Monday, December 4, 2023

The Fiscal Conservatives have taken control over Congress. The Counter-Revolution looks to have won a couple of major victories.

Lindsey Graham is a ranking member of the Judiciary Committee; he's also a member of the Budget Committee and Appropriations Committee.  Because of his membership in these, his words have iron.  But why now?  Why are they drying up the the money printing now?

1950s screen siren, Allison Hayes, 1930-1977, began taking calcium supplements following a broken arm from a fall off a horse.  



What's interesting is that she suspected that her supplements [brand not mentioned] caused her some lead poisoning, so she hired a toxicologist to measure her lead levels.

Lead poisoning doesn't seem to be a big concern from the FDA since it is so ubiquitous both in food from processing and in supplements.  For obvious developmental reasons, it's important to be vigilant of the food and environment that kids are exposed to so as to minimize their exposure to lead.  ConsumerLab reports that

The FDA has not established a limit on lead in dietary supplements, leaving the decision up to each manufacturer. Due to its common use by children, in April 2022, the FDA proposed an “action level” limit on lead in apple juice of about 2.4 mcg per cup (8 oz) serving, but double that limit for other fruit juices. (FDA Draft Guidance for Industry 2022). 

How prevalent is lead poisoning?  

NCBI explains that,

As concentrations continue to increase in adults, many of them will go on to develop further evidence of toxicity such as peripheral neuropathy and arthritis secondary to saturnine gout. 

This is interesting since so many people link excess beef consumption to gout, but Dr. Shawn Baker says that meat doesn't give you gout, but that it is the result of a metabolic condition.  One brought on by lead poisoning perhaps?  


Sunday, December 3, 2023

it used to be that your grandfather gifted you a series [double] EE savings bond in the 1950s, now your grandparents are cosigning on your credit card . . . when you come of age

Thank you to Caitlin Long

Why hasn't the dollar collapsed yet?   The Austrians will scream, and they did at the time, the moment the dollar went off the gold standard, "Dollar collapse!  Dollar collapse!  Dollar collapse!" and it hasn't happened.  Why?  Because we were bequeathed a tremendous balance sheet by our ancestors, and we had an equity-financed economy up until 1968 in the United States, and frankly most of the rest of the world, because most of the rest of the world follows the U.S. dollar and the U.S. standard whether explicitly or implicitly.  And so it used to be that your grandfather gifted you a series [double] EE savings bond in the 1950s, now your grandparents are cosigning on your credit card . . . when you come of age.  So we went from being gifted assets to being gifted debt.  And that's what is happening and is now part of everybody's capital structure but the erosion of real wealth that is coming from that is staggering, but it's been subtle and it's been happening over 50 years.  Literally, I was born in 1969, and the U.S. flipped from an equity-based economy to a debt-financed economy in 1968.  So my entire life has been "eating the seed corn" so to speak.  We've been drawing down the equity of the United States.  But that's why those who called for a collapse of the dollar when the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971 were wrong because we actually had a lot of equity capital that we could just draw down, and we've been drawing it down by borrowing borrowing borrowing borrowing and we will hit insolvency in the US at some point.  So James Lavish is right, there's going to be a debt tsunami that is going to hit the insolvency at some point but we're nowhere near where the naysayers think we are.  

Now that said, it could happen tomorrow because the financial system is that unstable and so we could have another 2008 and have a systemic issue that requires tens of trillions of dollars of printing by the Fed just to backfill for the default of private sector credit creation at that time.  I think we all know intuitively that it's coming, it's just that it's not as close as most people think . . . 

"The evil tongue is the worst part of the servant..."

Ukraine was free before the coup in 2014, now the whole country is owned by foreign companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Raytheon, etc. --GabeZZOZZ
The US Defense Secretary Austin has revealed a military secret.
A straightforward and simple-minded person, the general unhesitatingly stated the reason for the US involvement in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
No, it is not helping dying citizens or a country disappearing from the world map.

No, it is not fighting for democracy against tyranny.

And no, it is not even confronting Russia to diminish its defense capacity.
It is . . . the necessity to modernize the US defense industry for $40 billion.
What a sincere person!
It turns out, it’s all about defense goods commissioning to increase military production output and to create jobs. And, possibly, about the enormous profit that the companies close to the Biden Administration get from it.  

Lingua mali pars pessima servi . . . which translates to:

"The evil tongue is the worst part of the servant..."

Restaurant activity in the US hit an all time high in August 2021. Since the Fed started raising rates in March 2022, restaurant activity has moved in a straight line lower.