Global Mega Trends to 2030, a recent report from the business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, paints a picture of an automated transhuman world.
The top trend is transhumanism, which will drive “technology-driven evolution at an unprecedented speed of change, propelling deeper questions into what it is to be human”.
Other trends identified in the report include an overall move to automation, virtual reality leading to a matrix-like “total reality-virtuality continuum“, a rollout of 6G, and “ubiquitous connectivity anytime and anywhere by 2030”.
1. Transhumanism: Humanity is entering the rise of technology-driven evolution at an unprecedented speed of change, propelling deeper questions into what it is to be human.
2. Autonomous World: Autonomous applications could extend beyond warehouses to outside logistics with the industrial, aerospace, smart home infrastructure, and automotive industries becoming fully automated and intelligent.
3. Connected Living: Seamless integration of video, voice, and data services will provide access and ubiquitous connectivity anytime and anywhere by 2030.
4. Industry 5.0: With collaborative human-machine interaction, Industry 4.0 will begin to move towards Industry 5.0 in an iconic transition towards mass customization and extreme personalization.
5. Digital Reality as Frontier Technology: Augmented and virtual reality technology will begin evolving towards a total reality-virtuality continuum.
6. Complex Needs of a Heterogenous Society: A heterogeneous society will transform business models across a diverse set of industries.
7. Data as 21st Century Oil: Data will become as important as oil, reaching into previously unserved customer segments that help in opening up new revenue streams.
8. Era of Intelligent Digital Assistants: Intelligent assistants will optimize and personalize daily experiences across all activities and environments.
9. ‘Uberization’ of Industries: Peer-to-peer (P2P) services are expected to transform and penetrate several non-traditional applications.
10. Concept of ‘Zero’ World: A Mega Vision of a Zero concept world, which will urge companies to shift focus and develop products and technologies that innovate to zero.
11. Rise of Platform Economy: Digital leaders will consolidate efforts to build a diverse ecosystem, comprising of infrastructure on which platforms are built.
12. Zero Latency World: A world with no latency will emerge from ongoing advancements in 5G and the introduction of 6G by 2030, wherein millions of connected devices will interact in real-time at microsecond latency.
A pro-human renaissance could disrupt these trends and provide humanity with a chance to break free from technocratic tyranny.
Wall Street Analyst Jobs Vanish As Banks Take An Axe To Research With Market At Record Highs
Is the death of Wall Street equity research finally at hand? Because who needs an expensive team of analysts when clients can easily reap double-digit returns by dumping their money into passive funds?
The fact that sell-side research departments have been shedding analysts this year is hardly a surprise. MiFID II regulations made it clear from the beginning that banks would soon lose a valuable revenue stream used to support research by forcing the sell side to “unbundle” research & trading costs.
But as Bloomberg reminds us, 2019 was the year that the heads really started to roll. Across Wall Street, equity analysts were told to clean out their desks. Even fresh all-time market highs weren’t enough to save them.
Data shared by consultant Coalition with several financial media organizations, including Bloomberg, claimed that the total head count of sell-side equity analysts fell to roughly 3,500 this year, its lowest level in decades.
The relentless decline of brokerage research is accelerating. Its ranks shrank 8% to 3,500 across 12 major banks, data showed earlier this year, on pace for the sharpest annual decrease since research firm Coalition Development started collating the numbers in 2012.
One veteran Citigroup analyst who spoke with Bloomberg for its story said he left his job after 18 years and now works for a non-profit. Many other analysts have made similar career moves this year.
A Citigroup Inc. analyst for almost 18 years, Andrew Howell knows very well what to expect when you’re pitching a service that fewer and fewer customers need or want. So he found another line of work.
Howell now toils in a co-working space in Manhattan’s East Village doing research for a non-profit organization, part of the legion of Wall Street analysts reinventing themselves as demand for their skills fades.
MiFID isn’t the only factor impacting Wall Street analysts. Their field lies at the intersection of several trends reshaping the financial services industry, including the advent of automation and AI.
But for now, while these tools have changed things, they haven’t totally supplanted human analysts, or obviated the need for real human scrutiny.
According to BBG’s data, large American asset managers are currently leading the trend of unbundling their trading business and research.
The rules that have led banks to cut down their research staff were supposed to help the buy side by reducing the cost of research. But interestingly enough, a consulting firm teamed up with Evercore to study how research spending impacts asset-management firms’ performance.
They found that firms who skimped on the research spend routinely underperformed those that spent more.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Some banks are taking advantage of the retrenchment. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. hired new analysts this year to “get a bigger piece of what is overall a smaller pie,” said Jim Covello, Goldman’s global co-head of single-stock research.
Dwindling sell-side research may finally settle the question of its value. U.S. managers spend between three to six times more on research than their European peers, Neil Scarth at Frost Consulting estimates. An analysis by Evercore ISI and Frost argued that firms paying for analysis out of their own pockets generally underperformed last year, suggesting they’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
But the biggest boon for firms looking to take advantage of this trend will probably be found among boutique firms. As banks are forced to cut back there coverage, inevitably, even more will slip through the cracks.
This should create opportunities for smaller activist firms like this one willing to think creatively and invest more in research.
On the other hand, companies who know they are facing less scrutiny from Wall Street and the media might be emboldened to try and cover up or bury information that might hurt their stock.
This year, conservative students had their beliefs silenced and beaten down by their leftist classmates and professors. A survey discovered that nearly half of college students have personally experienced their own professors verbally protest President Donald Trump in class.
Campus Reform has put together some of the wildest instances of protests on college campuses.
After increasing demand to “abolish ICE” from leftists around the country, students at Carnegie Mellon University took it upon themselves to insist that the tech company Palantir be banned from doing business with the school because of its contract with ICE.
This #NoTechForICE demonstration included a petition signed by more than 300 people demanding that Palantir discontinue business relations with ICE, and demanding that the school do the same with Palantir.
Hundreds of students at North Carolina State University gathered inside the university’s Talley Student Union to protest Charlie Kirk and Lara Trump’s speech on campus. Allegations of “racism” and “fascism” overflowed from the students, but they were not able to pinpoint any instances of either.
After one student was asked for evidence of claims that Kirk, Trump, and Turning Point USA embodied these allegations, she told Campus Reform Correspondent Addison Smith to “go fuck yourself.” When another student bluntly exclaimed, “Fuck Charlie Kirk,” he provided reasons for saying so such as “I don’t know. Seems like a dick” and “I just don’t vibe with the guy.”
A group known as DIVEST BING at Binghamton University held a “die-in” protest by playing dead and laying gravestones out on campus. This came in light of the school’s investment in “stuff that literally kills people” – fossil fuels.
Photo credit: Pipe Dream
Students suggested that the school was “adamant on keeping as much of this as quiet as possible,” even though Executive Director of the BU Foundation Sheila Doyle said that she met with the group and explained the situation, adding that the financial statements are online for the public to see.
Female paleontologists at the University of California-Berkeley decided to wear fake beards to shed light on”‘gender bias” in their field.
The Bearded Lady Project aimed to promote the idea that women can contribute to science just as much as men can. To prove this, they were “challenging the face of science,” “one beard at a time.” Photos of these women wearing artificial facial hair were on display at the college.
“We came in expecting there would be some degree of discrimination, and that we would have to adapt to a male-dominated academic setting,” paleontologist Patricia Holroyd said.
During a football game between Harvard and Yale, a play was suspended as dozens of climate activists rushed onto the field to object to both schools allegedly being “complicit in climate injustice.”
This stunt delayed the game for almost 40 minutes. Protesters were asked numerous times beforehand to clear the field, but the number grew increasingly larger throughout its duration.
Brazil’s Oprah-Endorsed ‘Psychic Surgeon’ Rapist Gets 19 Years In Prison
A Brazilian faith healer known as João de Deus, or John of God (real name Joao Teixeira de Faria), was sentenced to 19 years and four months in his first prison sentence stemming from a spate of sex abuse allegations uncovered by a journalist whose son says she was murdered.
Joao Teixeira de Faria a.k.a. “John of God”
According to ABC News, the 77-year-old de Faria was convicted of raping four women, reads a statement from the court. His lawyers say he will appeal the decision, while he faces additional cases related to 10 more alleged sex crimes. He has also been accused, though not charged, of running sex-slave farms for child trafficking, allegedly killing mothers after 10 years of birthing.
Faria, whose high-profile clients were rumored to include supermodel Naomi Campbell, former President Bill Clinton and singer Paul Simon, rose to international fame after Oprah Winfrey sat down with him in a 2010 interview – calling him “inspiring.”
Since then, hundreds of women – including his daughter – have accused him of all types of sexual abuse ranging from groping to rape.
As we noted in February, de Faria started his “spiritual hospital” in 1978, the Casa de Dom Inácio de Loyola – named after Saint Ignatius, one of the 37 spirits Faria claimed would inhibit his body during psychic healing sessions, according to The Sun. In 1979, a benefactor secured land for him in a small town of Abadiânia, Brazil, where he received over 10,000 visitors a month.
John of God’s “spiritual surgeries” would often involve scraping people’s eyeballs without anesthetics, or inserting scissors of forceps inside people’s noses to cure various conditions. His accusers say he took it much further – instructing them to face away from them before performing sexual acts to “cure” them, allegations Faria denies.
Last December, four women appeared on Brazilian television to accuse Faria of molesting them during sessions, including Dutch choreographer Zahira Lienke Mous, who says she learned of Faria from Oprah Winfrey’s interview.
Speaking on TV Globo, three of the women described their encounters with Faria to host Pedro Bial on condition of anonymity. Dutch choreographer Zahira Lieneke Mous decided to be named, and said that during one of her trips to see the healer to be cured of the trauma of previous sexual assault, he took her into a back room and had her masturbate him. He then had her pick out a gemstone from a set and granted special treatment. She has also accused him of raping her during another session.
Following the broadcast, Brazilian prosecutors announced that more than 200 women had come forward with similar claims, leading for prosecutors for the state of Goias to call for his arrest.
The rapist faith-healer withdrew 35 million reais ($8.9m US) from various bank accounts, causing authorities to respond with an arrest warrant over concerns he would flee the country or hide money from those who might sue. De Faria surrendered himself to police in Abadiania, and was transported to police headquarters in Goiania, the capital of the state of Goias.
De Faria’s daughter, Dalva Tiexeira, says that her father abused and raped her between the ages of 10 and 14, and that he only stopped after she became pregnant by one of his employees. The subsequent beating she received from “John of God” caused her to miscarry, she says.
Dalva Teixeira, de Faria’s daughter
“My father is a monster,” stated Teixeira.
Suspicious suicide
Another highly disturbing aspect of the case is that of 38-yeaer-old Brazilian activist, Sabrina Bittencourt, who mysteriously “committed suicide” in Lebanon in February while she was on the road and “living under protection.”
Bittencourt said she had received reports of Faria’s sex slave operation in which newborns were sold for up to £40,000 ($51,000 USD) in the United States, Europe and Australia.
She claimed Faria would offer money to poor girls aged 14 to 18 to go and live in mineral mines or farms he owns in the Brazilian states of Goias and Minas Gerais.
“In exchange for food, they were impregnated and their babies sold on the black market,” she said.
“Hundreds of girls were enslaved over years, living on farms in Goias, and served as wombs to get pregnant, for their babies to be sold.
“These girls were murdered after 10 years of giving birth. We have got a number of testimonies.” –The Sun
Bittencourt’s eldest son, Gabriel Baum, confirmed her death on Facebook with a note that read: “She took the last step so that we could live. They killed my mother.“
“We said goodbye in Paris, she traveled to Barcelona for a few days to create the protection network for Brazilians of exile and returned to Lebanon with her girlfriend. It was one of the countries she loved!” Gabriel posted to Facebook.
Hundreds of military installations have either known or likely water contamination caused by runoff from firefighting foam used in response to vehicle and aircraft accidents, according to the Environmental Working Group.
“Of these sites, 138 have not been previously identified on EWG’s map of known PFAS contamination at military bases, civilian airports and industrial sites,” according to a Tuesday new release.
“In addition, 42 of these sites were not included on a list of 401 locations the Pentagon gave to Congress of active and former installations where PFAS contamination was known or suspected.”
The map went live the day after the House and Senate armed services committees finalized a compromise defense authorization bill for 2020, which includes provisions to approaching the PFAS issue going forward.
Expected to see a vote in the House on Wednesday, the law would prohibit the use of PFAS-laden firefighting foam after Oct. 1, 2024, and immediately ban any use of the foam outside of emergency situations.
While the bill dropped a provision that would have brought PFAS-contaminated bases under the federal Superfund law, providing funding and a requirement to clean them up, the NDAA pushes the Pentagon to work with state governments to start clean up using funds from the Defense Environmental Remediation Account.
It would also require that military firefighters are testing for PFAS levels in their blood, as the chemicals do not break down over time and are known to build up in the human body.
In the mean time, the Air Force has been testing a system that might be able to remove PFAS from ground water, and DoD is funding research into a new firefighting foam.
Dystopian Toilet Adds Raging Quad Pain For Employees Taking ‘Netflix And Poo’ Breaks
For those who deal with the occasional stubborn poop, a new startup’s toilet design will add a new level of difficulty to that prize-fight; your quads will be on fire.
Designed by UK-based StandardToilet, the new ‘throne’, tilted at a 13-degree angle, supposedly provides a myriad of health benefits – while encouraging employees to abandon the occasional ‘Netflix and poo’ break do to the fact that it becomes uncomfortable to sit on after just five minutes of use.
BREAKING NEWS: Say goodbye to comfort breaks! New downward-tilting toilets are designed to become unbearable to sit on after five minutes. They say the main benefit is to employees in improved employee productivity. pic.twitter.com/lfDbeXJdCX
The dystopian toilet, approved by the British Toilet Association (BTA), was inspired by “a series of annoyances,” according to StandardToilet founder Mahabir Gill – who says he discovered that over four decades as a consulting engineer, he became increasingly annoyed by long waits to use the toilet – discovering that some co-workers were sleeping on the pot, according to Wired.
“Its main benefit is to the employers, not the employees,” Gill told the outlet, adding “It saves the employer money.”
The fight to clampdown on toilet time has begun, it seems. After all, the alternative toilet market is booming. Japanese-style toilets are finally breaking into Western markets, and products like the Squatty Potty are offering us revolutionary new ways to sit on the toilet. Waterless compost toilets are catering to eco-conscious poopers, while others believe the future is rimless. But, is policing your pooing a step too far?
The StandardToilet was given public backing by BTA in November and retails between £150 and £500, and Gill is already in talks with several local councils and major motorway service stations to distribute his product, and believes their market extends to train stations, pubs, shopping malls and offices. –Wired
The flood of obituaries that noted the passing of Paul Volcker (1927-2019) last week have almost all lauded his achievement as Fed chair (1979-1987) in reining in the double-digit inflation that ravaged the U.S. economy during the 1970s.
Volcker was referred to as the “former Fed chairman who fought inflation” (here); “inflation tamer” and “a full-fledged inflation warrior” (here); and the “Fed chairman who waged war on inflation” and led “the Federal Reserve’s brute-force campaign to subdue inflation” (here). Mr. Volcker certainly deserves credit for curbing the Great Inflation of the 1970s. However, he also merits a lion’s share of the blame for unleashing the Great Inflation on the U.S. and the world economy in the first place.
For it was Mr. Volcker who masterminded the program that President Nixon announced on August 15, 1971, which unilaterally suspended gold convertibility of U.S. dollars held by foreign governments and central banks, imposed a fascist wage-price freeze on the U.S. economy, and slapped a 10 percent surcharge on foreign imports.
Tragically, by severing the last link between the dollar and gold, Volcker’s program scuttled the last chance of restoring a genuine gold standard.
More than two years before Nixon slammed down the “gold window,” Volcker, the recently appointed undersecretary of the treasury for monetary affairs, gave an oral presentation to Nixon and his closest advisors on US balance-of-payments problems. The presentation was based on a memo that the secret “Volcker group,” initiated by Henry Kissinger, spent five months preparing.
Among other things, Volcker recommended a continuation of capital controls to prop up the inflated dollar’s overvalued exchange rate and a massive appreciation or “revaluation” of the currencies of less inflationary countries such as West Germany, placing the burden of adjustment to unrestrained US inflation on these countries. Volcker then planted the time bomb that would eventually detonate and seal the fate of the gold standard. He suggested to Nixon that if these measures did not work to sustain the pseudo–gold standard of the Bretton Woods System, a run on the US gold stock could only be avoided by unilaterally repudiating the postwar US pledge to convert foreign official dollar holdings into gold. Unfortunately, the Volcker Group report summarily dismissed the alternative of raising — possibly doubling — the dollar price of gold, i.e., “devaluing the dollar,” which would have increased the value of the US gold stock and facilitated the restoration of a genuine gold standard.
Only a real gold standard could have halted and reversed the slow-motion collapse that the international monetary system had been undergoing since the mid-1960s due to large and persistent US payments deficits driven by profligate dollar creation.
Volcker, however, hated and wanted to get rid of the last vestiges of the gold standard and replace it with a fixed exchange-rate system dominated by the US fiat dollar to further enhance the power and prestige of the U.S. in international affairs.
According to Volcker, “the stability and strength of our currency was important to sustaining the broad role of the United States in the world.”
Years later, Volcker revealed, “I have never been able to shake the feeling that a strong currency is generally a good thing, and that it is typically a sign of vigor and strength and competitiveness.”
One of his biographers intimated that Volcker’s longstanding regret at having been rejected for military service during World War II because of his height was at the root of his single-minded determination to maintain “the supremacy of the American dollar as the world’s premier currency.”
Indeed, Volcker struggled mightily to make the dollar appear strong, even while rampant money printing to finance Great Society welfare programs and the Vietnam War inexorably weakened it. But Volcker bitterly opposed raising the price of gold, because he feared that open devaluation of the inflated dollar would not only diminish the status and reputation of the US, but also reward people and countries he detested, namely, speculators in gold and gold-producing countries such as the Soviet Union and South Africa. He especially loathed and wanted to punish President Charles de Gaulle and the French for embarrassing and discrediting the US by withdrawing from NATO and exposing the weakness of the dollar by insisting on converting their dollars into gold in the face of US threats to remove military protection against the Soviet Union. (To add insult to injury, de Gaulle had sent naval ships to retrieve French gold.)
When a full-blown run on U.S. gold stock appeared imminent in early 1971, Volcker prepared a memorandum for the new treasury secretary, former Texas governor and master political operative John Connally. The memo contained three main proposals. First, countries with less inflationary monetary policies, and therefore balance-of-payments surpluses, such as West Germany and Japan, would be imposed upon to substantially appreciate the value of their currencies, thereby encouraging US exports and stifling its imports while sparing the it the embarrassment of openly devaluing the dollar. Second, Volcker recommended a preemptive strike against gold in the form of a “cold-blooded suspension” of gold convertibility. Volcker’s final proposal was a temporary wage-price freeze.
As one of Volcker’s biographers characterized his motivation, “[H]e wanted America to act preemptively, to avoid appearance of defeat at the hands of currency speculators.” (Emphasis added.)
Secretary Connally bought into Volcker’s program. When a severe dollar crisis struck a few months later, he used all his substantial political wiles to persuade Nixon of the merits of the Volcker plan. Then Fed Chairman and Nixon advisor Arthur Burns, for all his erroneous monetary ideas and policy failures, was convinced that gold should play — at least nominally — a central role in the international monetary system. In fact, “[a]fter Nixon took office, Burns proposed to end the balance-of-payments problem by increasing the official price of gold,” which would have “effectively devalue[d] the dollar.”
In Burns’s view, this would maintain gold as the anchor of a fixed exchange-rate system, an outcome that Volcker would have detested. Not surprisingly, Burns was “troubled” by Volcker, who he thought had given “a stupid reply” to Nixon about raising the price of gold. Burns also recognized and bemoaned Volcker’s influence over Connally: “Somehow, poor and wretched Volcker — never knowing where he stood on any issue — had succeeded in instilling an irrational fear of gold in his tyrannical master whom he tried constantly to please by catering to his hatred of foreigners (particularly the French).”
Unfortunately, Burns had badly underestimated Volcker, and had mistaken his tact and strategic compromising for vacillation and indecisiveness. As his biographer noted, Volcker
admired John Connally’s social skills and had learned much from the master politician. … He preferred to equivocate, qualify, and risk being branded a poor communicator, rather than feign certainty.
In the end, the wily Connally-Volcker axis prevailed over the politically naïve Burns. Burns’s biographer clearly recognized Volcker’s political cunning in winning over Nixon:
The President decided against Burns. Paul Volcker convinced him that suspension [of gold convertibility] was inevitable and that delay would only create financial chaos. Perhaps more important, Nixon realized if he announced the move as part of a new economic package, he would appear to be acting decisively to take charge of the crisis, making, as Volcker put it, “the devaluation of the dollar into a political triumph, which was no mean feat.”
Thus it was that Volcker’s memo was used as the basis of the New Economic Policy that was hammered out by Nixon and his advisors, including Volcker, at Camp David and announced in Nixon’s fateful Sunday address to the nation.
One obituarist listed Volcker’s “great public accomplishments” thusly:
He was the point man at the Treasury Department in 1971 who managed the dollar’s untethering from gold; he quelled the double-digit inflation that took root in the U.S. in the late 1970s; he helped guide the country’s response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Unfortunately, this list grossly overstates Volcker’s public accomplishments, because it does not reveal the causal connection between his vanquishing the last remnants of the gold standard and the ensuing inflation of the fiat dollar whose supply was then subject solely to the decisions of bureaucrats eagerly seeking to please their political masters.
Former NSA Director Rogers “Very Cooperative” With Durham Russia Probe
The man who some consider the first ‘whistleblower’, after taking what Joe DiGenova called “immense risks” briefing the Trump team on the Obama’s administration’s surveillance, has been cooperating with the Justice Department’s probe into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump presidential campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, according to four people familiar with Rogers’s participation.
The Intercept’s Matthew Cole reports that retired Admiral Michael Rogers, the former Director of the National Security Agency, has met with John Durham on multiple occasions, according to two people familiar with Rogers’s cooperation. While the substance of those meetings is not clear, Rogers has cooperated voluntarily, several people with knowledge of the matter said.
While Durham has reportedly recently sought former CIA Director John Brennan’s emails, call logs, and other documents from the C.I.A., Cole notes that Rogers’s voluntary participation, which has not been previously reported, makes him the first former intelligence director known to have been interviewed for the probe.
“He’s been very cooperative,” one former intelligence officer who has knowledge of Rogers’s meetings with the Justice Department said.
In addition to Brennan, and now Rogers, Politico and NBC News have previously reported that Durham intends to interview former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
As Cole concludes, the Mueller probe, the recent inspector general’s report, and now the Durham investigation have done little to bridge the yawning political divide between Trump (and his supporters), who continue to see him as the victim of a politically motivated “witch hunt,” and career intelligence and national security officials, who view the Durham investigation as an effort to punish those who led U.S. efforts to investigate Russia’s election meddling. In May, Trump gave Barr the unprecedented authority to review and declassify intelligence related to the Russia investigation, further inflaming national security veterans.
Durham’s investigation has also sought information from foreign governments.
Although AG Barr said there is likely many months before Durham’s report is complete, it would appear, by the leaks of his contacts, that the federal prosecutor is narrowing in his scope on those who were really responsible for all the “mistakes” that were made.
The importance of logic and accurate information in stressful times cannot be overstated.
With the gun control mess occurring in Virginia right now, there have been a lot of rumors, a lot of interpretations, and a lot of allegations from anonymous sources.
I haven’t written this to call anyone out. I’m certain that the people covering this story have honorable intentions. I’ve written this because I want to remind everyone that reason is our greatest weapon in the battle against tyranny.
What we know vs. what some guy said
I cannot confirm whether any of these current rumors circulating right now are true or not. Neither can I predict if they’ll come to pass. I try to provide balanced information based on provable sources.
Sometimes readers get angry about this and accuse me of passing on “misinformation.” It’s unfortunate they feel that it is misinformation, but I only publish what I have a source to corroborate. I might speculate but then I make sure that I’ve pointed out my thoughts are mere speculation and that there’s no evidence of this.
At times like this, more than ever, we have to work in the realm of what we know versus what the gossip is. What we know is the wording of the bills on the table, the statements from elected officials, and the statements from the National Guard.
This doesn’t mean to completely rule out the rumors. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that communications could be taken down in a “rebel” area. It’s important to plan for all the possibilities. But I don’t think me running a story full of suppositions and anonymous sources is actually helpful at all. I don’t want to fan the flames of an already volatile situation with things that I cannot prove.
It’s irresponsible. I won’t do it.
My goal is to help you get prepared for the things which are most likely. To do that, I have to focus on what we know.
Logic, not hysteria, will win the day.
Like the rest of you, I’m good and mad about this. However, I’m trying to go about this from a place of reason. I’m trying to go about my reporting using old-school journalism – remember back in the days when we were supposed to be unbiased?
Cooler heads are needed in situations such as these. Practical information and advice are necessary.
If you get hysterical and get all worked up about the boundless possibilities of a tyrannical state, you’re not thinking logically and that will get you nowhere good. Humans can only function at a high level of adrenaline for a certain amount of time. You’re going to crash if you keep yourself completely worked up all the time.
I’m not suggesting you underestimate the possibilities. Let me be perfectly clear when I tell you that I would not rule anything out. This is a move that has been strategically planned, as I wrote before. We must be strategic in our responses. Get organized with your family, friends, and neighbors and make sure that lacking another, yours is the voice of reason.
Work with what you know, first.
Work with the things you know, first. Then move on to other scenarios.
I urge you to sit down and make reasonable plans. Obviously you want to cover possibilities like loss of comms or loss of power, but you don’t need to go out and spend thousands of dollars on generators for this.
If you’re buying anything, focus on alternative communications that cannot be taken down as easily as cellphone towers and phone lines. Alternate communications devices much better options than going out and blowing the bank account on a generator that would only be valuable for a week or two, depending on how much fuel you can store. We bloggers all need to make a living and cover our costs, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with an affiliate link here and there. But be wary of any breathless story that urges you to spend thousands of dollars based on hearsay.
Think about the things that are most likely, and plan for those first. If you’ve been prepping for a while you’ll probably find you are ready for a lot of it but that you may need to fill some holes.
If you lost power, isn’t this one of the major reasons you prep? Sure, it would be inconvenient and even unpleasant, but ask anyone from California if it’s absolutely the end of the world. Check your preps and make sure you have what you need on hand. (If you feel unprepared for a lengthy power outage, this PDF guide can help and I marked it down to $5.)
Remember, we are resilient enough that a few days of inconvenienceswill not take us down.
You have the power here.
Should a worst-case-scenario occur, it’s only as powerful as you allow it to be.
Let’s imagine, for example, the rumor about the Governor wiping out power and comms is true. If you move flawlessly over to your backup plan, the state government has made themselves seem like tyrants in front of the country and the world and you are minimally affected.
Qualify your responses first based on what you know, then based on the possibilities. But understand that the possibilities are as of yet unknown. You can predict what will happen in a pandemic far more easily than you can predict what will happen in a fight against tyranny.
Regardless of the situation, reacting calmly and methodically is always going to be better than losing your ever-lovin’ mind and rushing around in a panic. Panic kills, whether the situation is slow-moving like this one or fast-moving, like an immediate life-and-death scenario.
This is a prime example of prepping versus survival. You have time – this law will not go through (if it does pass) until January. Meanwhile, don’t spend the next month in a blind frenzy based on what you see on websites or forums. Take it all into consideration but for cryin’ out loud, keep your s**t together.
Did you ever think these scare tactics might be leaked deliberately?
Has it crossed your mind that rooting these seeds of fear might be deliberate? Of course, an enemy would want to see you discombobulated – this is classic Art of War stuff. If you feel under attack already, you’re going to have worn yourself out by the time things have actually come to fruition.
By no means am I suggesting that you do not take the treasonous threats against the Second Amendment seriously. I’m not suggesting you overlook the potential ramifications of the anti-paramilitary bill and its vague wording. It would be bad for militias but in its current incarnation, I don’t think it’s as far-reaching as banning instruction on the use of guns or self-defense. This isn’t to say that it couldn’t be one day used for that, but at this point, I think the purpose of that bill is to strike down opposition to the gun bill.
Think about it: If you were in a position of power and you wanted to have your “enemy” scrambling, wouldn’t a deliberate “leak” of an extreme scenario be a good tool for this purpose?
Again, this isn’t to say it couldn’t happen or won’t happen. I’m saying, think it through entirely. What is practical and likely? What is so extreme it would cause censure from the rest of the nation?
The government absolutely did a lot of bad stuff in Waco and Ruby Ridge, but that was small-scale, comparatively. We’re talking about nearly an entire state here. That would be an encroachment on such a massive scale that there’d be an outcry. The President could – and probably would – take over the National Guard in a situation like this.
I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with a narcissist, but they glory in getting a response from people. They feed off it. If they aren’t getting the response they need, they will strive to unsettle and scare their victims until they do.
Don’t let people get in your head. Reason is the enemy of tyranny. A panicking person cannot strategize effectively. The decision-making part of your brain literally shuts down when you panic.
Be calm and methodical.
This stuff is huge and it could be the start of a dark era for our country. This has the potential to change everything our Republic has stood for since it existed.
But fear and hysteria have no place in your preparations. Please consider your sources and don’t base your actions on “maybes” and “this guy said” scenarios. Preparing for the possibilities in a calm and methodical way will help you through whatever may come far more than preparing in a state of panic.
Can Goldman’s Former Top Mortgage Bond Salesman Revive Connecticut’s Moribund Economy?
Nutmeggers unleashed a collective groan last November when longtime telecommunications executive Ned Lamont defeated his Republican challenger to secure another four years of Democratic rule in Hartford.
His predecessor, Gov. Dannel Malloy, may have helped replenish the state’s rainy-day fund and improve some other aspects of the state’s finances, but he presided over a period where several major corporations moved their headquarters out of the state (including GE, which left Fairfield County for Boston, and Aetna, which nearly left Hartford before CVS decided otherwise at the last minute).
Over the past decade, economic growth in Connecticut has been stagnant, ranking among the worst-performing states (only Alaska and Wyoming were worse). The state’s population has shrunk by roughly 22,000 since 2014 as young educated workers left for more trendy urban enclaves like New York City and Boston, which also featured stronger employment prospects.
Now, Lamont is trying to apply his ‘business background’ to try and fix the state’s biggest problems – i.e. the fact that it’s not a very attractive destination for businesses. In the past, the state has relied on promises of preferential tax treatment in exchange for promises to create X number of high-paying jobs. Often, companies’ fell short, but were never made to pay the state back.
So, Lamont is trying a new tack: He’s surrounding himself with prominent figures from corporate America, including former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, who is leading the state’s effort to recruit more businesses.
Among those recruited by Lamont is David Lehman, a former Goldman Sachs partner who played an interesting role in the run-up to the financial crisis. As the head of Goldman’s mortgage finance group, he instructed his people to clear all of the toxic CDOs off the bank’s books just before the bottom fell out of the market.
Lamont recently appointed Lehman to lead Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development, and also named him a senior economic advisor.
Though we doubt the character was based on him, there are definitely some eerie similarities between Lehman’s crisis-era exploits at Goldman and the story arch of Kevin Spacey’s character in “Margin Call.”
After the crisis, Lehman was dragged in front of a Congressional committee to try and explain his involvement in the sale of one specific tranche of CDOs called “Timberwolf.”
The issue became notorious after one former Goldman executive described it as “a shitty deal” in an email uncovered by Congressional investigators. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation’s 2011 report on the financial crisis found that Lehman instructed his people not to give clients any written insights into how Goldman was valuing its securities.
Though he was never accused of wrongdoing, Lehman was grilled at a committee hearing back in 2011, and lawmakers in Connecticut raised the issue again during his confirmation hearing in Hartford.
To this day, Lehman insists that he didn’t know the product was worthless when he sold it to the bank’s clients.
“Any suggestion that I knew a product was going to be worthless and subsequently sold it to a client is completely and wholly untrue,” he said at the hearing. Reducing Goldman’s exposure to subprime mortgages was prudent risk management, he said. And, he said in an interview, that Goldman provided as much information as it had on prices in a volatile market.
“I’ve always conducted myself honestly and transparently and acted in good faith with all my dealings at Goldman Sachs,” Lehman said.
He was confirmed by a vote of 28 to 8.
However, nearly everything we have learned about Goldman’s corporate culture in the years since the crisis would suggest otherwise.
Still, Lamont and his friends in Hartford insist Lehman is “the perfect guy” to look after the interests of the people of Connecticut.
Lehman, known at Goldman as a convener and connector, is the “perfect guy” to bring Democrats and Republicans, business and labor together and sell the governor’s vision, said Susie Scher, global head of Goldman Sachs Financing Group.
“He’s a guy who can sit in the middle of disparate folks with differing objectives and bring them together because they all like and respect him,” she said.
Lehman’s approach to economic development centers around attracting more young people and businesses to Connecticut’s main urban centers: Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and Stamford.
And, as it so happens, his strategy for pulling this off relies heavily on the “Opportunity Zones” initiative that was included in the Republican tax plan (and which liberals have criticized as a hand-out to wealthy developers wrapped in the guise of helping the poor).
Twenty nine of the state’s 72 opportunity zones are in its four largest cities (mentioned above).
Lehman has lived in Greenwich for a decade, and thus believes he understands the state’s problems and how to fix them.
But one economist quoted by Bloomberg criticized Lehman’s tax-incentive plan as “pretty myopic,” arguing that companies prefer to receive tax breaks before they create jobs, and that instead of accepting the state’s deal, can easily just relocate somewhere more favorable.
The bottom line is this: As most Connecticut residents probably understand, all of Lehman’s (and the state’s) efforts will likely be worthless if they fail to accomplish one critical goal: Improve travel time to NYC on MetroNorth.
Lamont has supposedly made this a priority, and has set a lofty goal of cutting travel time to Manhattan in half. But if Connecticut wants to burnish the reputations of its cities as practical places for young people and companies to live and work, it will need to drastically improve commute times to Boston and New York.
If Lehman can’t offer companies access to more of the New York metropolitan area’s vibrant workforce, then companies won’t have a reason to come to Connecticut, no matter how many handouts you offer.
