Jan 312021
 
 January 31, 2021  Posted by at 10:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Tamara de Lempicka The refugees 1937

 

Reddit Preparing To Unleash “World’s Biggest Short Squeeze” In Silver (ZH)
Bitcoin Could Be About To Become The New GameStop (F.)
Just 0.04% Of Israelis Caught COVID19 After 2 Shots Of Pfizer Vaccine (JPost)
‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe (Tyee)
Germany Threatens Legal Action Over Vaccine Delivery Delays (G.)
Mighty Amazon Looks All But Unassailable As Covid Continues (O.)
Navalny Scam Sells Empty Concrete Shell As ‘Putin’s Luxurious Palace’ (MoA)
Trump’s Top Impeachment Lawyer Has Left His Team (Pol.)
Ohio Lawmakers Want To Mark Trump’s Birthday As ‘Donald J. Trump Day’ (JTN)
The Secret Social Network Of Trees (SMH)

 

 

 

 

Most infections are among the youngest. That doesn’t sound good.

 

 

Long John Silver.

Reddit Preparing To Unleash “World’s Biggest Short Squeeze” In Silver (ZH)

While all eyes have been focused on GameStop and a handful of other heavily-shorted stocks as they exploded higher under continuous fire from WallStreetBets traders igniting a short-squeeze coinciding with a gamma-squeeze, the last few days saw another asset suddenly get in the crosshairs of the ‘Reddit-Raiders’ – Silver. On Thursday, we asked “Is The Reddit Rebellion About To Descend On The Precious Metals Market?” … One WallStreetBets user (jjalj30) posted the following last night: “Silver Bullion Market is one of the most manipulated on earth. Any short squeeze in silver paper shorts would be EPIC. We know billion banks are manipulating gold and silver to cover real inflation. Both the industrial case and monetary case, debt printing has never been more favorable for the No. 1 inflation hedge Silver.

Inflation adjusted Silver should be at 1000$ instead of 25$. Link to post removed by mods. Why not squeeze $SLV to real physical price. Think about the Gainz. If you don’t care about the gains, think about the banks like JP MORGAN you’d be destroying along the way. Tldr- Corner the market. GV thinks its possible to squeeze $SLV, FUCK AFTER SEEING $AG AND $GME EVEN I THINK WE CAN DO IT. BUY $SLV GO ALL IN TH GAINZ WILL BE UNLIMITED. DEMAND PHYSICAL IF YOU CAN. FUCK THE BANKS. Disclaimer: This is not Financial advice. I am not a financial services professional. This is my personal opinion and speculation as an uneducated and uninformed person.”

…and judging by the unprecedented flows into the Silver ETF (SLV) they just got started… SLV saw inflows of almost one billion dollars on Friday, almost double the previous record inflow for this 15 year-old ETF.

 

 

Rainman Sacks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1355368285592715265

Read more …

There are more candidates.

Bitcoin Could Be About To Become The New GameStop (F.)

Bitcoin has surged this week, climbing after Tesla TSLA -5% chief executive Elon Musk gave the cryptocurrency a tacit endorsement. Musk sent the bitcoin price sharply higher as a long-running battle between bullish retail traders organised via Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum and Wall Street hedge funds that have long been shorting GameStop shares reached its climax—with regulators and brokerages trying to calm frantic markets with heavy-handed restrictions. Now, data has revealed hedge funds are short bitcoin to the tune of more than $1 billion, even as retail traders pile into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Hedge funds have been increasing their bitcoin short positions—effectively bets that the price of an asset will fall—since the bitcoin price began climbing in October, data from crypto news and analysis company The Block showed.

The net short position in bitcoin futures is now the biggest it has ever been, according to the CFTC’s latest Traders in Financial Futures report. The bitcoin price has soared around 200% since October, surging to over $40,000 per bitcoin before falling back slightly. The blistering bitcoin rally has largely been put down to institutional investors warming to the cryptocurrency and payments giants such as PayPal adding their support—though bubble fears have emerged. As hedge funds increasingly bet against the bitcoin price, to some extent covering their long positions, retail traders empowered by apps and bored by lockdowns are speculating on bitcoin and everything else.

“Being stuck at home due to pandemic lockdowns and restrictions seems to have spurred an influx of day traders,” Frédérique Carrier, head of investment strategy at RBC Wealth Management, wrote in a note. “Investor attitudes are being shaped by the headline-making gains of some high-profile issues. For example, the 35% gain made by bitcoin in the first nine days of 2021, on the heels of a fivefold surge in price from March to December 2020; or the more-than-sixfold increase in GameStop shares in less than two weeks to January 26; or even Tesla, now the fifth-largest stock in the S&P 500 by market capitalisation, with a market cap larger than that of the major U.S., European, and Japanese automakers combined.”

Read more …

Encouraging, but too early to draw conclusions.

Just 0.04% Of Israelis Caught COVID19 After 2 Shots Of Pfizer Vaccine (JPost)

A total of 371 out of 715,425 Israelis who passed at least a week after receiving two doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine have contracted the virus – 0.04%, with 16 being sent to the hospital – according to a Health Ministry report released on Thursday. Immunity to COVID-19 is supposed to kick in a week after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. According to the studies conducted by Pfizer, the vaccine had an efficacy of about 95%, which is considered very high. The Israeli data appear to confirm the inoculation’s effectiveness, showing an even more promising result.

Later in the day, Maccabi Healthcare Services – one of the country’s four health maintenance organizations – released the first results of the vaccination campaign of its members, with the organization also comparing the data to a control group that did not get inoculated. Some 248,000 Maccabi members were already a week after the second shot as of Thursday. Of those, just 66 got infected with the virus, the majority of them over the age of 55 and about half of them with preexisting conditions. All those infected experienced only a mild form of the disease, and none were hospitalized.

Over the same period of time, some 8,250 new cases of COVID-19 emerged in the control group of some 900,000 people having a diverse health profile. Those who were not inoculated were therefore 11 times more likely to get the disease than those who were immunized, showing 92% effectiveness. “The fact that seven to 18 days after receiving the second dose the vaccine shows a 92% efficacy is very encouraging data,” according to Dr. Anat Aka Zohar, head of Maccabi’s Information and Digital Health Division. “We will continue to monitor the situation to see if the number increases and reaches the 95% demonstrated during the Pfizer study.”

Read more …

“We pretended we could live with this virus and that vaccines would save the day. We were wrong. Dead wrong.”

‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe (Tyee)

Are you tired of COVID? I fucking am. But as a longtime science writer and the author of two books on pandemics, I have to report what you probably don’t want to hear. We have entered the grimmest phase of this pandemic. And contrary to what our politicians say, there is only one way to deal with a rapidly mutating virus that demonstrates the real power of exponential growth: Go hard. Act early. And go to zero. Last January, one strain of this novel virus began its assured global conquest, and since then our leaders have hardly learned a goddamn thing. So yes, I am angry, and I will not disguise my frustration with comfortable or polite language. In the last three months, several super-variants have emerged that are 30 to 70 per cent more infectious than the original Wuhan strain.

The old COVID-19 doubled its numbers every 40 days under a particular set of restrictions; under the same conditions, the variants double every 10 days. That means they can outrun any vaccination campaign.* That means if you haven’t eliminated — or almost eliminated — cases in your region, you are going to learn the meaning of grief. These highly-contagious variants have emerged in jurisdictions with high infection rates: the U.K., Brazil, South Africa and California. They became global tourists months ago, before you read about them. Meanwhile, governments still do not understand the threat at hand. To illustrate it, British mathematician Adam Kucharski recently compared a virus mutation that was 50 per cent more deadly with one that increased transmission by 50 per cent.

With a reproduction rate of about 1.1 and a death rate of 0.8 per cent, current strains of COVID-19 now deliver 129 deaths per 10,000 infections. A virus that is 50 per cent more lethal will kill 193 people in a month. A variant that is more transmissible wins the game with 978 deaths in just one month. The virus is finding its optimal configuration, its ideal form for contagiousness. And you thought this was over? Now don’t think of these variants as the same old COVID-19. That’s a big mistake. They actually represent an entirely new pandemic. In this new maelstrom, this complex coronavirus is just getting warmed up. It has the potential to become even more infectious than the current variants. We allowed this to happen by not taking the measures needed to go to zero, doing whatever was needed to eliminate COVID-19 in our province or country. We pretended we could live with this virus and that vaccines would save the day. We were wrong. Dead wrong.

Read more …

This feels like the wrong fight.

Germany Threatens Legal Action Over Vaccine Delivery Delays (G.)

In case you missed this earlier: Germany’s government on Sunday threatened legal action against laboratories failing to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the European Union on schedule, amid tension over delays to deliveries from AstraZeneca, AFP reports.“If it turns out that companies have not respected their obligations, we will have to decide the legal consequences,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told German daily Die Welt. There has been growing tension in recent weeks between European leaders and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which has fallen behind on promised delivers of its Covid-19 vaccine.The company said it could now deliver only a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc for the first quarter of the year because of problems at one of its European factories.


Brussels has implicitly accused AstraZeneca of giving preferential treatment to Britain at the expense of the EU.The EU briefly threatened to restrict vaccine exports to Northern Ireland by overriding part of the Brexit deal with Britain that allowed the free flow of goods over the Irish border. It backed down after British prime minister Boris Johnson voiced “grave concerns”. AstraZeneca is not the only drugs company in the firing line. Last week Italy threatened legal action against US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer over delays. Top German officials are due to meet with the drugs manufacturers to thrash out the problems.On Friday the European Medicines Agency cleared the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca for use inside the EU, the third Covid vaccine it has approved after Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Read more …

There goes small business.

Mighty Amazon Looks All But Unassailable As Covid Continues (O.)

The earliest references to the “one-stop shop” emerged during the first decades of 20th century as the fast-growing US economy spurred rapid retail innovation. A single location for various products provides obvious benefits: removing the hassle of travelling around town to visit different stores. Jeff Bezos redefined that logic for the internet age, making Amazon a dominant (and perhaps ambivalent) force first in selling books, and then in pretty much everything else. Before 2020 Amazon was a phenomenon, but the coronavirus pandemic has made it all but ubiquitous. The numbers in its financial results for the last three months of 2020, to be published on Tuesday, will be even bigger than Amazon’s earlier instalments in the first pandemic year.


Christmas and Thanksgiving always make the final quarter of the year the strongest for Amazon. Christmas 2020 will mainly be remembered for locked-down celebrations, but analysts predict that it will also mark the first time Amazon’s revenue surpasses $100bn in one quarter. In fact, consensus estimates collated by S&P Global Market Intelligence are forecasting sales of about $120bn – 37% up on the same period in 2019. Profits before tax are pegged at $4.4bn – shy of the record $6.8bn it made in the three months to September, but higher than any single quarter before the pandemic. It was only in 2016 that single-quarter profits topped $1bn, but that’s because the Bezos strategy is to invest spare cash in relentless, ruthless expansion and innovation, so that rivals cannot creep up on it.

Read more …

The story has been sold since 2010. CIA.

Navalny Scam Sells Empty Concrete Shell As ‘Putin’s Luxurious Palace’ (MoA)

In 2010 some minor Russian businessman, Sergei Kolesnikov, who had pissed off people above his pay grade, resettled from Russia to Estonia. To make himself interesting, and likely to get financial support, he made up a story. David Ignatius, the CIA’s resident writer at the Washington Post, picked it up: You can see the sprawling, Italian-style palace on the Black Sea in satellite photos. There’s a fitness spa, a hideaway “tea house,” a concert amphitheater and a pad for three helicopters. It’s still under construction, but already the cost is said to total more than $1 billion. And most amazing of all, according to a Russian whistleblower named Sergey Kolesnikov, it was predominantly paid for with money donated by Russian businessmen for the use of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The funds have come “mainly through a combination of corruption, bribery and theft,” charges Kolesnikov, a businessman who until November 2009 worked for one of the companies he alleges was investing money for Putin. In 2012 BBC Newsnight again picked up the story and made it into a nine minutes long anti-Putin segment. Putin’s Palace? A Mystery Black Sea Mansion Fit For A Tsar “On a thickly wooded mountainside overlooking Russia’s Black Sea coast, an extraordinary building has gradually taken shape. It is alleged to be a palace built for the personal use of Vladimir Putin, with massive and illegal use of state funds. Originally conceived, it is said, as a modest holiday house with a swimming pool, it now boasts a magnificent columned facade reminiscent of the country palaces Russian tsars built in the 18th Century. The massive wrought-iron gates into the courtyard are topped with a golden imperial eagle. Outside are formal gardens, a private theatre, a landing pad with bays for three helicopters, and accommodation for security guards.”

At the end of 2020 the ‘Putin’s palace’ story was recycled to promote the rightwing Russian nationalist and anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny. Navalny was at that time in Germany’s Black Forrest area where he recovered from an alleged poisoning. A studio was needed to produce a video about the ‘palace’. A German producer couple who had recently opened a TV-studio received a request. As the German daily Badische Zeitung reported (my translation): “Early December a request arrived via email from a U.S. production company in Los Angeles. There was talk of a documentation. It was looking for adequate locations, people and equipment in southern Germany. The German producers did not know the company, even though they have good contacts in L.A., but the request made a very professional impression.

The studio was rented to create the ‘palace’ material for the Navalny campaign. “The studio was actually only rented for just under a week, but the filmmakers liked the location with its atmosphere and the cinematic possibilities so much that the shooting was extended to a total of two weeks and parts of the 20-person international crew from Berlin, where actually a last shoot was planned before the flight to Moscow came to Kirchzarten.” On January 17 Navalny flew back to Russia and was immediately arrested for having violated his probation in a case where he had been sentenced for funneling a company’s money into his own pockets. On January 19 Navalny’s anti-corruption campaign FBK uploaded a two hour long polemic in which Navalny repeats the decade old claim that there is a palace at the Black Sea that is actually owned by Putin. But none of the many documents he provides proves that Putin is in any way involved in the project.

Read more …

Trump and his lawyers. A sordid tale all around.

Trump’s Top Impeachment Lawyer Has Left His Team (Pol.)

Former President Donald Trump has lost his top impeachment lawyer just days before his trial is to begin, a person familiar with his legal strategy and two attorneys close to the team confirmed on Saturday night. Butch Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer who was reportedly set to play a major role in the Senate’s trial of the former president, is now no longer with the team. Deborah Barbier, another South Carolina lawyer, won’t be either. The person described it as a “mutual decision” and said new names will be announced shortly. In addition, CNN reported on Saturday night that a third member of Trump’s prospective legal team, Josh Howard, was also leaving. The network reported that the ex-president had wanted his lawyers to focus on erroneous arguments of mass election fraud rather than the constitutionality of impeaching an ex-president.

The decision by Bowers, Barbier, and Howard to not join the team raised immediate questions, both about what compelled them to part ways and who actually will play the role of lawyer to Trump when the impeachment trial starts in early February. Trump has had difficulty finding legal help for his second impeachment, with some of the lawyers who worked on his first trial saying they wouldn’t do the same this go around. Bowers’ hiring was first announced by Trump ally and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. A longtime Republican attorney, Bowers represented former South Carolina Govs. Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley, and had experience in election law.

News outlets in South Carolina also named trial attorneys Greg Harris and Johnny Gasser as part of Trump’s impeachment team, although aides to Trump never officially confirmed who would be representing the former president. Trump’s first legal filing in the impeachment trial is due this coming Tuesday. In a statement, Trump spokesperson Jason Miller did not address the uncertainty around the legal team but, rather, railed against impeachment itself, noting that the vast majority of Senate Republicans voted that convicting a former president is an unconstitutional act — a conclusion with which legal scholars disagree.

Read more …

What do you mean Not The Onion?

Ohio Lawmakers Want To Mark Trump’s Birthday As ‘Donald J. Trump Day’ (JTN)

Two Ohio lawmakers are reportedly seeking support from their fellow legislators to mark former President Donald Trump’s birthday in that state as “President Donald J. Trump Day.” State Reps. Reggie Stoltzfus and Jon Cross reached out to lawmakers in the Ohio House on Friday, asking them to “recognize the accomplishments of [Trump’s] administration, and [show] that the Ohio House believes it is imperative we set aside a day to celebrate one of the greatest presidents in American history.” The lawmakers are seeking to designate June 14, Trump’s birthday, as the holiday in question. The news was first reported in the Ohio Capitol Journal, which said it obtained the co-sponsor request sent by Stoltzfus and Cross. In addition to being Trump’s birthday, the United States also marks June 14 as Flag Day, commemorating the date in 1777 on which the Continental Congress officially adopted the flag of the United States.

Read more …

Wonderful.

The Secret Social Network Of Trees (SMH)

By the time she was in grad school at Oregon State University, however, Simard understood that commercial clear-cutting had largely superseded the sustainable logging practices of the past. Loggers were replacing diverse forests with homogeneous plantations, evenly spaced in upturned soil stripped of most underbrush. Without any competitors, the thinking went, the newly planted trees would thrive. Instead, they were frequently more vulnerable to disease and climatic stress than trees in old-growth forests. In particular, Simard noticed that up to 10 per cent of newly planted Douglas fir were likely to get sick and die whenever nearby aspen, paper birch and cottonwood were removed. The reasons were unclear.

The planted saplings had plenty of space, and they received more light and water than trees in old, dense forests. So why were they so frail? Simard suspected the answer was buried in the soil. Underground, trees and fungi form partnerships known as mycorrhizae: threadlike fungi envelop and fuse with tree roots, helping them extract water and nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for some of the carbon-rich sugars the trees make through photosynthesis. Research had demonstrated that mycorrhizae also connected plants to one another and that these associations might be ecologically important, but most scientists had studied them in greenhouses and laboratories, not in the wild.

For her doctoral thesis, Simard decided to investigate fungal links between Douglas fir and paper birch in the forests of British Columbia. Apart from her supervisor, she didn’t receive much encouragement from her mostly male peers. “The old foresters were like, “Why don t you just study growth and yield? ” Simard told me. “I was more interested in how these plants interact. They thought it was all very girlie.” Now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, Simard, who is 60, has studied webs of root and fungi in the Arctic, temperate and coastal forests of North America for nearly three decades. Her initial inklings about the importance of mycorrhizal networks were prescient, inspiring whole new lines of research that ultimately overturned long-standing misconceptions about forest ecosystems.

By analysing the DNA in root tips and tracing the movement of molecules through underground conduits, Simard has discovered that fungal threads link nearly every tree in a forest – even trees of different species. Carbon, water, nutrients, alarm signals and hormones can pass from tree to tree through these subterranean circuits. Resources tend to flow from the oldest and biggest trees to the youngest and smallest. Chemical alarm signals generated by one tree prepare nearby trees for danger. Seedlings severed from the forest’s underground lifelines are much more likely to die than their networked counterparts. And if a tree is on the brink of death, it sometimes bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbours.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in 2021. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle January 31 2021

Viewing 38 posts - 1 through 38 (of 38 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #69104

    Tamara de Lempicka The refugees 1937   • Reddit Preparing To Unleash “World’s Biggest Short Squeeze” In Silver (ZH) • Bitcoin Could Be About To B
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 31 2021]

    #69105
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Tamara de Lempicka The refugees 1937

    Haunting…

    #69106
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Most infections are among the youngest.”

    When you have provably fake tests, what does that mean? Is it real?

    “ Reddit Preparing To Unleash “World’s Biggest Short Squeeze” In Silver (ZH)”

    Don’t know how to say this, but it is not organic. So, the first volley, which happens on 1/6 and culminates after 10 days of silence, threatening to take down the entirety of Wall Street and Western financial system is a stock called, “Game. Stop.” Does someone have a sense of humor?

    And now to silver? Let me tell you something: NOBODY cares about silver. Nobody’s even heard of it. There’s probably less capital in all CME silver worldwide than in GameStop at $18.

    BUT:

    Silver is the single most leveraged, most corrupt, most fragile, and most important market on planet earth. It’s been rigged by Central Banks for over 60 years. It is the single Achilles’ heel of the whole enchilada. And these random Redditors just Haaaaaaaaaaaaappened to pick it. From 5,000 most shorted stocks, and it’s not a stock. Sure pal.

    And if they succeed they WILL take down the system. Here’s why: Silver is acutely tied to gold, with a +90% correlation. “Silver” is the word for money in most countries. Although no longer advertised, gold remains the basis of the financial system, and central banks hold it greedily, as the “put up or shut up” reality of power, the anchor of currency. We are presently fighting wars in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Africa just to get it. The Bank of England is collapsing from lack of it, and Shanghai is replacing the entire West for access to it. Yet while they lack access, the same amount exists as ever, it merely changes location.

    Meanwhile, being in a bear market for 60 years, silver is depleted. All known above ground stores are gone. All mines are shuttered. They are in a shortage even for solar panels and electronics. It fails delivery regularly, yet even when there is a 30% premium, the market price will not rise.

    So what do you think would happen if silver, tied 90% to gold, suddenly rose from $20 to $800? Would the financial system also panic out of paper and into the firm anchor of metals reserves? Would the insider banks, most short ever, with least supply ever, unable to deliver to Apple, putting GME to shame, these proxy CENTRAL banks, would they them have the same squeeze put on them as RobinHood and Citidel?

    What even IS a squeeze on a central bank? They can just print money. And yes, they can. However, they cannot print silver. And that is why they have controlled and manipulated it since 1963, and why it is the weakest point in their whole fiat money system. So print? Go ahead. The MORE YOU PRINT, THE HIGHER THE PRICE. The higher the price, the more worthless and discredited are the fiat dollars and the financial system based on it. Quit hitting yourself.

    And $800/oz is not outrageous at all. Gold was previously $800 and is now $2,000. That’s pretty low since in 1980 houses were $50,000 and are now $250,000. That would be $40,000 gold. By the whole financial system it would be $200,000 gold. Silver was $50 and would therefore be $150 to match gold, or $250 to match housing. …Except there isn’t any. Hundreds of billions of ounces are used, missing, unrecoverable. It’s as if they lost 90% of the gold or burned 90% of the houses. What’s it worth now? 2x? 4x? There is no free market anywhere on earth, hasn’t been in generations, so no one knows.

    And you’re telling me random Redditors just randomly picked the sole market that can reset the financial system and convert it from a captured casino of fraud and extortion, and re-establish our system on fairly valuing hard work and free exchange? Under a 10-day-old Biden Presidency.

    Right. Position: long popcorn.

    “Bitcoin Could Be About to Become the New GameStop (F.)”

    As paper goes down and Wall Street is revealed as irredeemably corrupt, this is the other currency(s) people will flee into. And faster.

    “‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe (Tyee)”

    You’re fired, Mr. Science Writer, you’re the dumbest guy in the room. First he ignores the CDC and all science, plus a whole years hard lesson that said, “Once you have +1% population infection, a pandemic can not be contained.” No amount of unnecessary hardship or death has yet communicated that simple fact to him.

    Second, he’s a liar. Where is the catastrophe? Where are my 25 million deaths? France’s death rate is unchanged, as are most nations. A pandemic with no deaths? Is there no scientific curiosity or literacy anymore?

    He then conflates infection with deaths. If people are infected FASTER – which has yet to be proven by the way – you have a different strain that may be LESS deadly. Already COVID is as close to not deadly as is possible to be. So you will need to prove equal mortality too, but why bother when you’re not a real Science writer?

    Third, and most importantly, he ignores ALL pandemic science, ALL transmission of disease over ALL human history. Hey dum-dum: WHO is the new strain going to infect? Pandemics appear, rise exponentially, THEN PLATEAU, on their own, with no additional deaths, interventions, losses, or end to all human rights forever, WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF PEOPLE. Herd immunity. You might have heard of it.
    Arret
    https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/2/3/e000309/F3.medium.gif

    Like all math and all models he instantly assumes an infinite linear planet of infinite linear people and not a limited, cyclical one that has been proven since Ogg met Gog and this guy has lived in and seen with his own eyes EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE. But he can’t see it. Although, or more likely because, he’s an “expert.” “Reality” is therefore an “extraneous factor.”

    It doesn’t matter that he wants a pony. That’s not how the world works. Once you have +1% his lockdowns cannot be effective under any experience humans have had, and DOUBLY so with each advance in infection rate. However, he CAN end human society and kill millions unnecessarily with his “helping”, and has. At the same time, if the death rate was 95% IT WOULDN’T MATTER. The disease would still plateau and end without him. Period.

    He’s a moron.

    Worse, a Science denier. Worse still, as all have been lately, a Science-denier who claims to be a Scientist. Worse still, presented in the media. He will discredit science for a generation and kill us all. I wouldn’t trust him to tally change at a car wash.

    “Mighty Amazon Looks All But Unassailable as Covid Continues (O.)”

    Thanks to Mr. Tyee’s bad science, everything he knows will be destroyed. He can think about it when he’s tied to an electronic beacon, feverishly packing boxes in an 45c warehouse, and pissing in a bottle. Maybe there is more to life than cowering before a 0.003% chance of death? Cowering before someone’s ELSE’S unlikely death, not even your own? No wonder they used to kick people off on ice floes. He’s an embarrassment to the tribe, and a peril to us all.

    Please stop. Stop helping. I’m almost dead already.

    #69107
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    “Just 0.04% Of Israelis Caught COVID19 After 2 Shots Of Pfizer Vaccine”

    Supporting Ilargi’s “too early to draw conclusions”:

    However, experts have cautioned that data from Israel is preliminary and could be misleading. With its vast variables and constantly changing scenarios, an entire society cannot act as a petri-dish for a vaccine trial.

    “When you vaccinate nationwide, there’s lots of confounders,” said Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute. “This is not a trial. That’s the problem. We should be very cautious.”

    Israel is currently suffering a debilitating third wave of infections, with a national lockdown unable to significant pushdown morbidity rates. The government blames high infection rates on the more transmissible British variant of the virus.

    Vaccine data could be influenced by both the lockdown, which may decrease infections, and the British variant, which likely has the opposite effect, in confusing and contrasting ways.

    Meanwhile, the first people to receive the vaccine – on which these studies have been taken – mostly come from vulnerable populations, who may have been more likely to take precautions, which also could skew the data. Preliminary research might show different results at different times as the number of people being vaccinated is continually changing, and hospitalisation usually occurs days after infection.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/israel-covid-vaccination-data-offers-hope-exit-pandemic

    #69109

    I know, I know, it’s Laura Ingraham. But watch this.

    #69110
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Robin hood cartoon as a flash back on another cartoon character, Ragnar Danneskjöld, pirate from the “Atlas shrugged”.
    Art imitates “art”.
    To see JPM buckle would have bee a something to behold.
    Any legal action against behemoth corporation makes me laugh which turns into uneasy cough.

    Yesterday’s string of comments was a quite a “Left-right” stew with heavy spice of Mao-Stalin (but not a Genghis Kan or Attila “the whip of God”?) for the good measure. WES, even I agree with him on Tulsi as someone saying the right message while, really enjoying herself looking pretty, managed to insult a brigade of rock band members with his “Supply of pretty girls 24/7, is a communist trait”.

    Yesterday’s Kandinsky was great. Hundred years ago the guy decided to paint music or waves and broke away with visible world. Great work by Lempicka, as if Picasso had said: ” I will be doing something else. Can you take it from here?” (meaning his classical period) and she’d answered “Sure!”

    #69111
    zerosum
    Participant

    Thanks for finding this REAL story of THE AVATAR .
    The real story of LIFE is slowly being discovered and understood.

    ://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/a-vast-ancient-and-intricate-society-the-secret-social-network-of-old-growth-forests-20200703-p558ti.html

    The trees, understorey plants, fungi and microbes in a forest are so thoroughly connected, communicative and co-dependent that some scientists have described them as superorganisms. Recent research suggests that mycorrhizal networks also perfuse prairies, grasslands, chaparral and Arctic tundra – essentially everywhere there is life on land. Together, these symbiotic partners knit earth’s soils into nearly contiguous living networks of unfathomable scale and complexity.
    “These trees are very perceptive,” she said. “Very perceptive of who’s growing around them. I’m really interested in whether they perceive us.” I asked her to clarify what she meant. Simard explained that trees sense nearby plants and animals and alter their behaviour accordingly: the gnashing mandibles of an insect might prompt the production of chemical defences, for example. Some studies have even suggested that plant roots grow toward the sound of running water and that certain flowering plants sweeten their nectar when they detect a bee’s wing beats. “Trees perceive lots of things,” Simard said. “So why not us, too?”
    “That’s a fungus!” she said. “That is Piloderma. It’s a very common
    mycorrhizal fungus” – one she had encountered and studied many times before in circumstances exactly like these. “This mycorrhizal network is actually linked up to that tree.” She gestured toward a nearby hemlock that stood at least 30 metres tall. “That tree is feeding these seedlings.”

    We, too, are composite creatures. Diverse microbial communities inhabit our bodies, modulating our immune systems and helping us digest certain foods. The energy-producing organelles in our cells known as mitochondria were once free-swimming bacteria that were subsumed early in the evolution of multicellular life. Through a process called horizontal gene transfer, fungi, plants and animals – including humans – have continuously exchanged DNA with bacteria and viruses. From its skin, fur or bark right down to its genome, any multicellular creature is an amalgam of other life forms. Wherever living things emerge, they find one another, mingle and meld.
    ——–
    Great!. I’m waiting for a comparable study about vitamin D, Zinc, head lice and malarial drugs

    https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israel-shows-promising-results-from-pfizer-vaccination-campaign-657051
    By ROSSELLA TERCATIN JANUARY 28, 2021

    Just 0.04% of Israelis caught COVID-19 after two shots of Pfizer vaccine
    All those infected experienced only a mild form of the disease, and none were hospitalized.

    Here is a plot line for a good movie.
    1. Sales of Flue vaccines not making enough profits and are only 40% effective
    2. Established med. etc. co-operate to promote a flue pandemic.
    3. Its working – all gov. got onboard – Making money hand over fist.
    4. Keep the momentum going with a more dangerous variation.
    5. It worked. Use variant #2, then variant #3.
    6. (More suckers every day.) Ignore and denigrate all competitions. (vitamin D, Zinc, head lice and malarial drugs)
    ———–

    #69112
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Nah!
    You heard it hear first from me. That Fauci is a fraud way last year based on my observation of Anthony’s behavior 36 years ago. I mean it’s understandable no one believed or acted on the assessment of a first year medical student in 1985. However, what accounts for learned minds and bloggers resisting the exact same conclusion about Fauci drawn by a Nobel Prize winner, Mullis, more than 10 years after my observation.
    And now Raűl correctly alludes to Laura Ingraham’s show and her learned guest Dr. Risch from Yale who definitely draws the same inference about Fauci without consulting me Dr. D Rich and the specter of Nobel prize winner Mullis.
    Can I tell my mom her son’s mind is quicker than a Nobel prize winner AND a Yale professor?
    Perhaps we can add purposeful ignorance to shared psychosis as diseases far more deadly than coronavirus
    Hahahahahahah

    “…convert it from a captured casino of fraud and extortion, and re-establish our system on fairly valuing hard work and free exchange?”

    When Hell freezes over. Dr. D, fair question to you.
    What’s more addictive, gambling or hard work? I mean some of us our ‘workaholics’ but even in medicine the skimmers and scammers are presently triumphant in the medical system. Fauci Adm Don Arthur and David Tam are exemplars of this phenomenon.

    #69113
    zerosum
    Participant

    Record
    Views 1,062,824 Comments 3,610 AND CLIMBING

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/reddit-preparing-unleash-worlds-biggest-short-squeeze-silver

    “Everyone Is Afraid Ahead Of The Open” – Reddit-Raiders Spark Nationwide Physical Silver Shortage

    BY TYLER DURDEN
    SUNDAY, JAN 31, 2021 – 10:29

    #69114
    Bill7
    Participant

    ‘Get to Zero or face catastrophe’, eh? Mr. Nikiforuk appears to be softening us up for what’s to (needlessly)
    come, with his breathlessly sententious curse-filled polemic. Mr. Nikiforuk doesn’t mention, of course, the human costs- depression, anxiety, death- of the lockdowns and purposeful economic immiseration already baked-in by OMG Covid! response..

    As the commenter above said: this utter tripe passes for science?

    “We’ve got to kill you all to save you!” say our “experts”..

    #69115
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Joy of life in one of my favorite cities.

    #69116
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    The last time I looked at the annual deaths in the US was back in November. It was trending significantly higher than 2019, however, the the 2019 annual death was apparently a bit lower than average. Hence, it was difficult to draw definitive conclusions one way or the other.

    I have friends and clients living in a local retirement community. Those who passed in the prior week are listed in the community’s weekly newsletter. It was brought to my attention last week that while this community of several thousand usually has 1-3 deaths per week. Now, they have 7 or more deaths per week. Last week, there were 10 deaths. These numbers are *not* manipulated, not reported to a news agency, and only displayed in aggregate on the state’s Covid dashboard.

    This past week, residents were given access to the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, and all those I interact with were vaccinated. It will be interesting to see what happens to the death rate there in the next few months.

    #69117
    Bill7
    Participant

    “Stay home in lockdown till we get to Zero™, or until you go out feet-first on a gurney!” say those who rule us..

    It’s a war *by* the top 10%, on the lower 90%, w/ Da Covid making for a nice smokescreen.

    #69119
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Re: that breakdown of cases in Massachusetts (shown above), and this reaction:
    “Most infections are among the youngest. That doesn’t sound good.”

    This graph from the CDC shows a breakdown of cases by age, and the age groupings could give the impression that the older segments of society are being infected more than they actually are. One of the lines on the graph only covers 4 years (ages 14-17), while another line on the graph covers 35 years (ages 45-79).


    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/figures/mm695152a8-F.gif

    Since June of 2020, the 18-24 age category has had the highest number of Covid cases per 100,000 persons. This is more remarkable when you realize this category covers only 7 years (18-24). The next older category (24-44) covers 20 years, and the category above that (45-79) covers 35 years.

    Starting in July, the weekly cases for the age 14-17 category, covering only 4 years, is right up there with the older categories covering many more years.

    If the three lines for the under-25 cases were combined into one line, then it would be clear that the case count for under-25s is much higher than the other categories. Yet, looking at total deaths (from all causes) in 2020, this under-25 category is showing no real increase above the previous five years.

    #69121
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    The latest data from the CDC shows the under-50 age group has had 65% of the Covid cases, but less than 5% of the Covid deaths.

    https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

    #69122
    Dr. D
    Participant

    It’s hard to tell, and Covid is a thing. I just can’t figure it out among all the lying. And they wonder why we don’t believe them. I mean BESIDES that their cure is worse than the disease, and creates a dystopian prison planet with 6-figure hospital admins as the apparatchiks to the gulags.

    Logged in to say one of the hardest things to check is to compare something that’s actually dangerous: driving. So as nations drive far less, half as much perhaps, you’re going to have a far lower death rate off the top. That will be countered by the supposed Covid rate, which is real but far lower. However, you have a missing flu, heart disease, and where it appears it has become 100% of elder deaths, replacing all.(basically) Plus you took a substantial increase in drug, alcohol and suicide deaths. Unless they stop lying about the visible, provable, laughable things like wearing 27 masks, then eventually I’m going to ignore them about everything else. Even antibiotics and opioids, since THEY ruined both of these things, aren’t sorry, and doctors are a primary cause of death, about 1000x more deadly than firearms in the U.S. Correctly prescribed medications alone are the 4th leading cause of death.

    You think Fauci, who oversaw the killing of 100k gay people with AIDS, could stop lying for just ONE minute? Think again. Like other psychos he can’t stop saying ever more ridiculous things to see if we’re stupid enough to buy it. …And thus prove his narcissism is better and we’re under his power and control. And they do. No matter how many times he reverses himself.

    I fully expect to see him say we can only go out if we pat our head and rub our bellies.

    Remember: hopping on one foot protects your neighbor but not you!

    Shortage of silver and the market hasn’t opened yet. Could be precautionary but I’m betting big guns are hiding in the weeds on this one.
    Sck1t.

    #69123
    zerosum
    Participant

    “Everyone Is Afraid Ahead Of The Open” – Reddit-Raiders Spark Nationwide Physical Silver Shortage
    Still climbing
    views 1,463,123
    comments 5,471

    #69125

    So the market’s gonna crash (who’d thunk it?) and it will be blamed on redditers (who the Left thinks are Right) and the Markets will become a national security thingamajig. Swear that Biden got 81 million votes (and prove you have had the vaccine) and we’ll let you trade. EZ as 22/7.
    My friend’s mom died a couple of weeks ago. She had stopped eating long ago, so 2 months back the home tested her for Covid: positive. A week later, negative. The care home declared she had died from Covid.
    Even my friend- who dreads the virus- could see it was unfair to steal her mom’s long life from her with a nonsense cause of death. She was 93.
    Dr. D, you are wise beyond whatever years you may have accrued. Have a good night.

    So hedge funds are the current Eye of Sauron? Aren’t there some Wall Street movies about this sort of thing? From the 70s? 80s? 90s? 00s? 10s?
    There’s an awful lot of billionaires out there who could play this game- the con or the salvo.
    I’ve got a feeling this is about to go bananas- it’s a signal; it’s a provocation; it’s a ploy; it’s a cover.
    We’re gonna wish we had a businessman in office.

    #69126

    “Suck”. “It”.
    See? We’ve set up the patsies.

    #69127
    zerosum
    Participant

    Change
    Grubstake (IPO)

    1. provisions, gear, etc., furnished to a prospector, usually by a merchant. on condition of participating in the profits of any gold discoveries.

    2. What Is an Initial Public Offering (IPO)?
    An initial public offering (IPO) refers to the process of offering shares of a private corporation to the public in a new stock issuance. Public share issuance allows a company to raise capital from public investors.
    Although an investment bank may set the securities’ initial price and receive a fee for facilitating sales, most of the funding goes to the issuer. Investors typically pay less for securities on the primary market than on the secondary market. The important thing to understand about the primary market is that securities are purchased directly from an issuer.

    Other types of primary market offerings for stocks include private placement and preferential allotment. Private placement allows companies to sell directly to more significant investors such as hedge funds and banks without making shares publicly available. While preferential allotment offers shares to select investors (usually hedge funds, banks, and mutual funds) at a special price not available to the general public.

    In secondary markets, investors,( the merchant), exchange with others, (some or all of their share of the possible gains that the prospector could make) rather than with the the prospector that is gone into the mountains to find gold.

    #69128
    zerosum
    Participant

    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/
    SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2021
    The Stock Market, Fatally Wounded by the Truth, Will Stumble and Crash

    1. The stock market is nothing but one giant fraud.
    2. The Fed is a fraud.
    3. America’s system of governance is a fraud.
    4. The wealth effect is a fraud.
    our entire financial-political system is a fraud.

    #69129

    Okay. That part about “a businessman” was silly. Business and finance have little to do with each other.
    For some reason.

    #69130
    WES
    Participant

    Dr.D:

    Regarding silver’s role in the fiat financial system, your arrow hit the bullseye! Robinhood would be proud!

    The silver market is small compared to gold, so central banks, with their printing presses, find it very easy to manipulate the price of silver lower.

    The earth’s natural ratio of silver to gold is about 15:1. Currently the ratio is about 70:1. A short time ago it was over 100:1!

    So yeah, the proof of manipulation of silver prices downward is there for everyone to see, if they open their eyes and decide to actually look!

    As for breaking the JP Morgan Bank, it isn’t going to happen! JP Morgan ain’t as stupid as the other 8 banks still short silver and gold. They knew this day would come and have prepared by building up the largest physical holdings of silver 1 billion ounces and gold maybe 200 million ounces in the world over the last 12 years or so. Right now JP Morgan couldn’t care less which way silver and gold prices go. They are covered whether things go long or short! They will make billions either way!

    Right now the remaining 8 bullion banks still short of gold and silver, have been forced lately to “borrow” these metals from JP Morgan! So this is JP Morgan’s short position to complement their long position!
    Yeah, that’s right! No honor amoung thieves! Naturally JP Morgan extracts their pound of flesh from these 8 bullion banks still short on gold and silver!

    As of 7 pm Sunday evening silver is up $1.50 from $27 to $28.50. Let the games begin! I have been waiting decades for this moment!

    #69131
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I know, I know, it’s Laura Ingraham. But watch this.

    I did. Wow…
    It’s why I no longer listen to the galoots…
    I’m reminded every day that life in the west is no more than a scripted reality show…
    The Matrix is the closest metaphor I can think of…

    #69132
    WES
    Participant

    I have probably written this before but I come from a mining family. My Father was a mining engineer. I have worked in many mines all over the world. My brother has also worked in the mines. None do so now.

    So naturally mining commodities have always interested me. It is in my blood!

    And yes, I have been inside of a bullion bank’s gold and silver vault! Probably 100s of millions of dollars (today billions)! And no armed guards either! I was so disappointed! No fort knot! I was left to wander among the steel trollies loaded with tons and tons of bars!

    My Father’s warning about not getting my fingers pinched beneath the gold and silver bars still rings in my ears! I still had a few close calls! Those small looking bars weighing close to 100 pounds!

    I remember remarking to my Father, after we had left, that they really didn’t need any armed guards as the bars were too heavy to be easily moved!

    #69133
    WES
    Participant

    V. Arnold:

    Yes, our political and financial world is rigged. Not to mention totally corrupt!

    #69134
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    V. Arnold:

    Yes, our political and financial world is rigged. Not to mention totally corrupt!

    Indeed; a life, aka living, is corrupted.
    A sickness has descended across the west and all but the strongest will (have?) succumb(ed)…
    When its full impact hits me I feel physical nausea…
    Having no possibility to change or alter the course of events, I try not to think too much about it…
    It’s one reason I refer to my home as “The Hermitage”; it offers some respite…
    I’m reminded of The Never Ending Story; the Great Nothing is descending across the world taking everything with it and the battle to save the last vestiges of existence…

    #69135
    WES
    Participant

    V. Arnold:

    That is why I enjoy spending my summers at the family’s river island cottage. No internet!

    So I can watch the world go down the drain (without them telling me about it!).

    #69136
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    Here is the thing… on one hand I’m pleased as punch to see the corruption exposed via the Reddit traders. As “Quoth the Raven” podcaster Chris says, it’s a beautiful red pill moment for a large number of people. And it is a gutsy move to go after silver; as I type this silver is up 7% on futures just this evening (Sunday 6pm). Seemingly knowledgeable people are saying in the various comment threads that there is no way this is going harm JPMorgan, the biggest manipulator of silver. But on the other hand, if it does, we may regret that we got our wish. If the Great Reset hypothesis is true, there will have to be a financial crash to usher in the new system, whatever that is. And that new system is not gonna be using real money (constitutional money, gold and silver), boys and girls. Nosiree.

    Demand for physical silver is off the charts, with none to be had any large retail vendor. An hour ago the only silver that I could find was a 500 oz coin package for $17k. Interesting times.

    #69137
    WES
    Participant

    Rototillerman:

    Be very wary of buying any coins online!

    Many are Chinese websites selling fake gold and silver coins! They have unlimited supplies of coins!

    Real coin dealers don’t have any stocks of coins and haven’t had any for months!

    I would say right now it is already too late to buy silver coins!

    So if someone says they have silver coins available they are likely fakes!

    #69138

    There’s flatware, of course- sterling, and stamped. And it’s also very useful as eating utensils.
    Cool site brand new to me: finviz
    Interactive and easy financial visuals.
    Sweet dreams, all.

    #69139
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    The best time to buy is always yesterday… or last fall, when I was telling friends and family to get with the program (sadly, no one was convinced). I was really only window-shopping today, I could have bought yesterday if I really thought that I needed it. Not sure what I would trade it for if it turned into a ten-bagger anyway; I was mainly thinking of my nieces, thinking that perhaps I should grab a pile for each of them for when I’m gone. They’re more likely to live in a World Made by Hand than I am. Ah, well. If this doesn’t blow up the system another chance will probably come around.

    #69140
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    Corporate Media has gone silent on the contradictions that are splintering the West caused by incompetence and corruption that purposefully transferred of all of the wealth from the former Western Middle Class to the top 1%.

    The Pandemic was publicized to get rid of Donald Trump but with him long gone, the goal now is to pass on as many bucks from every vaccine shot given to as many people as possible to Big Pharma.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
    The reality is that the US for-profit healthcare system has killed 452,279 Americans to date. More have died in one year from COVID-19 than in the four years of WWII (405,399).

    The Robinhood App was used to squeeze naked short stocks. Paper silver appears next. Sooner or later, like 2008, a vital cog will break and the deregulated Wall Street will seize up, once again.

    The swamp creatures that brought the world Libya, Syria and Ukraine are back in charge.

    There will be a concerted effort to silence Redditors, Peaceniks, Trumpeters, the 90% riffraff – The Unwoke.

    #69141
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    V. Arnold:

    That is why I enjoy spending my summers at the family’s river island cottage. No internet!

    Well, that certainly qualifies as a hermitage… 😉

    #69142
    Huskynut
    Participant

    I have to say this strikes me more and more like an absurdist black comedy. The kind where a small portion of the audience twig immediately to the fact it’s a piss-take, but the general audience sit there in increasing discomfort as the plausible plot steadily becomes more deranged.

    They either click one by one, or there’s a set-piece over-the-top moment to clue them in.

    Two face masks now mandated on public transport (why not three or four?!): https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/medical-tyranny-cdc-announces-all-travelers-must-wear-two-masks-threatens-arrest

    At what point does the average rube click this is a farce, if not now..??

    #69143
    zerosum
    Participant

    David and Goliath
    Silver Futures Soar 8%, Rise Above $29 As Reddit Hordes Pile In
    SUN JAN 31, AT 7:29 AM
    views 2,029,046
    comments 8,521

    #69144
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    A military coup in Burma (Myanmar)…Su ky detained along with her government.
    This won’t end well…
    Cambodia and Thailant just shrug…SNAFU…situation normal, all fouled up…

    #69145
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    …another way to say about the coup; same shit, different day…;

Viewing 38 posts - 1 through 38 (of 38 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.