Providing Alcohol to an Alcoholic

Nobel prize winning discoverer of the HIV virus says Wuhan virus is man made.

“With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,” explains Luc Montagnier, interviewed by Dr Jean-François Lemoine for the daily podcast at Pourquoi Docteur, adding that others have already explored this avenue: Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus, … the HIV virus (AIDS virus), but they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great.

https://www.gilmorehealth.com/chinese-coronavirus-is-a-man-made-virus-according-to-luc-montagnier-the-man-who-discovered-hiv/

Today’s excellent essay by Tim Watkins discusses many important aspects of sustainability that we deny.

I personally remain confident that only voluntary rapid population reduction can improve the outcome of our predicament. And this won’t happen because genetic reality denial prevents our uniquely powerful intelligence from overriding our genes’ desire to execute the Maximum Power Principle. Which means we should configure our lives to expect the worse.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/04/15/is-this-sustainable/

Firstly, with the exception of the end of the Second World War – the first human conflict to be fuelled and won with petroleum – the only times that we have ever halted the growth in greenhouse gas emissions have involved system-wrecking economic crises. More importantly, the last dip – the recession that followed the 2008 financial crash – accounted for more carbon dioxide reduction than all of the non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies deployed around the planet thus far. “Non-renewable” because they cannot be manufactured or even maintained without the fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – which still provide 86 percent (assuming we can take Chinese government statistics at face value) of the world’s energy. The cement and steel in the concrete bases of wind turbines depends upon coal. The glass used in solar panels depends upon gas. Let’s not overlook what rare metals production looks like. And, of course, to transfer the manufactured solar panels and wind turbines from the Chinese factories to the European and American “farms” where they will be deployed depends upon a global transport system, at least 90 percent of which runs on petroleum.

The assumption that the pandemic crisis is teaching us how we might change the way our economy operates is fanciful at best. Mostly it is rooted in the entirely wrong belief that it is possible to do away with all of the supposedly non-essential and frivolous consumption that we engage in while keeping the essential components. But that is not how it works. The reason, for example, that you can access scientific papers about the current pandemic on the internet is because billions of other people are uploading pictures of cats. Take away the cats and the advertising revenue crashes. Take away the advertising and social media cannot function. Take away social media and what remains of the internet would be little different to the internet of the mid-1980s (when few outside academia and the military even knew it existed).

Even the oil industry itself operates only because of technically frivolous consumption. Diesel fuel is the lifeblood of the economy. But diesel is only a small fraction of what is refined from a barrel of oil. A waste product – petrol/gasoline – is by far the largest fuel to be produced. In a sense – as the response to the pandemic is demonstrating – most of us could dramatically cut back on our petrol consumption because most of our journeys – including the daily commute – have been shown to be non-essential. The problem is that our collective petrol consumption effectively subsidises the cost of diesel. So if we stopped using it, the oil industry would have the double whammy of having to increase the price of diesel (which the economy would likely be unable to afford) and to find something else to do with all that petrol (which will also likely come at a high cost).

Less obviously, the energy that we depend upon to do anything is itself increasingly constrained as most of the large oil fields around the planet pass peak production. It is not that there isn’t plenty of oil – or, indeed, fossil fuels in general – under the ground. Nor that enhanced recovery techniques, deep water drilling, hydraulic fracturing and strip-mining bitumen sands cannot continue to deliver vast quantities. Rather, the problem is that each additional barrel of oil from this point on is taking more energy to produce, so that the net energy available to the wider economy is shrinking.

The current lockdown measures are only “sustainable” for as long as national currencies maintain their value. National currencies, in turn, are only sustainable for as long as the myth of a bigger and wealthier future can be sustained. That myth depends upon growth in the net energy available to the economy that ceased sometime around 2005. There is already a growing list of things that we used to be able to do that – for net energy reasons – are no longer possible; from the collapse of commercial supersonic flight at one end to the growth of such things as bicycle delivery services and hand car washes at the other. In the aftermath of the pandemic, we will likely say goodbye to many more things that we used to take for granted until such time as investors notice and either markets and asset prices collapse for good or stagflation arrives to remove the paper wealth that western economies currently run on.

Today’s report from Chris Martenson is very good. He discusses new emerging data that suggests you REALLY don’t want to get sick with the Wuhan virus.

One of my heroes, Dennis Meadows, with a new short essay.

Limits to Growth and the COVID-19 Epidemic

There are two main causative links.

First, the explosive growth of humanity’s population and economy has stressed natural ecosystems, lowering their capacity to self-regulate, and making breakdowns such as epidemics more likely. In the recent past global society has been confronted with MERS, Ebola, Zika, SARS, and H1N1 plus major outbreaks of measles and cholera. And now we have COVID-19.

Second, growth in consumption has forced us to use resources more efficiently. Efficiency is the ratio between the output we want and the inputs required to produce it. Common measures of efficiency are, for example, miles per gallon, years of expected lifespan per dollar of health care, or bushels of wheat per gallon of water. Raising the efficiency of a system permits one to use fewer inputs per unit of output. In itself, higher efficiency is typically good. However, raising efficiency inescapably lowers resilience.

Slowing growth in population and in consumption of materials and energy will not eliminate the problem. But it would reduce the pressure to increase efficiency and leave more possibility for increasing resilience.

https://www.chelseagreen.com/2020/limits-to-growth-covid-epidemic/

New documentary: Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus

Much compelling evidence here that the virus is man made. Must watch with a filter to ignore the capitalism good, communism bad, patriotic bullshit.

Who knew? A common first step in vaccine production is to grow viruses in live chicken eggs. How will vegans react when vaccinations are mandatory and they learn that chicken babies were murdered to keep us healthy? We’re gonna need military personnel to hold people down for their shots.

Just finished reading “Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs” by by Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker. It’s excellent and highly recommended. When you hear our idiot leaders saying about the Wuhan virus that “no one could see this coming”, tell them to read this book. The predictions it makes about what we currently experiencing are remarkably accurate.

It remains a mystery why Osterholm deliberately misled us a couple weeks ago on the Joe Rogan show.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30841977-deadliest-enemy

plenty of eggs + no egg carton factory = egg shortage

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/03/26/liebigs-law-writ-large/

Mac10 articulates what I have been quietly thinking to myself. There’s a pretty good chance that the infinite printed money stimulus we just unleashed may not work for long.

It might be a good time to convert any surplus cash you have into things you will need to survive in a simpler world, for two reasons. First, because supply lines from far away factories that make all of our stuff may stop functioning meaning what you need may not be available. Second, because in the not too distant future money will buy much less, meaning you may not be able to afford what you need.

https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/03/mmt-modern-monetary-thermonuclear.html

We are being lied to about possible sources of the virus. Why?

Wolf Richter explains some of the new ways the Fed will print money.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/23/what-are-all-the-feds-corporate-investor-bailout-programs-and-spvs/

What Are All the Fed’s Corporate & Investor Bailout Programs and SPVs? Here’s the Whole Shitload of Them

Indirectly via its Special Purpose Vehicles and its Primary Dealers, the Fed can buy even old bicycles, as long as taxpayers take the losses.

With its announcement this morning, the Fed expanded its three fundamental mechanisms in which it is once again bailing out the biggest risk takers, over-leveraged companies, hedge funds, mortgage REITs, and PE firms; wiping out cash-flows for crash-averse savers and holders of Treasury securities; and creating special opportunities for well-connected individuals who have access to the Fed’s programs. And let’s get this straight: None of the programs are going to fix the economy.

These bailout programs fall into three mechanisms:

1. Fed buys assets directly. Until this morning, this was limited to Treasury securities, agency debt, and residential MBS backed by Ginnie Mae (US government agency) and the GSEs, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. This morning, the Fed added agency-backed commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) to the list.

2. Fed sets up special purpose vehicles (SPV) and lends to the SPVs which then buy assets or lend. These SPVs can buy assets the Fed is not allowed to buy and they can lend to entities and individuals to buy certain assets. Under the Federal Reserve Act, these SPVs require taxpayer backing from the Treasury Department to protect the Fed from losses.

3. The Fed lends to its 24 Primary Dealers against collateral, and that collateral can be anything the Fed decides, including now stocks – and in the end finally old bicycles.

The entire alphabet soup of new programs will take a while to get set up and get started. And since they won’t fix the economy and its underlying problems, they might not work as well in accomplishing their goals – making the wealthy wealthier – as they did during the Financial Crisis. So we’ll have to see how this works out.

Mac10 this morning says some important things for us to ponder. He thinks there is good evidence that stimulating the economy with printed money and lower interest rates is not effective any more. His views align with my hunch that the alcoholic is too drunk to drink more.

Governments are unlikely to stop printing money so the question is how does this all play out?

My guess is that credit becomes scarce and expensive causing supply lines to break down causing governments to nationalize and manage key components of the economy. Followed some months or years later by civil society destroying inflation.

https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/03/in-idiots-we-trust.html

In Idiots We Trust

On March 3rd, the Fed slashed rates .5% – the market rallied for fifteen minutes and then crashed. This past week on Sunday night, in a shock and awe move, the Fed slashed rates an entire percentage point to 0% AND re-started Quantitative easing. When the futures opened, they were limit down in :5 minutes. Monday was the worst day for markets since 1987. On Friday this past week, the Fed injected a record $1.1 trillion of combined stimulus into markets (repo + QE), the market ended the week down -17%.

…this past week, despite the restarting of QE (Fed bond buying), we witnessed the largest Treasury bond selloff in years. How could that possibly happen with the largest bond buying program in years? Because bond markets were spooked by the Trump fiscal stimulus package making its way through Congress. As it was with Trump’s asinine tax cut, we have now reached the point at which fiscal “stimulus” is doing far more harm than good. It’s called “the crowding out effect” – meaning the government is crowding out other borrowers in a limited credit market. Add in a global dollar liquidity crisis, and Trump extracting another $2 trillion of liquidity out of bond markets isn’t going to help.

Note that the magnitude of the stimulus package grew an astounding 100% since Wednesday despite the impact the smaller version had on the bond market:

“Long-term U.S. debt yields leaped Wednesday as investors sold 10- and 30-year bonds amid discussion about a potential $1 trillion federal stimulus package to help goose the economy.”

Traders sold long-term bonds in anticipation of a deluge of future debt supply and the government’s eventual need to auction even more Treasury’s. Any glut in debt supply could cause bond prices to fall and their yields to rise.”

The rapid rise in yields also appeared to spook equity markets on Wednesday. Dow futures hit their “limit down” level in premarket trade Wednesday, then tumbled more than 4.5% in morning trading.”

I have said all along that heli money is going to nuke the credit markets. This past week we already got a small taste of that scenario. This week, once again, we will find out who is right and who is wrong. I can assure you, those who are betting everything on free money bailouts can’t afford to be wrong.

Nature has checks and balances on how far profligacy and abject irresponsibility can be taken at the expense of future generations before it all blows up in the faces of the generation attempting to plunder the future for now.

I believe these obedient corporate gerbils have reached the end of the line and can no longer be bailed out by their trusted morons.

LitCovid is a curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus. It is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to 1378 (and growing) relevant articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics and geographic locations for improved access.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/

h/t Apneaman