from StevenCrowder
2021 is Already Optimized for Failure
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
One sure way to identify a system “optimized for failure” is if all the insiders are absolutely confident the system is “optimized for my success”.
I often discuss optimization here because it offers an insightful window into how systems become fragile and break down. When we optimize something, we’re aiming to get the most bang for our buck: maximize our efficiency, profit, productivity, etc., while
minimizing our costs.
To maximize our goal, whatever it is–profits, power, whatever– we strip away redundancy and buffers because these add costs and don’t boost our desired output. They create resilience, i.e. the ability to survive disruptions, but the logic of optimization is relentless: get rid of all extraneous costs, because resilience doesn’t boost the bottom line.
This trade-off–trading resilience for optimization–looks brilliant when everything goes according to plan. But when events veer outside the narrow parameters of the optimized system, the system breaks down: supply chains break, safety procedures fail, and so on.
The Latest Updates from Martin Armstrong – 2020.11.30
by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
Hong Kong – Do You Hear the People Sing
Bank Stocks Taking a Nose Dive?
Government Calling out Military Against the People
Georgia Judge Orders Voting Machines Should Not be Erased Then Reverses Himself
World Economic Conference 35th Year
France Erupts as Law Criminalizes Showing the Face of Police even when Abusing Rights of Citizens
This is All Excess Death! (Bull****)
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
My podcast the other day, 2 minutes.
Then…. this published yesterday.
A total of 1380 patients with confirmed SARS-CoV2 tests were identified; median age, 66.44 years (interquartile range, 52.6-76.3 years). Of these 1380 patients, 630 recovered with positive SARS-CoV2, [including 180 (28.6%) with DNR and 450 (71.4%) non-DNR], 640 died with death certificates attributing COVID-19 as the cause of death [including 570 (89.1%) with DNR and 70 (10.9%) non-DNR]. During the study period, there were 120 deceased patients with negative SARS-CoV2 testing [including 110 (91.7%) with DNR and 10 (8.3%) non-DNR] Figure 1.
What was their “conclusion”?
The risk of death from COVID-19 was significantly influenced by the patients’ DNR status.
Excuse me?
These are people who had a DNR on admission, not people who themselves, or their families, filed one after knowing they had Covid.
The Covid Case Con Continues
by Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.
American Thinker
As many Americans recover from their “virtual Thanksgiving,” sharing prayers and turkey across the internet, the media is pushing their November propaganda narrative, that Dementia Joe really won the presidential election and that COVID cases are once again surging across America.
The Washington Post claims that Wuhan coronavirus cases are “skyrocketing” while the New York Times wails that “It has hit us with a vengeance.” Yet the media is oblivious, either ignorantly or deliberately, to the reality that positive tests are not the same thing as cases.
A “case” has a very specific definition, apparently beyond the intellectual realm of Wolf Blitzer or Neil Cavuto. The CDC provides a specific “case definition.” A case is not just a positive test. Instead, what is needed is “presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence.” Notice the AND, meaning not simply a positive test.
Covid-19: Americans Are in ‘Delusional Psychosis’ and Policing Each Other, Psychiatrist Warns
‘We don’t need a police force. We don’t need a secret Stasi to go after the neighbor that isn’t wearing his mask on a park bench. We have families who are willing to do that.’
by Lianne Laurence
LifeSite News
November 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — America is on the verge of being “lost” because many of its citizens are suffering from a “delusional psychosis” and so fearful that they are turning on each other to enforce “nonsensical” coronavirus restrictions, a California psychiatrist has warned.
“We don’t need a police force. We don’t need a secret Stasi to go after the neighbor that isn’t wearing his mask on a park bench. We have families who are willing to do that,” Dr. Mark McDonald said last month during a summit on the virus.
“We have office workers [who] will come by and mace you if you are not wearing a mask, and no one will come to your rescue. In fact, they’ll probably applaud it.”
A child and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice in West Los Angeles. Dr. Mark McDonald made his remarks during the virtual Truth Over Fear Summit organized by Catholic broadcaster Patrick Coffin.
New York Times Mocked for Repeating Iran’s Talking Points
by Penka Arsova
LaCorte News
The New York Times came under fire on social media over a report that critics say parrots Iranian talking points about the country’s nuclear efforts.
The report focused on the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top Iranian nuclear scientist who was in charge of the county’s secretive nuclear weapons program that ended in the early 2000s. Fakhrizadeh was killed on Friday, according to local media, on his way to visit his in-laws. The perpetrators are believed to have detonated explosives placed near the road and then opened fire at Fakhrizadeh’s car. Several of his bodyguards were injured in the attack and some of them died from their wounds.
In reporting that many Iranian officials blame Israel for Fakhrizadeh’s death, the Times wrote that they “have always maintained that their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, not weapons.”
Why Millions Don’t Believe Trump Lost
by Frank Miele
Real Clear Politics
The allegations of election fraud that have divided the country in the weeks since Nov. 3, and the dismissal of them by the establishment as “conspiracy theories,” remind me of another November day 57 years ago.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, was officially assigned to the hand of Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union several years earlier and then returned to the United States with his Russian bride and their newborn daughter. Of course, Oswald was never convicted of the assassination because he was himself murdered by a shadowy mob-associated bar owner less than 72 hours later. Anyone who didn’t believe “Oswald did it” was labeled as a conspiracy theorist, or worse. But for many Americans, the official lone-gunman story accepted by the Warren Commission was itself the conspiracy.
Senator Wyden Calls Mnuchin’s Grab of CARES Act Money “Sabotage.” Wyden Has a Right to be Suspicious of Mnuchin
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
On November 25, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon Tweeted this: “The Trump administration is working harder to sabotage the economy and tie the Biden administration’s hands than it is to help working families survive a pandemic.” Wyden’s Tweet included a clip from a Bloomberg News article about how U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was planning to move $455 billion of CARES Act money to the General Fund of the Treasury so that the next Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration wouldn’t be able to use it to help bolster the economy.
That same Bloomberg News article included this sentence: “The money in question includes $429 billion that Mnuchin is clawing back from the Fed — which backed some of the central bank’s emergency lending facilities…” But as we detailed last Friday, 75 percent of the $454 billion that the CARES Act earmarked for emergency lending programs at the Fed to help struggling Americans and businesses survive the pandemic and support bank lending was never handed over to those programs by Mnuchin. All that the Fed has been reporting on its weekly financial statements for months is $114 billion from the Treasury for these programs. The breakdown of that $114 billion is as follows, according to the Fed’s weekly H.4.1 financial statements: (See Footnote 14 to Table 1.) We contacted the Fed via email and it stands by this breakdown:
French Protesters Set Fire to Central Bank
from Zero Hedge
One of the recurring questions amid the year’s countless BLM protests and associated riots has been why instead of burning and looting innocent businesses, the angry mob does not target the source of all wealth, income and social inequality – not just in the US but the world – the central bank, i.e. Federal Reserve (located at 2051 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20418 for those unaware).
Yet while US protesters and rioters still need guidance what buildings to burn down, their French peers are finally catching on.
Over the weekend, tens of thousands of critics of a proposed security law that would restrict the filming of police officers protested across France on Saturday, and officers in Paris who were advised to behave responsibly during the demonstrations repeatedly fired tear gas to disperse rowdy protesters. The controversial Article 24 of the bill seeks to protect police officers from doxing and harassment, and bans filming of cops on duty and sharing their images online with the “intent to harm.”
America’s Pride in the Economy is About to Be Greatly Shaken as Tens of Millions Face Eviction in 2021
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Unless there is emergency intervention, tens of millions of Americans could be facing eviction once the holiday season is over. We kicked the can down the road throughout 2020, but all of the rent that was originally owed to landlords all over the country is still due, and they are very eager to collect. Countless landlords are on the verge of financial ruin because of the rent moratoriums which were put in place, and kicking the can down the road even more would be absolutely disastrous for them. Of course it would also be absolutely disastrous if the moratoriums are not extended, because in some states more than half of all households are behind on their rent or mortgage payments, and most of them have no way to pay.
One way or the other, we are about to hit a breaking point. The Aspen Institute is telling us that a whopping 40 million people “could face eviction over the next several months”…
How Socialist Dogma Replaces Real Science with “Settled Science”
by Allen Gindler
Mises.org
Over the past hundred years, evolutionary socialism has slowly but steadily taken root in the fabric of American society. This is especially noticeable in the economic sphere, because evolutionary socialism uses the mandatory redistribution of wealth as one of the methods to achieve its ultimate goal. The bloated state machine interferes with the economy, distorts market signals and economic relations between market agents, and chooses winners and losers in order to achieve an illusory and propagandistic goal of equality and justice.
However, one should not forget that evolutionary socialism simultaneously uses the collectivization of consciousness and the redistribution of wealth. Moreover, an analysis of the existing flavors of socialist movements, especially those that have been able to materialize in practice, shows that the subjugation of individualism by collective thinking is an even more effective path to building a socialist society than the redistribution of wealth.
The Fed and the Promise of a Vaccine Aren’t Enough to Protect Investors from a ‘Reckoning,’ Top Economist Warns
‘We still have quite a bumpy journey left’
by Shawn Langlois
Market Watch
By the time Friday’s closing bell marked the end of the holiday-shortened stretch, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.12% had racked up a stellar gain of 2.2% to close at 29,910.37 after having closed above 30,000 earlier in the week for the first time ever. The S&P 500 SPX, -0.61% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.21% also banged out record highs.
‘You should worry about a reckoning longer term.’
Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens’ College University of Cambridge and economic adviser to Allianz, isn’t so sure the bull run will last.
U.S. Debt, Fed Easy Money Biggest Risks in 2021: Jim Rogers
by Divya Chowdhury
Reuters.com
Rogers, who is Chairman at Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests in Singapore, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum he expected the next decade to be the most difficult for markets in his lifetime because of the levels of global debt.
“We had a horrible time in 2008 because of too much debt, and since 2008, the debt everywhere has skyrocketed. We can’t even count how much the debt is up,” Rogers said at the Reuters Global Investment Outlook Summit 2020.
A Vaccine is Coming, Sell Your Gold and Silver!
by Jeff Clark
GoldSeek
A vaccine for Covid-19 is on the way, so gold investors should probably pack it in, right? After all, a valid and distributable vaccine will likely create euphoria, and push the stock market up and gold down. The economy will recover, maybe even roar, and with it fear of the pandemic will disappear and leave little need to own gold and silver.
At least that’s the consensus view among many mainstream outlets. We know this because the kneejerk reaction to Pfizer’s vaccine announcement on November 9 caused the Dow to soar 3% and gold to fall 4%, with silver crashing 6.2%.
Last week Pfizer and Moderna reported their vaccines are now roughly 95% effective, with Pfizer and BioNTech announcing plans today to file for authorization for emergency use, which would allow them to have their vaccine used in the US starting next month. The former FDA commissioner even claimed the pandemic can “effectively end” with a wide distribution of a vaccine at this level of efficacy.
Biden Announces Pick for OMB; GOP Senator: ‘Zero Chance of Being Confirmed’
by Hank Berrien
Daily Wire
On Monday, former Vice President Joe Biden announced he had selected Neera Tanden, the president of The Center for American Progress and a close friend of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as his choice to head the White House Office of Management and Budget, eliciting criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
Sen. John Cornyn, (R-TX) said Tanden “stands zero chance of being confirmed.”
USA Today noted that Tanden has issued 87,000 tweets since joining Twitter in March 2010. Garrett Ventry, who served as a communications aide to the committee chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley,(R-IA), noted, “Watching @neeratanden delete all her negative tweets about Republican Senators is hilarious. Her nomination is already a funeral.”