Authored by “V.F.” via TheChicagoEconomist.com,
The Sport Of Speculation
I’m beginning to believe the current “pandemic” is perhaps just the latest contrived “enemy of the state”. An opportunity taken by western governments that have, over the past 20 or 30 years, gotten bolder in their willingness to fabricate fear to secure a political end. Political ends are always about greater control, corruption, and ultimately, cover ups.
In the age where air has become second to digital noise in terms of ubiquity, and hyperbole has replaced truth as the journalistic objective, governments’ ability to leverage misinformation (i.e. propaganda) has become a precision tool. Like it or not, society has become confused by the amount of information thrown at us and that makes us susceptible.
But if this is contrived political hysteria, what is the objective?
I’ve heard people on either side of the aisle suggest it is to help or hurt Trump. And perhaps, it is that simple. However, given equally good points on both sides of that argument I am skeptical. So then what? Well, I think back to 9/11 and whether you believe it was an act of terrorism by our own government or some other group, the end result was the same – The Patriot Act, and a truckload of knock-on legislation that quietly edged out our individual rights and freedoms. All in the name of keeping us safe from harm.
Ok, but do we see any of that happening as a result of this current narrative? Of course. Right now a bill is making its way through Congress that most legislators, have admittedly, not read but are ready to approve. And perhaps the most glaring action is the $5 trillion financial bail out that took place over the weekend. This is by far, the biggest financial industry bailout ever to take place, at least on this planet. Most Americans have no idea a bailout is taking place and those that do will never come to know that the bailout began in early September. On September 2nd, the Fed began its second epic “bank bailout”. That is, it has nothing to do with the virus.
And it isn’t just banks but the entire sport of speculation that require a bailout. The leverage inherent in the sport of speculation, across all asset classes, has created an aggregate risk position so large there is no longer enough cash to cover the margin call.
And this is where we’ve run into trouble. In 2008, we had levered specific collateral instruments up using nonsensical economics. At the time I was studying financial engineering at Chicago Booth. I graduated in December 2008, after spending 2 years studying the models that were proving, in real time, to be absolutely wrong and creating massive pain for the bottom half of the economic food chain. To crawl out of that mess we printed trillions of dollars to bail out the large risk positions that had earlier created immense wealth for those on the top of the economic food chain.
This past weekend, once again the Fed announced a $5 trillion bailout and it went completely unnoticed by the public because we are distracted by a “world ending virus”. The largest financial bailout in the history of the world and nobody knows it happened because the focus is on a virus that to date, has resulted in 50 deaths in America (at the same time 8,000 deaths have resulted from the flu in America).
I am constantly having Italy being thrown at me evidence that the virus is going to wipe out humanity. So I decided to look into Italy, specifically. What I found is that each year in Italy has about 16K flu related deaths each year. That’s a little over 2K flu related each month of the flu 7 month flu season. And here are Italy’s Covid figures.
The new cases are in decline and the total death count in the 2 months since the outbreak began there, is at 2158, so about 1K per month (half that of the flu during the same period). And Italy is the worst case scenario in terms of mortality rate (fatality to recorded infections – yes this is a less than ideal statistic in terms of meaningfulness). Germany, for instance has an incredibly low mortality rate.
And let me be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t take this seriously. My point is whether or not the severe response from western governments is a reasonable response given the “threat”.
In 2009, the Swine Flu hit America’s shores. Let’s look at the spread and mortality figures of the Swine Flu outbreak that went almost unnoticed by the public and media. In fact, I had no idea Swine Flu hit our shores until the writing of this article. As of mid-March 2010, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that about 59 million Americans contracted the H1N1 virus, 265,000 were hospitalized as a result (0.4% of the estimated total number of people who contracted it), and 12,000 died (0.02%).
Now let’s look at the US Covid outbreak to date.
59 million Americans contracted Swine Flu, 265,000 were hospitalized, and 12,000 died from the 2009/2010 outbreak. Yet the public noise over that outbreak was so muted that I don’t even remember that it took place. Today, we have Covid, and in 2 months it has infected 4,600 Americans and 85 have succumbed to the virus.
If I were to show these figures to an alien and ask them to identify which scenario resulted in a lockdown of society, which do you suspect they’d point to? Exactly. 100% of you pointed to Swine Flu. 100% of you.
So how is it that the western governments picked Covid? And more importantly, why?
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financial engineering
Is that like ‘military intelligence’?
The world needs to get rid of people with such bullshit ‘knowledge’.
“financial engineering – Is that like ‘military intelligence’?”
no. it’s more like social engineering.
Whatever it is, the choreography is superb.
“Military intelligence, two words combined that can’t make sense” – Megadeth
“But if this is contrived political hysteria, what is the objective?”
to keep “us just us only us” safe from harm.
#1. Test the vulnerability of the population to propaganda.
#2. Demonstrate control of essentials to teach a lesson in compliance.
#3. Force population into a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance to keep them off balance.
#4. Allow a good cover for the pre-position of control elements, i.e. militarization of the public sphere.
#5. Demonstrate the need for mandatory vaccination.
#6. Destroy the economic viability of the middle class/working class in order to create dependency on government.
#7. Consolidate corporate control over the balance of the American economy.
#8 Artificially depress the value of all real estate and holdings in order to buy them back up for pennies on the dollar.
Those were just off the top of my head, haven’t given it much thought, really.
Great list. Don’t forget $trillions in bank/corporate bailouts.
Spot on HsF! Two thumbs up!
We should all pay attention to the farming community. The debt to asset ratio and suicide rate in our area is not looking positive for the long term family farm. Losing this asset will not serve us well.
Excellent diagnosis of the winners, HardScrabble.
The US and global financial system has been tipping out of control. Bank runs are coming. The global response to the virus will hyped as the necessary, but unfortunate cause of the financial meltdown. When the banks reopen dirty cash will be no longer be allowed to contaminate our immune system.
I doubt that part.
Too much black ops money in cash for them to just cut off the flow.
Arrangements will be made for that.
Real criminals who pay their dues to governments use debit and credit cards.
Removing cash only stops free lancers until they find a workaround. When crime pays you get more of it.
Criminals love cash and government, then, wouldn’t be able to send pallets of it to their terrorist buddies or finance their black ops.
will the new digital currency encompass the russian and chinese economies? will the russian and chinese leaders accept being fenced in by digital currencies not controlled by them?
One correlation not pointed out is the mortality rate per million population. Looking at the latest stats, those countries with a higher number of cases per million population generally show higher mortality rates (initial rates can be astronomically skewed, like the US, which at one point was reporting 66 infected with 22 deaths) .
The author sites the 2010 Swine flu with a mortality rate of .02%, or using the numbers he’s provided, (12,000 deaths/59,0o0,000 cases) about 1 death per every 4,900 cases (which expressed in as a percentage in decimal form and rounded would be .0002, not .02 as used in the article, which is 2 deaths per 100 people).
Today, Germany does appear to be doing better than most, with 8,604 confirmed cases and 23 deaths; which is roughly 1 death per every 347 cases.
Given Germany’s present numbers of 1 death per every 347 cases infected, it’s 14x’s higher than the Swine flu example cited by the author. And yes, when Covid-19 is done (so to speak, as it might never really go away to never return), the mortality rate for Covid-19 will in all likelihood be much lower, but does anyone want to sit back and ‘assume’ it will be, let it run rampant with no intervention and let the numbers fall where they may?
Given that it’s a novel virus, i.e., the world has never seen it before and there’s no immunity or known treatment, and given what has been reported so far, what’s the more prudent approach to take?
“does anyone want to sit back and ‘assume’ it will be”
I will. while most of the data is not yet complete, one set of covid19 data is – the cruise ship diamond princess. this was a perfect isolated petri-dish three-week no-internal-quarantine example of covid19 spread and morbidity. the results so far are 696 cases, 458 recoveries, and 7 fatalities, apparently with all deaths being people age 65 or (considerably) older. this indicates a normal flu, not a new black plague event.
“what’s the m ore prudent approach to take?”
that depends on what is meant by “prudent”. for some it means full retreat, lock and load, and fire when you see the white snot of their nose. your mileage may vary.
clearly it’s more “prudent” to you to close everything and crash the fragile economy… im sure THAT will have mortality effects far greater than 1-5%
Who the hell knows what will come of all this covid-19. The real numbers will not be in until it is all over. Until then you have a bunch of armchair pencil necks that will use projections and statistical models to convince you that we are in a deep world of crap.
The real question should be, what are they trying to cover up and keeping us from knowing???
As always, JMO.
Greetings,
A couple of years back I found myself traveling by air to Phoenix. Disembarking passengers at Phoenix have a bit of a maze to travel as they make their way to baggage. Other than a bathroom, there is nothing to distract you as you make your way out.
As I reached the escalators going down to baggage I found that it was blocked by several policemen. The policemen were all mum about what was going on but a guy next to me showed me a live television feed of it all on his phone. Apparently, a shirtless black guy with long dreadlocks and wearing bright red pants had been involved in a shooting in Tempe and his escape route had brought him on to airport property. Consequently, our terminal was entirely on lock down.
After standing in this hallway for more than an hour, people began to panic because they were going to miss their connecting flights. A family next to me had a flight to London in another terminal that they were going to miss if something didn’t happen soon. A constant stream of insults were being hurled at law enforcement.
At hour number two the authorities announced that buses were coming to pick us up to take us to an “undisclosed” location where we could be “cleared”. This announcement caused people to begin running around all over the place. I went into the bathroom and stood on a toilet and hid. When the buses arrived in hour number 3 to take us away, people just ran outside and into traffic to hail a taxi or get in a car timed to get them. It didn’t matter at all about our baggage because none of it was released because, you know, a shirtless black guy with dreadlocks and red pants might be hiding in our baggage.
I believe that what happened was that the airport had 20 or so different law enforcement agencies that all went into “action” over something that really didn’t involve any of us. After all, it is hard to hide as a shirtless black man in bright red pants and dreadlocks when everyone is going about their business. The chaos the authorities created was such that you could have easily hid 50 shirtless black men. Having spent a lot of time in the military, I knew damn well what a Goat Rodeo looked like but this was one for the records.
The authorities took a simple problem and cause an indescribable amount of harm. It was the banality of evil.
“It was the banality of evil”
not merely the banality of bureaucracy?
are you implying that any form of bureaucracy is benevolent?
“are you implying that any form of bureaucracy is benevolent?”
bureaucracy is inevitable. thinking of it as benevolent or malevolent is immaterial.
Yup, why ascribe malice to what is actually inefficiency and incompetence. Another little consideration to make here is the affirmative action hires and appointees. People are filling positions of authority and are doing so based not on ability but rather, on skin color, gender, sexual orientation and ‘diversity.’ What could possibly go wrong?
Hope you remembered to put the lid down before you jumped up.
What do you mean”IF?this is contrived political hysteria, what is the objective?”
One thing we know for sure is MSM andPTB wouldn’t lie to us about the Kung flu.
And I read about it in the alt media, so I know for a fact all of it is true. //sarc off//
The fuckery going on in the paper gold and silver markets is unbelievable. /SI is showing $12.67/oz but show me a single place where you can buy a 2020 silver eagle for under $22. Anyone? Anyone here willing to sell their silver at $13/oz? They say this is the cheapest silver has ever been priced relative to gold, but see if you can put your hands on some! Nuts!!!
TC.
Right. Yesterday I said “IF” you can take delivery of silver for 3 bucks over spot, how can you lose money. Gman thought that was stupid.
Well, I’m not selling at any price, but I’d damn sure be buying where it’s trading if I could.
I picked up 10 Silver Eagles last week when the online price was $14. Silly me, when I got to the coin shop, they were charging $20. Bought them anyway. They said the US Mint ran out of them and they were charging “market price” due to demand.
“They said the US Mint ran out of them and they were charging ‘market price’ due to demand.”
since you paid, were they not correct?
Rise up.
I got 10 oz. of junk dimes two days before supply dried up. The dealer emailed customers that they would no longer take orders under 300.00 and then expect up to two weeks delay.
Greetings,
I believe that the disconnect is in the collapse of the paper market for gold and silver which is hundreds of times larger than the physical stock. I picked up an additional 100 ounces and I was lucky that I got it for $17 per ounce. I had to order 100 ounces because the dealers were demanding large minimums.
Good luck finding any silver anywhere for $12
“the dealers were demanding large minimums”
are they trying to eliminate inventory?
They’re trying to keep some inventory on hand. Like many items, seems the PM’s are being bought hand over fist. Is silver more valuable than toilet paper?
I got 1/2 oz. for 8.30 from JM Bullion, deal now is that you have to buy a minimum of $300 worth before they sell to you. Lots of stuff sold out but lots of stuff still in inventory.
From the website….
We wanted to provide our customers with important updates about our company, including a new temporary $299 minimum order, as well as the overall state of the industry.
Over the last few weeks, we have seen record order volume, with yesterday being our largest sales day of all time. We are on pace for another record day today. As a business, we are doing everything we can to keep up, but with a 3-7x increase in order volume, we are unable to answer our phones and ship orders as quickly as usual. You can expect temporary shipping delays of 15+ business days while we scale up our operations to satisfy this unprecedented level of demand.
Thanks for the heads up. I am trying to empty the 2 I have now. I did not give a thought to the fact they may be in short supply. Makes them a good barter item perhaps.
Soon the PM price will break from the paper price.
If we Americans were to take this situation (the real situation, not the phony “Coronavirus® hoax we are being force fed) seriously, we would be arresting government officials, and preparing tribunals. This is nothing less than a brazen attempt (that will cause terrible misery even if it fails) to eliminate all privacy, liberty, and rule of law in the US. The rest of the world as well, but first things first.
All you idiots who still think there is some horrible “virus” causing horrible sickness and death, so horrible that the entire country has to be turned upside down to stop it deserve all the bad things you are going to get. You have been participating in your own hosing for years and years, and now the bill for the hosers is due. I hope you had a good time, and took a lot of selfies.
Sooner or later you will see the facts for what they are, and the truth for what it is. We all thought or hoped that this day of reckoning could be avoided, left to our children or grandchildren. Well, boys and girls, the time to reckon is now.
“we would be arresting government officials, and preparing tribunals”
meet the new boss? same as the old boss?
Of course mortality is low, they still have enough respirators. Without a respirator, then…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anhn0bnu7p0&feature=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSfr-FxBfBw&feature=emb_logo
This didn’t age well.