I was fired up in this one. Lots of rich people coming out lately and saying we need a “higher inflation target.”
They never phrase it as, “we want your cost of living to spike even higher than it has been.”
It's basically inbred-econ majors, their pets in the press, a corrupt Congress, and really, really rich and connected Wall Street types, who love low rates and high leverage, versus everyone else.
Below are links to some of the things I mentioned in the podcast, basically in the order they came up. Almost everything should have a link. If you see any errors please let me know.
I would suggest listening first, and then coming back for the links.
"One does not need to commit the perfect crime to escape detection. One only needs to control the cover up. Which includes the mainstream media, which, disgracefully, is all too eager to tag along."
James DiEugenio in A Lie Too Big To Fail
David R. Montague, Senior Investigator for the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, when asked what he thinks happened to JFK: "I think it was a conspiracy."
Montague: "There were so many people that kept talking about - they thought the shots were coming from the front, and that they had given statements to law enforcement, and that those statements did not end up in the Warren Report...I don't see how any one person could have done that."
Author James DiEugenio on the JFK murder: "It wasn't any mobster, ok? It wasn't any Cuban exile, it was somebody in a high position."
James DiEugenio on what he thinks the motive was for JFK's assassination: Vietnam.
DiEugenio: "I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was recruited into intelligence work at a relatively young age."
A short clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., talking about who he thinks killed his uncle (the CIA) and his father (not Sirhan Sirhan).
"Lee Harvey Oswald, was involved in an operation by the CIA mere months before the [JFK] killing"
Oliver Stone Documentary: JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass
"The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." - REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1979
Same Congressional Report: "The committee believes, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence available to it, that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King as a result of a conspiracy."
"After deliberating for barely three hours, a jury today decided that slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was the victim of an assassination conspiracy and did not die at the hands of a lone gunman."
Could organized crime have insured that the version of the front page of the Dallas Morning News offered to the Warren Commission as evidence no longer showed the originally scheduled route of the motorcade? Could the mob have obtained Governor Connally’s clothes, sending them out to be dry cleaned after the arrival of the President’s limousine at Parkland Hospital, thus removing all evidentiary marks? Could the Mafia have whisked Kennedy’s body past the Texas authorities, who wanted it kept for the local autopsy as Texas law required, and got it aboard Air Force One? Could the Mafia have placed in charge of the President’s autopsy an Army general who was not a physician? Could the Mafia, in the course of the autopsy, have ordered the pathologists not to probe the neck wound lest a bullet from the front be found lodged in the spine? Could the Mafia, afterwards, have ordered the chief pathologist, Commander Humes, to burn his original autopsy notes? Could the Mafia have arranged for President Kennedy’s brain to disappear from the National Archives?
Upon close examination, then, the false sponsors all fall of their own weight. What remains as the only likely sponsor with both the motive and the capability of murdering the President is the covert action arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.
- Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins
"If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.”"
Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967
You heard in this courtroom in recent weeks eye-witness after eye-witness after eye-witness, and, above all, you saw an eye-witness which was indifferent to power — the Zapruder film. The lens of the camera is indifferent to power, and it tells you what happened, and that is one of the reasons two hundred million Americans have not seen the Zapruder film. They should have seen it many times. They should know exactly what happened. They should know what you know now. Why hasn’t this come into being if there hasn’t been government fraud? Of course there has. But I am telling you that I think we can do something about it. I think that there are still enough Americans left in this country to make it continue to be America. I think that we can still fight authoritarianism: the government’s insistence on secrecy, the government force used in counter-attacks against an honest inquiry; and when we do that we are not being un-American, we are being American, because it isn’t easy, and you are sticking your neck out in a rather prominent way, but it has to be done, because truth does not come into being automatically. Justice does not happen automatically. Individual men, like the members of my staff here, have to work and fight to make it happen, and individual men like you have to make justice come into being, because otherwise it doesn’t happen. And what I am trying to tell you is that there are forces in America today, unfortunately, which are not in favor of the truth coming out about John Kennedy’s assassination. As long as our government continues to be like that, as long as such forces can get away with these kind of actions, then this is no longer the country in which we were born.
- Closing Summation by Prosecutor Jim Garrison, People v. Clay Shaw
(the JFK murder trial). Shaw was acquitted.
"The tracks of twelve bullets were found at the scene, and Sirhan’s gun contained only eight."
At three inches from the right mastoid area, I discovered we had a perfect match of the tattoo pattern of unburned-powder grains on Kennedy’s right ear. At that distance, the shape of the entrance wound was also duplicated, and it accounted for the carbon particles found in Kennedy’s hair. I now knew the precise location of the murder weapon at the moment it was fired: one inch from the edge of his right ear, only three inches behind the head. But I also realized that this evidence seemed to exonerate Sirhan Sirhan. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, but this time their sheer unanimity was too phenomenal to dismiss. Not a single witness in that crowded kitchen had seen him fire behind Kennedy’s ear at point-blank range.
But even apart from the autopsy findings of a close-range wound, there was other evidence to challenge the belief that Sirhan Sirhan had acted alone. For example, four bullets were fired at Kennedy; three of them struck him, and one passed harmlessly through his clothing. Five persons behind Kennedy were also struck by bullets, which were recovered in their bodies. And three bullet holes were found in the ceiling. Thus, the tracks of twelve bullets were found at the scene, and Sirhan’s gun contained only eight. Police believed that the extra tracks could be accounted for by ricochets. But to the day he died (the victim of an assassin’s bullet himself), Allard Lowenstein, one of Senator Kennedy’s strongest supporters for the Presidency, said that Sirhan had not acted alone. And such professional homicide investigators as Vincent Bugliosi, the deputy DA who convicted the Manson killers, insisted there was a second gunman in the room.
What was the truth?
- Thomas T. Noguchi, Coroner
“It was decided long ago that it was to stop with Sirhan,” he said, “and that is what will happen.”
The testimony of the most strategically placed witness is daunting. Karl Eucker, the maitre d’, led the Kennedys into the pantry. He was the man actually standing between Sirhan and the Senator. In fact, it was Eucker, not Roosevelt Grier or Rafer Johnson, who actually grabbed Sirhan and first wrestled him onto the steam table. Eucker was perfectly placed, and even years later he insisted, “I told the authorities that Sirhan never got close enough for a point-blank shot. Never!” Then he warned that an investigation of a second-gunman theory would get nowhere. “It was decided long ago that it was to stop with Sirhan,” he said, “and that is what will happen.”
- Noguchi
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explaining that his father was murdered by a CIA-affiliated security guard who worked for Lockheed, Eugene Thane Cesar, not Sirhan Sirhan.
"The fact that no official body has ever made the effort to honestly examine all the evidence in this case is nearly as chilling as the original crime itself, and points to a high level of what can only be termed government involvement."
Richard Helms (CIA Assistant Deputy Director for Plans) memo to Director Allen Dulles, April 3, 1953
“The Director of Central Intelligence had approved MKULTRA, a research program designed to develop a "capability in the covert use of biological and chemical agent materials." In the proposal describing MKULTRA, Mr. Helms, then ADDP, wrote the Director that:”
we intend to investigate the development of a chemical material which causes a reversible non-toxic aberrant mental state, the specific nature of which can be reasonably well predicted for each individual. This material could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, and implanting suggestions and other forms of mental control.
The above is from the Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 1976. Imagine how much progress they’ve made since then.
“Robert Kennedy’s death, like the President’s, was mourned as an extension of the evils of senseless violence; events moved on, and the profound alterations that these deaths ... brought in the equation of power in America was perceived as random ... What is odd is not that some people thought it was all random, but that so many intelligent people refused to believe that it might be anything else. Nothing can measure more graphically how limited was the general understanding of what is possible in America.”
—Allard Lowenstein, New York Congressman, 1977
My “pinned tweet” (which I recently accidentally deleted and had to redo):
Jason Furman’s shameful (and all too typical) op-ed
We are like Koi fish to the elites.
Best Economy Ever
Paul Krugman is one of Taleb’s “Idiots Yet Intellectuals”
“Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble”
To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.
- Paul Krugman, August 2, 2002
HOW THE US GOVERNMENT WILL FORCE BANKS TO FUND THE DEFICIT
“the rate of inflation that we would have to run to fund our fiscal needs would probably be about 40%”
1976 Democratic Party Platform
"Inflation is a tax that erodes the income of our workers, distorts business investment decisions, and redistributes income in favor of the rich."
The economic and social costs of inflation have been enormous. Inflation is a tax that erodes the income of our workers, distorts business investment decisions, and redistributes income in favor of the rich, Americans on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, are often pushed into poverty by this cruel tax.
The Ford administration and its economic advisors have been consistently wrong about the sources and cures of the inflation that has plagued our nation and our people. Fighting inflation by curtailing production and increasing unemployment has done nothing to restrain it. With the current high level of unemployment and low level of capacity utilization, we can increase production and employment without rekindling inflation.
A comprehensive anti-inflation policy must be established to assure relative price stability. Such a program should emphasize increased production and productivity and should take other measures to enhance the stability and flexibility of our economy.
The CPI is nonsense.
Why I pick on people like Sternlicht
The Cantillon Effect describes the uneven effect inflation has on goods and assets in an economy. Since new fiat money is injected into an economy at specific points, its effects are felt by different people and industries at different times. This causes a distortion in relative prices and benefits certain parties while disadvantaging others.
“Since rich people are the only ones who have sufficient collateral to borrow massive amounts of cheap money, their first access to the money printer allows them to buy and bid up assets in a virtuous cycle. Borrowing begets bidding which begets price appreciation which begets more collateral for borrowing.”
Look at the results
The stock market is 90% owned by the top 10%
Congress loves the Fed’s fun coupons
Why is a higher cost of living and lower real incomes good for most Americans?
Kashkari is a Goldman/Pimco guy who inexplicably became Minnesota Fed head.
I tried to point out how insane the average inflation targeting was
Average inflation targeting is something so stupid only PhD economists could come up with it.
2018 was not like 1931
“…the Fed stepped in, almost instantaneously, and initiated a $400 billion bailout. This bailout was unprecedented, and it benefitted a small group of hedge funds that had essentially hijacked the repo market and used it as a vehicle to make risky bets. The Fed saved them from the consequences of those bets.”
The events of the following Monday showed that the Fed’s New York trading team was essentially flying blind in the age of ZIRP. This meant that the entire leadership team of the Fed, including Jay Powell, was also flying blind. The central bank had transformed the financial landscape by swamping it with money and in doing so had destroyed one monetary regime and replaced it with a new one. But there was no reliable instrument to measure the terrain of the new regime. This fact was made a stark reality on Monday, when the repo market blew up. The resulting market crisis almost became a full-fledged financial crisis, at a moment in history when the markets were supposed to be stable and in good health. The only reason that this didn’t happen was that the Fed stepped in, almost instantaneously, and initiated a $400 billion bailout. This bailout was unprecedented, and it benefitted a small group of hedge funds that had essentially hijacked the repo market and used it as a vehicle to make risky bets. The Fed saved them from the consequences of those bets. But maybe the most remarkable part of the bailout is that the Fed did it without much notice. A $400 billion emergency cash injection was no longer news. The Fed described it as a matter of normal maintenance. But that’s not how it looked from inside the Fed, as the repo market melted down.
- Christopher Leonard, The Lords of Easy Money
Lots of great young people out there. They are the future.
"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."
- Ernest Hemingway, Esquire 1935
Make Scranton Great Again (MSGA)
The Bidens
Take ‘em all down
Congress: Avarice and Irresponsibility
Bastiat on Victims of Lawful Plunder: "According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it"
This is why QE was bad - except for the top 1%
Congressman Ron Paul and Citadel-intern Ben Bernanke in 2008
Enough!
"A severe inflation is the worst kind of revolution...only the most powerful, the most resourceful and unscrupulous, the hyenas of economic life, can come through unscathed." - Thomas Mann, 1942
"The big industrial capitalists gained the most, benefiting from the bankruptcies of smaller businesses—a process which concentrated capital in fewer hands—and from lowered real wages..."
$SPX since 3/9/2009
Paulson's and Kashkari's TARP “bait and switch.” From "Bull By The Horns," by Sheila Bair.
In the interview, I said Barofsky instead of Bair.
Kashkari and Paulson put the “fun” in “fungible”!
In the same year that Morgan Stanley was "just days" from collapse without taxpayer intervention, it paid out $4.475 billion just in bonuses, including 718 bonuses over $1 million.
I think the MSM grossly underestimates the effect the housing crash and resultant bankster-bailouts had on the non-elite American psyche.
Obama was the bankster’s best friend
"Eric Holder is the guy who worked for a corporate law firm that represents Wall St firms, then he went into government and explicitly outlined a “too big to jail” policy for Wall St firms, and then he left government to go back to the same law firm." - I think this from a deleted David Dayen tweet
This incredibly prescient article was written in May 2008 by Pam Martens, one of the people behind the must-read WallStreetOnParade website:
The Wall Street plan for the Obama-bubble presidency is that of the cleanup crew for the housing bubble: sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. (The corporate law firms have piled on to funding the plan because most were up to their eyeballs in writing prospectuses or providing legal opinions for what has turned out to be bogus AAA securities. Lawsuits naming the Wall Street firms will, no doubt, shortly begin adding the law firms that rendered the legal guidance to issue the securities.) Who better to sell this agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change?
"Think about it. If you own a bond, you've got a claim on money, but the claims are too much...You're either not gonna get back that money in full, or you're going to get back money that's worth less, because they print the money." - Ray Dalio
Congressman Ron Paul and Pimco-intern Bernanke in 2010
Obsessing over Household, he attended a lunch organized by a big Wall Street firm. The guest speaker was Herb Sandler, the CEO of a giant savings and loan called Golden West Financial Corporation. "Someone asked him if he believed in the free checking model," recalls Eisman. "And he said, 'Turn off your tape recorders.' Everyone turned off their tape recorders. And he explained that they avoided free checking because it was really a tax on poor people--in the form of fines for overdrawing their checking accounts. And that banks that used it were really just banking on being able to rip off poor people even more than they could if they charged them for their checks."
Eisman asked, "Are any regulators interested in this?"
"No," said Sandler.
"That's when I decided the system was really, 'Fuck the poor.'"
In his youth, Eisman had been a strident Republican. He joined right-wing organizations, voted for Reagan twice, and even loved Robert Bork. It wasn't until he got to Wall Street, oddly, that his politics drifted left. He attributed his first baby steps back to the middle of the political spectrum to the end of the cold war. "I wasn't as right-wing because there wasn't as much to be right-wing about." By the time Household's CEO, Bill Aldinger, collected his $100 million, Eisman was on his way to becoming the financial market's first socialist. "When you're a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off," he said. His mind was now fully open to the possibility. "I now realized there was an entire industry, called consumer finance, that basically existed to rip people off."
- Michael Lewis, The Big Short
The Covid Thing
New Zealand’s Minister of Truth
Fake News from Rachel Maddow
The Fascist Big Government / Big Tech partnership
"The Biden administration is using Big Tech as its private censorship arm & that violates what the Supreme Court...called an “axiomatic” principle: The gov't “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”"
Newsom was a petty tyrant
Cramer the fascist
Nancy on how we can’t check vaccination status
Justin on how he can’t mandate “vaccines”
The CDC changing definitions to fit the current Covid-19 narrative was very Orwellian.
“Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it. If they say to you science has shown such and such, you might ask, “How does science show it–how did the scientists find out–how, what, where?” Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect, has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at.”
Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Analysis Estimates Post-9/11 US Conflicts Killed Over 4.5 Million
Book Review: The Price of Time by Edward Chancellor
The wealth effect of capital gains starts to price out the poor and middle class from the best neighborhoods, vacation spots, restaurants, spectator events, and other basic pleasures of life, even if consumer goods remain reasonably priced. It’s the reason a Disney family vacation, once a realistic middle class aspiration, now requires a five-figure budget. This type of inequality, amplified by the FOMO of social media, is particularly grating to people who cannot afford the luxuries they see others consuming. Trust in institutions (rightly) plummets, and the country can pull apart, much as it is doing now, as more people (again, rightly) believe the system is rigged against them.
Jerome Powell tries to explain the Fed's made-up "2% target"
“It’s obviously not obvious how that is.”
Borderland Beat
"the American Constitution has been stopping stupid people doing stupid things for a long time. It's a very good constitution" - R. Napier
Partial List of people who have blocked me:
"Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology
because it cabbages up one's mind"
Charlie Munger
Coffee and a Mike