Feb 012021
 
 February 1, 2021  Posted by at 10:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Balthus Therèse dreaming 1938

 

The Store of Value Generation is Kicking Your Ass (Mark Cuban)
Is Robinhood On The Brink Of Collapse? (GIH)
Silver Prices, Miners Surge As Retail Buyers Pile In (R.)
To The Brink And Back On GameStop (R.)
Melvin Capital Loses 53% In January Over Bet Against GameStop (RT)
Bill Gates, Big Pharma and Entrenching The Vaccine Apartheid (M&G)
France & Germany Threaten AstraZeneca With Legal Action (RT)
GOP Tries To Gut Survival Checks (DP)
Trump Announces New Lawyers To Lead Impeachment Defense Team (JTN)
ExxonMobil and Chevron Held Merger Talks In 2020 (G.)
China Building Digital Silk Road From Asia Through Africa To Europe (RT)
Vitamin B1 Deficiencies Are Plaguing Fish and Birds (Atl.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Wall Street and the agency that governs it, the SEC have become fat and happy. Fat and Happy makes old school slow and resistant to change.”

The Store of Value Generation is Kicking Your Ass (Mark Cuban)

[..] there are a growing number of investors and traders who think that the digital goods and CryptoAsset marketplaces are better than old school physical markets and the stock market and most of them are young. They love the fact that NO ONE has power over them. That there is no central authority and they get the results of their own efforts without some government agency or big company fucking with them. Every negative , consequential financial moment in their collective lives has been the result of some massive entity getting greedy and fucking things up for them. On the flipside, they have also been watching some of their peers gain wealth with Crypto and Digital Assets, most starting with not much capital.

Those peers have also been very vocal about the lack of interference by Old Schoolers with Crpto and Digital Assests and much of those gains have come from all of them doing the same thing, buying and Holding On for Dear Life. They have learned that with digital assets, acting in unison can bring wealth to those who otherwise would not have access to it. That is power and they know it and they are learning how to use it. So what does this have to do with Wall Street Bets (WSB) and $GME and the other stocks they are trading ? Well, it’s pretty obvious that the WSB traders are applying the same principles of the digital/CryptoAsset world to the stock market and they are loving the fact that the old schoolers are hating it.

They know that Wall Street hasn’t changed much in generations. Sure it has gone digital in many respects, but the way the game has been played has not changed. Wall Street is 100pct top down controlled and regulated. Which stock is next in the S&P 500 ? Which is removed ? No one knows, but it is provocative and can change fortunes for investors. SEC decides to use their own in-house Administrative Law Judges and prevent defendants from having their constitutional right to a jury trial ? Yup. You can’t afford to fight them. Tough shit. Big brokerages get to have calls and put out notes to their millions of clients with price targets in hopes of moving markets, but think its wrong for Sub Reddits to do the same ? Yup. The ultimate in stock manipulations, corporate stock buy backs were illegal prior to 1982, till the SEC put a former Broker CEO in charge. Wanna guess what has happened to CEO compensation since then ?

Wall Street and the agency that governs it, the SEC have become fat and happy. Fat and Happy makes old school slow and resistant to change. Very resistant. And obviously very unaware of the change that is happening around them.

Read more …

What hat does Robinhood have on?

“For equity brokers who clear their orders properly, there is no reason to limit $GME purchases to one. There is no reason to limit withdrawals..”

Is Robinhood On The Brink Of Collapse? (GIH)

The question remains – is Robinhood running a b-book. For those who are not familiar with OTC brokerage, a b-book is where the losers trade. When you open an account, you get flagged either as a winner or a loser, if you are on the A-Server then your trades flow through to the market, this is known in OTC as “Straight Through Processing” minus a small fee, or the “A-Book.” The “B-Book” or “Broker Book” or “Bad Book” depending on who you ask, is where your trades are placed directly against the broker itself – like spread betting. In this case, the customer losses become the brokers profits, and the reverse. This typically works well for brokers as most retail traders lose. But is Robinhood running a b-book? The answer is we don’t know and would not know, because a b-book broker would never disclose it.

According to public data, this may be a complex convoluted b-book. Citadel not only pays Robinhood for order flow data, Citadel Securities also clears orders for Robinhood. Not only that, Robinhood gets 35% of it’s revenue from Citadel: According to a June report from the Financial Times, $39 million of Robinhood’s revenues from equities and options order flow came from Citadel Securities, a market maker sister firm of Citadel. At the time, this represented more than 35% of the trading platform’s revenues. Which looks like the FXCM trick; Robinhood is not operating a b-book. They clear through Citadel Securities, a market maker, who b-books the trades (goes short basically) by not clearing them. In addition to that, Citadel is heavily invested in Melvin Capital, the hedge fund with a massive short position in $GME.

NOTE: It is not possible to short private equity stock. Robinhood is currently a private company, available on private markets. They claim to have plans for an IPO but so did Refco. If Robinhood’s book is as toxic as it seems, there is no way out for the firm other than to drive the prices of these stocks back down, or to simply reverse the positions which never really existed in the first place. They might want to call b-book mastermind Dror “Drew” Niv who was able to mask his b-booking operation by creating an offshore entity who was the sole counterparty of transactions below a certain size. He’s currently chumming it up with his bros in Greenwich, CT since his firm FXCM has been permanently banned by the NFA.

We aren’t saying that Robinhood is a fraud, we are saying that all the signs are there. For equity brokers who clear their orders properly, there is no reason to limit $GME purchases to one. There is no reason to limit withdrawals, or need ‘liquidity’ for net cap requirements. Running a broker-dealer is not so complicated like an OTC desk, orders match up and it’s all exchange traded. Broker dealers don’t take any risk, at least any meaningful risk. Market makers do. This is the question that we should be asking Vladimir – are you acting as an agent or a principal?

Read more …

WallStreetBets is now setting prices?

Silver Prices, Miners Surge As Retail Buyers Pile In (R.)

Silver prices leapt to a five-month high on Monday and small silver miners listed in Australia surged after social media calls to buy the metal and emulate the frenzy that has driven GameStop shares up 1,500% in two weeks. Spot silver rose as much as 7.4% to $28.99 an ounce, the highest since mid-August. Shares in a handful of mining firms such as Argent Minerals, Boab Metals and Investigator Resources leapt more than 15%. Coin-selling websites also reported unprecedented demand and flagged delays in delivering bullion. The moves are the latest example of small-time traders buying en masse, particularly of stocks and other assets that were heavily bet against, resulting in large losses for major investors.


“There is this curious situation now where the Reddit crowd has turned its sights on a bigger whale in terms of trying to catalyse something of a short squeeze in the silver market,” said Kyle Rodda, an analyst at brokerage IG Markets in Melbourne. “The most important factor here is that silver is heavily shorted, the paper market is much, much larger than the underlying commodity can justify,” he said. “There’s a lot of commentary on these platforms to pile in to the miners.” Silver prices are up 15% since Wednesday’s close, around when messages began circulating on forums such as Reddit encouraging users to buy the metal and drive up prices.

Read more …

“..the idea to short GameStop had long been a favorite at exclusive “idea dinners”, where fund managers swap their best trades.”

To The Brink And Back On GameStop (R.)

The extent of losses has exposed a big weakness on Wall Street. Analytics firm S3 said GameStop short sellers had mark-to-market losses of nearly $20 billion so far this year. Several hedge fund managers said the idea to short GameStop had long been a favorite at exclusive “idea dinners”, where fund managers swap their best trades. Managers also noted traders, many of whom who work at multi-strategy funds that employ pods of portfolio managers, traders and analysts, often know each other well and may compare notes. Gabe Plotkin’s Melvin Capital, one of the funds gored most by GameStop’s gains, took a $2.75 billion bailout from his one-time mentor Steve Cohen and Citadel’s Ken Griffin. The funds involved have taken a dent: Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management lost roughly 15% in January partly because of its investment in Melvin.


Melvin’s assets slid during the month from around $12.5 billion to $8 billion, a source familiar with the situation said. Maplelane Capital, another fund that bet against GameStop, had lost roughly 45% in January, a person familiar with the fund’s returns said. Even Viking Global Investors, one of the world’s best-performing hedge funds, was off some 7%, people familiar with the returns said. “Being short consensus stocks is just bad business,” said Dinakar Singh, a former Goldman Sachs trader who now runs hedge fund Axon Capital and was not short the stock. “It is great while it is working but when it isn’t anymore one guy’s problem triggers everyone’s headache. It becomes a circular disaster.”

Read more …

This is not over.

Melvin Capital Loses 53% In January Over Bet Against GameStop (RT)

Hedge fund Melvin Capital felt the effects of the buying spree spurred by individual buyers from the r/WallStreetBets subreddit account, with the group losing 53 percent in January. Despite the loss, Melvin Capital received fresh cash from investors by the end of January after taking heavy losses due to the unexpected and record stock gains for companies like GameStop, according to a source cited by Reuters. Melvin started January with $12.5 billion in assets, but is closing out the month with $8 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal’s report on the losses. It closed out its short position on GameStop in the wake of the massive surge. Other groups like Citron have also felt the squeeze by betting against GameStop and have closed their short positions with heavy losses.


GameStop became the center of controversy after motivated buyers sought to flood the market and increase its stock price aiming to upset Wall Street hedge funds. Trading at a mere $10 a share in October, GameStop closed out Friday at $325 a share. It has seen a total gain of over 1000 percent this year. Redditors also invested into other surprising companies like AMC leading to a frenzy on Wall Street as longtime investors found themselves trading in a quickly fluctuating and unpredictable market. Traders who bought into GameStop mainly did so through the app Robinhood, which controversially stepped in and halted trading on certain companies and then limited it, claiming this was a move to prevent market manipulation.

Read more …

Rania Khalek: “Too bad there’s so much hatred for bill gates over a conspiracy theory that he wants to micro chip us when actually he’s just a billionaire monster trying to cash in on vaccine profits.”

Bill Gates, Big Pharma and Entrenching The Vaccine Apartheid (M&G)

In October 2020, diplomats from South Africa and India approached the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with a revolutionary proposal. Together, the two countries argued that countries should be allowed to ignore any patents related to Covid-19 vaccines, for the duration of the pandemic. In other words: everyone should be allowed to manufacture the vaccine, without penalty. In their official communication, the countries said: “As new diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for Covid-19 are developed, there are significant concerns [about] how these will be made available promptly, in sufficient quantities and at affordable prices to meet global demand.” Just a few weeks later, Pfizer and BioNTech announced the first successful phase three trials for a Covid-19 vaccine, followed swiftly by Moderna and AstraZeneca.

In developing countries, jubilation at the prospect of a swift end to the devastating pandemic turned quickly into fear and anger, as it became clear that vaccines would only be made available to the rich, with little thought to equitable distribution. Canada, the worst offender, has pre-ordered so many vaccines that it will be able to vaccinate each of its citizens six times over. In the UK and US, it is four vaccines per person; and two each in the EU and Australia. The vaccines that have been made available to the developing world are either untested — such as the Chinese and Russian vaccines, for which insufficient clinical trial data has been released — or expensive. South Africa has ordered 1.5-million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but will pay more than double what the EU is paying per dose.

The EU says that it is entitled to a lower price because it invested in the vaccine’s development — nevermind that the AstraZeneca vaccine was literally tested on the bodies of South Africans who volunteered to be part of the clinical trial in Johannesburg. In lower income countries, the situation is even worse. As of 18 January, 39-million vaccine doses had been administered in the world’s 50 richest countries, compared to just 25 individual doses in low-income countries. It appears that South Africa and India were right. Under the current rules, the vaccine cannot be made quickly or cheaply enough to meet global demand, which vaccines are only going to those countries that can afford it. This is a “catastrophic moral failure”, said the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Some activists have described the situation as a “vaccine apartheid”. Nonetheless, the proposal for a patent waiver has been repeatedly rejected at the WTO by wealthier countries including the European Union, the United Kingdom, US and Switzerland; countries which, as Reuters wryly noted, are “all home to major pharmaceutical companies”. They also all enjoy early access to the vaccine. Nor has South Africa and India’s proposal received support from the most influential non-state actor in global public health: Bill Gates. The pandemic has been good to Gates. In 2020, the Microsoft cofounder added $18-billion to his fortune, which now stands at a cool $131-billion (the annual GDP of Ethiopia, a country of 112-million people, is $96-billion). He is the fourth-richest person in the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has since its inception in 2000 spent more than $54-billion combating diseases such as polio and malaria and bolstering the health systems of developing countries. It funds everything from governments to civil society organisations to health journalism outlets, which means it has an enormous say in how health policy is shaped and communicated. It also contributes 12% of the WHO’s total budget. But despite Gates’ stated commitment to an equitable distribution of the Covid vaccine, he is refusing to back South Africa and India’s calls for a waiver on patents.

Read more …

The wrong fight.

France & Germany Threaten AstraZeneca With Legal Action (RT)

Tensions in a row between AstraZeneca and the EU over vaccine shortages have heightened further as Paris and Berlin said the company should face penalties or even legal action if it turns out it preferred Britons to Europeans. “I am not saying that there is a problem but if there is a problem and that [they] have favored other destinations, other countries – for example the UK – over us then we will defend our interests,” France’s Secretary of State for European Affairs Clement Beaune told the French Radio J on Sunday, adding that the company is now facing “serious accusations” and that is not something that Brussels treats “lightly.” The official then said that the British-Swedish vaccine manufacturer could face “penalties or sanctions” if found to have prioritized its British clients over the European ones.


Beaune added that Brussels could punish the company by refusing to order any supplementary doses or imposing penalties “foreseen by the contract.” The EU has struck an advance purchase agreement with AstraZeneca worth €336 million ($407.8 million) but not all of the money has been paid to the company. Beaune admitted that there is an investigation into AstraZeneca that is still ongoing and the Europeans first need “clarity and transparency.” Still, he said, “if there has been a preference granted to the British, then that’s a problem.” A similarly stark rebuke came from Germany, where the Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Die Welt daily that “if it turns out that individual companies are not complying with their obligations, a decision must be made about legal consequences.”

Read more …

Biden promised the $2,000 checks “immediately”. Where are they? Why try and blame this on the GOP instead?

GOP Tries To Gut Survival Checks (DP)

A group of Republican senators is pushing to cut the size of the next round of COVID-19 relief checks and significantly limit who’s eligible to receive the payments, as the Biden administration continues to indicate that it would be open to further restricting who’s eligible for survival checks. Last month, President Joe Biden promised that $2,000 checks would “go out the door immediately” if Democrats managed to win the two Georgia senate runoff races and claim control of the Senate. After Democrats pulled off two miracle victories in Georgia, Biden quickly narrowed his pledge to new $1,400 checks, asserting that the $600 checks authorized by Congress in December were a down payment on his plan.


On Sunday, ten moderate Republicans proposed new $1,000 checks instead as part of their own scaled-down coronavirus relief package. Under their proposal, survival checks would go to far fewer Americans than in previous relief bills — only to “families who need assistance the most,” according to a letter they sent to the White House. While the details haven’t been released yet, one Republican involved in the effort, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, told CNN on Sunday that direct payments should only go to individuals earning less than $50,000 and families earning less than $100,000. In previous COVID relief bills, full rounds of survival checks have gone to individuals earning up to $75,000 and couples earning up to $150,000. Limiting assistance the way Portman described would cut off relief to millions of Americans who have previously received economic impact payments.

Read more …

Like the spotlight?

Trump Announces New Lawyers To Lead Impeachment Defense Team (JTN)

Lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr. will lead former President Trump’s impeachment trial defense team, according to an announcement on Sunday from the Office of Donald J. Trump. The announcement notes that the two attorneys consider the impeachment unconstitutional and that Schoen had already been working with Trump and other advisors to get ready for the approaching Senate trial. “It is an honor to represent the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, and the United States Constitution,” Schoen said in a statement included in the announcement. “I consider it a privilege to represent the 45th President,” Castor said. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always.” The House of Representatives voted in favor of impeaching Trump earlier this month during the waning days of his term in office.

Read more …

110 years after Standard Oil.

ExxonMobil and Chevron Held Merger Talks In 2020 (G.)

The chief executives of American oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron held preliminary talks in early 2020 to explore combining the two largest US oil producers in what would have been the biggest merger of all time, according to people familiar with the matter. The discussions, which are no longer ongoing, are being seen as having tested the waters for the huge corporate marriage after the coronavirus pandemic shook the world last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Such consequential discussions are indicative of the pressure the energy sector’s most dominant companies faced as Covid-19 took hold and crude prices plunged. The talks between Exxon chief executive, Darren Woods, and Chevron CEO, Mike Wirth, were serious enough for legal documents involving certain aspects of the merger discussions to be drafted, one of the sources told Reuters.

[..] The discussions were described as preliminary and although were not ongoing could come back in the future. Such a deal would reunite the two largest descendants of John D Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, which was broken up by US regulators in 1911, and reshaped the oil industry, the Journal reported. A combined company’s market value could top $350bn, creating the world’s second largest oil company by market capitalization and production, second only to Saudi Arabia’s state oil producer, Aramco. Such a big American oil merger could run into regulatory and antitrust hurdles in the new Biden [presidency], which has taken the US back into the Paris climate accords.

Last week Biden signed new environmental orders, saying the climate crisis was an existential threat demanding urgent remedies and introduced his team, including former secretary of state John Kerry as the new US climate global envoy. During the election campaign last October, Biden said he would push the US to “transition away from the oil industry”.

Read more …

Huawei.

China Building Digital Silk Road From Asia Through Africa To Europe (RT)

The final stretch of a cross-border fiber optic cable is set to be laid by China in Pakistan to create the Digital Silk Road (DSR), Nikkei Asia reports. The DSR is part of the broader Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The fiber cable will link to the Pakistan East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) submarine cable in the Arabian Sea, to service countries participating in BRI, and Europe. It is currently being laid between Pakistan’s Rawalpindi city and the port cities of Karachi and Gwadar. The $240-million project, which is in partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies, was approved by the government last week.

The laying of sea cable in Pakistan’s territorial waters will begin in March, following government approval this month for Cybernet, a local internet service provider, to construct an Arabian Sea landing station in Karachi. The Mediterranean section of the cable is already being laid, and runs from Egypt to France. The 15,000 kilometer-long cable is expected to go into service later this year. The PEACE cable will provide the shortest direct internet route between participating countries, and will drastically reduce internet data transfer speeds.

It is expected to help reduce Pakistan’s exposure to internet outages from damaged submarine cables by providing an additional route for internet connectivity. According to Eyck Freymann, author of ‘One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World,’ the BRI is evolving to place less emphasis on traditional heavy infrastructure, and more on high-tech cooperation and digital services. He told Nikkei Asia that “Beijing wants to dominate the physical infrastructure underlying global communications, particularly the internet,” adding: “This will give it an advantage in internationalizing its tech sector and pursuing future tech-related deals with partner countries.”

Read more …

“..some unexplained process is compromising the foundation of the Earth’s food web by depleting ecosystems of this critical nutrient.”

Vitamin B1 Deficiencies Are Plaguing Fish and Birds (Atl.)

Disoriented little fish caught the attention of staff members at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Red Bluff, California, in early January 2020. Looking down into the outdoor tanks—called raceways—the facility’s employees noticed that among the dark, olive-colored clouds of live fish, there were occasional slivers of silver from the undersides of tiny fry that were struggling to swim. These small fish would roll onto their sides, sink to the bottom for a moment, spring back upright, swim a few strokes, and then roll over again. Many were dying, too. While a few hundred mortalities daily in a facility containing millions of fish is normal, something was definitely amiss. Daily mortality “was in the thousands, and it didn’t go down,” says Brett Galyean, complex manager at the hatchery.

Galyean and his team had already hatched and released into the raceways between six and seven million fish—about half of Coleman’s annual production—and the prospect of losing many or most of them began to seem very real. Biologists at the California-Nevada Fish Health Center, an on-site lab at the hatchery, which is located on a tributary of the Sacramento River, inspected the fish but couldn’t make a diagnosis. A few samples were sent to the University of California, Davis, for more testing. Around that time, Galyean recalls, other salmon hatcheries in the state began reporting unusually high mortality rates in their fish. Whatever was afflicting Coleman’s salmon was evidently impacting fish across Northern California. Short of better explanations, Galyean and his colleagues grew concerned that a virus was sweeping through their brood.

Grasping for ideas as thousands of fish expired each day, they turned to the internet, where they dug up research on nutritional deficiencies in trout from the Great Lakes, as well as Atlantic salmon on the East Coast. Several decades ago, sick and dying fish in these regions had been found to be deficient in thiamine, or vitamin B1—a basic building block of life, critical to the functioning of cells and in converting food into energy. Encouraged by this finding, biologists at the Fish Health Center ran a trial, submerging about half of the fry in a bath of water and dissolved thiamine powder. It worked like a charm, Galyean says. After several hours, nearly all of the treated fish were behaving normally, while symptoms continued in an untreated control group.

Coleman, as well as the other hatcheries, scaled up the treatment and applied it to more than a million fry. It did the job in the short term, but it didn’t solve the underlying problem. Because the fish acquire thiamine by ingesting it through their food, and females pass nutrients to their eggs, the troubling new condition indicated that something was amiss in the Pacific Ocean—the last place the fish eat before entering fresh water to spawn. Now, California researchers investigating the source of the salmon’s nutritional problems find themselves contributing to an international effort to understand thiamine deficiency, a disorder that seems to be on the rise in marine ecosystems across much of the planet. It’s causing illness and death in birds, fish, invertebrates, and possibly mammals, leading scientists to suspect that some unexplained process is compromising the foundation of the Earth’s food web by depleting ecosystems of this critical nutrient.

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 February 1 2021

Viewing 31 posts - 1 through 31 (of 31 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #69150

    Balthus Therèse dreaming 1938   • The Store of Value Generation is Kicking Your Ass (Mark Cuban) • Is Robinhood On The Brink Of Collapse? (GIH) •
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 1 2021]

    #69151
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    Hydroxychroquine really works says Professeur of Medicine Dr Peter McCullough…

    Of course it works, many doctors have been claiming this for almost a year now. But that highlights perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the entire corona virus affair: the attack on practicing doctors.

    We hear a lot these days about attacks on experts but those are just pundits on tv offering one-size-fits-all pseudo-solutions. Meanwhile, working professionals (such as medical doctors) are undermined, either promote the tv dogma or risk losing professional license.

    Throughout history, if one became sick then they sought the advise and care of someone with experience (and hopefully success) in dealing with the matter at hand. Up close, a skilled doctor can evaluate a patient with all of the necessary nuance for creating a course of action. Instead, suddenly, we have been propelled into a world where doctor & patient no longer matter because EVERYBODY is presumed sick and/or dangerous to others…thus absurd, universally mandated policies rain down with incredible bureaucratic efficiency.

    In short, it is a massive centralization of power. The crisis is not medical at all, it is entirely political as tyranny is emerging everywhere in a blitzkrieg attack against us all.

    #69152
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Balthus Therèse dreaming 1938

    Dreaming about what pray tell?
    Interesting; a rather provacative pose for the time; but I like it, regardless…

    #69153
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Rania Khalek: “Too bad there’s so much hatred for bill gates over a conspiracy theory that he wants to micro chip us when actually he’s just a billionaire monster trying to cash in on vaccine profits.”

    Monster stories had to originate from somewhere 😉 People just get creative

    #69154
    Germ
    Participant

    “Held captive by apathy, afraid of your own shadow. PCD American Psychosis – Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy.”

    #69155
    Mr. House
    Participant

    I mean Dracula was a noble man, lived in a castle, taking from the people made him a “blood sucker”. I’m sure somebody has written a book on this topic.

    #69156
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://covexit.com/category/guest-articles/

    Doctors with COVID-19 Put Early At-Home Treatment to the Test\
    ———–
    david and goliath
    • The Store of Value Generation is Kicking Your Ass (Mark Cuban)
    ” Big brokerages get to have calls and put out notes to their millions of clients with price targets in hopes of moving markets, but think its wrong for Sub Reddits to do the same ? Yup. The ultimate in stock manipulations, corporate stock buy backs were illegal prior to 1982, till the SEC put a former Broker CEO in charge. Wanna guess what has happened to CEO compensation since then ?”

    What are they, (WallStreetBets), saying about silver

    David

    https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/hot/
    As I read this I got an Apple news alert that silver is at its highest in 8 years thanks to the same people behind GameStop….
    I’m here lurking everyday snd haven’t seen shit about silver over the last week or 2.
    They can suck my d*** from the back if they think this stupid ass trap will work.

    goliath

    https://www.zerohedge.com/
    “It’s Been Nuts”: Silver Surges Most Since Lehman Bankruptcy; Hits 7-Year High Over $30

    WallStreetBets is now setting prices?
    • Silver Prices, Miners Surge As Retail Buyers Pile In (R.)
    —————
    • Trump Announces New Lawyers To Lead Impeachment Defense Team (JTN)
    Question?:
    What would happen if Trump was not represented by lawyers in the senate impeachment hearing?
    ——

    #69157
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Mr House –
    So true! You have me grinning.

    One of the challenges the non-elites face is how to respond in concert to this situation where so few control the wealth and power of the world and return some power to themselves. To do this, the non-elites need to be able to communicate with one another, need to be able to agree on who and what is the problem exactly. “Wealthy billionaires and their funded lackeys in government” is a viable start. “Bill Gates wants to chip you,” “Count Dracula,” and “the boogeyman” are too ephemeral for the focus required. However…remembering a conversation with a friend last week who thought of Bill Gates as “that nice guy with the foundation” — I suppose “Bill Gates wants to chip you” will help dislodge the “nice guy” viewpoint from at least a subset of the population, which helps us get to the problem of wealthy billionaires and their lackeys.

    The Microsoft company has made some beneficial contributions to mankind…but that doesn’t mean that Bill Gates (one man) should have more wealth and power and influence than the government representing the 112 million people of South Africa.

    #69158
    John Day
    Participant

    Now I know who Laura Ingraham is. The guy on the right of the screen in yesterday”s link (in comments) Harvey Risch MD is an epidemiologist. The statement up top today about the one-in-a-gazillion-chance-that-HCQ-doesn’t-work is medical professor Peter McCullough MD’s writing. These are a couple of the principals on the email listserv of C-19 treating physicians, that Dr McCullough added me to last month.
    It’s a good and useful and heterogenous group. I’ve gotten behind again over the long Friday at work and the weekend chores in Yoakum. Other chores back in Austin today.

    This video did not come from that august group, but is likely informed by their COVID treatment work.
    Former Military Surgeon, Lee Merritt MD (skip the first 2-3 minutes of beard-guy) lays out the argument that SARS-CoV-2 is a military weapon, and we humans are the targets, but that the actual aggressor remains hidden in this war. China is mentioned, but she specifically does not say that the CCP is the primary aggressor. Arguments are sound, even if the finish of this piece is nuevo-John-Birch-Society.
    Understanding that we are already in a war is a useful cognitive tool.
    Yes, hydroxychloroquine is effective in the early (pre-hospital) stage and also some in hospital, and ivermectin is effective at all stages, and other medicines have antiviral effects, notably vitamin-D as a baseline immune support, and zinc to reduce viral replication when ill. We are not supposed to think.
    We are supposed to take vaccines. Why?
    The answer is not apparent. Is this a long term business model on your rent to keep living, in the form of a vaccine every 6 months? That’s plausible.
    Is some vaccine (there are many) the harmless first part of a binarybiological weapon of some sort?
    What would the secondary part of the binary weapon cause? Death? Infertility?
    https://www.brighteon.com/b95f1834-1283-4866-b16e-fb6bf9092aeb

    As to some of the comments from the days I missed. I’ve read them. Tulsi-bashing is easy. She did 2 tours in a medical unit in a war-of-empire-zone. Bash Tulsi after you walk in those shoes. She is strong in character and strong physically. She surfs like a warrior, not like a babe. “Pretty” is a cheap shot.
    Let me refer you to this link, scroll down to just above the comments:

    Debt Rattle March 3 2020

    #69159
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “The answer is not apparent. Is this a long term business model on your rent to keep living, in the form of a vaccine every 6 months? That’s plausible.”

    The major healthcare company i work for has said you’ll need a booster shot each year, so that sounds right. And i still believe this will be made mandatory at some point if you want to “work” for a major corporation. I think so far the response to the vaccine hasn’t been what they thought it would be, now they’re doing pro vaccine townhalls and such. People aren’t getting the jab like the TPTB thought they would.

    #69160
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Tetracyclines and macrolides and 50s or 30s ribosomal units. Yep.
    The poles, pundits and editorialists wake up to the danger, shared psychosis, of allowing Malignant Narcissists and Antisocial Personality Disordered people run the show. Yup.

    You heard it all here folks almost a year ago.

    #69161
    Bill7
    Participant

    Rob Slane- ‘The Largest Experiment on Humans Ever Seen’:

    “Which is the more reasonable approach a society might take in the outbreak of epidemic:
    To quarantine the sick, and take reasonable precautions to stop those who are identified as vulnerable from contracting the illness.

    To attempt to “control the virus” by preventing millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people.

    To any society prior to 2020, it would have been obvious that the first approach is not only logical and proportionate, but the one least likely to have other unintended and highly destructive consequences. However, to my continued astonishment, many in our society not only believe that the answer is the second, but they somehow believe it to be based on established science.

    Now I understand that many who support Lockdown will object to my characterisation of their position. They will say that it is deliberately misleading, since it talks about healthy people, and does not mention the sick. Such objections founder, however, on this undeniable fact: Lockdowns are, by their nature, an entirely untargeted and indiscriminate approach to a health issue, and the prohibiting by law of millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people is a feature, not a bug of a policy that was untried and untested before it was first implemented by the Chinese Communist Party in January last year, then copied by many Governments around the world thereafter.

    For some reason, many Lockdownists seem to think that the onus is on Lockdown opponents to disprove their position. But as Dr Malcolm Kendrick points out in his excellent piece – Does Lockdown Work or Not, this is the opposite of how things are supposed to work:

    “The starting point, for any scientific hypothesis, is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work, to prove that it doesn’t, is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.”..”

    The Largest Experiment on Humans Ever Seen

    ‘The Times Wants You Consumed by Fear, Isolation, and Misery’:

    “There are probably multiple reasons why coronavirus cases in the US are down nearly 50% in the US in the last month.
    Could be seasonal. Could be the vaccine. Could be herd immunity from natural infection.
    Could be the post-holiday default to endemicity. Could be a change in the cycle threshold of PCR that generates fewer positive cases. Could be data tweaks in light of political changes.
    Anyone who says he knows for sure which is dominant is pretending to know the unknowable.

    The New York Times, which obliquely reports the case decline, is still certain that you should still live in isolation, fear, and disease panic. They offer every county in America a tool in which you can discover what you should do to protect yourself from the pathogen, as if the only way to deal with a respiratory virus is to hide. Their tool is extremely manipulative..”

    The Times Wants You Consumed by Fear, Isolation, and Misery

    Jus caint figger it out.

    -Bill7

    #69162
    John Day
    Participant

    The blog has a paper by Dr Merritt, and the video linked to above, but mainly it has a picture of me in the 1957 iron bathtub that now has a tile shower. You should not get sore from grouting and puttying a tile job. I’ve never done grout work before. I have a couple of sore spots. I did not do the tile work, itself.
    I would like to know what V.Arnold thinks of the photographic composition and subject matter.
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/02/war-by-virus.html

    Off to plant another peach tree in the other raised-bed planter at the clinic!

    #69163
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    RE: “..some unexplained process is compromising the foundation of the Earth’s food web by depleting ecosystems of this critical nutrient.” One more collapse story…what isn’t failing…no where to run or hide.

    Birth. Growth. Decay. Death. All in this creation are subjected to the cycle – the Wheel of Life turns on with or without you. Can my grief for the dying salmon, Ohio fir trees, and Buckeye Mom on Hospice be converted/transformed into acceptance? Am appreciating the diligence of the hatchery scientists in seeking answers. They aren’t surrendering to the problem despite the fact that the scope/issues have expanded to include the Pacific Ocean.

    Returned HOME to fulfill my ROLE as eldest Daughter by getting Mom into a supported and cozy “nest” for her final flight. PEACE (acceptance) was found in the process.

    #69164
    Mr. House
    Participant

    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/facebook-oversight-reverses-hydroxychloroquine-censorship-decision

    The one thing you can count on in the Age of Fraud and as Dr. D loves to point out, no one will be held accountable

    #69165
    kultsommer
    Participant

    @Germ
    Thank you for the post. I will go into sunset thinking why is it so hard for the anybody to get it. He’s pointing to the dictators and system of the past that has nothing to do with us, right now. But he’s making clear WHO we should be concerned about HERE and NOW and why. Ideologically fogged minds simply refuse to even contemplate such a notion, and have their eyes fixed on the past – but not beyond 1917. Monsters come in all shapes and forms throughout in history.

    Only people who may have a problem with this Balthus are the ones who think that some painting of nude should entice the same reaction as, God forbid, centerfold spread. At which point young girl, or boy, start to “dream”?
    Problem is that Epsteins and Clintons of the world think that they are the theme of that dream

    #69166
    Noirette
    Participant

    Patients get no treatment whatsoever…They literally are told to stay at home until they are sick enough to go to hospital… Dr. P. McC. at top post.

    Not only in the US and Australia, but in much of the W as well, Europe.

    It is crazy. It seems like the Docs have given up their profession and are directly or implicitly -following the movement- i.e. obeying Gvmts, “nothing to be done and avoid meeting to flatten the curve” and bowing to Big Pharma “nothing to be done until the miracle of vaccines.”

    Imho the Docs don’t see that this step they have taken or perhaps have unconsciously submitted to will do great harm to their profession. They are well on their way to becoming middlemen, a kind of servant to higher powers who deals with trouble on the ground – sick ppl.

    Of course, as we here (Switz, CH) never tire of pointing out, Docs are a libéral profession, like lawyers, independents with xyz-qualifications, even if today a large no. of docs (CH) are salaried employees, or entirely dependent on decisions taken by insurers as to pay.

    By contrast, lawyers have an esprit de corps (leading to group organisation, defense) but Docs do not. They are too diverse, too individualistic, and in positions that are too different. Nurses, who are more similar in their training / functions / positions, and at a lower echelon, have it better on that rubric. (CH, it is an example.)

    Docs apparently also don’t see that their independence, besides the middleman aspect which is bad enough.. is threatened by algos. Nurses can’t be replaced on the whole, but Docs, who listen, gather some measurements, study signs and symptoms, order tests which go to labs, advise and prescribe, can. Tele-med is already being pushed hard in some places.

    from investopedia:

    25 Highest Paid Occupations in the U.S. — Government data show that healthcare dominates the salary ladder

    https://bit.ly/3pHSr1M

    Set to change fron now on. (Not that I approve of Med. Perso. earning more than others, e.g. teachers, scientists, fire-fighters, etc.)

    —> see also Basseterre above similar pov, mentions ‘centralized power’

    #69167
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    MY BRAIN IS TRYING TO KILL ME.

    Hahaha. Isn’t that the truth – or so it seems!

    The ultimate battlefield is within. You have the power to sort it out.

    MY BRAIN IS TRYING TO KILL ME AND I AM WINNING

    #69168
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    There was a lot of ballyhooing about silver over the weekend, but it would appear that for all the effort to “short squeeze” it, it went up a bit, then shrugged and said, “Is that all ya got?” Might the central banks have counter-moved against the “Reddit Army”, as it’s now being called, to prevent the short-squeeze on silver? Just a thought. 🙂

    #69169
    zerosum
    Participant

    More info
    https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltext
    REVIEW| VOLUME 134, ISSUE 1, P16-22, JANUARY 01, 2021
    Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection
    Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH Ronan J. Kelly, MDGaetano Ruocco, MDWilliam W. O’Neill, MDMarcus Zervos, MDHarvey A. Risch, MD,PhDShow all authors
    Open Access Published: August 06, 2020

    Hence, the agents proposed are those that have appreciable clinical support and are feasible for administration in the ambulatory setting. SARS-CoV-2 as with many infections may be amenable to therapy early in its course but is probably not responsive to the same treatments very late in the hospitalized and terminal stages of illness.
    10. For the ambulatory patient with recognized early signs and symptoms of COVID-19, often with nasal real-time reverse transcription or oral antigen testing pending, the following 4 principles could be deployed in a layered and escalating manner depending on clinical manifestations of COVID-19-like illness11 and confirmed infection: 1) reduction of reinoculation, 2) combination antiviral therapy, 3) immunomodulation, and 4) antiplatelet/antithrombotic therapy. Because the results of testing could take up to a week to return, treatment can be started before the results are known. For patients with cardinal features of the syndrome (ie, fever, body aches, nasal congestion, loss of taste and smell, etc.) and suspected false-negative testing, treatment can be the same as those with confirmed COVID-19.
    11 Future randomized trials are expected to confirm, reject, refine, and expand these principles. In this article, they are set forth in emergency response to the growing pandemic as shown in Figure 1.

    https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/b5b1dfe2-865b-40f6-a93c-6458e3c51c8c/gr1.jpg

    Zinc Lozenges and Zinc Sulfate
    Antimalarials Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)
    Azithromycin
    Doxycycline
    Favipiravir
    Immunomodulators
    Colchicine
    aspirin 81 mg daily can be administered as an initial antiplatelet and anti-inflammatory agent

    #69170
    Germ
    Participant

    Food for thought about Covid and creeping fascism:

    #69174
    zerosum
    Participant

    Do you remember my simple example of IPO vs GRUBSTAKE?
    Well in today”s world, I learned that if the merchant that did the original grubstaking sold part of his note to someone else, then the transfer would be done with a computerized mechanism

    Between every stock trade there are 2 agents; The Registrar and the Transfer Agent. Your/my Stocks are hold by them “in street name”.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/these-are-shadowy-new-york-financial-institutions-forced-robinhood-restrict-trading-certain
    These Are The Shadowy New York Financial Institutions That Forced Robinhood To Restrict Trading In Certain Stocks
    Have you ever heard of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation? What about Cede and Company? If those names are foreign to you, then you don’t really understand how the core of our financial system really works.

    #69175
    zerosum
    Participant

    I went to zerohedge and could not find the ink that I made. Was it deleted? can you see it?

    MONDAY, FEB 01, 2021 – 12:22

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/these-are-shadowy-new-york-financial-institutions-forced-robinhood-restrict-trading-certain

    #69176
    WES
    Participant

    A few thoughts on Reddit/Robinhood “little guys” short squeezes.

    First, the big guys have pushed their short positions to extremes (naked shorting) in particular stocks, creating the right conditions for an organized group of little guys to exploit. The big guys never thought this would ever happen in their rigged game! They were the sole organizing group!

    The little guys are like hit and run bandits. All the little guys have to do, is “say” they are going to target a particular overshorted shorted stock to have an effect! They don’t actually have to put any money into it.

    This is a form of asymmetrical warfare that the big guys find very hard to fight. The big guys have big money on the table but the little guys don’t have much, if any, money on the table!

    So the logical thing for the big guys to do is to not short to the extremes (naked shorting) they are currently doing. This would reduce the opportunities available for the little guys to exploit, to nearly zero.

    However, the shorting function in the stock market is critical to make stocks go up (bull market) through periodically forced bouts of short covering.

    If the big guys become more conservative in their short positions, then bull market rallies will become weaker. However, in bear markets, bear market rallies will also become weaker too!

    In the long run the little guys will force the insane behavior of the big guys to be just a little bit less insane!

    No, honesty will still not return! The markets will still remained rigged against the little guy!

    #69177
    WES
    Participant

    Regarding buying silver coins. Don’t buy! At least not now! And beware of Chinese fake coins. Don’t buy any coins from China!

    Why? Premiums being charged by coin dealers are currently insane!

    Typically coin dealers are asking for $40 to $42 for an one ounce silver eagle. Silver is just under $29 now. That works out to at least a 25% to 30% premium, way over the typical 5% premium for coins.

    The coin dealers say there is a shortage of physical silver. Yes, and No!

    Yes, there is a shortage of minted silver coins. (The mints are having trouble sourcing large silver bars.)

    No, there is not really a shortage of physical silver bars (the only shortage of silver bars is at a low price of $29! Anybody with silver bars will not sell their large silver bars at such a low price when they know silver is worth much, much, more!).

    #69178
    WES
    Participant

    Under the category of “changing the rules in the middle of the silver game”, the CME has raised silver margin requirements 18% if you want to continue to play in their rigged silver paper sandbox!

    And by-the-way, there is no shortage of paper silver (or paper gold)! That is what SLV holds! Same for GLD too!

    Today I would say silver is up about $2 after surviving a $1 sell off by people booking profits. Not bad but hardly inspiring either when compared to GameStop.

    #69179
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Beware the new Ism; transgenderism
    I have no problem with transgender per se, but the ism is troubling…
    Biden has, in effect, damaged women’s sports; possibly permanently…we’ll see…
    What’s being done to children regarding trans is a crime, IMO…

    #69180
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    John Day
    I would like to know what V.Arnold thinks of the photographic composition and subject matter.

    Methinks you are too kind in your regards to critique…
    Compositionally the subject is you; contrasted against your newly tiled shower… 😉

    #69181
    John Day
    Participant

    @Germ: Thanks for the short , searingly truthful Chris Hedges video.


    @Susmarie108
    : Yu are doing the work. I think it’s best to do the work the first time it is presented to you, not to put it off… You’re an ok human being… You and Mom know that.

    #69182
    WES
    Participant

    It is really interesting to read some of the details of why their was military coup in Burma, yesterday.

    In November 2020 Burma had an election. The ruling party won by a landslide! Yeah, just like obiden won 81 million votes! She was not very popular either. Sound familiar!

    The military complained that there were over 8 million unexplained voting irregularities.

    The military complained to the election commission, but the commission declined to look at the evidence! Sound familiar!

    Guess what! Burma uses the same voting machines as the US does!

    Yesterday the Burmese military did something about it!

    Now we know why obiden and Dems support the disposed party leader because she used their voting machines to steal the election!

    Now wouldn’t it be very embarrassing, to obiden, if the Burmese military releases a true audit of their election voting verses what their voting machines counted!

    #69183
    Bill7
    Participant

    From ‘Masked and Anonymous’ (2005):

    As with ‘Brazil’, ‘Blade Runner’, and this good piece- they tell us what they have planned.

    Mickey Rourke is perfect here; Goodman is real good, too. Dylan et at 10:40 or so in the real thing™..

    NewDarkAge.com

Viewing 31 posts - 1 through 31 (of 31 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.