Tag: finance

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics.com,

President Biden so desperately wants the vaccine-hesitant part of the country to get their shots that he may have spread a little misinformation.

“You are not going to get COVID,” he promised during a CNN town-event Wednesday night, “if you have these vaccines.”

Of course, this is not true. Biden knows it. He said as much later during the forum, explaining that, while vaccinated individuals enjoy significant protections, they can still test positive for the virus. But even if that happens, the president pointed out, the vaccine largely mitigates the most serious dangers. “You are not going to be hospitalized,” he said, reciting the latest scientific consensus. “You are not going to be in the IC unit, and you are not going to die.”

The fact that fully vaccinated individuals can still contract the coronavirus is a medical reality. It has also led to more uncomfortable questions about transparency for the Biden administration.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed at Tuesday’s briefing that there had been previously undisclosed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated employees at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Psaki refused, two days later, to say how many White House officials had gotten sick.

Reporters pressed her on the issue. After all, as the country learned the hard way during the pandemic, the health of the people working directly for the president can end up influencing the health of the republic. A lot of people have those jobs, more than 2,000 in the White House itself and the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building. According to Psaki, that means “that just statistically speaking, there will be people who are vaccinated individuals who get COVID on the campus.”

Will the White House make those statistics available as they develop? “No,” Psaki said. “I don’t think you can expect that we’re going to be providing numbers of breakthrough cases.”

Well, why not? The story of the pandemic has been told through the charts and graphs presented to the public by members of the White House COVID task force. Why should this data be exempt?

When Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News pressed the White House to explain the lack of transparency, Psaki responded by saying that things are different now:

“Well, Kelly, I think, one, we’re in a very different place than we were several months ago. The vast, vast, vast majority of individuals who are vaccinated who get COVID will be asymptomatic or have mild cases.”

NOW – Psaki refuses to disclose the number of #COVID19 breakthrough cases at the White House.pic.twitter.com/pwJ38GjOgv

— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 23, 2021

Psaki continued by saying that everyone who clocks in and out at the White House campus “has been offered a vaccine.” But those administration employees, like the rest of the federal workforce, have not been required to roll up their sleeves and take the shot. Face coverings have disappeared all the same at the White House, and aides are expected to follow the rule Biden laid out in May: “Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.”

But since even vaccinated individuals can become infected with the virus, what happens in those cases? “We have been very clear that we will be transparent with anyone who has had close proximity contact with the president or any of the four principles as deemed by the White House medical unit with all of you,” Psaki said.

And if someone sick with COVID comes into close contact with those principles, the press secretary said that the case itself would be made public but the infected individual would decide whether or not his or her name would be released. She promised, “We will protect their privacy.”

White House staff were made aware of this policy in a campus-wide email sent recently, and Psaki said Tuesday that the White House was abiding by “an agreement we made during the transition to be transparent and make information available.” They had committed then, she insisted, to releasing “information proactively if it is commissioned officers.”

The White House did not provide a copy of that commitment to transparency when asked to do so by RealClearPolitics.

It is a touchy subject. On one hand, the White House would rather not deal with headlines about vaccinated staffers coming down with COVID at the exact moment they are singing the praises of getting vaccinated. On the other, they would rather keep contact tracing apolitical and skip the pandemic parlor game that consumed the press and the previous administration.

In the time before the vaccine, reporters kept meticulous notes of which Trump staffers were and were not wearing their masks. And after Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ceremonial nomination in the Rose Garden was dubbed a “super-spreader” by Anthony Fauci, the press scrambled to carry out their own unofficial contact tracing to see who might have been the “patient zero” who infected President Trump, the first lady, and several members of Congress. Biden World would rather skip that drama.

The risks aren’t as severe now, thanks to the vaccine. Get the shot and, as Biden explained, “you are not going to die.” All the same, even some Biden allies find the lack of transparency frustrating. “I get they’re trying to show strength and resolve, but I hated this secrecy with Trump and I hate it here with Biden too,” said Bradley Moss, a partner at the law firm that represented the whistleblower in Trump’s first impeachment. “Keep the public informed. Secrecy breeds mistrust.”

So why not just tell the public how many breakthrough cases there have been? Again, as Psaki explained, “we’re in a very different place than we were several months ago.”

To date, the number of mass shootings in the U.S. is 21% higher than the same period in 2020 (Jan.1 – July 20), which is 30% higher than the previous high, according to nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive (GVA). 

GVA’s data so far shows the U.S. has recorded 375 mass shootings in 41 different states (and Washington D.C.) in the first 200 days of 2021. Putting that in perspective, the country had 310 by this date last year.

Compared with the last several years, mass shootings are way above trend in 2021. The below chart clearly shows that pandemic lockdowns didn’t reduce the phenomenon whatsoever, and in fact may have contributed to the opposite.

This year, a combination of defunding the police and relaxation of petty crimes by liberal-run metro areas has transformed the U.S. into a chaotic mess. 

More than 1,800 people were injured or killed in mass shootings so far in 2021. That’s a higher total than in 2015 or 2018. 

Rising violent crime positively correlates with surging gun ownership and elevated ammo prices. People are arming themselves as the liberal utopia miserably backfires. 

Cumulative deaths from mass shootings were more than 370 this year, up 50% over the same period last year. 

American mass shootings since 2014:

• 2014: 270
• 2015: 335
• 2016: 382
• 2017: 348
• 2018: 336
• 2019: 417
• 2020: 611
• 2021: 375 (in 201 days)

And in case you’re wondering who’s involved with all these mass shootings – Mass-Shootings.info shows those who’ve been charged, convicted, or wanted for violent crimes in connection by year. The site also notes that 53% of mass shootings in 2021 have no known suspect, however as you’ll see their data is different than GVA’s – perhaps because “mass shooting” has several definitions.

Meanwhile, here’s where the mass shootings are happening, according to the site:

And in what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, Chicago and the state of Illinois take the cake:

If the trend continues, 2021 could be set for a record year. 

Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics.com,

The Tokyo Olympics prompted the latest furor over transgender participation in women’s sports. It came when New Zealand named a transgender woman to its weightlifting team. This athlete’s participation raises questions far beyond this Olympics or that particular sport. The same questions arise whenever a transgender person competes at any level, from high school to world-class. When the winner takes the victory stand, biological women can’t help but wonder if they were treated fairly. Transgender athletes respond, pointedly, that it would be unfair to exclude them.

“She’s a woman,” they say.

“This is a woman’s event. So she should compete.”

The problem with this debate is that it raises other fundamental questions: Should we have women’s sports at all? Why? What is the rationale—and how compelling is it?

The answers to those questions provide an answer to whether transgender athletes should compete in women’s sporting events.

A century ago, the answers would have been obvious.

Men and women were separated for all sorts of reasons—social, cultural, and biological. Mixed competition would have been unthinkable. Today, our norms about gender and sex are substantially different. The default is that men and women should be treated identically. Treating them differently, such as separating them in competition, requires a strong rationale, at least in liberal, Western societies. Separate treatment violates deeply held modern norms, which oppose discrimination because of irrelevant criteria, such as race, sex, gender, religion, and national origin.

We consider it a national disgrace that black baseball players were excluded from Major League Baseball until Jackie Robinson ran onto the field on April 15, 1947. His race had no bearing on his skill as a ball player. Yet no one today would celebrate Rory McIlroy or Dustin Johnson “integrating” the women’s professional golf tour.

Why the objections to McIlroy or Johnson on the women’s tour? For the same reason golf courses provide separate tees for women, the same reason the WNBA uses a smaller basketball than their male counterparts, the same reason there are thriving women’s leagues in tennis, soccer, bowling, and dozens more. It is not about the social construction of gender; it is about biological differences that bear directly on performance.

Biological males and females differ systematically in size, strength, speed, height, lung capacity, and agility. Acknowledging those differences is separate from respecting how any individual self-identifies. Given our widely shared opposition to discrimination, those physical differences are the only reason to permit separate events. If gender differences don’t matter for a particular sport, then the rationale for separate events is weaker than our liberal ideal of non-discrimination.

We would never permit, much less require, this kind of gender separation in chess tournaments. It would violate our basic norms demanding equal treatment unless there are very powerful reasons to treat people differently. Those reasons and their persuasiveness will differ from sport to sport. They hardly matter for equine events like show jumping and dressage. They probably don’t matter for target shooting. But they do matter for archery. Top male athletes pull their bows with higher “draw weights” than do top females, so they can shoot arrows with flatter trajectories, less affected by crosswinds. The differences matter in golf, too. On the men’s professional tour, the average drive is 295.5 yards. On the women’s tour, even the longest hitter doesn’t drive the ball that far.

What about competition in the Boston Marathon, where male winners finish 10 to 15 minutes faster than women? That difference is prima facia evidence that we should crown separate winners. A more interesting fact is that Kenyan men and women win the races nearly every year, consistently beating Americans and Europeans. Yet we would rightly consider it invidious racism to segregate marathons by race or national origin. So, why isn’t it invidious sexism to crown separate men and women winners? The answer lies in our common-sense recognition that men and women have major physical differences.

The Olympics certainly recognizes these consequential differences. In Tokyo, men and women will compete against each other only in equestrian events and one division of sailing.

This kind of separation may not last forever. Social norms are changing. But, for now, we still hold separate sports competitions for men and women, and we do so solely because of their systematic physical differences. If that is the only compelling rationale for separating sports by gender, then it should be the only rationale in determining transgender participation.

The best way to resolve this issue is to step back and ask yourself: Is there any compelling reason to hold separate competition for men and women in this particular sport? The answer might be different for golf, shot put, target shooting, or dressage. If the answer is “Yes, there are strong reasons in this particular sport,” then that same rationale answers the question, “Should transgender women compete against other women in this sport?”

Put simply, if there are good reasons for holding separate competitions at all, then transgender women should not compete against other women.

The latest Labor Department report on consumer prices shocked economists when they saw how prices for used vehicles soared 10.5% in Jue, following already-robust increases of 7.3% in May and 10% in April. As the economy overheats and global shortages of computer chips crimps new-car production, an extremely rare phenomenon has turned the auto world upside down.

For the first time in recent memory, prices on used cars are “defying gravity,” according to WSJ.

Once seen as the ultmate depreciating asset, some car owners are being offered even more money than they originally paid for their vehicles, especially for certain popular models like the Kia Telluride and the Toyota Tundra. The problem is that consumer demand for cars and trucks has surged (thanks in part to all the federal stimulus dollars sloshing around in Americans’ bank accounts).

To be sure, for most models, used vehicles can still be had at a lower price than the newer cars. But if things don’t change soon, most in-demand used models will see their prices remain elevated for a long time.

“We have a long way to go before prices come down,” said Tyson Jominy, an auto analyst with research firm JD Power.

But according to data from JD Power, the average price paid by a customer in June for a one-year-old vehicle was only $80 less than the selling price of a brand-new vehicle. Typically, the gap is closer to $5,000.

The impact of this shift can already be seen in dealerships’ marketing materials. Dealers typically run ads advertising prices on cars they’re hoping to sell. Now, they’re telling customers how much their cars are worth.

Some dealerships are even offering “drive-through appraisals.”

“It just seems like we’re in fantasyland,” said New England auto dealer Abel Toll.

And for low-mileage vehicles, offers equivalent to what customers initially paid aren’t uncommon.

Amid this used-car gold rush, some dealership owners say they’re worried customers who buy now will end up being dissatisfied with the high prices when their vehicles depreciate more rapidly in the years to come.

But some are milking it for all it’s worth. One small-business owner traded in his entire fleet of trucks and decided to use the premium to finance upgrades to more “high content” models. “I can’t imagine this will last for much longer, so I decided to go all in.”

Along with Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington, Real Vision CEO and co-founder Raoul Pal welcomes Julian Brigden, co-founder of MI2 Partners, for his Real Vision Daily Briefing debut. As a special edition of the Daily Briefing, Pal and Brigden will be diving deep into their respective frameworks, discussing the differences in how they’re seeing the macro picture as well as rallying around where they are aligned.

Authored by Emily Miller via Emily Posts (emphasis ours),

Click here for my most recent article on Biden’s push for Senate Democrats to vote for David Chipman. Then click here for a refresher on what happened during Chipman’s committee hearing (confiscating AR-15s was the highlight!)

Pres. Joe Biden will not withdraw his nominee to run ATF, despite all the Senate Republicans opposing David Chipman. Biden is banking on holding all Democrats and having Vice President Kamala Harris be the deciding vote. The firearms industry is prepared for the worst case scenario. 

“If Chipman is the head of ATF, members of the industry will be far less likely to work cooperatively with the bureau,” Larry Keane, who is the top lobbyist in DC for the firearms industry, told me in an interview

Chipman is the Senior Policy Advisor at Giffords Courage to Fight Gun Violence, which was founded by Gabby Giffords and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). He’s also a member of the advisory board for Mike Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. And Biden somehow thinks this appointment to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms etc. (ATF) is going to work in reality. Uncle Joe is so wrong. 

“When ATF has a zero-tolerance mentality and the place is run by a gun-control lobbyist, retailers are going to think twice before calling ATF to seek guidance or admit a paperwork mistake. Major manufacturers will be less willing to help ATF to train agents and inspectors,” said Keane. 

Keane is the Senior Vice President for Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports (NSSF), which is the firearm industry trade association. The NSSF has taken the lead in DC in trying to stop the Chipman appointment. (If you have my book, look up Keane in the index. He has taught me a lot about the industry through the years.)

I didn’t know what Larry was referencing about the manufacturers cooperating with ATF. He explained that NSSF regularly arranges to have new ATF agents and inspectors tour factories. 

“You have these people showing up in the front office of ATF who have the faintest idea how guns are made. How can you regulate an industry you know nothing about? So you offer close up tours to teach the newbies about gun parts and all that stuff so they can learn,“ Keane said. “Our major manufacturers aren’t required to do this. They do it because they are good corporate citizens. But with Chipman, that’s not going to happen anymore.”

Senate Whip Count:

Since the Judiciary Committee voted — without Chipman’s ATF personnel files — two more Republicans said they won’t vote in favor: Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), who is usually squishy on guns. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has not said publicly how she would vote but Republican leaders are confident she will be a nay to hold the 50 total.  

As Senators, we took an oath to protect Americans’ Constitutional rights – including the right to keep and bear arms. That’s why @SteveDaines and I took to the Senate floor to strongly oppose the nomination of David Chipman to lead the ATF.https://t.co/YtRmbfkZPW

— Senator Mike Braun (@SenatorBraun) July 15, 2021

The deciding votes are all moderate Democrats in pro-gun states:  Manchin (WVA), King (ME), Tester (MT), Shaheen (NH) and Sinema (AZ). They will have to decide if they vote on behalf of  their state’s Second Amendment advocates or with their president’s nomination. They are being lobbied hard. 

“They are putting an enormous amount of pressure on these senators,” said Keane, who is tracking all the votes. “This could all end if one of the undecided Dems says ‘no.’ But they won’t do that out of deference to the president.”

Read the rest of the report here.

The 2020 Olympics are finally underway in Tokyo. Japan has been averaging 3,000 cases a day this week while only 22 percent of the public has been fully vaccinated.

The event is now set to take place behind closed doors which is a bitter blow for both the public and organizers after a massive amount of work and investment.

Cost overruns have become the norm for host cities and it is estimated that postponing the games by a year cost Japan $2.8 billion, two-thirds of which was paid with public funding. That has come on top of a project that is already severely overbudget. When the Japanese capital was awarded the Olympics in 2013, the bid committee projected a final bill of $7.3 billion and this was revised upwards to $12.6 billion in December 2019 before the postponement. Japan’s National Audit Board later reported that the final cost would be far higher at $22 billion. Financial newspapers Nikkei and Asahi claim that the end cost of hosting the Olympics will actually amount to a whopping $28 billion.

As Statista’s Niall McCarthy details, Tokyo is just the latest of a number of host cities to learn a harsh economic lesson.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Some have taken past mistakes onboard and Hamburg is a notable example which rejected its 2015 bid on cost grounds in a public referendum. Other cities have learned that the financial consequences can be dire only after hosting the games. Research conducted by The University of Oxford in 2016 and website Play The Game shows how costs ballooned in most cities down through the years. Notable examples include Montreal in 1976 where the games were 720 percent overbudget and Barcelona in 1992 which experienced a cost overrun to the tune of 266 percent.

In recent years, the 2016 Olymics in Rio cost just under $14 billion which represented a 352 percent cost overrun while the 2012 London Olympics saw its final bill of just under $15 billion come in 76 percent overbudget. Snowballing costs are also a feature of the Winter Oympics where there have been several financial catastrophes such as Sochi. The 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian City cost $21.89 billion, a 289 percent cost overrun largely as a result of overbudget venues.

Sadly, the enduring legacy of hosting the Olympics is now nothing more than a slew of abandoned and overgrown venues in multiple former host cities. That remains the case to this day in past venues such as Sarajevo, Athens, Beijing and Rio, to name just a few, where crumbling stadia and forgotten Olympic villages serve not as proud monuments to athletic achievement, but rather as somber symbols of catastrophic financial mismanagement.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Two parent advocacy organizations are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the statewide mandate that children should wear masks to school regardless of their vaccination status.

The groups Let Them Breathe and Reopen California Schools announced on July 22 that they have filed a lawsuit against Newsom and the state’s top health officials over the mask mandate in public schools.

The lawsuit says that the statewide mandate requiring schoolchildren to wear masks regardless of their vaccination status will harm the “mental and physical health” of children, particularly after a year of isolation and distance learning.

It names Newsom, Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, Public Health Director Tomás Aragón of the Department of Public Health, and Dr. Naomi Bardach of Safe Schools for All as defendants.

“It’s clear that [the health department] has chosen to ignore the overwhelming evidence that show children are at a very low risk from being infected with COVID-19, transmitting it to others, or becoming seriously ill from COVID-19,” Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson of Roseville said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee.

“A return to a normal school year is crucial to the mental and physical health recovery for students across California who have endured months of isolation and a majority of who spent last school year entirely in distance learning.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom talks during a news conference at Universal Studios in Universal City, Calif., on June 15, 2021. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP Photo)

Earlier this month, the Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued guidance requiring that K-12 California schools mandate mask wearing for students.

That was in contrast to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which on July 9 issued guidance stating that vaccinated students could remain unmasked during in-person classes.

The groups’ lawsuit calls the state mandate arbitrary, not based on scientific evidence, and harmful to students, according to The Sacramento Bee.

“CDPH states that despite CDC recommendations, they will require masks for all students in order to treat them the same,” Let Them Breathe founder Sharon McKeeman said in a statement.

“Of course it’s true that all children deserve equity and should not be singled out based on vaccination status. However, this should be accomplished by allowing all children to unmask and share their smiles.

Their lawsuit comes as California experiences a spike in new COVID-19 infections, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Just over a month ago, the state removed most of its virus safety restrictions and currently, people can take off their masks when outdoors.

But hospitalization numbers have increased by 58 percent since relaxing restrictions, according to New York Times data, prompting some counties to reinstate mask mandates and push for more vaccinations.

Experts blame the highly contagious Delta variant for a new increase in cases.

The delta variant makes up 83 percent of sequenced samples in the United States, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.

Walensky added that this was a “dramatic increase, up from 50% for the week of July 3.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office for comment.

In what one Manhattan real estate insider described as “an effort to quanitfy the optimism that we’re seeing now”, the owner of the 96th-floor penthouse at 432 Park has put the unit on the market for $169MM, roughly double what they paid for it, despite all the complaints and negative press surrounding what has been described as an ill-conceived abomination of a residential tower.

More than any other building, 432 Park came to symbolize the luxury apartment development boom that characterized the 2010s not just in Manhattan, but across Brooklyn and Queens as well (the Bronx and Staten Island were mostly left out, for reasons that are probably self-evident for most New Yorkers).

Back in 2016, the 96th floor penthouse at the top of the building sold for nearly $88MM to a company controlled by the Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Alhokair.Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez bought a 4K-square-foot apartment in the building for $15.3MM in 2018, only to sell it about a year later.

However, early whispers about the building’s shortcomings were made embarrassingly public in February when the NYT’s Stefanos Chen reported on the disputes between the chronic malfunctions ratcheting up tension between buyers and the developers.

“I was convinced it would be the best building in New York,” Sarina Abramovich, one of the earliest residents of 432 Park, told the NYT in February. “They’re still billing it as God’s gift to the world, and it’s not.”

The seething anger about broken-down elevators (making traveling to and from the top floors virtually impossible) appears to have quieted a bit. But as the NYT reported, in recent years, there have been a number of floods in the building, including two leaks in November 2018 that the general manager of the building, Len Czarnecki, acknowledged in emails to residents. The first leak, on Nov. 22, was caused by a ‘blown flange’. Days later, a “water line failure” on the 74th floor caused water to enter elevator shafts, removing two of the four residential elevators from service for weeks.

Now, broker Ryan Serhant, who has the seller’s listing, is marketing the penthouse as “a trophy unlike any other in the world,” highlighting its private elevator landing, herringbone white oak floors and designer furniture from Fendi, Bentley and Hermes.

According to Bloomberg, Manhattan’s battered luxury housing market is “surging back” following the doldrums of the pandemic.

However, even Jonathan Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, acknowledged that the pricing is “clearly aggressive”.

Now, the seller of the penthouse is “under the assumption that the market has doubled since September of 2016,” Miller said. “The list price assumption seems inconsistent with market trends.”

Still, the broker claims that more than half a dozen would-be buyers have toured the penthouse since it hit the market. “There are a lot of people looking for places to put their money,” he said. “In cash, cars cryptocurrency and high-end real estate.”

On the upside, the owner of the penthouse will boast an even grander view than that afforded by billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin, who bought the penthouse at nearby 220 Central Park South a few years back.

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

The general mood presently being fortified by the chattering classes is one of perpetual fear.  The basic stratagem includes continuously implanting the populace with extreme panic.  For a fearful populace is a subservient populace.

The current hobgoblin is the delta variant of the coronavirus.  The bug, at this very moment, is dispersing through the population…as viruses do.  And, per latest reports from the front lines, the lambda variant’s now on the loose too.

Nonetheless, there’s something on the loose that’s far more deadly to society than a mutated coronavirus.  That is, the virus of fear.  It originates with the control freak central planners.  Then it’s showered on the populace in rapid succession.

Last Sunday, for example, at the conclusion of a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she was, “…concerned that coronavirus variants could derail the global economic recovery and called for an urgent push to deploy vaccines more rapidly around the world.”

And to avoid catching the delta variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci – a complete doof – stated that, “…if you want to go the extra mile of safety even though you’re vaccinated when you are indoors, particularly in crowded places, you might want to consider wearing a mask.”

Certainly, the opportunities to spread the virus of fear are countless.  New coronavirus variants.  Cyberattacks.  Climate change.  Terrorism.  The Russian menace.  The China problem.  UFOs.

You name it…the sky’s the limit…

Situation Perpetual Fear

The most advantageous kind of fear in the eyes of the political class is fear that can be tied to some sort of imminent economic calamity.  Such fears are not entirely fabricated.  Rather, they stem from a real threat, which is then whooped up and overblown to the max.

This presents the central planners with carte balance opportunities to go big…and save the people from a supposed otherwise disaster.  When the fear’s orchestrated just right, the people actually demand it.  They plead for the government to save them.

Perpetual fear, you see, is a prerequisite for perpetual government intervention.  Fear means big spending programs.  Fear means big centrally planned solutions.  Fear means great big deficits.  Fear means excessive levels of excessive nonsense.

Conversely, without fear spending programs are politically untenable.  Without fear stimulus bills financed with credit created from thin air die on the Senate floor.  Without fear stimmy checks go away.  Without fear zombie corporations are left for dead.

Indeed, fear is an essential lubricant for all collective governments.  What’s more, fear delivers the lard for inflationism…where the money supply is continually inflated to support expanding government obligations and promises.

Inflationism is what makes a national debt of $28.5 trillion possible.  Inflationism is what makes $3 trillion budget deficits possible.  Inflationism is what makes unfunded liabilities of $153.5 trillion possible.  Inflationism is what makes the exponential growth of government, and all its agencies and bureaucracies, possible.

Inflationism is what stimulates an ever expanding class of dependents…

No doubt, centralized control and power has been consolidating in Washington for well over 100 years.  Since at least the reign of Teddy Roosevelt.  These days many electorates advocate for it.  They trip over themselves in their rush to vote for big government solutions.

These same voters, however, like to flatter themselves with an American narrative of freedom and liberty.  Some may reject communism or socialism as a valid system of government.  Just last week, for example, President Biden called communism a “universally failed system.”

Yet politics demands tell a different narrative…

Life and Death in the Age of Fear

The central planners, and the public adherents, are zealous supporters of bankrupt transfer payment programs.  The mathematical flaws of social security and Medicare are conveniently ignored.  Instead, they want more.  They want bigger programs, and government contracts…so long as they get their cut.

At the same time, the general American populace isn’t ready to give up their pretenses and go whole hog in support of socialism.  But feed them a steady diet of fear and they’ll line up and beat their chests in unison for the government to do something – anything – to save them.

Currently, the post-pandemic boom is turning out to be a great big dud.  The 10-Year Treasury yield is slumping towards 1.28 percent.  Consumer prices are “officially” increasing at 5.4 percent.  By all honest accounts, they’re rising at double that rate.

Here’s the point…

The federal government, and some state governments, have turned a large segment of the population into dependents.  This ensures votes come election time…so long as the political class can deliver the goods. 

And to deliver the goods they need to keep the free money flowing.

But to keep the free money flowing, in the form of massive spending programs and goodies, the public needs to be implanted with more fear… which brings us to the latest schemes making their way through the Senate…

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.  And the $3.5 trillion budget resolution bill to address climate change, child care, and expanded Medicare coverage for hearing, vision and dental care.

Perhaps the Republicans and Democrats will come to agreement on how to distribute the pork.  This seems likely for the infrastructure proposal.

The budget resolution bill, however, will likely need an additional nudge.  Specifically, it will need heavy doses of manufactured fear…

The delta variant.  Lambda.  Forest fires.  Summer heat waves.  Southern floods.

If these bills aren’t advanced before the Senate leaves for the August recess on August 6, the fear machine will spend the rest of August whooping things up to a matter of life and death.

Alas, a new round of lockdowns may be in order to get the job done.