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Creating Serial Speculative Booms To Sustain The Illusion Of Prosperity

A weeked topic starting with WINK in Florida. “Paul Beattie, owner of Beattie Development cannot build homes anymore. It’s not a permanent situation, but part of a settlement agreement with the state says he’d need to pay $300,000 before he could get a new license. Beattie is accused of taking money and not finishing dozens of homes. Court documents show he’s in debt for $11 million. ‘To finish my house, my wife and I are out $200,000,’ Jason Yoraway, the tipster and former Beattie customer said. Then the Beattie Development office in Cape Coral got raided. On Thursday, Beattie gave up all his licenses in a Department of Business and Professional Regulation settlement. ‘My first initial reaction was, yay. You know, it’s obviously great. We, you know, he finally kind of got something that was coming to him. But the other hand, I think it shows just how ineffective DBPR is. You know, we gotta ask who they are protecting here?’ said Stuart Owen, another former Beattie customer.”

Fox 13 Tampa Bay in Florida. “While Hurricanes Debbie, Helen and Milton cost billions, state leaders say we are also paying for storm damage that never occurred. Kim Ferris knows more about this than she ever cared to learn. ‘The nightmare started with a knock at the door,’ she said. “The man asked did you know we had a storm here? Mind if I check your roof for you? And I said sure.’ She said the man claimed she had roof damage from a tornado and hurricane, and that she could get a new roof paid for by her property insurance company. Kim said she then called two other roofers and neither found any storm damage, but that paper she signed came back to haunt her.”

“‘He said we have a contract. I said, what contract? I never got a copy or anything.’ She said she told him she was going with somebody else and was told she couldn’t. ‘He said, oh you can’t do that because we’re going sue you now for 33.5% of the insurance money, but I said I never put a claim in. And he said, we did.’ She said nearly $40,000 later she got a new roof. She paid the $1,000 deductible, while her insurance company, Citizens, paid the rest. Insurance may question a claim like that but decide it’s probably cheaper just to pay the claim than fight it in court. ‘In lieu of paying $70-$80K to litigate the claim, often times insurers will just write a $25,000 or $35,000 check just to get rid of it,’ said Jeff Brandes, a former Florida State Senator and President of Florida Policy Project.”

“Lawmakers, realtors, and home inspectors like Michael Bender say the problem starts with contractors who claim a roof is storm damaged when it really isn’t, and that source of the problem appears to have gone largely unaddressed. ‘I’m watching them canvas neighborhoods going door after door after door—then we come back three weeks later, and it’s bang, bang, bang, bang, putting roofs on everywhere,’ said home inspector Michael Bender.”

From Curbed. “No degree is required to become a real-estate agent — even a high-school diploma — and video tutorials to pass state exams are sold on Groupon ($86.40 in New York for a one-week course). ‘There are great brokers out there who are always a pleasure to work with, and others who you have to hope and pray for,’ said John Brandon, a broker at Archpoint Advisory, a boutique firm that markets its ability to hand-hold. And hope and prayer are all New Yorkers have: Of the 3,700 complaints made to the state about real-estate agents over the last four years, only 61 brokers and agents lost their licenses. The lack of scrutiny is a national problem, of course: Lexi Newman, a broker with Compass in Los Angeles, likes to tell clients that a sale ‘is only going to be as smooth as its weakest link, and sometimes that’s the agent on the other side.'”

“In Miami, where the agent Ivan Chorney has expertise in select developments, he’s lost listings to green agents a seller just happened to already know. ‘The brother, the friend, and a lot of times in Miami, it’s the pretty girl — that happens all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I should have gotten a listing and the seller said, ‘Actually, I’m going to hire a friend who lives an hour away,’ he said. Those agents can overprice homes, mess with marketing, or fail to book timely showings. ‘There are all these people who will take one of the biggest investments of their life and will go and give it to an amateur.'”

“At a recent Lower East Side listing, Michael Biryla, a broker who had been grinding for ten years in New York, met an eager buyer and an agent she introduced as her ‘bestie,’ a person with ‘no experience, no mentor, nothing,’ he said. He had no obligation to help her, share comps. So he didn’t. Though there were no other offers, he told her that she would need to waive all of her contingencies and come in over asking. ‘She did,’ he said. ‘I could smell blood in the water.'”

News for San Antonio in Texas. “New housing developments are sprouting up all around Bexar County and so are MUDs. That’s short for Municipal Utility Districts. MUDs can tax you and use a lot of water. As News 4 I-Team reporter Jaie Avila uncovered, a MUD can be approved through an election with as little as one vote. Sara Coger’s well went dry last year, and she had to pay hundreds of dollars to have water trucked to her home. Coger blames all the new housing developments tapping into the water supply. ‘These massive developments they want to just divide it up like it’s just like it’s in town and you can’t do that out here, and it’s running everything dry,’ Coger said.”

“We researched the results of the Canyon Ranch MUD election, from May of 2022. The MUD was approved by one vote. The only vote cast. According to court filings, prosecutors think that solitary vote came from someone who moved a trailer on to the empty land so they could cast the deciding ballot. The Comal County District Attorney’s office charged Christopher Williams and Kelly Leach with election fraud. According to court filings prosecutors claim Williams ‘unlawfully changed his address to vote’ in the election. The state alleges Leach, the developer of Canyon Ranch, ‘encouraged him to do so.'”

10 News in California. “San Diego County has spent $58.3 million on a homeless program over the past five years resulting in minimal success in finding those involved permanent homes, a Team 10 investigation has found. Team 10 found nearly one-fifth of the funding, or $11.2 million, went to Equus, an out-of-state contractor for San Diego County, that only helped 39% of the 2,400 participants find permanent homes. El Cajon, a conservative East County community, has been the epicenter of the regional homeless assistance program. On most nights, the city’s low-budget hotels house 103 of the 250 households involved in the program, records show. Mayor Bill Wells said the program has taxed the city’s police department with calls for drug overdoses, sex offenders and car thefts.”

“Team 10, through a public records request, obtained documents showing the county — through Equus — pays $140 a night or roughly $4,000 a month for Kelly Pickenpaugh, who has been in the program about a year and a half, to stay in low-cost hotels in El Cajon. The 60-year-old former businesswoman said she became homeless following a spinal cord injury and entered the program in late May 2023. ‘It’s unbelievable to me because of the rent being so much cheaper,’ Pickenpaugh said. ‘And to say there’s no housing, there’s all kind of housing out there. All kinds of apartments for rent.'”

NPR on Colorado. “Denver’s homeless population hit an all-time high in 2024 but there is actually no shortage of available housing units, according to a new report. Omar Ocampo, researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and the report’s co-author, said much of the housing built over the past two decades is not homes for people. Those units, many of which remain vacant, are being used by hedge funds and the wealthy as a safe and profitable place to park large sums of untaxed wealth. ‘We have seen, over the past decade or so, a boom in luxury real estate,’ Ocampo observed. ‘Basically, the only people who can afford it are people who are ultrahigh net worth, or at the top of the income distribution.'”

From Nexstar. “The median price of a new home these days is about $426,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Looking back at 1980, the median new home cost more like $68,000. One figure that measures affordability for buyers, house price-to-income ratio, has nearly doubled since 1980, MoneyGeek reports. ‘Price-to-income ratios that low were the norm across much of the country in prior decades. Indeed, fully two-thirds of large markets had price-to-income ratios below 3.0 as recently as 2000,’ wrote researchers Alexander Hermann and Peyton Whitney, summarizing their work. Now, the only remaining major metro area with a ratio below 3 is Syracuse, New York. In 1980, people in South Dakota were spending the biggest chunk of their paychecks on housing. Now, it’s Californians forking over the most.”

Columbia School of Professional Studies. “For cautious watchers of the housing market, familiar patterns in the data have raised cause for concern. Should we be worried about another housing bubble crash? Experts say probably not. The panelists referenced the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and other precautions taken by lending financial institutions to ensure that they are dealing with reputable borrowers, which significantly decrease the likelihood of widespread defaults and crashes. Pratik Gupta, managing director at Bank of America Securities, added that servicers these days are more proactive to ensure borrowers have alternative payment options if faced with a major credit event such as a job loss or medical issue. This ‘solutions era-based time we live in,’ he added, ‘means foreclosures are a lot less [frequent], and that has an impact of reducing supply during time”s of distress’ like recessions.”

From The Hill. “It has been nearly 14 years since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that the Fed’s emergency quantitative-easing policy, of which the most radical part was buying mortgage-backed securities, was ‘temporary’ and would be ‘reversed.’ The Fed made huge mortgage-backed securities purchases. The purchases pushed mortgage interest rates to artificially low levels, stoked the second great house price bubble of the 21st century and made houses unaffordable for many. In addition, these mortgage-backed securities investments unintentionally caused massive Fed losses. They are costing the Fed and taxpayers billions of dollars a month and will for years to come, as there is no practical way for the Fed to reverse its very large, deeply underwater mortgage-backed securities investment.”

“The Fed created a giant, loss-making mortgage-backed securities portfolio. It currently owns $2.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities mostly bought at the top of the market when mortgage yields were artificially low. Today, these mortgage-backed securities are worth far less than the Fed paid for them. The June 30 Fed financial statement shows an unrealized market value loss of $423 billion on the Fed’s mortgage-backed securities investments. This loss is nearly 10 times the Fed’s financial statement reported capital of $43 billion.”

Business in Vancouver in Canada. “A B.C. Realtor has agreed to hand in their licence and pay the B.C. Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) $5,000 after admitting to buying a $2.18-million property with falsified income documents. Jin Luo, a former real estate agent with Green Team Realty Inc. while licensed with City Realty Ltd. (RE/MAX City Realty), signed a consent order proposal on Oct. 1 after admitting professional misconduct. The order states how Luo submitted a mortgage application in December 2015 in relation to his purchase of a Vancouver property, for which he represented himself as the buyer. However, Luo did so with falsified income and savings information via the services of former sub-mortgage broker Jay Kanth Chaudhary.”

“Chaudhary has since acknowledged that he provided unregistered mortgage services and that he altered documents in order to obtain mortgage financing for his clients, the order notes. Luo was investigated in May 2019 for his home purchase. The order states how Luo bought the $2.18-million property by falsely indicating he had a savings account balance of $850,000 and an annual income of $256,961; Chaudhary falsified a TD savings account statement and CRA documents for Luo’s application, which was submitted by a registered mortgage broker. A similar scenario played out for the mortgage refinancing of the second property, the order indicates.”

“Chaudhary, between 2009 and 2018, allegedly arranged over half a billion dollars in mortgage loans with lenders based on falsified income records as an unregistered, so-called ‘shadow’ broker. For Chaudhary’s part, it is unclear what consequences he may face. Chaudhary was issued a cease-and-desist order by BCFSA in 2018. Chaudhary was summoned to the Cullen Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in February 2021, where he admitted he systemically falsified mortgage applications. Chaudhary gave testimony under guidance from his criminal defence lawyer Joel Wyshall, who told the commission Chaudhary ‘is the subject of an ongoing investigation and there is a search warrant being executed on him and the CRA is investigating, and that manner is in charge approval.’ To date, no charges appear in the province’s criminal court registry.”

The Canadian Press. “During the pandemic, Michael Ross Albert grappled with a familiar kind of stress for many Torontonians: the uphill battle of trying to buy a home in the city. With the average home price in the Greater Toronto Area expected to climb to $1.19 million by year’s end — a six per cent increase from 2023, per a new report by Royal LePage — Albert knows his experience resonates, given that home ownership feels out of reach for many. So he’s channeled some of this real-estate tension into ‘The Bidding War,’ a biting new comedy premiering Tuesday at Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre.”

“The play takes on Toronto’s housing crisis with a story set during a frantic, one-day bidding war over the city’s last affordable home. As the clock runs out, the fight for ownership devolves into chaos, laying bare the lengths to which people will go in their anxious quest for a foothold in the market. Cast member Aurora Browne says ‘The Bidding War’ ultimately shows how self-serving those working in Toronto’s real estate market can be. ‘Toronto is definitely a playground for people who are interested in their own profit,’ she says.”

“Like Albert, Director Paolo Santalucia became a homeowner during the pandemic. He says he felt rushed to buy a house during a time when prices were down. ‘I just remember the bloodlust that rose in that period of talking to my partner and saying, ‘Whatever we need to do, we’ve got to do it because we’ve got two weeks to make the biggest financial decision of our lives.'”

New Indian Express. “Central bankers are rarely out of the media. When not changing rates or announcing new infusions, they are jawboning markets and pontificating on economic conditions. This prominence is recent. The rulebook expanded after the 2001 dot-com problems and the 2007/8 financial crisis. The staple was interest rates. When they approached zero, central banks innovated with negative rates and implemented quantitative easing (QE), purchasing securities, government bonds, but later including mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds and shares, using newly created reserves.”

“An analysis of these policies is unflattering. The real effect was on asset markets. As values reflect future cash flows discounted back to the present, an upward shift in prices was natural. Near zero rates meant the adjustment was exaggerated. Asset prices became detached from intrinsic values, creating the constant spectre of financial instability. Rising prices for financial assets favoured high-income, wealthy cohorts exacerbating inequality.”

“History will not be kind to central bankers fixated on financial economy and who created serial speculative booms to sustain the illusion of prosperity. It will also be critical of governments unwilling to address weaknesses, who deflected shifting hard policymaking to independent, unelected and largely unaccountable central banks.”

Related Posts

Goodbye Seller’s Market

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fam-88t8oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cf-1NbAyPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgGvUNiykyU

This Post Has 77 Comments

    1. ‘There are all these people who will take one of the biggest investments of their life and will go and give it to an amateur.’”

      Professional or amateur, all realtors are liars who are motivated solely by Always Be Closing and extracting the maximum commission from buyers.

  2. ‘A B.C. Realtor has agreed to hand in their licence and pay the B.C. Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) $5,000 after admitting to buying a $2.18-million property with falsified income documents…Chaudhary, between 2009 and 2018, allegedly arranged over half a billion dollars in mortgage loans with lenders based on falsified income records as an unregistered, so-called ‘shadow’ broker….Chaudhary ‘is the subject of an ongoing investigation and there is a search warrant being executed on him and the CRA is investigating, and that manner is in charge approval.’ To date, no charges appear in the province’s criminal court registry’

    Nine years later he gets a 5000 peso fine and nobody gets charged with a crime.

  3. ‘met an eager buyer and an agent she introduced as her ‘bestie,’ a person with ‘no experience, no mentor, nothing,’ he said. He had no obligation to help her, share comps. So he didn’t. Though there were no other offers, he told her that she would need to waive all of her contingencies and come in over asking. ‘She did,’ he said. ‘I could smell blood in the water’

    Of course you then fooked the buyer Mike.

    1. TBH that’s his job. (representing the seller). Not his problem you picked bad representation and/or failed to do your own research (not like real estate is hard).

      1. I find it interesting when UHS are candid about the ‘profession.’ You don’t even need a high school degree. You can be a ‘pretty girl’ in Miami and get listings. And when one of these idiots talks a bag catcher into throwing goodies at a shack listing when there’s not even another offer? I smell blood, fook that lady!

  4. ‘The median price of a new home these days is about $426,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Looking back at 1980, the median new home cost more like $68,000. One figure that measures affordability for buyers, house price-to-income ratio, has nearly doubled since 1980, MoneyGeek reports. ‘Price-to-income ratios that low were the norm across much of the country in prior decades. Indeed, fully two-thirds of large markets had price-to-income ratios below 3.0 as recently as 2000’…Now, the only remaining major metro area with a ratio below 3 is Syracuse, New York. In 1980, people in South Dakota were spending the biggest chunk of their paychecks on housing. Now, it’s Californians forking over the most’

    But there are no subprime loans.

    1. Swimming Naked When the Tide Goes Out
      By: timestaff
      Published: Apr 02, 2009
      2 min read

      A nugget of wisdom that Warren Buffett has passed along more than once to Berkshire Hathaway investors is this: “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. ” What the oracular Omahan seems to have meant by this is that you don’t really know or appreciate the risks that companies are taking until they are tested by adverse conditions–a corollary to the saying that everyone looks like a genius in a bull market. Buffett used the line a year ago, for example, in reference to the follies of large financial institutions exposed by falling home prices.
      …
      https://money.com/swimming-naked-when-the-tide-goes-out/

    2. “Do you worry the mean ole Mr Grinch may cancel this year’s Santa Claus rally?”

      – With stonk market valuations already in nosebleed territory before the election, there shouldn’t be any investor expectations of significant additional gains. It’s just the Fed Put. It’s just moral hazard.
      – Warren Buffett is selling stonks and raising cash to record levels, and other insiders are selling as well. Stonks are being distributed to retail investors. It’s not different this time.
      – The Fed has conditioned investors to expect that stonks only go up, as has been the case this election year with only a minor hiccup in early August. All financed with deficit spending and debt monetization. This has been going on for 15 years since the GFC.
      – This year, markets and the economy were driven by monetary “not QE-QE” and extreme fiscal stimulus from Congress at the behest of the Administrative / Deep State, since threatened by Trump. All for not. Trump won anyway. Cue tiny violin…

  6. FEMA is as bad as everyone says they are , no accountability at all…The $750. plus often $300 extra is being sent out to anyone that applies from any storm disaster declared counties in SC and NC. That’s good , as one qualifier is if your power was off for 3 days or more ,you are in.
    It’s hard to find any rental cars ,or hotel rooms in the area , they’re handing those out to about anyone, that makes up a good story to them .I noticed one couple went missing from one of our rental houses ..when I got in touch with them ,they paid up the rents , but admitted they hadn’t stayed there over a month……”FEMA has us put up in a motel for 58 days, might as well stay there “….was the reply ….No damage to the house at all ,but they were out of power for 6 days ,after the storm…..Crazy indeed thinking …

  7. Washington Post — Trust in science hasn’t fully recovered from pandemic controversies (11/14/2024):

    “The survey comes at a moment of uncertainty for scientific organizations and government agencies as President-elect Donald Trump assembles a new administration. In his first term, Trump’s initial budget requests called for cuts in funding of some scientific research, but science has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress.

    The partisan divide in attitudes toward scientists grew rapidly between the April 2020 and December 2021 Pew surveys. Among Republicans and independents leaning Republican, confidence in scientists fell from 85 percent to 63 percent.

    In that period and beyond, the pandemic generated a swarm of controversies that pivoted on scientific research but were also influenced by misinformation and political agendas. Social media provided a decentralized platform for robust and rancorous debates about school closures, social distancing, potential cures for covid, the utility of masks and the origin of the virus.

    “Overall we’re seeing decline in trust in institutions,” Jamieson said. “Confidence in and trust in science remains high compared to those other institutions.”

    But scientists made mistakes, she added. For example, some oversold the ability of vaccines to prevent covid infections.

    “People were told if you just took the vaccine, everything was going to be fine,” she said.

    Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, recalls that in early 2020 a reporter asked her to forecast the impact of the spreading coronavirus. Her response: “This will be science’s finest hour. Science is going to come up with a vaccine to save us all.”

    https://archive.ph/Elsrk

    1. Her response: “This will be science’s finest hour. Science is going to come up with a vaccine to save us all.”

      You have to hand it to them, they really got most people to believe Covid was our version of the black death. Funny how illegals caught crossing were never required to get the jab before being released into the US.

  8. Beattie is accused of taking money and not finishing dozens of homes.

    Why isn’t this fraudster in prison?

  10. ‘The nightmare started with a knock at the door,’ she said. “The man asked did you know we had a storm here? Mind if I check your roof for you? And I said sure.’

    The stupid, it burns.

    1. We had some very mild hail this summer. The roofers are still pounding on my door, offering to inspect the roof.

  12. ‘There are great brokers out there who are always a pleasure to work with, and others who you have to hope and pray for,’ said John Brandon, a broker at Archpoint Advisory, a boutique firm that markets its ability to hand-hold.

    Three things:

    1. Realtors are liars
    2. “Boutique firms” always charge more
    3. “Always be closing” will always trump any UHS notional fiduciary responsibility to “clients,” as will the imperative of extracting the highest possible price and commission on any shack transaction.

  13. Lexi Newman, a broker with Compass in Los Angeles, likes to tell clients that a sale ‘is only going to be as smooth as its weakest link, and sometimes that’s the agent on the other side.’”

    Or maybe it’s you, Lexi.

  14. ”FEMA has us put up in a motel for 58 days, might as well stay there “….was the reply ….No damage to the house at all ,but they were out of power for 6 days ,after the storm…..Crazy indeed thinking ”

    No, not “crazy” thinking. That is greed: pure & simple!

    1. Paid for by taxpayers. FEMA needs to be taken out from under DHS, then subjected to a top-to-bottom overhaul to clean out the DEI hires and partisan political hacks. This agency has been an epic failure ever since Hurricane Katrina, but no one has ever been held accountable in the top echelons for all the fraud, waste, and abuse.

    1. Starting to see a lot of rental listings at 60 days plus. That tells me most of these investors don’t know how to use a pencil. 3 month vacancy is a big loss. Lower the rent $300 and that represent a $3600 loss over a year. But 3 months of a rental sitting empty and now you’re looking at a loss two to three times that amount. Plus a rent amount that’s below comparable rentals remains occupied. If you’re constantly having turnover that adds up quickly. But many of these “investors” can’t afford to drop rent. Can you say distressed sale?

  16. Nevada unprepared for Trump’s mass deportations

    Nevada’s captains of industry and political leaders are doing little, if anything, to prepare for the potential economic hit as well as the human toll of President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to deport at least 11 million undocumented immigrants, including 189,000 who live in Nevada.

    The Nevada Resort Association, which represents the state’s gaming and resort industry, is unaware of any discussions about the effects of deportation among its members, some of the largest employers in the state.

    “I don’t think the resorts employ undocumented people,” NRA president Virginia Valentine said via email.

    https://nevadacurrent.com/2024/11/15/nevada-unprepared-for-trumps-mass-deportations/

    1. I’ll bet that very few of the people that Biden/Harris waived across the border have jobs. Plus the only thing they are qualified to do is mop floors and scrub toilets.

  17. Nebraska beauty queen accused of bilking more than $3 million in bogus ‘passive income’ scheme

    The sitting Mrs Nebraska 2024 is accused of helping to fleece unwitting consumers out of more than $3m in a bogus get-rich-quick scheme.

    Liz Friesen is on the wrong end of a state lawsuit filed by Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, who says in court filings that the 34-year-old defrauded other Nebraskans by “flaunting a high-end and wealthy persona online to mislead consumers into believing [she] would give consumers access to similar levels of wealth and success.”

    Friesen, whose Facebook profile quotes the Bible and describes her as a “mompreneur,” pushed a so-called passive-income strategy that made her rich, but no one else, according to the suit.

    She and her co-conspirators then spent their victims’ investments on “luxury vacations in exotic locales, Lamborghinis, Cadillac Escalades, and other high-end vehicles, multimillion-dollar mansions, jewelry, designer clothing, private airplanes, a lakehouse, and countless other extravagances,” according to the lawsuit.

    Friesen lured in dozens of targets by posting photos on social media of herself “enjoying the fruits of [her] misdeeds and deceptions” via a shady operation called WiFi Money, the lawsuit states. It alleges that she and nearly a dozen co-conspirators never mentioned that their enviable lifestyles had in fact been underwritten by a raft of unwitting investors who thought they, too, could share in comparable riches.

    The alleged scam began during the Covid-19 pandemic, and capitalized on the “sudden explosion in online shopping” that occurred at the time, according to the suit. Each “investor” paid between $15,000 and $100,000 in total to set up e-commerce stores on Amazon and Walmart.com, after being led to believe they would earn as much as $100,000 a month, with minimal effort, via “dropshipping,” according to the suit.

    Dropshipping involves opening an online storefront and listing items for sale by third-party retailers, offering them to customers at a markup, and having them shipped directly by the original seller, the lawsuit explains.

    “Dropshipping has many flaws, not the least of which is the fact that customers can simply pay the lower price from the third-party retailer instead of purchasing it from the dropshipper,” the lawsuit states. “The industry is also highly competitive, which makes profit margins negligible or nonexistent. When returns, shipping, and marketing costs are factored in, turning a profit through dropshipping becomes extremely difficult.”

    In reality, Friesen’s promises fell completely flat, earning investors either no profit at all, or a substantial loss, according to the suit.

    In one example laid out in the suit, after Friesen and her partners had brought their victims nothing more than 2.5 years of “abject failures,” she continued to push her “#paidtolive” claims.

    “[W]ork alongside me and my WiFi Money team and make $5,000 extra a month, $10,000 extra a month, $100,000 extra a month,” Friesen posted on Instagram, the lawsuit states. “Whatever it is that your heart desires, let’s make it happen.”

    However, as one angry investor told authorities, things immediately went south, according to the suit.

    It states that the store was insufficiently stocked, fraudulent charges began to appear, and the venture threw off zero profit. Friesen and her partners made various excuses for their “ineptitude,” but never “meaningfully responded” to the investor’s demands for a refund, the suit claims.

    Now, through his lawsuit, Hilgers says he is seeking to stop Friesen from promoting any further passive income schemes, to force her to refund her victims, and to “penalize those who enriched themselves off deceiving Nebraska consumers and preying on consumers during vulnerable periods of financial uncertainty.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/nebraska-beauty-queen-accused-of-bilking-more-than-3-million-in-bogus-passive-income-scheme/ar-AA1u99me

    2. “Friesen, whose Facebook profile quotes the Bible and describes her as a “mompreneur,” pushed a so-called passive-income strategy that made her rich, but no one else, according to the suit.”

      And she’s a mother too. Yikes!

  18. Since the U.S. presidential election, X, formerly known as Twitter, has experienced one of its largest user exoduses since Elon Musk bought the social platform in 2022.

    In recent weeks, Mr. Musk’s involvement in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the announcement that he will have a role in the new administration has further encouraged others to leave X.

    British news publisher the Guardian announced on Wednesday that it will no longer post content to X. The left-leaning Guardian, which has 10.7 million followers on its main account, is the first large British media company to retreat from the platform.

    “We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere,” the Guardian said in an editorial. “This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”

    In response, Mr. Musk said of the Guardian in an X post: “They are irrelevant.”

    Don Lemon, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lizzo are among the latest big names to leave the platform. Stephen King also announced that he is leaving the platform.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-x-twitter-exodus-bluesky-elon-musk/

    2. “Stephen King also announced that he is leaving the platform.”

      X isn’t an airport, so you don’t have to announce your departure!

  19. Bay Area prosecutors upping efforts to charge fentanyl dealers with murder

    On the heels of California’s first murder conviction in connection to selling fentanyl, Bay Area prosecutors are preparing to go after more dealers.

    “For the first time in our county, we had an individual named Phillip Ng we have charged with the crime of murder for providing fentanyl to a victim, and it killed her, and she didn’t know what it was,” said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

    Last year in Placer County, a dealer was convicted of murder in connection with the overdose of a 15-year-old girl, and now other counties are following suit. Wagstaffe estimates about 100 charges like this have been made across the state. Many settled outside of court with two going to trial: the Placer County case, and in Riverside County another guilty verdict.

    “There is very little fentanyl dealing in our county,” said Wagstaffe. “They go to San Francisco to get it. They know they can head up there to the Tenderloin, and it’s pretty easy marketing on that…They then bring it home, take BART back down here, and then we get an overdose.”

    “We do know that San Francisco became a popular drug market for people from all over the Bay Area. So yes, if we do have an overdose death that occurs in another county that is connected to a seller who was here in San Francisco. I’m more than willing to do my job and partner with that DA’s Office and that jurisdiction to make sure the proper charges get filed,” said Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco District Attorney, noting a team’s been training Southern California. “We are at the table right now creating the San Francisco model because every jurisdiction has their own style of drug market, so that we again know what specific cases we will undertake investigations.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/bay-area-prosecutors-upping-efforts-to-charge-fentanyl-dealers-with-murder/ar-AA1uaf4M

  20. A California Republican who’s not afraid to say the T-word

    Labor unions and establishment Republicans fought tooth and nail to keep firebrand conservative activist Carl DeMaio out of the California Assembly. It didn’t work.

    The talk-radio host and former San Diego city councilmember is shipping up to Sacramento next month after handily dispatching fellow Republican Andrew Hayes in the race to fill outgoing GOP state Rep. Marie Waldron’s seat in northern San Diego County.

    He comes bearing a risky proposition for other Golden State Republicans: embracing President-elect Donald Trump.

    “I’m going to be pushing the Republican Party in a whole different direction when it comes to environmental issues, housing issues, social issues,” DeMaio said in an interview with POLITICO’s California Playbook. “If we want to be a majority in California, which is absolutely possible, we have to transform.”

    State Republican leaders have long attempted to distance themselves from the president-elect in hopes that a more moderate image will earn them swing votes in deep-blue California. Take Steve Garvey, for example: The former baseball star was so eager to separate himself from Trump during his unsuccessful Senate run this year against Sen.-elect Adam Schiff that, at one point, he wouldn’t even rule out voting to reelect President Joe Biden.

    It’s good timing for DeMaio, a longtime Trump acolyte who has built his political brand by advocating controversial anti-tax and anti-labor policies despite criticism from both sides of the aisle. His Assembly campaign leaned into Trump’s hardline immigration stances, even running ads declaring that former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson “was right” to back a controversial 1994 ballot measure that sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants.

    Just last month, DeMaio told former Fox News host and British government policy adviser Steve Hilton that California’s GOP leaders have “Stockholm syndrome” after two decades stuck under Democrats’ thumb.

    Yet, come December, DeMaio’s Trump train will come roaring into town. DeMaio said he plans to hire an “intergovernmental affairs” staffer whose primary role will be connecting with the Trump-led federal government, and he hopes the Department of Housing and Urban Development will “come down like a load of bricks on California’s dysfunctional and failure-ridden homeless policies.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-california-republican-who-s-not-afraid-to-say-the-t-word/ar-AA1u9HC5

    1. Take Steve Garvey, for example: The former baseball star was so eager to separate himself from Trump during his unsuccessful Senate run this year

      IIRC, Garvey was a member of the board of trustees at my alma mater, until he got embroiled into some naughty peccadilloes, when he was told to leave, and resigned. I noticed that incident was scrubbed from his wikipedia bio.

      1. embroiled into some naughty peccadilloes

        Whatever they were, I’m confident they paled in comparison to Adam Schiff’s. #ChateauMarmount #StandardHotel

    2. after handily dispatching fellow Republican Andrew Hayes in the race

      A particularly unusual situation in California having to choose between two Republicans. We had two unrelated Democrats stop by our normally solicitor-unfriendly house wanting DeMaio over Hayes.

  21. New Indian Express. “Central bankers are rarely out of the media. When not changing rates or announcing new infusions, they are jawboning markets and pontificating on economic conditions.”

    \\

    – Additional excerpts from the original article here:

    https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2024/Nov/15/central-banks-the-legacy-of-monetary-mandarins
    Opinions

    Central banks: The legacy of monetary mandarins

    Satyajit Das
    Updated on:  15 Nov 2024, 2:41 pm | 4 min read

    These developments have significant costs. First, the policies encouraged rapid growth in private and public debt. It facilitated fiscal indiscipline of governments who ran large budget deficits. An economic model of consumption and investment using borrowed funds became entrenched.

    Second, capital was misallocated. Easy money allowed the survival of ‘zombie’ enterprises—indebted businesses that generated sufficient cash to cover costs and loan interest but not sufficient to invest in operations or repay the debt itself.

    Third, asset prices became detached from intrinsic values, creating the constant spectre of financial instability. Rising prices for financial assets favoured high-income, wealthy cohorts exacerbating inequality.

    Fourth, it fundamentally altered financial markets. Abundant cash, low rates and YCC artificially reduced risk. The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank hold around 16, 53, 27, and 30 percent of outstanding government debt. The Bank of Japan holds around 7 percent of the stock market. The Swiss National Bank has a share portfolio (consisting mainly of US stocks) of around $200 billion (around 20 percent of GDP). This overhang and potential central bank activity distorts prices and liquidity.

    Fifth, speculation and risk-taking are now underwritten by the ‘Greenspan Put’. Investors assume in case of problems, central banks will step in to ensure survival of banks and institutions deemed ‘too big to fail’.

    Sixth, the ability to normalise policy settings—increasing rates or selling asset holdings—is restricted. Higher interest costs would increase the risk of financial distress for the growing numbers of over-indebted borrowers. Governments with high debt levels face larger financing expenses and must raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere. This, combined with falling collateral values, threatens lenders. The current pressure on central banks to cut rates reflects, in part, these pressures.

    Finally, the policies generated toxic interest rate exposures that damaged balance sheets. QE created an asset liability mismatch as central banks purchased longer maturity securities with modest fixed rate coupons, funding them with reserves paying short-term rates. When rates rose in 2021 to counter inflationary pressures, the value of these bonds fell sharply. Central banks now have large unrealised losses that would be crystallised on sale. Their income is affected by the higher interest paid on reserves, below the earnings on the bonds.

    \\

    – Satyajit is simply saying that central bankers have so distorted free market economics that the entire system is now a fragile house of cards and is dependent on cheap money. This is the result of central planning and a command and control economy. This works until it doesn’t and failure and a bust is always the outcome. Reference: former USSR.
    – “Serial speculative booms to sustain the illusion of prosperity” is no way to run an economy, and yet here we are. I’m sure this is fine.
    – Will the Trump administration end the Fed? That seems unlikely, but one can hope. In any case, 2025 should be “interesting.”

  22. The Latinos Who Found Their Inner MAGA

    Jack Herrera saw Latinos’ drifting rightward up close. A freelance reporter, Herrera has written deep dives about immigrant communities, from border counties in Texas to a small town in Iowa. Everywhere he found an electorate angry about the economy, disillusioned with Democrats, and increasingly willing to give Trump a chance. I spoke with him about why Latinos changed their minds, and what it might take to change them back.

    But there are two warning signs for the Democrats. First off, there is a core shift here that does represent people adopting Trumpism and becoming true believers. It’s not just like, “Biden, you’re fired. The price of eggs is too high.” There are people who are like “You know what? I’m a Republican. I’m a Trump voter.” That’s a significant share. I do think a huge part of the shift, though, is people who are just making things a referendum on the economy. But I don’t think that that means that they just automatically shift back to the Democratic column in 2028.

    In some places, it was once verboten to show your support for Trump, and now more and more people are.

    Yeah. I think South Texas is a peculiar place, and I think you have to really be cautious about extrapolating what’s happening there to the rest of the country just because it’s a really weird region with a really specific history. Starting before the 2020 election, there were people who were out and about saying, “I’m voting for Trump,” and they were doing Trump trains, which are pickup-truck lines, driving all around the Rio Grande Valley on the highways in South Texas. But they were seen as gadflies and hopelessly outnumbered. And you’d get a lot of shit for supporting Trump. People weren’t afraid to call you pocho or say “Tienes nopal en la frente,” phrases that basically mean you’re self-hating, you’re trying to be white.

    That changed really quickly. Suddenly, Trump had quadrupled turnout, and counties Democrats had been winning with 70, 80 percent of the vote, it was closer to 50-50, like swing districts. That taboo still exists in some places — you’re going to take shit from some people — it’s not as strong as it once was. In some places, it’s really just disappeared. And I don’t think you can underestimate that social component, that interpersonal component about what happened in this election.

    And then I do think there’s a deeper rot in the strategy. One of the shocks I had was in Reading in October. The local Latinos, the Democrats in the State House, and the mayor’s a Latino Democrat — they were all like, “Okay, listen. She’s not going to do very well in Reading. She’s going to lose a ton of votes. Is that because the city’s slipping? No, I think two things are happening. Trump is really here — literally he’s come through a few times. J.D. Vance was just here. Tucker Carlson was just here, and Harris hasn’t come.” And of course there’s a difference between the candidates showing up versus the campaign showing up. But if you follow where Harris went, she was prioritizing the places where Democrats thought they could win and thus where she went is also where the lion’s share of resources followed.

    It was a suburban strategy. They’ve got an extremely sophisticated data voter list and data project that locates the most persuadable and most likely voters. And that algorithm’s not sending them to Reading, Pennsylvania, because very few people vote in Reading, Pennsylvania. Very few people vote in South Texas or Miami, actually. Latinos tend to lie behind the rest of the population in turnout.

    So if you want to hit up voters who are the most likely to show up for the polls and the most persuadable to vote Democrats, you’re heading to whiter, college-educated suburbs. And for Democrats, this is at least the third election where they’ve pursued that strategy since 2012. And they’re paying the price for it. When you go to the suburbs and you track your message for the white college-educated suburbs, not only does it have an opportunity cost, where you could have been in a city like Reading or down in rural country like South Texas, it also maybe has a negative effect. If you’re talking suburb talk, maybe it actually hurts you with working-class Latinos.

    It’s probably no accident that Democrats developed this strategy after 2012, because one of the takeaways from that election was that Democrats were totally solid with Latino voters. Did they take their eye off the ball after that?

    I won’t pretend to be older than I am, but I remember at the time, all the op-eds were like, “This is Democrats’ perma-victory. Obama’s data voter list: That’s how Democrats are going to win forever.”

    What I’ve learned in politics is whenever anyone says that, it stops being true in about four years.

    Oh yeah. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 2012 was the last high-water mark of Democrat support among Latinos. I think they learned some of the wrong lessons, and that was taking Latinos for granted and focusing your energies elsewhere on turning out voters, because they thought, “Latinos are going to vote for us anyway, and there’s only going to be six of them who show up to the polls. So we’ll get a more robust ROI if we go to the Philly suburbs or the Dallas suburbs.”

    Everyone’s saying the Obama coalition is dead, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s too early to say that, but it may be true. I think more accurately, the Obama strategy — the big-data voter strategy — is dead. It has had middling results for 12 years now.

    Beyond all the factors we’ve discussed, there’s an idea that people who have become more right wing are consuming different streams of information that Democrats haven’t penetrated — not just the likes of Rogan but also straight-up misinformation. Based on all the reporting you’ve done, do you see that as an actual prevalent problem? Is this something that Democrats are overthinking?

    I think it does tend to be a problem, but I think the condescending solutions which are like, “Oh, these people need to be educated” — going in with that attitude, you’re just going to fail. Like, let’s fix this by giving people homework?

    The collapse of local news isn’t helping here.

    That’s a hundred percent a part of it. The second thing is it’s just not very fun to listen to a Kamala Harris speech. It’s really boring to listen to any Democrat talk. And I think just making it a bit more fun and more interesting or just satisfying … the Trump show is really fun to watch, and Democrats don’t have an answer for that. It doesn’t mean they couldn’t. I think it’s going to require something very fundamental to change, but they could do that.

    And the third thing is that — and this is going to come across as patronizing, but I think it’s fundamentally true — people are fucking tired when they get home from work in a place like Starr County or Nogales. A lot of people are working hard manual labor, a lot of people are working more than one job, and child care is very hard to come by, and most people can’t afford it, so you’re just exhausted. So the idea that you’re sitting down with the New York Times at the end of the day — it’s not intellectual reasons; it’s really structural reasons for why people don’t do that. And so if you can have your entertainment, your infotainment, bite-size, TikTok style, Instagram-video style, that’s an easier way to reach people who are basically too busy to read this Q&A that your readers are reading right now.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-latinos-democratic-party-trump-2024-election.html

  23. Steenographic version. Press conference of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo of 11 November 2024

    QUESTION: The last question, Doctor, last night Donald Trump, the next president of the United States, announces Tom Homan as the Tsar of the border. Let us remember that he was already on his team when he was already President Donald Trump, in our country, and there was a lot of criticism because he implemented this policy of separating children from their parents when they were trying to cross the border. Any opinion on this new appointment, Doctor?

    MEXICO PRESIDENT, CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM PARDO: We will seek to contact President Trump’s transition team before he enters the government. We are always going to defend the Mexicans who are on the other side of the border, because they are also necessary for the U.S. economy.

    We have data and we are going to give the information, but, anyway, it is important to come into contact, know what they are thinking and as far as possible, to move forward with coordination.

    QUESTION: Good morning, President. I’m Jonathan Lozada, from Chiapas, Máxima FM.

    I want to talk about the migration issue, get back to the point. Regardless of the decisions that are made in the United States of the appointments that are made there, because there is a very clear immigration policy of his government that has raised it here that, in some way, it is also very similar to that proposed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at the time, and that has had results in reducing migration.

    The reality of Mexico, as far as the export of migrants, if we can say so, because it is very different from that experienced in the six-year period of privatization, it is a very different number, say.

    However, Mexico remains a territory of passage for Central American migrants, and in this sense, the decisions taken by the United States are very close to affecting in some way the territory, the country, because it is a country that is practically next door.

    PRESIDENT OF MEXICO, CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM PARDO: If, as you know, we, our position in the case of migration that is a comprehensive program, is attention to causes. As long as you don’t listen…

    The main reason for migration is poverty, unfortunately. Families seek a better living condition, so they migrate, they emigrate out of necessity in most cases, both in our country and in Central America and in other countries. And also, sometimes there are other causes that drive migration.

    There are already incentives. If more is needed, there will be more incentives, but the objective is to generate a project beyond incentives and wait for investment, but to really generate a comprehensive project for that area that allows work obviously for the inhabitants of Chiapas, but also to contain migration in the south of our country in the most humanitarian way possible, which is offering employment and development throughout this area.

    https://www.gob.mx/presidencia/articulos/version-estenografica-conferencia-de-prensa-de-la-presidenta-claudia-sheinbaum-pardo-del-11-de-noviembre-de-2024

    1. Mexico is having its own cost of living crisis which is only going to worsen as Sheinbaum’s leftist policies tank the peso, discourage foreign investment, and accelerates capital outflows. She is also following the leftist playbook with her “hugs not bullets” (actual name) security strategy against drug cartels that murder, extort, and kidnap with impunity, as well as profiting massively from the flow of illegals across our open southern border.

      https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexican-peso-dollar-trump/

      1. her “hugs not bullets” (actual name) security strategy

        Abrazos y no balazos.

        Most Mexicans know that policy was an utter failure. Everyday there are headlines in Mexican newspapers of people murdered by the cartels.

      2. Mexico is having its own cost of living crisis

        Yup. My middle class relatives down there tell me that it’s really, really bad.

  24. The End of Globalization?

    Germany’s Successful Economic Model Could Be Finished

    The transition to electro-mobility has proven far smoother for Ford in the U.S. The electric F-150 doesn’t just look exactly like its fossil fuel-burning counterpart, it is also winning over more and more fans, says the plant manager. The electric market is challenging in the U.S. as well, the manager allows, and production of the electric F-150 is scheduled to be suspended for a few weeks in November. Still, Ford has just reaffirmed its forecast for this year: an operating profit of around $10 billion. That, too, is quite a difference from the situation back in Lies’s home state. VW’s third quarter profits collapsed by 64 percent.

    In the U.S., an economic stimulus program for climate-friendly products like the electric F-150 is in full swing. In Germany, by contrast, the governing coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz is still locked in a dispute over the correct economic policy.

    Within the German delegation that is touring the Ford factory, a bitter realization is growing with every step: The once struggling automobile industry in the U.S. appears to be fully energized, while the sales numbers of German brands are plunging. And the most serious decline is taking place in the market that made them so big in recent decades: China.

    The era of continually expanding globalization appears to be over, an age in which production was divided up, based on the belief that international trade would benefit all who took part. “It is a paradigm shift,” says Claudia Schmucker, a Berlin-based researcher who heads up the Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics and Technology at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “The age of rivalry between the U.S. and China has begun.” And it looks as though the German economy is trapped between the front lines.

    During globalization, the primary goal was becoming more efficient and producing more cheaply. “Our companies were the victors of this era,” says Schmucker. “At the moment when the old order collapses and protectionism divides the global markets, we are the ones who will suffer the most.” The upheavals are becoming increasingly apparent, the economist believes. “The primacy of economic security” has now come to dominate trade relations. Or, to put it a different way: Everyone has begun looking out for themselves. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the bloc formations could result in global economic output falling by 2-3 percent per year.

    The trend began in the U.S. with the tariffs imposed by then-President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum from overseas. In the current campaign, he has again threatened to introduce levies, this time on products from China, Mexico and elsewhere in the world.

    The EU, meanwhile, slapped punitive tariffs on cheap electric vehicles from China on Wednesday to protect producers in Europe – thus also hitting European and American carmakers that build vehicles in China for export.

    Those looking for a bit of security have little choice but to bring production back home or to import products from countries that share the same values, a trend known as “friendshoring.” Companies that no longer want to be dependent on cheap raw materials from China must now search for other sources to minimize risk. That, too, has a name in business lingo: “De-risking.”

    The rather brisk economic winds have hit German executives hard. Some 61 percent now say they face barriers to their international business against just 34 percent in 2013, according to the annual survey conducted by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) among its members. The trend observed by German companies is reflected in the number of trade limitations imposed worldwide.

    German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has no illusions about this new economic order. “Fifty percent of our economic growth comes from international trade,” he said in mid-October at a geo-economy symposium. “In China, it’s just 20 percent,” he added. And when prosperity is threatened, the Green Party politician doesn’t just see economic dangers: “For liberal democracies, a shrinking economy is a stress factor.”

    Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, has just returned from a trip to Brussels, with deep rings under his eyes testifying to his jetlag. He is being driven to a lunch with the managing director of the Federation of German Industries, who is in Beijing for a visit – and she is looking for advice from Eskelund. Is the boom for German companies over?

    “To the Hyatt, Oriental Plaza,” Eskelund tells his driver, who is steering the car through the city’s smog. The car is an American Chrysler, not a German brand. Eskelund has been living in China for the last 26 years. For much of that time, German cars, German machines and German efficiency were in high demand. Is that still the case?

    Volkswagen has seen its sales in China plunge by 10 percent, BMW has experienced a 4-percent dip and Mercedes-Benz has issued a profit warning. “A turning point has been reached for a growing number of companies,” says Eskelund. “It feels a bit like the Chinese economy has long COVID.”

    For years, the growth of China’ gross domestic product was driven by construction across the country: new airports, highways and express train lines. Hundreds of thousands of residential towers and apartments were put up, financed by borrowing. With the residential construction sector now having collapsed, that era is over. Since then, the leadership in Beijing has been trying to stimulate industrial production to reach the government’s stated growth target of 5 percent. The consequence has been a huge glut of consumer goods. “Production is growing faster than consumption, leading to overcapacity,” says Eskelund.

    The result is that China is now shipping more goods abroad than ever before. In Europe, that development has been especially felt in electro-mobility – with Chinese companies, backed by state subsidies, able to offer electric cars so cheaply that the European Commission recently saw no other option than to impose protective tariffs.

    Jens Eskelund’s car has now arrived at the Hyatt and the concierge opens the door. “Many member companies are now making more money in markets outside China than in China,” he says. A crisis is looming of a kind China hasn’t seen in decades.

    The rhetoric, says U.S. economist Adam Posen, most likely translates to “additional tariffs, new trade barriers and more protectionism.” Trump, he says, “is clearly on a much higher altitude than Harris.”

    How should Europe react? Claudia Schmucker, the economist from the German Council on Foreign Relations, invokes the World Trade Organization (WTO), which is tasked with preventing protectionism. Between 70 and 90 percent of global trade continues to follow these rules. “If we throw multilateralism overboard, we will never get it back,” the economist warns.

    https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-end-of-globalization-germanys-successful-economic-model-could-be-finished-a-f52fe977-4387-4fa8-990a-c70a5d38e2df

    2. The electric F-150 doesn’t just look exactly like its fossil fuel-burning counterpart, it is also winning over more and more fans, says the plant manager.

      Is that why production has been suspended until sometime next year?

  25. A poll was taken recently whereby 70% polled said they didn’t care if they were called “racist .”

    I’m sure at this point being called emeny of the State, a threat to democracy, garbage, deplorable, White Supremacists, toxic males, Hitler, extreme, etc , isn’t working anymore and falling on deft ears.

    This was divide and conquer warfare by The Powers That Be. They were the big Corporate advertisers that paid for fake news and other programming, to push fake narratives , brainwashing , fear mongering , etc. Joe Biden paid a Billion of taxpayer funds for “safe and effective” fraud and Hollywood endorsement to take the vaccine.
    They tried to use the same strategy that they used to defraud people into taking a fake vaccine with the Harris campaign. Over a billion spent in Star endorsements, and anything to suppress known consent to what Harris policies were.

  26. Should we be worried about another housing bubble crash? Experts say probably not.

    Those “experts” quoted in the globalist scum media are paid REIC shills who would never spook the herd and piss off NAR advertisers by telling the truth about the bursting housing bubble. This is going to be 2008 redux.

  27. The June 30 Fed financial statement shows an unrealized market value loss of $423 billion on the Fed’s mortgage-backed securities investments.

    Is that a lot?

    1. Oh man the rats are SCRAMBLING.

      Andy McCabe, the guy who helped launch the Russiagate hoax against Trump and Flynn, says Kash Patel would not run the FBI “faithfully, ethically, and legally”.

      That’s rich coming from him.

      He then says Kash is unqualified: “At the end of the day, Kash Patel is profoundly incapable of running the FBI. He is absolutely unqualified for that position. He’s never run anything in his life that I’m aware of.”

      Lastly, he says Kash wouldn’t receive any respect from law enforcement: “The idea that Kash Patel would walk into a room of police chiefs and sheriffs and command any level of respect and recognition is absurd.”

      Panic harder, Andy. Treason doesn’t pay well in the end.

      1. Panic harder, Andy. Treason doesn’t pay well in the end.

        It might be time for him to flee the country under a fake identity.

  30. Mexico is the world’s #1 silver producer. Half of that is mined in the state of Zacatecas, which is a cartel battleground. Thanks to the “Hugs not Bullets” security strategy of leftist president AMLO, which his newly-sworn-in leftist replacement Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged to continue, well-armed cartels have free rein to rob and extort mining operations and other productive enterprises with impunity. In their latest heist, cartel bandits made off with 240 tones of precious metals ore concentrates from an American-owned mining company. If mining companies are forced to shut down their Mexico operations due to the pervasive insecurity that is tolerated by the Sheinbaum administration, the supply/demand fundamentals for silver will become even more bullish, especially as the Fed gives no indication of curbing its fiat currency fraud.

    https://www.bnamericas.com/en/features/240t-of-newmont-concentrate-stolen-in-mexico

    1. I expect Mexico will be a fully failed state before 2030, with Sheinbaum and her cronies fleeing into exile as some cartel boss moves into Los Pinos (Mexico’s White House).

      History will repeat itself. Mexico had no functioning government for years in the late 19teens and early nineteen twenties as strongmen fought over rule. Mexico later sanitized those thugs, who murdered each other, as “heroes of the revolution”

      1. Mexico’s top policeman, Garcia Luna, is now sitting in a US prison after colluding with drug cartels for years. Mexican organized crime groups aren’t just running things from behind the scenes: they ARE the scene. Four more years of Biden-Harris regime corruption in high places would’ve seen the former USA headed down the same road.

        1. Cancun used to be a safe haven form the cartels. I know people who moved there to escape from “la inseguridad”. But that is no more. The cartels have taken over there as well.

      2. ‘I expect Mexico will be a fully failed state before 2030’

        In 1996 I was walking around Nuevo Laredo at 2 AM with my white friend. It was peaceful, drunks sleeping it off under the plaza. You couldn’t pay me to go there now.

  31. Unhinged libtard females who get triggered by TDS and steal or vandalize the property of conservatives practicing their 1st Amendment rights might get a much-needed education on respecting the rights of others.

    Steals someone’s sign
    “You’re under arrest for larceny”
    Pikachu face

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SNH6w5kmt0

    1. “Pissed off residents slam woke / liberal Mayor Brandon Johnson to his face. Chicago Ilinois USA”

      – Great post and video clip!
      – This is Chicago. This is awesome! The peeps are finally getting it about the Lefty policies, including “sanctuary city” and being overrun by illegal aliens. They’re seeing that they’re being played. Maybe it’s time for some real change there. It’s long overdue.
      – The last R mayor: 1927–1931 William Hale Thompson (R)
      – I wish everyone there outside of .gov and the teacher’s union all the best and good luck.

  34. The Coin Clippers want you to only think of things in terms of dollar increases. Chuze Fitness $9.99 to $15.99. Starry Internet from $30.00 to $45.00.

    It’s “only” $6 and $15. No, that’s 60% and 50%, respectively. How will Paul Krugman be remembered fifty years from now? Like a Realtor, a liar? Paul Krugman is a lying sack of sh*t.

  35. ‘Gupta, managing director at Bank of America Securities, added that servicers these days are more proactive to ensure borrowers have alternative payment options if faced with a major credit event such as a job loss or medical issue. This ‘solutions era-based time we live in,’ he added, ‘means foreclosures are a lot less [frequent], and that has an impact of reducing supply during time”s of distress’ like recessions’

    Here’s the thing Pratik, you bashtards haven’t been foreclosing on anything much since 2011. And we’ve had the biggest housing bubble in US history since.

  36. Real Estate
    ‘You might think the housing market goes up in 2025 but it doesn’t’ | Outlook on Charlotte real estate following 2024 election
    Homebuyers might be wondering what a new administration means for Charlotte’s fast-growing housing market.
    Author: Jane Monreal
    Published: 10:53 PM EST November 15, 2024
    Updated: 11:28 PM EST November 15, 2024
    …
    https://www.wcnc.com/article/money/markets/real-estate/charlotte-housing-market-2025-preview-donald-trump-administration-presidency/275-600bc441-6083-4f62-8356-9157304ab309

  37. Bucks GOP
    @BucksGOP

    🚨🚨🚨#BucksCounty Democrat Commissioners violate the rule of law and ignore PA Supreme Court ruling!

    Democrat Commissioners Diane Marseglia and Bob Harvie voted today to count illegal ballots, against PA Supreme Court ruling, in an attempt to aid former Senator Bob Casey.

    “…precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country. And people violate laws anytime they want. For me if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.” – Diane Marseglia

    Thank you to Republican Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo for making a motion to uphold the law!

    Our attorneys are working with attorneys from the PAGOP and RNC to address this matter.

    1:31 PM · Nov 14, 2024

    https://x.com/BucksGOP/status/1857129301092807028

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