TBP GOES OFF THE CHARTS

Until this week the highest daily visitor count in TBP history was about 34,000. Our average daily count is around 20,000. For some unexplained reason the article written by a black minister called What if Whites Strike Back? which was posted 8 days ago was picked up by someone on Facebook and proceeded to go viral. I don’t use Facebook, so I’m not sure how or why it went viral, but TBP visitor counts reached 35,000 last Thursday, then topped that on Friday at 44,000, and yesterday skyrocketed to 67,000.

This article has now had 115,000 views, eclipsing the next highest article in TBP history by 80,000 views. And it’s still going.

It now looks like TBP will break the 700,000 mark in a month for the first time. Hopefully, some of the people who have seen TBP for the first time will stick around. If someone who came here from Facebook can explain why this article went viral, I’d appreciate knowing. I’d like to replicate it with other articles.


ANOTHER RECORD MONTH FOR TBP

A record amount of shit was flung on TBP last month. Yesterday produced the 2nd highest daily visitor count in TBP history at 32,000 visitors. The daily average topped the 18,500 mark, the highest monthly average in TBP history. The total visitor count of 555,000 for the month was up 50% over last November. We surpassed the 5.5 million mark for the year and should end the year above 6 million. There isn’t much different about the site versus last year, so I’d attribute the 50% increase in visitors to the worsening of our economic, social, political and global outlook. More people realize they are getting lied to by politicians, bankers, government drones, and the dying corporate media. They are seeking the truth elsewhere and are ending up here. We’ll keep the shit flinging and see what 2016 brings. Thanks for your support and the commentary stream that is often better than the articles posted.


Record-High Gun Sales Prove Americans Want Liberty

Guest Post

Inside a gun shop

Inside a gun shop

Anti-freedom politicos such as current White House residents and (ick) Hillary Clinton are well-known for hating our gun rights here in the USA. They continue to try and try again to further restrict that which “shall not be infringed,” but which has been steadily infringed for generations.

There was a time when buying a gun was simple and easy. And in free states, that can still be the case if one individual is buying from another. But if a gun transfer goes through a dealer, one must submit to a NICS background check.

This check is useless as far as preventing criminals from buying guns, but it is great for the government. They can track how many new guns are bought in the USA, where, and by whom. And this system is showing that the American people are not at all interested in bowing down to accept martial law from its government, nor are they willing to sit meekly by and wait like sheep for another brutal jihadist blood-letting.

Yep–according to the FBI, October of 2015 saw the sixth consecutive month in which background checks exceeded all previous records.

Continue reading “Record-High Gun Sales Prove Americans Want Liberty”

TBP SETS A NEW RECORD

For some unknown reason, TBP set an all-time high for visitor count in March. It seems 494,000 people were drawn to the doom. I find that interesting. With the stock market at all time highs and the government reporting fantastic jobs numbers, you would think doom websites would see visitor counts plummeting.

The year to date visitor count is 30% higher than last year. That is a pretty dramatic surge in one year. I think we owe The Man With No Name a lot of credit. The site runs like a well oiled machine now. It ran like a 1973 Ford Pinto before he arrived on the scene.

It is an interesting contrast that CNBC’s ratings hit an all-time low in March, while a libertarian anarchist website gains more visitors by the day.

I think this is a positive development in that more people seem to be coming to their senses and realizing the government, the banks, and the mainstream media are the enemy. They are beginning to comprehend that we are in the midst of a Crisis, whose outcome will determine the future course of this country.

Thank you to all the TBP contributors, commenters, lurkers, and DHS surveillance agents for keeping this dysfunctional family of shit throwing monkeys together.


 

AFGHANISTAN SETS A RECORD

What year did we arrive to free Afghans from the clutches of the Taliban?

This is called winning hearts and minds?

It seems we are having as much success with the War on Terror as we are with the War on Drugs.

It almost appears like we don’t really want to win these wars. I wonder why?

Washington, 21 October 2014 (Reuters) – Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has hit an all-time high despite years of counter-narcotics efforts that have cost the US $7.6bn (£4.7bn), according to a US government watchdog.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime [pdf] reported that Afghan farmers grew an “unprecedented” 209,000 hectares (523,000 acres) of opium poppy in 2013, surpassing the previous high of 193,000 hectares in 2007, said John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

“In past years, surges in opium poppy cultivation have been met by a coordinated response from the US government and coalition partners, which has led to a temporary decline in levels of opium production,” Sopko said in a letter to the secretary of state, John Kerry, the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, and other top US officials.

“The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of those prior efforts,” he said on Tuesday.

Afghanistan produces more than 80% of the world’s illicit opium, and profits from the illegal trade help fund the Taliban insurgency. US government officials blame poppy production for fuelling corruption and instability, undermining good government and subverting the legal economy.

The US has spent $7.6bn on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since the start of the 2001 war, it said.

Sopko said the UN drug office estimated the value of poppy cultivation and opium products produced in Afghanistan in 2013 at about $3bn, up on the $2bn estimated in 2012.

“With deteriorating security in many parts of Afghanistan and low levels of eradication of poppy fields, further increases in cultivation are likely in 2014,” Sopko said.

He said affordable deep-well technology brought to Afghanistan over the past decade had enabled Afghans to turn 200,000 hectares of desert in the south-west of the country into arable land, much of it devoted to poppy production.

In a letter responding to the findings, the US embassy in Kabul said the rise in poppy cultivation and decline in eradication efforts by provincial authorities was “disappointing news”. It said American officials were helping Afghans develop the ability to lead and manage a long-term counter-narcotics effort.

HOME DEPOT FINALLY ADMITS TO 56 MILLION CREDIT CARD BREACH

Home Depot wins. They officially win the award for largest credit card breach in world history. Please congratulate them by never shopping in their stores again. While the CEO was ignoring security for his customers he spent $18 billion buying back his own stock and rewarding himself and his executive cronies with massive stock bonuses for a job well done.

Via Brian Krebs

Home Depot: 56M Cards Impacted, Malware Contained

Home Depot said today that cyber criminals armed with custom-built malware stole an estimated 56 million debit and credit card numbers from its customers between April and September 2014. That disclosure officially makes the incident the largest retail card breach on record.

pwnddepotThe disclosure, the first real information about the damage from a data breach that was initially disclosed on this site Sept. 2, also sought to assure customers that the malware used in the breach has been eliminated from its U.S. and Canadian store networks.

“To protect customer data until the malware was eliminated, any terminals identified with malware were taken out of service, and the company quickly put in place other security enhancements,” the company said via press release (PDF). “The hackers’ method of entry has been closed off, the malware has been eliminated from the company’s systems, and the company has rolled out enhanced encryption of payment data to all U.S. stores.”

That “enhanced payment protection,” the company said, involves new payment security protection “that locks down payment data through enhanced encryption, which takes raw payment card information and scrambles it to make it unreadable and virtually useless to hackers.

“Home Depot’s new encryption technology, provided by Voltage Security, Inc., has been tested and validated by two independent IT security firms,” the statement continues. “The encryption project was launched in January 2014. The rollout was completed in all U.S. stores on Saturday, September 13, 2014. The rollout to Canadian stores will be completed by early 2015.”

The remainder of the statement delves into updated fiscal guidance for investors on what Home Depot believes this breach may cost the company in 2014. But absent from the statement is any further discussion about the timeline of this breach, or information about how forensic investigators believe the attackers may have installed the malware mostly on Home Depot’s self-checkout systems — something which could help explain why this five-month breach involves just 56 million cards instead of many millions more.

As to the timeline, multiple financial institutions report that the alerts they’re receiving from Visa and MasterCard about specific credit and debit cards compromised in this breach suggest that the thieves were stealing card data from Home Depot’s cash registers up until Sept. 7, 2014, a full five days after news of the breach first broke.

The Target breach lasted roughly three weeks, but it exposed some 40 million debit and credit cards because hackers switched on their card-stealing malware during the busiest shopping season of the year. Prior to the Home Depot breach, the record for the largest retail card breach went to TJX, which lost some 45.6 million cards.

BULLISH!!!!

How could corporate profits at all-time highs, with the largest companies in the world reducing their earnings projections at a record pace, be anything other than bullish for the stock market? Wall Street isn’t pumping and dumping money losing IPOs like there is no tomorrow because they know what is just around the corner. Record margin debt and record levels of bullishness never end in tears. Corporate insiders selling their own stocks at an all-time record pace surely isn’t a warning sign. The muppets have finally been lured into the market, as mutual fund flows into stocks have picked up in 2014. We all know what happens to muppets. Ask Goldman. Every warning sign is flashing red. CNBC and the Wall Street shysters assure you it’s the best time to buy. Just like the National Association of Realtors told you it was the best time to buy a house in 2005. Everything is bullish!!!

According to John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet, 93 out of the 111 companies in the S&P 500 that have issued an earnings outlook for the first quarter have guided below Wall Street’s consensus estimate. That’s the second-highest number of companies issuing warnings since FactSet began tracking guidance data in 2006. The highest number came just three months ago — for 2013’s fourth quarter.

THE TRUTH ABOUT RECORD HIGH HOUSEHOLD NET WORTH

What The Hell Is That Ticking Sound In My Head! Household Wealth – The Real Story

Yesterday the media got all bulled up over the Fed’s new data on household wealth showing that it hit a record in the fourth quarter of 2013. As usual with Wall Street’s chattering media class, this wasn’t quite the whole story, at least not the “real” story. The real story is deeply ominous.

The total net worth of households and non profits did reach a record in nominal terms. That is true. But that’s not the same thing as the wealth of individual households hitting a record in real, inflation adjusted terms. In addition, the calculation of the numbers is based on absurd assumptions which everyone takes for granted as being realistic. And if the net worth of the top 1% was lopped off, the picture would be far bleaker. But we need not even go there. By now it’s been well established that those in the upper income strata have gotten virtually all of the gains in wealth in recent years while the majority falls deeper into the economic mire.

For this analysis I just looked at the data as a whole, and did the simple exercises of dividing the total net worth of households and non-profits of $80.66 trillion by the census bureau’s estimate of the total year end population of the US of 317.44 million. Then I converted that to real terms by dividing the result by the Consumer Price Index. That’s conservative enough. It probably understates inflation by underweighting housing and doesn’t take into account asset inflation at all. But it’s a widely accepted means of converting nominal measures into real, inflation adjusted numbers. The same operation is then performed for every quarter going back in time as far as the data goes. The results are then plotted on this graph. It shows how the wealth of households has trended in real terms per capita.

Real Household Net Worth Per Capita - Click to enlarge

Real Household Net Worth Per Capita – Click to enlarge

I’ve also plotted alongside that line a graph of the Fed’s holdings in its System Open Market Account, which is all of the Fed’s paper holdings that it acquires in trades with Primary Dealers. Prior to 2007, the Fed had steadily grown its holdings at the rate of about 4-5% per year. Household wealth grew at almost double that rate beginning in 1994, prompting Alan Greenspan to proclaim “irrational exuberance” in 1996. Greenspan was particularly concerned that the prices of stocks were growing faster than the Fed’s balance sheet. That was something new. Historically they had grown at more or less the same rate.

The collapse of the internet/tech bubble in 2000-2003 took some of the bloom off the rose as household wealth fell back to the long term trend. Panicked, the Fed sharply lowered interest rates while keeping its asset growth in the 4-5% range. That was sufficient to trigger Housing Bubble I which led to record levels of household wealth per capita in real terms beginning in 2004. That tide peaked in 2006, when the housing bubble crested.

As the Fed scrambled in the early stages of the credit crisis it kept rates low, but withdrew cash from the Primary Dealer system and shrunk its SOMA to fund emergency lending programs in 2007 and most of 2008. The housing bubble crashed and stocks had a big bear market. Household wealth in real terms plunged back to trend. That’s where, like Greenspan before him, Bernanke hit the panic button, opening the floodgates on a massive surge of Fed credit into the financial markets via the Primary Dealers. That initially was followed by a slow recovery in household net worth as the stock market turned sharply and housing prices bottomed in 2009-2011. By late in 2012, both markets were trending sharply higher.

The Fed had a brief return of sanity as it paused QE through most of 2011 and 2012. The housing and stock market recoveries were actually picking up steam during that period. But that was only a temporary remission of the craziness.

Late in 2012 the Fed’s went completely mad. In spite of the fact that both house prices and stocks were in raging bull markets by that point, it opened the money printing floodgates again. This caused extreme distortions in the housing market where prices rose to bubble levels while sales activity remained near record lows. The majority of households were and are in no position to be able to afford buying a house. But prices skyrocketed because there was no supply and absurdly low mortgage rates were subsidizing buyers and inflating prices. It also caused the bubble conditions we see today to develop in stock prices.

The funny thing is that even though few houses are on the market, and even fewer are sold, the Fed and everybody else thinks that we can simply extrapolate the value of all housing based on this tiny sample of sale prices. The media, Wall Street, and the economic establishment all buy in to this ridiculous charade.

Has anyone bothered to stop and think what would happen to prices if a few more people had to sell their houses in the face of the current near record low buyer demand. These prices are fictitious in that regard. By extrapolating those few sale prices to the entire US housing inventory, the Fed creates the illusion of massive amounts of wealth and capital, backed by massive amounts of mortgage debt. It’s imaginary. It’s pure fiction. This is the essence of the fictitious capital nightmare we face. And nobody is paying attention because of the way we think about this data. It’s irrational and insane, but everybody looks at it the same way, just like they did a decade ago.

Don’t think that another collapse can’t happen, because it can. We’re making all the same mistakes, only worse because we should know better by now.

Despite what the headlines say, there’s no new high in net worth per capita, and by extension per household, in spite of all the insane central bank money creation that we’ve seen over the past 5 years. Net worth per capita was still below the 2006 peak level in real terms in the fourth quarter. No doubt that when the first quarter data is in it will be at a record, most likely by a substantial margin given what has already transpired this year. But the questions we must ask are who benefitted, and is it real?

If most people don’t own stocks, or houses in areas that have seen strong appreciation, and if house prices would fall in the presence of an increase in homes for sale to historic norms, then this new high in net worth is an illusion. Increasing wealth at the top of the household wealth strata cannot carry an economy to growth indefinitely. “Wealth” based on a tiny sample of inflated sales prices at record low financing costs cannot be actually liquidated. It isn’t real. If the majority do not experience economic gains and therefore provide a strong and broad base of real demand that can sustain active markets with normal levels of inventory, then the growth of asset prices will once again eventually slam back to trend, and probably worse.

We have seen that three prior surges in household net worth driven by cheap and easy central bank credit have crashed back to earth after about 5 years of extreme bubble gains . The current surge is now in its fifth year. What’s that ticking sound I hear?

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