Ford Madox Brown Finding of Don Juan by Haidee 1873
< 1% of #COVID19 deaths had NO existing conditions
> 64% of deaths had 6 or more conditions
> 97% of deaths had 2 or more conditions
Bartiromo Ron Johnson IVM
https://twitter.com/i/status/1449799293578121217
SEALs put their lives in each other’s hands. Trying to set them against each other seems a bad idea.
• Biden Threatens To Make Navy SEALs Resisting Vax Repay Their Training Cost (AT)
I can think of few better ways to ensure that fewer qualified people will apply to join the nation’s most elite fighting unit than the policy just announced by the U.S. Navy’s COVID Consolidated Disposition Authority. It has issued a directive that, as Hank Berrien reports, threatens “removing them from special warfare, reducing their salaries, and forcing them to repay training.” Since training a SEAL is very expensive, this amounts to financial ruin for the heroes who undergo incredibly harsh training and who offer their lives to protect us. President Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, a former SEAL, appropriately criticized the plan on Facebook:
“Our Nation’s best don’t sign up to be a Navy SEAL to cash in on our training years later. We give a blood oath to fight for freedom and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. In doing so, we bear a burden of emotional, psychological, physical, and family stress of constant deployments and low pay because we love our Country. Shame Mr. President for not recognizing the service and sacrifice and further insulting SEALs by making this about money.”
Put aside any consideration of the effectiveness of the vaccines or of the side effects that may take years to become apparent. This escalation of bullying of the bravest and most self-sacrificing among us threatens national security. Physically fit young adults like the SEALS face a negligible threat from COVID, so why sacrifice the effectiveness of the nation’s elite fighting units? The price that is being inflicted on the nation far outweighs any benefit from the vaccines.
Read more …
“.. the European reporting system now associates 26,000 deaths in close proximity to administration of the vaccine. Whistleblower data from the CMS system (Medicare charts) showed close to 50,000 deaths in the Medicare group shortly after the vaccine.”
• The Unvaccinated Are Looking Smarter Every Week (Thomas T. Siler MD)
[..] as time has passed with this pandemic and more data accumulates about the virus and the vaccine, the unvaccinated are looking smarter and smarter with each passing week. It has been shown now that the vaccinated equally catch and spread the virus. Vaccine side effect data continues to accumulate that make the risk of taking the vaccine prohibitive as the pandemic wanes. Oral and IV medications (flccc.net) that work early in the treatment of COVID-19 are much more attractive to take now as the vaccine risks are becoming known, especially because the vaccinated will need endless boosters every six months. First, let’s address the intelligence of the unvaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy is multi-factorial and has little to do with level of education or intelligence.
Carnegie Mellon University did a study assessing vaccine hesitancy across educational levels. According to the study, what’s the educational level with the most vaccine hesitancy? Ph.D. level! Those can’t all have been awarded to liberal arts majors. Clearly, scientists who can read the data and assess risk are among the least likely to take the mRNA vaccines. The claim that there’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated is, therefore, patently untrue. As a retired nurse from California recently asked, “Why do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that did not protect the protected in the first place?” If the vaccine works to prevent infection, then the vaccinated have nothing to worry about. If the vaccine does not prevent infection, then the vaccinated remain at some risk, and the unvaccinated would be less likely to choose a vaccine that does not work well.
The mRNA vaccine efficacy is very narrow and focused on the original alpha strain of COVID-19. By targeting one antigen group on the spike protein, it does help for the original alpha strain, but it is clear now it does not protect against Delta strain and is likely not protective against any future strains that might circulate. It also appears that the efficacy wanes in 4-6 months, leading to discussions about boosters. Several authors have pointed out that vaccinating with a “leaky” vaccine during a pandemic is driving the virus to escape by creating variants. If the booster is just another iteration of the same vaccine, it likely won’t help against the new strain but will, instead, produce evolutionary pressure on the virus to produce even more variants and expose us to more side effects. Why, then, is this booster strategy for everyone being pursued?
This vast Phase 3 clinical trial of mRNA vaccines in which Americans are participating mostly out of fear is not going well. It is abundantly clear for anyone advocating for public health that the vaccination program should be stopped. Iceland has just stopped giving the Moderna vaccine to anyone which is a good step in the right direction. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have banned the Moderna vaccine for anyone under the age of 30. Eudravigilance, the European reporting system now associates 26,000 deaths in close proximity to administration of the vaccine. Whistleblower data from the CMS system (Medicare charts) showed close to 50,000 deaths in the Medicare group shortly after the vaccine.
An AI-powered tracking program called Project Salus also follows the Medicare population and shows vaccinated Medicare recipients are having worse outcomes week by week of the type consistent with Antibody Dependent Enhancement. This occurs when the vaccine antibodies actually accelerate the infection leading to worsening COVID-19 infection outcomes. Antibody Dependent Enhancement has occurred previously with trials of other coronavirus vaccines in animals. The CDC and the FDA are suppressing this data and no one who receives the vaccine has true informed consent.
Read more …
“..fully vaccinated people now suffer from what appears to be acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, more popularly known as AIDS.”
• Immune System Functions Are Dropping Around 5% Each Week In Vaccinated (NN)
The latest data from the United Kingdom’s PHE Vaccine Surveillance Report suggests that people who have been “fully vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) are losing about five percent of their immune systems per week. Doubly injected people between the ages of 40 and 70 have already lost about 40 percent of the immune system capacity from the moment they get injected. They then progressively lose more of it over time, with peak immune system loss for many expected to arrive by Christmas. “If this continues then 30-50 year-olds will have 100% immune system degradation, zero viral defence by Christmas and all doubly vaccinated people over 30 will have lost their immune systems by March next year,” reports The Exposé.
There is no denying, based on the data, that fully vaccinated people now suffer from what appears to be acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, more popularly known as AIDS. Their immune systems are fading away, which many have been warning would be the case. “People aged 40-69 have already lost 40% of their immune system capability and are losing it progressively at 3.3% to 6.4% per week,” The Exposé says. Interestingly, the worst-off demographic is people aged 40-49, who are suffering total immune system loss in about nine weeks. The best-off group is younger people aged 18-29, who tend to last around 44 weeks. Elderly people over the age of 80 last about 20 weeks, while the 50-59 age category only gets about 15 weeks. The other remaining age groups last anywhere from 12 to 25 weeks.
“Everybody over 30 will have lost 100% of their entire immune capability (for viruses and certain cancers) within 6 months,” warns The Exposé. “30-50 year-olds will have lost it by Christmas. These people will then effectively have full blown acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and destroy the NHS (National Health Service).” [..] It is not just that the jabs do not provide the claimed amount of protection against the Fauci Flu. The fact of the matter is that they provide no protection at all in the long term and actually destroy a person’s immune system. “Pfizer originally claimed a 95% efficiency for their vaccine (calculated as in the last column above). The figures above indicate that their figures may well have been correct immediately after vaccination (the younger age groups have had the vaccine for the shortest time),” The Exposé explains.
“But the figures above also show that the vaccines do NOT merely lose efficiency over time down to zero efficiency, they progressively damage the immune system until a negative efficiency is realised. They presently leave anybody over 30 in a worse position than they were before vaccination.” People who take the Biden “Booster” shots will only accelerate this process by adding even more immune-destroying chemicals to their bodies. The downward spiral will move even faster, in other words, the more shots a person gets. “If we do nothing about this, it will only get much worse than we ever could have imagined,” wrote one Exposé commenter. “I, for one, appreciate all who have stood against and continue to stand against this tyranny.”
Read more …
If the jabs “wane” 5% a week, they’re much worse.
• Natural Immunity Is Just As Good As Being Jabbed (DM)
Recovering from Covid offers just as good protection as getting two doses of any vaccine, official figures suggest. An Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) report published today found unvaccinated Britons who catch the Delta variant are around 71 per cent less likely to test positive for a second time. It estimated the risk of infection is slashed by approximately 67 per cent in people given two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca’s jabs. The ONS said there was ‘no evidence’ vaccines offered more immunity than catching Covid itself, despite a number of other studies showing the opposite. The findings are based on more than 8,000 positive tests across Britain between May and August, when the Delta variant became dominant.
Scientists are still trying to untangle exactly how long naturally-acquired and vaccine immunity lasts. Protection from the jabs appears to dip at around five months, which is why Britons over the age of 50 are being offered booster doses this autumn. But the duration of natural immunity remains somewhat of a mystery, made more complicated by the rise of new variants. The ONS looked at 8,306 positive PCR results between May 17 and August 14. Samples were collected from unvaccinated, fully vaccinated and double-jabbed volunteers, some who had previously had the virus already. Using a statistical analysis, the report found those who were double-jabbed had a reduced the risk of testing positive by between 64 and 70 per cent, giving the headline figure of 67 per cent. In people who were unvaccinated but previously positive, the risk was cut by between 65 per cent to 77 per cent.
The overlap in confidence intervals meant that there was no statistical difference between the results. Writing in the report, the ONS said: ‘There was no evidence that the reduction in risk of infection from two vaccine doses differed from that of previous natural infection.’ The ONS found that two doses of Pfizer’s jab offered slightly higher protection against infection than two of AstraZeneca. But the ONS said it was not statistically significant and added that any slight difference may be due to the fact Pfizer’s was rolled out to the masses slightly later than AstraZeneca’s. The report does not look at the negative effects of catching the virus, including long Covid, which blights a significant number of adult sufferers. But critics of the Government’s decision to vaccinate healthy school pupils as young as 12 have argued that natural immunity is better for children because it removes the small risk of side effects from the jabs.
Read more …
Clear numbers.
• Rhode Island Covid Breakthrough Hospitalization and Mortality Rates (Bostom)
A 10/12.21 story in the Rhode Island Patch maintained that the “vast majority” of the state’s covid-19 infections during September 2021 (essentially; 9/4/21 to 10/2/21) occurred amongst those who were not fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. The story added, “ (covid-19) deaths show the same trend.” This latter statement is patently false as demonstrated by data on September 2021 hospitalizations and deaths just released from The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) to Rhode Island state representative Mike Chippendale. These actual RIDOH data for September, 2021 reveal that 136 covid-19 hospitalizations were recorded in those fully vaccinated, versus 27 among those who were not fully vaccinated (note: RIDOH pools the unvaccinated and partially vaccinated, and dubs them all “unvaccinated”).
Similarly, 22 covid-19 deaths were tallied among those who were fully vaccinated, compared to 5 in the not fully vaccinated. Regardless of vaccination status, in those with a history of prior infection, i.e., “natural immunity,” only 12 covid-19 hospitalizations were recorded, and zero covid-19 deaths. Calculating simple, unadjusted population-based rates (per 100,000) puts these September 2021 Rhode Island covid-19 mortality and hospitalization data in clearer, more meaningful perspective. To do so, requires estimates of the number of Rhode Islanders fully vaccinated, or not fully vaccinated, and the number with a history of prior infection. I chose the September 15, 2021 midpoint of the month to estimate the both the numbers fully vaccinated, or with a history of prior covid-19 infection.
Rhode Island’s 2021 estimated population is 1.1 million. According to the public RIDOH database, by September, 15, 2021, ~684,000 Rhode Islanders were fully vaccinated. Per the website “Covidestim.org,” a project supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and directed by epidemiologists from Yale, Harvard, and Stanford universities, 58% had been covid-19 infected at some point during the pandemic. Applying these estimates yields the following rates, for covid-19 hospitalizations, and deaths:
Hospitalizations
—136 breakthrough hospitalizations/684,000 fully vaccinated=19.9/100,000
—27 not fully vaccinated hospitalizations/416,000 not fully vaccinated= 6.5/100,000
—12 hospitalizations in those with prior infection history/638,000 with prior infection=1.9/100,000
Deaths
—22 breakthrough deaths/684,000 fully vaccinated=3.2/100,000
—5 not fully vaccinated deaths/416,000 not fully vaccinated= 1.2/100,000
—0 deaths in those with prior infection history/638,000 with prior infection=0/100,000
Another way to look at an estimate of relative risk for hospitalization, the crude odds ratio, comparing being fully vaccinated to having a prior infection yields an ~90% reduction [odds ratio 0.095; 95% confidence interval= 0.052 to 0.171] with a history of prior infection.
Read more …
“In Brazil, health officials even suggested avoiding pregnancy to reduce risk during the pandemic.”
• Covid-19 Treatments And Vaccines Must Be Evaluated In Pregnancy (BMJ)
The numbers of pregnant and postpartum women in the UK admitted to hospital or intensive care because of covid-19 peaked over the summer. Maternal mortality has reached concerning levels in 2021, with case fatality rates rising in the US, doubling in Brazil, and almost tripling in India since the beginning of the pandemic. In Brazil, health officials even suggested avoiding pregnancy to reduce risk during the pandemic. Inconsistent messaging from authorities, driven by lack of trial data, has increased covid-19 vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women. This, coupled with the increased transmissibility of new variants and relaxing of social distancing restrictions, contributed to the surge in hospital admissions seen in successive waves.
Concerns around the longer term effect of covid-19 post partum, including long covid, cardiovascular complications of covid-19, and widening socioeconomic disparities are also mounting. Despite a desperate need for treatments, pregnant women continue to be left behind. In the long shadow of the thalidomide and diethylstilboestrol tragedies, only one drug designed for use in pregnancy, atosiban, has been licensed in four decades and only five prescription medicines (amoxicillin, labetalol, diazoxidine injection, doxylamine with pyridoxine, sodium feredetate) are licensed for non-obstetric use in pregnancy in the UK. A sobering 98% of all marketed drugs have insufficient or no safety data to guide dosing during pregnancy and lactation. This includes all covid-19 vaccines.
Vaccination in pregnancy is not a new concept; nor are the struggles with uptake. Concerns about covid-19 vaccination, like previous vaccines, have centred around fears of side effects for the fetus, doubts regarding efficacy, and even doubts around the need for immunisation. These concerns have been further compounded by misinformation regarding fertility, suspicion of the swift rollout of vaccines, and the exclusion of pregnant women from preapproval trials, with levels of vaccine hesitancy highest in deprived communities and among those from ethnic minority groups.
Read more …
“By the end of the week, tens of millions more Americans could be eligible for extra shots.”
• FDA To Allow “Mixing and Matching” Of COVID Boosters (ZH)
mRNA or a disabled adenovirus? According to the latest iteration of the “science” it’s really all the same and just jam it in there, because as the NYT reports, the Food and Drug Administration will allow Americans to “mix and match”, i.e., receive a different Covid-19 vaccine as a booster than the one they initially received, a move that could “reduce the appeal of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and provide flexibility to doctors and other vaccinators.” In other words, the mRNA lobby has just booked the entire second floor at Scores and is hoovering up industrial amounts of Colombian marching powder while surrounded by the best silicone money can rent.
In the latest example that money talks and what was scientific consensus until this morning walks, the government would not recommend one shot over another, and may instead note that using the same vaccine as a booster when possible is preferable, but vaccine providers could use their discretion to offer a different brand, a freedom that state health officials have been requesting for weeks. Maybe one should check if the bank accounts of said state health officials have suddenly seen a mysterious inflow of outside funds that prompted their agitation. In any case, the approach was foreshadowed on Friday, when so-called “researchers” presented the findings of a federally funded “mix and match” study to an expert committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration.
The study found that recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot who received a Moderna booster saw their antibody levels rise 76-fold in 15 days, compared with only a fourfold increase after an extra dose of Johnson & Johnson. We can only assume that this “study” is different than the one that took place just a few months ago that prompted the same NYT to report that “Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts”…… and in which we read that: Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.” It now turns out that Britain was simply early in guessing which way a whole lot of bribes money can sway the “science” du jour.
Amusingly, even as the FDA agonizes over greenlighting covid booster shots for Americans younger than 65 – having initially rejected the biotech/pharma lobbied outcome which has been eagerly sought by the Biden admin – Federal regulators this week are aiming to greatly expand the number of Americans eligible for booster shots. As such, the FDA is now expected to authorize boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Wednesday evening; it could allow the mix-and-match approach by then. The agency last month authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for at least six months after the second dose. Then, on Thursday, a CDC advisory committee will also take up the booster issue and will then issue its own recommendations (to go ahead and do it because science says “mix and match” is cool). By the end of the week, tens of millions more Americans could be eligible for extra shots.
Read more …
“And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.”
• Is Aspirin the New Horse Dewormer? (Brian C.Joondeph, MD)
Aspirin is one of those drugs that has been around forever. It is commonly used as a pain reliever, anti-inflammatory, and blood thinner. Surprisingly it may also have benefits in treating COVID. A paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia published last spring titled, “Aspirin use is associated with decreased mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019.” This was a retrospective, observational study of adult patients admitted to multiple hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, in the early days of COVID. The primary outcome addressed by the researchers from George Washington University was the need for mechanical ventilation, which then, and still now, carries an extremely high chance of never leaving the ICU alive.
This was not a gold standard randomized prospective clinical trial. That would not be feasible in this situation since study patients were already hospitalized and critically ill. Remember in the early days, one needed to be extremely ill before even being admitted to the hospital rather than being sent home until sick enough to return and go straight to the ICU. But the results were impressive. As reported last week by the Jerusalem Post, “The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.”
Why would aspirin be helpful for COVID, a respiratory disease? What if COVID is more than simply a lung disease or pneumonia? COVID is actually thought to be a microvascular disease causing blood clots, as described in the medical journal Circulation, “Although most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present with a mild upper respiratory tract infection and then recover, some infected patients develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multi-organ failure, and death. Clues to the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 may lie in the systemic inflammation and thrombosis observed in infected patients. We propose that severe COVID-19 is a microvascular disease in which coronavirus infection activates endothelial cells, triggering exocytosis, a rapid vascular response that drives microvascular inflammation and thrombosis.”
How did aspirin get its start? Over 3,500 years ago, willow bark, known as “nature’s aspirin,” was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and in a chemical synthesis by a Bayer chemist in 1897. Aside from pain relief, it was found to have anti-platelet and anti-cancer effects. It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with another familiar drug, ivermectin. The Harvard-based physicians’ health study in the 1980s found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack by 44 percent. A recently published Israeli study found, “Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID-19 positive patients.” This included a lower likelihood of infection, disease duration, and hospital survival. In other words, aspirin works as both a preventative and as a treatment.
Aspirin is another potential therapeutic, along with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is inexpensive, readily available, and relatively safe, and could save countless lives when used appropriately for COVID. An editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia described aspirin for COVID as, “An old, low-cost therapy with a strong rationale.” And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.
Read more …
“..the question is whether the stress on our society could accumulate to a level in which we would start doing the things that were done in Germany during the Nazi period..”
• The Age of Exterminations (V): Suicide (Ugo Bardi)
In Germany, regular medical doctors used barbiturates to kill children and gas chambers to get rid of adults. Neither the victims nor their families were told of what was being done. Officially, the victims were hospitalized in order to receive some kind of medical treatment, and, later on, families received notice that, unfortunately, their relatives had not survived it. These deaths were not suicides, but there was a certain element of voluntary acceptance of the procedure and it is hard to think that people would not at least suspect what was going on. The human mind is pliant, and probably everyone, including the victims, was doing their best to believe that it was all done for the sake of their health.
In our times, we have methods to get rid of people with their consent that were not available in Nazi Germany. In terms of “substance abuse,” we have a large choice of substances that shorten one’s life expectancy. In some cases, we know that they are bad. In some cases, they are forbidden, although obtainable illegally (heroin, cocaine, and others). In some cases, they are recognized to be harmful, but they are still marketed, although not advertised (tobacco) or advertised with some limitations (alcohol). In other cases, they are heavily advertised and widely available (junk food). We need also to mention that some medical treatments are widely recommended as good for your health, but nobody really knows if they really are (4) and in some cases, it is discovered only later that they are very bad. Maybe you remember the case of Thalidomide, but there are many more in the history of medicine. Surely, there will be more in the future.
Although effective, these substances are slow and messy ways to get rid of people and they may generate negative side effects in terms of diffuse criminality and handicapped people that are expensive to care for. For instance, cocaine taken every day will shorten a person’s life by about 10 years. Morphine will do better, with a 30 years reduction, but, in any case, these methods are too slow to be interesting but for would-be exterminators. It is at least unlikely that the diffusion of heavy drugs in our society is the result of an evil plan of extermination, although some agencies of the deep state may well have a role in the supply and distribution system. At this point, the question is whether the stress on our society could accumulate to a level in which we would start doing the things that were done in Germany during the Nazi period, that is to exterminate people singled out for some physical factor, religious belief, or ideology.
And there is no doubt that our society is heavily stressed although, probably not so heavily as Germany was in 1945 (not yet, at least). Of course, the reaction to this hypothesis normally comes with the sentence “It can’t happen here” and clearly, we are not seeing our government distributing cyanide capsules to the population. Nor are we seeing explicit orders given to doctors to kill their patients. But a basic rule in history is that if something happened once, it may happen again. So, never underestimate what psyops can accomplish, nor how evil the people in power can be! And if they were to start reasoning like the German government did in 1945, they have a number of options that we can only hope will never be put into practice.
Read more …
“..“Joe Biden’s” vaccination mandate — with no basis in law, by the way — that is destroying most of the critical services industries in the nation: the hospitals, school systems, police forces, firefighters, ambulance squads, airlines, railroads, restaurants, you-name-it. No vaxx, no job for you..”
• Let Us Count the Ways (Kunstler)
Let us count the ways that America is committing suicide by Democratic Party policy. There is, front and center, “Joe Biden’s” vaccination mandate — with no basis in law, by the way — that is destroying most of the critical services industries in the nation: the hospitals, school systems, police forces, firefighters, ambulance squads, airlines, railroads, restaurants, you-name-it. No vaxx, no job for you — and no resuscitation for the unfortunate persons writhing on their kitchen floors in myocardial infarction. I’d say that depriving folks of their livelihoods while ensuring harm and death upon the citizenry is a bad combo for public order. One can easily imagine the righteous wrath building to the point where lamp-posts in capital cities are decorated with the dangling government officials who caused this to happen.
Then there are the vaxxes themselves and the Covid cat that dragged them in. Do you feel all warm and fuzzy over a shot that will turn your body into a spike protein generator, considering how spike proteins behave in a human vascular system? Got any questions or doubts about the number of adverse events seen so far? Looks like more than ten thousand deaths in the USA directly attributable to the vaxxes under the VAERS registry, and millions of injuries around the world. Not to mention the murky origins of the disease, the participation of US public health officials in its design and development, and the colossal profits reaped by the pharma companies that sell the vaxxes. Have you noted the draconian desperation to vaxx up absolutely everybody, despite some excellent reasons for people to say “no thanks?” Does the Big Picture look a little nefarious to you? Like some parties are out to bump off a pretty large number of people — including parties who have stated out loud that steeply reducing the global population would be a swell idea?
In the course of an average day, do you ever think about all the people from around the world who are jumping the US/Mexican border? It’s thousands of them each day, and millions piling in over the year 2021 — under the averted eyes of “Joe Biden” & Co. Some of them are criminal opportunists who — how shall we say — aim to blow shit up in this country. That’s apart from the economic burdens that the nonviolent ones will impose on the nation. Can you blame genuine US citizens from regarding this as an affront to common sense and common decency, not to mention an insult to the law and the constitution behind the law? Well, it is, you know. Since it’s the federal government’s duty to control entry across the border, and since “Joe Biden” directed the border patrol to not perform its duties, will you be surprised if the citizens develop the notion that they will have to defend the border themselves?
Read more …
Lynn Parramore talks to Jim Chanos. Who knows China.
• Jim Chanos: China’s “Leveraged Prosperity” Model is Doomed (Parramore)
LP: Let’s talk about Evergrande, the Shenzhen developer whose crisis has got everybody worried. How did things get so bad? JC: Last year, as the tech crackdown was gaining momentum, Xi’s administration put down a set of rules called the “three red lines.” They were sort of balance sheet financial tests. It was an attempt to deleverage the real estate developers. LP: Which means he knew something was wrong. JC: Well, here’s the problem. I always joke that when you have an investment-driven economic model, you know your annual GDP on January 1st of that year, because you can stick shovels in the ground to make your growth numbers. That’s how the model works. It’s not a consumption-based model. As we now know — and the Wall Street Journal just had some phenomenal numbers in a recent piece – that real estate construction is now larger than it was when he took office. I would always hear, well, don’t worry: these are smart guys, technocrats who see the problem and will wean themselves off this apartment construction-on-steroids. But they haven’t.
LP: Why haven’t they been able to slow it down? JC: Since we started following China at the end of ’09, this is the fourth time that they’ve attempted to slow the real estate market down, because they do know that this is going to be basically too big to deal with if it keeps growing at the rate it’s growing. But every time they’ve done it, the economy has hit stall speed very quickly, and they panicked. They went from hitting the breaks to hitting the accelerator. That’s why we’ve seen higher levels of real estate. The idea that “I can’t lose buying apartments” became ingrained with bankers, real estate speculators, and the public. LP: So with Evergrande, everyone came to expect a bailout?
JC: I think we’re at that crossroads. The problem is that these companies are so much bigger than they were in 2015 or 2011. Can you bail everybody out? In the case of the developers, you have an additional problem. The biggest amount of liabilities is not necessarily to banks and bondholders. It’s to apartment buyers. Here’s why: the Chinese real estate finance system is exactly the opposite of ours. In our system, when there’s a new development, you’re typically required to put 10% down to sign a contract, with the balance due on closing. You go get your financing and your mortgage proceeds pay for the rest of the house or the apartment.
In China, you pay upfront. You are extending the developer a loan. So, of the $300 billion in liabilities Evergrande owes, I think the biggest chunk, last time I checked, is basically what we would call a deferred revenue item. It’s money that you took in from people, and you owe them an apartment. And the apartments aren’t done, but the money’s been spent. So the problem is not just bailing people out, but the question of who is going to put up more capital to pay off the retail people that have bought apartments that haven’t gotten anything. These numbers are big, and Evergrande is not the only one. There are a handful of developers that are missing interest payments and have their bond prices reflecting distress.
Read more …
CRT
Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.