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California Just Put Washington in this Economic “Catch-22”
California Just Put Washington in this Economic “Catch-22”
Government bailouts are being revived, and this time, unlike during the 2008 recession, it appears large financial companies won’t be the only ones asking for help.
The problem is, the government may not be able to help this time.
In response to a bloated state budget and a massive debt of over $550 billion, Newsmax reports that California Governor Gavin Newsom is looking for a bailout from the federal government:
Without an infusion of at least $14 billion from Congress, Newsom said the state would have to cut billions to public schools, not to mention hundreds of millions for preschool, child care and higher education programs. It’ll also need to eat into health benefits for the poor, among other things.
“The enormity of the task at hand cannot just be borne by a state,” Newsom said. “The federal government has a moral and ethical and economic obligation to help support the states.”
Obviously, Newsom’s decision to impose lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in more than 746,000 unemployed, partly explains the sudden need for cash.
Economist Robert Wenzel thinks the “lockdown is projected to lead to a state budget shortfall this year of $54 billion,” which is bound to make things more complicated.
Wenzel added another sharp critique of Newsom’s request for a bailout, and a comparison to Greece’s economic bust in 2007:
[Newsom] is now in begging mode just like Greece was, but, whereas a lot of Greece’s financial trouble was about paying off old debt, California’s problem is about running the current state government (and also local governments).
It sure seems like California has been playing a dangerous debt game, first ignoring economic realities prior to the pandemic, and then asking the federal government to send bags of cash so things can keep running smoothly.
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It Doesn’t Matter What You Think, Reality Is What It Is
It Doesn’t Matter What You Think, Reality Is What It Is
It doesn’t matter what you think, the reality we face is what we are seeing here on the ground. Reality is what it is and our government will as usual muddle through with poorly thought out politically correct solutions geared to kick the can down the road. This brings me little delight. I have gone a bit quiet lately because of how events are slowly unfolding, the keyword, in this case, is slowly. Rather than a wave washing over us we are experiencing a troubling drip after drip of bad news which a majority of the population has now come to accept as normal. You can put lipstick on a pig but no matter what you tell yourself, it is still a pig.
In some ways what is happening to people across the world could be compared to what occurred when the white-man came to America. The Indians slowly traded their freedom for baubles and what they did not trade away was slowly taken by force. In this analogy, technology is the shiny promise unto which we sadly surrender our future. Beware, those that claim the promise technology is the key to a better future are not quick to share its rewards.They prefer to turn us into mindless slaves and government is a tool they employ in their efforts.
Exploding debt and a slow recovery following the 2008 financial crisis. Many of us claimed it really was not a true recovery but rather a debt-fueled false economy. All this continued with the aid of a few major distractions which took our eyes off the ball. Then the corona-virus hit. Looking back, the first diversion was the emergence of ISIS and the wave of refugees that destabilized Europe and the second was the trade war with China.
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COVID-19 Has Replaced Osama bin Laden as the Fall Guy for Lost Liberties
COVID-19 Has Replaced Osama bin Laden as the Fall Guy for Lost Liberties
The government and media have dumped at the doorstep of the coronavirus many of the political, economic and social afflictions that are now ravaging much of the global population. In reality, they need to point the finger at themselves.
As the mainstream media saturates the airwaves with a daily overdose of coronavirus fear porn, the majority of journalists have given their governments a free pass to enact any draconian measure they see fit. From the closure of public beaches to forbidding power boats on waterways, the insanity seems to have no limits or logic. And as the media would have us believe, it was the coronavirus that enacted these measures, as opposed to living, breathing, unthinking humans.
Anti lockdown Protest went well. #Antilockdown #COVID19
What dirty deeds does the new and improved villain of our times stand accused of? First and foremost, the coronavirus singlehandedly destroyed the global economy as only ‘essential’ businesses may continue to operate. Thus, thousands of small businesses have been ordered shuttered, de facto destroyed, while countless numbers of people around the world have been ordered to ‘shelter-in-place’ with dwindling financial reserves.
Again, this wanton destruction of a large swath of the economy is not due to bad government decision-making, at least according to the media, but Covid-19.
‘Jobless claims jump another 4.4 million — 26 million Americans have lost their jobs to the coronavirus,’ reported MarketWatch. ‘It could take two years for the economy to recover from the coronavirus pandemic,’ screamed another headline.
Perhaps it was also the coronavirus that decided that it would make perfect sense to keep abortion clinics and state-owned liquor stores open during the pandemic, while shutting down houses of worship and gun shops. Clearly, the coronavirus is an equitable and non-partisan distributor of pain and suffering!
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The Unspoken Reason for Lockdowns
The Unspoken Reason for Lockdowns
Governments cannot openly admit that the “controlled easing” of COVID-19 lockdowns in fact means controlled progress toward so-called herd immunity to the virus. Much better, then, to pursue this objective silently, under a cloud of obfuscation, and hope that a vaccine will arrive before most of the population gets infected.
LONDON – The COVID-19 pandemic is the first major global crisis in human history to be treated as a mathematical problem, with governments regarding policy as the solution to a set of differential equations. Excluding a few outliers – including, of course, US President Donald Trump – most political leaders have slavishly deferred to “the science” in tackling the virus. The clearest example of this was the UK government’s sudden shift on March 23 to an aggressive lockdown policy, following a nightmarish forecast by Imperial College London researchers of up to 550,000 deaths if nothing was done to combat the pandemic.
Such modeling is the correct scientific approach when the question debars experiment. You can test a new drug by subjecting two groups of lab rats to identical conditions, except for the drug they are given, or by administering it to randomly selected humans in clinical trials.
But you can’t deliberately insert a virus into a human population to test its effects, although some Nazi concentration-camp doctors did just that. Instead, scientists use their knowledge of the infectious pathogen to model a disease’s pattern of contagion, and then work out which policy interventions will modify it.
Predictive modeling was first developed for malaria over a century ago by an almost-forgotten English doctor, Ronald Ross. In a fascinating 2020 book, the mathematician and epidemiologist Adam Kucharski showed how Ross first identified the mosquito as the infectious agent through experiments on birds. From this fact, he developed a predictive model of malaria transmission, which was later generalized as the SIR (Susceptible, Infected, and Recovered) model of contagious-disease epidemics.
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Contact Tracing, Immunity Cards and Mass Testing: Are We on The Fast Track to a National ID?
Contact Tracing, Immunity Cards and Mass Testing: Are We on The Fast Track to a National ID?
If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.
CHARLOTTESVILLE (Rutherford) –– No one is safe. No one is immune. No one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living under the shadow of an authoritarian police state.
That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.
Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.
As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.
It’s already worse.
Now there’s talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities.
If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.
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You’re Being Conditioned to Live in a “Smart City” – Resist It
You’re Being Conditioned to Live in a “Smart City” – Resist It
And at the dead center of it all is Eric Schmidt. Well before Americans understood the threat of Covid-19, Schmidt had been on an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign pushing precisely the “Black Mirror” vision of society that Cuomo has just empowered him to build. At the heart of this vision is seamless integration of government with a handful of Silicon Valley giants — with public schools, hospitals, doctor’s offices, police, and military all outsourcing (at a high cost) many of their core functions to private tech companies.
– The Intercept: Screen New Deal
Each crisis in the 21st century has been aggressively and ruthlessly wielded into a massive wealth and power grab by the American oligarchy and national security state. The big power grab following 9/11 centered around whittling away constitutional rights via mass surveillance in the name of “keeping us safe”, while the money grab after last decade’s financial crisis concentrated wealth and assets into fewer hands while entrenching financial feudalism and making the Federal Reserve and mega banks even more powerful.
Despite the success of this diabolical and intentional concentration of money and power, there’s still too much privacy, freedom and independent wealth around for the imperial oligarchy to feel comfortable. As such, the current pandemic is being used to put the finishing touches on whatever little political and economic freedom remains in these United States.
The lessons learned from prior crises are being rolled out simultaneously this time around while people remain incapacitated at home due to Covid-19. The 2008/09 financial collapse taught those in power they can get away with unprecedented, unaccountable theft during an economic and stock market crash. Similarly, 9/11 demonstrated people will relinquish civil liberties without much protest when immersed in a state of fear.
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Internet Censorship, Ego Death, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Internet Censorship, Ego Death, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
There is no legitimate basis upon which to support monopolistic plutocratic megacorporations with extensive government ties silencing dissident voices in order to control the thoughts that people think about Covid-19. This is true regardless of your stance on the virus itself.
It is a known fact that Silicon Valley tech giants have extensive ties to the US government. Like, it’s not a secret. At all. Yet whenever you object to internet censorship you always get people babbling about how it’s a “private company” so it’s okay. If a company is intertwined with government power in myriad ways, how is its deplatforming behavior meaningfully distinct from state censorship? Especially when its willingness to collaborate with the government protects it from antitrust cases, thereby killing any potential competition?
“Free market” types say “If you don’t like it you can go on another platform!” No you can’t. There’s no competition. If you don’t like Twitter you can leave a platform of hundreds of millions for a platform like Gab, which is like ten people and nine of them are Nazis.
They’ll say “No biggie, go be on that tiny platform over there, there’s plenty of free speech there!” I am sure there is. There’s free speech in the desert, too. Free speech doesn’t matter if you’ve isolated yourself on a platform where your voice is only heard by a few fringey people.
They’ve herded everyone onto a few monopolistic government-tied platforms, and now they’re censoring those platforms with an increasingly authoritarian fist. There’s no “free market” solution to this problem, because it’s not happening in a free market.
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The Outlines of a Better World Are Emerging
The Outlines of a Better World Are Emerging
Once the government’s ability to sustain its enforcement with money created out of thin air vanishes, the entire order vanishes along with it.
The era of waste, greed, fraud and living on borrowed money is dying, and those who’ve known no other way of living are mourning its passing. Its passing was inevitable, for any society that squanders its resources is unsustainable. Any society that makes private greed the primary motivator and priority is unsustainable. Any society that rewards fraud above all else is unsustainable. Any society which lives on money borrowed from the future and other forms of phantom capital is unsustainable.
We know this in our bones, but we fear the future because we know no other arrangement other than the unsustainable present. And so we hear the faint echo of the cries of alarm filling the streets of ancient Rome when the Bread and Circuses stopped: what do we do now?
When the free bread and entertainments disappeared, people found new arrangements. They left Rome.
The greatest private fortunes in history vanished as Rome unraveled. All the land, the palaces, the gold and all the other treasures were no protection against the collapse of the system that institutionalized corruption as the ultimate protector of concentrated wealth.
The most zealously guarded power of government is the creation of money, for without money the government cannot pay the soldiers, police, courts and administrators needed to enforce its rule. Western Rome created money by controlling silver mines; in the current era, governments create money (currency) out of thin air.
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Lockdowns Ending but Their Politics Still Rule
Lockdowns Ending but Their Politics Still Rule
While it looks like the worm is turning against the draconian economic shutdowns decreed by governments, so much damage has already been done it likely won’t matter now.
I began the week hopeful that my home state of Florida would lead the way towards challenging the anti-human and thoroughly intolerable lock down mentality imposed on us by officials at the WHO, NAIAD, Johns Hopkins and the IHME.
That hope continued earlier this week while watching Governor Ron DeSantis give a half-hour presentation of why Florida not only outperformed all of the grossly negligent predictive models but nearly every other state in the union in nearly every metric relevant to COVID-19.
It, however, vanished completely when he finally unveiled his new plan, which was to graciously allow the private economy to get back to 25% capacity, following the same tyrannical guidelines of those now discredited members of President Trump’s Task Force.
I guess I need to remind myself of why hope is the most negative of all emotions.
“Phase One is a baby step,” DeSantis said during a news conference at Tampa General Hospital. “We are deliberately going to be very methodical, slow and data-driven on this because I think people want to have confidence things are going in a good direction.” He said a slow approach would also give the state an opportunity to step in to handle any spikes in the disease that might occur.
But this is typical political double-speak. Because the political pressure on DeSantis, Trump and other ‘Red State’ Governors to not open things back up has been enormous. If it wasn’t he would have shown more spine.
But, the numbers don’t support DeSantis’ decsion at all.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Far worse to come: COVID-19 collapse of state and local governments
Far worse to come: COVID-19 collapse of state and local governments
Another sudden and unexpected factor will transform this year’s elections. Many states, cities and counties are about to, suddenly, run out of money. Wages won’t be paid. Services won’t be delivered. Institutions will shut down abruptly. Many state colleges may fold. And yet most state and local political and administrative leaders just sit and watch. Voters will not be pleased.
Millions of American workers filed for unemployment insurance during the past two weeks. That is a record and represents a collapse of our local economies. Across the country, in every state, county and city, businesses have been shut down, and many will not return after the coronavirus crisis is over. Tens of millions have lost jobs, homes, savings and retirement incomes that will never return. Owners of rental property will go under when their loan payments come due and renters can’t pay. Across the country, state and local economies are being badly damaged — many of them permanently.
The result is that state and local tax revenues will plummet. States and localities will burn through any reserves they’ve maintained like wildfire. Since most of our politicians and government managers have been raised during a decade of expanding economies, their first instinct will be to wait and then panic and then raise taxes to cover shortfalls — perhaps a special “coronavirus surtax.” Taxpayers across the country have tolerated various forms of high state and local taxes; the politicians would naturally ask, “Why should now be any different?”
But it is different. The resulting increased tax burden would be a disaster. Businesses that were barely hanging on would go under. Workers and homeowners who were barely surviving would go under. State and local tax bases would collapse even faster. There would be social unrest, possibly requiring martial law. People would migrate from high-tax states toward new jobs, accelerating a downward spiral. These large migrations would make the 2020 census results nonsense.
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Crazy long food lines across America reveal the total LACK of preparedness that now characterizes our just-in-time society
Crazy long food lines across America reveal the total LACK of preparedness that now characterizes our just-in-time society
(Natural News) As the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread across the United States, sickening and killing tens of thousands, other problems are just beginning, including food shortages.
As reported by The Sun, the U.S. now has more recorded COVID deaths than any other country in the world, though there are doubts even among U.S. intelligence agencies that China has been completely transparent and up-front in reporting its true number of cases and deaths.
That said, as the virus spread and governors ordered non-essential businesses closed to help contain the spread, newly out-of-work Americans, by the millions, are already beginning to suffer basic shortages of food.
The news site reports:
The shocking statistics come as the need for emergency food aid has exploded in recent weeks due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Nearly 100 per cent of food banks in the Feeding America network are serving more neighbors in need during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet nearly 60 per cent are facing reduced inventory levels amidst rising demand,” according to a survey by Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief and food rescue organization.
Meanwhile, organizations are having difficulty replenishing their food stocks and keeping food on hand for the growing numbers of needy, many of whom line up for hours in cities like San Antonio, Texas, and elsewhere waiting for assistance.
The survey noted further that the current number of people needing food assistance has surpassed the 37 million who faced hunger in the country last year.
It added that “since establishing the COVID-19 Response Fund on March 13, Feeding America has distributed $112.4 million and over 94 million pounds to food banks throughout the network, helping provide nearly 79 million meals to neighbors facing hunger.”
If this doesn’t prove to you why aspects of “prepping” are vital, nothing will.
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Economies won’t be able to recover after shutdowns
Economies won’t be able to recover after shutdowns
Citizens seem to be clamoring for shutdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19. There is one major difficulty, however. Once an economy has been shut down, it is extremely difficult for the economy to recover back to the level it had reached previously. In fact, the longer the shutdown lasts, the more critical the problem is likely to be. China can shut down its economy for two weeks over the Chinese New Year, each year, without much damage. But, if the outage is longer and more widespread, damaging effects are likely.
A major reason why economies around the world will have difficulty restarting is because the world economy was in very poor shape before COVID-19 hit; shutting down major parts of the economy for a time leads to even more people with low wages or without any job. It will be very difficult and time-consuming to replace the failed businesses that provided these jobs.
When an outbreak of COVID-19 hit, epidemiologists recommended social distancing approaches that seemed to be helpful back in 1918-1919. The issue, however, is that the world economy has changed. Social distancing rules have a much more adverse impact on today’s economy than on the economy of 100 years ago.
Governments that wanted to push back found themselves up against a wall of citizen expectations. A common belief, even among economists, was that any shutdown would be short, and the recovery would be V-shaped. False information (really propaganda) published by China tended to reinforce the expectation that shutdowns could truly be helpful. But if we look at the real situation, Chinese workers are finding themselves newly laid off as they attempt to return to work. This is leading to protests in the Hubei area.
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Rabobank: Over 100 Million Could Be In Lockdown In India
Rabobank: Over 100 Million Could Be In Lockdown In India
Police State
The headlines continue to shock.
Firstly, the number of coronavirus cases surged past 300,000 on Sunday with more than 13,000 deaths now reported worldwide.
Secondly, predictions about the fall out on the global economic outlook have rapidly gone from bad to worse over the past few days.
- In the US over 80 million people are now in a lockdown,
- over 100 million could be in similar circumstances in India.
- In Italy, controls on movement have been stepped up with all internal travel now banned and in numerous other countries social gatherings have been forbidden and businesses have been closed in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus.
In just over a fortnight or so, the debate among economists has shifted from whether the US will suffer recession to how big the downturn is likely to be. Our baseline base case now is a global pandemic as outlined by our colleagues here.
Central banks and governments around the world have moved quickly to staunch the wounds, but more policy support will likely be forthcoming.
On Friday, the UK Chancellor jacked-up the size of the fiscal relief offered to the UK economy aggressively – just over a week since he delivered his budget. The new measures include a pledge by the state to pay 80% of the wages of workers, up to GBP2,500 per month. Germany has announced it will raise EUR150 bln in new debt to bolster the economy, which is an abrupt departure from its culture of fiscal discipline. By contrast the US’s Republican’s Coronavirus Rescue Package failed to pass through the Senate yesterday. Shortly after the vote DJIA futures were again limit down. Democrats argued that the package overly favoured corporations and didn’t go far enough to support individuals facing joblessness and a loss of income.
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Be wary of overreaching government responses to coronavirus: Ron Paul
Be wary of overreaching government responses to coronavirus: Ron Paul
Governments love crises because when the people are fearful they are more willing to give up freedoms for promises that the government will take care of them.
After 9/11, for example, Americans accepted the near-total destruction of their civil liberties in the PATRIOT Act’s hollow promises of security.
It is ironic to see the same Democrats who tried to impeach President Trump last month for abuse of power demanding that the Trump Administration grab more power and authority in the name of fighting a virus that thus far has killed less than 100 Americans.
Declaring a pandemic emergency on Friday, President Trump now claims the power to quarantine individuals suspected of being infected by the virus and, as Politico writes, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease.” He can even call out the military to cordon off a US city or state.
State and local authoritarians love panic as well. The mayor of Champaign, Illinois, signed an executive order declaring the power to ban the sale of guns and alcohol and cut off gas, water, or electricity to any citizen. The governor of Ohio just essentially closed his entire state.
The chief fearmonger of the Trump Administration is without a doubt Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Fauci is all over the media, serving up outright falsehoods to stir up even more panic. He testified to Congress that the death rate for the coronavirus is ten times that of the seasonal flu, a claim without any scientific basis.
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Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself
NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”- Franklin D. Roosevelt – March 4, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke these words during his first inauguration at the depths of the Great Depression in 1933. The narrative taught in government schools is how FDR’s words invigorated the nation and inspired the people to show courage in the face of adversity. His terminology was that of a general leading his troops into battle.
What is not taught in government schools or proclaimed by the propaganda spewing fake news media were the dictatorial type actions taken by FDR over the next month after his “inspirational” speech. He was the first Democrat president to not let a crisis go to waste. The day after his inauguration, Roosevelt assembled a special session of Congress to declare a four-day bank holiday, and on March 9 signed the Emergency Banking Act.
What the American people should have feared was the government taking control of every aspect of their lives and threatening them with imprisonment if their dictums were not followed. On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding ‘of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency’, under penalty of $10,000 and/or up to five to ten years imprisonment.”
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