The administration says federal spending trends are helping rein in price increases, but the economic calculus may be more complicated.
As Americans deal with the highest inflation in decades, President Biden has declared that combating rising costs is a priority for his administration. Lately, he has cited one policy in particular as an inflation-fighting tool: shrinking the nation’s budget deficit.
“Bringing down the deficit is one way to ease inflationary pressures in an economy,” Mr. Biden said this month. “We reduce federal borrowing and we help combat inflation.”
The federal budget deficit — the gap between what the government spends and the tax revenue it takes in — remains large. But Mr. Biden has pointed out that it shrank by $350 billion during his first year in office and is expected to fall more than $1 trillion by October, the end of this federal budget year.
Rather than stemming from any recent budget measures by his administration or Congress, the deficit reduction largely reflects the rise in tax receipts from strong economic growth and the winding down of pandemic-era emergency programs, like expanded unemployment insurance. And for many experts, that — plus the reality that deficits have a complicated relationship with inflation — makes the budget gap a surprising talking point. …
… The Biden administration’s March 2021 spending package helped the economic rebound, but it also meant the deficit shrank less than it otherwise would have last year. In fact, the $1.9 trillion relief plan probably added to inflation, because it pumped money into the economy when the labor market was starting to heal and businesses were reopening.
But the White House has explained its new emphasis on deficit reduction and fiscal moderation in terms of timing. Administration officials argue that back in March 2021, the world was uncertain, vaccines were only beginning to roll out and spending heavily on support programs was an insurance policy. Now, as the labor market is booming and consumer demand remains high, the administration says it wants to avoid ramping up spending in ways that could feed further inflation.
“Supply chains have created challenges in ramping up production as quickly as we were able to support demand,” said Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “The point he’s trying to make is that the plan, moving forward, is responsible and is not aimed at adding to demand.”
Moody’s Analytics estimates that inflation will be about a percentage point lower this year than it would be had the government continued spending at last year’s levels. …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Don’t let them get your goat because its milk is worth a bundle of baby formula when fortified with a bit of yeast for niacin and folic acid. However, it ain’t cheap and probably only still more available than infant baby formula because the MSM is mum on it. Also, some commercial brands have D3 added. The powdered form has a great shelf life. Fresh, pasteurized, and powdered are used to feed babies all around the world, particularly where goats are abundant for use as lawnmowers and for grilling.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Homemade Infant Formula written byKresha Faber last updated onMay 19, 2022
UPDATE – MAY 15, 2022: This post was written in 2011. To say it needs an update is an understatement. Due to the current baby formula shortage, we are working on simplifying these recipes, providing much more in-depth safety information, and providing thoughtful critique so you can make informed decisions for your family. Thus, we thank you for your patience and please check back over the next few days for more up-to-date help. In the meantime, if you’re needing a quick, effective formula for your baby, check out our emergency baby formula recipe formulated from the World Health Organization’s guidelines.
i looked at the link. no expert am i. but if e-coli is an issue, i think boiling the water might help. check with someone you trust.
as for hand sanitizer, ordinary soap and water does a good job. very hot not scalding water seems to protect against infection of minor wounds. again, i am no expert. check with someone you trust. i don’t know if soap has a chemical effect on germs, or if it’s just a matter of mechanical removal.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
WIC is a great program. WIC saves lives. Protecting those lives from information with which they can help themselves under adverse conditions might be a little overbearing flaw of elitism, possibly even self-serving avoidance of seeming responsible for any downside of independent actions.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
WIC also has a lot of rules for what they pay for as specified by each individual state government. That could really screw up any message on national media regarding homemade substitution. Link below for Washington state serves as a related example.
Of course camel milk is far better even than goat’s milk, but not so readily available in the US. I was surprised to find that sheep milk was at least as good nutritionally as goat milk (but not as good as camel) since in my part of the country people keep goats rather than sheep to feed babies, at least in my dad’s part of the country where I only briefly lived myself.
Dairy cows produce a lot of milk, but not nearly the most nutritious. Cattle were probably bred mostly for protein food, not just more tender, bland, and generally leaner beef – but also milder butter and cheese. Goat is both leaner and gamier than lamb, but I like both marinated in soy sauce and port wine for a few days before grilling. Venison is ever better. Bison ain’t bad either. Beef is available and despite recent price trends, still cheaper for the most part.
yes, i had been wondering about homemade until today i read it might be dangerous. well, what do i know about milk allergies or other dangers in baby food (except for reports some years ago about commercial baby food/formula killing babies)?
so i hope your comment here and references can find a wider audience. i don’t know how people make sure that what they do is safe. but somehow i agree that the powers want to protect us from information…patly because they are afraid of being sued if they fail to warn us, or if their warning hurts some company’s profits (sorry for the boilerplate but by now it’s pretty much conventional wisdom).
just imagine if people learned how to make their own baby-food. profits would fall, proud companies would go out of business, governments would crumble (which might not be a bad thing, except for the Trumpists in the wings waiting to take up the slack. IS a Puzzlement! [reference is to a famous musical/movie you all are too old to have seen. the only sex scene in it was Anna and the King dancing a breathtaking waltz singing “Shall we dance?””]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I got no goat nor baby. I think of Gerber for food minced to mush and put in a jar at a huge markup. Many parents are not able to blend their own baby food from the food of their regular meals because babies need good nutrition to grow and be healthy while many parents are content to eat their depression on a diet of slow suicide. My wife likes junk food and I accommodate her periodically while keeping the healthy food that constitutes most of our diet on the tasty side of healthy with compromises such as whole wheat pasta and turkey burgers.
My blender is an Oster that is over 30 years old. The Ninja is a step up from my old Oster, but all that I use it for is shredding the fennel, cumin, and coriander seeds that go into my blackening seasoning, for which it works just fine. I do not do smoothies.
A thirty year old kitchen appliance does too. But that’s a different subject.
I like goats, but they can be hard to keep out of trouble [ Ninja would be a great name for one], My dogs say they have an answer for that, but I have explained morality to them.
A chaotic day on Wall Street extended the longest period of market turmoil since 2001, with stocks on Friday briefly descending into bear market territory, a symbolic marker of investors’ deep pessimism about the health of the global economy and the buying power of the American consumer.
The S&P 500 has fallen for seven consecutive weeks, its worst stretch since the dot-com bubble burst more than two decades ago. After a 3 percent drop this week, the index is down 14 percent since early April.
Friday afternoon, the S&P 500 crossed the bear market threshold of a 20 percent decline from its peak on Jan. 3. But with less than 30 minutes left before trading ended, after hours of churn and a drop of as much as 2.3 percent, the market rallied and ended a hair above where it had started the day. …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
On July 12, the S&P 500 posted a new all-time record close of 4385, extending its gains since the start of 2021 to 16.8%. But the market reached another milestone that should gravely concern prudent investors. A highly respected valuation gauge developed by Yale economist and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller hit a mark showing that the S&P 500 is now pricier than in 96% of all quarters over the past 141 years. Put differently, big-cap stocks have been this expensive only 4% of the time in the recorded history of equity markets.
The new reading is so extreme that it suggests stocks may be soaring in a speculative frenzy unhinged from fundamentals. It also spotlights the bulls’ view that the current regime of super-slim interest rates means that big-caps can sustain, or even expand, price/earnings (P/E) multiples virtually never before seen. The Shiller data points to a different outcome: Just because equities are likely to beat ultra-low-yielding Treasuries in the years ahead doesn’t mean stocks will keep delivering strong gains. Quite the contrary: The data suggests that Treasuries will do extremely poorly, and the S&P should underperform as well, only less so.
U.S. big-caps will battle three powerful headwinds. First, the fall in “real” rates that has done so much to lift valuations will inevitably reverse. Second, that downdraft pressures today’s high-flying P/E multiples. Third, the U.S. economy is destined to grow at a far slower pace than in recent decades, reducing profit gains from stupendous before the pandemic to slim in the years ahead. Since mid-2020, it’s been all about momentum. Going forward it will be all about the other Big M—the market Math…
(This is a shocking story about what went on between France & Haiti after the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. Haiti won independence but was required to pay ransom to former slaveowners. And later was devastated by a French bank. This apparently has everything to do with the wretched state of that country.)
(Post-revolution) … Debt had smothered the country for more than half a century. Despite ousting its colonial rulers in a war of independence, Haiti had been forced to pay the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars to its former French slave masters, a ransom for the freedom it had already won in battle.
But on the night of Sept. 25, 1880, paying off the last of that money finally seemed within reach. …
… Haiti’s central bank was set up by a Parisian bank, Crédit Industriel et Commercial. At a time when the company was helping finance one of the world’s best-known landmarks, the Eiffel Tower, as a monument to French liberty, it was choking Haiti’s economy, taking much of the young nation’s income back to Paris and impairing its ability to start schools, hospitals and the other building blocks of an independent country.
Crédit Industriel, known in France as C.I.C., is now a $355 billion subsidiary of one of Europe’s largest financial conglomerates. But its exploits in Haiti left a crippling legacy of financial extraction and dashed hopes — even by the standards of a nation with a long history of both.
Haiti was the first modern nation to win its independence after a slave uprising, only to be financially shackled for generations by the reparations demanded by the French government for most of the 19th century.
And just when that money was nearly paid, Crédit Industriel and its national bank — the very instruments that seemed to hold the promise of financial independence — locked Haiti into a new vortex of debt for decades more to come. …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
If one is shocked by any crime perpetrated against humanity by the blend of arrogance and greed distilled from the cauldron of ethnic Europeans’ quest to extract wealth from every turn of history that gives them the upper hand, then they should read more world history. Even before substantial written history then Vikings who stole from everyone, Celts that mainly robbed Picts, and Brits and Francs that robbed Moors set the tone. From the cruelty of the Spanish Conquistadors search for gold in America into American colonial slavery through the US Trail of Tears to steal native lands that had been previously secured for the natives by treaty all the way forwards to the fatal bargain of the US, Britain, and France (at their bankers’ bequest) with the Treaty of Versailles that would doom the Wiemar Republic into the waiting hands of Nazis and (my personal favorite) the Belgian manipulation of Hutu and Tutsi into a bloody genocidal civil war, there is little left to learn that should shock our senses.
However, this is one more tragic story to add to that long list.
there is no gainsaying this. but before we ethnic Europeans don sackcloth and ashes and repent (with reparations) we ought to remember the crimes against humanity commited by the Mongols, Japanese, Chinese, Egyptians, Arabs, Hebrews, Africans, Sioux, Certain Florida Indians, Aztecs, Anaszi, Incas, …oh, Hell…and any I forgot.
according to Beatrice Forbes Manz, “in his formal correspondence Temur continued throughout his life to portray himself as the restorer of Chinggisid rights. He justified his Iranian, Mamluk, and Ottoman campaigns as a re-imposition of legitimate Mongol control over lands taken by usurpers.”[22] … Timur’s armies were inclusively multi-ethnic and were feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe,[9] sizable parts of which his campaigns laid waste.[23] Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.
[note first line above: echos of Putin?]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
True, but then we must use the greater technology and greater power alibi for our greater distribution of human abuse. Even when power is equally distributed, then there is some variance within the distribution of cruelty. The Maoris of the North Island were fairly tame and peaceful compared to the Maoris of the South Island. Native American tribes varied greatly in terms of civility and cruelty that was considered acceptable behavior as I noted some that you listed were fond of human sacrifices to the gods. However, when it comes to terrorizing the way into the status quo of our modern world, then we are unrivaled. Of course, that is no problem that cannot be solved by our own compulsive rules of acquisition leading to the uncertain final outcome whether by war, pestilence, or GHG pollution. When we have taken all that we can take from others, then there are none remaining to rob but ourselves. So, I am not recommending penance.
OTOH, my motivation was actually that I read about Haiti’s post-revolution problems with the embarrassed and vindictive French about a half century ago and was just having some fun with it.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
…and of course the Russians and Chinese are more than willing to help us end the world perhaps in a tantrum that if they cannot run the world then no one can.
of course”we” are more destructive than previous conquerors because the accidents of history gave us more power. but killing 17 million people, five percent of the worlds population in the 15th century would entitle Timur to membership in the club of great conquerors.
my point was to show that Europeans did not invent slavery and murder. not a very important point, except i get tired of hearing people claim that we did.
but then i went to google to see if i could find a reference to Graebers description of slavery and rule by terror among some indians in pre-conquest Florida. I could not find it. But i did find two essays but marxist-feminists who say Graeber got it all wrong. As far as I can tell “he was wrong” because he did not agree with marxist feminists, though in the essays i read they offered no actual evidence from anthropology, but only evidence that he ignored marxist=feminists. my head began to spin…i realize i have no way…neither time nor inclination…to find out who is “right.” if anyone.
i actually thought Graeber was a little too fond of feminist rhetoric. not that i have anything against women or any reason to disparage their role in history and even civilizing their male-beast friends. but i do get tired of marxist and feminist rhetoric.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
My intent was to repudiate the “shocking” part of the idea that the French were cruel and vindictive towards Haitians after the Haitian revolution rather than to specifically indict Europeans for all the sins upon humanity. I am sure that all the races and ethnic tribes have perpetrated their fair share of horrors against their neighbors, which supports the notion that not much that people can do to one another is shocking. However, as our friend Pogo (alias Walt Kelly) might say, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
My solution regarding marxist and feminist rhetoric is simply to ignore it and certainly not to read it myself. Behavior modification begins and ends at home unless you use shock therapy. There is little in life that I can change, but the things that I can ignore are endless.
thanks for straightening me out. I suppose I was overreacting because all of your examples were “European” and there has been so much blaming us white folk for inventing racism, slavery, violence, and cruelty that I was reacting to that.
i was not aware of the French oppression of Haiti after the Haitians kicked them out. How were they able to pull that off? And why are we with our various good neigbor policies unable to turn it around?
i may be losing my powers of recognizing propaganda instantly. i felt confused because i realized i had no way to check on the substantive claims, until i realized there were NO substantive claims.
just the other day i wandered into a website claiming that the Russians were winning in Ukraine. My first reaction was “how do I know this is not true..?”
well, even with aging of my early warning system, it turns out that if I just let the liars talk for a while it becomes pretty obvious that they are lying. but still, i can see how people might be fooled. i am afraid that with constant lying from all sides i as well as others will lose the ability to detect lies even after having a chance to “think” about them. what i think i know about brains suggests this is almost inevitable. when eye deep in salt water you learn to float, but not to touch bottom.
… By the early 20th century, half of the taxes on Haiti’s coffee crop, by far its most important source of revenue, went to French investors at C.I.C. and the national bank. After Haiti’s other debts were deducted, its government was left with pennies — 6 cents of every $3 collected — to run the country.
The documents help explain why Haiti remained on the sidelines during a period so rich with modernization and optimism that Americans dubbed it the Gilded Age and the French called it the Belle Époque. This extraordinary growth benefited both faraway powers and developing neighbors, yet Haiti had vanishingly little to invest in basics like running water, electricity or education.
The damage was lasting. Over three decades, French shareholders made profits of at least $136 million in today’s dollars from Haiti’s national bank — about an entire year’s worth of the country’s tax revenues at the time, the documents show.
The Times vetted its methodology and sources for these calculations with economic historians and accountants. The financial historian Éric Monnet of the Paris School of Economics summed up the national bank’s role as “pure extraction.”
But the cumulative losses to Haiti were far greater: Had the wealth siphoned off by Haiti’s national bank stayed in the country, it would have added at least $1.7 billion to Haiti’s economy over the years — more than all of the government’s revenues in 2021.
And that’s if the money had simply remained in the Haitian economy, circulating among its farmers, laborers and merchants, without being invested in bridges, schools or factories, the sort of projects that help nations prosper.
More important, the toll Haiti’s national bank took came after generations of payments to former slaveholders that inflicted as much as $115 billion in losses to the Haitian economy over the last two centuries. …
… decades of diplomatic correspondence, financial reports and archival records reviewed by The New York Times show that, behind the public explanations, another hand was hard at work as well, pushing the United States to step in and seize control of Haiti for the wealth it promised: Wall Street, and especially the bank that later became Citigroup.
Under heavy pressure from National City Bank, Citigroup’s predecessor, the Americans elbowed the French aside and became the dominant power in Haiti for decades to come. The United States dissolved Haiti’s parliament at gunpoint, killed thousands of people, controlled its finances for more than 30 years, shipped a big portion of its earnings to bankers in New York and left behind a country so poor that the farmers who helped generate the profits often lived on a diet “close to starvation level,” United Nations officials determined in 1949, soon after the Americans let go of the reins.
“I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues,” Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, a leader of the American force in Haiti, wrote in 1935, describing himself as a “racketeer for capitalism.”
For more than a century, Haiti has been labeled a disaster, a basket case, a place so destitute, indebted, lacking and lawless that it needs constant saving. The assassination of the president in his bedroom, the kidnappings in the capital, the swells of Haitian migrants heading to the United States — they all point to a country in a seemingly endless vortex of despair that the world’s great powers, whether with troops or mountains of aid, have not managed to fix.
But the documents and financial records reviewed by The Times in Haiti, the United States and France show how much of Haiti’s misery has been brought by the outside world — and how often intervention has been portrayed as a helping hand.
By the time U.S. forces arrived in the summer of 1915, Haiti had already spent more than half a century handing over big slices of its meager earnings to France. Though the Haitians had overthrown their French enslavers, beaten Napoleon’s forces and declared their independence in 1804, French warships sailed back to Haiti decades later, demanding staggering amounts of cash under threat of war.
Haiti became the first and only country where the descendants of enslaved people paid the families of their former masters for generations, hampering its ability to build a nation almost since birth.
After that came French bankers, dangling loans before a country that had been depleted by decades of paying France. They took so much in commissions, interest and fees that, in some years, their French shareholders’ profits were bigger than the Haitian government’s public works budget for the entire country.
Next were the Americans, at times portraying their intervention as a way of defending Haitian “sovereignty.” And just as it had for generations of Parisian bankers, Haiti proved profitable for Wall Street. In its filing to the Senate Finance Committee in 1932, National City Bank said it secured one of its largest margins during the 1920s from a debt it controlled in Haiti.
Little of that history remains part of Citigroup’s public profile today. Haiti is barely mentioned in its official timeline. The company declined to provide access to its archives and said it was unable to find any information on some of its biggest loans to Haiti.
But according to nearly two dozen annual reports published by American officials and reviewed by The Times, a quarter of Haiti’s total revenue went to paying debts controlled by National City Bank and its affiliate over the course of a decade — nearly five times the amount spent on government-run schools in Haiti during that time. …
Biden sends US troops back into SomaliaThe Biden administration has ordered the redeployment of 450 US soldiers to Somalia at the request of the Pentagon. Government officials state the decision is aimed at countering the advances of the Islamist group al-Shabab, which controls much of the countryside in southern and central Somalia.
Biden’s decision is a reversal of a Trump administration order to remove 700 US soldiers from the country and deploy them to neighboring countries in January 2021. Trump portrayed the action as part of his campaign promise to roll back US involvement in “forever wars,” though US troops continued to conduct military activities inside of Somalia from their new bases in neighboring Kenya and Djibouti.
The stated goal of the redeployment is to target a dozen leaders of al-Shabab, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US government, and to “maximize the safety and effectiveness of our forces and enable them to provide more efficient support to our partners,” according to Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council in an interview with the New York Times.
Al-Shabab has been engaged in military confrontations with the central Somali government for over 15 years and has been the target of repeated US military operations and airstrikes. Having consolidated control over large parts of the country, the organization is believed to have 5,000 to 10,000 armed fighters and close ties to Al Qaeda.
Absolutely. Still, the only thing worse than fighting a forever war may be losing a forever war. However, the Democratic Party may be a bit reflexive about not appearing soft on defense going all the way back to Truman.
or is it because he didn’t invade China and use the Big Bomb?
[well, he did use the Big Bomb, but only against the defeated Japanese. I don’t know that it would have made much difference against China. or maybe Truman learned something from his mistakes. Something not apparent on the Right….unless they learned how to run a coup from what they did wrong last time.]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I did not mean that Truman was soft on defense, but rather that Truman was reflexively hard on defense matters because he was afraid of giving the appearance that he might be soft on defense. FDR tried to keep us out of WWII, just like Wilson tried to keep us out of WWI. They both knew that war is hell. Truman did not have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to Republicans in the same manner that Wilson and FDR did, for vastly different reasons. Wilson’s political strength arose from Teddy castrating the Republican Party in 1912 when he broke off the progressives to form the “Bull Moose Party.” FDR blossomed his strength when Coolidge castrated the US economy and the Republican Party along with it leaving Herbert Hoover nothing on the table but crumbs. Truman inherited a muscle car without any driving experience.
I didn’t thinkyou were saying HST was soft. I was responding to the R’s who say Dems are soft etc. It’s not true…remember Bob Dole and “democrat wars”?
But it’s someting the r’s get to say because if you say it often enough it’s true.
Gas prices keep climbing. The stock market has been tumbling. Interest rates are rising. Consumer confidence is falling.And even the historically strong jobs and housing markets are showing early warning signs of a slowdown.
Less than six months before crucial midterm elections, President Biden and the Democrats aren’t getting much good news lately on the issue that Americans say matters the most to them: the economy.
The risk over the next year of a recession — an economic contraction that lasts at least six months — is uncomfortably high, experts warn, as the Federal Reserve tries to tame inflation near a four-decade peak while the war in Ukraine rages on and another COVID surge builds. …
That uncertain outlook poses a major challenge for Democrats as they try to hold onto their slim congressional majorities in November while Republicans pound away on what they’ve branded “Bidenflation.”
“If there is a general view by the late summer and fall that the economy’s not doing well and that things are down, it’s going to be a tough election for Democrats,” said Simon Rosenberg, president of the centrist Democratic think tank NDN. “The economic challenge is to keep the economy growing and to get inflation under control and the political challenge is to get more credit for the things that have gone well. That’s something that can be done in the next five or six months.”
But it won’t be easy. And in the world of electoral opinion, it may not come in time for the Democrats. …
Inflation has been a major factor in pushing Biden’s approval rating down to 40.7 percent, according to an average of national polls by analytics website FiveThirtyEight. An NBC News poll released last Sunday found just 16 percent of American adults think the nation is headed in the right direction, near the low of 12 percent during the 2008 financial crisis.
Even after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the federal right to an abortion, the poll found respondents ranked “cost of living” as the most important issue facing the country. Biden’s approval rating on handling the cost of living was just 23 percent.
Americans also have been rattled by seemingly random product shortages and price spikes caused by pandemic supply chain disruptions. The ongoing scramble by parents for baby formula follows past struggles to buy lumber, garage doors, and computer chips and adds to a sense of an economy in chaos. …
Stagflation: i wonder what part of “stag” they don’t understand. Causing a recession to cure inflation never really works. But after things have settled down a bit the next adminstration can always say “are you better off than you were last year.”
Biden’s influence over this is about as good as Obama’s and Clinton’s and Carter’s ability to fight sabotage of their administratons by the R’s who pretty much run the economy. And if that sounds paranoid, sometimes paranoia is the only way to spot your enemies.
There will be no circumstances where I (or Mrs Fred) will be voting GOP this fall, no matter what. ‘Stagflation’ or not. We will be voting for Dems. My adult kids will no doubt not be voting for any GOP candidates either. But they would probably be preferring to vote for AOC in 2024, should she be on the ballot.
Biden (as any Dem would have) has been dealt a tough hand, and obviously is getting no bi-partisan help from the GOP which only exacerbates matters, seriously.
Ordinarily, centrists from one party will support centrists from the other party.
That just isn’t happening any more.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
as an Eisenhower Republican I would always be tempted to favor “moderation in all things. But by the time I began to pay attentions, “moderate” was what people called themselves who were agents of rule by corporations but trying to appeal to people not actually foaming at the mouth. Romney is one of these.
Manchin and Cinema are simply fifth colonists, if not active traitors..not so much to Democrats, but to America and the whole idea of government by the people..etc
of course since i am on record at AB for having reservations about the ability of “the people” to govern themselves, maybe i am still a moderate after all. but the other moderate.
… For the first time in history, retail investors’ index fund holdings exceed their holdings in actively-managed funds, according to new numbers from Morningstar Direct.
As of March 31, Morningstar says, retail investors had $8.53 trillion invested in index mutual funds, while $8.34 trillion worth of assets were invested in actively-managed funds.
… think of this as Main Street’s revenge on Wall Street. A spokesman for S&P Dow Jones Indices has a more elegant view: “the democratization of investing.” …
Back in 1993, when Morningstar first began tracking index-versus-active assets, active funds had about 60 times as much in assets ($1.25 trillion) as index funds ($21 billion).
As recently as 10 years ago, assets invested in index funds by retail investors were only about a third of those invested in actively-managed funds: $1.87 trillion compared to $5.47 trillion. But the tide had long since turned.
By the end of last year, the asset difference was less than one percent — $8.90 trillion to $8.98 trillion. …
Whether you call it revenge or democratization, index assets exceeding active assets is an amazing development, given that active retail mutual funds have been around roughly forever, while retail index funds didn’t exist until 1976.
(Note. Indexed funds may not be performing better than managed funds – the article doesn’t say – but their expense ratios – what they charge for ownership – are always much lower than those of managed funds.)
Suzanne Walsh, president of Bennett College, at first ignored the email that would lead to the cancellation of nearly 500 overdue bills at her college. After all, she thought at the time, “people just don’t reach out and say we can help your students pay off their debts.”
But the Debt Collective, a union of debtors rallying against consumer debt, wasn’t joking. After the initial conversation, the group arranged for the purchase of $1.7 million in unpaid student balances.
Then they canceled it. Its elimination means students no longer have to pay off the debt and those who couldn’t access their transcripts because of overdue bills now have access to their academic records and the ability to continue their educations.
Braxton Brewington, a spokesman for the organization, said they chose Bennett College in North Carolina because Black women on average have higher student loan balances than any other group of borrowers. The debt cleared does not include federal student loans, only money owed directly to the school.
“These are the people that are really taking the brunt of the student debt crisis,” Brewington said. …
Occupy Wall Street activists pay off student debt for nearly 500 Black women at HBCU
USA Today – May 21
Suzanne Walsh, president of Bennett College, at first ignored the email that would lead to the cancellation of nearly 500 overdue bills at her college. After all, she thought at the time, “people just don’t reach out and say we can help your students pay off their debts.”
But the Debt Collective, a union of debtors rallying against consumer debt, wasn’t joking. After the initial conversation, the group arranged for the purchase of $1.7 million in unpaid student balances.
Then they canceled it. Its elimination means students no longer have to pay off the debt and those who couldn’t access their transcripts because of overdue bills now have access to their academic records and the ability to continue their educations.
Braxton Brewington, a spokesman for the organization, said they chose Bennett College in North Carolina because Black women on average have higher student loan balances than any other group of borrowers. The debt cleared does not include federal student loans, only money owed directly to the school.
“These are the people that are really taking the brunt of the student debt crisis,” Brewington said. …
Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the United States have bothsignaled that Russia’s debacle in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear strike. By claiming that Russia is readying its weapons, by warning of a “serious” risk of nuclear escalation and by declaring “there are few rules left,” they purposefully rattled the ultimate saber. Vladimir Putin himself has noted that he has weapons his opponents do not and that he will “use them, if needed.” Even the C.I.A. director, William Burns, has warned of the possibility that Mr. Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon, even if there is no “practical evidence” right now to suggest it is imminent. Nevertheless, we should be prepared; the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger has argued that we should give the threat consideration.
We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain. …
… Some will conclude that to avoid provoking Russia — and thus avoid the prospect of a possible Russian nuclear strike — we should pre-emptively restrain Ukraine from routing the Russian military. We could limit the weapons we send, hold back on intelligence and pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to settle. I disagree; free nations must continue to support Ukrainians’ brave and necessary defense of their country. Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. If Mr. Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests. Inevitably, our friends and allies would be devoured by brazen, authoritarian nuclear powers, the implications of which would drastically alter the world order.
The right answer is to continue to give Ukraine all the support it needs to defend itself and to win. Its military successes may force Mr. Putin to exit Ukraine or to agree to a cease-fire acceptable to the Ukrainian people. Perhaps his control of Russian media would enable him to spin a loss into a face-saving narrative at home. These are the outcomes he would be smart to take. But if a cornered and delusional Mr. Putin were to instead use a nuclear weapon — whether via a tactical strike or by weaponizing one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants — we would have several options.
There are some who would argue for a nuclear response. But there is a wide range of options, and they need not be mutually exclusive. For example, NATO could engage in Ukraine, potentially obliterating Russia’s struggling military. Further, we could confront China and every other nation with a choice much like that George W. Bush gave the world after Sept. 11: You are either with us, or you are with Russia — you cannot be with both. …
Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event. Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah. Some or all of its economy would be severed from that of the United States and our allies. Today, the West represents over half of the global G.D.P. Separating any nation from our combined economies could devastate it. The impact on Western economies could be significant, but the impact on the economies of Russia and its fellow travelers would be much worse. It could ultimately be economic Armageddon, but that is far preferable to nuclear Armageddon.
Together with our key NATO allies, we should develop and evaluate a broad range of options. I presume the president and the administration are already engaged in such a process. The potential responses to an act so heinous and geopolitically disorienting as a nuclear strike must be optimally designed and have the support of our NATO allies. Mr. Putin and his enablers should have no doubt that our answer to such depravity would be devastating.
Lest it be forgotten, there is apparently NO international agreement NOT to use ‘tactical nuclear weapons’. Some decades ago, ‘neutron bomb’ weapons were devised, supposedly low-yield devices which would kill people with horrific sprays of high-speed neutrons, but do little damage to infrastructure.
Ideal for modern urban war fare. Maybe Russia has those in its stockpile.
As previously noted, Oppenheimer’s comment at the Trinity test in New Mexico in 1945, quoting words from the Bhagavad Gita ‘I am become Death – destroyer of worlds.’ (Sooner or later, we are going to blow ourselves up.)
There are NO international agreements for tactical nukes.
As for strategic nukes (the Big ones), there are still a some understandings perhaps. Basically, it’s MAD (mutual assured destruction): if you launch ICBMs, we launch ICBMs. See ‘Dr Strangelove’ for details.
Although, in that film it was soviet seismometers detecting explosions and setting off the Doomsday Machine, before the days of the ICBMs as I recall. They forgot to warn us about that.
Such ‘radiation-enhanced’ nuclear weapons, i.e. ‘neutron bombs’ were taken out of the US arsenal about 25 years ago, according to Wikipedia. Interestingly enuf, they appear to have been in the ‘tactical’ category.
That certainly doesn’t mean the Russians don’t have such weapons.
if he would use it now, he will use it later. better to call his bluff now. if he’s not bluffing, well goodbye to all that. but i we let him get away with his bluff, it’s still goodbye to all that.
Get DVDs of ‘Dr Strangelove’ & ‘Failsafe’, set yerself down in a comfy chair near the tv and watch these two films over & over, nothing else, until the bombs begin to fall.
but what about the cave gap? Puty may have a plan for that. Throw in a DVD of The Time Machine
[hint, it’s about a future in which there are two “races”. those who survived (a nuclear war?) by living underground and developing science. and those who somehow survived above ground and evolved into hippies. you can guess who eats who.]
I suppose you are referring to the vaunted ‘Mineshaft Gap’ of ‘Dr Strangelove’, presumably a sarcastic allusion to the infamous ‘Missile Gap’ of the 1960 Presidential campaign.
(Note: In the US, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR’s missiles in comparison with those of the US (a lack of military parity). The gap in the ballistic missile arsenals did not exist except in exaggerated estimates, made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. Even the contradictory CIA figures for the USSR’s weaponry, which showed a clear advantage for the US, were far above the actual count. …
John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. Wikipedia )
Biden’s Curious Talking Point: Lower Deficits Offer Inflation Relief
NY Times – May 20
Don’t let them get your goat because its milk is worth a bundle of baby formula when fortified with a bit of yeast for niacin and folic acid. However, it ain’t cheap and probably only still more available than infant baby formula because the MSM is mum on it. Also, some commercial brands have D3 added. The powdered form has a great shelf life. Fresh, pasteurized, and powdered are used to feed babies all around the world, particularly where goats are abundant for use as lawnmowers and for grilling.
Homemade Infant Formula
written byKresha Faber last updated onMay 19, 2022
UPDATE – MAY 15, 2022: This post was written in 2011. To say it needs an update is an understatement. Due to the current baby formula shortage, we are working on simplifying these recipes, providing much more in-depth safety information, and providing thoughtful critique so you can make informed decisions for your family. Thus, we thank you for your patience and please check back over the next few days for more up-to-date help. In the meantime, if you’re needing a quick, effective formula for your baby, check out our emergency baby formula recipe formulated from the World Health Organization’s guidelines.
i looked at the link. no expert am i. but if e-coli is an issue, i think boiling the water might help. check with someone you trust.
as for hand sanitizer, ordinary soap and water does a good job. very hot not scalding water seems to protect against infection of minor wounds. again, i am no expert. check with someone you trust. i don’t know if soap has a chemical effect on germs, or if it’s just a matter of mechanical removal.
…which again leads to the conclusion that the purpose of mainstream media is to protect the public from the many dangers of having knowledge.
WIC is a great program. WIC saves lives. Protecting those lives from information with which they can help themselves under adverse conditions might be a little overbearing flaw of elitism, possibly even self-serving avoidance of seeming responsible for any downside of independent actions.
WIC also has a lot of rules for what they pay for as specified by each individual state government. That could really screw up any message on national media regarding homemade substitution. Link below for Washington state serves as a related example.
https://doh.wa.gov/you-and-your-family/wic/wic-foods/milk
WIC Approved Milk…
Of course camel milk is far better even than goat’s milk, but not so readily available in the US. I was surprised to find that sheep milk was at least as good nutritionally as goat milk (but not as good as camel) since in my part of the country people keep goats rather than sheep to feed babies, at least in my dad’s part of the country where I only briefly lived myself.
Dairy cows produce a lot of milk, but not nearly the most nutritious. Cattle were probably bred mostly for protein food, not just more tender, bland, and generally leaner beef – but also milder butter and cheese. Goat is both leaner and gamier than lamb, but I like both marinated in soy sauce and port wine for a few days before grilling. Venison is ever better. Bison ain’t bad either. Beef is available and despite recent price trends, still cheaper for the most part.
yes, i had been wondering about homemade until today i read it might be dangerous. well, what do i know about milk allergies or other dangers in baby food (except for reports some years ago about commercial baby food/formula killing babies)?
so i hope your comment here and references can find a wider audience. i don’t know how people make sure that what they do is safe. but somehow i agree that the powers want to protect us from information…patly because they are afraid of being sued if they fail to warn us, or if their warning hurts some company’s profits (sorry for the boilerplate but by now it’s pretty much conventional wisdom).
just imagine if people learned how to make their own baby-food. profits would fall, proud companies would go out of business, governments would crumble (which might not be a bad thing, except for the Trumpists in the wings waiting to take up the slack. IS a Puzzlement! [reference is to a famous musical/movie you all are too old to have seen. the only sex scene in it was Anna and the King dancing a breathtaking waltz singing “Shall we dance?””]
Coberly,
Yes indeed. Ninja might put Gerber out of business.
Ron
you have a goat named Ninja?
Coberly,
I got no goat nor baby. I think of Gerber for food minced to mush and put in a jar at a huge markup. Many parents are not able to blend their own baby food from the food of their regular meals because babies need good nutrition to grow and be healthy while many parents are content to eat their depression on a diet of slow suicide. My wife likes junk food and I accommodate her periodically while keeping the healthy food that constitutes most of our diet on the tasty side of healthy with compromises such as whole wheat pasta and turkey burgers.
My blender is an Oster that is over 30 years old. The Ninja is a step up from my old Oster, but all that I use it for is shredding the fennel, cumin, and coriander seeds that go into my blackening seasoning, for which it works just fine. I do not do smoothies.
Sounds good to me.
A thirty year old kitchen appliance does too. But that’s a different subject.
I like goats, but they can be hard to keep out of trouble [ Ninja would be a great name for one], My dogs say they have an answer for that, but I have explained morality to them.
Some good news for investors. Sort of.
S&P 500 Drops for Seventh Straight Week but Evades Bear Market
NY Tmes – May 20
[Reality sucks, but often slowly.]
https://fortune.com/2021/07/14/s-and-p-500-bubble-stock-market-spx-history-excess-cape/
Bubble warning: The S&P 500 has only been this expensive for 4% of the past 140 years
By
Shawn Tully
July 14, 2021 2:38 PM EDT
On July 12, the S&P 500 posted a new all-time record close of 4385, extending its gains since the start of 2021 to 16.8%. But the market reached another milestone that should gravely concern prudent investors. A highly respected valuation gauge developed by Yale economist and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller hit a mark showing that the S&P 500 is now pricier than in 96% of all quarters over the past 141 years. Put differently, big-cap stocks have been this expensive only 4% of the time in the recorded history of equity markets.
The new reading is so extreme that it suggests stocks may be soaring in a speculative frenzy unhinged from fundamentals. It also spotlights the bulls’ view that the current regime of super-slim interest rates means that big-caps can sustain, or even expand, price/earnings (P/E) multiples virtually never before seen. The Shiller data points to a different outcome: Just because equities are likely to beat ultra-low-yielding Treasuries in the years ahead doesn’t mean stocks will keep delivering strong gains. Quite the contrary: The data suggests that Treasuries will do extremely poorly, and the S&P should underperform as well, only less so.
U.S. big-caps will battle three powerful headwinds. First, the fall in “real” rates that has done so much to lift valuations will inevitably reverse. Second, that downdraft pressures today’s high-flying P/E multiples. Third, the U.S. economy is destined to grow at a far slower pace than in recent decades, reducing profit gains from stupendous before the pandemic to slim in the years ahead. Since mid-2020, it’s been all about momentum. Going forward it will be all about the other Big M—the market Math…
(This is a shocking story about what went on between France & Haiti after the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. Haiti won independence but was required to pay ransom to former slaveowners. And later was devastated by a French bank. This apparently has everything to do with the wretched state of that country.)
How a French BankCaptured Haiti
NY Times – May 21
If one is shocked by any crime perpetrated against humanity by the blend of arrogance and greed distilled from the cauldron of ethnic Europeans’ quest to extract wealth from every turn of history that gives them the upper hand, then they should read more world history. Even before substantial written history then Vikings who stole from everyone, Celts that mainly robbed Picts, and Brits and Francs that robbed Moors set the tone. From the cruelty of the Spanish Conquistadors search for gold in America into American colonial slavery through the US Trail of Tears to steal native lands that had been previously secured for the natives by treaty all the way forwards to the fatal bargain of the US, Britain, and France (at their bankers’ bequest) with the Treaty of Versailles that would doom the Wiemar Republic into the waiting hands of Nazis and (my personal favorite) the Belgian manipulation of Hutu and Tutsi into a bloody genocidal civil war, there is little left to learn that should shock our senses.
However, this is one more tragic story to add to that long list.
Ron
there is no gainsaying this. but before we ethnic Europeans don sackcloth and ashes and repent (with reparations) we ought to remember the crimes against humanity commited by the Mongols, Japanese, Chinese, Egyptians, Arabs, Hebrews, Africans, Sioux, Certain Florida Indians, Aztecs, Anaszi, Incas, …oh, Hell…and any I forgot.
oh heck, i forgot Tamerlain
Timur, Wiki:
according to Beatrice Forbes Manz, “in his formal correspondence Temur continued throughout his life to portray himself as the restorer of Chinggisid rights. He justified his Iranian, Mamluk, and Ottoman campaigns as a re-imposition of legitimate Mongol control over lands taken by usurpers.”[22] … Timur’s armies were inclusively multi-ethnic and were feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe,[9] sizable parts of which his campaigns laid waste.[23] Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.
[note first line above: echos of Putin?]
Coberly,
True, but then we must use the greater technology and greater power alibi for our greater distribution of human abuse. Even when power is equally distributed, then there is some variance within the distribution of cruelty. The Maoris of the North Island were fairly tame and peaceful compared to the Maoris of the South Island. Native American tribes varied greatly in terms of civility and cruelty that was considered acceptable behavior as I noted some that you listed were fond of human sacrifices to the gods. However, when it comes to terrorizing the way into the status quo of our modern world, then we are unrivaled. Of course, that is no problem that cannot be solved by our own compulsive rules of acquisition leading to the uncertain final outcome whether by war, pestilence, or GHG pollution. When we have taken all that we can take from others, then there are none remaining to rob but ourselves. So, I am not recommending penance.
OTOH, my motivation was actually that I read about Haiti’s post-revolution problems with the embarrassed and vindictive French about a half century ago and was just having some fun with it.
…and of course the Russians and Chinese are more than willing to help us end the world perhaps in a tantrum that if they cannot run the world then no one can.
Ron,
of course”we” are more destructive than previous conquerors because the accidents of history gave us more power. but killing 17 million people, five percent of the worlds population in the 15th century would entitle Timur to membership in the club of great conquerors.
my point was to show that Europeans did not invent slavery and murder. not a very important point, except i get tired of hearing people claim that we did.
but then i went to google to see if i could find a reference to Graebers description of slavery and rule by terror among some indians in pre-conquest Florida. I could not find it. But i did find two essays but marxist-feminists who say Graeber got it all wrong. As far as I can tell “he was wrong” because he did not agree with marxist feminists, though in the essays i read they offered no actual evidence from anthropology, but only evidence that he ignored marxist=feminists. my head began to spin…i realize i have no way…neither time nor inclination…to find out who is “right.” if anyone.
i actually thought Graeber was a little too fond of feminist rhetoric. not that i have anything against women or any reason to disparage their role in history and even civilizing their male-beast friends. but i do get tired of marxist and feminist rhetoric.
Coberly,
My intent was to repudiate the “shocking” part of the idea that the French were cruel and vindictive towards Haitians after the Haitian revolution rather than to specifically indict Europeans for all the sins upon humanity. I am sure that all the races and ethnic tribes have perpetrated their fair share of horrors against their neighbors, which supports the notion that not much that people can do to one another is shocking. However, as our friend Pogo (alias Walt Kelly) might say, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
My solution regarding marxist and feminist rhetoric is simply to ignore it and certainly not to read it myself. Behavior modification begins and ends at home unless you use shock therapy. There is little in life that I can change, but the things that I can ignore are endless.
Ron
thanks for straightening me out. I suppose I was overreacting because all of your examples were “European” and there has been so much blaming us white folk for inventing racism, slavery, violence, and cruelty that I was reacting to that.
i was not aware of the French oppression of Haiti after the Haitians kicked them out. How were they able to pull that off? And why are we with our various good neigbor policies unable to turn it around?
with regard to feminist marxist literature
i may be losing my powers of recognizing propaganda instantly. i felt confused because i realized i had no way to check on the substantive claims, until i realized there were NO substantive claims.
just the other day i wandered into a website claiming that the Russians were winning in Ukraine. My first reaction was “how do I know this is not true..?”
well, even with aging of my early warning system, it turns out that if I just let the liars talk for a while it becomes pretty obvious that they are lying. but still, i can see how people might be fooled. i am afraid that with constant lying from all sides i as well as others will lose the ability to detect lies even after having a chance to “think” about them. what i think i know about brains suggests this is almost inevitable. when eye deep in salt water you learn to float, but not to touch bottom.
NYT:
(Not surprisingly, eventually – in 1914 – the US took over from the French…)
Invade Haiti,Wall Street Urged.The US Obliged
looks like the forever wars are back on:
yep. no better way to win the hearts and minds than to kill people’s friends and relatives.
Coberly,
Absolutely. Still, the only thing worse than fighting a forever war may be losing a forever war. However, the Democratic Party may be a bit reflexive about not appearing soft on defense going all the way back to Truman.
Ron
Truman? who gave us Korea and the Cold War.
or is it because he didn’t invade China and use the Big Bomb?
[well, he did use the Big Bomb, but only against the defeated Japanese. I don’t know that it would have made much difference against China. or maybe Truman learned something from his mistakes. Something not apparent on the Right….unless they learned how to run a coup from what they did wrong last time.]
Coberly,
I did not mean that Truman was soft on defense, but rather that Truman was reflexively hard on defense matters because he was afraid of giving the appearance that he might be soft on defense. FDR tried to keep us out of WWII, just like Wilson tried to keep us out of WWI. They both knew that war is hell. Truman did not have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to Republicans in the same manner that Wilson and FDR did, for vastly different reasons. Wilson’s political strength arose from Teddy castrating the Republican Party in 1912 when he broke off the progressives to form the “Bull Moose Party.” FDR blossomed his strength when Coolidge castrated the US economy and the Republican Party along with it leaving Herbert Hoover nothing on the table but crumbs. Truman inherited a muscle car without any driving experience.
Ron
I didn’t thinkyou were saying HST was soft. I was responding to the R’s who say Dems are soft etc. It’s not true…remember Bob Dole and “democrat wars”?
But it’s someting the r’s get to say because if you say it often enough it’s true.
More bad economic news stalks Biden, Democrats
Boston Globe – May 21
Fred,
Stagflation: i wonder what part of “stag” they don’t understand. Causing a recession to cure inflation never really works. But after things have settled down a bit the next adminstration can always say “are you better off than you were last year.”
Biden’s influence over this is about as good as Obama’s and Clinton’s and Carter’s ability to fight sabotage of their administratons by the R’s who pretty much run the economy. And if that sounds paranoid, sometimes paranoia is the only way to spot your enemies.
There will be no circumstances where I (or Mrs Fred) will be voting GOP this fall, no matter what. ‘Stagflation’ or not. We will be voting for Dems. My adult kids will no doubt not be voting for any GOP candidates either. But they would probably be preferring to vote for AOC in 2024, should she be on the ballot.
Biden (as any Dem would have) has been dealt a tough hand, and obviously is getting no bi-partisan help from the GOP which only exacerbates matters, seriously.
Ordinarily, centrists from one party will support centrists from the other party.
That just isn’t happening any more.
Fred,
The center seems to have shrunk in both parties, but in the GOP it has almost completely disappeared. OK, there is still Mitt Romney.
Ron
as an Eisenhower Republican I would always be tempted to favor “moderation in all things. But by the time I began to pay attentions, “moderate” was what people called themselves who were agents of rule by corporations but trying to appeal to people not actually foaming at the mouth. Romney is one of these.
Manchin and Cinema are simply fifth colonists, if not active traitors..not so much to Democrats, but to America and the whole idea of government by the people..etc
of course since i am on record at AB for having reservations about the ability of “the people” to govern themselves, maybe i am still a moderate after all. but the other moderate.
“Cinema” is courtesy of stealth spell check.
So, I think, is “colonists.” But my personal spell checker may have left me open to that one. Or perhaps my type setter has a sense of humor.
(Indexed funds surpass managed funds, says Morningstar.)
‘The democratization of investing’: Index funds officially overtake active managers
… For the first time in history, retail investors’ index fund holdings exceed their holdings in actively-managed funds, according to new numbers from Morningstar Direct.
As of March 31, Morningstar says, retail investors had $8.53 trillion invested in index mutual funds, while $8.34 trillion worth of assets were invested in actively-managed funds.
… think of this as Main Street’s revenge on Wall Street. A spokesman for S&P Dow Jones Indices has a more elegant view: “the democratization of investing.” …
Back in 1993, when Morningstar first began tracking index-versus-active assets, active funds had about 60 times as much in assets ($1.25 trillion) as index funds ($21 billion).
As recently as 10 years ago, assets invested in index funds by retail investors were only about a third of those invested in actively-managed funds: $1.87 trillion compared to $5.47 trillion. But the tide had long since turned.
By the end of last year, the asset difference was less than one percent — $8.90 trillion to $8.98 trillion. …
Whether you call it revenge or democratization, index assets exceeding active assets is an amazing development, given that active retail mutual funds have been around roughly forever, while retail index funds didn’t exist until 1976.
(Note. Indexed funds may not be performing better than managed funds – the article doesn’t say – but their expense ratios – what they charge for ownership – are always much lower than those of managed funds.)
you’re better off buying an index fund
CNBC – March 21
Morningstar Research Says Passive Still Hard To Beat
Occupy Wall Street activists pay off student debt for nearly 500 Black women at HBCU
USA Today – May 21
Occupy Wall Street activists pay off student debt for nearly 500 Black women at HBCU
USA Today – May 21
(Aging Baby Boomer urging US to prepare for nuclear war?)
We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons
NY Times – Mitt Romney – May 21
very strange to find myself agreeing with Romney.
Lest it be forgotten, there is apparently NO international agreement NOT to use ‘tactical nuclear weapons’. Some decades ago, ‘neutron bomb’ weapons were devised, supposedly low-yield devices which would kill people with horrific sprays of high-speed neutrons, but do little damage to infrastructure.
Ideal for modern urban war fare. Maybe Russia has those in its stockpile.
As previously noted, Oppenheimer’s comment at the Trinity test in New Mexico in 1945, quoting words from the Bhagavad Gita ‘I am become Death – destroyer of worlds.’ (Sooner or later, we are going to blow ourselves up.)
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Fred
I wouldn’t rely too much on international agreements. Putin doesn’t.
There are NO international agreements for tactical nukes.
As for strategic nukes (the Big ones), there are still a some understandings perhaps. Basically, it’s MAD (mutual assured destruction): if you launch ICBMs, we launch ICBMs. See ‘Dr Strangelove’ for details.
Although, in that film it was soviet seismometers detecting explosions and setting off the Doomsday Machine, before the days of the ICBMs as I recall. They forgot to warn us about that.
Maybe Putin forgot to tell us.
Such ‘radiation-enhanced’ nuclear weapons, i.e. ‘neutron bombs’ were taken out of the US arsenal about 25 years ago, according to Wikipedia. Interestingly enuf, they appear to have been in the ‘tactical’ category.
That certainly doesn’t mean the Russians don’t have such weapons.
sure they do. that’s why they camped out at Chernobyl.
if he would use it now, he will use it later. better to call his bluff now. if he’s not bluffing, well goodbye to all that. but i we let him get away with his bluff, it’s still goodbye to all that.
Get DVDs of ‘Dr Strangelove’ & ‘Failsafe’, set yerself down in a comfy chair near the tv and watch these two films over & over, nothing else, until the bombs begin to fall.
Fred
but what about the cave gap? Puty may have a plan for that. Throw in a DVD of The Time Machine
[hint, it’s about a future in which there are two “races”. those who survived (a nuclear war?) by living underground and developing science. and those who somehow survived above ground and evolved into hippies. you can guess who eats who.]
I suppose you are referring to the vaunted ‘Mineshaft Gap’ of ‘Dr Strangelove’, presumably a sarcastic allusion to the infamous ‘Missile Gap’ of the 1960 Presidential campaign.
Dr Strangelove – ‘An astonishingly good idea’
(Note: In the US, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR’s missiles in comparison with those of the US (a lack of military parity). The gap in the ballistic missile arsenals did not exist except in exaggerated estimates, made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. Even the contradictory CIA figures for the USSR’s weaponry, which showed a clear advantage for the US, were far above the actual count. …
John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. Wikipedia )
Dobbs
yes. but while not sure about “caves” I can’t make myself remember it as “mineshaft.”
You can watch the ‘Mineshaft Gap’ scene in the link I posted.
Dobbs
thanks.
afraid to see what else i forgot.