Featured COVID + ~ The INVISIBLE ENEMIES

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POOH’S LYING NOW

Communists consider religion to be the opiate of the masses. Both the Soviet Union and communist China have oppressed the religious. Bernie Sanders promises action against Christians, whom he calls ‘religious bigots.’

Most communists do not believe in God. Their god is the ‘state.’ The state can do no wrong—it is both omniscient and omnipotent. It is perfect and incapable of mistakes. Heretics who doubt communism can face gulags or a bullet in the back of the head. In China, Mao starved millions of his own citizens for the good of the state. Nowadays, Chinese dissidents might even face having their organs ripped out of them. The state feels no guilt about any of this. After all, they consider humans to be data at best and at worst mere blobs of matter who are there to carry out the will of the state. The citizens must also pretend to be happy about it.

The problem with the perfect state of communism is the lies. The Soviet Union lied about nuclear technology and that led to the Chernobyl disaster. The current Chinese Communists are lying about the release of a bioweapon from one of their labs in Wuhan. The ChiComs must present themselves as incapable of error, so they’re now blaming the United States military for the virus. The ChiComs consider themselves to be perfect, therefore they will never admit a mistake. They never accept blame. Being wrong is a sign of weakness.

President Trump realized the United States has been wrong about trade with China. The US has become far too dependent on China for pharmaceuticals, for example. The ChiComs are now threatening to cut them off. It’s time to bring manufacturing back to America and that’s just what Trump wants to do. If we don’t do that, we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

—Ben Garrison

 

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New York (CNN Business)The New York Federal Reserve is taking out the big guns to calm panicky financial markets.

The NY Fed announced plans Thursday to inject vast amounts of money into the financial system, totaling at least $1.5 trillion. And the Fed promised to start purchasing a range of Treasuries -- a step that effectively marks a return to the 2008 crisis-era bond buying program known as quantitative easing, or QE.

The Fed said the dramatic moves will address "highly unusual disruptions" in the Treasury market linked to the coronavirus outbreak. This accelerates weeklong efforts by the NY Fed aimed at easing fears that companies will lose access to capital or that markets will become unhinged.

"The Fed is all in. They've fired their nuclear weapon. and they did it because financial markets are seizing up," said James Bianco, president of Bianco Research. "There is no liquidity in the markets. They are trying to unstick them."

Not only did US stocks nosedive Thursday, but the ultra-safe government bond market malfunctioned. Even though Treasuries are supposed to be the safest assets on the planet, liquidity dried up in that market, setting off alarm bells on Wall Street.

"The market in a sense broke today. The Fed came out and fixed it," said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group.

Boockvar said there was a "blow out" in the gap between bid and offer in Treasuries, signaling a liquidity crunch in what is normally a very deep market. One way to look at it: The bond-trading engine seized up, and the Fed added oil to make it run smoothly again.

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A World Health Organization (WHO) situation report on Tuesday March 10 catalogued 113,702 cases of coronavirus Covid-19 across 113 countries and territories, causing 4,012 deaths.

In 2017 the World Bank issued a pandemic bond designed to help fund the response to any widespread outbreak of a number of diseases, including coronavirus. The $320 million bond was part of a bigger $425 million risk transfer that included a concurrent $105 million swap with six reinsurance counterparties. Should it already be paying out?

As of March 11, the answer was no, principally because the required time period has not yet elapsed since the start of the outbreak, which is 84 days, or 12 weeks. The World Bank confirmed to Euromoney on March 5 that the official start of the outbreak has been set at December 31, 2019, meaning that the first day following the 12-week period will be March 24.

Contrary to rumours circulating online, there is no requirement for a body like the World Bank or the World Health Organisation to formally declare that the outbreak is a pandemic for the bonds to pay out. When the criteria are met, the bonds will be triggered, whether or not a pandemic has been declared. However, the WHO has now declared a pandemic as of March 11.

Some of the criteria have been met, but two - the growth rate of cases and the ratio of confirmed cases to total cases (including suspected) - can only be calculated after the initial 84 days, and are determined during an additional period of up to two weeks. This means that although March 24 marks the end of the 12-week period since the start of the outbreak, the growth rate and confirmation ratio data that relate to that day would not be known until April 6. Two days is then set aside for calculation of those rates.

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“Only thing we have to fear is fear itself” FDR 1933

As I write this the Dow futures are down 1,200 points. Oil is down over 20 percent. Gold is way up—no wait, it’s going sideways and silver back down under $17. So much for safe havens. Precious metals are also considered commodities and are now treated as such. Everything is getting punished and many bubbles will get popped.

The coronavirus is the trigger that is causing the crash. It’s a crash that should have happened in 2008. Instead the banks were bailed out and even rewarded for their criminality with taxpayer-paid bonuses. Lower rates and never-ending QEs caused the stock market to skyrocket to outrageous highs. It seemed like it would only go up and the party would never end.

Now the party’s over. Debt is turning out the lights. There’s a huge amount of debt everywhere in the system. Everyone got way too greedy and overextended including the ChiComs. Some conspiracy theorists are saying they released the virus intentionally to do away with a few hundred surplus workers. Their economy was due to crash and they know the virus is a good distraction from that.

In America we have a $23, soon to be $24 trillion national debt. It’s so much that most ignore it as something meaningless. A billion is a number that’s difficult enough to comprehend. A billion minutes ago, Jesus walked the Earth. Every two hours, the US Government spends $1 billion. It’s all debt money, and the interest must be paid back to the Federal Reserve’s private central bankers. Maybe this crash will open eyes and we can finally jettison the vile system of money that has plagued hard-working US citizens for over 100 years. Our corrupt banking system also allows fractional reserve lending, which means more debt. Corrupt politicians have given the ’too big to fail’ big banks permission to become casinos and now they’ve run up over a quadrillion in derivative bets.

The average consumer is nearly maxed out on credit cards and paying the robber baron bankers an outrageous interest rate. The bankers create that ‘unsecured’ debt money out of thin air.

It’s all a con game. It’s all fake. Still, as Ayn Rand once said, “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

We should have faced those consequences long ago. Hold on—we’re in for a rough ride that will be difficult to ignore.

—Ben Garrison

 

Passenger on Diamond Princess
Still testing positive under Quarantine
His coronavirus symptoms were like a light flu
His family has been receiving death threats


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A senior Iranian official, who was a close advisor to country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has died of coronavirus, according to reports.

Mohammad Mir-Mohammadi, a member of the Expediency Council, died at a Tehran hospital on Monday making him one of 66 people the virus has killed in the nation. He was among 1,501 confirmed cases reported.

According to Fox News other Iranian government officials have been infected with the deadly virus. The Iranian Health Ministry said there were 523 new cases in the past 24 hours. It is a 53 percent increase since the day before.

Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 71. The reports state that COVID-19 has already infected Iran’s vice president and deputy health minister.

On Monday Iran rejected help from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced last week the U.S. was concerned Iran may have covered up details on the spread of the virus.

For more on this story go to Fox News.

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China In A Bull Shop

Friday morning’s DOW futures are heavily in the red, and it does not portend well for the stock market. We’ve seen a 10-year bull market and some were saying the market could never go down, especially with the endless quantitative easing. Some said there was no other viable place for money to go, so the market would go up ad infinitum. A new paradigm of sorts. When you hear talk like that, it usually means the market has topped, but this bull just kept running up further no matter what.

Nothing could touch the Teflon market bubble. It’s a bubble that showcases unreasonable valuations (Tesla, for example), but the bubble kept inflating no matter what. Those that shorted it quickly turned into losers and were forced to cover—thus adding more fuel to a perma-bull market on fire.

It took China’s coronavirus to change all that. Now it’s a matter of just how much damage will be done. I’ve become accustomed to seeing the market always turn bright green after a few red days. Will Friday be the turnaround day? It remains to be seen and my crystal ball broke a long time ago, but it strikes me now that this market may not be just another buying opportunity.


Caution is advised.

—Ben Garrison

 

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Coronavirus news caused the Dow to crash by around 1,000 points on Monday. As this cartoon is published it may be way up again if the Plunge Protection Team jumps in to support it.

Fear of the virus forced stocks into correction mode, which was actually way overdue. The stock market has been in a bubble and mostly out of touch with economic reality. It has become a place for easy money to go, since there isn’t much return elsewhere.

The virus also shows how much the globe has become reliant on the cheap labor and lax standards in China. The shutdowns due to the virus have wreaked havoc on production. It’s a sure sign that we depend too much on a nation that’s ruled by a backward clique of communist tyrants.

Oil prices continue to crater along with industrial metals such as copper, due to the shutdowns and quarantines. Oil in particular was already in a bear market due to oversupply.

Meanwhile I’m sure the Democrats would be delighted by a stock market and economic crash. The Fidel Castro-loving Bernie Sanders would love it. Comrade President of the USA? It makes me sick just thinking about it.

—Ben Garrison

 

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