Big line go up. In the old blogging days, I used to love to blog on the financial system and investing. Like a cadre of fringe right or skeptic right people, I found my eyes opening to the lies of the system first via the blatant lies of the financial system. Some of us commented together at Barry Ritholtz’s old blog or Matt Yglesias Moneybox, pointing out Matt’s stupidity and the lies piling up left and right with the ’00s bubble. The system printed trillions and restarted bubbles everywhere. Big line go up.

You cannot fight it. The entire system is dependent on the lie. If one large player defects, the whole thing crashes, ruining it all for everyone. There is the lie for the system and then the corruption. This is why they do not defect. They have the number for all the members of the credibility trap. Start making noises that they do not like, and you will get the Dominique Strauss-Kahn treatment. Be a potential reformer in the future, and the feds will bust your madam and spread your details of your hooker use without actually charging you with any crime a la Elliot Spitzer.

The big line will go up and the real estate valuations will go up. Now the indexes do not see broad strength and are propped up by fewer stocks accounting for the overall gains. Likewise, real estate gains have been ridiculous in major cities. Unlike the stock issue, real estate gains have now priced enough people out to then flood mid-tier cities with new residents that new projects get installed to cater to. Columbus does not need penthouse apartments for $3,000/month, but they cater to a clientele abandoning New York City. It is tied together as the asset holders can get lines of credit on the inflated valuations and then buy more assets, bidding up prices.

It is all tied together. Our markets go up and assets are attractive to foreigners, flooding the US markets with more money. Europe has now had negative rates for years, and not just negative short term rates but 10 year bonds. The 10 year Greek bond yields less than 1%. Greece! Look all across the competent EU nations, and you will find negative rates. Where do you think they go for chasing yield? US Markets! These markets feel sick and distorted to you, and you are right, but it is how they are now as this incredible long read explains. No one gets credit and loans except for the best borrowers and there is so much money to shove at them. Euro money managers push money into our markets rather than assume risk in their own backyard. This pushes down Treasuries, and boom, America can fund the Godfather Intervention Protection Racket all over the globe. Foreign plunder keeps everyone fat and happy here!

Eventually, an external shock is going to set the house of cards a tumble. Either the post-Trump US foreign policy establishment flexes its atrophied muscles with a new president happy to say “Oh Yeah We’re Back, Baby” and gets a bloody nose or our creditors will get to the point where bleeding us slowly does not look as good as calling the chips in pronto. This won’t last forever despite the media screaming at us to buy now for fear of missing out. You can feel the tension at any 5% market dip. You saw it in January when the nation had a week of chicken littling over friction with Iran. We have gone from behind the scenes billionaires funding candidates to billionaires overtly buying elections (Pritzker and Blomberg). We have coercion to comply rather than persuasion, and not just at home but in how we manage the empire. What are you sitting there for, buy now. Don’t miss out.

Onto the links…

Jeremy Grantham goes Frogtwitter – Grantham is a sharp financial figure. He now says that in the future the rich will be the only ones who can have kids because toxic chemicals will render the rest of us sterile. I bet he doesn’t touch receipts anymore. Question is: why are we tolerating the use of these chemicals?

Experimental brain treatments gone bad – When I read this, it felt like a toned down story that Zero HP Lovecraft would write.

Why Witchcraft is on the rise – The article does mention the feminism angle, but of course, dodges the religion issue. It also avoids citing the witch media content that the regime has been pumping out for years now. Pretty sure we have all seen the glorification of witches or the ‘witchcraft is a cool consumer identity’ online.

Caldwell on Houellebecq – Just read it. I am thrilled he quoted and dug into The Elementary Particles at length because yes, it is as autobiographical as Houellebecq would get.

China Re-feudalizing – This could be some fake news, but coronavirus is causing some changes. There are likely some cultural effects that will change China if this becomes endemic. I’ll wait for Spandrell’s take on it, but the people I know in Shenzen and Beijing are freaked out with good reason.

Codevilla Says Build A Team – Codevilla knows it takes 1,000 men. It takes a team. That really is the challenge for the ’20s. Not just at the federal level, but at state levels so that these state teams can become federal teams if called on. The stale conservatives need a house-cleaning within the sysytems that they have any power over at state and county levels. Do you know how candidates are selected and pushed out to the voters to make sure they get the votes? Who has control over the county party? The state or is the county org independent? Where is the real money coming from?

Croesus and Caesar were rich and Inflation has been rigged – Two posts on how our modern economists cannot judge wealth and inflation. The first explains how idiot economists would say ancients were poor because they did not have indoor lighting. Lord. The second article explains how economists are paid by our rulers to make sure we do not understand how much has been taken from us. This is why incomes have risen, inflation looks 2% but most people feel broke or struggling. Economists are just salesmen.

Reddit fears the phrase “day of the rope” – Atavisionary explains how Reddit went and deleted posts and links to anything that had ‘day of the rope’ in it. They have become this hypersensitive.

The Promise of California – Twitter figure Ben Braddock has an essay at American Greatness about California.

Bloomberg Bucks – There are a lot of dumb lines in this essay (he called Cory Booker and Julian Castro accomplished), but the line of the Democrat party being a shell is wrong. It is a headless horseman. This is its design. Unaccountable minions everywhere have a piece of power, and now with their super diverse coalition, it is hard to assemble a winning figurehead. They need a Beige Bernie, and it might too long of a take time to find one before the empire unwinds. Bloomberg could break it. The figures he cites for Bloomberg’s potential spending are amazing but plausible.

Bolton the Liar – This is not about Bolton admitting the leaked manuscript during impeachment was to juice book sales. This covers his tenure as NSA where he and his team lied non-stop to push our Iran policy in the direction he wanted it to go. Now that direction did happen to align with Sheldon Adelson’s vision, so it was an easy sell to Trump.

Haaretz or Stormer: you read it and decide