Sisu

Endeavor to persevere.

If you haven’t, check out my Substack Notes, where I put some funny serious stuff, and Substack Chat, where I’ve started posting random music I like.

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Since I’ve seen infamous Strigoi Henry Kissinger mentioned lately (e.g., he’s currently at the Bilderberg Conference, for the 400th straight year), here is the definitive description of Henry Kissinger, from Christopher Hitchens:

“He’s a thug and a crook and a liar and a pseudo-intellectual and a murderer. OK? All of those things are factually verifiable. That he is an anti-communist is a speculation that he likes to encourage.”

Too harsh perhaps. What say you, Anthony Bourdain?

"Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

- Anthony Bourdain, 𝘈 𝘊𝘰𝘰𝘬'𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳: 𝘐𝘯 𝘚𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘭

The long con: Henry Kissinger, Klaus Schwab, and UK Prime Minister Heath at the WEF, 1980.

No one is so evil that Steve Schwarzman wouldn’t hang out with them.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Stephen Schwarzman attend NEW YORKERS FOR CHILDREN Spring Gala, 2008, apparently without any sense of irony.

Nothing I had seen during my decade of legal work had prepared me for what I witnessed in just a few short months at the New York Fed. In those months I discovered a disorienting world full of hidden clues, where people said one thing but meant another.

Beneath the public face of the Fed laid a web of incompetence, corruption, rampant mismanagement, secrets, and lies. In the “fake work” culture of the Fed, where supervision was a job title, not a job, the most important thing was to control the process to serve the ultimate master. The New York Fed was not simply failing to stop the banks; it was actually enabling their bad behavior.

Carmen Segarra, Noncompliant

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Remember when every single FOMC member was complaining that inflation (i.e., your cost of living) was too LOW, and that they actually wanted higher inflation?

I remember.

Credit-card balances hit $986 billion in the fourth quarter last year and remained largely unchanged in the first quarter of this year, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in its most recent quarterly report on household debt. It looks increasingly likely that credit-card debt is on track to hit the $1 trillion mark this year, and experts say that this number could be an indicator of a looming economic downturn.

This has raised eyebrows among some observers, because people typically pay off their debts from the holiday season in the first quarter of the year. That did not happen this year. This was the first time credit-card debt did not make its customary dip between the fourth and first quarters since the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, New York Fed researchers said. That was a recession marked by the end of the dotcom bubble. 

Read the comments here. I doubt anyone at the Fed ever hears about normal life like this. They’re too busy angling for jobs at Goldman:

The average credit card rate (according to the Fed) is over 20%

There was never any “ZIRP” for the people commenting above.

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So the guy I’m talking about in this archived thread is cheerfully talking about his stocks again…fair warning.

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This is floating around again from Deutsche Bank - this time going back to 1831. Yes, year on year % drops in money supply are rare (especially since we switched to a completely unanchored currency):

I still think that comparing today with, say, the 1930’s is a bit of a stretch:

As Jeremy Grantham and too few others point out - these asset bubbles central banks create are very dangerous, especially when they pop.