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The Big Lie & The Robinhood Rally

The Big Lie & The Robinhood Rally

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The Big Lie & The Robinhood Rally Tyler Durden Sun, 08/23/2020 - 20:10

Authored by Kevin Duffy via LewRockwell.com,

As cities burn and statues topple, the Nasdaq races to all-time highs.  As unemployment explodes to levels not seen since the 1930s, gambling on dicey stocks soars.  As private property becomes less secure, titles to property are bid higher.  As businesses struggle to reopen, it’s business as usual for the great bull market in financial assets.

If the statisticians at the CDC are to be believed, 0.01% of the U.S. civilian labor force has died of the coronavirus in 2020.  For a risk that compares to driving an automobile, much of the population was scared out of their wits and a third of the economy put on life support.

The Big Lie

Official narratives have proven far more contagious (and lethal) this year than any virus, and the supporting lies keep getting bigger. 

Upon arrival of an unknown health risk in late February, the authorities promoted a top-down one-size-fits-all solution of universal isolation.  The centralization of knowledge was assumed and market solutions not even considered.  As “non-essential” businesses were shut down, corporate debt markets locked up and stocks lost one-third of their value. 

To deal with the economic mess, only top-down government solutions saw the light of day, this time at a price tag of over $5 trillion in borrowed and printed money (with plenty more on the way).

With the death of George Floyd on May 25, caught on video for the world to see, the narrative shifted overnight from gray lives matter and “shelter in place” to “black lives matter” and protest in public.  Never mind that Floyd had enough fentanyl in his body to kill him and that the officers on the scene may have acted to save him

The mainstream media went into overdrive, promoting the well-rehearsed narrative of systemic racism.  Keep in mind, 30% of the top 30 highest-paying celebrity endorsements last year went to blacks (even though they account for 13% of the population).  Consumers generally don’t buy products endorsed by people they hate.

The third act in this play, reopening the economy, was met with fearmongering over spiking cases, despite evidence that this was due largely to increased testing and inflated by false positives. 

(Apparently crowds looting and setting cars on fire were not a factor.) 

Meanwhile, the weekly death rate has dropped 60% from its peak in April. 

(Over the past week, there were 7,200 official deaths vs. 250,000 recoveries.)

All three deceptions are wrapped in the biggest of lies, that government has a magic printing press that will suspend the laws of economics and make it all go away.

Day trading madness

As it turns out, a fair amount of the stimulus money found its way into the financial markets.  Evidently, the government’s economic advisors failed to consider the possibility that shutting down casinos while ordering people to remain home and mailing them $1,200 checks might give the green light to pile into the only casino still open: the stock market.

August 15, 2020

Speculation took off, especially among younger investors.  Robinhood, favored by millennials, added 3 million accounts in the first quarter alone.  (Charles Schwab has 14 million accounts in total.)  According to CNBC,

Robinhood traders lived up to their outlaw name during the coronavirus market downturn. The young investors booked profits - trading stocks with some of the best returns in the past two months - while other Wall Street veterans were left scratching their heads.

Tempting the investment gods, CNBC flattered youth and mocked experience:

Young investors… appeared to have a prescient understanding of the market, unlike the billionaire hedge fund managers who said stocks would retest their lows.  Longtime investor Stanley Druckenmiller - who misjudged equities’ comeback - said Monday that the market’s strong performance over the last three weeks has “humbled” him and that he underestimated the power of the Federal Reserve.  Even legendary investor Warren Buffett sold his stake in airlines during the pandemic.

In the Twittersphere, the day trading parade is led by Dave Portnoy with 1.6 million followers:

I play the stock market like I play Monopoly.  If I land on it, I’m buying it.  I don’t care if it’s Baltic, I don’t care if it’s Park Ave…  When I land on “Pass Go,” I try to buy Go.  When I land in jail, I’m like, can I buy jail?… I just buy, buy, buy.  That’s how I do stock market, that’s how I play Monopoly.

It’s hard not to laugh, but also to know what passes for parody and actual investment advice these days.  Davey Day Trader, #DDTG, was recently invited to spend 20 minutes interviewing President Trump at the White House as both celebrated buying the dip in March.  You can’t make this up.

How to wreck an economy

2020 has been a textbook example of how to inflict maximum economic damage. 

Let’s review:

1) The media incites a panic over a severe novel case of the flu.  Have state governors use this as a pretext to shut down a third of the economy.

2) With the social fabric frayed, the media segues to racial protests.  Allow bad apples to destroy property and have the police stand down while the mob takes over.

3) Pass trillions in money printing and stimulus, preventing the market from adjusting to rapidly changing events.  Incentivize unemployment by paying people an extra $600 a week to sit at home and day trade.

4) Unwittingly turn speculators loose, sending false signals to economic actors.

5) After you’ve crippled many small businesses with #1-4, regulate them to death, adding costs they can’t afford and inconveniences their customers don’t want.

Déjà vu all over again

Anyone who experienced the tech bubble of the late 1990s must be feeling a profound sense of déjà vu.  The internet was a paradigm shift creating a New Economy in which enlightened central bankers would prevent any serious downturn.  Silicon Valley was booming.  Wall Street was cranking out hot IPOs (initial public offerings) and repackaging companies by adding “.com” to the name in order to keep up with seemingly insatiable demand from the public.

The prevailing mood among investors was that making money was easy.  Youth was elevated and wisdom discarded.  Profits didn’t matter.  What mattered was “first mover advantage” and “eyeballs.”  Those who were too old to grasp the new rules just didn’t “get it.”  They were stuck in the Old Economy.

February 22, 1999

I remember when the late Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes did a story about the dot-com mania.  The young entrepreneurs he interviewed had a religious zeal, like they had been chosen for a higher calling.  One even had the audacity to tell Bradley he was a dinosaur and that his job was targeted for extinction.

It is hard to escape the parallels with today’s mania for technology stocks, venture capital, day trading, hot IPOs and youthful exuberance.  There are two critical differences: the backdrop for the 2000 vintage was a booming economy and the dollar amounts were much lower.  In 2000, Microsoft, GE and Cisco Systems broke the $500 billion barrier for market capitalization.  On August 13, Apple hit $2 trillion.

Perhaps it is a rite of passage that every generation must take part in some sort of speculative madness.  Today’s millennials seem ideologically wired to believe in the upward slope of technological progress, conflate virtue signaling with investing, underestimate the economic damage from trillions of dollars of stimulus, and place their unswerving faith in the Fed.

Tesla has become the poster child of the millennial bubble, p.c. bubble, EV bubble and VC bubble.  Its stock commands a market value of $412 billion, more than BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Toyota and General Motors combined.  Believe it or not, some traders are actually confusing Tesla (symbol “TSLA”) with micro-cap Tiziana Life Sciences (symbol “TLSA”).

Of course, amateur hour at the casino has a silver lining.  Experienced poker players salivate when the patsies show up.

(This article was excerpted from the latest issue of The Coffee Can Portfolio.)

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Spread & Containment

Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials in…

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Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials in New Mexico confirmed that a resident died from the plague in the United States’ first fatal case in several years.

A bubonic plague smear, prepared from a lymph removed from an adenopathic lymph node, or bubo, of a plague patient, demonstrates the presence of the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the plague in this undated photo. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Getty Images)

The New Mexico Department of Health, in a statement, said that a man in Lincoln County “succumbed to the plague.” The man, who was not identified, was hospitalized before his death, officials said.

They further noted that it is the first human case of plague in New Mexico since 2021 and also the first death since 2020, according to the statement. No other details were provided, including how the disease spread to the man.

The agency is now doing outreach in Lincoln County, while “an environmental assessment will also be conducted in the community to look for ongoing risk,” the statement continued.

This tragic incident serves as a clear reminder of the threat posed by this ancient disease and emphasizes the need for heightened community awareness and proactive measures to prevent its spread,” the agency said.

A bacterial disease that spreads via rodents, it is generally spread to people through the bites of infected fleas. The plague, known as the black death or the bubonic plague, can spread by contact with infected animals such as rodents, pets, or wildlife.

The New Mexico Health Department statement said that pets such as dogs and cats that roam and hunt can bring infected fleas back into homes and put residents at risk.

Officials warned people in the area to “avoid sick or dead rodents and rabbits, and their nests and burrows” and to “prevent pets from roaming and hunting.”

“Talk to your veterinarian about using an appropriate flea control product on your pets as not all products are safe for cats, dogs or your children” and “have sick pets examined promptly by a veterinarian,” it added.

“See your doctor about any unexplained illness involving a sudden and severe fever, the statement continued, adding that locals should clean areas around their home that could house rodents like wood piles, junk piles, old vehicles, and brush piles.

The plague, which is spread by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, famously caused the deaths of an estimated hundreds of millions of Europeans in the 14th and 15th centuries following the Mongol invasions. In that pandemic, the bacteria spread via fleas on black rats, which historians say was not known by the people at the time.

Other outbreaks of the plague, such as the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, are also believed to have killed about one-fifth of the population of the Byzantine Empire, according to historical records and accounts. In 2013, researchers said the Justinian plague was also caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria.

But in the United States, it is considered a rare disease and usually occurs only in several countries worldwide. Generally, according to the Mayo Clinic, the bacteria affects only a few people in U.S. rural areas in Western states.

Recent cases have occurred mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Countries with frequent plague cases include Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Peru, the clinic says. There were multiple cases of plague reported in Inner Mongolia, China, in recent years, too.

Symptoms

Symptoms of a bubonic plague infection include headache, chills, fever, and weakness. Health officials say it can usually cause a painful swelling of lymph nodes in the groin, armpit, or neck areas. The swelling usually occurs within about two to eight days.

The disease can generally be treated with antibiotics, but it is usually deadly when not treated, the Mayo Clinic website says.

“Plague is considered a potential bioweapon. The U.S. government has plans and treatments in place if the disease is used as a weapon,” the website also says.

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the last time that plague deaths were reported in the United States was in 2020 when two people died.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 21:40

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International

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and…

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women's Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and bewildering tunnel of social justice cultism?  Global events have been so frenetic that many people might not remember, but only a couple years ago Big Tech companies and numerous governments were openly aligned in favor of mass censorship.  Not just to prevent the public from investigating the facts surrounding the pandemic farce, but to silence anyone questioning the validity of woke concepts like trans ideology. 

From 2020-2022 was the closest the west has come in a long time to a complete erasure of freedom of speech.  Even today there are still countries and Europe and places like Canada or Australia that are charging forward with draconian speech laws.  The phrase "radical speech" is starting to circulate within pro-censorship circles in reference to any platform where people are allowed to talk critically.  What is radical speech?  Basically, it's any discussion that runs contrary to the beliefs of the political left.

Open hatred of moderate or conservative ideals is perfectly acceptable, but don't ever shine a negative light on woke activism, or you might be a terrorist.

Riley Gaines has experienced this double standard first hand.  She was even assaulted and taken hostage at an event in 2023 at San Francisco State University when leftists protester tried to trap her in a room and demanded she "pay them to let her go."  Campus police allegedly witnessed the incident but charges were never filed and surveillance footage from the college was never released.  

It's probably the last thing a champion female swimmer ever expects, but her head-on collision with the trans movement and the institutional conspiracy to push it on the public forced her to become a counter-culture voice of reason rather than just an athlete.

For years the independent media argued that no matter how much we expose the insanity of men posing as women to compete and dominate women's sports, nothing will really change until the real female athletes speak up and fight back.  Riley Gaines and those like her represent that necessary rebellion and a desperately needed return to common sense and reason.

In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Gaines related some interesting information on the inner workings of the NCAA and the subversive schemes surrounding trans athletes.  Not only were women participants essentially strong-armed by colleges and officials into quietly going along with the program, there was also a concerted propaganda effort.  Competition ceremonies were rigged as vehicles for promoting trans athletes over everyone else. 

The bottom line?  The competitions didn't matter.  The real women and their achievements didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered to officials were the photo ops; dudes pretending to be chicks posing with awards for the gushing corporate media.  The agenda took precedence.

Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, was more than an activist invading female sports, he was also apparently a science project fostered and protected by the athletic establishment.  It's important to understand that the political left does not care about female athletes.  They do not care about women's sports.  They don't care about the integrity of the environments they co-opt.  Their only goal is to identify viable platforms with social impact and take control of them.  Women's sports are seen as a vehicle for public indoctrination, nothing more.

The reasons why they covet women's sports are varied, but a primary motive is the desire to assert the fallacy that men and women are "the same" psychologically as well as physically.  They want the deconstruction of biological sex and identity as nothing more than "social constructs" subject to personal preference.  If they can destroy what it means to be a man or a woman, they can destroy the very foundations of relationships, families and even procreation.  

For now it seems as though the trans agenda is hitting a wall with much of the public aware of it and less afraid to criticize it.  Social media companies might be able to silence some people, but they can't silence everyone.  However, there is still a significant threat as the movement continues to target children through the public education system and women's sports are not out of the woods yet.   

The ultimate solution is for women athletes around the world to organize and widely refuse to participate in any competitions in which biological men are allowed.  The only way to save women's sports is for women to be willing to end them, at least until institutions that put doctrine ahead of logic are made irrelevant.          

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:20

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Government

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary…

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Mike Pompeo Doesn't Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a new interview that he’s not ruling out accepting a White House position if former President Donald Trump is reelected in November.

“If I get a chance to serve and think that I can make a difference ... I’m almost certainly going to say yes to that opportunity to try and deliver on behalf of the American people,” he told Fox News, when asked during a interview if he would work for President Trump again.

I’m confident President Trump will be looking for people who will faithfully execute what it is he asked them to do,” Mr. Pompeo said during the interview, which aired on March 8. “I think as a president, you should always want that from everyone.”

Then-President Donald Trump (C), then- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L), and then-Vice President Mike Pence, take a question during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus at the White House in Washington on April 8, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

He said that as a former secretary of state, “I certainly wanted my team to do what I was asking them to do and was enormously frustrated when I found that I couldn’t get them to do that.”

Mr. Pompeo, a former U.S. representative from Kansas, served as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018 before he was secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. After he left office, there was speculation that he could mount a Republican presidential bid in 2024, but announced that he wouldn’t be running.

President Trump hasn’t publicly commented about Mr. Pompeo’s remarks.

In 2023, amid speculation that he would make a run for the White House, Mr. Pompeo took a swipe at his former boss, telling Fox News at the time that “the Trump administration spent $6 trillion more than it took in, adding to the deficit.”

“That’s never the right direction for the country,” he said.

In a public appearance last year, Mr. Pompeo also appeared to take a shot at the 45th president by criticizing “celebrity leaders” when urging GOP voters to choose ahead of the 2024 election.

2024 Race

Mr. Pompeo’s interview comes as the former president was named the “presumptive nominee” by the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week after his last major Republican challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, dropped out of the 2024 race after failing to secure enough delegates. President Trump won 14 out of 15 states on Super Tuesday, with only Vermont—which notably has an open primary—going for Ms. Haley, who served as President Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

On March 8, the RNC held a meeting in Houston during which committee members voted in favor of President Trump’s nomination.

“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump on his huge primary victory!” the organization said in a statement last week. “I’d also like to congratulate Nikki Haley for running a hard-fought campaign and becoming the first woman to win a Republican presidential contest.”

Earlier this year, the former president criticized the idea of being named the presumptive nominee after reports suggested that the RNC would do so before the Super Tuesday contests and while Ms. Haley was still in the race.

Also on March 8, the RNC voted to name Trump-endorsed officials to head the organization. Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote in Houston, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th President of the United States,” Mr. Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected, replacing former chair Ronna McDaniel. Ms. Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

President Trump hasn’t signaled whom he would appoint to various federal agencies if he’s reelected in November. He also hasn’t said who his pick for a running mate would be, but has offered several suggestions in recent interviews.

In various interviews, the former president has mentioned Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, among others.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:00

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