The Imminent Demise Of The American Economy
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Harris&Ewing Angelus siren on roof of Evans building, Washington, DC Aug 1918 If and when you see that in 2014 S&P 500 Companies Spend Almost All Prof
[See the full post at: The Imminent Demise Of The American Economy]The inflation of assets is the purpose of the economy. Janet Yellen said as much recently when she urged middle class and poor people to accumulate assets to gain wealth. (wink wink, nod nod, elbow to the gut. Damnit, the Fed has your back on this stuff)
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/yellen20140918a.htm
No mention of work, income,wages, heaven forbid. That’s so 19th century,she could have said. Do I need mention the absurdity of people barely scraping by, or less, buying assets, presumeably finanicial? The assumption that inflating assets creates wealth is absolute. Well it would be if they thought that assets inflated but no, they only rise in value. A perfect storm of misconception.
Speaking of which, rapier, here’s a good one:
“Loan gives low-income borrowers a chance to build equity fast”
https://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-lew-20141005-story.htmlCheck it out, Ilargi. The bankers are just full of bright ideas. That should have some value, right?
A Spanish nurse in Madrid, who helped care for a Spanish priest with Ebola, entered his room twice. He died September 25. She has now been diagnosed with Ebola, and has a high fever. That puts an end to the proposition that Ebola is “hard to catch”. This Ebola epidemic is of different character than all prior outbreaks.
There are statements that it is not transmitted through airborne aerosols, but they are not proven at all. Aerosol transmission is the explanation which fits best with the information about this gowned, masked, goggled and gloved nurse catching Ebola.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-06/spanish-ebola-infected-nurse-first-case-contagion-out-africa-salzburg-activates-ebol
How long until this gets rationally discussed in the mass media?SteveB – from the article you posted:
“To make the payments more affordable, the offering rate will be about three-quarters of a percentage point below the 30-year FHA rate. And the rate can be bought down even further. For every 1% of the loan amount the borrower puts up as a down payment, the interest rate will be lowered by half a percentage point, which is twice as much as usual.
Consequently, a $6,000 down payment on a $100,000 mortgage at 3% would bring the rate down to zero, meaning that every penny spent on the monthly payment would go to principal.”
LOL – Santa Claus is in the house!
Ilargi – “Companies need to invest their earnings into projects that will generate profits, into the development of products and services that they can sell to the world out there.”
Well, the insiders of these companies ARE investing their earnings. They bought stock when it was low, got given stock options, and they’re cashing them in like crazy, along with bonuses up the wazoo. That’s the problem. There is currently too much money being made from nothing (financial products). Their reasoning is, “Well, why would I ever want to risk starting a project when I can make a killing doing what I’m doing?”
And then these very people turn around and say, “Don’t raise our taxes because we’re the money-earners, we pay all of the taxes.” From what? From money made out of nothing.
Ilargi – “Because I think that what we’re looking at here is the imminent demise of the corporate world, and therefore the financial world, and the entire US economy as we know it.”
I think you are right!
John Day – the Dallas Ebola patient’s daughter-in-law (the one who came over on Sunday, September 28th, to give him tea, who went out and bought him a blanket, who rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital, the one who was not ordered into quarantine, but has thankfully quarantined herself – that one) was yesterday (October 5th) given permission to go back to work at the old-age care facility she works at.
She was not “gowned, masked, goggled and gloved” while attending to her father-in-law, yet the CDC have given her and her husband (who had seen the Ebola patient the morning of September 28th) permission to go out and get back to work. She is not agreeing to this (thank goodness), and is herself deciding to ride out the 21 days in quarantine.
John Day, do you not think that this is too short a time to decide they can re-enter the work force, go out shopping? I know you are only infectious when you’re feverish and ill (so they say), but sometimes (as in the case of the flu) you are infectious before you know you’re even sick. Sounds like this Spanish nurse didn’t develop symptoms for about 10 to 12 days, if you start counting from about the 24th of September.
Hope you got my link yesterday on the Liberian doctor who gave his patients the HIV drug and saved 13 out of 15 lives. That might be a good thing to know if this gets out of hand. Thanks.
Sorry, I forgot the link to the above post:
I don’t know if this guy is correct or not, but he’s quoting government documents:
“It seems to be a common assumption that Ebola isn’t Aerosol and cant be transmitted via inhalation (a lot of news stories I read seem to make this assumption when talking about a story surrounding an infected person). While this is true for SOME strains of Ebola (4 out of 5), there is a strain that is Aerosol and transmittable via inhalation; the Zaire strain, which this current virus is a genetic variant of. Because of this I find that a lot of the precautions being taken, especially at airports, and in planes involving visibly sick people, really aren’t going to stand a chance for containing this virus (they seem to just let other passengers go assuming they are not also infected due to not actually touching the suspected person…). Truth is an airplane is extremely close to a “hospital environment”, which is the perfect condition for Ebola-Zaire to transmit via aerosol. For those that say that Ebola isn’t aerosol or transmittable via inhalation, please check out the follow .gov sources that blatantly say otherwise.”
https://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2616116/pg1
And from the CDC themselves, they list what constitutes high risk exposure and low risk exposure:
“Low risk exposures:
A low risk exposure includes any of the following
– Household contact with an EVD patient
– Other close contact with EVD patients in health care facilities or community settings. Close contact is defined as
a) being within approximately 3 feet (1 meter) of an EVD patient or within the patient’s room or care area for a prolonged period of time (e.g., health care personnel, household members) while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., standard, droplet, and contact precautions; see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations).”https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/case-definition.html
One commenter said that he thinks so many medical personnel got sick because they were assuming Ebola couldn’t be transmitted via aerosol droplets. I too am wondering if that’s the case.
Zero percent low income home loans? Wow, I wonder what that cost the home builders lobby?
On share equity for debt, why, again, is it not a good idea to lock in some of the lowest long term interest rates in all of history?
There is some nice leverage there, and when rates begin rising again, shares can always be re-issued. And at that point, maybe the Fed will buy them all.
On the one hand, anyone who falls for the Wealth Building Home Loan gets what they deserve. But given the average IQ in America these days, maybe the government should offer at least a minimum of protection. If not, you might as well make any and all breaking and entering legal.
Re Ebola, from Jon Barron, a leader in alternative health, says that ebola risks outside West Africa are being hyped:
The maleficent, monger-miners of morbidity are at it yet again, looking to whip people into a frenzy of fear and spread misinformation in the name of the CDC. In case you haven’t seen it, there have been an abundance of headlines over the last couple of days saying things like:
CDC report predicts as many as 1.4 million cases of Ebola by January
And although the CDC report literally says that, it doesn’t actually mean that. The statement is taken out of context. I encourage you to read the actual report and not just the stories about it. But if you don’t have the time, let me explain what the report actually says.
First, this is not an actual prediction; it’s the presentation of two different scenarios based on an Ebola Response modeling tool developed by the CDC. The 1.4 million figure represents one scenario. To quote from the report.
“Extrapolating trends to January 20, 2015, without additional interventions or changes in community behavior (e.g., notable reductions in unsafe burial practices), the model also estimates that Liberia and Sierra Leone will have approximately 550,000 Ebola cases (1.4 million when corrected for underreporting).”
However, the second scenario in the report states:
“If, by late December 2014, approximately 70% of patients were placed either in ETUs or home or in a community setting such that there is a reduced risk for disease transmission (including safe burial when needed), then the epidemic in both countries would almost be ended by January 20, 2015.”
In other words, if you weren’t into fear mongering, you could just as easily have run a headline based on this report that read:
CDC report predicts Ebola will be over by January
So which scenario is more likely? Well, the last three sentences in the report clearly state the opinion of the researchers themselves.
“Officials have developed a plan to rapidly increase ETU capacities and also are developing innovative methods that can be quickly scaled up to isolate patients in non-ETU settings in a way that can help disrupt Ebola transmission in communities. The U.S. government and international organizations recently announced commitments to support these measures. As these measures are rapidly implemented and sustained, the higher projections presented in this report become very unlikely.”
Unfortunately, many news services have decided to transform into fear-mongering the CDC’s express effort to motivate the international community. As the Washington Post pointed out in its version of the story, CDC Director Tom Frieden, commenting on the report, said, “This presents a what-if case — the nightmare scenario if nothing is done.” He added, “It is still possible to reverse the epidemic, and we believe this can be done if a sufficient number of all patients are effectively isolated, either in Ebola treatment units or in other settings, such as community-based or home care. Once a sufficient number of Ebola patients are isolated, cases will decline very rapidly — almost as rapidly as they rose.”
Link to the whole article: https://jonbarron.org/colds-flus-infectious-diseases/ebola-14-million-cases-not-really
sumac.carol – yes, we have the story of the young woman who used plastic garbage bags to cover her body while she cared for her Ebola-infected family members. I believe she saved all but one. It could be her family members just had better immune systems.
But I still believe in the Dallas case that the situation was handled in a negligent manner. And if the CDC has told the daughter-in-law that she may return to work, with a so-called incubation period of up to 21 days, then that is again being negligent.
I think the only way they’re going to stop this from spreading further is if they quarantine all three countries affected, no one going in or out. When you want to stop a forest fire, you build a firewall.
Of course, the pharmaceutical companies might have other ideas.
Anyone else hear about Crucell’s Ebola vaccine from back in 2006? It’s a company Bill Gates was involved in. So despite the news, apparently THEY think there’s a vaccine or they wouldn’t have patented it with Phase I clinical trials. What a profit-maker there, huh?
At the same time, doesn’t it seem like the people the US have brought back and given the “special treatment” seem to have all recovered? So does this mean we have a cure, either in trial or in total? Or is it not as dangerous as they claim, or…what?
Reports were also that in Dallas, vomit was cleaned off the street, ambulance, etc with no protection as no one was informed. Where are these people, and did they contract it? (n.b. we probably wouldn’t know yet) If not, interesting vector that it a) infects some in whole-body suits and b) doesn’t infect others who are violently exposed. Just watching. Interesting questions.
Hi Raleigh, I’ve now looked at and replied to your post from yesterday. Back when this was “blogspot” I got e-notifications of replies. Not now. I would appreciate it if you would look at what I answered there. This link should go to a graph of presentation of Ebola symptoms over time.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ufVgUj86eAg/VCtqvM1hQPI/AAAAAAAABA4/0MkpQD9HmGw/s1600/Ebola%2Bonset%2Bdistribution.JPGThat graph link seems to work.
About 90% of people are symptomatic within 10 days of exposure. 21 days is something like 5 standard deviations from the mean, by the looks of things.
3TC/Lamivudine , TKM-Ebola and brincidofovir, which is being used in Dallas, on Thomas Duncan, all take the place of a nucleotide in a DNA or RNA chain, which is like a zipper, and one side allows the other side of the zipper to form, then separate, then it all happens again.
These drugs mess up the zipper function, so the viral RNA or DNA (Ebola is RNA) can’t replicate, or replicates with big warts and has the wrong shape to work.I’m going to keep these replies bite sized.
Raleigh,
Yes, I agree that the response in Dallas has been an embarrassment, and with poorly reasoned snap responses.
Putting a bunch of people in an apartment without food, not all even directly related, and stationing ungowned cops outside, was a Dallas Police Department level of professionalism (ie, low).
The self-quarantined people in Dallas have clearly been directly and repeatedly exposed to an active Ebola patient and his bodily secretions. God bless them for their responsibility.
Diablo,
Having clean-up workers with their isolation gowns rolled to their elbows (photo on Zero Hedge) and a guy on the sidewalk in street clothes pressure spraying Ebola vomit onto a pedestrian in sandals (also ZH photo) was par for that course. Vaccines don’t always work, and they take a lot of time to ramp up. Flu vaccine is big business, and probably a bit less effective than taking 2000-5000 units of vitamin D daily (adult dose interpolated from 1200 U/d pediatric dose in 2009 Japanese study). I was a (healthy) volunteer for an AIDS vaccine study over a decade ago. Still no AIDS vaccine…I do not know how the initial snap judgement was made about who to quarantine and who to let run free was made, but it was clearly made before collecting enough information.
that’s understandable. Why was it not revised? There are so many errors here.
Now the quarantined group has been moved to a house in a gated community, where they are not open to such embarrassing scrutiny.Whether “Ebola” can be transmitted as an aerosol is really an open question, based upon conditions. “Ebola” is not one virus, but this new strain behaves very differently from prior strains. Aerosol transmission between sick piglets in a cage and chimps in a separate cage across the room has been demonstrated.Even without the droplet nuclei of a sneeze, aerosolized particles are created in everyday life. This article about “government lies”, by a Criminology Prof. has a lot of good details about aerosolized viruses. https://www.globalresearch.ca/ebola-outbreak-the-latest-u-s-government-lies/5405584
It also contains the seldom mentioned information that this virus has no direct antecedents, and regression analysis of the mutation rate points to a first human contact in December 2013. This virus has covered a lot of ground since then, unlike all other Ebolas. Doubling every 3 weeks (hypothetical) means it will infect 8 billion people next June. Of course there are limits…
So, Sumac.Carol, I don’t believe that there is an excess of fear about this.
My independent medical analysis is that this is a direct threat to every human. Exponential growth is not something we are wired to understand, except through studied rational processes.
I do agree with the CDC that America (and everybody) remains threatened, as long as this virus persists in Africa.
Donating to Doctors Without Borders is the best form of self-protection that I can see right now.
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