Fred reminds us "A country deserves what it tolerates. And gets more of it" in his latest column on the current race issues: Applied Racial Anencephaly: Making Things Worse. I really appreciate his comments on the media. (This matches up pretty well with my article this week: Cincinnati's Race Problem.)
None of these media delicates will ever have walked a foot beat in a bad section, fired a gun, or imagined what it is like to be in a dark building with a criminal you can’t see and who may be armed. The talking heads seem to have no idea of the intensity of the anger and hatreds in the country. Notice how puzzled they are by Donald Trump’s popularity. For the price of a cup of coffee in any truck stop on I95, and a little conversation, they could have found out.
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Making things worse is the norm for talking heads and the “elites.” Consider Jeff Gutenbezos, daddy of the Kindle and honcho of Amazon. In a display of his essential goodness, he recently pulled from Amazon all items containing the Confederate flag (while continuing to sell Meinkampf). Net effect? To infuriate a lot of white people, largely against blacks, without doing anything to benefit blacks.
Will denizens of the ghetto do better in school with no Confederate flags on sale at Amazon? Will they stop shooting each other? Get married before giving birth? No. But Jeff will feel good about himself. The talking heads will love him.
Making things worse.
Captain Capitalism has a lengthy post on the topic of our central bank, the "Fed," and how quadrupling (aka inflating) the nation's money supply has yet to result in massive inflation.
…I’m outright accusing them of telling a half-truth, because (if they're economists) they know this low level of inflation, IN SPITE OF A NEAR TRIPLING OF THE MONEY SUPPLY, is due to a TANKING of the "velocity of money." Why the Federal Reserve Ain't No "Jesus Christ"
Without boring the reader, the velocity of money is the rate at which a dollar is re-spent. So you can theoretically have a low money supply, but if people keep spending (either because of faith in the future or a market bubble) instead of saving, you can trigger inflation still. However, the opposite is happening today, and the reasons are (I claim) the total disheartening and destructive effects socialist policies (primarily under Obama) has had on investors, purchasers, innovators, entrepreneurs, businessmen and other productive members of society. The constant assail and assault against "the rich," "corporations," "success," and the always-available evil and hated "white males" has thrown sand into America's most productive economic engines, tanking faith and hope in the future, and thus the velocity of money. And though this has slowed economic growth considerably, this grants the Federal Reserve's "Jesus Strategy" a reprieve in that their money printing has not caused inflation.
ZH reports China has sold over $100b in US Treasuries, and explains this means higher interest rates going forward. It's Official: China Confirms It Has Begun Liquidating Treasuries, Warns Washington.
. . . China has likely sold somewhere on the order of $100 billion in US Treasuries in the past two weeks alone in open FX ops to steady the yuan. Put simply, as part of China's devaluation and subsequent attempts to contain said devaluation, China has been purging an epic amount of Treasuries.Selling our treasuries? Did they really expect subprime America to pay off our debts?!
More China and currency-war discussion at the WSJ today with Niall Ferguson's op-ed, ‘Chimerica’ and the Rule of Central Bankers.
Before the 2008 financial crisis, Chimerica was a marriage of opposites. China saved, exported and lent. America consumed, imported and borrowed. For a few heady years, the odd couple were happy together. Not only did the glut of Chinese savings lower the cost of capital, the glut of Chinese workers reduced the cost of labor. Every asset class on the planet rallied.
Rightly or wrongly, Joe Deters' virtual lynching of Tensing is likely the only thing that averted another race riot in Cincinnati. And for the record, I think he was wrong to treat it as he did and say the things he said. I don't see the murder charge sticking, and when it fails, Cincinnati will likely have riots anyway. In the end, it's only a stall. That city is simmering, and is due to boil over.
ReplyDeleteCincinnati can be a really cool city, but they've got issues that are going to get worse before they get better. So I just avoid crossing the DMZ (Ohio River) unless absolutely necessary, and stay on the Kentucky side as much as possible.