Nov 242020
 
 November 24, 2020  Posted by at 10:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Claude Monet Impression Sunrise 1872

 

What Could be Better Than a Drug That Can Stop Covid? (CP)
Successful Not-for-Profit Oxford Vaccine Threatens Big Pharma Profit (MPN)
Oxford Covid Vaccine Hit 90% Success Rate Thanks To Dosing Error (G.)
Analyst Warns AstraZeneca Vaccine Efficacy “Embellished” (ZH)
Trump Tells GSA To Allow Biden Transition To Proceed (ZH)
President-Elect Biden Is A Machiavellian’s Dream (GM)
The Germans Are Back! (CJ Hopkins)
Home Alone Thanksgiving (Jim Kunstler)
Bond Defaults Show Bailouts Over For China’s State-Owned Enterprises (Caixin)
OED Says 2020 Has Too Many Potential Words Of The Year (G.)
Work From Home Until April If Possible, PM Tells England’s Workers (G.)
Walmart Thanks Government For Completely Obliterating Small Business (BBee)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“How could some be making billions off the horror that’s killing millions?”

What Could be Better Than a Drug That Can Stop Covid? (CP)

Who doesn’t like a race? A grand global race, like the competition to run the first mile under four minutes. Or the race to scale the world’s highest mountain. Or be the first to walk on the moon. Now we find ourselves in a race of much greater import: the dash to develop an effective vaccine for Covid-19. The world now watches with that fabled bated breath. Pfizer, a Big Pharma behemoth, is running neck-in-neck with Moderna, a lavishly funded corporate upstart. Pfizer, first to announce trial results, reports 90 percent effectiveness rates for its pandemic-stopper. Moderna, not to be outdone, reports 95 percent success rates. We actually hit that brass ring, too, retorts Pfizer. And ours even works with older people! What a race! How exciting! More to the point: How lucrative!

This race is minting billionaires. The founder of Pfizer’s partner company, BioNTech, achieved billionaire status earlier this year. Earlier this month, that founder and his two top investors saw their personal fortunes leap a combined $2 billion. At Moderna, three top players, including the CEO Stéphane Bancel, have become billionaires so far this year. Various other pharmaceutical industry movers and shakers — like the hedge fund behind Vaxart, a San Francisco concern — have made hundreds of millions. “Every day, Americans wake up and make sacrifices during this pandemic,” says Ben Wakana, the executive director at Patients for Affordable Drugs. “Drug companies see this as a payday.” The headlines that trumpet coronavirus boondoggles have become, in effect, the rain on our yes-we-now-have-a-vaccine! parade.

How could some be making billions off the horror that’s killing millions? The biggest tragedy of all: Things don’t have to be this way. Over a half-century ago, we conquered polio, and no one became fabulously rich in the process. We could have done the same with Covid-19.

Read more …

Was the AstraZeneca stock price under presssure yesterday because investors figured this out?

Successful Not-for-Profit Oxford Vaccine Threatens Big Pharma Profit (MPN)

The world is abuzz today after a team of medical researchers from Oxford University in the United Kingdom announced that advanced trials of their experimental coronavirus vaccine were a roaring success, with the vaccine possibly being rolled out before Christmas. Testing was done on 24,000 volunteers in the U.K, Brazil, and South Africa, with an average effectiveness of over 70%. However, when the vaccine was administered as a half dose, then patients were later given a full one, effectiveness increased to 90%. Encouragingly, there were no serious side effects registered among any of the volunteers, none of whom had to go to the hospital as a result of being immunized. The U.K. government has already ordered 100 million doses.

Professor Andrew Pollard, Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chief investigator of the experiment, was delighted, stating that: “These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly, we’ve found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90 percent effective, and if this dosing regimen is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply. Today’s announcement is only possible thanks to the many volunteers in our trial, and the hard working and talented team of researchers based around the world.”

Even better news is that the Oxford team developed the breakthrough vaccine with the explicit intention of supplying it around the world on a not-for-profit basis, meaning that the poorest nations on the planet will not have to worry about being shut out of a cure due to lack of funds. This was certainly not the case with other solutions developed by the likes of Moderna or Pfizer. Indeed, the world’s richest countries had already bought up the majority of their COVID-19 vaccines, whose secrets were being closely guarded, rather than shared widely to help the rest of humanity.

Large scale manufacturing of the vaccine has already begun in ten countries, according to a press release from the University of Oxford. “Today marks an important milestone in our fight against the pandemic. This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against COVID-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency,” said Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca, a bioresearch company that partnered with the 924-year-old educational institution on development and testing. “Furthermore, the vaccine’s simple supply chain and our no-profit pledge and commitment to broad, equitable and timely access means it will be affordable and globally available supplying hundreds of millions of doses on approval.”

Read more …

“Scientists said they still could not fully explain why the half dose gave better protection, but said it may be that it triggers the immune system differently.”

Oxford Covid Vaccine Hit 90% Success Rate Thanks To Dosing Error (G.)

The Oxford University and AstraZeneca vaccine trials reached 90% efficacy by accident thanks to the “serendipity” of an error that led to some participants receiving half doses, it has emerged. On Monday scientists revealed that the Oxford vaccine had an overall efficacy of 70%, but could be around 90% effective when administered as a half dose followed by a full dose a month later. “The reason we had the half dose is serendipity,” said Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca. When university researchers were distributing the vaccine at the end of April, around the start of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s partnership, they noticed expected side effects such as fatigue, headaches or arm aches were milder than expected.

“So we went back and checked … and we found out that they had underpredicted the dose of the vaccine by half,” said Pangalos. Instead of restarting the trial, he said researchers decided to continue with the half dose and administer the full dose booster shot at the scheduled time. About 3,000 people were given the half dose and then a full dose four weeks later, with data showing 90% were protected. In the larger group, who were given two full doses also four weeks apart, efficacy was 62%. Scientists said they still could not fully explain why the half dose gave better protection, but said it may be that it triggers the immune system differently.

Prof Sarah Gilbert from Oxford University, who led the research, said: “It could be that by giving a small amount of the vaccine to start with and following up with a big amount, that’s a better way of kicking the immune system into action and giving us the strongest immune response and the most effective immune response.”

Read more …

How wrong was this analyst?

Analyst Warns AstraZeneca Vaccine Efficacy “Embellished” (ZH)

AstraZeneca’s announcement that its adenovirus-vector vaccine is roughly 70% effective (which followed an announcement claiming the vaccine is safe and effective in the elderly) failed to impress investors, as Astrazeneca shares tumbled on the news in premarket. But AZ shares took a second leg lower on Monday when a health-care analyst dropped some damning commentary that has caught the market’s attention. SVB Leerink analyst George Porges said Monday that the company is likely to be roundly criticized for publishing its results without enough data on safety and other factors. The vaccine’s (known formally as ChAdOx1) safety disclosure simply stated that “no serious safety events related to the vaccine have been confirmed”, as well as for its results, which the company “tried to embellish” by highlighting a reported 90% efficacy in the relatively small sub-set of subjects in the study who received the modified initial vaccination followed by the “full dose” four weeks later.

Porges believes that this product will never be licensed in the US due to the design of the company’s trials, which don’t appear to match the FDA’s minimum criteria, and the occurrence of severe safety events that resulted in the extended clinical hold on enrollment in the US (remember when the US put the AZ-Oxford trial recruitment on hold for a month). The findings, according to Porges, confound his original thesis that “all spike protein vaccines are created equal”, which is manifestly not the case now. This raises questions about other adenovirus-vector vaccines, including the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

On the other hand, Porges said “we remain optimistic about the outlook for adjuvanted protein sub unit vaccines such as those in development at Novavax and GSK/SNY, and these engineered synthetic virus vaccines may have a role long term in boosting, but it appears that the occurrence of pre-existing or post-vaccination immunity to the vector has a significant dampening effect on the efficacy of the vaccines (and may confer risk as well) and for this reason we believe these products are likely to be regarded as relatively marginal suppliers in the COVID vaccine market of the future.”

Read more …

“Murphy also said that she had received “threats online, by phone, and by mail directed at my safety, my family, my staff, and even my pets..”

Trump Tells GSA To Allow Biden Transition To Proceed (ZH)

In what is the closest words yet to a concession, President Trump agreed to let GSA proceed with the Biden administration transition. In a pair of tweets, Trump noted: “I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA.” Trump added that while the election litigation battle continues… “Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!” … He will allow the transition to proceed: “Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”

[..] Trump’s tweets follow a letter from Emily Murphy (see below), the General Services Administration chief, in which she told Biden that “because of recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results, I have determined that you may access the post-election resources and services described in Section 3 of the Act upon request,” which includes some $6.3 million in funding and other government resources, as well as access to current agency officials and briefing books. The biggest change now is that the Biden transition team will be able to flood federal agencies with officials focused on preparing the way for his administration. They will have access to agency staff and briefing books assembled earlier this year.

Until today’s GSA letter, the Biden transition team had worked informally to establish a new administration, including assembling a coronavirus task force and consulting with public health officials outside of the federal government, mimicking the approach former Vice President Dick Cheney took during the disputed 2000 election. In the letter, Murphy also said that she had received “threats online, by phone, and by mail directed at my safety, my family, my staff, and even my pets in an effort to coerce me into making this determination prematurely.” She added that she was not “directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official” into the making or timing of a decision on the presidential transition.

Read more …

“This country, for what it is, takes itself too seriously. Have you ever considered the possibility that America has always been a joke? I’m sure most historians have.”

President-Elect Biden Is A Machiavellian’s Dream (GM)

Though I did not put this in writing, not from responsibility but just out of cowardice, I did go around telling people IRL that my preferred outcome was “it looks like Trump wins, then it looks like Biden steals it from him.” Some mistook this for an “accelerationist” stance. It was only Machiavellian. I would also tell Trumpists that I was “so pro-Trump, I wrap all the way around to pro-Biden.” This did not raise many hackles and was also quite true. In any case I am delighted to hail, perhaps prematurely but I doubt it, the election of this elder statesman, this American Nestor, always a bridesmaid and now a bride, “China” Joe Biden. If the big guy ever needs to pull an Augustus, he knows who to call. (President-elect Biden has in fact kissed my own mother, not in a sexual way I think. My stepfather, a former Biden staffer from the ‘80s, is a gentleman of honor. So I hear only good things about America’s new cynosure. His teeth sure are looking great.)

It is useless to speculate on the details of a Philadelphia election. One need only say the words, “Philadelphia election,” and anyone on or near the grave of Mark Twain will experience a little earthquake. Has Philadelphia ever had a free and fair election? (This country, for what it is, takes itself too seriously. Have you ever considered the possibility that America has always been a joke? I’m sure most historians have.) The fundamental purpose of a democratic election is to test the strength of the sides in a civil conflict, without anyone actually getting hurt. The majority wins because the strongest side would win. Better to measure that by counting heads, than knocking heads; and counting heads produces a reasonable guess as to who would win a head-knocking contest. Same outcome, fewer concussions: a Pareto optimization.

But this guess is much better if it actually measures humans who are both willing and able to walk down the street and show up. Anyone who cannot show up at the booth is unlikely to show up for the civil war. This is one of many reasons that an in-person election is a more accurate election. (If voters could be qualified by physique, it would be even more accurate.) My sense is that in many urban communities, voting by proxy in some sense is the norm. The people whose names are on the ballots really exist; and almost all of them actually did support China Joe. Or at least, preferred him. The extent to which they perform any tangible political action, including physically going to the booth, is very low; so is their engagement with the political system. They do not watch much CNN.

Read more …

”..these protesters were all “Corona Deniers,” “far-right extremists,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “neo-Nazis,” and so on, so they probably got what they deserved.”

The Germans Are Back! (CJ Hopkins)

Break out the Wagner, folks…the Germans are back! No, not the warm, fuzzy, pussified, peace-loving, post-war Germans … the Germans! You know the ones I mean. The “I didn’t know where the trains were going” Germans. The “I was just following orders” Germans. The other Germans. Yeah…those Germans. In case you missed it, on November 18, the German parliament passed a law, the so-called “Infection Protection Act” (“Das Infektionsschutzgesetz” in German) formally granting the government the authority to issue whatever edicts it wants under the guise of protecting the public health.

The government has been doing this anyway — ordering lockdowns, curfews, travel bans, banning demonstrations, raiding homes and businesses, ordering everyone to wear medical masks, harassing and arresting dissidents, etc. — but now it has been “legitimized” by the Bundestag, enshrined into law, and presumably stamped with one of those intricate official stamps that German bureaucrats like to stamp things with. Now, this “Infection Protection Act,” which was rushed through the parliament, is not in any way comparable to the “Enabling Act of 1933,” which formally granted the government the authority to issue whatever edicts it wanted under the guise of remedying the distress of the people.

Yes, I realize that sounds quite similar, but, according to the government and the German media, there is absolutely no equivalence whatsoever, and anyone who suggests there is is “a far-right AfD extremist,” “a neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist,” or “an anti-vax esotericist,” or whatever. As the Protection Act was being legitimized (i.e., the current one, not the one in 1933), tens of thousands of anti-totalitarian protesters gathered in the streets, many of them carrying copies of the Grundgesetz (i.e., the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany), which the parliament had just abrogated. They were met by thousands of riot police, who declared the demonstration “illegal” (because many of the protesters were not wearing masks), beat up and arrested hundreds of them, and then hosed down the rest with water cannons.

The German media — which are totally objective, and not at all like Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda in the Nazi era — dutifully reminded the German public that these protesters were all “Corona Deniers,” “far-right extremists,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “neo-Nazis,” and so on, so they probably got what they deserved.

Read more …

“We’ll dare to have seven at the table here, and therefore not have to eat some reincarnation of turkey for three weeks afterward.”

Home Alone Thanksgiving (Jim Kunstler)

One result of these final innings in the contest will be the delegitimizing of Ol’ White Joe Biden as president, should his forces finally prevail. Half of America will not only refuse to buy it, but it will incite a counter-resistance on the right as determined as Hillary’s pussyhat brigades and bureaucrat activists of the post-2016 era, and possibly more bloodthirsty, especially if the left makes a move to confiscate guns. The prospect of Joe Biden functioning as president is a joke, anyway. Have you forgotten his non-campaign campaign? The empty parking lots with the white circles? The pitiful gaffes? And lurking in this fog of war is the all that odious monkey business selling influence abroad involving crack-head son Hunter and the rest of the Biden family. Think that’s going away?

What you’d actually get with a Biden “victory” is a Deep State junta of malicious, coercive, and vengeance-crazed characters such as John Brennan, Andrew Weissmann, Nancy Pelosi, Susan Rice, and Adam Schiff, with Barack Obama hovering somewhere backstage, commanding this-and-that — even if President Ole White Joe is shoved aside on account of mental incompetence, leaving Kamala Harris in the Oval Office to giggle through the next four years while she orchestrates junior-high-school style mean girl campaigns against the enemies of Wokesterism. The DC “blob” has demonstrated that it doesn’t need no steenkin’ president to work its wicked will.

Meanwhile, have a lovely Home Alone Thanksgiving, if you are dutifully following the orders of Governors Cuomo, Pritzker, Whitmer, Murphy, and Newsom. We’ll dare to have seven at the table here, and therefore not have to eat some reincarnation of turkey for three weeks afterward. As a holiday bonus, I leave you with a little burlesque submitted by a reader wishing to remain anonymous for your amusement, as follows….

Read more …

Wonder why Xi is allowing it.

Bond Defaults Show Bailouts Over For China’s State-Owned Enterprises (Caixin)

“This might be a historic credit crisis,” a debt investor told Caixin, referring to a recent series of bond defaults by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The bond market veteran’s employer holds AAA-rated bonds of two state-owned defaulters in the crisis: Brilliance Auto Group Holdings Co., a Shenyang-based automaker with links to BMW AG, and Yongcheng Coal and Electricity Holding Group Co. Ltd., a major coal mining company in Henan province. He has been trudging between Shenyang in the northeast and Zhengzhou in central China trying to collect the debts. Both bond issuers are profit-making companies backed by local governments, so their defaults caught investors off guard and set off a chain reaction affecting other debt issuers and local government financing vehicles.

Such bondholders counted on government bailouts to reduce the risk of default by SOEs. But amid a national policy change to shift risk to markets, local governments have been unresponsive. They are now coming under criticism for allowing SOEs to default and avoiding their own responsibility for debt taken on by government-backed businesses. “Default by SOEs is not a terrible thing,” one bond market participant said. “What we fear is that the government allows SOEs to evade repayment of debts in the name of marketized default.” Now the biggest challenge for the government is how to push forward the marketization restructuring of SOEs while avoiding local credit collapses that could spark a domino effect and weigh on the economic recovery.

Since China launched a massive deleveraging campaign in 2015 to curb excessive borrowing by local governments, financial institutions and businesses, private companies’ credit risks have been relatively fully exposed. That means even a large wave of defaults by private companies wouldn’t disturb the market. But the risks related to borrowing by SOEs have been largely an iceberg under the water, a senior bond market participant said. “Once the SOEs default their debt, it would turn the market upside down,” he said. The sell-off of corporate bonds triggered by the defaults of Brilliance Auto and Yongcheng has caused 60 billion yuan ($9.15 billion) of losses for bond investors, according to one brokerage estimate.

Many energy companies canceled or delayed bond issuance plans over the past two weeks. A coal mining enterprise in Shanxi had to pay a 5% coupon rate for an ultra-short-term bond issued Nov. 18, 1.1 percentage points higher than an earlier bond from the same issuer. As the default rate for Chinese private companies rose sharply to 5.34% in 2018 from 1.83% in 2017, defaults by SOEs amounted to only 0.02%, according to a calculation by Huatai Securities.”The deleveraging is like a storm that has drenched everyone,” one fund manager said. “How can only private firms get wet while SOEs get away with it?”

Read more …

New riches.

OED Says 2020 Has Too Many Potential Words Of The Year (G.)

For the first time, the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen not to name a word of the year, describing 2020 as “a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word”. Instead, from “unmute” to “mail-in”, and from “coronavirus” to “lockdown”, the eminent reference work has announced its “words of an ‘unprecedented’ year”. On Monday, the dictionary said that there were too many words to sum up the events of 2020. Tracking its vast corpus of more than 11bn words found in web-based news, blogs and other text sources, its lexicographers revealed what the dictionary described as “seismic shifts in language data and precipitous frequency rises in new coinage” over the past 12 months.

Coronavirus, one of its words of the year, is a term that dates back to the 1960s, although it was previously mainly used by scientists. By March this year it was one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language. “Covid-19”, first recorded on 11 February in a report by the World Health Organization, quickly overtook coronavirus in frequency of use, noted the dictionary. One of the year’s most remarkable linguistic developments, according to the OED, has been the extent to which scientific terms have entered general discourse, as we have all become armchair epidemiologists, with most of us now familiar with the term “R number”. “Before 2020 this was a term known mainly to epidemiologists; now non-experts routinely talk about ‘getting the R down’ or ‘bringing R below 1’.

Other terms that have become much more common in everyday discourse this year include ‘flatten the curve’ and ‘community transmission’,” said the dictionary. Use of the phrase “following the science”, it added, has increased in frequency more than 1,000% compared with 2019. Other coronavirus-related language cited by the OED includes “pandemic”, which has seen usage increase by more than 57,000% this year, as well as “circuit breaker”, “lockdown”, “shelter-in-place”, “bubbles”, “face masks” and “key workers”. The revolution in working habits has also affected language, with both “remote” and “remotely” seeing more than 300% growth in use since March. “On mute” and “unmute” have seen 500% rises since March, while the portmanteaus “workation” and “staycation” increased by 500% and 380% respectively.

Other news events have also been reflected in language. In the early months of 2020, there were peaks in usage of “impeachment” and “acquittal”, and “mail-in” has seen an increase of 3,000%. Use of “Black Lives Matter” and “BLM” also surged, as did the term “QAnon”, up by 5,716% on last year. The phrase “conspiracy theory”, meanwhile, has almost doubled in usage between October 2019 and October 2020. Use of “Brexit”, however, has dropped by 80% this year.

Read more …

The impact on society, communities will be huge. A Great Reset.

Work From Home Until April If Possible, PM Tells England’s Workers (G.)

The government has told all workers in England they should work from home if possible until April 2021 as part of a move to a stricter tier system that is likely to be a further blow to businesses reliant on commuters in city centres. Boris Johnson on Monday confirmed that under every tier of new restrictions, workers in England who can work from home should continue to do so. The rules under the new three-tier system will last until at least the end of March if voted through by parliament. The government’s 64-page Covid-19 winter plan suggested that working from home was one of the three key areas highlighted by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). The other policies apparently suggested by Sage included closing pubs that do not serve food in tier 2 areas and closing all hospitality venues in tier 3 areas.

The guidance said: “The previous tiered system had an impact on viral transmission, but Sage advised that stronger measures would be needed in some areas to prevent the epidemic from growing. The tiers therefore need to be strengthened to keep the virus under control.” England’s larger cities, such as Birmingham, Leeds, London and Manchester, and Scottish cities such as Glasgow have lagged behind their smaller counterparts in recovering from lockdowns because of their reliance on workers, according to the Centre for Cities, thinktank. Smaller cities are more reliant on leisure footfall, a disadvantage in normal times that has been flipped on its head by the pandemic. Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at the thinktank, said: “The prospect of them having to hang on to April may mean when city centre workers go back, their favourite restaurant or coffee bar may not be there.”

Central London has been particularly hard hit because of the vast number of people who previously commuted into it from other parts of the city or beyond. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told the Observer on Sunday that there was “potentially an existential threat to central London as we know it” because of the curbs on office workers. The City of London Corporation, the governing body of the Square Mile, which also advocates for the financial services sector, said UK ministers needed to provide a plan for a return to offices before a vaccine. “What we also urgently need from the government is a clear plan to allow office workers to return to Covid-secure workplaces in order to get as much of the economy operating as possible,” said Catherine McGuinness, the corporation’s policy chair. “This is vital to protect livelihoods.”

Read more …

Not even funny anymore.

Walmart Thanks Government For Completely Obliterating Small Business (BBee)

In an open letter addressed to state officials, Walmart leadership expressed gratefulness to the government for inflating their sales and stock price while completely pulverizing their small business competition. “Yeah, we know 2020 has been tough for the little people,” said one board member while shoveling piles of cash into his vault. “But it’s been super great for us! No longer do we have to worry about the baker down the street or the family-owned hardware store next door taking away some of our business. The government just blew them up! We didn’t even ask them to! Can you believe it? What luck!”


According to reports, Americans are really looking forward to giving all their business solely to giant mega-corporations like Walmart, Amazon, and McDonald’s until all local culture has disappeared. “This is my dream come true!” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “Within 10 years, everyone will be wearing the same identical futuristic grey jumpsuit and eating Amazon-issued food cubes, just like in the movies! That will be so cool.” Sources indicate most powerful corporations are advocating at least one more year of lockdowns to make sure small business competition stays dead. “We have to make sure those uppity business owners never threaten us again,” said Bezos while sitting in a massive chair and stroking a white cat.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 24 2020

Viewing 17 posts - 1 through 17 (of 17 total)
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  • #65991

    Claude Monet Impression Sunrise 1872   • What Could be Better Than a Drug That Can Stop Covid? (CP) • Successful Not-for-Profit Oxford Vaccine Th
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 24 2020]

    #65992
    Dr. D
    Participant

    The Germans Are Back! (CJ Hopkins)

    Yay Europe! Not like the United States at all. No, they’re much, much worse. End of all civil liberties and human rights. End of all free speech and free assembly. End of all free will and due process. The people cheer! Yay, shoot out more eyes of French women! They deserve it for having opinions different from our own.
    “It acts like a cult, totalitarianism.”

    “Pennsylvania Governor Bans Alcohol Sales on the Day Before Thanksgiving”

    Can anyone tell me how he can do that? Wouldn’t someone have to pass a d—ned law? I’m sure when I say “The law is in my mouth” and “Whatever I think for the next 5 minutes until I change it” y’all think I’m kidding, exaggerating, hyperbolic clap-trap. That’s literally what Wolf just did here. He got up one morning, had coffee, then said “Alcohol is hereby forbidden from the time I finish my coffee until I feel like making it legal again, maybe by Friday, who knows?”

    Everyone just goes: “Dum-de-doh, I guess since you DIDN’T pass a law, and without them your words have NO legal authority, I’ll just obey police/prosecutor/judge/storeowner/citizen, forever and ever, amen.”

    You know, like COVID. For which there is NO law passed, and no legal authority to pass one, as Michigan and coincidentally Pennsylvania Supreme Courts just ruled. They ignored it, because: Law. We haven’t obeyed the law in 100 years and we ain’t gonna start now. Ask Newsome, Pelosi, Cuomo…

    Human rights were not suspended, because they do NOT come from the U.S. Constitution (nota bene to you Germans) they come from your CREATOR, and can NOT be suspended. However they will need to be enforced. By the real government, YOU the people. With the consent of the governed or lack thereof. At least have the b-lls of tiny Portugal, who just ruled PCR tests are completely worthless and cannot be used to establish law.

    Work from Home Until April If Possible, PM Tells England’s Workers (G.)”

    Translation: There are still some small businesses, those dreadful “nation of shopkeepers” with the hateful piano in the parlour, whose lives, wealth, and purpose have not been transferred to Jeff Bezos and the Peabody Coal Company Store.

    We will keep handing out the 90% false-positives tests until they are utterly destroyed and their children are white with hunger and force-vaccinated without parental consent as in D.C. /Translation You’re welcome.

    “Walmart Thanks Government for Completely Obliterating Small Business (BBee)”

    See, even normal people can cotton onto this, it’s so blindingly obvious.

    To me, it was obvious 3 years ago when they burned down a fortune promoting totally unprofitable mail-order-home-grocery, self-checkouts, drone-delivery, and self-driving-taxis. Literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, have no chance of being economical, must less profitable. I think I said it back then, if you look. I’m sure I was called crazy, but what a coincidence, eh? I do not find that suspicious at all.

    Speaking of: right now they are calling for the end of ICE cars by 2030 and a move to all-electric, while having no lithium supply and no electric grid. Obviously, they are serious and this is not a similar scam, because I find that perfectly logical and adhering to all engineering standards.

    You know like when ACA added 30,000 people to the health system but added no doctors or nurses, only administrators, and the medical stocks when up. It was so good, Congress wrote and exemption for themselves they had to punish you 5 grand to take it! Clearly demonstrating it was earnest, honest, and heartfelt.

    Or like right now: We have a widely-publicized Economic Reset — proudly promoted by themselves — that coincidentally causes a world-wide shut down, the end of all commercial activity not owned by them, the end to all protests, handouts to insiders by the trillions per quarter, and worldwide surveillance and unlimited martial law including gestapo arrests and forced involuntary committal to psych wards for whistleblowers and objectors.

    I’m sure they’re not connected at all. It’s all a coincidence that they have written about, worldwide, in public, for almost 100 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

    #65994
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/powell-for-people.html Picture of banana grove planted @ link

    Brilliant idealistic lawyer, Sidney Powell does not represent Team Trump. (She clearly states these voting systems were used to rob Californians who voted for Sanders, and give them Clinton, instead.)
    Sidney Powell represents the American voters, who have the constitutional right to cast their ballots and have them tallied correctly.
    That’s easy to like. I listened to the 20 minute radio interview with Ms Powell.
    This is a criminal case she is making about vote rigging.
    ​ ​I agree with the campaign’s statement that I am not part of the campaign’s legal team. I never signed a retainer agreement or sent the President or the campaign a bill for my expenses or fees.
    ​ ​My intent has always been to expose all the fraud I could find and let the chips fall where they may–whether it be upon Republicans or Democrats.
    ​ ​The evidence I’m compiling is overwhelming that this software tool was used to shift millions of votes from President Trump and other Republican candidates to Biden and other Democrat candidates. We are proceeding to prepare our lawsuit and plan to file it this week. It will be epic.
    ​ ​We will not allow this great Republic to be stolen by communists from without and within or our votes altered or manipulated by foreign actors in Hong Kong, Iran, Venezuela, or Serbia, for example, who have neither regard for human life nor the people who are the engine of this exceptional country.
    ​ ​#WeThePeople elected Donald Trump and other Republican candidates to restore the vision of America as a place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
    ​ ​You may assist this effort by making a non tax-deductible contribution to

    http://www.DefendingTheRepublic.org. #KrakenOnSteroids”​ [I did]

    Here are the moving parts behind this approach:
    1. The facts about Dominion and Smartmatic, above.
    2. The strong statistical indication about voter fraud, also above.
    3. Powell’s statement to Larry O’Connor on Friday that she represents the people, not the president:
    4. The information that Michael Flynn Jr. and Lin Wood provided about the administration separating from Powell for financial reasons and her still being in the fight.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/making-sense-news-about-sidney-powell

    (TAE readers have seen most of the vote fraud stories I include)

    Matthew Ehret looks at the strategic competition for the future between globalists and nationalists.
    ​ I​t is still impossible to state with 100% certainty that Joe Biden will in fact be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. The simple reason for this is that verifiable evidence of vast partisan vote fraud tied to the highest echelons of British Intelligence have mount with every passing day with Dominion voting systems most recently accused of erasing 2.7 million Trump votes across the nation, and giving 220 000 pro-Trump votes given to Biden in Pennsylvania (along with hundreds of other vote counting anomalies and technology glitches across all major swing states).​…
    ​ By now most people reading this are aware (or should be aware) that the trans Atlantic financial system has been set to melt down under a $1.5 quadrillion derivatives time bomb being held together by a mix of wishful thinking, hyperinflationary money printing and vast unpayable securitized debts waiting to default. It should also come as no surprise that the Great Reset Agenda designed to coordinate the “post-COVID world order” has nothing to do with any actual pandemic, and everything to do with imposing a new bankers’ dictatorship onto the nations of the earth.​..
    ​ ​Biden says that either: 1) Someone else takes America’s place as global hegemon that doesn’t “advance our interests and values or 2) “No one will and chaos will ensue”.
    ​But wait a minute!
    ​ ​Shouldn’t there be a third option in Biden’s crystal ball? What about the option of a world defined by sovereign nations working in win-win cooperation and mutual self interest?​…​
    ​ It​ is too easily forgotten that the UN Charter, as outlined by Franklin Roosevelt was premised on the belief that America must never become an empire but merely help those in need by providing the means of industrial development. This was essentially understood as the internationalization of the New Deal which included social safety nets, bank regulation, productive work guarantees and infrastructure projects to all other nations aspiring independence across Africa, Asia and the Americas or struggling the heal from the destructive effects of the war.
    ​ ​FDR’s vision for the IMF/World Bank mandates were never to reconquer poor nations under a new system of debt slavery and conditionalities, but to extend productive credit for long term megaprojects that were in the common aims of mankind and which angered Churchill immensely.
    ​ ​Most importantly, this vision was premised on the need for a trust-based U.S.-Russia-China alliance that never would have permitted the emergence of a bipolar Cold War.

    Trump vs Biden: Will the Future Belong to the Patriots or the Globalists?

    ​”Ending ‘forever wars'”:​ (Yeah, one war is all you really need, but it’s spatially and temporally unrestricted, you see.)
    ​ ​Biden’s likely pick for Secretary of Defense, Michele Flournoy, and his top foreign policy advisor, Tony Blinken, have played central roles in every war waged by Democratic presidents dating back to the Clinton era
    ​ ​Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military’s doctrine of permanent war – what it called “full spectrum dominance.”
    ​ ​Flournoy called for “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.”

    VIDEO: Top Biden advisors Flournoy and Blinken promise smarter, more secretive permanent war policy

    ​The Ron Paul Institute has more detail on “Biden’s Deep State” picks for top level political assignments. We know their work, already. Hubris.
    ​ ​Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about the banality of evil, and there’s never been a more banal bunch than the foreign policy and security state crew Barak Obama surrounded himself with for eight years beside the possible exception of Bush’s own Neocons.
    ​ ​Now after three years screaming about “Russian collusion” it appears the Evil Empire is about to regain its lost ground, championing new wars and more interventionist expansionism with a much greater role for the US military in the world.
    ​http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/november/18/biden-s-deep-state/

    ​Marc sends this paper about ivermectin vs hydroxychloroquine, when otherwise used with standard-care with things like zinc, high dose vitamin-C and NAC (aka: acetylcysteine)​
    A substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in Ivermectin treated groups; group I (mild/moderate cases), (99%, and 0.0%, respectively) and group III (severe cases), (94%, and 2.0% respectively) versus hydroxychloroquine plus standard care treated groups; group II (mild/moderate cases), (74% and 4%, respectively) and group IV (severe cases) (50% and 20%, respectively). Ivermectin had significantly reduced the incidence of infection in health care and household contacts up to 2% compared to 10% in non ivermectin group when used as a prophylaxis.
    https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v2

    Review of the Emerging Evidence Supporting the Use of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19 ​ (Extensive)
    https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FLCCC-Ivermectin-in-the-prophylaxis-and-treatment-of-COVID-19.pdf

    ​ Keep your immune system working well with sleep, exercise fresh vegetables and 5000 units per day of vitamin-D:
    ​More people are getting COVID-19 twice, suggesting immunity wanes quickly in some (A vaccine can hope to be almost this good.)
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/more-people-are-getting-covid-19-twice-suggesting-immunity-wanes-quickly-some

    ​ This is probably not what you think, and it’s good insight from Charles Hugh Smith
    The One Chart That Predicts our Future
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-one-chart-that-predicts-our-future.html

    #65995

    I doubt any living creature would willingly sit on the lap of Jeff Bezos. That’s why his dog is a robot.

    #65996

    Robots here and robots there;
    Robots can’t give Bezos hair.
    There’s a chip on Bezos’ shoulder-
    ‘Bots can’t stop him growing older.

    #65997
    zerosum
    Participant

    NOVEMBER 23, 2020
    What Could be Better Than a Drug That Can Stop Covid? A Society That Doesn’t Let Some Make Billions off a Drug Millions Can’t Access
    BY SAM PIZZIGATI

    https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/best-foods-high-in-zinc
    The 10 Best Foods That Are High in Zinc

    Top 10 Best Sources of Vitamin D


    Top 10 Best Sources of Vitamin D

    Recommendation for everyone over 65 who are afraid to die.
    1. Spend your savings to enjoy life
    2. Go south to get your vitamin D from the sunshine
    3. Eat a great non-fattening diet to get your Zinc
    4. Don’t use cheap care workers. Use a live-in nurse
    5. If you lost your partner, Don’t forget that when you are retired, soul mates are attracted by the color of gold not your sexy body

    #65998
    Bill7
    Participant

    “Pandemic is Over” – Former Pfizer Chief Science Officer Says “Second Wave” Faked On False-Positive COVID Tests:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/pandemic-over-former-pfizer-chief-science-officer-says-second-wave-faked-false-positive

    #65999
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Science!™ The same people who do the COVID test do a DNA test that looks up the father online, then claims that guy is the father by DNA.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2020-11-24/labcorp-hidden-liabilities-faulty-paternity-tests

    Ah, anotehr fine day’s work for “experts” who wear white coats. Every paternity test in the last 10 years more fake than Theranos.

    …Did I mention they also do Covid tests? Yeah, that.

    No doubt they learned it all from the FBI labs who did the exact same thing: “Well, what do you WANT the test to say?” FBI still there, never discredited. Experts. Less good at their jobs than 3rd Taco station in Taco Bell. …Which has higher security than U.S. Elections.

    But just keep goin’ guys. No need to fix anything or change yet. It’s clearly not bad enough for that.

    #66000
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Oh, and there’s a Lou Dobbs interview from 2006 making the rounds where they outed Dominion for being Venezuelan when they first appeared. No one cared. Why would they? “Well what do you WANT the outcome of the election to be?”

    #66001
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has to be the most visible aggressive proponent of this Modern Monetary Theory bullbuzz going around lately, and I gotta admit it does sound tempting at first blush.
    I mean the filthy rich have been doing it for themselves like forever, right, so why not for the rest of us, too ?
    Her sales pitch , boiled down to its basic goo goes like this :  It doesn’t matter how much “borrowed into existence” debt is created because we can just fire up the good ol’ counterfeit machine and print up as many Yankee Dollahs as we need to pay it all off . That’s what we’ve been doing for decades, and despite a few glitches (like the crash of ’08 !) its been working great for us back here in the USSA.
    So far (as in,   “up til now” )  however, it looks like all of this free money has all gone to the rich. It goes to them as “loans” (low-to-no interest , by the way) who launder it by “investing” in worthless imaginary shit like Apple or Microsoft stock , or gazillion dollar palaces in the Hamptons that can ALWAYS and FOREVER  be bought today for 1 dollah and sold tomorrow for 2 (netting a nice profit, over and over again).  Any shortfall in that scam is made up for by flogging the peasants to work harder, or cutting their wages. 
    The fantasy she is selling is to convince the peasants that they, too,  can get in on the free money long-con .   Of course anyone with a brain cell  intuitively  knows there’s something wrong with that picture, BUT  they sure would like some of that free money for themselves, too . Like , why should the rich get it all ?  AND  shit, we’ve gotten away with it this far, haven’t we?  Why not for a bit longer ?  And if the whole shebang IS all going to come crashing down anyway then why shouldn’t   WE   (poor folk) get in on some free buckets of honey  before they’re all gone ?
    AOC presents a pretty compelling argument, insofar as the poor folk are concerned, but there are a few itsy bitsy little flaws (like mass starvation, world war and certain death) but , hey, nothing’s perfect right ? Here is what’s really wrong with her sales pitch :

    1.   First and foremost : the rich guys who write the rules and make the laws will  never ever   let any more poor folk in on the racket to any greater degree than the poor folk are already in on the skim.  In other words, she can not get such legislation passed, and so the  temptation she dangles is just another politician-style lie to get herself elected.
    2.   Unbeknownst to the poor starving masses in America (who sincerely do picture themselves as exploited victims)  America’s middle and lower and lowest classes are themselves beneficiaries of the scam already .  They’re just not “math aware” enough to see it. You see It is not America’s poor who are being ripped off. It is the people outside our borders who are being bled dry.  They are forced to borrow worthless dollars (fake money)  and pay it back with REAL money , REAL work, and REAL  products. 
    Everybody in America ( including the poor) have been enjoying the benefits of this free ride ever since the US Dollar became  the World Reserve Currency in 1944 (treaty of Bretton Woods, ratified by the 44 largest countries, including the USSR). If you wonder what the “financial system” is, well that system (Bretton Woods) is the system. It made it a legally enforceable fact that international debt would be denominated in U.S. Dollars. It made the dollar King.
    Don’t break your brain on this point. It’s way more simple than it’s made to appear. Basically, if I loan you dollars then you can’t pay me back in wampum. You must get your hands on dollars to pay me back if I say so. And the courts of the world will back me up it. No exceptions.
    3.   No one knows the upper limit of just how far (or for how much longer)  this ridiculous ripoff can continue before the true victims  (i.e. the rest of the world) reach the end of their rope and declare  “No mas ! ” But there is one thing they all know and agree upon :  The world is teetering on the brink of that “system”  breaking under the load of too much real money is being demanded from real producers (i.e. the rest of the world)  to pay back too much fake money to counterfeiters  (i.e. the USA). 
    In other words,  no way  will the powers that be hasten ‘The End Of The World As We Know’ It by giving freebies to ungrateful poor people. Those same poor people, however, might soon hit the end of their rope, and put an end to the world of the rich anyway. In other words, revolt.
    4. THEREFORE AND ON THE OTHER HAND :   Rich folks might  be persuaded to pay poor folks not to revolt,  and that is the card that AOC is playing .   China would like to see this  because it will speed up dooms day for the USA’s hegemonic empire. That’s why China has been so enthusiastically bank rolling every Democrat, publisher and commie agitator they can get their hands on by any and ever means, fair or foul. Buy, bribe, blackmail, trick, persuade, fake, or do it themselves and pretend to be someone else. Makes no difference to the them, just as long as it works.
    The Chinese Communist Party knows beyond the slightest shadow of any doubt that they cannot rule the world until the US Dollar Reserve Currency does NOT  rule the world.
    5. So, probably yeah. We could all get free money for a while  (just not very much and not for very long ) . . . BUT it will trigger the true end of US hegemony and hand the world over to the CCP on a china platter. Pun intended.

     Conclusion :  If you get free money, use it to learn Mandarin.

    #66002

    Does it not inspire confidence that a dosing error suddenly boosted the efficacy of AZ’s “vaccine”?
    How convenient, as well.

    #66005
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    The vaccines being developed by Russia, J&J and CanSino use a human adenovirus platform, which is a proven technology used in Ebola vaccines and cancer treatments. The other frontrunners are “based on new, largely unproven technology platforms designed to produce vaccines at speed.”

    Other vaccine candidates using more conventional approaches won’t have late-stage trial results until sometime in 2021.

    I am going to avoid mRNA vaccines like the plague, and wait and see whether the conventional approaches produce anything with a good track record and minimal risk. (I’ve had some vaccines in recent years, but I’ve never had a flu shot.)

    Many leading candidates now in final-stage testing are based on new, largely unproven technology platforms designed to produce vaccines at speed.

    They include messenger RNA (mRNA) technology used by Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc with partner BioNTech SE, and inactivated cold virus platforms used by Oxford University/AstraZeneca Plc, Johnson & Johnson and CanSino Biologics, whose vaccine has been approved for military use in China.

    Merck & Co in September started testing a COVID-19 vaccine based on a weakened measles virus that delivers genes from the new coronavirus into the body to stimulate an immune response to the coronavirus.

    Of these, only the technology offered by J&J and CanSino that use [human] cold viruses as vectors to deliver coronavirus genetic material have ever produced a licensed vaccine – for Ebola. [The Russian vaccine also uses this technology.]

    The next set of candidates – with late-stage trial results expected in the first half of 2021 – are heavily skewed toward approaches that have produced successful vaccines.

    Conventional methods include using a killed or inactivated version of the pathogen that causes a disease to provoke an immune response, such as those used to make flu, polio and rabies vaccines.

    Also more common are protein-based vaccines that use purified pieces of the virus to spur an immune response. Vaccines against whooping cough, or pertussis, and shingles employ this approach.

    Next crop of COVID-19 vaccine developers take more traditional route (Reuters)
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-next/next-crop-of-covid-19-vaccine-developers-take-more-traditional-route-idUKKBN27E0G9

    #66006
    a kullervo
    Participant

    To inquiring minds, all the “serendipity” around the forthcoming “vaccines” carries the distinctive whiff of a placebo (nocebo, for the anti-vax crowd) – right out from the nearest faucet (with some bleach thrown in for good measure.)

    #66007
    Bill7
    Participant

    Brandon Smith article from 2015- ‘The global economic reset has begun’:

    The global economic reset has begun

    #66008
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Following up on Noirette’s post yesterday that provided links about potential early evidence of COVID spread (Noirette was responding to an earlier poster’s question about why it didn’t spread if it was around here earlier).

    I dug into the flu stats for New York State. Low and behold, we have a “NYS Flu Tracker – weekly” (who knew?) that tracks flu season from October through May. (I’d take a screen shot and post it but I’m afraid my lack of technical skills will make me look, well, stupid). The site also compares the current season with previous seasons.

    There is clear evidence something was going on in NY very early in the 2019/20 flu season.

    WEEK 49 (first week in December – weeks are based on the # in a calendar year):
    2017/18, 571 cases
    2018/19, 602 cases
    2019/20, 1,838 cases

    It steadily gets worse:

    WEEK 1 (first week in January)
    2017/18, 3,936
    2018/19, 3,736
    2019/20, 10,076

    Interestingly, by April the flu disappeared for the 2019/20 flu season … once everything was diagnosed as COVID:

    WEEK 15 (mid April):
    2017/18, 1,798
    2018/19, 3,342
    2019/20, 143

    Also, is it possible to start a GoFundMe so I can donate my COVID vaccine(s) to someone living in a “poor” country, or even to a “poor” American? I don’t want marginalized people to miss out on this once-in-a-life-time opportunity.

    Americans, we’re so lucky, we get the mRNA vaccines – hallelujah!! Inject me with a synthetic mRNA strand that hijacks my cells and tells them to produce something. Anything!

    I’m not yet clear on how “the scientists” made sure this mRNA hijacker will quit forcing my cells to produce stuff once its demands are met. Does anyone here with medical knowledge understand how it’s guaranteed that the mRNA strands don’t get just a bit power hungry and take over more than initially agreed upon? Cause we all know how things go once hijackers get involved ….

    #66009
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    upstateNYer: “how it’s guaranteed that the mRNA…”

    I’m not an MD but according to the Jerusalem Post, an article published by the NIH listed some potential risks of mRNA vaccines, including:

    1. the bio-distribution and persistence of the induced immunogen expression
    [spreading throughout the body and lasting longer than intended]

    2. possible development of auto-reactive antibodies
    [potentially leading to auto-immune conditions]

    3. toxic effects of any non-native nucleotides and delivery system components.
    [such as from nanoparticles and potential allergens like polyethylene glycol (PEG)]

    But when the world begins inoculating itself with these completely new and revolutionary vaccines, it will know virtually nothing about their long-term effects. “There is a race to get the public vaccinated, so we are willing to take more risks…

    But he acknowledged that there are unique and unknown risks to messenger RNA vaccines, including local and systemic inflammatory responses that could lead to autoimmune conditions.

    An article published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a division of the National Institutes of Health, said other risks include the bio-distribution and persistence of the induced immunogen expression; possible development of auto-reactive antibodies; and toxic effects of any non-native nucleotides and delivery system components.

    Could mRNA COVID-19 vaccines be dangerous in the long-term?
    https://www.jpost.com/health-science/could-an-mrna-vaccine-be-dangerous-in-the-long-term-649253

    #66027
    Noirette
    Participant

    upstateNYer, yeah interesting, thx.

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