Econophysics2020

Texas Smacks Lawless Sock Puppet Administration

Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a complaint and motion for temporary restraining order in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, asking the Court to immediately halt the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) freeze on deportations of illegal aliens.

On its first day in office, the Biden Administration cast aside congressionally enacted immigration laws and suspended the removal of illegal aliens whose removal is compelled by those very laws. The move violates the U.S. Constitution, federal immigration and administrative law, and a contractual agreement between Texas and DHS. Last night, Attorney General Paxton issued a letter warning that the Administration’s actions resulted in an abdication of DHS’s obligation to enforce federal immigration law, which would seriously and irreparably harm Texas and its citizens.

“In one of its first of dozens of steps that harm Texas and the nation as a whole, the Biden administration directed DHS to violate federal immigration law and breach an agreement to consult and cooperate with Texas on that law. Our state defends the largest section of the southern border in the nation. Failure to properly enforce the law will directly and immediately endanger our citizens and law enforcement personnel,” said Attorney General Paxton. “DHS itself has previously acknowledged that such a freeze on deportations will cause concrete injuries to Texas. I am confident that these unlawful and perilous actions cannot stand. The rule of law and security of our citizens must prevail.”

The petition is available here: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-sues-biden-administration-demanding-immediate-halt-unlawful-deportation-freeze

And a Federal judge blocked the deportation freeze.

Paxton, in a statement on Twitter, hailed the victory, saying, “Texas is the FIRST state in the nation to bring a lawsuit against the Biden Admin. AND WE WON.”

“Within 6 days of Biden’s inauguration, Texas has HALTED his illegal deportation freeze. *This* was a seditious left-wing insurrection,” the Republican continued. “And my team and I stopped it.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/federal-judge-blocks-biden-deportation-freeze-nationwide-after-texas-ag-challenge_3672601.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-26-2

Playing God and Uncontrolled Experiments

The highest-paid Federal civil servant and his gain-of-function research with Federal tax dollars – outsourced to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – developed the high affinity ACE-2 receptor.

Dr. “Death”‘s labelled his opinion in the Washington Post: “A flu virus risk worth taking” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth-taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html):

Fauci Funded Now-Deleted Wuhan Study Engineering Same Transmission Pathway As Covid

Home Prices Soar At 4.5 Times The Fed’s Inflation Target In All US Cities

Tyler Durden (ZeroHedge):

Well, here’s an idea: maybe all the central-planning megabrains at the Marriner Eccles building and 33 Liberty Street can take a break from whatever circle jerk they are engaged in right now, and look at the latest Case Shiller numbers which showed not only that home prices surged at the fastest pace in seven years, rising more than 9% compared to a year ago but that for the first time since the financial crisis, the annual price increase in every major US MSA (and according to Case Shiller there are 20 of them) rose by at least 6.8% Y/Y (in the case of Las Vegas) and as much as 13.8% in Phoenix, meaning that the average home prices across all of the US is now rising at 4.5 times the Fed’s own inflation target, and even the cheapest US MSA is rising at more than 3 times the Fed’s inflation goal.

Why does this matter? Simple: Because if – as Joseph Carson mused last month – CPI measured actual house prices, inflation would be above 3% right now.

For those who missed it, here again is the explanation:

“Actual” consumer price inflation is rising during the recession. That runs counter to the normal recessionary pattern when the combination of weak demand and excess capacity works to lessen inflationary pressures.

The main source of faster consumer price inflation is centered in the housing market. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index posted a 7% increase the last year, more than twice the gain of one-year ago.

The sharp acceleration in house price inflation represents the fastest increase since 2014 and runs counter to the patterns of the past two recessions. During the 2001 recession house price inflation slowed by one-third, while in the Great Financial Recession housing prices posted their largest decline in the post-war period, falling over 12% nationwide.

The consumer price index (CPI) does not show in house price inflation because it uses a non-market rent index to capture the trends in housing inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the non-market rent index has increased 2.5% in the past 12 months, or 450 basis points below the rise in house prices.

If actual house prices were used in place of rents core CPI would have registered a 3% gain in the past year, nearly twice the reported gain of 1.6%.

If aggregate price measures did not exist house prices would be one of the most important measures to gauge inflation and the proper setting of official interest rates. That’s because house price cycles include easy credit/financial conditions, excess demand, and inflation expectations, three key ingredients of inflation cycles.

Rising consumer price inflation is added to the list of unique features of the 2020 recession. Others include an increase in corporate debt levels instead of debt-liquidation and rising equity prices instead of share price declines.

If the 2020 recession has economic and financial features that normally appear during economic recovery what does that imply for the next growth cycle? The debt overhang at the corporate and federal debt should impede the next growth cycle. And if the cyclical rise in housing demand is occurring in recession it can’t be repeated during recovery.

The next economic cycle will be filled with unique tipping points, and no one should assume that policymakers can control or offset them.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/home-prices-soar-45-times-feds-inflation-target-all-us-cities

Lunatic Fringe, I know you’re out there

Submitted for your approval, Bed, Bath and Beyond (BBBY) going into the day and coming out.

Before

After

WOW!

Repo Madness

Is the covid ‘pandemic’ merely economic theatre?

Anonymous rhetorically asks on The Burning Platform: is the CoVid pandemic merely economy theatre? (https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/01/23/the-real-reason-for-the-lock-downs-prevent-worldwide-financial-anarchy/#more-232514).

He suggests the USD collapse began weeks before “Operation Shutdown” which was halted by a world wide manufactured economic “freeze”.

What’s the evidence?

Well, for starters, Anonymous points to the Fed “pouring literally trillions of dollars into the US banks to prevent inter-lending bank-runs which were starting to develop.” Let’s check the tape.

Uhhh, yeah, looks like trillions and, yeah, coincides with the early days of the pandemic. And, yeah, similar pattern to the 2008 crisis though on a much greater and sharper scale.

Back the days when Lehman froze up interbank leaning, banks became so distrustful of each other’s solvency, that they massively increased interest rates to each other to factor in the risk. Happened in the Panic of 2007, too.

Anonymous: In September 2019 the Fed intervened in the repo. markets for four consecutive days, pumping $75 billion per day into the banks, as the inter-banking interest rate – the repo rate – peaked at a terrifying 10% [1]. If this level were allowed to contaminate regular highstreet lending, it would cause widespread debt defaults & insolvencies.

How much all in? Over $9 trillion beginning September 2019, and over 40% of the USA’s GDP, prior to Covid – nearly a 40% increase in the USA’s national debt!

And the dollar debasement? Well, judge for yourself.

Fortunate for the Fed, the external ‘event’ – CoVid/CCP Virus – happened along to take the spotlight off US finance and its woes.

Anonymous argues this what ‘The Great Reset’ really is about.

Along with the ‘flight to (dollar) safety’, Covid has offered the opportunity to freeze the USA’s banking collapse with massive injections of cash. $9 trillions was available to US banks up until March 2020, but in addition to this the Fed produced $5 trillion in economic stimulus to the wider economy and a further 5 trillions recently.

…

From renting taxis with Uber, replacing hotels with flats from AirBNB, ordering meals via UberEats, holding meetings on zoom, spending ‘cash free’ via Visa, MasterCard & the Paypal cartel, ordering food on-line with Uber eats and destroying local culture are all being forced on a gullible world public during the Covid selective collapse. It should be dawning on everyone by now that Covid is a very, very Neoliberal Corporate virus, strangely working in the interests of a continued US Corporate neoliberal rollout against our own national geopolitical interests.

It is not only the Corporates that benefit from US ‘operations’ like Covid, the security state also demands their share of the spoils for assisting in and facilitating much of the operation. US tracking apps, social media and communication platforms are being forced, as a parasitical middle man, into every walk of our lives, taking a thin slice off everyday activities, like an America tax.

CCP/Wall Street Sock Puppet as Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen, On Stage, at the 2018 Bloomberg New Economy Forum, November 6, 2018, Singapore

Seems to be the Oligarchs have a full drawer of sock puppets ready and well-greased up to step in.

Here are the Martens (Wall Street on Parade): https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/01/ten-months-after-stepping-down-as-fed-chair-janet-yellen-became-part-of-the-leadership-team-for-forums-tied-to-the-chinese-communist-party/

Haven’t we learned anything about properly vetting people for the highest offices in the U.S. government?

Former Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen has failed to report the details of millions of dollars in fees that she earned in 2018, the year she stepped down as Fed Chair, as she went on a whirlwind of speaking engagements in foreign cities around the world. Yellen’s “leadership” role with the Bloomberg New Economy Forums which had the “active participation and support” of an organization openly tied to the Chinese Communist Party, raises further serious red flags. And yet, Yellen sailed through her Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing this past week, gaining a favorable vote of 26-0. A full Senate vote to confirm Yellen as Treasury Secretary is expected to occur tomorrow.

What Yellen did disclose on her Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure form showed that in 2019 and 2020 she made a cash haul of more than $7 million in speaking fees, the majority of which came from Wall Street trading houses, mega banks and hedge funds. Yellen stepped down as Chair of the Fed on February 3, 2018. Over the next 10 months, in addition to her foreign gigs, Yellen also appeared at numerous stateside paid engagements for Wall Street firms like JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Jefferies. She has failed to make public the transcripts of her speeches at these events or the specific amounts she was paid.

After the news broke of Yellen’s $7 million haul, Senior Reporter Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica Tweeted: “Deeply troubling two-fisted money grab from banks by Janet Yellen. This is corruption, but isn’t called that because it’s so quotidian.” Eisinger also noted: “Sure, Yellen might think she can make independent decisions once in office. But how arrogant is it to imagine that money corrupts everyone but you?”

Many of the banks Yellen accepted cash windfalls from were regulated by the Fed prior to her departure. These banks are also recidivist lawbreakers. JPMorgan Chase has been charged with, and admitted to, five criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice while it was being supervised by the Fed. The public deserves to know how much Yellen received from JPMorgan Chase in the year after she left the Fed. Citigroup, a smaller bank than JPMorgan Chase, paid Yellen over $990,000 in 2019 and 2020, according to her financial disclosure form. Citigroup received the largest Fed bailout in global banking history following the Wall Street crash of 2008.

With a resume like that, of course Janet will forever be the darling of The Party.