Swindling futurity on a large scale
Greetings to my 81 million followers!
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” - Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
“I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” - Thomas Jefferson, May 28, 1816
Pretty much everything you see here is illegal:
A lot of today’s children’s programming is weird crap. Don’t just prop junior down and leave the room. On the other hand, many of the greatest cartoons every made (i.e., Looney Tunes) could not be made today. As a refresher, I was reading reviews of Disney’s 1951 “Alice in Wonderland” (before screening it - it’s been a while), and came across this one, which, especially in light of some of today’s Disney-related headlines, was interesting:
It seems to me, when watching most Disney films, that Walt Disney had an evil masterplan to mess with the minds of children, young and old. Dumbo is a film about an outsider, Pinocchio is a film about a freak child who cannot stop lying. Walt only made these films family viewing through constantly having a moral ending. Dumbo can fly and Pinocchio is rewarded for risking his life to save another, however, these moral endings do not disguise the fact that, at times, Disney films were quite peculiar.
Alice in Wonderland on the surface is a dreamlike fantasy about a child nodding off and visiting a wonderful wonderland where flowers sing, caterpillars smoke and rabbits talk. However, similarly to Blue Velvet, this film is not about the surface values, its is about the dark, seedy undertones that exist beneath the aesthetic surface.
Below its surface lies a wealth of wholly unlikeable and unhelpful creatures. Aside from the King (Hooray) of Hearts, each character only serves to hinder Alice in her attempts to come to terms with her warped dream. The Cheshire Cat is responsible for putting Alice in court, the White Rabbit wants to have Alice destroyed when he finds her at his home, the flowers shun Alice when they incorrectly perceive her to be a common garden weed, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare also shun Alice for no reason whatsoever, this list is as long as the tunnel that leads Alice into her Wonderland.…I'll admit this review might seem overly critical of the film, but it is for these warped reasons and the context of what the film represents or least what it should represent that I absolutely adore it. Walt Disney might have had a masterplan to screw with the minds of his children, but I say, good luck to him. A subtle undertone to the magical shell of the movie shows that the yolk is in fact sour. I daren't but will compare this movie to Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder, another film about a false surface level and the warped undertones of life and death.
Sleep is only a state of mind, it's what happens in this state of mind that really matters. Or at least, what mattered to Walt.
Classic.
Anyway, the little person I was screening Alice for loved the movie. From experience, watching the classic Disney movies caused no permanent damage to anyone I know personally - I just liked some of the above analysis. e.g., The Blue Velvet and Jacob’s Ladder references alone were worth the read.
Who controls the wealth Erik? The boomers. They have not been trading crypto, what are they trading? They're trading stocks, how they trading stocks? Well, if they're wealthy, they've got a registered investment advisor. Like they got a broker. A broker has told them to get out. Those guys haven't been trained to tell them to get out. Right? So it's when these guys and I can tell you in conversations I've had with wealth managers, and private family offices. They are all gagging for a rally. So they can try and get out. No one saw this coming. No capitulation. Now, maybe they don't capitulate. But it's kind of hard to see that because a lot of these guys are coming up to retirement, right. So you got to imagine, if you got a rally that they'd be sellers on a rally. Right? Same as pension funds, right? I mean, if you're a pension fund, and you just got given, you just caught the Hail Mary pass because you are underwater in terms of your funding equities have risen. And now and you were long, a lot of equities, and now you can go and sell those equities and go and lock it in decent bond yields. Wouldn't you do that? So I just think, minimum, there's a hell of a lot of supply on the top side. Worst case, they just haven't capitulated yet.
- Julian Brigden on Macrovoices Podcast
Friends of the show Harry Melandri and Steve Saretsky: Canada’s Red-Hot Housing Market Will Cool
Consensus Earnings Estimates haven’t started to decline. What recession?
This looks ominous…
Who’s Still Buying Fossil Fuels From Russia Since The War Started? North Korea? Yemen? Hungary? No!
“The EU bloc accounted for 61% of Russia’s fossil fuel export revenue during the 100-day period.”
Major Asset Classes Gold held up pretty well for a “pet rock.”
This is what the U.S. Dollar Index is made up of:
Against five-year-olds, I am an outstanding basketball player.
Fears of recession leave €40bn of European corporate bonds in distress
I don’t get it. Forty billion Euros? That’s like 10 Fed QE days. Heck, the ECB owns $9.3 trillion worth of crap like this. They have a technology, called a printing press, or, today, its electronic equivalent. Piece of cake.
Whatever it takes!
I can’t even tell if I’m joking anymore.
Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows files for bankruptcy If you remember, Three Arrows used to be known as “Abenomics.”
This caught my eye, from The Economist: Which European countries know the least about climate change? “A new survey finds people underestimate the scientific consensus”
According to a report by the Policy Institute, a think-tank at King’s College London (KCL), people vastly underestimate the scientific consensus. Researchers surveyed 12,000 people in six countries—Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Poland—about their views on climate change. The average guess was that a mere 68% of scientists think that “human-made climate change is happening”. The true proportion is 99.2%, according to an analysis of scientific literature.
There was no footnote or explanation of “according to an analysis of scientific literature,” so I googled “99.2% climate change” and found nothing relevant other than a headline that said, “Trudeau to miss 2020 emissions target by 99.2%,” so there’s that.
If one did an analysis of, say, Americans who work for The Economist, probably 99.2% voted for Joe Biden (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Regardless, I’m sure the real number - whatever it is - is very high (although I’d feel more comfortable if they’d gone out to 4 decimal places.) And I’m not sure knowing the “right percentage” here necessarily means you know the most about climate change.
Surprisingly, I’m not a licensed climate scientist, but when I see “99.2%” numbers it makes me think of North Korean or Detroit election results. Probably 99.2% of the top minds of the early 16th century thought the Sun revolved around the Earth.
I’ve noticed a number of articles from The Economist over the years that bugged me, so maybe I’m just being ornery.
So Who Owns The Economist Anyway?
The "A" special shares are held by individual shareholders including the Cadbury, Layton, Rothschild, Schroder and other family interests as well as a number of colleagues and former staff.
Nice. That group probably has more private jets than I have hairs on my head.
As @Grantspub taught us:
a single four-hour private flight produces eight tons of C02 emissions, equivalent to a full year’s worth of such pollution from the average citizen
We will own nothing and be happy and accept the consensus.
Speaking of four decimal places, here’s the sneaky St. Louis Fed Financial Stress Index, which “measures the degree of financial stress in the markets and is constructed from 18 weekly data series: seven interest rate series, six yield spreads and five other indicators.”
TL;DR: it’s made up of things massively manipulated by the Federal Reserve.
Currently it’s about as negative as it gets, indicating “below-average financial market stress.” You read that correctly.
This index is well-known for its uncanny ability to get very, very low immediately before it gets very, very high.
This is good: The Insufferable Arrogance of the Constantly Wrong
Too many people in the past few years have been attacked, fired and de-platformed for simply questioning official narratives. Many of those official narratives were wrong, but as with central banking and U.S. foreign policy, there is never any accountability, there are no apologies, and nothing gets better. In fact, the government and the usual Stasi-blue checks are calling for even more social media censorship. The bad people are still in control.
I had more than a few disagreements on Twitter over 9 years, but I never suggested banning anyone. Sadly, many people are so insecure their only effective intellectual weapon is censorship.
In positive news, it appears more people are getting it:
Fox “drew 2.27 million total viewers in primetime, up 4% from May, 2021. MSNBC averaged 1.02 million, down 32%, while CNN averaged 660,000, down 28%. In the 25-54 demographic, Fox News topped with an average of 351,000 viewers, compared to 150,000 for CNN and 105,000 for MSNBC.”
I’m particularly not a fan of CNN, since I last watched it as an experiment in 2016. Everyone should give up on all these networks in any form. e.g., more recently:
Here’s the CNN article I was ranting about above. Surreal. Also check out: Why Don’t They Believe Us?
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
Have a great weekend, amigos.
I can't believe I get all this in my inbox. Just about the best thing in email.
You are the most amusing fellow. Pithy depth filled piece today!
Immensely enjoyed….bitch slapping of these rags and media con outlets. So tiresome with idiotic dribble by pancaked clowns 🤡
High regards!