“Bull Market Has Reversed” – NYC Multifamily Building Sales Plunge
A new report from PropertyShark, a real estate data provider, said the New York City multifamily market shifted from “bull to bear in 2019.”
PropertyShark said multifamily sales in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens significantly cooled in 2019, and sales plunged from 1,225 in 2018 to 828 in 2019, a 32% drop. Total deal flow volume in terms of dollar amount fell 41%, from $11.6 billion to $6.8 billion over the period.
Summarizing New York City’s 2019 downtrend in the multifamily market is Greg Corbin, executive managing director at Besen Associates, said: “The slowdown in investment sales transactions has been a product of the perfect storm: rising interest rates, concern about new rent regulation laws and fear that the near decade-long bull market has reversed.”
A tailwind for the New York City multifamily market in 2020 could be record-low mortgage rates, but what could push the market lower is an outbreak of Covid-19. As of Friday, 22 confirmed cases were seen, with about 2,800 people under observation. A virus outbreak would cause spending patterns to shift among investors/consumers, sending the local economy into a tailspin.
With the Covid19 virus popping up across the country, people who are preppers are adding a few last-minute things to their stockpiles. Those who aren’t preppers are starting from scratch to get what they think they might need to handle a potential quarantine at home.
While most of the folks on this website would read this and think, “Of course they are” there are a few who think, “What a bunch of selfish people, hoarding supplies instead of only taking a little and leaving the rest for other people.” Often the people with this mindset are those “other people” who failed to prepare and who are upset that they missed their window of opportunity to get the necessary supplies.
But the media and government certainly aren’t helping paint those getting prepared in a good light with headlines about “panic buying” and “hoarding.”
An article on USA Today starts out:
Keep calm and stop hoarding. The spread of coronavirus in the U.S. won’t wipe out our toilet paper supply. Or supplies of hand sanitizer, bottled water and ramen.
That is, unless the frenzied stampedes for hand sanitizer and bottled water continue at their current pace. (source)
The article goes on to use phrases like “impulsive buying binges,” “air of aggressive competition,” “stripping store shelves of toilet paper,” and “the crush of humanity” at Costco.
The entire article dismisses stocking up as ridiculous and even irresponsible, blaming shoppers for causing shortages.
Experts say not to worry and to stop “hoarding.”
The USA Today article blithely reports:
Supply chain experts say to stop worrying about hoarding basic necessities beyond having on hand the recommended 14-day emergency supply of food and necessities.
Perishable food such as fruits and vegetables are unlikely to be limited in the short term. Supplies of imported frozen meat and fish are more at risk but were already curbed by trade sanctions.
Packaged goods such as cereal and toothpaste and dry goods won’t be affected in the near term, either. For items that are now in shorter supply, such as hand sanitizer, plenty of substitutes exist such as soap. Some people are even making their own…
…Even with images of all those empty shelves flooding social media feeds, supply chain experts urged people to stop, well, freaking out.
“We don’t have a shortage of toilet paper in this country. We have plenty of toilet paper to go around,” said Per Hong, a senior partner in the strategic operations practice at Kearney, a global management consultancy. “Those supplies will be fully restocked and my ability to go to the store to get those supplies isn’t going to go away anytime soon.” (source)
I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable facing a possible lockdown like the one in China with only a 14 day supply of food and necessities. And if what’s happened in Italy is anything to go by, your ability to pop out to the store to get more toilet paper absolutely could go away sometime soon.
An article on Los Angeles News Today continues in the same vein with its own experts chiming in.
Los Angeles County health director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said residents should be prepared just as they should always be for a natural disaster or other emergency.
“That means having some water in your house and some food and your medications that last for a few days,” Ferrer said. “You don’t need to rush out and buy out weeks and weeks worth of supplies, but you (do) need to have what we always ask you to have — enough supplies in your house to get through a few days.” (source)
So according to them, you only need to be prepared for a few days. No biggie.
Stocking up is occurring around the world.
Wise people around the world are gathering up supplies. According to the Nielsen consumer market research agency, the spread of the coronavirus has folks everywhere “actively stockpiling emergency supplies.”
“They’re also starting to think beyond emergency items, such as basic foodstuffs, including canned goods, flour, sugar and bottled water,” according to Nielsen. “Concerns are having a ripple effect into non-food essentials as well. In the U.S., sales of supplements, fruit snacks and first aid kits, for example, are all on the rise.”
The agency noted “significant spikes” in hoarding of emergency supplies in China, the United States and Italy, “where consumers are rushing to build what are being labeled ‘pandemic pantries.”(source)
Of course, what they call hoarding, I’d call preparing for the worst.
Did you notice a word being repeatedly used?
The word “hoarding” is being repeatedly used throughout news reports. They’re already working to paint preppers as bad and selfish people. They’re already vilifying those who hurry out to fill any gaps in their supplies. They’re making it seem like a mental illness to get prepared for what could potentially be a long stretch of time at home with only the supplies you have on hand.
This is a frequent trick of propagandists everywhere. Repeat a word often enough and suddenly everyone begins using it. Everyone begins to believe that the people labeled with an ugly word are terrible, selfish, and threats to decency.
A friend of mine wrote about an article she had read:
There’s a single quote that sticks out to me:
“The government ended up subsidizing masks so that every family could have them after people decided to hoard them like they were bottled water in a storm.”
Do you see what happened there? Those who prepared ahead of time are being vilified. This theme is being repeated over and over again if you start reading what the experts are writing. History tells us that those who are prepared are either hailed the heroes (when they have enough for everyone) or the villains (when they have enough for themselves).
This is a recurring theme. Those who prepare are demonized while those who do not are portrayed as victims of the “hoarders.”
Keep listening because you’re going to hear words like “hoarding” and “selfish” a lot more often as this situation continues to evolve.
State governments and the CDC are at odds
State health officials in places like Hawaii and Minnesota have recommended that residents get prepared for what could be a bumpy ride. Residents of those states are paying attention and stocking up.
CDC Director Robert Redfield on Thursday told a U.S. congressional hearing that there was no need for healthy Americans to stock up on any supplies.
“We should have one unified message,” said Robyn Gershon, a clinical professor of epidemiology at New York University. “When there’s an absence of a good, strong and reassuring official voice, people will get more upset and start doing this magical thinking.” (source)
There, there. Don’t worry. The government will save you. Go order a pizza and don’t worry your silly little head about some virus.
Many see preparation as selfishness.
I’ve gotten comments on my own website and also in the group that I run on Facebook that preparedness is a “selfish” endeavor. And it’s always in the comments that you find out how people really feel, often using MSM talking points as their guides.
There was this rather naive comment on a mainstream article.
The thing I have with INDIVIDUAL preppers is that why not leave it in the store? Why don’t people see the grocery store as a prepper’s storage unit?
Someone who is no longer in my Facebook group told us.
You people are part of the problem. You go out and hoard things when it wouldn’t hurt you to leave some stuff on the shelf for other people. If there aren’t enough supplies for everyone, it is selfish for you to only think of your family. What about everyone else’s family? Oh right, you only care about yourself.
A commenter on my own website said:
What a bunch of selfish jerks you all are. You don’t need 10 packages of toilet paper at a time. What about the other people who can’t afford ten packs of toilet paper?
The author of an article about being in quarantine finds those stocking up to be selfish too, which is kind of mind-boggling when you not this author is in the position in which we all worry about finding ourselves.
I was sorely disappointed by the amount of items that were out of stock after Singaporeans rushed to buy a whole plethora of goods (including instant noodles and toilet paper) when DORSCON Orange happened.
Given such uncertain times, I can empathise with the panic. But I couldn’t help but feel that this hoarding mentality is really selfish.
Because this means that a good portion of people–those on their weekly grocery runs or others like myself looking to get groceries delivered as I am unable to leave the house–cannot get their hands on essentials. (source)
Watch closely. You will see the word “selfish” getting thrown around right up there with “hoarding.”
These people are wrong.
Currently, thousands of people in the United States are spending weeks at home under self-quarantine. I’ll bet if you asked them, there are probably all sorts of things they wish they had on hand right now, and this is even with the ability to order things that can be delivered to their doorsteps. What would happen if all of us within a region faced the type of lockdown happening in northern Italy where there are potential criminal penalties for being out unnecessarily? Wouldn’t you then wish you had made that last-minute run to the store?
Stocking up is the responsible thing to do. It means that your family will not be dependent on government services. It means that nobody has to run out in the middle of a pandemic because there’s not any Tylenol and somebody has a fever. It means you don’t have to risk infection in order to have food for your children.
Stocking up to care for yourself means that you won’t be a drain on those limited government resources being dispensed and there will be more for people who did not prepare. It means you don’t need to order deliveries, causing some other person to risk their own health bringing supplies to you after things get bad.
Stocking up is practical. Whether you’ve done it over a period of years, as most of us have, or whether you’re topping up now (which I’m doing since I’ve been traveling for quite some time and I want to make sure my daughter’s place is well-supplied), taking the steps you need to be prepared is the height of personal responsibility.
Some folks have noted that what is going on right now as shelves get emptied across the country is not prepping – it’s panic buying. While there’s a little bit of truth to that, I’d still rather see people in the stores getting what they need than waiting for a handout.
Regardless of how the Covid-19 outbreak plays out in the United States, rest assured that those who prepared will be painted with a dark brush by the media. This is one of those situations in which OpSec is of primary importance. You don’t want your unprepared neighbor to know you’re doing just fine with your canned goods and dried fruit after they failed to go to the store.
Our first responsibility is always, without fail, to our own families.
Don’t let the mainstream media try and tell you otherwise.
“It’s Utter Mayhem” – US Mortgage Rates Plunge To Record Low
Rates for 30-year US mortgages plunged to a record low on Thursday, forced lower by Covid-19 fears as the US economy could be nearing recession as investors continued to make a mad dash into treasuries.
The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 3.29%, down from 3.45% last week and the lowest in nearly five decades, Freddie Mac said in a statement Thursday. The last time rates were this low, it was November 2012 at 3.31%.
A quick drop in mortgage rates could boost home sales, but a fast-spreading virus that is starting to take a toll on West Coast cities could prove otherwise. From business shutdowns to quarantines to a collapse in air travel, the economy is rapidly slowing as people load up on food and masks to weather a possible pandemic.
Matthew Pointon, a US property economist at Capital Economics Ltd., told Bloomberg that mortgage rates would probably extend declines before hitting a floor.
We noted on Wednesday that plunging rates has led to a massive refinance boom.
Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s senior vice president and chief economist, said:
“The 30-year fixed rate mortgage dropped to its lowest level in more than seven years last week, amidst increasing concerns regarding the economic impact from the spread of the coronavirus, as well as the tremendous financial market volatility. Given the further drop in Treasury rates this week, we expect refinance activity will increase even more until fears subside and rates stabilize.”
Quicken Loans said they saw “record-setting” volume on Monday and Tuesday as rates fell. CEO Jay Farner said:
“The way that we leverage technology to communicate with our clients, to make it easy for them to make a mortgage application, for our underwriters, we can scale very quickly, which helps us when we see increased volume like this.”
Lewis Sogge, a senior loan officer at Freedom Mortgage, said the decline in rates is fueling an epic refinancing boom. Sogge said, “mortgage rates are lower than I thought we’d ever seen. Everyone is working overtime to handle the new loan supply. Its utter mayhem.”
There are many different ways that COVID-19 is going to affect the world. To quote the CDC “The disruption of daily life might be severe.” They are talking about the USA but this applies to the world as well. They should know because they totally failed the public on many levels at this point and increased the threat and danger to every person residing in the USA.
In this article, I am going to concentrate on some of the things that at this point are either starting to occur or very likely to occur over the next few months.
Before I address supply chain disruptions and other societal impacts, I want to address how the government and the Center For Disease Control have totally failed and endangered the medical professionals and law enforcement officers of the United States.
They failed in the following ways:
Did not provide timely and accurate information to police, medics, doctors, nurses, and other professionals. They did not tell these fine folks how contagious COVID-19 actually is. They never expressed that this disease is aerosolized.
Provided no way for medical professionals to test. The long delay in testing supplies combined with delivering dirty and unusable test kits has made a bad situation much worse than it had to be.
The CDC has stopped reporting testing after complaints about how few they were doing. This is irresponsible and not how an agency that is supposed to be working in the best interest of the health of America should act.
Refusing to acknowledge that the incubation period of COVID-19 is likely longer than 14 days. The result is an inadequate quarantine period.
The people that work hard to provide medical and emergency services for us are being let down and we will all pay for this in the future. What happens when the people trained to take care of us when we are sick and keep communities safe cannot because they are sick too?
The results of these decisions are highlighted in the stories and videos below.
5 Dallas police officers were sent home after it was discovered they were potentially exposed to COVID-19 due to interaction during the arrest and processing of a man.
Even if you ignore the rest of my article, I urge you to at least watch the video below that highlights the struggle of doctors and how they cannot get what they need to test patients.
Clothing
Almost all clothing was made in China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Even the fancy name brand designer labels that cost a fortune per piece take advantage of the low labor costs in these countries to produce their designer duds.
All those inexpensive cotton socks, underwear, and packs of t-shirts that we are used to are not going to be on the shelves. Some are still made in America but it will take quite some time to create the infrastructure necessary to meet increased domestic demand.
Food
Luckily, America is a country that produces more food than it consumes. There will be food as long as there are people to work on the farms. However, there are imported food items that you and your family may like a lot that could become either impossible to get or more expensive due to the collapse of the global shipping industry and how hard it is to procure the ingredients.
Other countries that rely on the United States for food on some level will suffer a lot as crops and foods are not exported but consumed domestically or only exported to countries that are close enough to make it economically feasible.
Pharmaceutical Drugs
We rely on China for most antibiotics. India produces a lot of final product medications but many of the active ingredients are produced in China. There are already some medications that are starting to be harder to find. While some may rest a bit easier when reassured by Indian drug manufacturers that they have an 8 week supply on hand, that is not a big enough cushion to make me think this is not a serious problem.
Many people renewed their prescriptions sooner rather than later when items started appearing in the news that indicated that meds may be harder to get or that they may need to stay at home for many weeks. This led to supplies becoming more depleted at the beginning of the situation. Those that did not renew and get their meds, will be the first to suffer the consequences of doing without. Even so, everyone that is on meds will eventually feel the impact.
Of course, there are also those that are on prescription medications that are only allowed a 30 day supply at a time. This is how it works with some drugs that are prescribed for mental health or pain. You also have to go to an actual pharmacy to get these meds. They won’t ship you major painkillers or drugs like Adderall or Ritalin for ADHD.
Some medications you cannot quit suddenly without some potentially serious or fatal consequences. Consider how some people that rely on mental health medications are going to do if they suddenly have to quit. In the USA we have a pretty significant population on psychiatric medications.
From face masks to gloves to major medical equipment, China is the main manufacturer. Considering that we are dealing with an epidemic or pandemic depending on what you believe, now is a heck of a time to be facing shortages of medical supplies.
A lot of illegal drugs are smuggled in shipping containers that have other goods in them. Who knows how many days worth of supply is in the USA but regardless, at some point that amount is going to dwindle which will at first lead to higher prices for users. Some areas may lack any as dealers divert supplies to those that can pay more. At some point, there just may simply not be any of certain drugs across a big are.
The increased cost alone will lead to more stealing and other crimes committed out of desperation to get the substance the user relies on. Some drugs incapacitate those in withdrawal while others don’t so much thus you have people that are desperate and capable of some pretty awful things.
Appliances
Some of the larger appliances are still made domestically but that doesn’t mean that they don’t rely on components manufactured in foreign countries. Usually, this country is China. Almost all small appliances are made in China from toasters ovens to coffee pots and blenders. Any device, even if you buy a better than average brand, has a working life.
At some point, what appliances and parts that are already in the country or at least in a nearby one, will start to dwindle. It is hard to say when this will happen because there are many factors at play. Maybe we have enough to get by until manufacturing starts up in US or else ware but I kind of doubt it.
When your coffee pot breaks if may be a little harder to find a replacement that is anywhere near the price point you are used to paying. Even the small appliances that were considered cheaply made, will be resold for a much higher cost to those that want the convenience that they bring to their lives.
Tools
A lot of the power and hand tools we use every day are made in China or Japan. As a farmer and someone that built their house with their husband, I put a lot of value in tools. During hard times a lot of us may have to do more tasks on our own. Hopefully, our tools hold out for a while.
There are some good hand tools made in the USA but like so many things, the supply is far lower than the demand.
Auto and Machine Parts
A lot of auto manufacturers have decreased or stopped production because they cannot get the materials and components they need to produce vehicles or the parts needed to repair existing ones. How many of us have bought an aftermarket part for a car or small machine? Almost all the aftermarket generic parts that are affordable are made in China.
Just about everything that the average person uses to maintain and run their household.
I could list many more things that are in your home that may be harder to get. Sheets for your bed, towels, and blankets are just a few of the other items that are often made in China or India. Although India is not reporting a ton of cases yet, I suspect that the numbers are much greater and considering the population density, the potential for a major outbreak is extraordinary.
More expensive goods due to a lack of low labor costs. Manufacturing will occur closer to home.
We are used to being able to get a lot things at a low cost. This is not going to be as common. People will not work and are not able to work for the wages that they will in China, Vietnam, or Cambodia.
It will take a long time to get any production going domestically or in an alternative foreign location. There are many components that go into even basic electronics and appliances. Metals, small parts, etc, are something we used to take for granted as always being there.
Price gouging is already happening. Demand is much higher for some items like N-95 masks. Price gouging and people reselling items on eBay for extremely high prices is something we are likely to see more and more of.
Resentment and blame towards fellow consumers
There are already people that are blaming fellow shoppers for them not being able to get items that they want. One person was angry because they could not find something for their baby and blamed people for stocking up. They called them selfish. Another man couldn’t put in his weekly order for 2 loaves of bread and was livid about it.
When other more major shortages start to be apparent, the blaming will get worse, with many people in denial that the real cause is the lack of manufacturing and shipping.
Politicization and the blame game is already happening and will continue to escalate.
It really annoys me when important issues that affect us all get politicized. People from all across the political spectrum are already blaming this political party or this person. I am critical of the CDC but that is an agency that is supposed to work for all of us regardless of political leanings. I will not get caught up in the political blame game because it does nothing to help us get through this horrible virus that as all over the world. As far as I am concerned governments need to put aside some of the party politics and concentrate on the health crisis at hand.
Racism and xenophobia will surface more often towards some groups.
This is already happening all over the world. Those that kept their feelings to themselves are feeling that now is the time to express them. There are also some that have switched to this way of thinking. While checking in on a new friend in Italy I met in a preparedness group on Facebook, he told me of a man verbally abusing a Chinese lady in the street by loudly yelling that “All the s*** eaters need to go back home”. This was more than a week ago and at the very beginning of the quarantines in Italy and occurred in a town that was not yet under mandatory quarantine.
It will be harder to shelter children from the woes of the world.
Kids are going to ask a lot of questions. While causing them to panic and freak out is not the answer, it is going to be a lot harder to hide what is going on over a period of time. Some parents have decided to approach it from encouraging more hand washing and telling children and teens to avoid people that are coughing or showing signs of illness. I think that a degree of honesty is best myself but I realize that how you raise your child is something that is ultimately a personal decision.
There may be a time when kids and teens ask some other really tough questions that you will need to address and it will be practically impossible to shield them from. What if something awful like a friend or family member gets sick, is hospitalized, or even dies? Kids may also have some questions about the xenophobia and racism that could pop up.
Events that involve large groups will be rarer and many that are planned will be canceled.
Sometimes I am sitting here typing and an ad will come on Pandora from an artist telling me to catch them on tour. Now when I hear that I think about how many of those big concerts and sporting events are going to be canceled. In some cases when they are not canceled, the musicians or players will either be greeted by a nearly empty or empty venue. In Italy, soccer teams are playing without the fans due to the possibility of spread.
Children and teens that are used to the team spirit and camaraderie that comes from participating in organized sports may have to face losing that part of their life.
The travel industry will crash
Travel agents and online booking sites are facing record-breaking numbers of cancellations. This means at least a partial refund of fees that were already paid.
Anyone that works at hotels, for airlines or any industry that caters to travelers is going to be affected. The ripple effect is going to be very noticeable. I would not be surprised to see some hotels and motels shut down and never open again. Bankruptcies in the travel industry are very likely to accelerate greatly over the next year.
The cruise ship industry, in particular, is being hit hard and with good reason considering the disaster of the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.
People will become more isolated. Social distancing will be the rule for many.
Doing what you can to distance yourself from others is one of the things that you have some control over. While staying at home is not an option for many due to their jobs or school, avoiding other social situations, shopping online, or visiting stores at very low volume times are all possible. Many people have been doing this for quite some time.
Restaurants, coffee shops, and bars are going to face some tough times.
Some of the first social distancing will be people avoiding restaurants and drinking establishments. This is one of the easiest things for people to do to reduce exposure to others. At the moment, staying at home and popping a frozen pizza in the oven makes sense to some. Going out and socializing is something people like to do but you can have a beer at home for less money and avoid exposure. There are a lot of people employed in the restaurant and bar industry. Many of these hard-working people rely on tipping that is just not going to be there.
The lack of cargo to ship will have a significant effect on the shipping and transport industries.
This is another industry that employs a lot of people. From the local UPS and FedEx drivers to the port and cargo ship workers. While at the time a lot of people are utilizing mail order, as time goes on and there are less goods to ship, the volume will drop. Volume has already dropped dramatically at ports on the western and eastern seaboards of the United States. Where shipping containers were once stacked as high as buildings, there is empty space and nothing coming in.
This video shows what some of the ports look like at this time. It was taken by a lady that drives container trucks to and from the port.
Truck drivers that service ports, as well as those responsible for moving cargo across the country, will likely feel the effects of fewer goods to distribute.
Lack of demand for oil will cause the barrel price to crash.
The oil markets are already experiencing the effects of less demand. When this continues, the price will drop a lot. Of course, if some oil production shuts down as a result, the price may go back up to some degree. Regardless there are going to be some dips and volatility in the oil market.
Families will either learn to get along or be miserable. Some will simply fall apart because they cannot cope with all that time together.
There will be more homeschooled children and teens in the future.
Some school districts are already creating plans for delivering learning materials online. Other people are thinking about homeschooling as an option. I was homeschooled from 7th-12th grade. It was the best option for me. Although I was doing very well in school, it was boring and the social aspects were not something I enjoyed. I had to spend 90 minutes of my life on a bus because the nearest junior high was 10 miles away and that took 45 minutes each way.
While parents may have to go to work, I do have to say that some responsible teens may be able to handle staying at home and completing their studies even if you are not there. I was pretty much self-taught through junior high through graduation.
If you find yourself working from home and feel that you should eliminate the risk of exposure via schools, then homeschooling is something to consider. Many kids find that they enjoy it and have more time to do other things like learn skills or even help out around the house. A lot of time is wasted within the public school system.
Conclusion
Times are not going to be easy. We are going to be facing some major disruptions to our way of life in the future. Let’s hope that a cure and better treatment becomes available soon. Even if things dramatically improve, the global supply chain is going to be forever changed.
I wish the best for you and your family during this trying time.
* * *
To keep up to date on coronavirus I encourage you to subscribe to the Peak Prosperity Youtube Channel.
Chris does a fantastic job covering the latest news that you should know about COVID-19. He has been producing a daily video covering COVID-19 since the epidemic started.
Obama-Era Inspector General Indicted On 16 Counts Of Theft And Fraud
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Friday that the Obama administration’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General and his former subordinate were indicted on 16 counts of theft and fraud.
The charges against 59-year-old Charles K. Edwards and his underling Murali Yamazula Venkata, 54, include theft of government property, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Venkata is also charged with destruction of records.
According to the allegations in the indictment, from October 2014 to April 2017, Edwards, Venkata, and others executed a scheme to defraud the U.S. government by stealing confidential and proprietary software from DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), along with sensitive government databases containing personal identifying information (PII) of DHS and USPS employees, so that Edwards’s company, Delta Business Solutions, could later sell an enhanced version of DHS-OIG’s software to the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Agriculture at a profit. Although Edwards had left DHS-OIG in December 2013, he continued to leverage his relationship with Venkata and other DHS-OIG employees to steal the software and the sensitive government databases. -DOJ
Venkata and others are also accused of reconfiguring Edwards’ laptop so that he could upload the stolen software and databases, and helped troubleshoot whenever Edwards needed. He even built a test server at his house with the stolen software and databases.
Edwards is also accused of employing Indian software developers for the purpose of developing his ripoff of DHS’s software.
Congress Rips Boeing’s “Culture Of Concealment” & FAA’s ‘Jeopardizing’ Public In Scathing 737 MAX Report
In a sense finally making the long developing scandal official in terms of where blame lies and who covered it up, Congress has blasted Boeing’s “culture of concealment” which recklessly pursued cost-cutting over safety, made worse by the Federal Aviation Administration’s woeful lack of oversight, leading to twin deadly crashes of Boeing’s 737 MAX jets and 346 lives lost in late 2018 and March 2019. The report cites “efforts to obfuscate information” involving an automated system that “violated Boeing’s own internal design guidelines.”
Preliminary findings issued by Democrats on the House Transportation Committee Friday afternoon found Boeing executives and FAA regulators ignored the fatal software glitch which was simply shipped by default with all new 737 MAX planes instead of being repaired.
Boeing “failed in its duty to identify key safety problems and to ensure they were adequately addressed during the certification process,” the House committee found.
Source: Getty Images/CBS
“Friday’s report details Boeing’s determination at various levels — years before the MAX won approval by the Federal Aviation Administration — to avoid putting any pilots through costly ground-simulator training,” the WSJ writes. And further summarizes, “That single-minded goal was evident across Boeing’s engineering, marketing and management ranks, according to the report, and resulted in various efforts to mislead or withhold information from FAA officials during the lengthy certification process.”
The Congressional report, which comes as the result of a series of five public hearings into the MAX’s design and production after it was ground world-wide last March, also excoriated the FAA for its “grossly insufficient” review of the plane which ultimately “jeopardized the safety of the flying public” with its “inherent conflicts of interest” — even though it’s supposed to be the final impartial safety watchdog.
Here are key damning conclusions from the report per The Seattle Times:
Extensive efforts at Boeing to cut costs, maintain the MAX program schedule, and not slow down the MAX production line undermined the safety of the jet.
In order to avoid greater FAA scrutiny and increased pilot training requirements, Boeing practiced a “Culture of Concealment” that withheld crucial information from the FAA, its airline customers, and pilots.
Inherent conflicts of interest among authorized representatives of the FAA, who are Boeing employees authorized to perform certification work on behalf of the FAA, ”jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”
Boeing’s influence over the FAA’s oversight resulted in FAA management rejecting safety concerns raised by the agency’s own technical experts at the behest of Boeing.
After these and other scathing critiques in the Congressional findings, the FAA instead of a full-frontal acknowledgement to the public of its role leading up to disasters involving hundreds of deaths and grieving relatives, merely lamely stated that “we are a learning agency and welcome the scrutiny.”
Then president and chief executive officer of The Boeing Company at a Congressional hearing last year, via EPA/The Guardian.
“The lessons learned from the investigations into the tragic accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 will be a springboard to an even greater level of safety,” the FAA statement added.
However, we doubt that few among the traveling public will find such an ‘assurance’ believable or comforting, also considering the potential expanding nature of the safety issues and cover-up, as the WSJ notes additionally: “More broadly, the reports also details examples of FAA managers overruling safety concerns of their own technical expertsrelated to another Boeing airliner, the Boeing 787.”
It’s very bizarre and dissonant how there are currently two separate and non-overlapping lines of criticism going on against the campaign of establishment-anointed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. There are the perfectly accurate criticisms regarding the right-wing, militaristic policy positions of the politician Joe Biden used to be, and then there are the equally accurate criticisms of Biden’s handlers and Democratic Party leadership for wheeling out the dementia-addled husk of a man he currently is to run for the world’s most powerful elected office.
These two debates do not interweave, because they are not relevant to one another. It doesn’t matter what political positions a dementia victim once had; what matters is taking care of him and keeping him away from hazards, like sharp objects and nuclear launch codes. It’s impossible to know what actual political convictions still remain held within a mind that can no longer lucidly string thoughts together anyway.
I hate doing this. I hate repeatedly writing about the obvious and undeniable fact that an old man is exhibiting obvious and undeniable symptoms of incipient dementia. It isn’t fun, and it doesn’t feel good. But the alternative is laying down and allowing the Democratic party and its allied media to gaslight people into believing it’s not a thing, as they are doing currently.
At a certain point there needs to be a serious and empathetic conversation about Biden’s relatively frequent, confused, irritable inability to complete coherent thoughts. It’s not about a stutter. Watching him speak a mere four years ago makes that clear. Hope this happens soon!
If you do a live Twitter search for the word “stutter”, you will as of this writing see that word being tweeted multiple times per minute on the social media platform as Democrats scramble to defend Biden from people who are accurately highlighting the indisputable fact that the former vice president is showing signs of cognitive decline. In my interactions with Biden supporters over the last 24 hours I’ve had this irrelevant word suddenly start getting thrown at me, because narrative managers in the mainstream media and the Biden campaign have been aggressively promoting the talking point that Biden’s increasingly frequent neurological misfirings on the campaign trail are actually the result of a longstanding speech impediment.
This is false. While it is true that Biden has periodically exhibited signs of a stutter, the inability to hold on to his own train of thought, forgetting where he is and who he’s with, grossly incorrect use of language, and inappropriate behavior are not symptoms of a stutter.
Memory loss, which is usually noticed by a spouse or someone else
Difficulty communicating or finding words
Difficulty with visual and spatial abilities, such as getting lost while driving
Difficulty reasoning or problem-solving
Difficulty handling complex tasks
Difficulty with planning and organizing
Difficulty with coordination and motor functions
Confusion and disorientation
Clearly, the symptoms of the speech impediment are very distinct from the symptoms of a degenerative neurological disorder. What follows are dozens of examples suggesting the latter, most of which were compiled by the Twitter user @KoenSwinkels. You may be absolutely certain that Trump will not hesitate to highlight this growing mountain of evidence should Democratic Party leadership successfully install Biden as the nominee; in fact both Trump and his Fox News cheerleaders are doing so already.
Joe Biden is Jeb Bush plus dementia. Trump will be far less charitable with his symptoms than I am here, and if he’s nominated the president will make certain this story dominates news headlines from the convention until November. Anyone who wants Trump out of office should fiercely oppose Biden’s nomination.
1. “Make sure you have the record player on at night… make sure the kids hear words.”
Everyone talked about Biden’s bizarre call for families to make use of an archaic audio technology in response to a debate question about slavery, and some criticized his paternalistic suggestion that black Americans need to be taught how to raise their children correctly, but hardly anyone made a fuss about the fact that his entire answer was also a rambling, incoherent word salad.
It’s easy to overlook linguistic peculiarities when they’re spoken, so I made a verbatim transcript of Biden’s complete answer, exactly as he spoke it. There are no typos. Read it carefully, resisting the urge to mentally re-word it in order to make it make sense:
“Well they have to deal with the — Look, there is institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved I started dealing with that. Redlining. Banks. Making sure that we’re in a position where — Look, talk about education. I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title 1 schools, triple the amount of money we spend from 15 to 45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise that equal raise to getting out — the sixty-thousand dollar level.
“Number two: make sure that we bring into the help the — the student, the, the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home. We need — We have one school psychologist for every fifteen hundred kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are reca — Now, I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have make sure that every single child does in fact have three, four, and five year-olds go to school — school, not daycare. School. We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t wanna help, they don’t want — they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television, the — ‘scuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the-the-the-the phone, make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear four million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.”
Compare this muddle-headed mess, and all the following subsequent examples, to the crisp, forceful way Biden used to speak:
Or even just a few years ago:
Joe Biden explains why Bernie Sanders is the best to beat Trump.
(Yes, this is Joe 4 years ago.. I know it’s strange watching him talk in full sentences.) pic.twitter.com/5zhs1eYvFu
2. “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by the, go, you know the, you know the thing.”
3. “Super Thursday”
4. “I’m a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. Look me over, if you like what you see help out, if not vote for the other Bi- gimme a look though okay?”
This is so sad.
Here @JoeBiden says to the crowd in South Carolina that he is “running for the United States Senate” and that if they don’t like him they can “vote for the other Biden.”
I honestly wish he would’ve retired & not subjected himself to the rigors of this campaign. pic.twitter.com/mygFnsrdjC
Here’s a transcript of an answer Biden gave to a question at a town hall. Read through it, resisting the urge to mentally revise it into something more coherent:
“And so I was saying that, and what they turned around and said, Joe Biden said, in effect, they said, that Joe Biden said that what he was told, that what, that what the white supremacists argue, that we have no problem, that our, our, our basic English jurisprudential system is not the problem. The problem is those countries like Africa and Asia and those places, they’re the reason why we have all these problems. So they turn it around to make it sound like that, and by the way, the title of the article is, was, is the Washington Post ‘The Deceptively (indecipherable) of Joe Biden Singles, Signals What Is Coming’ and that is that’s a whole bunch of lies. The generic point I’m making here is that, what has happened is that, I know we’re going to get in to, whomever the nominee is of the Democratic Party, is going to have a plethora of lies told about him or her, and misrepresentations and this went on the internet, this edited article, it got retweeted by some press people and then they realized it was edited to make it look like something not… white supremacists, see, Biden’s acknowledging that the problem here is that that all those folks, all those minority folks are the problem. And so, in essence. And so they corrected, they corrected. You’re going to see a lot more of it. You’re going to see a lot more of not only my statements being taken out of context, and lied about, or altered, you’re going to see whomever the Democratic nominee is because that’s how this guy operates. Now. Whether or not I can win?”
16. “We choose truth over facts.”
17. “150 million people have been killed since 2007 when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability.”
This would be about half the population of the United States. Pretty sure that would’ve made bigger headlines.
18. Confusing Theresa May with Margaret Thatcher.
He only missed by 29 years!! 😂
Biden mixes up British PM Theresa May with Margaret Thatcher, who left office in 1990 https://t.co/H1wiDRY47A
Biden apparently received instructions from his team to tell debate viewers to text “Joe” to 30330, but these directions were too complicated for him. He wound up sending viewers to a random empty URL which was subsequently bought up by a Buttigieg supporter.
30. Made, then dropped, claim that he was arrested in South Africa while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison.
Biden’s fake Mandela story would have been a week-long news disaster for him back when anyone still had bandwidth and standards https://t.co/ESdcjChPsQ
34. Claimed he had the support of the “only” African American woman that had ever been elected to the senate, while the other one was standing on the stage with him.
35. “Why why why why why why why!”
36. Referred to Bernie Sanders as “the president”, then, still unable to remember his name, called him “my friend Vermont”.
37. Also called Cory Booker “the president”.
That’s it for now. Let me know if I missed any good ones; I’ll probably keep this updated with all the latest neurological misfirings until this discussion goes mainstream like it should already be.
Trump Promotes Freedom Caucus Leader Mark Meadows To Chief Of Staff, Sends Mick Mulvaney To Northern Ireland
In the middle of a rapidly escalating pandemic, President Trump has finally decided to fill that chief of staff slot that’s technically been vacant since John Kelly left at the end of 2018.
Mick Mulvaney has been serving as acting chief of staff while also leading the critical Office of Management and Budget (OMB). But many have gotten used to him as chief of staff, a far more visible role where Mulvaney has nevertheless suffered a handful of embarrassing gaffes, despite his overall competence performance. Mulvaney also served as head of the CFPB until December 2018.
However, after more than a year with Mulvaney in the acting role, Trump has apparently decided to appoint North Carolina Congressman and Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows, long rumored as a potential chief of staff candidate, to the position in a series of tweets sent at 8pmET on a Friday.
For whatever reason (perhaps because rumors that Mulvaney has somehow displeased Trump are true), Mulvaney is being shipped off to Belfast as the US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland.
Trump made the announcement on Twitter:
“I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one…I want to thank Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney for having served the Administration so well. He will become the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Thank you!”
I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one….
….I want to thank Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney for having served the Administration so well. He will become the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Thank you!
Notably, Meadows will get the full title, no “acting” which Mulvaney allegedly kept so he could earn the highest salary of his many roles (that of head of the OMB).
Meadows gets the full title. Not “acting,” which Mulvaney had, and recently told the Oxford Union he kept so he could keep his higher OMB salary. https://t.co/B8x0cjNx1Y
– Fires Mick Mulvaney
– Ships him off to Northern Ireland
– Names Mark Meadows new White House Chief of Staff
– Attacks Governor Jay Inslee
– Botches Grand Princess outbreak
– It’s all falling apart
– Trump is going to prison
– It’s still only 8:15pm
It wouldn’t be a Trump twitter firing if the person being fired didn’t find out at the same time as everyone else…we look forward to Mulvaney telling the world how the secret service showed up at his house in the middle of dinner and told him to pack his bags and grab his passport.
Whatever the reason for this firing (was it a mix of tension-induced panic and rage?, we’re sure we’ll read the ‘full story’ this weekend in the NYT or Washington Post.
MbS Arrests Top Royals On ‘Treason’ At Moment World’s Attention On Coronavirus
A huge development out of Saudi Arabia late Friday via the Wall Street Journal which reports Saudi authorities have detained two prominent royals close to the throne— namely, the ageing King Salman’s brother, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al Saud, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al Saud (often referred to as MBN).
“The Saudi royal court accused the two men of plotting a coup to unseat the king and crown prince, according to people familiar with the situation,” WSJ reports. One of MBN’s brothers, Nawaf, was also reported to be arrested.
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, right. Getty Images.
Black-clad and masked commandos raided the homes of the two men Friday morning on charges of treason, in what’s being widely interpreted as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MbS) broader “purge” of potential powerful rivals and centers of influence, which first began in 2017 when scores of princes and top officials were locked up in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton.
Perhaps entirely to be expected, Saudi authorities gave no details or evidence of the alleged coup attempt even though a “treason” conviction means they face execution, as the WSJ notes further:
The two men who potentially had once been in line for the throne are now under threat of lifetime imprisonment or execution, said people familiar with the situation. The details of the alleged coup attempt couldn’t be learned.
Crucially both Prince Ahmed and MBN previously spent time as minister of the interior, a very powerful post with direct oversight over troops and Saudi intelligence.
Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz. File image via Middle East Monitor.
Bin Nayef, it must be remembered, had initially been in line to be king before being stripped of his powers as Interior Minister in 2017 and King Salman declaring his son MbS heir to the throne.
Following the state-sanctioned (and no doubt MbS-ordered) murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Oct. 2018, any drastic or aggressive consolidation of power related action out of MbS had cooled significantly for a while compared to the period of the near daily headlines coming out of the kingdom in 2017 through early 2018 amid the crackdown.
Though political and business leaders in the West essentially shunned MbS at major public events for much of the year following Khashoggi’s death, bin Salman was quietly “rehabilitated” by the elites and it’s recently seemed ‘business as usual’.
It appears MbS is now once again going back on the offensive, perhaps also given the world’s attention is now focused far away from the crown prince’s political machinations as the Coronavirus fast becomes a global pandemic.
Astronomers in Perth, Australia recently detected and observed the largest explosion ever found in the universe since the Big Bang, according to a study published in the Astrophysics Journal.
“We’ve seen outbursts in the centers of galaxies before but this one is really, really massive,”said Curtin University professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt.
“And we don’t know why it’s so big. But it happened very slowly—like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years.”
Researchers at the Curtin University International Centre for Radio Astronomy were observing the distant galaxy cluster Ophiuchus when they detected a huge explosion at the center of a supermassive black hole, approximately 390 million light-years from Earth. According to scientists, the explosion released five times more energy than the big bang, Science Dailyreported.
In fact, the explosion was so massive that it blew a hole in the cluster plasma (super-heated gas) surrounding the supermassive black hole and also broke the previous record-holder—a cluster known by the designation MS 0735+74.
One author of the study, Dr. Simona Giacintucci who works at the Naval Research Laboratory in the U.S., compared the explosion to the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, in which the top of the mountain was completely blown off.
“The difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas,” she said.
X-ray telescopes previously detected a hole in the black hole’s cluster plasma, but astronomers originally discarded the theory that it could have been caused by an energetic explosion because the outburst was believed to be too massive.
“People were skeptical because the size of outburst,” Johnston-Hollitt said. “But it really is that. The Universe is a weird place.”
“This object was actually observed with the Chandra X-ray telescope by a previous team and they saw this bubble in the hot X-ray plasma in the centre of this galaxy cluster, and they said, ‘Well, this can’t be from one of these energetic outputs because it would be enormous; the scale would be unthinkable’. So, they dismissed that possibility,” explained Prof Johnston-Hollitt, who directs the MWA. “But we went back and we observed with low-frequency radio telescopes and discovered that this cavity is filled with radio plasma.”
The scientists realized what they discovered when they observed the Ophiuchus cluster with radio telescopes. Then they saw that the radio data matched the x-ray data, confirming a gigantic expulsion of energy from the cluster.
In total, four telescopes were used to detect and confirm the eruption. Those instruments were NASA’s X-ray Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia, and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India.
Johnston-Hollitt, who directs the MWA, compared their discovery to archeologists uncovering the first dinosaur bones. She further stated that with new tools like low-frequency radio telescopes, astronomers can “dig” deeper into space and uncover unusual discoveries like this which teach us about the universe and its history.
Johnston-Hollitt also pointed out that studying the universe at different wavelengths will continue to uncover never-before-seen phenomenas like this one.
“We made this discovery with Phase 1 of the MWA, when the telescope had 2048 antennas pointed towards the sky,” she said.
“We’re soon going to be gathering observations with 4096 antennas, which should be ten times more sensitive. I think that’s pretty exciting.”
