peril into possibility.
Crisis into opportunity.
Setback into strength.
Life can knock us down.
But in America, we never stay down.
In America, we always get up.
And today, that’s what we’re doing: America is rising anew.
Choosing hope over fear.
Truth over lies.
Light over darkness.
After 100 Days of rescue and renewal, America is ready for takeoff.
We are working again.
Dreaming again.
Discovering again.
Leading the world again.
We have shown each other and the world: There is no quit in America.
100 days ago, America’s house was on fire.
We had to act.
And thanks to the extraordinary leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer – and with the overwhelming support of the American people – Democrats, Independents, and Republicans – we did act.
Together — we passed the American Rescue Plan.
One of the most consequential rescue packages in American history.
We’re already seeing the results.
end quotes
But are we really, people?
Or more correctly, what results are we really seeing, and here, by way of background, just recently, in a Reuters article entitled “TREASURIES-Yields fall on manufacturing data, Treasury boosts Q2 borrowing” by Karen Pierog on May 3, 2021, we learned that the U.S. Treasury said it plans to borrow $463 billion in the second quarter, assuming an end-of-June cash balance of $800 billion, as spending increases in response to the pandemic and that was much bigger than its February estimate of $95 billion, which preceded the March enactment of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
And then there was a CNBC article entitled “Soaring lumber prices add $36,000 to the cost of a new home, and a fierce land grab is only making it worse” by Diana Olick on April 30, 2021, where we see more results, as follows:
Lumber prices seem to set a new record almost daily, now up 67% this year and up 340% from a year ago, according to Random Lengths, a wood products industry tracking firm.
The surge in lumber prices in the past year has added $35,872 to the price of an average new single-family home and $12,966 to the market value of an average new multifamily home, according to the NAHB.
Prices of gypsum, which is drywall, are up nearly 7% from a year ago.
Steel mill product prices are at a record high, up nearly 18% in March year over year.
The price of copper also set a record high this month and is 27% year to date.
end quotes
In another Reuters article entitled “U.S. weekly jobless claims drop below 500,000; layoffs lowest since 2000” by Lucia Mutikani on May 6, 2021, we learn as follows, to wit:
The government has provided nearly $6 trillion in pandemic relief over the past year.
end quotes
SIX TRILLION DOLLARS of borrowed money in one year alone and what results do we have to show for it?
How about a Reuters article entitled “Is it over yet? Still no recession end date as U.S. economy hums along” by Howard Schneider on May 4, 2021, where we had as follows:
Is the United States still in recession?
Common sense and a lot of data say no, but the Business Cycle Dating Committee, a panel organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research that acts as the official arbiter of U.S. recessions, has not yet pinned down an end date for the contraction it said started after February 2020, around the onset of the pandemic.
end quotes
So, for the expenditure of SIX TRLLION DOLLARS in one year, we have bought ourselves an economy that is still in recession, which takes us to another Reuters article entitled “Treasury sell off in February highlights ongoing liquidity risk – Fed” by Dan Burns on May 6, 2021, where we had, to wit:
A bruising bond market sell-off earlier this year appears to remain high on the minds of Federal Reserve officials, who in a report on Thursday singled out the event as illustrative of continuing liquidity issues in the $21 trillion U.S. Treasury market.
The Feb. 25 drubbing followed a historically poor auction of 7-year Treasury notes and sent yields surging as market liquidity evaporated in minutes.
The event, coming less than a year after the Fed had to inject $2 trillion into the bond market in the space of about five weeks to keep it from a complete melt down, “highlighted the importance of continued focus on Treasury market resilience,” the Fed said in its semi-annual Financial Stability Report.
end quotes
So, people, whether you like it or not, there is the backdrop to where we are in this nation right now, with Joe Biden wanting to borrow another FOUR TRILLION on top of that SIX TRILLION that has bought us this recession we are still in, which takes us back to giddy Nancy Pelosi on 3 March 2021, where giddy Nancy gushed as fo9llows about Joe Biden, to wit:
He knows how to get the job done.
When our nation faced the Great Recession.
It was Joe Biden, who led the implementation and accountability of ARRA, helping to create and save millions of jobs.
That experience serves him well with the American Rescue Plan.
Joe Biden has been a voice of reason and resilience with a clear path to lead us out of this crisis.
Thank you, Mr. President, for being there and for – with us and for us.
President Biden is a leader who is the personification of hope and courage, values, authenticity and integrity.
Joe Biden is President – as President and with Democratic Majorities in the House and Senate, we will deliver bold progress For The People.
And now it is my privilege to present the [46th] President of the United States, as my children – grandchildren would say, ‘Open Biden,’ Mr. President.
end quotes
To which I say, stay tuned, for more is yet to come in the wake of a Reuters story entitled “Yellen says U.S. debt ceiling could pinch in summer” by Reuters Staff on May 7, 2021, where we had “TOODLES” telling us of what is out ahead, as follows:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday the nation could exhaust its ability to borrow this summer even if Treasury takes “extraordinary actions” to buy more time when the nation’s debt ceiling comes back into effect at the end of July.
end quotes
That sounds like it could cramp Joe Biden’s plans to borrow another FOUR TRILLION, which takes us to a CNBC article entitled “Weak jobs report shows the need for massive jobs and families bills, Biden says” by Christina Wilkie on May 7, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Friday that April’s lower than expected job growth reveals that the U.S. economy is still struggling to recover from the Covid pandemic, and that his massive infrastructure and family support bills are needed now more than ever.
“This month’s job numbers show we are on the right track,” said Biden.
“But we still have a long way to go.”
“My laser focus is on growing the nation’s economy and creating jobs.”
“My laser focus is on vaccinating, and my laser focus is on one more thing: making sure that hard working people in this country are no longer left out in the cold.”
Hours before Biden spoke, the Labor Department reported that hiring slowed dramatically in April, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by a much less than expected 266,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 6.1% amid an escalating shortage of available workers.
end quotes
And there is where we will pick this back up when next we meet.
OH!
Don’t forget that other CNBC article entitled “Fed warns about potential for ‘significant declines’ in asset prices as valuations climb” by Jeff Cox on May 6, 2021, to wit:
Rising asset prices in the stock market and elsewhere are posing increasing threats to the financial system, the Federal Reserve warned in a report Thursday.
The report also mentions risk at hedge funds and other nonbank financial institutions on several occasions as potential threats to the system.
“Vulnerabilities associated with elevated risk appetite are rising.”
“Valuations across a range of asset classes have continued to rise from levels that were already elevated late last year,” Brainard said.
“The combination of stretched valuations with very high levels of corporate indebtedness bear watching because of the potential to amplify the effects of a re-pricing event.”
end quotes
Sounds like we really do need an economical miracle worker now, doesn’t it, people?
So, is Joe Biden that man?
Paul Plante says
America, we are in serious trouble.
And the name of that serious trouble is Joe Biden, a geriatric old fool, with a MESSIAH COMPLEX, which is defined as a state of mind in which an individual, in this case, Joe Biden, holds a belief that he is our savior today,
The term can also refer to a state of mind in which an individual believes that they are responsible for saving or assisting others, which is Joe Biden.
And all the proof we need of that, as if we didn’t already have enough proof with all of Joe’s blather while campaigning about winning the fight for the “SOUL” of America as our MAHDI, our spiritual and temporal leader who will rule before the end of the world and restore religion and justice and triumph over injustice, is in the text of the 28 April 2021 rambling speech Joe made to the Democrats in celebration of Joe lasting 100 days on the job, which speech is seething with logical contradictions and just plain stupid and uninformed statements that sailed right past the assembled Democrats and the media, as well, who fawn on Joe, well, ah, hey, because he is our MESSIAH, and you just do not question MESSIAHS because questioning is an act of disbelief that they are a MESSIAH, which is somebody who is all-knowing, so Joe’s ignorance sails right through unquestioned, which is to our detriment as a people and as a nation.
And let me go right to only one example of many from the text of Joe’s 28 April 2021 speech to the clueless Democrats and fawning media, where we had Joe stating as follows:
We’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century.
end quotes
Now, that right there is a pile of horse**** from out the mouth of Joe Biden, who is full of it, because we are not in a competition with China to win the 21st Century, because there is no such thing as “winning a century.”
But let’s not stop there:
The American Jobs Plan will help millions of people get back to their jobs and their careers.
Jobs.
Jobs.
There’s no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.
end quotes
Uh, right, Joe, a big ten-four on that good buddy.
And you know what, people?
Joe is actually correct there when he says there’s no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing, because we have already been building them here in the USA for years now, as we see by going to the United States Department of Energy website under the heading “Wind Manufacturing and Supply Chain,” where we find as follows:
There are more than 500 U.S. manufacturing facilities specializing in wind components such as blades, towers, and generators, as well as turbine assembly across the country.
In fact, modern wind turbines are increasingly cost effective, reliable, and have scaled up in size to multi-megawatt power ratings.
end quotes
So why is Joe Biden acting like he is going to provide us with something we never had before, when in fact, we already have a mature industry manufacturing these very same things without the need for Joe Biden to make it happen?
MESSIAHS are dangerous, people!
Paul Plante says
Chaos is coming, people!
But let’s not take my word for it.
To get a glimpse of what is out ahead of us, let us go to a CNBC article entitled “Biden urges employers to boost wages but warns workers they’ll lose unemployment pay if they reject jobs” by Jacob Pramuk, where we have the latest from the CULT OF JOE, as follows:
President Joe Biden on Monday urged U.S. companies to boost pay for workers as he outlined the steps his administration is taking to spur hiring after disappointing job creation in April.
end quotes
Now, here, people, is where we are going to pay a price for having put a career politician into the white house who has never held a real job in his life, and so, thinks he can just snap his fingers and order business owners to raise their wages for their employees without any disruptions to their business models or the economy which affects us all.
Bu let’s develop that though further by going back to the story o see what the underlying issues are, to wit:
Biden said the White House does not “see much evidence” that the $300 per week federal unemployment benefit in place until September has deterred people from taking jobs, adding that “Americans want to work.”
end quotes
The white house only sees what Joe Biden wants it to see, because like Joe Stalin before him, our Joe is always right and never wrong, so why look for evidence that could possibly contradict him?
For an alternative view, let’s go to a Reuters article on hat same subject entitled “U.S. hiring takes big step back as businesses scramble for workers, raw materials” by Lucia Mutikani on May 7, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. job growth unexpectedly slowed in April, likely curbed by shortages of workers and raw materials as rapidly improving public health and massive government aid fueled an economic boom.
The Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday, which showed a plunge in temporary help jobs – a harbinger for future hiring – as well as decreases in manufacturing, retail and courier services employment, sparked a heated debate about the generosity of unemployment benefits.
The enhanced jobless benefits, including a government-funded $300 weekly supplement, pay more than most minimum wage jobs.
Labor and input shortages have been well documented by business surveys.
“The employment gain is understated in part because of the generous largess from Washington,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
“Short-staffed restaurant owners are working overtime, truck drivers are impossible to find even after a hefty increase in hourly wages and loading docks at warehouses are keeping trucks idle as there aren’t enough workers.”
end quotes
That, of course, is all the evidence that the white house doesn’t see because Joe Biden doesn’t believe it, as we see by going back to Reuters, as follows:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the government to scrap the weekly unemployment subsidy, but the White House dismissed complaints the generous unemployment checks were causing worker shortages.
“It’s clear that there are people who are not ready and able to go back into the labor force,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
“I don’t think the addition to unemployment compensation is really the factor that is making a difference.”
end quotes
As was the case with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union, the only person in the United States of America who is always right while everybody else who disagrees with him is always wrong is Joe Biden, and there we have his treasury secretary and CULT CHEERLEADER Janet “TOODLES” Yellen making that point incandescently clear.
Getting back to the CNBC story, it continues as follows:
The president put the onus on employers who have accepted federal relief to offer good pay, protect workers from the virus and encourage vaccination so Americans feel comfortable taking jobs.
“My expectation is that as our economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.
“And if they do, they’ll find plenty of workers.”
end quotes
Good old goofy Joe Biden, going by his “feelings,” there, what his “gut” tells him has to be true, which takes us back to Reuters, as follows:
With workers scarce, employers boosted wages and increased hours for employees.
Average hourly earnings jumped 0.7% after dipping 0.1% in March.
The average workweek rose 0.1 hour to 35 hours.
end quotes
So there we see employers are already raising wages, because they have to, to compete with he federal government who is paying people good money to say home and watch NetFlics, instead.
Getting back to CNBC for more essential background, since this story is just getting going and is far from concluding, we have:
The report Friday raised questions about how companies can entice workers in a reopening economy and what role the government should play in encouraging hiring.
Biden downplayed the slow growth, saying the economy is “moving in the right direction.”
end quotes
And that’s it, people, right there is all we need to know – Joe Biden, the all-knowing, all-seeing MESSIAH of America, our MAHDI, says the economy is “moving in the right direction,” and so it must be, because Joe said so, and Joe is infallible.
Paul Plante says
And here, as we consider that our own Joe Biden is always right, and never wrong, I would like to go back for a moment to Nikita Khrushchev’s Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. on the Cult of the Individual, or Cult of Personality surrounding Joe Stalin delivered on February 24-25, 1956, where we have the similarities between the two “leaders,” Joe Stalin and our own Joe Biden, described as follows:
Khrushchev: I will allow myself in this connection to bring out one characteristic fact which illustrates how Stalin directed operations at the fronts.
end quotes
In our case, of course, we are looking at the same essential thing – Joe Biden single-handedly directing efforts at his war on pretty much everything at his point, including our economy, which is where my emphasis is in this thread, which takes us back to Khrushchev, to wit:
Present at this Congress is Marshal [Ivan] Bagramyan, who was once the head of operations in the Southwestern Front Headquarters and who can corroborate what I will tell you.
When an exceptionally serious situation for our Army developed in the Kharkov region in 1942, we correctly decided to drop an operation whose objective was to encircle the city.
The real situation at that time would have threatened our Army with fatal consequences if this operation were continued.
We communicated this to Stalin, stating that the situation demanded changes in our operational plans so that the enemy would be prevented from liquidating a sizable concentration of our Army.
Contrary to common sense, Stalin rejected our suggestion.
end quotes
That is Joe Biden rejecting the word of people who are more expert in he in such things saying that so long as Joe Biden is paying people to stay home, they are not going to look for work, because in his “gut,” where his thinking brain is located, Joe knows different, which takes us back to Khrushchev and Joe Stalin, to wit:
He issued the order to continue the encirclement of Kharkov, despite the fact that at this time many of our own Army concentrations actually were threatened with encirclement and liquidation.
I telephoned to Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky and begged him: “Alexander Mikhailovich, take a map” – Vasilevsky is present here – “and show comrade Stalin the situation that has developed.”
We should note that Stalin planned operations on a globe.
Yes, comrades, he used to take a globe and trace the front line on it.
I said to comrade Vasilevsky: “Show him the situation on a map.”
“In the present situation we cannot continue the operation which was planned.”
“The old decision must be changed for the good of the cause.”
Vasilevsky replied, saying that Stalin had already studied this problem.
He said that he, Vasilevsky, would not see Stalin further concerning this matter, because the latter didn’t want to hear any arguments on the subject of this operation.
end quotes
Just as today, our own Joe Biden doesn’t want to hear any arguments on his grandiose and foolhardy plans for our economy, which takes us back to Khrushchev, to wit:
After my talk with Vasilevsky, I telephoned to Stalin at his dacha.
But Stalin did not answer the phone and Malenkov was at the receiver.
I told comrade Malenkov that I was calling from the front and that I wanted to speak personally to Stalin.
Stalin informed me through Malenkov that I should speak with Malenkov.
I stated for the second time that I wished to inform Stalin personally about the grave situation which had arisen for us at the front.
But Stalin did not consider it convenient to pick up the phone and again stated that I should speak to him through Malenkov, although he was only a few steps from the telephone.
After “listening” in this manner to our plea, Stalin said: “Let everything remain as it is!”
And what was the result of this?
The worst we had expected.
The Germans surrounded our Army concentrations and as a result the Kharkov counterattack lost hundreds of thousands of our soldiers.
This is Stalin’s military “genius.”
This is what it cost us.
On one occasion after the war, during a meeting between Stalin and members of the Politbiuro, Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan mentioned that Khrushchev must have been right when he telephoned concerning the Kharkov operation and that it was unfortunate that his suggestion had not been accepted.
You should have seen Stalin’s fury!
How could it be admitted that he, Stalin, had not been right!
He is after all a “genius,” and a genius cannot help but be right!
Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never erred, that he was always right.
He never acknowledged to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made more than a few in matters of theory and in his practical activity.
end quotes
Which brings us to an article in The Hill by Arthur Laffer, an economist and president of Laffer Associates who was an economic adviser to Presidents Reagan and Trump, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019, and Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at FreedomWorks and an economic adviser to the Trump campaign and White House entitled “‘Borrow-and-spend’ stimulus bill is a fiscal monstrosity” on 12/22/20, where we had as follows on that subject of people not working because Joe Biden is paying them to stay home, which Joe Biden denies, to wit:
The 5,000-page, $900 billion fiscal “stimulus” legislation passed by Congress on Monday is not a jobs bill, and it will do far more short- and long-term damage to the U.S. economy than good.
Why is it that “bipartisanship” in Washington these days means that Republicans and Democrats agree to spend and borrow?
Fiscal conservatives in Congress should have rejected this debt bill.
One of the worst features of the bill is the $300-a-week supplemental unemployment benefit (raised by only $25 in the 2009 recession under President Obama) which will deter work and reduce employment by as much as 3 million jobs, according to a study by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan.
Half of all unemployed workers will receive more money in unemployment benefits and food stamps than they would earn for working.
This is, in reality, an anti-employment measure.
The $600 checks — free cash! — to Americans are simply a form of “helicopter money” that redistributes income and reduces the rewards for working and producing.
end quotes
And there for the moment, I will rest.
Paul Plante says
And while we are on the subject of CHAOS COMING in here, people, now that the nation has been so stupid as to turn total control of our national government over to the Democrats, which is a serious sign of the decline in the mental health of the voters of this nation, for further background to help us understand where the CULT OF JOE is taking us to, let us go to a Washington Post article by Steven Pearlstein, a Post economics and business columnist who is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, which article is entitled “In Democrats’ progressive paradise, borrowing is free, spending pays for itself, and interest rates never rise” on March 3, 2021, where we meet the BRAVE NEW WORLD being ushered in by the CULT OF JOE, to wit:
Welcome, fellow Americans, to the era of the free lunch.
end quoes
Of course, Joe Biden would dispute that, that he is handing out free lunches, so let’s go back for more to see where the author is taking us to, as follows:
To hear it from liberal economists, progressive activists and Democratic politicians, there is no longer any limit to how much money government can borrow and spend and print.
In this new economy, we no longer have to worry that stock prices might climb so high, or companies take on so much debt, that a financial crisis might ensue.
In this world without trade-offs, we can shut down the fossil fuel industry and transition to a zero-carbon economy without any risk to employment and economic growth.
Nor is there any amount of infrastructure investment that could possibly exceed the capacity of the construction industry to absorb it.
Rest assured that the economy won’t miss a beat no matter how high or fast the minimum wage is raised.
And whatever benefits are required by the always-struggling middle class can be financed by raising taxes on big corporations and the undeserving rich.
So party on, progressive dudes.
end quotes
Does that remind anyone of the 1920’s in this country, or the failed Weimar Republic in Germany after WWI with its famous hyper-inflation that had a loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 costing 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923?
Getting back to the Washington Post article, it continues as follows:
Worries about debt and inflation are just so 20th-century, the figments of a now-discredited neoliberal imagination.
We have entered a magical world where borrowing is costless, spending pays for itself, stocks only rise and the dollar never falls.
end quotes
Today, the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY had the Dow falling 681.50 points.
Getting back to he article:
In this economic paradise, government mandarins can fine-tune the economy to prevent inflation and unemployment, while economic, racial, environmental and social justice can be achieved without any painful trade-offs.
end quotes
And that is really what this thread is about, right there – can the Biden-esque government mandarins really fine-tune our economy to prevent inflation and unemployment, while economic, racial, environmental and social justice can be achieved without any painful trade-offs?
Because if they can’t, then we are in some serious trouble as a nation and as a people, because the CULT OF JOE, having painted itself into a corner with a bunch of promises to the cult members, is now incapable of believing otherwise, which takes us back to the Washington Post, as follows:
It is undoubtedly true, for example, that in a globalized economy, the United States is less susceptible to inflation-inducing capacity constraints or a crowding-out of private borrowing by government borrowing.
But that doesn’t mean that the government can borrow and spend an extra $10 trillion on covid relief, infrastructure and climate investments without running a serious risk of overheating the economy.
end quotes
That as Reuters reported on May 10, 2021 that the materials sector of the stock market hit a record high as miners and makers of steel products gained after gold, copper and aluminum scaled new peaks.
Getting back to the article:
Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has learned that it could avert financial panic and global depression by printing dollars and using them to buy government and corporate bonds.
But what we should also have learned is that running the printing press at full tilt for years after the initial crisis has passed creates giant credit and investment bubbles that will burst at the first hint that the bond-buying is about to end.
All this borrowing and money-printing also risks triggering a run on the dollar and demands from foreign investors for higher interest payments on the $1 trillion they lend us each year just to maintain our current standard of living.
Just because these things haven’t happened yet doesn’t mean that they won’t.
And when they do, the unwinding will be swift and painful.
My purpose in walking through this analysis is to point out that this is the kind of discussion that the country and Congress should be having at this moment — and that many of us hoped would happen with the arrival of a moderate, dealmaking president.
But what we have been treated to instead are mindless talking points (“Go Big”) politically inspired lines in the sand ($1.9 trillion in stimulus, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, $1,400 rebates) and transparently partisan proposals to reward the Democratic base, buy off White working-class voters and avenge the partisan outrages of the Trump era.
Instead of bringing a polarized country together after a narrow election victory, Democrats seem determined to spike the football in the end zone.
It is disappointing, of course, that Democrats have embraced some of the same intellectual dishonesty, and the same all-or-nothing strategy, that they rightfully criticized when the Republicans were doing it.
But what is equally disappointing is the performance my colleagues in the media, who relentlessly and heroically exposed the lies and exaggeration and false narratives of the Trump era but have suddenly lost their critical eye.
The extensive coverage of the $1.9 trillion relief package, for example, has been full of all the usual talking points and political posturing but has contained little about how these vast sums were arrived at or how the money would actually be distributed and spent.
Rare is the story these days that does not highlight how “progressives” feel about an issue, with nary a mention of what moderates or business leaders have to say.
Where is the three-Pinocchio skepticism when the chair of the Federal Reserve assures that there is no connection between skyrocketing values for tech stocks and bitcoin and his pledge to continue pumping an additional $120 billion a month into the financial system?
And when was it decided that every economic issue or business practice is best viewed through the lens of race and gender?
end quotes
Existential questions for our times, indeed!
Paul Plante says
And here, as we develop necessary background to understand better the peril the CULT OF JOE represents to our future as a nation and as a people, let us go back for a moment to the Washington Post article by Steven Pearlstein, a Post economics and business columnist who is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, entitled “In Democrats’ progressive paradise, borrowing is free, spending pays for itself, and interest rates never rise” on March 3, 2021, where we have the following to consider, to wit:
My purpose in walking through this analysis is to point out that this is the kind of discussion that the country and Congress should be having at this moment — and that many of us hoped would happen with the arrival of a moderate, dealmaking president.
end quotes
Except outside of here at the Cape Charles Mirror, the “country,” i.e., we, the people, are cut right out of any discussions about our collective future which the Democrats have placed firmly in the hands of Joe Biden, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
But what we have been treated to instead are mindless talking points (“Go Big”) politically inspired lines in the sand ($1.9 trillion in stimulus, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, $1,400 rebates) and transparently partisan proposals to reward the Democratic base, buy off White working-class voters and avenge the partisan outrages of the Trump era.
end quotes
And thanks to the GRAND PALLADIUM OF LIBERTY that is the Cape Charles Mirror, we, the people can take those mindless talking points and subject them to rigorous examination to expose them for the Democrat BULL**** they really are, which again takes us back to that article, to wit:
But what is equally disappointing is the performance my colleagues in the media, who relentlessly and heroically exposed the lies and exaggeration and false narratives of the Trump era but have suddenly lost their critical eye.
end quotes
Ah, yes, the CULT OF JOE emerges.
Yesterday, a friend who makes it a point to watch both liberal and conservative talk shows tuned into MSNBC yesterday morning to some panel discussion where the subject was Joe’s approval rating, and the host asked the panelists, some six of them, I believe, if any of them could say anything negative about Joe’s performance to date, and they couldn’t, because, people, as Nancy Pelosi says, and she is a high-ranking United States government official, so she would know this better than any of us common folks, we are blessed to have Joe Biden as president, and when you are blessed with someone like Joe, you find nothing about them to criticize, lest you be labeled as a heretic, and who in their right mind wants to be labeled as one of them?
Getting back to that story:
The extensive coverage of the $1.9 trillion relief package, for example, has been full of all the usual talking points and political posturing but has contained little about how these vast sums were arrived at or how the money would actually be distributed and spent.
end quotes
Which is the motivation for this thread – to delve into how these vast sums were arrived at and how the money would actually be distributed and spent.
Going back to this bit of truth from that article we have:
Rare is the story these days that does not highlight how “progressives” feel about an issue, with nary a mention of what moderates or business leaders have to say.
end quotes
Yes, people, it is about feelings today, not facts.
Facts are complicated, feelings are not, so to the “progressives,” how they “feel” about something is what is all important, facts be damned.
Which takes us in turn to a Reuters article entitled “TREASURIES-U.S. yields climb as CPI data stokes inflation worry” by Chuck Mikolajczak on May 12, 2021, as follows:
On Wednesday, Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida said it will be “some time” before the U.S. economy is healed enough for the Federal Reserve to consider pulling back its crisis levels of support and he expects the rise in prices to be temporary.
end quotes
“Crisis” levels of support, people?
Can he really be serious that it will be “some time” before the U.S. economy is healed enough for the Federal Reserve to consider pulling back its crisis levels of support?
SIX TRILLION dollars have been pumped into the economy in the last year by the federal government and the CULT OF JOE wants to pump in a couple of trillion more, and still it will be “some time” before the U.S. economy is healed enough for the Federal Reserve to consider pulling back its crisis levels of support?
WTF is up with that?
Paul Plante says
And while we continue to ponder which way Joe Biden is taking this country, and where all the money is going, let’s go to a Business Insider articke entitled “The Biden administration moved more than $2 billion earmarked for COVID measures to deal with the influx of migrants at the border” by Yelena Dzhanova on 16 May 2021, where we learn as follows:
The Biden administration is funneling more than $2 billion toward the care of migrant children by and along the southern border, Politico reported.
That money had originally been earmarked to go toward various measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, according to Politico.
end quotes
And here is a thing about Joe Biden as a Stalin-esque type of dictator – those earmarks mean exactly nothing, because as a dictator, it is Joe that makes the decisions on how our tax dollars are to be spent, not Congress, so it is okay in Joe’s mind for him to divert money meant by Congress to protect the health of the American people over to dealing with the mess his immigration policies have made at the southern border, which takes us back to the story, as follows:
The Department of Health and Human Services said $850 million will come from funds originally intended to expand testing for COVID-19, Politico reported.
Another $850 million will be taken out of a fund set aside to help the country rebuild its emergency stockpile of medical items like masks, respirators, and gloves.
The Strategic National Stockpile is meant to support the country as it deals with an emergency, but the pandemic has basically emptied it.
Another $436 million coming from various health initiatives will also be diverted to support children at the border, according to Politico.
end quotes
So much for protecting the American people.
So, let’s go back to that story to see what the mess Joe Biden has created at the southern border looks like in real life:
At the US-Mexico border, there’s been an influx of migrants seeking entrance to the US and fleeing unfavorable or difficult conditions in their home countries.
In response to the surge, the Biden administration opened several temporary federal shelters, and as of early May, Us officials are holding about 22,500 unaccompanied children.
There’s concern that officials have struggled to adequately care for these migrant children.
There are reports, for example, that say migrant children are not receiving enough food or appropriate mental health care.
Earlier this year, the public got a first look inside the facility after a Congressional representative leaked photos to the media.
One facility showed adults and children sitting in what appeared to be makeshift rooms separating out groups of people.
Each room was cordoned off by what looks like a plastic enclosure, drawing comparisons to jail cells.
Dozens of masked children can be seen lying down on gray mats.
Some were crowded into corners, despite the threat of the coronavirus spreading.
Others appeared to sit on the floor.
Such conditions have caused lawmakers and human-rights experts to sound the alarms and argue that migrant children should have better treatment upon crossing the border.
HHS did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment.
end quotes
And who is surprised by that lack of comment.
Certainly not I.
Paul Plante says
Chaos is coming, people, and it’s name is Joe Biden!
And to flesh that thought out ma bit more, let us first go back to the full transcript from President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, where we have Joe blathering away about things he doesn’t know about and doesn’t understand, to wit:
Tonight, I come to talk about crisis — and opportunity.
About rebuilding our nation — and revitalizing our democracy.
And winning the future for America.
end quotes
Yes, people, sing hallelujah and say amen, because we are saved – Joe Biden is here and he is going to win the future for America, because of how much our Joe loves us, which takes us back to that transcript as follows:
For me, when I think about climate change, I think jobs.
Electrical workers installing 500,000 charging stations along our highways.
end quotes
Keeping that thought in mind about those 500,00 charging stations Joe Biden is going to install all across America, because that thought is essential to understanding the brick wall Joe Biden is going to slam us into face first, let us next go to a story in The Hill entitled “Governors pressure Biden to nationally phase out gas, diesel cars – A dozen states are calling on the president to phase in zero-emission vehicles” by Christian Spencer on April 30, 2021, where we learn further about the future Joe Biden is going to create, as follows:
Governors from across the country are calling on President Biden to take federal action to ensure that all new cars and trucks sold are zero-emission by no later than 2035.
The Biden administration could set vehicle admission standards under the Clean Air Act that only the electric cars could meet, The Guardian reports.
Biden already shares the same sentiment with the governors.
“[There’s] no reason why American workers can’t lead the world in the production of electric vehicles and batteries,” the president said.
Biden’s plans on ushering in new innovative ways to expand renewable energy and electric vehicles, which he promises will bring in millions of new jobs.
end quotes
And that then takes us to a CBS News story entitled “Biden says ‘the future of the auto industry is electric’ at Ford plant” by Kathryn Watson on May 18, 2021, to wit:
Dearborn, Michigan — President Biden traveled Tuesday to Dearborn, Michigan, to visit Ford’s electric vehicle plant as his administration continues to push for alternative forms of energy and transportation.
“The future of the auto industry is electric.”
“There’s no turning back,” Mr. Biden said in remarks from the auto plant, known as the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.
end quotes
And in one of those cosmic confluences of events associated with the Cape Charles Mirror, that thought brings me back to the Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. of Nikita Khrushchev on February 24-25, 1956, as follows:
You see what Stalin’s mania for greatness led to.
He completely lost consciousness of reality.
end quotes
Getting back to that story, it continues, thusly:
Mr. Biden has aligned himself with unions, and is pushing his multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package, known as the American Jobs Plan.
“Right now, China is leading in this race, make no bones about it,” Mr. Biden said about the production of electric vehicles.
“They will not win this race.”
“We can’t let them.”
Mr. Biden denounced the Trump administration for not focusing enough on development of electric vehicles, or on shoring up the nation’s infrastructure.
“They announced infrastructure week!” Mr. Biden said.
“And they announced it, and announced it, and announced it, and announced it — every week for four years.”
“Didn’t do a damn thing.”
“They didn’t get the job done.”
In a fact sheet released Tuesday morning, the White House said the president’s American Jobs Plan would “accelerate our domestic EV industry by driving demand for advanced cars and trucks, reinvigorating our automotive sector and battery manufacturing, deploying a national network of chargers, and advancing our innovation capacity for the next generation of technology.”
end quotes
And with that as necessary background, before proceeding with the analysis, let me pause here for that to all sink in, and let me leave you with this thought – how long does it take to refill an electric car?
And haven’t we been here before with Joe Biden?
Anyone recall the name Fisker?
Doers anyone recall that in 2009, the Obama-Biden administration agreed to pump $500 million of taxpayer stimulus cash into a foreign automotive company, Fisker, to make cars in the vice president’s home state of Delaware?
And when their green-energy boondoggle went belly up, zero cars had been manufactured in the United States — despite the hefty cost footed by America.
Fisker was awarded $528 million in federal loans to build luxurious looking, environmentally friendly automobiles in America — despite having never sold a car.
The grant was given by the Department of Energy and celebrated by Secretary Steven Chu who declared that thousands of jobs would be created.
And interestingly, bankruptcy documents related to the Fisker failure curiously listed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, as a creditor to the automaker.
Fisker was later purchased at auction by Wanxiang, a Chinese conglomerate, after being “enticed” by Fisker creditors.
Wanxiang also has ties to Hunter Biden: The foreign company had invested $1.25 billion into a different company that was a client of Seneca Advisors, Hunter’s consulting firm.
Wheels within wheels, people!
So who will benefit from this latest Biden BOONDOGGLE?
Hunter Biden?
Paul Plante says
And while we are on that specific subject of Joe electrifying the highways of America to realize his and John Kerry’s dream of laying America low by banning all internal combustion engines on the highways of America, let us go to an Oilprice.com article entitled “18% Of EV Drivers In California Switched Back To Gasoline Cars” by Irina Slav on May 03, 2021, to see where this is all headed with Joe Biden’s promise to install 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations all across America, as if that is going to solve any problems that John Kerry and Joe Biden, neither of whom has ever held gainful employment in their lives that would tend to give them insight into the folly they are going to precipitate in the name of “GO GREEN AS HARD AND FAST AS YOU CAN AND DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES,” to wit:
Close to a fifth of all EV drivers in California have switched back to gasoline cars because charging their electric cars was a hassle, according to a new study bound to send ripples across an industry that has plans for market domination.
end quotes
Which takes us back to my existential question above of exactly how long does it take to fill up the tank of an electric vehicle, versus a car powered by gas, which maybe would take what, five or ten minutes at the most?
Getting back to that article, we have:
The study from the University of California, published in Nature Energy, looked at drivers who bought EVs between 2012 and 2018 and found that 18 percent of battery electric vehicle buyers switched back to gasoline-powered cars, as did 20 percent of plug-in hybrid buyers.
The main problem cited by respondents to the surveys that the authors conducted was with charging times.
end quotes
Yes, people, “charging times!”
So how about that?
Because electric cars do not have a tank that can be conveniently filled, like a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, they have a battery, that like any battery, takes some time to recharge, or “fill,” if you like.
So when you are on the road and pull in to one of Joe Biden’s charging stations, you are going to be there for more than five or ten minutes, so bring some water to drink and a lunch, which takes us back to that article, as follows:
Insider, in a report on the study, quoted Bloomberg’s car analyst Kevin Tinan as explaining that he had just tested a Mustang Mach-E.
It had charged — in a household outlet — at a rate of just 3 miles of range per hour.
This makes just 36 miles of range for overnight charging, Tinan noted.
end quotes
So there you are, people, you, the kids, the family dog, on the road to see America, and every twelve hours of recharging your battery, you can make it another thirty-six miles down the road, and how you keep the kids and dog amused while that is happening is a mystery to me.
Maybe Joe will build motels by each charging station so at least people will have a place to stay while waiting for their car to recharge.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, afterall, says Joe, which takes us back to that article, to wit:
The technicalities of EV charging rarely make the headlines, and the reason is that they are a bit inconvenient for EV proponents.
If you buy an EV that you use every day, you won’t be able to do it by charging it at home.
The reason is that household outlets give out some 120 volts of power, which makes for the aforementioned rate of charging.
Public charging points, in comparison, put out 240 volts, which means faster charging.
Then there are Tesla’s Superchargers, which give out 480 volts.
Yet even with a Supercharger, it would take an hour to “fill up” an EV battery.
This compares to just a handful of minutes to fill up a gasoline-powered vehicle.
What’s more, according to the study from the University of California, two-thirds of EV drivers didn’t use public charging stations, although the reasons for this were not specified.
Such studies don’t bode well for the future of EVs.
The Biden administration — and the state of California — have superambitious plans for EV adoption, and so have all big carmakers.
But studies such as the one from nature Energy suggest success may not be as certain as some would like it to be.
Car dealers are already aware of that: a recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted EVs still make up a tiny minority of total car sales and cited one car dealer as saying, “The consumer in the middle of America just isn’t there yet.”
Paul Plante says
And while we ponder these 500,000 charging stations Joe Biden is going to install all across America as he and John Kerry electrify America’s highways while doing away with internal combustion engines, consider that at present, the national highway system consists of 160,955 miles of highways, and there are approximately 4,071,000 miles of roads in the United States, 2,678,000 miles paved and 1,394,000 miles unpaved, while the number of registered vehicles in the US in 2020 was 286.9 million, so Joe Biden’s charging stations are going to be few and far between.
As to how far the best electric vehicles can go before needing a recharge, here is what we have to date:
Top 10 longest-range electric cars
Mercedes EQS: 479 miles.
Tesla Model S Long Range: 412 miles.
Tesla Model S Plaid: 390 miles.
BMW iX xDrive50: 373 miles.
Ford Mustang Mach E Extended Range RWD: 370 miles.
BMW i4: 366 miles.
Tesla Model 3 Long Range: 360 miles.
Tesla Model X Long Range Plus: 348 miles.
end quotes
So Joe Biden is going to have to have a charging station for these cars every 300 miles or so, all across America.
500,000 charging stations therefore sounds like a low number compared to what would truly be needed if every car with an internal combustion engine were replaced by an electric car.
And where are John and Joe getting all that power from the operate all these charging stations, presumably at 480 volts?
From windmills and solar farms?
As to the Mercedes EQS, the automaker did not release pricing for the EQS, however industry experts expect it to easily top $100,000, which makes that a real stunning number for the middle class dude on the rise to own as a status symbol.
And the Tesla Model S Long Range is a real steal at only $79,990, while the Tesla Model S Plaid can be yours for only $119,990!
And set to arrive on our shores in early 2022, the BMW iX xDrive50 model will start at around $85,000, which is a bargain at twice the price, for you cost-conscious people out there keeping an eye on how you spend a buck, and if you are feeling a bit strapped for cash, the BMW i4 can be had for about $50,000, which is mere chicken feed when you think about it, making that a poor man’s BMW, but a BMW none the less.
And another car for the masses of poor folks in America is the Ford Mustang Mach E Extended Range RWD starting at $42,895, but as low as $35,395 after Federal Tax Credit.
So there we have it, people.
There is what the future is starting to look like as Joe and John carry out their plans to have everybody in America driving an electric vehicle.
Paul Plante says
Chaos is coming, people!
Yes, it is!
Consider this recent report from the University of Michigan “Suurveys of Consumers” by chief economist, Richard Curtin, to wit:
Consumer confidence in early May tumbled due to higher inflation–the highest expected year-ahead inflation rate as well as the highest long term inflation rate in the past decade.
Rising inflation also meant that real income expectations were the weakest in five years.
Policy commitments to establish full employment while allowing inflation to meaningfully rise have never been attempted with the additional micro goals of equity and fairness across population subgroups.
end quotes
Focus on that last sentence in there for a moment, where it states that “policy commitments” to establish full employment while allowing inflation to meaningfully rise have never been attempted with the additional micro goals of equity and fairness across population subgroups.
They are talking there about the federal reserve allowing inflation to “run hot” for years until every LGBQT and person of color has a well-paying job of their choice, as if the miracle workers and divines of the federal reserve could actually make that happen.
And in the meantime, what has inflation brought us?
How about this:
Sales at clothing stores tumbled 5.1%.
There were also decreases in sales at sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores.
Sales at building material stores slipped 0.4%.
Online retail sales fell 0.6%.
Sales at furniture stores dropped 0.7%.
end quotes
Does anyone out there remember what caused the Great Depression?
And no, people, it wasn’t the stock market crash, as if the stock market could crash all on its own.
What caused to stock market to crash was consumerism.
As is the case today, the economy back then was based on cheap credit, so that people could buy consumer goods that they couldn’t otherwise afford.
And when tariffs caused prices to rise, people stopped buying and the result was massive debts not being paid off and that in turn led to the stock market crash.
And let’s go to a Business Insider article entitled “The White House offers to cut infrastructure plan down to $1.7 trillion” by Juliana Kaplan and Ayelet Sheffey on 21 May 2021, where we have the latest from the CULT OF JOE, as follows:
President Joe Biden has offered to cut down the cost of his infrastructure plan — the so-called American Jobs Plan. — from $2.25 trillion to $1.7 trillion, presenting a counteroffer to Republicans on Friday.
The offer did not address the $1.7 trillion American Families Plan, which is largely focused on care-economy measures, so the initial $4.1 trillion combination of packages would now come to about $3.2 trillion.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that officials including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo offered up the reduced package.
“In our view, this is the art of seeking common ground,” Psaki said.
Psaki said that funding for broadband was reduced to match that of Republicans, and proposed funding for roads, bridges, and major projects was also reduced to be more in line with senators’ proposals.
Investments in research and development, supply chains, manufacturing, and small businesses will be shifted into different legislative pushes.
However, the White House said it will continue to push for funding for critical transportation infrastructure, especially rail.
Psaki also said the White House planned to reiterate the president’s unwillingness to raise taxes on Americans making under $400,000, such as through a gas tax and user fees.
“He believes that the extraordinarily wealthy, that companies — many of whom have not paid taxes in recent years — can afford a modest increase to pay for middle class jobs,” Psaki said.
end quotes
Except inflation is really a tax, people, and it is being levied on Americans making under $400,000, which not surprisingly makes Jen Psaki, the bobble-head with the waving hands who is the mouthpiece for Joe Biden, out to be either uninformed, ignorant or a liar.
As to inflation as a tax, let us go to The Library of Economics and Liberty and the article entitled “Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes” by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner, in Part III. What Can Be Done?, Chapter 11 – What about Full Employment?, to wit:
Biting the Bullet
A policy of attempting to reduce unemployment through the stimulation of aggregate demand is shortsighted in a situation that is not structurally abnormal (such as the 1930s).
Unemployment may be reduced temporarily, but the inflation will exacerbate the maladjustments contained within the economy.
There is no costless cure for a maladjusted economy.
Reallocations of capital and labor must take place before the economy’s structure of production will once again reflect the underlying data to which a free economy adapts.
The mistakes that result from people responding to the false signals generated by inflation must be worked out before the economy can return fully to normalcy.
Recession is an inherent part of the recovery process; it is the economic analogue to a hangover for a nation that is drunk from Keynesian stimulation.
To attempt to maintain “full employment” is an act of delusion.
The readjustments can be postponed, though with ever-increasing difficulty, but they cannot be prevented, at least within the context of a free society.
The inflation-unemployment spiral that results from shortsighted efforts at demand stimulation will simply increase the dissonance between people’s aspirations and their realizations.
As a result, democratic institutions become more fragile.
In Britain in the late 1970s, where the policy dilemma has been even more severe than that of the United States, there has been widespread discussion of the prospects of calling in some “leader,” empowered to deal effectively with the issues, reflecting a yearning that emerges when people lose their faith in the ability of ordinary democratic process to produce meaningful patterns of economic and social existence.
The Employment Act of 1946, one of our legacies from Lord Keynes, may come to be regarded as one of the more destructive pieces of legislation in our national history.
This act pledges the government to do something it cannot possibly do, at least so long as our underlying fiscal and monetary institutions are themselves the primary source of instability.
And if fiscal and monetary sources of instability were removed, there should be no need for an Employment Act.
The political system is burdened with claims on which it cannot possibly deliver, at least within the context of a nonregimented society.
The act has an inflationary bias, a bias that, as Joseph Schumpeter noted with remarkable perceptiveness and frightening prescience, can ultimately topple a liberal, democratic civil order.
end quotes
So, will it?
Stay tuned!
Paul Plante says
And before we go further forward in here, let us go back for a moment to these few sentences from The Library of Economics and Liberty article entitled “Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes” by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner, in Part III. What Can Be Done?, Chapter 11 – What about Full Employment?, to wit:
The Employment Act of 1946, one of our legacies from Lord Keynes, may come to be regarded as one of the more destructive pieces of legislation in our national history.
This act pledges the government to do something it cannot possibly do, at least so long as our underlying fiscal and monetary institutions are themselves the primary source of instability.
The political system is burdened with claims on which it cannot possibly deliver, at least within the context of a nonregimented society.
end quotes
And tighten your focus onto the phrase “cannot possibly deliver, at least within the context of a nonregimented society,” and then ask yourself exactly what a “nonregimented society” is in the context of the United States of America and Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and the $1.7 trillion American Families Plan, which is largely focused on care-economy measures.
Where the federal reserve in conjunction with the Biden administration is making policy commitments to establish full employment while allowing inflation to meaningfully rise with the additional micro goals of equity and fairness across population subgroups, can that be accomplished in a “nonregimented society?”
And that answer is no.
And that thought takes me back to Nikita Khrushchev and his Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. on February 24-25, 1956 on the CULT OF PERSONALITY as follows:
Comrades: The cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person.
end quotes
Are we seeing the same thing today in the United States of America as THE CULT OF JOE tries to achieve monstrous size chiefly because Joe Biden himself, using all conceivable methods to support the glorification of his own person?
Think about it.
Getting back to Joe Stalin, we have:
This is supported by numerous facts.
One of the most characteristic examples of Stalin’s self-glorification and of his lack of even elementary modesty is the edition of his Short Biography, which was published in 1948 (sic).
This book is an expression of the most dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a godhead, of transforming him into an infallible sage, “the greatest leader, sublime strategist of all times and nations.”
Finally, no other words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens.
end quotes
Do we today have before us in the case of Joe Biden another example of making a man into a godhead, of transforming him into an infallible sage, “the greatest leader, sublime strategist of all times and nations?”
I believe Joe Biden would say, “you’re damn right, so come on, man and clap your hands for me!”
Going back to Joe Stalin, once again, we have:
We need not give here examples of the loathesome adulation filling this book.
All we need to add is that they all were approved and edited by Stalin personally.
Some of them were added in his own handwriting to the draft text of the book.
What did Stalin consider essential to write into this book?
Did he want to cool the ardor of the flatterers who were composing his Short Biography?
No!
He marked the very places where he thought that the praise of his services was insufficient.
Here are some examples characterizing Stalin’s activity, added in Stalin’s own hand:
“In this fight against the skeptics and capitulators, the Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites and Kamenevites, there was definitely welded together, after Lenin’s death, that leading core of the Party… that upheld the great banner of Lenin, rallied the Party behind Lenin’s behests, and brought the Soviet people onto the broad paths of industrializing the country and collectivizing the rural economy.”
“The leader of this core and the guiding force of the Party and the state was comrade Stalin.”
Thus writes Stalin himself!
Then he adds:
“Although he performed his tasks as leader of the Party and the people with consummate skill, and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation.”
end quotes
And doesn’t that sound very much like what Joe Biden would say about himself today?
Paul Plante says
Chaos is coming, people!
And insanity.
Check out either Lowe’s or Home Depot for a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood sheathing and you will find it going for $78.
Yes, people, that is correct – $78 for something that was $48 a year ago, which itself was already expensive.
And that is an actual price, regardless of what the morons and idiots in the Biden administration or the federal reserve are saying about inflation, such as Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard in the Reuters story “Fed’s Brainard says she expects pricing pressures to subside over time” on May 24, 2021, where we have a real good glimpse into the insanity coming, thanks to the monetary policy of the federal reserve, to wit:
The recent inflation spike seen in some areas of the economy should settle down after prices recover from the lows reached at the start of the pandemic and temporary imbalances between supply and demand are addressed, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard said on Monday.
end quotes
Now, run that sentence around in your mind for a moment, keeping in mind that right now, if you go to either Lowe’s or Home Depot for one 4’x8′ sheet of 3/4 inch plywood, the price you are going to pay is $78, or almost twice what it was a year ago.
So what “inflation spike” is Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard talking about, and does she even know?
Like asking George Bush back when how much a quart of milk cost, as if American presidents actually go out to the market like normal people to buy bread or milk, which for a moment takes us back in time to a BBC story entitled “Should politicians know the price of a pint of milk?” by Vanessa Barford published 24 April 2012, as follows:
A Tory MP has described David Cameron and George Osborne as “two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk”.
But why is knowing the price of milk so important?
It’s a classical political ambush that has been popular on both sides of the Atlantic for decades.
Politicians, constantly primed to deal with detailed questions on policy, personnel or principles, are instead asked the price of something.
But it’s not the price of the new fighter jet or flagship hospital – instead it’s a stamp, a loaf of bread or, most of all, a pint of milk.
In 1992, US President George H W Bush, was forced to admit he did not know how much a gallon of milk cost during a debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
Another American to suffer a similar reality check was Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who was rumbled while on the campaign trail in Alabama.
He managed to underestimate the cost by about 50%.
But why should the price of milk be a classic measure of being in touch with reality?
end quotes
My goodness, why indeed?
Why should politicians know how much is costs the masses to eat, or build a house?
What are the msses to them?
More importantly, what are the masses to the federal reserve?
Getting back to Lael Brainard, she prattles on as follows, to wit:
“We’re in the middle of a pretty unprecedented rebound in the U.S. economy,” Brainard said during a virtual discussion organized by CoinDesk.
While some prices may increase further over the next several months, Brainard said she expects these pressures associated with supply bottlenecks and the reopening to “subside over time.”
end quotes
So, is the price of a sheet of plywood going even higher then in which case it will be more of a luxury item than it is now, and already people like myself have stopped buying plywood, because the price is just plain stupid.
I’ll just wait it out, while others will do what others always do and find a cheap substitute.
So then what happens, people?
What happens to all these Lowe’s and Home Depots sitting on stacks of plywood at $78 a sheet?
They take a bath, don’t they?
If price pressures ameliorate as Lael Brainard seems to think they are going to, and plywood comes back down, is that going to be good for the economy?
And that takes us to a CNBC story entitled “Treasury Secretary Yellen says rates may have to rise somewhat to keep economy from overheating” by Jeff Cox published May 4, 2021, where we had from “TOODLES” as follows:
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen conceded Tuesday that interest rates may have to rise to keep a lid on the burgeoning growth of the U.S. economy brought on in part by trillions of dollars in government stimulus spending.
Later in the day, she tempered her comments somewhat on the need for higher rates, saying she respects the Federal Reserve’s independence and was not trying to influence decision-making there.
Yellen has said she is largely not concerned about inflation becoming a problem, though she has added that there are tools to address it should that happen.
end quotes
And my goodness, people, of course “TOODLES” Yellen is not concerned about inflation, largely because she has a net worth in 2021 of $18 million.
And she does not even know we exist!
Paul Plante says
As to Lael Brainard of the federal reserve, her net worth is $20 million, so she is not all that concerned with paying overmuch for a loaf of bread or a sheet of plywood, and like “TOODLES” Yellen in her gated community with security guards to keep out the commoners and just plain riff-raff, Lael Brainard of the federal reserve also does not know we exist, or care, for that matter.
And in the meantime, let us go to a Reuters article entitled “Fed’s balance sheet could reach $9 trillion by end of 2022, NY Fed report projects” by Jonnelle Marte on May 24, 2021, where we have, to wit:
The Federal Reserve’s ongoing asset purchases could lead the central bank’s portfolio to grow to $9.0 trillion by the end of 2022, according to projections released by the New York Fed on Monday.
end quotes
Now, when we hear about the federal reserve’s “balance sheet,” what exactly does that mean to us that it is going up to $9 TRILLION?
Should we even care, because most people, starting with the majority of hack politicians in Washington along with Joe Biden and Janet “TOODLES” Yellen say don’t worry about it, one day, we’ll get our house in order, but that day is not today, and besides, deficits don’t matter, which is pure bull****, since it is we, the supposed American people are on the hook for that debt, which is a form of “tax farming,” as the federal reserve feeds the money it makes off the bonds it holds back into the treasury, which takes us back to that story as follows:
The Fed’s balance sheet ballooned last year after the U.S. central bank acted aggressively to support the economy and credit markets by lowering interest rates to near zero levels, launching a suite of emergency lending programs and increasing its monthly asset purchases.
The central bank’s portfolio stood at just under $8 trillion as of last week, the most recent data available, up from about $4.1 trillion at the start of 2020.
end quotes
And we are still in a recession, but at the same time, the portfolios of important people like Lael Brainard and “TOODLES” Yellen have been protected, and really, people, isn’t that the way it really should be?
Paul Plante says
And here, for some essential background, let us go to a New York Times story entitled “Defying Critics, Biden and the Fed Insist the Economic Recovery Is on Track – Confidence from the White House runs counter to warnings from Republicans, some investors and even a few liberal economists” by Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek on May 22, 2021, where we have as follows to consider about the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY that the CULT OF JOE is bringing us, single-handedly, to wit:
WASHINGTON — McDonald’s, Chipotle and Amazon are all raising pay as companies try to fill jobs faster than they can find workers.
Airplane tickets and hotel rooms are becoming more expensive as demand rebounds thanks to newly widespread vaccinations.
Supply shortages are making it tougher to buy a house or a new car.
Republicans look at the economy and see a political liability for the Biden administration.
Inflation is taking off, they warn, and worker shortages are threatening the viability of long-suffering small businesses.
President Biden and his advisers assess the same set of conditions and reach a vastly different conclusion.
end quotes
And of course the CULT OF JOE has to reach a vastly different conclusion, because the CULT OF JOE cannot even picture imperfection in Joe Biden, let alone accept that it is so, which takes us back to the NYT, to wit:
The dislocations that are causing prices to rise quickly are likely to be temporary, they say.
end quotes
So what are they really saying there, people, given that right now, the actual price of a sheet of 3/4″ plywood is $78 at either Home Depot or Lowe’s, which is just plain stupid?
Are they saying prices will continue to rise, but slower?
Or are prices going to fall?
And they don’t know what they are saying, in actuality, just pitching bull**** at us in the belief that we are all as stupid as they and won’t know the difference, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
Four months into Mr. Biden’s term, Republicans say his economic agenda is already failing the country.
The president’s team says the state of the economy shows how he can deliver for workers.
“It is good policy and good for everyone to increase those wages a little,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said in an interview.
“You see some very large employers already starting to do that, and that’s good for the country.”
“And that is certainly in line with what President Biden believes, which is that working Americans, middle-class Americans who haven’t been the beneficiaries of trickle-down economics for the last 40 years, deserve a raise.”
end quotes
Which thought takes us back in time to Joe’s former boss Hussein Obama, himself a financial and economical guru par excellence, and his Weekly Address of Feb. 22 2014, entitled “Weekly Address: Time to Lift the Minimum Wage and Give America a Raise,” where we had from Hussein as follows:
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
February 22, 2014
Hi, everybody.
Restoring the idea of opportunity for all requires a year of action from all of us.
In my State of the Union Address, for example, I asked more business leaders to take action to raise their employees’ wages.
So it’s good news that, earlier this week, one of America’s largest retailers, The Gap, decided to raise wages for its employees beginning this year.
Their decision will benefit about 65,000 workers in the U.S.
That means more families will be able to raise their kids, finish their studies, or keep up on their bills with a little less financial stress and strain.
Gap’s CEO explained their decision simply – he said, “It’s right for our brands, good for our people, and beneficial to our customers.”
And he’s right – raising Americans’ wages isn’t just a good deed; it’s good business and good for our economy.
It helps reduce turnover, it boosts productivity, and it gives folks some more money to spend at local businesses.
end quotes
And as soon as I heard that spew of very ignorant horse**** from Hussein, who was clueless as to what he was blathering about, I started watching financial articles about The Gap to see how it would fare from following the financial advice of a ****** idiot like Barack Obama, where we had as follows from Marketwatch on Apr. 7 2016, as follows:
Gap Inc. said Thursday that its sales fell in March and that high inventory levels will pressure profits in the first quarter.
Shares of Gap, down 35% over the past year, fell 9% to $25.20 in after-hours trading.
“While March proved challenging, we remain focused on taking the necessary steps to improve results,” said Sabrina Simmons, Gap’s chief financial officer.
Gap said its margins in the first quarter will be under pressure because the retailer entered April with more inventory than planned.
Retailers, when faced with high amounts of inventory, frequently will discount prices, a move that can hurt profits.
For the five weeks ended April 2, Gap’s total sales fell to $1.43 billion from $1.53 billion a year ago.
On a comparable basis, a key metric to assess retailers’ performance, Gap’s same-store sales declined 6% in March; in the year-ago period, sales rose 2%.
At its different brands, the largest decline came from Banana Republic, which reported a 14% drop in same-store sales, compared with a 3% fall a year earlier.
Old Navy, which has been a key sales driver, reported a 6% decrease in same-store sales, compared with a 14% increase a year ago.
Same-store sales at Gap’s namesake stores fell 3%, narrower than a 7% drop in the year-ago period.
end quotes
And what were they expecting – that people would rush to buy their already overpriced **** because they raised the price to make it even more attractive?
So much for Obama’s stupid talk, which stupid talk the CULT OF JOE not surprisingly has adopted as its own, as Stalin adopted the words of Lenin, that raising Americans’ wages isn’t just a good deed; it’s good business and good for our economy because it helps reduce turnover, it boosts productivity, and it gives folks some more money to spend at local businesses.
Paul Plante says
And before we go back to that background presented to us by the New York Times on the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY, we need to go to a Reuters article just out yesterday entitled “Exclusive: Biden looks abroad for electric vehicle metals, in blow to U.S. miners” by Ernest Scheyder and Trevor Hunnicutt on May 25, 2021, where we have the CULT OF JOE breaking promises it never was going to be able to keep in the first place, as follows:
(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will rely on ally countries to supply the bulk of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and focus on processing them domestically into battery parts, part of a strategy designed to placate environmentalists, two administration officials with direct knowledge told Reuters.
The plans will be a blow to U.S. miners who had hoped Biden would rely primarily on domestically sourced metals, as his campaign had signaled last autumn, to help fulfill his ambitions for a less carbon-intensive economy.
end quotes
All I can say is that anybody who would believe the BULL**** Joe Biden was peddling when he was on the campaign trail doing anything including telling all kinds of lies and whoppers as he pandered for votes to get those votes had to be delusional, which takes us back to that story, to wit:
Rather than focus on permitting more U.S. mines, Biden’s team is more focused on creating jobs that process minerals domestically into electric vehicle (EV) battery parts, according to the people.
Such a plan would help cut U.S. reliance on industry leader China for EV materials while also enticing unions with manufacturing work and, in theory, reduce pandemic-fueled unemployment.
The U.S. Commerce Department is organizing a June conference to attract more EV manufacturing to the country.
Biden’s proposed $1.7 trillion infrastructure plan earmarks $174 billion to boost the domestic EV market with tax credits and grants for battery manufacturers, among other incentives.
The department declined to comment.
The approach would see the United States rely on Canada, Australia, and Brazil – among others – to produce most of the critical raw materials needed, while it competes for higher-value jobs turning those minerals into computer chips and batteries, according to the two sources.
While U.S. projects from small and large miners alike will feel the impact, the pain from any blocked projects will fall disproportionately on smaller, U.S.-focused companies.
Many large miners also have global projects that could benefit from the administration’s plan.
end quotes
And now fasten your seatbelts, people, because here we are about to take a real deep dive into the LAND OF WTF, BIG TIME, as follows, and here remember well the name Hunter Biden, because sure as anything, there is a good chance he is lurking somewhere in the background of this Biden deal waiting to have some cash stuffed down his pocket, to wit:
The U.S. government in April became the largest shareholder in mining investment firm TechMet, which controls a Brazilian nickel project, a Rwandan tungsten mine and is a major investor in a Canadian battery recycler.
end quotes
HUH?
The U.S. government in April became the largest shareholder in mining investment firm TechMet?
Who the **** is TechMet that Joe Biden is investing OUR tax dollars in it?
Where is Hunter Biden in this deal?
As to who TechMet is, let’s simply go to their website and see what they have to say, to wit:
“The world is undergoing a seismic transformation in how it produces and uses energy.”
“A part of this is a mobility revolution with the mass adoption of electric vehicles.”
“These radical shifts represent ‘once-in-a-century’ investment opportunities and will re-shape not just whole industries, but also the geopolitical landscape.”
“A key to success will be the ability to secure the supply of its building blocks – the technology metals.”
– Brian Menell, Chairman and CEO, TechMet
end quotes
An investment firm?
That is what Joe Biden is doing with our tax dollars, handing them over to an investment firm that doesn’t make or build anything?
Where is Hunter?
Getting back to TechMet, we have:
OUR VISION
Our vision is to create a technology metals champion with strategic control over significant production of the key metals that will define and power the 21st century global economy.
end quotes
Hmmmm.
So Joe Biden is giving our tax dollars to an investment firm that is going to use that money to get a stranglehold of all the materials Joe needs to build his electric cars with, which sounds like a real good deal for the investment firm and a piss-poor deal for the American people.
Where is Hunter Biden in all of this?
But wait, there is more:
ETHICAL AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNANCE
Our Mission is to make responsible investments and generate the highest level of returns within the boundaries of our commitment to social justice, protection of human life and dignity, stewardship of the planet, and promotion of the common good.
end quotes
Okay, people so it is clear from that that we are dealing with the GOOD GUYS here, so no wonder Joe Biden wanted to plow some of our tax dollars into their pockets, instead of the pockets of the BAD GUYS, and we all know who they are, don’t we, people?
And looking further into their background, we have thusly:
TechMet General Information
Description
Operator of a private industrial firm intended to strengthen the global metal supply chain for technology metals.
The company is building a portfolio of projects that produce, process, and recycle the metals that go into electric vehicles and renewable energy systems, enabling clients to get metal resources comfortably.
end quotes
Ah, I see – so they are like a metals supermarket?
So how big a company are we talking about here?
How about a company with 12 employees?
That’s right, people – Joe Biden is plowing our tax dollars into a firm with just 12 employees, and where is the 12-employee firm actually located?
How about this:
Primary Office
20 Lower Baggot Street
Suite 22
Dublin D02 X658
Ireland
end quotes
And besides Joe Biden with our tax dollars, who are the other investors?
Well, there is Lansdowne Partners, operator of a hedge fund company which manages separate client focused equity portfolios and primarily provides its services to pooled investment vehicles, and they are located at Primary Office, 15 Davies Street, London W1K 3AG, England, United Kingdom.
And then, there is the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which is a government agency based in Washington, District of Columbia established in 2019 to help U.S. businesses gain footholds in emerging markets, catalyzing revenues, jobs, and growth opportunities both at home and abroad, achieving its mission by providing investors with financing, guarantees, political risk insurance, and support for private equity investment funds and providing medium- to long-term financing through direct loans and loan guarantees to eligible investment projects in developing countries, when conventional institutions are reluctant or unable to lend.
end quotes
Yeah, right, in that case, stick it to the U.S. taxpayers.
So where is Hunter Biden in all of this?
The white house liaison?
Paul Plante says
And while we are on the insanity represented by the presidential administration of Joe Biden, and the chaos to come, let us go to a Reuters article entitled “TREASURIES-U.S. yields rise on Biden’s proposed budget” by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss on May 27, 2021, to wit:
NEW YORK, May 27 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields advanced on Thursday, bolstered by a New York Times report saying President Joe Biden will announce on Friday a $6 trillion budget for 2022, the largest spending since the second world war, fueling supply concerns.
The selloff ahead of the auction accelerated after news of Biden’s proposed budget for next year.
The budget figure suggested the U.S. government will be running deficits of more than $1.3 trillion through the next decade, according to the report.
The report weighed on Treasury prices because it means the government would have to flood the market with more debt to finance the budget.
“That budget is just way too much.”
“How do you even finance that going forward?” said Tom di Galoma, managing director at Seaport Global Holdings.
“That’s what the market is struggling with and was quite surprised by it.”
end quotes
Pure madness, people – pure madness.
The CULT OF JOE is operating not on VOO-DOO economics, but total HOO-DOO economics, based on what is known as MMT, or modern monetary theory Modern Monetary Theory, which is a heterodox (not conforming with accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs) macroeconomic theory that describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires, which takes us to a CNBC story entitled “The Fed has embraced the ‘punchbowl’ and has no intention of taking it away” by Jeff Cox published Mar. 26, 2021, where we see the insanity that is the federal reserve under the Biden administration developing as follows:
The Federal Reserve has come a long way from the days of warning about “irrational exuberance.”
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan famously sent up a flare in December 1996 about stretched asset valuations triggered by wild dot-com speculation that had produced an unbridled bull market.
It took three years for the warning from “The Maestro” to come true, but the statement is still considered a seminal moment in market history where a Fed leader issued such a bold warning that went unheeded.
Flash forward 25 years and the attitude from the Fed is considerably different, even though market valuations look a lot like they did back around the time the dot-com bubble burst.
Central bank officials repeatedly have been given the opportunity to advise caution on asset valuations, and each time they have largely passed.
Other than acknowledging that prices are higher than normal in some instances, Fed speakers have largely attributed market moves as the product of an improving economy buoyed by aggressive fiscal stimulus and low interest rates that will be in place for years.
Just a few days ago, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly spoke on the issue and said the Fed has no intention of tightening policy even in the face of roaring bull markets across several asset classes.
“We won’t be preemptively taking the punchbowl away,” Daly said during a virtual Q&A on Wednesday.
The “punchbowl” metaphor was interesting in that the term became a bit of a pejorative following the 2008 financial crisis.
Its origin in policy circles dates to William McChesney Martin, the longest-serving Fed chairman who held the position from 1951-70.
The Fed’s role, Martin said, was to act as a “chaperone who has ordered the punchbowl removed just when the party was really warming up.”
The statement delineated the cautionary role the Fed should be playing when it spots signs of excess.
But Daly implied that such a duty either does not exist today or is not relevant to the current situation.
“That’s something that worked maybe in the past, definitely doesn’t work now, and we’re committed to leaving that punchbowl or monetary policy accommodation in place until the job is fully and truly done,” she said.
end quotes
Yes, people, pure insanity as giddy Mary Daly, Nancy Pelosi’s central banker gushes mindless nonsense, which thought takes us back in time to Oct. 26, 2010 and a Marketwatch article entitled “The Fed’s secret $4 trillion experiment – Commentary: Climbing into the ring for a longer, tougher round two” by Jon Markman, as follows:
SEATTLE (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve plan to gin up the printing press in an effort to knock down long-term interest rates is one of the most well-signaled roundhouse punches in the history of finance.
They’re calling the effort quantitative easing, but considering that numerous Fed officials have talked it up and several others have talked it down, they probably ought to call it teasing, or maybe wheezing.
The Fed doesn’t want to just blurt it out because it is afraid of creating a one-way trade that steals the thunder from its scheduled announcement on November 3.
Yet it’s so well known that some analysts believe the market has not only fully discounted its potential, but is already preparing to discount the unwinding of its effects.
This begs the question:
If everyone already knows that QE is coming, and when, and credit and equity markets have already adjusted, then what’s the point of actually doing it?
My guess:
The market has likely misjudged the Fed’s intention — possibly by a mile.
You see, there are two things that are not known about QE:
How much, and how long.
The consensus thinks that the answers are $500 billion and seven months.
So to make money as a speculator at the dawn of the age of QE, you need to guess it will be more or less.
Bears are betting that’s all there is, and that furthermore it will have no effect.
Bulls are betting that it will be much bigger and take much longer.
My expectation is that $500 billion over six months will be just a first step, and that the full amount contemplated is much larger than consensus — as much as $2 trillion.
This view is based on an analysis by Goldman Sachs Chief Domestic Economist Jan Hatzius that suggests current interest rates, at 0% to 0.25%, are 700 basis points, or seven percentage points, too high.
In plain English, the Goldman analysis suggests that interest rates would have to be -7% to achieve the Fed’s goals of higher inflation and employment.
To close this yawning gap, the government is using three tools: fiscal policy (i.e. tax cuts and infrastructure spending); asset purchases (buying Treasurys); and commitment language (stating that the program will continue for an extended period).
The Fed has assigned each of these levers a value that corresponds with its contribution to getting to eliminating the policy gap and getting to that -7% solution.
Although there is a high level of uncertainty about how each of these will mix and change once they go into the recipe, the Hatzius view is that additional asset purchases of $2 trillion or more will be necessary to close the gap.
That’s $1.5 trillion more than consensus, which, needless to say, is a lot.
Goldman expects the process — which the Fed itself calls “large-scale asset purchases,” or LSAPs, rather than quantitative easing — to start as the consensus believes with $500 billion over six months.
There’s also a chance that the Fed will state a monthly purchase goal of around $100 billion to be maintained until its outlook for inflation and employment improves.
end quotes
Today, they are buying $120 billion a month with no end in sights as the federal reserve is enmeshed in a trap of its own making.
And that takes us to a Reuters article entitled “Yellen says Biden budget raises U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio but is responsible” by Reuters Staff on May 27, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget request will increase the U.S. federal debt-to-GDP ratio above its current level of about 100% over the next decade.
“I believe it is a fiscally responsible program,” Yellen said.
end quotes
And that burst of nonsense from “TOODLES” Yellen takes us back in time again, first to a Marketwatch article on July 29, 2013, where we have as follows:
President Obama, in a weekend interview with the New York Times, appeared to stress his desire to name a new Fed chairman whose main focus is on growth instead of the traditional central-bank concern of low and stable inflation.
“I want a Fed chairman that can step back and look at that objectively and say, ‘Let’s make sure that we’re growing the economy,'” Obama said.
end quotes
So much for federal reserve “independence,” which is a myth, which thought takes us another Marketwatch article on Oct. 9, 2013, to wit:
President Obama on Wednesday officially nominated Janet Yellen to be Fed chief, replacing Ben Bernanke and further cementing the administration’s commitment to loose monetary policy.
end quotes
Except the president is not supposed to be in charge of monetary policy – that is supposed to be the domain of the federal reserve, which takes us to a CNBC story entitled “Treasury Secretary Yellen says rates may have to rise somewhat to keep economy from overheating” by Jeff Cox on May 4, 2021, to wit:
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen conceded Tuesday that interest rates may have to rise to keep a lid on the burgeoning growth of the U.S. economy brought on in part by trillions of dollars in government stimulus spending.
Later in the day, she tempered her comments somewhat on the need for higher rates, saying she respects the Federal Reserve’s independence and was not trying to influence decision-making there.
“It’s not something I’m predicting or recommending,” Yellen told the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit.
“If anybody appreciates the independence of the Fed, I think that person is me, and I note that the Fed can be counted on to do whatever is necessary to achieve their dual mandate objectives.”
end quotes
The independence of the federal reserve?
Janet “TOODLES” Yellen, who was the tool of Hussein Obama when he put her in charge of the federal reserve, wants us to believe she appreciates the independence of the federal reserve, when it was not independent under her reign and isn’t again under Joe Biden with “TOODLES” as a borrow and spend treasury secretary?
These people are are out of their minds and bent on destroying this country think we must be insane to believe that horse**** from “TOODLES” about federal reserve independence.
And the only thing the federal reserve is independent of is its senses – it has departed from them long ago as we see with giddy Mary Daly of the San Francisco federal reserve and her crazy talk of not taking away the punch bowl.
So are we insane?
Paul Plante says
And for some further background to help us understand the ground the Biden-istas and the Biden-controlled federal reserve have us standing on, and the eternal question Cui Bono (who benefits), let’s go back a bit in time to a Marketwatch article entitled “Opinion: The Fed has fueled inflation — and it’s helping the rich” by John Coumarianos published May 23, 2016, keeping in mind that Hussein Obama reign as president Presidency of Barack Obama was from January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017, to wit:
It may come as no surprise that in the aftermath of an epic single-family housing boom and subsequent bust, millions of more people have been renting — without much new multifamily housing supply until recently.
This situation has let to strong gains for apartment REITs and an astonishing ability for property owners to raise rents.
Now a research paper by Rob Arnott and Lillian Wu of Research Affiliates in Newport Beach, Calif. asks why the CPI doesn’t reflect the inflation that is apparent in places where people spend their money.
end quotes
And there is a question I also have been asking for years. knowing full well that it is a rigged or artificial measure that provides no useful information to the average American, which brings us forward for a moment to today, and the Reuters article entitled “Pent-up demand, shortages fuel U.S. inflation” by Lucia Mutikani on May 28, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer prices surged in April, with a measure of underlying inflation blowing past the Federal Reserve’s 2% target and posting its largest annual gain since 1992, because of pent-up demand and supply constraints as the economy reopens.
Consumer prices as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding the volatile food and energy components, increased 0.7% last month amid strong gains in both goods and services.
That was the biggest rise in the so-called core PCE price index since October 2001 and followed a 0.4% gain in March.
In the 12 months through April, the core PCE price index vaulted 3.1%, the most since July 1992, after rising 1.9% in March.
Some economists are not convinced that higher inflation will be temporary.
A survey from the University of Michigan on Friday showed consumers’ one-year inflation expectations shot up to 4.6% in May from 3.4% in April, hurting household sentiment.
Their five-year inflation expectations rose to 3.0% from 2.7% last month.
“Concerns about the future can cause households to become more conservative in their spending,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania.
“The Fed is guessing that the rise in inflation will be temporary, and it better be correct.”
end quotes
Yes, people, the fed is guessing and it has been guessing and doing a damn poor job of it since the housing market crash, which takes us back to the Marketwatch article, as follows:
Arnott and Wu argue that the four biggest expenditures for most people — rent, food, energy, and health care — have been rising.
Since 1995, rents have been rising at 2.7% clip, energy at a 3.9%, food at 2.6%, and health care at 3.6%.
Notably, these four expenses account for 60% of the aggregate of people’s budgets, 80% of middle-class budgets, and 90% of the budgets of the working poor.
Indeed, these Four Horsemen are galloping along, outstripping headline CPI, but it has taken six years of massive government spending, borrowing, and central bank stimulus for real per-capita GDP to regain its pre-recession peak.
In addition, 50th percentile income has barely budged since 1970, and real per-capita GDP continues to outstrip it in a breathtaking manner.
In other words, the massive stimulus since the Great Recession of 2008-09 hasn’t brought much benefit to America’s middle class.
end quotes
Which brings us back to the present and the Reuters article, to wit:
Personal income plunged 13.1% after surging 20.9% in March.
end quotes
Wow, and who would have thought it, which takes us back to the Marketwatch article from 2016, to wit:
Rather than unleashing the “animal spirits” of the private sector, it has arguably served to stagnate economic and wage growth.
Monetary policy, in particular, may be stimulating inflation in financial assets including stocks, bonds, and real estate — further widening the gap between rich and poor, and hollowing out the middle class, according to Arnott and Wu.
end quotes
Remember here, people, that we are talking about what was taking place while Hussein Obama was president, Joe Biden vice president and “TOODLES” Yellen was the federal reserve chairman in office from February 3, 2014 – February 3, 2018.
So whose interests, besides their own, were they serving then, and whose interests are Joe and “TOODLES” serving today?
Getting back to the Marketwatch story from 2016 for that answer, we have:
The authors quote former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke saying he wanted to create a “wealth effect” by lowering interest rates.
Resulting higher asset prices would stimulate the affluent to spend more, which, in turn, would have a beneficial effect on the economy.
end quotes
And hey, wait a minute here, people – isn’t that “trickle down?”
And that thought takes us to to the New York Times story entitled “Defying Critics, Biden and the Fed Insist the Economic Recovery Is on Track – Confidence from the White House runs counter to warnings from Republicans, some investors and even a few liberal economists” by Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek on May 22, 2021, where we have as follows to consider about the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY that the CULT OF JOE is bringing us, single-handedly, to wit:
The president’s team says the state of the economy shows how he can deliver for workers.
“It is good policy and good for everyone to increase those wages a little,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said in an interview.
“You see some very large employers already starting to do that, and that’s good for the country.”
“And that is certainly in line with what President Biden believes, which is that working Americans, middle-class Americans who haven’t been the beneficiaries of trickle-down economics for the last 40 years, deserve a raise.”
end quotes
If president Biden believes that middle-class Americans haven’t been the beneficiaries of “trickle-down” economics, then why were he and Hussein and “TOODLES” engaging in “trickle-down” while Joe was the vice president?
Do they think we are all stupid and don’t know what happened five minutes ago, let alone the day before yesterday, which brings us the full transcript from President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, where we have Joe blathering away about them “trickle-down” he and Hussein and “TOODLES” were pushing when Joe was vice president, to wit:
My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked.
It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle-out.
end quotes
What ******* bull****!
How do you grow and economy from the bottom up and the middle out?
Which takes us to an article in The Week entitled “Obama’s middle-out economics is good. Bottom-up economics is better” by Jeff Spross on January 30, 2015, where we see that we have been here before, although we are supposed to all be as stupid as a politician is stupid and not remember that, to wit:
Lately, the Democrats have been trying to rebrand their political vision as “middle-out economics.”
It’s certainly preferable to “upper-class economics” or “crazy-rich-fatcat” economics.
And the basic argument for bulking up the middle class’ purchasing power over the long haul is sound.
But it also raises an uncomfortable, if obvious question: What about the lower class?
Yet the Democrats’ new proposals to boost the middle class feature a number of design aspects that render them almost useless to the lower class.
end quotes
So, okay, people, that was when Joe was vice president and “TOODLES” Yellen was fed chair, so what since then has changed, which takes us back to the Marketwatch article, as follows:
Unfortunately, spending by the affluent has a limited effect on the economy.
Arnott and Wu ask rhetorically, “If the rich mostly buy more assets (i.e., stocks, bonds, real estate, art, collectible cars, rather than ‘new stuff’ that needs to be manufactured), doesn’t that just fuel more bubbles?”
Furthermore, there is a downside to bull markets in that as asset prices soar, future returns diminish.
Indeed, looking at the asset return forecasts of Research Affiliates and also of one of the firm’s like-minded competitors, Grantham, Mayo, van Oterloo, it’s tough to find asset classes that are priced to deliver inflation-beating returns over the next seven-to-10 years.
Not only do anemic future returns bode poorly for the wealthy who, Arnott and Wu argue, typically dissipate their wealth among just a few generations.
They also harm young workers and the middle class in general who require stronger returns on investments to fund their retirements.
The middle class has little incentive to save and invest with prospective returns so poor.
Moreover, new business start-ups are delayed because, with interest rates held artificially low, entrepreneurs don’t know the cost of capital.
Near zero borrowing rates aren’t available to them, and the future cost of capital may be still higher.
Likewise, larger corporations shy away from risky projects now in favor of borrowing money at shockingly low rates in order to finance stock buybacks — even if the shares are purchased at ever higher prices.
end quotes
So seriously, people, other than the rhetoric spewing from out the mouth of Joe Biden, has anything really changed?
Stuart Bell says
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/05/28/watch-joe-biden-to-veterans-daughter-i-love-those-barrettes-in-your-hair-looks-like-shes-19-years-old/
Paul Plante says
And who are these people THE CULT OF JOE has talking **** to us about the MIRACLE ECONOMY of Joe Biden?
How about the New York Times story entitled “Defying Critics, Biden and the Fed Insist the Economic Recovery Is on Track – Confidence from the White House runs counter to warnings from Republicans, some investors and even a few liberal economists” by Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek on May 22, 2021, where we have as follows to consider about the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY that the CULT OF JOE is bringing us, single-handedly, to wit:
The president’s team says the state of the economy shows how he can deliver for workers.
“It is good policy and good for everyone to increase those wages a little,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said in an interview.
“You see some very large employers already starting to do that, and that’s good for the country.”
“And that is certainly in line with what President Biden believes, which is that working Americans, middle-class Americans who haven’t been the beneficiaries of trickle-down economics for the last 40 years, deserve a raise.”
end quotes
Who is she, people, that we should believe a word she says, about anything?
Who is Anita Dunn?
And what does she advise Joe Biden about, other than how to feed bull**** to the American people, something she appears quite good at, actually, based on her own spew of bull**** on behalf of Joe in the NYT story above here?
Well, first of all, as of 2020, her estimated net worth is $850,000, so trickle-down appears to have worked fairly well for here, anyway.
But who is she to have made that kind of money in “public service?”
According to her bio in 2020, we have as follows concerning Anita, whose job with the Biden administration is to advise him on the lies that will most likely sail right by the American people without question to make Joe out as our hero, while feeding the MYTH of THE CULT OF JOE as a Stalin-esque type of superman, to wit:
Anita Babbit Dun, commonly known as Anita Dunn is a senior advisor to the presidential campaign of Joe Biden.
Anita is also a political strategist who was an Acting White House Communications Director in 2009.
For a strategic communications firm in Washington, D.C., she serves as a managing director.
end quotes
So, okay, people – strategic communications, which for a politician means the right lies at the right moment, 24/7/365, which is why we come across Anita feeding us bull**** in the NYT article above, which in turn takes us back to her bio, to wit:
Anita completed her bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, College Park with specialization in Arts.
end quote
A specialization in the arts?
How about the art of spewing bull**** for Joe Biden, which takes us back to her bio, as follows:
Anita Dunn started her first job as an intern in Carter White House, for White House Communications Director Gerald Rafshoon.
Later on for chief of staff Hamilton Jordan.
She earlier worked with U.S. Senator John Glenn.
She then worked as an advisor and communications director and chief strategist for the presidential campaign of Senator Bill Bradley.
But her career took a path when then-Senator Barack Obama appointed her for the Hope Fund.
This appointment led her to join the Obama for America campaign in April 2008.
She served as a director of communications, policy and research operations for the campaign.
Then Anita worked as interim White House Communications Director.
Her work started in April 2009, but she left in November.
After leaving the post, her husband Bob Bauer was named White House counsel.
Leaving her position as White House communications director she started to work in a strategic communications firm in Washington, D.C., SKDKnickerbocker.
In the 2012 Obama campaign, she was again connected to Obama.
She helped Obama for his debates.
Currently, in 2020, Anita is hired as senior advisor for Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign.
end quotes
So, should we really believe a word she says, about anything?
Are we that stupid, people?
Which takes us to an ABC story entitled “Several of Biden’s top White House aides aren’t required to disclose personal finances – The officials are playing temporary but significant roles in the administration” by Soo Rin Kim and Libby Cathey on March 24, 2021, to wit:
Some of President Joe Biden’s top aides in the White House, including advisers overseeing the administration’s coronavirus response and vaccine operation, have not publicly disclosed their personal finances even as they play a significant role in the multibillion-dollar federal operation to curb COVID-19.
Senior White House adviser Anita Dunn, deputy coronavirus response coordinator Andy Slavitt and coronavirus vaccine coordinator Bechara Choucair are not required to file public financial disclosure reports that would reveal their past employment, source of income, personal assets and liabilities, due to the temporary nature of their positions or because they are paid below the reporting threshold, a White House official told ABC News.
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The decision not to require public disclosures from those officials comes as the Biden administration has publicly released financial disclosure forms for dozens of other White House aides, including Chief of Staff Ron Klain, COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients, Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, revealing a vast amount of wealth held by some of the president’s top advisers.
end quotes
A vast amount of wealth held by some of the president’s advisors?
HUH?
I thought Joe was for the middle class.
I mean, well, that is what it sounded like anyway in the transcript from Joe’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, to wit:
The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America.
And, it recognizes something I’ve always said.
Wall Street didn’t build this country.
The middle class built this country.
end quotes
Hmmmmm.
So where are they then, in all these wealthy advisors Joe has advising him on how to so totally cover us in a cloud of horse**** so dense we won’t even be able to see the sun?
And the answer is no where, which takes us back to that ABC article thusly:
Under the federal ethics law, political appointees that play substantial roles within an administration are typically required to publicly disclose their current and past financial ties to ensure transparency and public trust in their policymaking roles without conflict of interest, according to ethics experts.
Dunn, a veteran communications and political strategist, was reportedly brought onto Biden’s White House team as a temporary senior adviser to help the president push his initial agenda from inside the West Wing.
It’s unclear exactly how much she’ll be paid or how long she’ll be in the White House.
“If she is in the White House and is performing a substantive role, which I can’t imagine somebody of her caliber not doing that, it would be better for her to be disclosing her conflicts of interest or make them make a public disclosure so her conflicts of interest can be assessed,” said Virginia Canter, a former Obama administration official and current chief ethics counsel at the Washington-based government ethics group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Canter said that was particularly true if Dunn is retaining her outside position as a partner at the public affairs and political consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker, which still lists her as part of the firm’s team.
Prior to joining the White House, Dunn served as a senior adviser on the Biden-Harris transition team as well as on Biden’s presidential campaign, for which she was paid roughly $45,000 in the final two months leading up to the November election, campaign disclosures show.
SKDKnickerbocker was also paid more than $2 million during the election cycle, but it’s unclear if Dunn received any of those funds.
The firm’s vice president of public affairs, Cameron French, served as a senior spokesperson for the Biden transition team.
SKDKnickerbocker has disclosed campaign and lobbying clients through various disclosure records, but Dunn’s own past clients and financial ties have remained private.
Dunn also previously served as former President Barack Obama’s White House communications director between February and November 2009, but she’s among the very few early Obama administration officials whose financial disclosures could not be found in ProPublica’s Obama administration financial disclosure archive.
end quotes
Hmmmm, again, people.
I thought THE CULT OF JOE was all about transparency, but this all seems to be quite murky to me.
How come, Joe?
Paul Plante says
And here, let us go to a Reuters story entitled “Money is cheap, let’s spend it – White House $6 trillion budget message” by Andrea Shalal, Jarrett Renshaw and Jeff Mason on May 28, 2021, where we have more on the future the CULT OF JOE intends to visit on us, to wit:
The White House on Friday sent Congress a $6 trillion budget plan that would ramp up spending on infrastructure, education and combating climate change, arguing it makes good fiscal sense to invest now, when the cost of borrowing is cheap, and reduce deficits later.
end quotes
Yes, people, we can reduce deficits some time later, maybe what, twenty or thirty years, when the economy can finally support itself without massive effusions of money from the federal reserve to keep the ZOMBIE economy afloat, along with massive stimulation from the federal government and Joe Biden, which takes us back in time to an Associated Press article on the first of many stimulations of the economy from the federal government entitled “Consumers at Heart of Stimulus Plan” by Christopher Leonard on January 25, 2008, thirteen (13) years ago now, to wit:
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The success of the federal $150 billion emergency economic stimulus plan will hinge on whether American consumers do what they do best — spend, spend, spend.
end quotes
And yes, if you give people enough free government money, there is a likelihood they will spend it, but then, once it is gone, and it goes quick, they simply stop spending, as we see from a Reuters article entitled “U.S. retail sales pause, record savings seen supporting spending” by Lucia Mutikani on May 14, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. retail sales unexpectedly stalled in April as the boost from stimulus checks faded, but an acceleration is likely in the coming months amid record savings and a reopening economy.
end quotes
And that takes us back to 2008 and the first stimulation of many to follow, to wit:
The stimulus has been debated in Washington for more than a week as the economic outlook worsened, and now Americans are armed with specifics: Individuals will get up to $600, working couples $1,200 and those with children $300 more per child.
President Bush and leaders in Congress hope people will spend those rebates — a flat-screen television, maybe, or a trip to Disneyland — to help revive an economy sagging from bad mortgage lending and a lack of confidence in the stock market.
One problem: The spending habits of Americans, many of whom used the rising value of their homes during the real-estate boom like a piggy bank, may be changing as housing prices tumble and credit dries up.
end quotes
And that brings us back to the present, as follows:
Biden’s plan for fiscal year 2022 calls for $6.01 trillion in spending and $4.17 trillion in revenues, a 36.6% increase from 2019 outlays, before the coronavirus pandemic bumped up spending.
It projects a $1.84 trillion deficit, a sharp decrease from the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but up from 2019’s $984 billion.
The blueprint builds on a partial “skinny budget” the White House released last month that mapped out $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending.
The plan drew praise from Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and criticism from Republicans – who blasted the proposed higher debt levels – and some progressive groups, who said it should have scaled back military spending.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders called Biden’s budget “the most significant agenda for working families in the modern history of our country,” and said it would create millions of good-paying jobs, while reducing poverty.
end quotes
Which is why they call him “Barmy Bernie” Sanders, because if all these stimulations to date have not created millions of good-paying jobs while reducing poverty, why would we expect this one to do so?
That would be pretty stupid of us, would it not?
Getting back to that story, it continues as follows:
White House officials said Biden’s $4 trillion plans to address historic U.S. inequality, climate chance and provide four more years of free public education would be completely paid for in 15 years, with tax increases starting to chip away at deficits after 2030.
Cecilia Rouse, the chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, says Biden’s plan is front loaded and that the administration was willing to live with budget deficits amid low-interest rates to make significant investments in the nation’s economy.
end quotes
And here is another new name of a Biden-ista or member of the CULT OF JOE popping up here, that being Cecilia Rouse, whose net worth in 2021 was estimated at $70 million, so regardless of how the rest of us have faired during this GREAT RECESSION, Cecilia seems to have done quite well for herself, anyway.
So who is she, now?
For that answer, let us go to Wikipedia where we learn that Cecilia Elena Rouse (born December 18, 1963) is an American economist currently serving as the 30th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and she is the first African American to hold this position, because as we learn from the ABC News story “Biden’s 1st 100 days: Promises kept, broken, or in progress – Here’s a look at how Biden measures up against markers he, himself, set” by Ben Gittleson, Molly Nagle, Sarah Kolinovsky, and Justin Gomez on April 26, 2021, our Joe wants a cabinet that looks like America, to wit:
The promise: Create a Cabinet that ‘looks like America’
Status: Kept
Biden campaigned on a pledge to assemble a team that “looks like America.”
He has fulfilled that promise, forming a Cabinet is the most diverse in U.S. history.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is the first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet position, Janet Yellen is the nation’s first female treasury secretary, Deb Haaland became the first Native American interior secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas is the first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security and Lloyd Austin is the first Black defense secretary.
There are more women serving in Biden’s Cabinet than any other recent administration and more than half are people of color.
end quotes
Getting back to Cecilia, she served in the National Economic Council under President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 1999, and then she served as a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2011.
So she certainly knows a thing of two about spending government money, anyway.
And with a net worth of $70 million, exactly whose interests might she be looking out for?
Those of us poor folks?
Or hers?
Getting back to the story, it continues as follows:
Rouse said the economy was seeing short-term inflation spikes, fueled by the sharp growth in the economy, but projected it settling down to an annual rate of around 2% over time.
end quotes
Short-term inflation spikes, like 3/4 inch plywood at $78?
Do tell, Cecilia.
Getting back to it:
Biden’s first full spending outline since taking office in January serves as the fiscal blueprint for his political priorities, and is likely to kick off months of difficult negotiations with Congress, which needs to approve most of the spending.
Republicans’ opposition is growing to much of Biden’s push to spend more to revamp the U.S. economy, as they argue it could fuel inflation and tamp down corporate competitiveness.
Biden has tussled with Republicans over the price of his initiatives, recovery from the pandemic and improvement of roads and bridges.
No Republicans voted for his $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, but some touted its benefits later, drawing some chiding from the president.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that the budget would push U.S. debt above the size of the U.S. economy but would not contribute to inflationary pressures.
end quotes
And is there anyone out there foolish enough to believe a word Janet “TOODLES” Yellen says about the economy after having been previously informed in a Marketwatch article on Oct. 9, 2013 that Hussein Obama had nominated “TOODLES” to be Fed chief, replacing Ben Bernanke and further cementing the administration’s commitment to loose monetary policy?
If so, send me an e-mail about a bridge I have for sale at a cheap price, because I need the money, that connects Marin County in California to San Francisco, and promises to be a real gold mine for the right person, so don’t hesitate, for he or she who hesitates is lost!
Paul Plante says
And going back to the transcript from Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, we have Joe speaking to not only America and the world, but the universe, as well, and saying thusly, to wit:
Madame Speaker.
Madame Vice President.
The First Lady.
The Second Gentleman.
My fellow Americans,
While the setting tonight is familiar, this gathering is very different – a reminder of the extraordinary times we are in.
As I stand here tonight — just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration.
100 days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.
The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
end quotes
And my goodness, people, of course it would have to be the worst one, because if it wasn’t, think how much less majestic and heroic Joe would seem, not to mention not having an excuse to loot several TRILLION dollars from the U.S. treasury with which to reward his followers.
So, how did those in Joe’s inner circle fare during this GREAT HUGE RECESSION?
Like the common person in America, did they too see their fortunes depleted?
Or was the GREAT HUGE RECESSION actually good to them?
For a look at what that answer might be, let’s go to an ABC News story entitled “Obama-era officials return to White House worth millions – White House financial disclosures show several officials gained massive wealth” by Soo Rin Kim and Libby Cathey on March 21, 2021, where we learn as follows about the inner circle of THE CULT OF JOE, to wit:
As several Obama-era officials return to the White House under President Joe Biden, their reunion comes with fuller pockets and deeper ties to corporate interests, new financial disclosure reports show.
According to ABC News’ analysis of the most recent disclosure reports, many of Biden’s top White House officials, including Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, and coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients, have substantially multiplied their wealth over the past few years.
end quotes
And seriously, people, in a world finally gone right for a change, isn’t that the way it really should be, that those in the top echelons of government over us should not be poor like us, but should instead be flush with cash?
How else, afterall, could we respect them if they weren’t special?
Getting back to the story, it goes on as follows:
Rice, who is among the wealthiest members of the Biden White House team, dramatically increased her wealth since her previous White House job during the Obama administration, reporting between $36 million and $149 million in various assets in her new disclosure filing released Saturday morning.
That’s nearly three to four times the amount she reported back in 2009, when she joined the Obama administration as the ambassador to the United Nations.
Back then she reported total wealth between $13.6 million and $40.4 million, and the figure didn’t increase dramatically when she served as President Barack Obama’s national security advisor during his second term.
In her most recent filing, Rice reported holding shares worth between $250,000 and $5 million in major corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Apple and Microsoft.
She also had a significant amount of stock options in Netflix, where she served as a board member, and reported earning more than $300,000 from exercising Netflix stock options in the past year.
In addition, she reported shares in several oil and gas industry companies, including $1 million to $5 million of holdings in the Canadian multinational natural gas distribution company Enbridge Inc.
Rice, who served as the president of her author and speaking business SERice LLC, earned roughly $620,000 from various corporate and academic speaking engagements in the past year, and $250,000 from book royalties, with her total income from the past year amounting to between $2 million and $6.7 million.
ABC News has not yet obtained Rice’s ethics agreement, so it’s not yet clear if she has or will divest from her assets in private companies or recuse herself from matters related to those companies — except for her stock options in Netflix, which she said in her disclosure report that she’ll be divesting.
end quotes
So the GREAT HUGE RECESSION that wiped the fortunes of a lot of common ordinary people was actually pretty kind to Susan Rice, which takes us back to the story as follows:
“These White House officials are experienced government leaders whose past private sector experience is part of a broad and diverse skill set they bring to government service,” a White House spokesperson told ABC News in a statement.
“They have returned to government because of their deep commitment to public service, their desire to help bring our nation out of this time of crisis, and their strong belief that government can work for the American people.”
end quotes
And isn’t that enough to have us all weeping with joy, people, and feeling good about ourselves and all warm and squishy inside, the thought that these really rich people have such love and devotion for us that they would come back and serve us as our public servants because they have such a strong belief that government can actually work for the American people, instead of for their pockets?
Let’s go back to the story and see who else in the Biden administration the GREAT HUGE RECESSION has blessed, to wit:
Klain, a longtime adviser to Biden, has also tripled his wealth since 2009, a comparison of his past and new disclosures shows.
When he joined the Obama administration in 2009 as Biden’s chief of staff, Klain reported owning between $1.4 million and $3.5 million in assets, and he now enters the Biden administration with between $4.4 million and $12.2 million in various assets.
Much of Klain’s wealth comes from various assets related to his employment.
In 2020 he received nearly $2 million in salary from the venture capital firm Revolution LLC, where he was executive vice president and general counsel, compared to $1 million he reported receiving in salary in his filing from early 2009.
end quotes
Joe figures that if you really want some very smart people to help Joe help out the poor folks in this troubled and sick nation, it is best to get some really well0off people with a lot of money because it is they who know what is best for the poor folks to help them along, so to speak, which brings us back to the story, as follows:
Zients is the single wealthiest Biden administration official that had disclosed assets as of Saturday evening, surpassing Vanita Gupta, Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, in his total assets.
Zients reported owning between $89.3 million and $442.8 million in assets, including various investment funds, real estate properties and cash shares.
He has divested his shares in his private investment firm, Cranemere Group, as well as $1 million worth of shares in Facebook, where he has served as a board member.
He reported making between $10.4 million and $28 million in income in the past year, including his seven-figure salary from his investment firm, as well as other several seven-figure assets he has divested from.
His total wealth has more than doubled since he first joined the Obama White House as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in 2009, when he reported assets between $45.2 million and $205.7 million.
end quotes
Aren’t we truly blessed, people, to have such people as these helping Joe Biden to help us all and get us back on our feet?
And my goodness, who else among the Biden-ista inner circle has been blessed with good fortune by the GREAT HUGE RECESSION?
How about everybody’s most favorite white house mouthpiece:
In her disclosure report, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reported receiving a communications consulting fee from Zients in excess of $5,000 — though the report has no further details on the transaction.
Her assets have also grown significantly since her first White House job during the Obama administration.
In 2009, Psaki had reported between $32,000 and $130,000 in assets and $125,000 in income, but in 2021 she reported her wealth had increased at least tenfold, to up to $1.5 million in assets with an annual income of roughly $647,742.
Much of her income from the past year came from Evergreen Consulting LLC, which she founded, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.
She also worked as a CNN contributor and an adviser to WestExec, a consulting firm founded in 2017 by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at which several Obama-era officials worked.
In addition to the $5,000 Zients paid her, she was paid the same consulting fee by Lyft, among a handful of other companies.
end quotes
And really, people, is there anyone more deserving of that good fortune than Jen Psaki, because without her didication to us, we would have no clue whatsoever as to what was actually going on in Washington, which again takes us back to the story of the members of the inner circle of the CULT OF JOE, to wit:
Deese’s wealth has also multiplied dramatically since 2009, when he took his first White House job as Obama’s special assistant for economic policy.
In 2015, just a few months into his role as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Deese reported owning between $81,000 and $215,000 in assets — but now, as a member of the Biden administration, he’s reported between $2 million and $7.2 million in assets.
Prior to joining the Biden administration, Deese made $2.3 million in salary from the investment firm BlackRock as the Global Head of Sustainable Investing, compared to the $175,000 in salary he received during his last year as Obama’s deputy OMB director.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, was paid consulting fees by General Electric, Lyft, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Gates Ventures, among others, as clients of Precision Strategies, a marketing agency in which she was a founding partner.
She reported between $2.2 million to $4.7 million in assets on her disclosure form and more than $800,000 in income in the past year, which includes $426,067 deferred compensation and severance from Precision Strategies, on top of $50,000 in salary from the firm.
She also made more than $110,000 as Beto O’Rourke’s campaign manager before becoming Biden’s campaign manager at a salary of over $190,000.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s current national security adviser, is another multimillionaire, reporting assets between $7.5 million and $27.5 million held with his spouse, Margaret Goodlander, a former law clerk to now-Attorney General Judge Merrick Garland.
Much of his wealth comes from a long list of residential and commercial real estate properties scattered throughout Florida and New Hampshire, and he also reported holding five- to six-figure dollars’ worth of shares in private companies including Abbott Labs, American Express, Facebook, FedEx, Google, Merck, Visa and Verizon.
Sullivan’s salary from the consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners in the past year was $138,000, and his corporate consulting clients included Uber, LEGO, MasterCard and Standard Chartered Bank.
He also held academic positions at Yale and Dartmouth.
In first lady Jill Biden’s office, chief of staff Julissa Reynoso was a partner at the law firm of Winston & Strawn, where she made more than $1.5 million last year with a $150,000 bonus.
She reported between $4.1 million and $14.8 million in assets, and made up to $1.9 million in total income in the past year, including income from rental properties in New York and Miami as well as commercial properties in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Henderson, North Carolina, among others.
She also listed a vacant beachfront property in the Dominican Republic on her disclosure form.
end quotes
And there we have it, people, fortune shines down on the fortunate, does it not?
Paul Plante says
And here, let us go to a Reuters story entitled “Fed policymakers edge closer to opening debate around taper” by Ann Saphir and Howard Schneider on May 25, 2021, where we have ditzy Mary Daly of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, Nancy Pelosi’s personal central banker, prattling on as if we were all adolescents sucking on our thumbs, like her, as follows:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal Reserve policymakers have begun to acknowledge they are closer to debating when to pull back some of their crisis support for the U.S. economy, even as they say it is still needed to bolster the recovery and employment.
“We are talking about talking about tapering,” San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly told CNBC on Tuesday, referring to the potential reduction of the Fed’s $120 billion in monthly asset purchases.
“I want to make sure that everyone knows that it’s not about doing anything now,” Daly added.
end quotes
So, they are at least talking about talking, anyway, people, and my goodness, doesn’t that make you feel good about yourself to be an American, instead of something else, where we have the federal reserve to watch over us and keep us safe by talking about talking, but not actually doing anything?
Getting back to that story, we have more as follows:
Most Fed policymakers have stuck to the view that the recent rise in inflation will prove transitory, given its origins in supply and labor market bottlenecks that will in time get worked out.
But not all are completely convinced.
Speaking late Monday, Kansas City Fed President Esther George noted the “tremendous” amount of fiscal stimulus that has been pumped into the economy and said she is “not inclined to dismiss today’s pricing signals or to be overly reliant on historical relationships and dynamics in judging the outlook for inflation.”
Clarida on Tuesday said he believes that the Fed will be able to curb any outbreak of inflation with tough talk and more modest rate hikes that would allow economic growth to continue.
end quotes
Tough talk?
From the federal reserve?
In the meantime, checking the price today, a 3/4″ sheet of plywood is up to $82.48 for a 4′ x 8′ sheet.
Plywood, people!
Not jewelry, not a diamond necklace – plywood!
Now a luxury item!
So much for tough talk from the fed, especially in the light of the Reuters story “Amid hiring troubles, rising prices, U.S. growth gains speed – Fed” by Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir on June 2, 2021, to wit:
The U.S. economic recovery accelerated in recent weeks even as a long list of supply chain troubles, hiring difficulties, and rising prices cascaded through the country, Federal Reserve officials said in their latest review of economic conditions.
Homebuilders could not keep up with demand, manufacturers faced delivery delays of the material needed to finish goods, and “it remained difficult for many firms to hire new workers, especially low-wage hourly workers, truck drivers, and skilled tradespeople.”
Prices were rising, and for now were likely to continue to do so, the Fed reported.
Builders in the Midwest reported “significant project delays and some outright cancellations” because of “inflated material costs,” the Minneapolis Fed reported.
Paul Plante says
And as we watch the price of a four by eight foot sheet of 3/4 inch plywood climbing from $78 to $82, close to a doubling of price pre-Joe Biden, let us go back to a New York Times story entitled “Defying Critics, Biden and the Fed Insist the Economic Recovery Is on Track – Confidence from the White House runs counter to warnings from Republicans, some investors and even a few liberal economists” by Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek on May 22, 2021, where we have as follows to consider about the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY that the CULT OF JOE is bringing us, single-handedly, to wit:
The Federal Reserve likewise sees its policies — rock-bottom interest rates and monthly purchases of government-backed debt that are fueling lending and spending — as helping heal the labor market and the overall economy.
end quotes
And from this citizen’s perspective who has been following the federal reserve on a daily basis since about 2001, that is just plain BULL****, which is what we have come to expect from the federal reserve since the GREAT HOUSING MARKET MELTDOWN.
Simply said, in the name of “monetary policy,” what the federal reserve is really engaging in is called “social engineering,” which in this case is the use of centralized planning by the federal reserve board, all unelected, and all totally unaccountable to anything or anyone, in an attempt to manage and regulate the future development and behavior of OUR society.
Consider this bull**** “aggressive” policy known in the jargon of the economics trade as “yield-curve control” which was being pushed by Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard, who herself has no experience with the policy, and may not even know what day of the week it is, let alone what month, although she did manage to come out of the GREAT RECESSION quite well with fortune seemingly intact and unscathed.
In a speech at a conference examining how the Fed should react in the next downturn, which is where we are right now and have been during the GREAT RECESSION that left Joe Biden’s inner circle far better of financially than they were before, Brainard said the Fed should also pledge to keep interest rates at zero until the Fed achieves its targets of full employment and a 2% annual inflation rate, which could leave rates near 0% for a long time.
But pledge to whom?
Who actually cares what the federal reserve pledges to, especially today when any credibility it might once have had is totally shredded.
Consider that on October 6, 2014, it was reported that an Associated Press/Gfk Knowledge Networks poll in July found that most Americans said it is difficult to decipher the Fed’s policies on interest rates with seven-in-ten saying it was hard to understand the Fed’s interest rate policies while only 27% said it was easy (including just 7% who said it was very easy).
I think they speak gibberish and baby-talk, myself, and that is because the fed speaks in real stupid and inane gibberish like “lower for longer,” or “slightly accomodative,” or “in a good place,” all of which mean exactly nothing to the average American, for whom rates on such things as credit cards do not go down.
“Bernanke sees the stock market as a transmission mechanism for monetary policy,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist for Prudential Annuities.
“He wants people to take risks.”
Which translates to me as he and the federal reserve want people to be stupid, greedy and gamble.
Hardly traits to encourage if one wants a stable society, which the federal reserve is totally incapable of providing to the American people.
Consider the article “Riverboat gambling with Ben Bernanke” by Alex J. Pollock on July 21, 2013, to wit:
One can debate whether this has resulted in “The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve,” as is argued by Brendan Brown, but it is certain that the Federal Reserve is unsurpassed in its ability to create systemic risk for everybody else through its unlimited command of the principal global fiat money.
Mr. Bernanke’s chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board, which will run from 2006 to 2014 (it appears), will without doubt go down in financial history as highly memorable for remarkable emergency actions and a vast expansion of central banking.
How future histories characterize the author will reflect something they will know, which we cannot: what the outcome of the Bernanke Fed’s massive manipulation of the government debt and mortgage markets will have been.
end quotes
With respect to the federal reserve, manipulation means the action of manipulating someone, in this case, the American people, in a clever or unscrupulous way which takes us back to that article as follows:
The then-dominant personality in the Fed, Benjamin Strong, famously decided in 1927 to give the stock market a “little coup de whiskey.”
Ben Bernanke decided to give the bond market a barrel or so of whiskey, in a way which would have astonished previous generations of Federal Reserve Governors, and have been utterly unimaginable to the authors of the Federal Reserve Act.
The ultimate outcome of this manipulation will probably render Chairman Bernanke in future histories as either a great hero or a great bum.
end quotes
Not at all surprisingly, I have him down as a great bum, myself, which takes us back to that article, to wit:
The record of the Federal Reserve at economic and financial forecasting, including missing the extent of the Housing Bubble and the huge impact of its collapse, and failing to forecast the ensuing sharp recession, strengthens this wise case for humility on the Federal Reserve’s part.
Such humility seems especially appropriate about attempts to predict financial market dynamics.
As Bernanke recently said about rapid increases in bond yields, “Well, we were a little puzzled by that.”
end quotes
Because he and they are stupid, for all their college degrees, as we see from the following:
In a 1996 speech otherwise famous for raising the question of “irrational exuberance,” then- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sensibly discussed the limits of the Fed’s knowledge.
“There is, regrettably, no simple model of the American economy that can effectively explain the levels of output, employment, and inflation,” he said.
“In principle, there may be some unbelievably complex set of equations that does that.”
“But we [the Fed] have not been able to find them, and do not believe anyone else has either.”
Indeed, they have not, as subsequent history has amply demonstrated.
Moreover, in my view, not even in principle can any model successfully predict the financial and economic future, so the Federal Reserve cannot know what the results of its own actions will be.
end quotes
And yet, these clowns on the federal reserve today are telling us the exact opposite, as if we were all as stupid as they are:
“We did not anticipate that the decline in house prices would have such a broad-based effect on the stability of the financial system,” Bernanke concedes.
Indeed, well into 2007, the Fed was downplaying the extent of the damage the mortgage collapse which had already begun would entail.
end quotes
Stupid is as stupid does.
Believe a word the federal reserve says at your own risk, which takes us back to the New York Times article as follows:
Its (the federal reserve) top officials have maintained that the period of higher inflation expected this year will be temporary.
And while policymakers have been surprised by some recent data points, they emphasize that is to be expected: After all, nobody has reopened the economy from a pandemic before.
end quotes
And that is a stupid, ignorant statement that nobody has reopened the economy from a pandemic before as we clearly see from a CNBC article entitled “‘Roaring 20s’ after the pandemic? Big banks warn be careful what you wish for” by Elliot Smith on Jan. 27, 2021, to wit:
The 1918 flu infected around 500 million people in four waves between February 1918 to April 1920, resulting in tens of millions of deaths.
What followed was a decade characterized by economic and cultural prosperity in the U.S. and Europe.
There are a host of parallels between current global conditions and those prior to the Roaring 20s: the end of a pandemic, the proliferation of new technologies, a transport revolution, political polarization, emerging international rivalries and a soaring stock market.
However, HSBC Senior Economic Advisor Stephen King echoed Staley’s concerns, noting that while the Roaring 20s were great for the “real-life Gatsbys” who made their fortunes, actual economic growth in the U.S. economy was distinctly ordinary.
“Many rural citizens were left behind.”
“Meanwhile, an inexperienced Federal Reserve struggled to cope with a combination of low inflation and surging stock prices.”
“When it all came crashing down, depression followed,” King said in a research note Wednesday.
Between 1920 and the Wall Street crash of 1929, real GDP (gross domestic product) per capita rose by 17.7% in the U.S., with only a handful of major economies performing worse, and nor was the period out of the ordinary compared to other nine-year stretches in American history.
Meanwhile Western Europe and the Soviet Union saw much more substantial rebounds, having also been hit by hyperinflation and civil war, respectively.
King also highlighted that now, as then, the global economy faces substantial monetary policy conflicts, with zero or negative rates and quantitative easing encouraging a huge flow of liquidity into financial assets even as consumers during lockdowns have been prevented from spending their incomes.
“As lockdowns end and spending increases, the risk of policy error is likely to rise,” he suggested, adding that the surging stock market is likely to offer “cold comfort” to those left behind by the pandemic.
“And just as the Great Depression led many to spurn western democratic values and embrace the apparent attractions of either European-style fascism or Soviet-style Communism (conveniently ignoring Stalin’s abuses) so, today, there’s a risk that western democracies come under increasing pressure from rising inequality, their uneven management of the pandemic and the increasing amount of social media-generated ‘fake news’,” King suggested.
He noted that a post-pandemic recovery could help to justify elevated stock prices and, for now, those owning stocks seem to be emerging as the big winners of Covid-19.
“The Twenties may have roared for some and Spanish flu might have been tamed but the decade ultimately paved the way for unimaginable political, financial and, in Gatsby’s case, personal upheaval,” King said.
“By all means cheer at the resilience of the stock market and the possibility of a post-pandemic economic bounce.”
“But also prepare yourself for the possibility that it all ends in tears.”
Paul Plante says
And as we continue to examine the relationship between the Biden administration and the federal reserve, which functions as a “tax farmer” for the Biden administration, let us once more go back to the New York Times story entitled “Defying Critics, Biden and the Fed Insist the Economic Recovery Is on Track – Confidence from the White House runs counter to warnings from Republicans, some investors and even a few liberal economists” by Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek on May 22, 2021, where we have, to wit:
Critics, including some liberal economists, look at the confidence coming from the White House and the Fed and see a risk: that policymakers will be too slow to change course in the face of a fast-changing backdrop.
end quotes
In light of history, people, pay some very special heed to that concern, which takes us back to the article, to wit:
If companies continue to struggle to find workers and prices shoot even higher, they warn, the economy could overheat, hurting businesses and consumers and maybe even leading to another recession.
end quotes
And how many recessions have we had now since the Dot-Com Bubble burst?
If we go to the website The Balance. and the article “History of Recessions in the United States
Causes, Length, GDP, and Unemployment Rates,” by Kimberly Amadeo reviewed by Somer G. Anderson updated May 12, 2021, we find as follows:
21st Century Recessions
In its first decade, the 21st century experienced three recessions.
Each was worse than the one before, but for different reasons.
2020 Recession
The 2020 recession was the worst since the Great Depression.
The U.S. economy contracted a record 31.4% in the second quarter, after falling 5% in the previous quarter.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced businesses to close and families to shelter-in-place.
In April 2020, the U.S. economy lost an astonishing 20.8 million jobs, sending the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 14.7%.
It remained in the double-digits until August.
Uncertainty over the pandemic’s impact also caused the 2020 stock market crash.
The Federal Reserve lowered the fed funds rate to 0%, promising to keep it there until 2023.
Congress issued $3.8 trillion in aid.
Although the economy grew 33.1% in the third quarter, it was not enough to make up for earlier losses.
2008–09
The Great Recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, the longest contraction since the Great Depression.
The subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global bank credit crisis in 2007.
By 2008, the damage had spread to the general economy through the widespread use of derivatives.
GDP in 2008 shrank in three quarters, including an 8.4% drop in Q4.
The unemployment rate rose to 10% in October 2009, lagging behind the recession that caused it.
The recession ended in Q3 2009, when GDP turned positive, thanks to an economic stimulus package.
The recession ended in Q3 2009, when GDP turned positive, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
2001
The 2001 recession lasted eight months, from March to November.
It was caused by a boom and subsequent bust in dot-com businesses.
The Y2K scare partially created the boom in 2000.
Companies bought billions of dollars worth of new software because they were afraid the old systems weren’t designed to transition from the 1900s to the 2000s.
Many dot-com businesses were significantly overvalued and failed.
The 9/11 attack worsened the recession.
The economy contracted in two quarters: Q1 by -1.1% and Q3 by -1.7%.
Unemployment continued rising until it peaked at 6.3% in June 2003.
20th Century Recessions
There were 12 recessions in the 20th century.
end quotes
So much for the federal reserve, which takes us to this, to wit:
Federal Reserve Makes $88.9 Billion in Profit
JAN 11, 2013
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced in a preliminary estimate that it had made a profit in 2012 and transferred $88.9 billion to the Treasury.
This is a new high for the Fed, up from the previous high of $79 billion in 2010, and $77 billion last year.
The Fed took in $91.0 billion, the overwhelming majority ($80.5 billion) of which was attained through its open-market operations.
The Fed was selling short-term T-bill and buying longer-term bonds as part of what has been called “Operation Twist,” and recently has been buying more mortgage-backed securities as part of QE3.
Expenses of the Federal Reserve System totaled $4.9 billion, with an additional $387 million to fund the operations of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and Office of Financial Research that were created by the Dodd-Frank Act.
Revenue from the Federal Reserve has been one of the more significant revenue streams flowing to the federal government in the past few years.
It has raised about as much money as all excise taxes and ranks only behind individual income, corporate income, and payoll taxes.
It’s worth noting, though, that while Federal Reserve remittances have dramatically increased over the last few years, that is unlikely to continue when the economy recovers and interest rates begin to rise.
The Fed will likely increase their holdings of short-term T-bills, but they will significantly shrink their balance sheet overall to unwind from their current accommodative monetary position.
end quotes
Which is all BULL****, people, because just in the last year, the federal reserve balance sheet has ballooned, as we see by going to the Open Market website on 16 Nov. 2020, to wit:
The Fed’s Balance Sheet Will Continue to Grow in 2021
By Blu Putnam
The Federal Reserve (Fed) has shifted its approach to the pandemic of 2020 in some important ways during the year.
Initially, from late February through early June, the Fed purchased a wide variety of assets and provided loans to several parts of the financial system, expanding its balance sheet from about $4 trillion to $7 trillion.
Going forward, the commitment to continue purchasing coupon-paying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities at a rate of about $25-$30 billion per week, means that the balance sheet will start to grow again.
end quotes
As of May 26, 2021, the Fed’s assets stood at $7.9 trillion, so the profits feeding back to the Biden administration will rise considerably, this as THE CULT OF JOE tell us that there will be no tax increases on the middle class and the lower classes, when in fact, inflation is indeed a tax on the middle class and the lower classes imposed by the federal reserve to profit the Biden administration.
Paul Plante says
And here, let us do some quick review to see where it is we might now be with respect to the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY by going first to a CNBC story entitled “Stocks are on the path towards new records, even with Fed and inflation worries increasing” by Patti Domm published June 7, 2021, where we have as follows:
“I’m pretty optimistic about U.S. equities,” said Adam Parker, founder of Trivariate Research.
He said there are four reasons, including an accelerating economy, strong earnings growth, an accommodative Fed and stimulus.
end quotes
And yes, people, because of stimulus and an accommodative Fed, there is the appearance of an accelerating economy, and strong earnings growth.
That is a given because of all the money now sloshing around in the system thanks to the Weimar Republic-like policies of the federal reserve which is printing money like it is going out of style, which it may well be doing, as we see from a Reuters article entitled “TREASURIES-Yields little changed as investors look to upcoming auctions” by Ross Kerber on June 7, 2021, to wit:
June 7 (Reuters) – Traders left U.S. Treasury yields little changed on Monday as they waited on the results of upcoming government bond auctions, while a Federal Reserve reverse repurchase facility took in a record amount of money.
The amount of money flowing into the U.S. Federal Reserve’s reverse repurchase facility hit an all-time high of $486.1 billion on Monday, about a billion dollars more than the previous record on May 27.
The high amounts put pressure on short-term interest rates, trading just above zero.
Jim Barnes director of fixed income for Bryn Mawr Trust, said the records reflect government money funds parking cash even without an interest payment.
end quotes
That, of course, is to protect the net worth of such important people here in America as Janet “TOODLES” Yellen, Joe Biden’s well-off treasury secretary, and Pramila Jayapal, and Ilhan Omar, and who can forget Hillary Clinton, plus all of Joe Biden’s inner circle including his arm-waving, head-bobbling press secretary Jen Psaki.
They are not in public service to get poor, afterall, which thought takes us to another CNBC article, this one entitled “Deutsche Bank warns of global ‘time bomb’ coming due to rising inflation” by Jeff Cox published June 7, 2021, to get an idea of where this fiasco might be heading, because the federal reserve is now firmly caught in a trap of its own making, called MORAL HAZARD, which is a belief instilled in people that the federal reserve will always be there to do “whatever it takes” to keep them flush, so that the fed cannot stop printing money now, or the ship goes down, as follows:
Inflation may look like a problem that will go away, but is more likely to persist and lead to a crisis in the years ahead, according to a warning from Deutsche Bank economists.
In a forecast that is well outside the consensus from policymakers and Wall Street, Deutsche issued a dire warning that focusing on stimulus while dismissing inflation fears will prove to be a mistake if not in the near term then in 2023 and beyond.
The analysis especially points the finger at the Federal Reserve and its new framework in which it will tolerate higher inflation for the sake of a full and inclusive recovery.
The firm contends that the Fed’s intention not to tighten policy until inflation shows a sustained rise will have dire impacts.
“The consequence of delay will be greater disruption of economic and financial activity than would be otherwise be the case when the Fed does finally act,” Deutsche’s chief economist, David Folkerts-Landau, and others wrote.
“In turn, this could create a significant recession and set off a chain of financial distress around the world, particularly in emerging markets.”
As part of its approach to inflation, the Fed won’t raise interest rates or curtail its asset purchase program until it sees “substantial further progress” toward its inclusive goals.
end quotes
As was stated above, the federal reserve is now using monetary policy to push a social agenda that it is trying to engineer and impose on us, and consequences be damned, as we are going to see, and experience, which takes us back to CNBC, to wit:
Multiple central bank officials have said they are not near those objectives.
In the meantime, indicators such as the consumer price and personal consumption expenditures price indices are well above the Fed’s 2% inflation goal.
Policymakers say the current rise in inflation is temporary and will abate once supply disruptions and base effects from the early months of the coronavirus pandemic crisis wear off.
The Deutsche team disagrees, saying that aggressive stimulus and fundamental economic changes will present inflation ahead that the Fed will be ill-prepared to address.
“It may take a year longer until 2023 but inflation will re-emerge.”
“And while it is admirable that this patience is due to the fact that the Fed’s priorities are shifting towards social goals, neglecting inflation leaves global economies sitting on a time bomb,” Folkerts-Landau said.
“The effects could be devastating, particularly for the most vulnerable in society.”
end quotes
And let us be incandescently clear here, people – the federal reserve has no expertise in social engineering, and it has no experience with social engineering, since it is not charged with engaging in social engineering in the first place, and the best example of another government trying the same social engineering policies was the short-lived Weimar Republic and its hyperinflation, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
To be sure, the Deutsche position is not widely held by economists.
Most on Wall Street agree with the Fed’s view that current inflation pressures are transitory, and they doubt there will be any policy changes soon.
end quotes
And anybody who is not an out-of-touch-with-reality moron knows full well that the federal reserve will not change its policies soon, because it is trapped, so i8t can’t, or down comes the house of cards, POOF, which again takes us back to that story, to wit:
Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, said there are “strong reasons” to support the position.
On price pressures in general, Hatzius said that much of current spike is being driven by “the unprecedented role of outliers” that will ebb and bring levels back closer to normal.
“All this suggests that Fed officials can stick with their plan to exit only very gradually from the easy current policy stance,” Hatzius wrote.
That will be a mistake, according to the Deutsche view.
Congress has approved more than $5 trillion in pandemic-related stimulus so far, and the Fed has nearly doubled its balance sheet, through monthly asset purchases, to just shy of $8 trillion.
The stimulus continues to come through even with an economy that is expected to grow at about a 10% pace in the second quarter and an employment picture that has added an average 478,000 jobs a month in 2021.
“Never before have we seen such coordinated expansionary fiscal and monetary policy.”
“This will continue as output moves above potential,” Folkers-Landau said.
“This is why this time is different for inflation.”
The Deutsche team said the coming inflation could resemble the 1970s experience, a decade during which inflation averaged nearly 7% and was well into double digits at various times.
Soaring food and energy prices along with the end of price controls helped push that era’s soaring inflation.
Then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker led the effort to squash inflation then, but needed to use dramatic interest rate hikes that triggered a recession.
The Deutsche team worries that such a scenario could play out again.
“Already, many sources of rising prices are filtering through into the US economy.”
“Even if they are transitory on paper, they may feed into expectations just as they did in the 1970s,” they said.
“The risk then, is that even if they are only embedded for a few months they may be difficult to contain, especially with stimulus so high.”
The firm said interest rate hikes could “cause havoc in a debt-heavy world,” with financial crises likely particularly in emerging economies where growth won’t be able to overcome higher financing costs.
end quotes
Ah, yes, may we always live in interesting times, which brings us to a Reuters article entitled “U.S. consumers sour on housing market’s buying conditions” by Evan Sully on June 7, 2021, to wit:
A record-low percentage of U.S. consumers believe now is a good time to buy a home, with worries about surging prices and a small supply of houses on the market outweighing improved sentiment about their jobs and income, a survey from home financing giant Fannie Mae showed on Monday.
The percentage of consumers who said it is a good time to buy a home declined in May to 35% from 47%, Fannie Mae said in its monthly survey of the U.S. housing market.
This reading, the lowest since Fannie Mae began the survey about a decade ago, marked the second straight monthly decline and represented a drop of 18 percentage points since March.
In comparison, the percentage of consumers indicating that now is a bad time to purchase a home increased to 56% from 48% last month.
The data is part of Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI), which increased by 1.0 point to 80.0 last month and is up 12.5 points from a year earlier.
“The ‘good time to buy’ component fell further – hitting another all-time survey low – as consumers appear to be acutely aware of higher home prices and the low supply of homes, the two reasons cited most frequently for that particular sentiment,” Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan said in a statement.
The improvement of a U.S. economy that had been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic has left a challenging environment for home buyers.
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported last Wednesday that its seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 4% from a week prior to the lowest in more than a year.
end quotes
Yes, people, price inflation destroys economies, but hey, it is the fed’s to destroy, is it not?
And who are we mere menials to question them?
Paul Plante says
And speaking of having a crackpot economist in charge of our United States Treasury, and thus, essentially in charge of our lives, which is not a comforting thought at all, unless you are into and an advocate of HOODOO economics, a swirl of smaller crackpot theories rolled up into one major-league crackpot theory employed by Janet “TOODLES” Yellen, Joe Biden’s own personal financila guru, let’s go to a CNBC story entitled “Higher interest rates would be good for the country, Treasury Secretary Yellen says” by Emma Newburger published June 6, 2021, where we have this ignorant codswallop (nonsense, as in “I think that’s a right load of old codswallop”) from “TOODLES” which demonstrates how thin her grasp on the reality most of us who are not rich like her live our lives in, outside of her guarded and gated community where only the rich and privileged can go, to wit:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion spending proposal would be positive for the country, even if it leads to a rise in interest rates.
“If we ended up with a slightly higher interest rate environment it would actually be a plus for society’s point of view and the Fed’s point of view,” Yellen told Bloomberg.
“We’ve been fighting inflation that’s too low and interest rates that are too low now for a decade,” she said.
She added that if the packages help at all to “alleviate things then that’s not a bad thing — that’s a good thing.”
end quotes
And that is from her perspective as someone who wants to protect her own net worth and has the political power to do so.
But historically speaking, what might be good for the fed is hardly good for society, since the federal reserve is a giant parasite that feeds off society and ultimately sucks the life out of it, to feed its bloated self, a process it is no long in control of, which in turn takes The (Raleigh) News & Observer story “Lumber prices still sky-high amid COVID-19 shortage. What’s being done to get costs down?” by Bailey Aldridge on June 6, 2021, where we get further insight into “TOODLES ” statement “We’ve been fighting inflation that’s too low now for a decade,” to see where we are on that score, to wit:
RALEIGH — Lumber prices have continued surging in response to supply shortages spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lumber scarcity matched with increased demand during the pandemic drove costs sky-high, which in turn has increased construction and housing costs and left government officials and those within the industry grappling with how to rebound supply and bring costs down.
Between April 2020 and April 2021, the National Association of Home Builders said the “price per thousand board feet” increased by nearly 250% — from $350 to $1,200.
Prices then soared past $1,400 in early May and have continued increasing since.
The high lumber costs have increased the price of a single-family home by about $36,000, the NAHB says.
That’s priced “millions of middle-class households out of the market at a level they previously could afford.”
It’s also added nearly $13,000 to the cost of an “average new multifamily” home — meaning rent for a new apartment has gone up by about $119 each month.
end quotes
And you know what, people?
The fed loves that, because it to their benefit, not being of us, or a part of us, but a large blood-sucking parasite over us, which takes us back to that story, to wit:
What’s being done to bring lumber prices down?
The NAHB said it has called for “prompt action” from President Joe Biden’s administration and other officials and in late May discussed the soaring lumber prices with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
“Raimondo and NAHB CEO Jerry Howard discussed working together on convening a summit that would include representatives from the U.S. government, the lumber supply chain and the home building industry,” it said.
end quotes
And Holy Cow, people, there is a solution alright – convene a summit, get all the right people in the room at the same time and have some palaver, and out of that will come something, else why have a summit in the first place?
Getting back to the story:
NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke said in a news release that Raimondo acknowledged she and Biden are concerned about the effect of high lumber prices on the country’s economy.
“We take these issues seriously, and my staff and I are committed to continuing to work with all stakeholders, including reviewing relevant data and conducting analysis to identify targeted actions the government or industry can take to address supply chain constraints,” Raimondo said, according to the NAHB.
end quotes
And hey, Gina, dude, no rush!
Don’t get yourself all stressed out about something you’re totally out of your league in, other than issuing empty platitudinal statements to the effect you “take these issues seriously, and my staff and I are committed to continuing to work with all stakeholders, including reviewing relevant data and conducting analysis to identify targeted actions the government or industry can take to address supply chain constraints,”
Getting back to the story once again:
Some GOP lawmakers have criticized Biden for the high lumber costs, accusing him of “declaring war” on construction jobs and not taking enough action, Fox Business reported.
“Lumber prices are an issue that has many causes, from economic complications from the coronavirus pandemic to difficult trade issues with Canada.”
“Biden has shown he is either unwilling or incapable of tackling these obstacles,” Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio said in a statement to Fox News.
But Biden said during remarks in late May that rebooting the economy isn’t like “flipping on a light switch” and that there will be supply chain issues on the way to “steady growth.”
“In the coming weeks, my administration will take steps to combat these supply pressures, starting with the construction materials and transportation bottlenecks,” Biden said.
Some groups have urged Biden to remove lumber and steel tariffs imposed during President Donald Trump’s administration, CNN Business reports.
A White House spokesperson told CNN Business that the Biden administration is pursuing “every avenue that could help relieve bottlenecks and strengthen our economic recovery” and that it will continue to review Trump-era trade policies.
“Tariffs are one tool in the toolbox to support American workers and American industry,” the spokesperson said, according to CNN Business.
end quotes
Except tariffs, which benefit the treasury, are killing the home construction industry, and in the case of lumber, are doing doodly-squat to support American workers or American industry, but Joe needs those tariffs to support his massive and grandiose stimulation, so there we are and if we go back to the story once again, we will see that there is where we will remain, to wit:
What pushed prices so high?
Some sawmills were forced to shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, limiting lumber supplies.
At the same time, many American stuck at home due to COVID-19 restrictions stocked up on materials to complete do-it-yourself projects and demand for construction or home improvement projects increased.
Additionally, Fortune reports that many potential homebuyers opted for construction when record-low interest rates spurred a boom in the housing market, further driving up demand.
“It was the perfect storm,” Kari Doll, manager at a lumber yard in Montana, told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
The decrease in supply coupled with the increase in demand drove lumber prices sky-high.
Now, the backlogged supply hasn’t been able to catch up with the high demand and lumber prices have remained elevated.
Experts have offered varying projections on when prices could come down, with some saying they could ease in the summer and others saying it’s unclear when or if prices will return to where they were before the boom.
end quotes
Oh, well, should have built that new dog house last year, when it would still have been affordable!
Sorry, Fido, a tarp over the picnic table will have to suffice for now, and well, okay, quite a long time but than God dogs are patient, or there might have been some leg-biting over that news.
Paul Plante says
Getting back with the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY, let’s go to a CNBC story entitled “Producer prices climb 6.6% in May on annual basis, largest 12-month increase on record” by Jeff Cox published June 15, 2021, to see what impact the federal reserve’s push for higher inflation is having on the REAL AMERICAN ECONOMY, which is the economy of MAIN STREET, where we all live and have to function, to wit:
Producer prices rose at their fastest annual clip in nearly 11 years in May as inflation continued to build in the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.
end quotes
And the federal reserve, which is a quasi-private bank not responsible in any way to We, the American People, with interests of its own totally foreign to ours, and inimical (tending to obstruct or harm) to ours, given that inflation reduces the value of our money and is a tax the federal reserve collects despite our having no representation in the matter, is quite fine with that rapid rise in inflation, which takes us back to that story, to wit:
The 6.6% surge was the biggest 12-month rise in the final demand index since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in November 2010.
Those higher price pressures came amid a pronounced dip in retail sales, which fell 1.3% in May, worse than the 0.6% estimate, according to the Census Bureau.
end quotes
And big surprise there – the pronounced dip in retail sales, which is exactly what is predicted in The Library of Economics and Liberty paper titled “Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes” by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner.
As prices go up, people find alternatives, or they stop buying.
Except the federal reserve thinks it can push on a rope and do work that way, so they think people will simply accept the higher prices and pay them, which raises the amount on their credit card, and thus, the interest they are paying if they can’t wipe the balance on a monthly basis, which is great for the member banks of the federal reserve.
Getting back to CNBC:
Excluding food and energy, the 12-month final demand PPI rose 5.3%, which also was the biggest increase since that the BLS started tracking that number in August 2014.
Substantial price increases at the producer end came from nonferrous metals, which jumped 6.9% for the month.
Prices of grains also surged, rising 25.7%, while oilseeds increased 19.5% and beef and veal rose 10.5%.
Fresh fruits and melons fell 1.9%, while basic organic chemicals and asphalt also declined.
Though services continued to be a lower contributor to overall producer price pressures, the index rose for the fifth straight month.
The higher numbers likely will add to an ongoing debate over whether the inflation pressures over the past several months will last.
Federal Reserve officials believe the current increase will prove to be transitory as supply and demand issues balance out and low readings during the pandemic lockdown wash out of the system.
However, several notable Wall Street names, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, told CNBC on Monday that it’s time for the Fed to pull back on the easy-money policy it instituted during the pandemic.
end quotes
Except the fed can’t do that – pull back on the easy-money policy it instituted during the pandemic, because it will cause a TAPER TANTRUM, which again takes us back to the story, to wit:
While the inflation readings have been gathering the Street’s attention, consumers have been pulling back on their purchases as the effects from government stimulus checks have worn off.
end quotes
And there is what we were just taking about – the fact that if the government hands people money, there is a likelihood, not a certainty, that they will spend it, and then, they won’t spend while waiting for another handout, which takes us back to the reality we live in, which is far removed from the “reality” that only exists in the economic models of the federal reserve, to wit:
Excluding autos, retail sales were down 0.7% in May, well off the estimate for a 0.5% increase.
Excluding gas stations, sales fell 1.5%.
Building material and garden supply sales tumbled 5.9% for the month, while miscellaneous store sales were off 5% and general merchandise sales fell 3.3%.
end quotes
1929, anyone?
Paul Plante says
And yes, people, the BIDEN MIRACLE ECONOMY coming to a town or village near you real soon, which takes us to a CNBC story entitled “The Fed could be facing a jobs headache in its inflation fight” by Jeff Cox on June 11, 2021, where we get another glimpse as to what is out ahead of us as THE CULT OF JOE institutes Weimar Republic fiscal and monetary policy in this country, to wit:
If the Federal Reserve’s view on inflation prevails, a few key things have to go right, particularly when it comes to getting people back to work.
Solving the jobs puzzle has been the most vexing task for policymakers in the coronavirus pandemic era, with nearly 10 million potential workers still considered unemployed even though the number of open positions available hit a record of 9.3 million in April, according to the latest data from the U.S. Labor Department.
There’s a fairly simple inflation dynamic at play: The longer it takes to get people back to work, the more employers will have to pay.
Those higher salaries in turn will trigger higher prices and could lead to the kinds of longer-term inflationary above-normal pressures that the Fed is trying to avoid.
“Unfortunately, we see good reasons to think that labor participation might not return quickly to its pre-Covid level,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a note.
“Whatever is happening here, the Fed needs large numbers of these people to return to the labor force in the fall.”
end quotes
Yes, people, when pushing on the rope fails to lift the load, why, you just double down and push harder.
And that is yet another example of the social engineering the federal reserve under THE CULT OF JOE is engaged in, as they use monetary policy to try and force social behavior, which takes us back to the story, as follows:
Consumer prices increased at a 5% pace year over year in May, the fastest since the financial crisis.
Economists, though, generally agreed that much of what is driving the rapid inflation surge is due to temporary factors that will ease up as the recovery continues and the economy returns to normal following the unprecedented pandemic shock.
end quotes
Has anyone out there ever followed the projections of economists on a daily basis with regard to economic trends?
They make weathermen look dead on the money by comparison with their misses, so that anyone who trusts the predictions of an economist is a fool, which takes us back to CNBC, to wit:
That’s far from certain, though.
The Atlanta Fed’s gauge of “sticky” inflation, or price of goods that tend not to fluctuate greatly over time, rose 2.7% year over year in May for the strongest growth since April 2009.
A separate measure of “flexible” CPI, or prices that do tend to move frequently, increased a stunning 12.4%, the fastest since December 1980.
end quotes
So, price inflation, people – great for the federal reserve and the ONE PERCENT who form the core of Joe Biden’s inner circle, but not for the American people themselves, for whom inflation is a tax that reduces their buying power, which again takes us back to the story of our developing future, to wit:
In their most recent forecast, Fed officials put core inflation at 2.2% for all of 2021; Shepherdson said the current numbers suggest something closer to 3.5%.
“That’s a huge miss, and it potentially poses a serious threat to the Fed’s benign view of medium-term inflation because of its potential impact of the labor market,” Shepherdson said.
end quotes
Not only is the federal reserve not always right, more seriously, it is dead wrong, as it was during the housing market meltdown, believing implicitly, and wrongly, that housing prices do not come down, which again takes us back to the story of the reality we common folks are confronted as the federal reserve bungles its way along here, to wit:
Managing its way through the various dynamics could prove difficult for the Fed.
Previous attempts to normalize policy over the years have largely failed, with the central bank having to revert back to the zero-interest money-printing world that arose during the financial crisis.
“The Fed is trapped,” wrote Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist for the Americas at Natixis and former chief economist for the National Economic Council.
end quotes
And yes, indeed, they are, a trap they created that is known as MORAL HAZARD, where you have to keep handing out free money tomarrow, because you handed it out today and yesterday and the day before and the day before that – the now-famous BERNANKE PUT, which instilled a belief in the ONE PERCENT that the federal reserve would always have their back and never let them fail, which again takes us back to the story, to wit:
While LaVorgna sees inflation as staying relatively under control, he thinks the Fed could face problems from deflationary pressures.
The central bank doesn’t like inflation that’s too low, as it creates a low-expectation cycle that constricts monetary policy during downturns.
“The political pressure to do nothing will be intense” as government debt increases, LaVorgna said.
“If the Fed cannot (or will not) remove excessive policy accommodation when the economy is booming, how can policymakers do it when growth invariably slows?”
end quotes
An existential question for our times, alright, which takes us back to CNBC for more federal reserve social engineering, to wit:
Regardless of the inflation pressures, the Fed last year changed its mission statement to keep policy accommodative until the economy sees inclusive labor gains, meaning across gender, income and race.
end quotes
So, because of the social policies the Biden administration is imposing on us with this “equity” horse**** the CULT OF JOE is imposing on us, the federal reserve, which is no experience in social engineering, and no expertise in social engineering, and no mandate to engage in social engineering is going to engage in social engineering nonetheless to our detriment by letting inflation “run hot” until every L, every G, every B, every Q, and every T and every Black person and persons of all other colors than white have the high-paying job that they want for themselves, which is straight out of the WEIMAR REPUBLIC MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY HANDBOOK.
Is chaos coming?
Stay tuned!
Paul Plante says
And to get a feel for the evolution of this history that leads us up to this moment where in the CNBC story entitled “The Fed could be facing a jobs headache in its inflation fight” by Jeff Cox on June 11, 2021, we have Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist for the Americas at Natixis and former chief economist for the National Economic Council saying quite truthfully, “The Fed is trapped,” let’s go back in time to a story in the New Yorker entitled “The Bernanke Put: Can the Markets and the Economy Live Without It?” by John Cassidy eight years ago on June 21, 2013, where we were treated to the following background history, to wit:
In finance, a “put” is a contract that gives its owner the right to sell something — a stock, a bond, a tanker of crude oil — at certain price, regardless of the price in the market.
A put is a guarantee, basically, and when the markets are falling it can be invaluable.
But the word is sometimes used in a more general sense.
Back in the old days, when Mark Zuckerberg was in high school and Alan Greenspan was in Foggy Bottom, there was something called “the Greenspan put.”
It was a commitment on the part of the Fed to cut interest rates and print money whenever the markets or the economy stumbled.
end quotes
And there, people, we see the first weavings by the federal reserve of the trap it now has fenced itself in with, which has it pouring gobs of money into the system, while keeping interest rates near zero, because to raise them will screw the be-jaysus out of the high-flying tech stocks which require low interest rates to maintain their lofty evaluations.
As to money sloshing around in the system, let us go to a Reuters article entitled “TREASURIES-Yields rise as Fed eyes earlier start to rate hikes” by Karen Pierog on June 16, 2021, where we have as follows:
“The IOER hike is really about relieving some of the strains in the front-end of the curve related to a tsunami of cash in the financial system,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Capital Management.
“Banks are overreserved, money market funds are finding it hard to get positive yield anywhere – and so it addresses some of those problems.”
The amount of money pouring into the reverse repurchase agreement facility, which offers approved money managers the option to lend money to the Fed overnight in return for Treasury collateral, has ballooned, hitting a record $584 billion on Monday.
end quotes
CHEAP MONEY!
And the more the federal reserve pours out, the less our money is worth, which is why there is inflation, which takes is back to 2013 and the BERNANKE PUT, to wit:
Although its existence was officially denied, many investors believed it was in place, and this belief helped sustain the great stock market bubble of the late nineteen-nineties.
For the past few years, the Fed has been issuing another type of official guarantee, this time in the bond market.
Call it “the Bernanke put.”
In reducing the short-term interest rate it controls practically to zero, and committing to purchase trillions of dollars of Treasury bonds and high-grade mortgage bonds — a tactic known as quantitative easing — the Fed has managed to bring mortgage rates, and other lending rates, down to levels not seen since the nineteen-fifties.
end quotes
And lo and behold, people, the CNBC story “Mortgage rates shoot higher after Fed Chairman Powell’s comments” by Diana Olick on June 17, 2021, where we have the other end of that policy in our times today, to wit:
The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage moved decidedly higher Thursday, hitting 3.25%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
That is the highest rate since mid-April.
The move was a reaction to comments made Wednesday by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell following the central bank’s meeting this week.
Fed officials indicated that rate hikes could come in 2023, although they didn’t mention when they would start scaling back their massive bond-buying program.
“You can think of this meeting that we had as the ‘talking about talking about’ meeting,” Powell said, recalling a statement he made in 2020 that the bank wasn’t “thinking about thinking about raising rates.”
Mortgage rates even moved higher Tuesday in anticipation of the Fed meeting.
Mortgage rates do not follow the federal funds rate, which was unchanged Wednesday, but generally track the yield on the 10-year Treasury, which moved higher.
Mortgage rates are also affected greatly by the amount of mortgage-backed bonds the Fed purchases.
That’s what caught some investors off guard and caused bond yields and mortgage rates to move higher than expected.
“Markets were somewhat surprised by the Fed’s rate hike outlook.”
“Granted, the Fed Funds Rate doesn’t control mortgage rates, but the outlook speaks to how quickly the Fed would need to dial back its bond buying programs (aka ‘tapering’).”
“Those programs definitely help keep rates low,” noted Matthew Graham, chief operating officer of Mortgage News Daily.
The sooner the Fed starts to taper, the sooner mortgage rates move higher, as happened in the last so-called taper tantrum in June 2013.
Mortgage rates are now nearly a quarter of a percentage point higher than they were last Friday and about a quarter of a percentage point higher than they were a year ago.
Now, applications to refinance a home loan are 22% lower than they were a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
There are now far fewer borrowers who can benefit from a refinance.
As for homebuyers, given today’s sky-high home prices, any move higher in rates is not only going to hit the monthly payment but may make it harder to qualify for the loan.
“For home buyers, this means it’s a good idea to take a fresh look at your home shopping budget.”
“Run the numbers and know what it means for your search price if rates tick up a quarter point, but keep these worries in context,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for realtor.com.
end quotes
Kind of put a screwing to the working man it does, which takes us back to 2013 and the Bernanke Put, to wit:
Just as it was designed to do, this policy has given a significant boost to the housing market, and to other parts of the economy, but its flip side has been a bubble, or something closely resembling a bubble, in the global bond markets.
With investors chasing anything with a decent yield, they’ve piled into lower quality bonds — such as “junk bonds” issued by companies with poor credit ratings, and debts issued by governments in emerging markets — greatly narrowing the interest-rate premiums that such securities normally carry.
As long as the Fed remained committed to quantitative easing, the risks that investors faced in buying these types of bonds, or any other risky financial asset, was greatly attenuated.
Whilst much of the action was in the bond markets, quantitative easing also gave a boost to stock prices, which have more than doubled in the past four years.
Over all, the Fed’s policy has been reasonably successful.
As I’ve been saying for months, and as Bernanke confirmed earlier this week, the economic recovery is gradually strengthening.
That’s why the Fed chairman decided this was the right time to prepare the markets for a change in policy.
In theory, Bernanke’s gambit was a perfectly reasonable one.
Quantitative easing was always meant to be an emergency measure, not a permanent fixture.
But the market’s panicked reaction illustrates just how difficult it is for the Fed to remove a put it has previously issued, or is widely perceived to have issued.
Expressed bluntly, a Fed chairman intent on forcing the economy to stand on its own two feet has to be willing to accept some turmoil in the markets, and some collateral damage to the economy itself.
A modest fall in stock prices, which is what we’ve seen in the past few days, is the least of it.
Mortgage rates have already started to rise toward more normal levels, and the wave of cheap refinancings may be coming to an end.
That will put a crimp on the housing market and on consumer spending.
Combined with the impact of the sequester, which is still to be fully felt, these things could put a damper on G.D.P. growth in the second half of this year, when the Fed is expecting it to accelerate.
And, meanwhile, as the bond-market bubble starts to deflate, there’s a danger of some big financial institution that has been overexposed getting into trouble.
Bernanke, his colleagues, and his successor — his term is up next January — will have to withstand all of this.
In addition, they will come under attack from commentators and politicians who believe that, with the unemployment rate still very high and the rate of inflation still very low, they shouldn’t be doing anything to tighten policy.
Even some Fed insiders take this view.
In a statement released on Friday, James Bullard, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a colleague of Bernanke on the Federal Open Market Committee, said the announcement of the plan to draw down quantitative easing was “inappropriately timed,” and should have been delayed until there was more confirmed evidence of a pickup in economic growth.
I have some sympathy for Bullard’s argument, but also for the predicament in which Bernanke finds himself.
When Greenspan was the Fed chairman, one of the major criticisms about his policies was that they encouraged investors to believe that the central bank would always be there to protect them, and thereby contributed to excessive risk-taking — a phenomenon known as “moral hazard.”
(I made this argument myself, at book length.)
By issuing a warning now that quantitative easing may be coming to an end, Bernanke is seeking to forestall this problem before it generates another boom-bust cycle.
But being a tough cop is never easy.
end quotes
Which is why we still have Quantitative Easing today.
Stay tuned.
Paul Plante says
Which brings us back to the present moment and the Reuters story “Fed signals higher rates in 2023, bond-buying taper talks as virus fades” by Howard Schneider, Ann Saphir and Jonnelle Marte on June 16, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve on Wednesday began closing the door on its pandemic-driven monetary policy as officials projected an accelerated timetable for interest rate increases, opened talks on how to end crisis-era bond-buying, and said the 15-month-old health emergency was no longer a core constraint on U.S. commerce.
U.S. stocks fell after the release of the statement and the economic projections before paring losses, with the S&P 500 index closing down about 0.5%.
end quotes
A whiff of a coming taper tantrum?
Let’s go back for more to see what might be up here:
The Fed reiterated it wanted to see “substantial further progress” in employment before making any policy shift.
end quotes
And since the federal reserve has no real clue what that stupid statement “substantial further progress” means in actuality, given it is a made-up gibberish term, who can really say what the fed is going to do, starting with them, which again takes us back to Reuters, as follows:
Alongside higher growth, prices are also rising.
Inflation is now on track to exceed the Fed’s 2% target by a wide margin of 3.5% this year and remain slightly elevated for the next two years, the projections showed.
end quotes
That doesn’t faze the federal reserve in the least, since they live in LA-LA LAND, but that inflation will have a big impact, as intended, on the “working class” people in America who are the ones who will be paying that tax to the federal reserve, which takes us back to Reuters, as follows:
But he (Powell of the federal reserve) also acknowledged the rising risk that higher inflation may persist, a possibility apparent in the relative rush, by Fed standards at least, of policymakers toward an earlier rate increase.
end quotes
TRANSLATION: he has not clue!
Getting back to Reuters:
“This change in stance jars a little with the Fed’s recent claims that the recent spike in inflation is temporary,” said James McCann, deputy chief economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments.
“The pressure is on to explain the change in stance without setting hares running.”
end quotes
Anyone who believes a word the federal reserve says is a fool, which takes us to another Reuters article entitled “Dow, S&P post worst week in months after hawkish Fed spooks investors” by David French on June 18, 2021, for some taper tantrum, to wit:
(Reuters) – U.S. stocks ended sharply lower on Friday, with the Dow and S&P 500 posting their worst weekly performances in months, after comments from Federal Reserve official James Bullard that the U.S. central bank might raise interest rates sooner than previously expected spooked investors.
end quotes
OMG, the punch bowl is going to be taken away!
AAAARGH!
The end of the world is coming, people, which takes us back to Reuters, to wit:
The blue-chip Dow and the benchmark S&P 500 started the week at record closing levels, but ultimately fell by their most in any week since late October and late February, respectively.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq index also closed lower despite posting its two highest ever finishes in the last five days.
Investor confidence in their existing positions was initially dinged by the Fed’s policy meeting, where it projected interest rate hikes would happen sooner than anticipated, and signaled it was reaching the point where it could begin talking about tapering its massive stimulus – as opposed to just thinking about it.
This was compounded by Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, saying Friday he was among the seven officials who saw rate increases beginning next year to contain inflation.
Inflation, and how the U.S. central bank will tackle it as the country comes out of the pandemic, had been front-and-center of investors’ minds in the run-up to the policy meeting, which ended on Wednesday.
The CBOE volatility index, Wall Street’s fear gauge, closed Friday at a four-week high.
“Next week, you will have various Fed governors give speeches, and we’ll have the same thing: some governors will be more hawkish, and some will be more dovish, so you’ll see some back-and-forth,” Ghriskey added.
end quotes
Which thought takes us to yet another Reuters article entitled “TREASURIES-Yield curve flattens as Fed seen more proactive on inflation” by Karen Brettell on June 18, 2021, to wit:
NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) – Long-dated U.S. Treasury yields fell on Friday and the yield curve continued to flatten as market participants bet that the Federal Reserve will act sooner to clamp down on inflation pressures if they persist.
“It does seem as though the market has now shifted its view that the Fed’s going to let inflation run wild, to the Fed’s basically going to kill inflation in the cradle,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York, adding that “the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.”
“They are trying to reinforce their control of the narrative.”
“I don’t think they want the narrative to be that the Fed is behind the curve on inflation,” Goldberg said.
end quotes
The fed is behind the eight-ball and asleep at the switch, just as they were back in 2008.
But stay tuned, for this is just the beginning of all of what is yet to come!
Paul Plante says
And here, for some more essential background on this subject of price inflation, let us go back to an article in the ECONOMIC REVIEW, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1981, entitled “KEYNES ON INFLATION” by Thomas M. Humphrey, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, where we have as follows on the subject of the inflation the federal reserve is pursuing on behalf of the CULT OF JOE, to wit:
Early Writings
Keynes’ strong aversion to inflation is evident in even his earliest work.
It appears, for example, in his Indian Currency and Finance (1913).
There he emphatically rejects the argument that “a depreciating currency is advantageous . . . to trade,” contending that any advantages derived from inflation are “only temporary” and that they “occur largely at the expense of other members of the community” and therefore do “not profit the country as a whole.”
He takes an even tougher attitude in his Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), condemning inflation in the harshest possible terms.
He says:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency.
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.
He agrees with Lenin that inflation has the potentiality of destroying the basis of capitalist society.
Lenin was certainly right.
There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
He then proceeds to specify at least four ways that rapid inflation works to weaken the social fabric and to undermine the foundations of the capitalist free-market system.
First, unforeseen inflation, he says, results in a capricious and totally “arbitrary rearrangement of riches” that violates the principles of distributive justice.
Besides its inequities, inflation also renders business undertakings riskier and thereby turns “the process of wealth-getting . . . into a gamble and a lottery.”
In generating risk and injustice, inflation “strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.”
Second, inflation violates long-term arrangements based on the assumed stability of the value of money.
In so doing, inflation disturbs contracts and upsets “all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism.”
Third, inflation generates social discontent and directs it against businessmen whose windfall profits are wrongly perceived to be the cause rather than the consequence of inflation.
This discontent is exploited by governments which “being many of them . . . reckless . . . as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as ‘profiteers’ the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods.”
In other words, governments actually responsible for causing inflation seek to shift the blame onto businessmen who consequently lose “confidence in their place in society” and become “the easy victims of intimidation” by “governments of their own making, and a Press of which they are the proprietors.”
By making business a scapegoat and target of vilification and control, inflation reinforces anti-business attitudes and weakens support for what Keynes called “the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society.”
Finally, inflation tends to breed such misguided remedies as “price regulation” and “profiteer-hunting” that may do more damage than the inflation itself.
end quotes
So why is the federal reserve actively pursuing inflation today?
Paul Plante says
So, yes, people, price inflation!
And that thought takes us to a Daily Caller article entitled “Yellen Predicts ‘Rapid Inflation’ After Downplaying Risk For Months” by Thomas Catenacci on 16 July 2021, where we have the latest on that subject, to wit, keeping in mind that yesterday, a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 3/4″ inch plywood sheathing was still selling for $84.08, which is patently ridiculous:
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged “rapid inflation” will persist for several more months after she repeatedly downplayed the risk of consumer price increases.
Americans can expect consumer prices to continue their rapid rise until returning to normal in the “medium term,” Yellen said Thursday in an interview with CNBC.
But Yellen, along with top Federal Reserve officials, predicted inflation wouldn’t be a concern.
“We will have several more months of rapid inflation,” Yellen told CNBC.
“So I’m not saying that this is a one-month phenomenon.”
“But I think over the medium term, we’ll see inflation decline back toward normal levels,” she said.
“But, of course, we have to keep a careful eye on it.”
end quotes
And “TOODLES” Yellen can keep her eye on it all day long, every day, and so what because there is absolutely nothing she can do about it, given the treasury secretary has no control over inflation or price stability, which by law is the responsibility of the federal reserve.
Getting back to the story, it continues thusly:
Yet in February, Yellen downplayed the risks of inflation, saying the Treasury Department had the tools to deal with the risk “if it materializes.”
end quotes
Except that is pure hog****, because the treasury department has no “tools” to deal with inflation.
It is the federal reserve that supposedly has the “tools” to deal with inflation, and one would think “TOODLES” would be aware of that fact, given that we were previously informed in a Marketwatch article on Oct. 9, 2013 that Hussein Obama had nominated “TOODLES” to be Fed chief, replacing Ben Bernanke and further cementing the administration’s commitment to loose monetary policy, but perhaps she is just confused and isn’t sure which position she is really occupying.
Getting back to that story:
She also pushed back on former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ warning that President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package would trigger massive, once-in-a-generation inflation.
Yellen added that the Biden administration was more worried about jobs than rising prices.
end quotes
Which is to say the Biden administration is not at all worried about inflation, nor is “TOODLES.”
Staying with the story, we have:
One month later, the Treasury secretary downplayed inflation again when asked if the $1,400 stimulus checks included in the relief package could boost prices, according to the Associated Press.
She again pushed the legislation, saying it was key for a full economic recovery.
“I really don’t think that is going to happen,” she said in the March 8 interview, the AP reported.
Then, one week later, Yellen doubled down, arguing again that there wouldn’t be significant inflation.
“Is there a risk of inflation?”
“I think there’s a small risk and I think it’s manageable,” Yellen told ABC News.
“I don’t think it’s a significant risk,” she continued.
“And if it materializes, we’ll certainly monitor for it but we have tools to address it.”
end quotes
And there we are back to that bull****, because Janet “TTODLES” Yellen, who has no credibility, also has no “tools” to manage inflation, and we are a nation of fools if we believe a word she says on that subject, which takes us back to the article to see just how wrong she has been, to wit:
However, consumer prices have surged faster than they have in decades, according to government data.
Economists also expect inflation to rise higher and for longer than previously expected.
In addition, several major U.S. corporations have recently announced price increases while the highest number of small businesses have reported price hikes since 1981.
end quotes
And there is the latest, people.
The moral?
Buy that loaf of bread while you can still afford it!
Paul Plante says
And keeping up with this background in here, as federal reserve chairman Jerry Powell is coming up for reappointment as fed chief early next year, a reappointment not yet confirmed or even hinted at by the Biden-istas and the CULT OF JOE, all of whom are staying silent on the subject of will Jerry be reappointed, or will Joe put “TOODLES” Yellen back in as an “easy money” fed chief to replace Jerry Powell, a Trump era holdover, the way Hussein Obama replaced Ben Bernanke with “TOODLES” back in 2013, which thought takes us back to a Marketwatch article entitled “Obama nominates Yellen to succeed Bernanke” by Greg Robb published Oct. 9, 2013, where we have this background to consider as to Joe putting “TOODLES” back into the fed chief chair as opposed to Jerry Powell, to wit:
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, elevating a woman to the top post for the first time in the central bank’s 100-year history.
In a brief statement at the White House, Obama, flanked by Yellen and Bernanke, urged the Senate to act swiftly to confirm her “given the urgent economic challenges facing our nation.”
Yellen, 67, is currently vice chair of the U.S. central bank.
She said that “more needs to be done to strengthen the recovery,” even though progress has been made.
end quotes
And my goodness, people, guess what – that was 2013 and this is 2021, and she is still saying the exact same thing as she advocates for Joe Biden’s multi-TRILLION dollar spending plans as we see in the CNBC story “Yellen sees ‘several more months of rapid inflation’ before easing, worries about housing impact” by Jeff Cox on July 15, 2021, to wit:
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cautioned Thursday that prices could continue to rise for several more months, though she expects the recent startling inflation run to ease over time.
Yellen spoke as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell faced grilling this week from House and Senate lawmakers over whether historically easy Fed policy and aggressive congressional spending risked runaway inflation.
The Fed, which Yellen once chaired, has run its balance sheet above $8 trillion during the pandemic, while Congress is staring down its second consecutive year of a $3 trillion budget deficit.
For her part, Yellen said spending associated with the White House-backed American Rescue Plan is helping the recovery.
“I think we’re seeing it having the desired effect as well as – preventing scarring and harm to families and their finances,” she said.
end quotes
Or the CNBC story “Inflation looks bad now, but it’s pretty much sticking to the script” by Jeff Cox on June 26, 2021, as follows:
In the near term, at least, that notion that inflation is going to fade at some point is of cold comfort to those who’ve gotten socked with higher costs.
Everything from airline tickets to hotel stays to the cost of buying a home has been on the rise and showing only occasional signs of letting up.
A separate inflation indicator, the consumer price index, moved up 5% in May from a year ago, while the producer price index surged 6.6%, the fastest rise on record.
Consumers are paying higher costs for just about everything.
The stakes on inflation couldn’t be higher.
If the current trend does not follow script, the stunning economic growth of the past year could get sidetracked quickly.
At the same time, the Biden administration is counting on inflation staying low, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeatedly saying that the current heavy deficit spending is being made affordable through the low-rate environment.
end quotes
So we can see how Joe Biden could very well prefer “TOODLES” back as fed chief, because she is for easy money and is quite supportive of Joe’s economic policies as we see in the CNBC story “Higher interest rates would be good for the country, Treasury Secretary Yellen says” by Emma Newburger on June 6, 2021, to wit:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion spending proposal would be positive for the country, even if it leads to a rise in interest rates.
“We’ve been fighting inflation that’s too low and interest rates that are too low now for a decade,” she said.
She added that if the packages help at all to “alleviate things then that’s not a bad thing — that’s a good thing.”
end quotes
Or the Reuters article entitled “Yellen says Biden budget raises U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio but is responsible” by Reuters Staff on May 27, 2021, to wit:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget request will increase the U.S. federal debt-to-GDP ratio above its current level of about 100% over the next decade.
“I believe it is a fiscally responsible program,” Yellen said.
end quotes
And back we go to 2013, for more, to wit:
“Too many Americans still cannot find a job and worry how they will pay their bills and provide for their families,” Yellen said.
The Fed can help by ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to work hard and build a better life, she added.
At the same time, the central bank must make sure that inflation remains “in check,” she said.
Yellen has a reputation as a “dove” though some observers feel that is a bit overstated.
Obama called Yellen “tough” and joked that it was not just because she was born in Brooklyn.
“She has a keen understanding about how markets and the economy, not just in theory, but also in the real world,” Obama said.
The president said that Yellen told him she understands the human costs of a high unemployment rate.
“America’s workers and their families will have a champion in Janet Yellen,” Obama said.
Economists portray Yellen as a continuation of Bernanke’s aggressive easing stance developed in reaction to the financial crisis.
end quotes
So, will we soon enough have “TOODLES” Yellen and her easy money policies back in charge of the federal reserve to run its balance sheet up even higher to keep Joe Biden’s economic policies funded with borrowed money that we owe?
Stay tuned.