Looking Backwards …
LB #1
“The Democrats have been instituting a propaganda campaign to hide or deny the effects of inflation ever since Joe Biden took office in 2021. At first, they claimed there was no inflation threat. Then they claimed inflation was “transitory.” When the CPI hit 40 year highs they were forced to admit that inflation was an issue, but refused to admit the true cause (helicopter money from the Federal Reserve to fund various stimulus programs the US cannot afford). Instead, Biden and Harris argued that the business world was to blame and high prices were a product of “price gouging.” More on that in a minute…It’s interesting to note that both the World Bank and even the Federal Reserve have recently warned about the dangers of price controls – Those guys are corrupt, but they aren’t crazy like Kamala. The last time the US instituted price controls was during the early-1970s during the onset of the last stagflation crisis. This was after the Nixon-era removal of the Dollar from the gold standard. It was an unmitigated disaster.
On Aug. 15, 1971, in a nationally televised address, Nixon announced, “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.” After a 90-day freeze, increases would have to be approved by a “Pay Board” and a “Price Commission,” with an eye toward eventually lifting controls. This move was initially popular and helped win Nixon a second term in office…In June 1973, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw explain in The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy:
“Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets…”
The government is in no position to police prices. These controls will only cause more damage in the long run and Kamala Harris and her team of Biden advisors are not intelligent enough to deal with the problem anyway.” I can’t put it any better than ZeroHedge has done here folks. Kamala is now talking price controls and this is a failed strategy that has been tried before. What bothers me is that both candidates are not talking about the true problem which is government spending. How loud do we need to be to make them understand that they are the problem not prices, not businesses, not price gougers.
LB #2
Let me introduce you to Kamala’s price gougers. Let’s go back to ZeroHedge “It makes very little sense why VP Harris has recently admitted at campaign rallies there’s an ongoing inflation storm and affordability crisis, yet it appears she is throwing President Biden under the bus. However, she is second in command and trying to deflect accountability for nation-killing, out-of-control government spending that stoked the inflation storm.” Let’s now switch to solid grounded analysis from Lyn Alden’s Twitter account where she writes “Grocery stores have razor thin margins and people are talking about them price gouging. Tweet #2 Producers of food products typically have margins in the single digit to low double-digit range, which is normal for a business, and similar to what they were a decade ago.” Our price gougers are not grocers. If we wanted to look at price gougers and I am not even recommending that we do. How about we look at Visa? They have a 95% plus gross margin adding two percent to every purchase a consumer makes. Visa gives responsible credit risks their money back and more with points while charging usury level interest rates and fees on the poorest. It is the opposite of the political playbook where Biden wants to tax the rich. Visa just taxes the poor at incredible margins, and nothing is said about them gouging anyone. What about Apple having the audacity to charge $1.500 for a phone. Their margins are what 45%? How about making Apple give us the latest cell phone for $900. How about Nvidia getting away with 75% margins right now. Nope, no gouging talk there. Kamala is out of her depth she is ice fishing on top of the ice right now. There probably wasn’t a worse example to use than grocers. Just when I am thinking Elon and Trump ruined Trump’s chances, Kamala talks and now Trump is back in it. Enough negativity for today, we can finally celebrate some good news.
LB #3
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the mystery of the Nord Stream pipeline has been solved. This from David Gilmour at Mediaite, “According to a bombshell report from the Journal, a small team of Ukrainian divers blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in defiance of an order by President Volodymyr Zelensky that the initially approved operation, first suggested during a drunken night months earlier, be called off. According to the Journal report, a group of six Ukrainian divers allegedly chartered a 50-foot pleasure boat from Germany, sailed it to the Baltic Sea, and planted explosive charges on the Nord Stream pipeline. The idea to sabotage the pipeline reportedly emerged during a drunken night a few months earlier, when a group of Ukrainian businessmen and senior military officers were celebrating their country’s recent military successes.” When this happened, we offered up the Ukraine and the US as the most likely participants and Seymour Hirsch’s article pointed the finger at the CIA and now the WSJ is pointing the finger at the Ukrainians, so I guess we can officially rule out the Russians now? Shouldn’t the liberal media start covering the worst example of environmental terrorism a little more seriously now? That was certainly a big narrative when the world thought Russia did it. I guess we have moved on to grocer price gouging. I think this might be the most ridiculous article ever written in the Wall Street Journal. I cancelled my subscription immediately.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
Ah climate change…The science of telling people that the earth is warming with research done by those whose livelihoods are dependent on global warming grant funding. Remember when the polar bears would be extinct by now, looking at you Big Al from Tennessee? Well, it was just a few years ago when the Great Barrier Reef was running out of coral far far away from the polar bear tragedy. This from Chris Morrison from the Dailysceptic.org “Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began… Travelling back from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reported that last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hard coral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7% to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the result of monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).” Let me repeat that again, highest level since detailed observations began, this is what is so great and pesky abouts facts. They really tend to get in the way of a bullshit narrative. As Upton Sinclair said in 1930’s, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
LF#2
Wyoming is famous for its hot air as the wind rushes down the Rocky Mountains and begins blowing over the plains. The only place with more hot air is Washington DC or the set of the View. To my surprise, there is no hot air coming out of the newspaper in Cody Wyoming because AI is already doing the news. This from Amy Beth Hanson from the AP, “Quotes from Wyoming’s governor and a local prosecutor were the first things that seemed slightly off to Powell Tribune reporter CJ Baker. Then, it was some of the phrases in the stories that struck him as nearly robotic.
The dead giveaway, though, that a reporter from a competing news outlet was using generative artificial intelligence to help write his stories came in a June 26 article about the comedian Larry the Cable Guy being chosen as the grand marshal of a local parade. It concluded with an explanation of the inverted pyramid, the basic approach to writing a breaking news story.” It turns out that AI has the same problem as Joe Biden and Ron Burgundy. It will report anything that is written at the bottom of the page. The reporter using AI was Aaron Pelzcar, and who has admitted what he was doing and has since resigned. Being a journalist is good work if you can avoid doing it.
LF#3
Just a short drive away from Cody is Jackson Hole, the place made famous by Clint Eastwood and his orangutan Clyde in Any Which Way You Can. Next week the Fed heads to Jackon Hole because the world needs to see more pink fingered tenderfoots put cowboy hats on to talk tax policy. We couldn’t send these policy wonks to someplace like Baltimore in August? The market expects to get some direction from Chairman Powell about when not if he is going to start cutting rates. Now I find it funny after the near double digit percent run last week that we need to cut rates at all. Retail spending surpassed expectations as well so why exactly are we raising rates? This has been the market’s MO all year, pricing in rate cuts that Powell hasn’t delivered. If Powell was a pregnant woman he’d have popped by now.
Bloomberg economists are thinking,“It’s highly likely Powell will use his Jackson Hole address to declare it will soon be the ‘appropriate’ time to cut rates. So attention will focus on a narrower question: Will he or won’t he signal an openness to a 50 basis-point move? We don’t think Powell will shut the door to a 50-bp cut, but he also won’t show any particular inclination toward it. That’s because policymakers likely haven’t reached a consensus on the urgency of cutting rates.”
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading …at 40,659.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …at 3.883%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $79.68 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at an all-time high of $2,546/oz.
The price of silver is … at $29.08/oz.
I leave you with this from the information superhighway, Where is the best place to hide a body? Page 2 of Google Results.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.