Like many Americans today, I stand back aghast at what’s been happening in our major cities.
Like many other voters this year, I’m amazed I ever called myself a Democrat.
Who are these animals on the streets each night; who are these imbecilic talking heads on the cable news?
Like many other voters this year, I’m amazed I ever called myself a Democrat.
Who are these animals on the streets each night; who are these imbecilic talking heads on the cable news?
What a Mistake!!!
The corporate media doesn’t want to tell you this on their nightly news broadcast, but the World Health Organization admitted that the lockdowns were a mistake.
“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” the group’s envoy, Dr. David Nabarro, told world health leaders and media on Sunday. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”
They admit the lockdowns make poor people more poorer.
I think most of us suspect that divorce, suicide, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and alcohol abuse are all up, as are murders, thefts, and other crimes.
Why?
The lockdowns.
Remember how we were just going to flatten the curve for two weeks to buy the hospitals time?
Then that morphed into months, as ‘expert’ after ‘expert’ and the stupid politicians that believed them gave us reason after reason and excuse after excuse why they were smarter than us, and that we simply didn’t know what was right for us.
My how wrong they were.
Turns out the experts were wrong. What a surprise. Most of us knew this even before the worst of the lockdowns began.
Laypeople are smarter than the experts - that’s the world we’re living in now.
And my, how the bigwigs do not want you to know this!
I had to get that article I cited from Bing - Google censors it.
The corporate media hasn’t mentioned the WHO lockdown reversal all week, and I doubt they will.
With fewer than 500 hours to the election, do you think they want to put doubt in swing voters’ minds?
No, they’ll keep up the charade for a bit longer, hope their lies continue to trick and bamboozle those ‘oh-so-stupid-masses.’
And we put up with this.
The Shaky Banks
I’m still worried about what’s going to happen with Deutsche Bank. I’m having the same kinds of worries about JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
Why?
Commercial real estate.
As well all know, the monumentally disastrous - and now it turns out, wrong - lockdown approach decimated the commercial real estate business as business after business closed up shop, stopped paying rent, and with many set to never pay it again.
Despite this, Deutsche Bank was the top lender to commercial buildings like hotels and large office skyscrapers, seeing their share of the commercial lending market go from 8% to 20% during the pandemic.
JP Morgan went from 7% to 15% and Goldman Sachs went from 8% to 18%.
Why does any of this matter?
Because in June around 30% of commercial businesses paid their rent, though by July that had risen to 65%.
Still, there are months and months of back rent or partial rent owed, and many businesses will never be able to pay this.
So what happens to them?
They go out of business.
What happens to the loans those big banks made? They go bust.
Then what happens?
I think what happens is what we’re beginning to see with Wells Fargo, which is set to write-off $20 billion in loans that will never be paid back.
The company’s earnings per share are now $0.42, down from $0.92 a year ago.
Another problem hitting the bank is a serious reduction in interest income, something that is hitting other banks as well. Bank of America, for instance, saw a 7% drop in that category, which caused overall earnings for the bank to fall by 11% or over $2.5 billion.
Reduced interest income means that loan demand is weakening, a sure sign that our economy is very sick.
Wells Fargo is seeing a 54% drop in company value in a year, and with other banks experiencing the same problems, I suspect we’ll see a round of bank mergers and acquisitions begin early next year as they try to shore against what’s coming.
I think it’s already too late.
As I said, I suspect the banking collapse will spur the airline collapse, which will result in the entire collapse of the economy and the dollar devaluing something fierce as inflation revs up. Grocery prices are already up substantially from just a month ago, and 4% from last year.
Get ready.
Transplant Issues
Every once in a while I’ll get an email from someone in the Flathead telling me their thoughts.
The other day I got one, telling me about a phone call this person got from a Bullock supporter.
Seems the number that was calling was an out-of-state number. So the call recipient starts chatting up this woman, figures out that this Bullock supporter just moved up here from Florida three months ago.
Now, it’s not all bad - the person was born here (no word on their spouse). They worked for some internet company down there, so could easily transplant themselves up to Whitefish, where houses on the lake are cheap in comparison. In fact, they sold their home in Florida for so much that when they bought here, they had a bunch of money leftover!
That despite Whitefish homes selling for $20,000 to $30,000 over asking price…and many times in cash. Most of the homes are bought sight-unseen, over the internet.
God, people are desperate to get out of the cities, out of the blue states!
This Florida transplant is of course a Democrat, but many (I think most) are not. The same person that bought the lake house knows many others from Florida that are moving up here. Most are ex-military...people that will turn the state even more red.
That’s not appealing for the Bullock supporter that called the long-time Montana native. He asked them why Whitefish of all places? They respond that Montana only has two Dem cities - Missoula and Whitefish. They know in places like that they can find like-minded enviros and anti-frackers.
The Floridian knew nothing of the Montana Democrats’ decision to leave the rural areas of the state in the dust, nor did she know of Montana’s largest economic driver (agriculture).
Nor did she understand why the person she was calling was going to vote for both Daines and Williams.
She didn’t understand the person she was talking to; didn’t really understand the state she was moving to. She certainly doesn’t understand our economy, our politics, and probably our culture.
Most of the transplants will be the same way.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately of where I can move to get away from all the people that are moving here to get away from...whatever.
But it seems there’s nowhere.
We don’t have the money to move; we’re stuck here. And God help us when us natives run into these newly-minted transplants that know what’s best for us.
God help them, too.
