Newly declassified documents released Thursday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that a U.S. national laboratory assessed the COVID-19 lab-origin hypothesis as a serious possibility as early as May 2020, as well as evidence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research that included planning for spike-protein modifications, receptor-adaptation experiments, and testing in humanized mice in collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The documents also prove that Anthony Fauci lied under oath. Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements… pic.twitter.com/ZMdliW4zyS The release, issued on Gabbard’s last day on the job, includes an eight-page May 27, 2020, assessment from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Z Program. That assessment concluded that “ all of the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus - specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors - were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid-to-late 2019 .” It assigned equal weight to a laboratory-modification hypothesis and a natural-origin scenario. Meanwhile, Recall that while the government was locking us down, Dr. Anthony Fauci and those in his orbit were actively fabricating a 'wet market' narrative that would conceal US research as a possible origin - despite his own advisors initially insisting that COVID-19 looked manmade. In his January 2024 transcribed interview, Fauci was asked about conversations concerning the same three topics - COVID origins, WIV, and EcoHealth . When asked about the CIA, he answered yes: he said he was briefed “once or twice” in a secure NIH facility and also recalled a briefing in a White House situation room. The newly released documents then show a June 4, 2021 briefing involving CIA/WCP personnel, NSC officials, and Fauci , during which Fauci offered views on pangolin research, sick WIV researchers, single-lineage vs. multi-lineage evidence, and recommended scientists for the IC to contact. A separate CIA-context email says that same 40-minute secure video teleconfrenece involved CIA/WCPMC officials and that Fauci gave thoughts on the 4 May 2021 COVID-origin briefing and recommended U.S. scientists to consult. So, he lied. According to a statement released with the files, " Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions , the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 , when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research." The files include the Year 5 progress report for EcoHealth Alliance’s NIH grant 5R01AI110964-05. Under Specific Aim 3, the project outlined plans to: This research track overlaps with work described in the 2018 DEFUSE proposal , which involved EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and Shi Zhengli’s team at WIV. The proposal sought to create chimeric bat coronaviruses with enhanced human infectivity, including consideration of furin cleavage site insertion to improve lung-cell entry, and to test the resulting viruses in humanized mice originally developed in Baric’s lab. A 2016 WIV paper included in the release describes a synthetic shuttle vector system for assembling large DNA fragments, with demonstrated capability up to 31 kilobases. The authors presented the method as a tool for “genome-scale DNA reconstruction,” a technique relevant to synthetic biology and virus engineering. Surveillance work under the same NIH grant reported that 9 of 1,497 rural residents in southern China (0.6%) were seropositive for bat SARS-related or HKU10 coronaviruses. And from leaked emails three years ago: Among other things, the NIH helped fund experiments at WIV t hat infected genetically engineered mice with “chimeric” hybrids of SARS-related bat coronaviruses in what some scientists have described as unacceptably risky research . ... Andersen laid them out plainly in an email to Fauci that same evening. “ The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered, ” Andersen wrote in the email. “I should mention,” he added, “that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself a ll find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory . But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.” - The Intercept A June 8, 2021, internal email in the release references a 2016 New York Academy of Medicine meeting at which Peter Daszak reportedly discussed colleagues in China “manipulating the spike protein on coronavirus to make them more virulent.” Other 2020–2021 emails show officials debating technical concerns, including references to a DOD report on a “suspicious added furin-site” and FBI reporting containing unusual genetic descriptions. One analyst noted the risk that non-experts could misinterpret technical data while still calling for scrutiny. Another observed that “the IC took direction straight from NIH… the people that funded the Wuhan Lab” and referenced “a complex web of money and politics influencing analysis.” July 2021 emails concerning the selection of outside reviewers for COVID-origin assessments show officials rejecting several candidates for political sensitivity or conflict-of-interest reasons: These materials provide primary-source documentation that a U.S. national laboratory assessed a laboratory origin as equally plausible to natural emergence at a time when prominent scientific publications were publicly emphasizing a natural zoonotic source and characterizing alternative hypotheses as conspiracy theories. This includes the February 2020 Lancet letter and the March 2020 Nature Medicine paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”, along with subsequent amplification by NIH leadership. The research details in the declassified grant reports and proposals involved techniques and modifications - spike-protein engineering, receptor adaptation, humanized-mouse testing, and consideration of furin cleavage sites - that later featured prominently in scientific debate over SARS-CoV-2’s characteristics.

• • • Hooray for Hollywood! New National Security Threat Just when you thought national security threats could not get any stupider … Trump says Hollywood ‘dying’; orders 100% tariff on non-US movies to save it U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the country, saying the U.S. movie industry was dying a “very fast death” due to the incentives that other countries were offering to draw American filmmakers. “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Trump said he was authorizing the relevant U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Commerce to immediately begin the process of imposing a 100% tariff on all films produced abroad that are then sent into the United States. Trump added: “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posting on X said: “We’re on it.” Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details on how the tariffs would be implemented. Trump appointed three Hollywood veterans Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, in January, to bring Hollywood back “bigger, better and stronger than ever before.” Film and television production in Los Angeles has fallen by nearly 40% over the last decade, according to FilmLA, a non-profit that tracks the region’s production. Governments around the world have offered more generous tax credits and cash rebates to lure productions, and capture a greater share of the $248 billion that Ampere Analysis predicts will be spent globally in 2025 to produce content. Former senior Commerce official William Reinsch, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said retaliation against Trump’s foreign movie tariffs would be devastating. “The retaliation will kill our industry. We have a lot more to lose than to gain,” he said, adding that it would be difficult to make a national security or national emergency case for movies. Hooray! Higher Prices for Movies Higher prices for shoes, clothes, lawn mowers, underwear, steel, aluminum, cars, trucks, and now movies. Who wouldn’t want that? Related Posts May 4, 2025: Would You Pay $15,000 for this Nice-Looking EV Toyota? Zoomers? I am sure many would say yes, but there’s a catch. April 14, 2025: Trump’s Plan to Make Manufacturing Great Again in Pictures The share of manufacturing employment keeps declining. What role did NAFTA play? Also note Consumers Face End of De Minimis Tariff Exemptions on $800 Packages The trade provision that allows consumers and resellers to avoid duties on shipments worth $800 or less is ending for products made in China. Hooray!? 40% to 100% Higher Prices Who wants that? (Exclusions for cultist parrots who cannot think). The idea we are going to bring shoe or clothes manufacturing back to the US (or that we would like the price result if we did) is of course ludicrous. New National Security Threat Just when you thought national security threats could not get any stupider … Trump says Hollywood ‘dying’; orders 100% tariff on non-US movies to save it U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the country, saying the U.S. movie industry was dying a “very fast death” due to the incentives that other countries were offering to draw American filmmakers. “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Trump said he was authorizing the relevant U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Commerce to immediately begin the process of imposing a 100% tariff on all films produced abroad that are then sent into the United States. Trump added: “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posting on X said: “We’re on it.” Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details on how the tariffs would be implemented. Trump appointed three Hollywood veterans Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, in January, to bring Hollywood back “bigger, better and stronger than ever before.” Film and television production in Los Angeles has fallen by nearly 40% over the last decade, according to FilmLA, a non-profit that tracks the region’s production. Governments around the world have offered more generous tax credits and cash rebates to lure productions, and capture a greater share of the $248 billion that Ampere Analysis predicts will be spent globally in 2025 to produce content. Former senior Commerce official William Reinsch, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said retaliation against Trump’s foreign movie tariffs would be devastating. “The retaliation will kill our industry. We have a lot more to lose than to gain,” he said, adding that it would be difficult to make a national security or national emergency case for movies. Hooray! Higher Prices for Movies Higher prices for shoes, clothes, lawn mowers, underwear, steel, aluminum, cars, trucks, and now movies. Who wouldn’t want that? Related Posts May 4, 2025: Would You Pay $15,000 for this Nice-Looking EV Toyota? Zoomers? I am sure many would say yes, but there’s a catch. April 14, 2025: Trump’s Plan to Make Manufacturing Great Again in Pictures The share of manufacturing employment keeps declining. What role did NAFTA play? Also note Consumers Face End of De Minimis Tariff Exemptions on $800 Packages The trade provision that allows consumers and resellers to avoid duties on shipments worth $800 or less is ending for products made in China. Hooray!? 40% to 100% Higher Prices Who wants that? (Exclusions for cultist parrots who cannot think). The idea we are going to bring shoe or clothes manufacturing back to the US (or that we would like the price result if we did) is of course ludicrous. Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts. Subscribers get an email alert of each post as they happen. Read the ones you like and you can unsubscribe at any time. This post originated on MishTalk.Com Thanks for Tuning In! Mish Mike Shedlock Comments to this post are now closed. This is reminiscent of the ’70s which was a response to the bloated movies of the ’60s. movies like Dr Dolittle almost killed studios. then we got a raft of smaller cheaper movies that were quite excellent like the French Connection. It wasn’t until Jaws that Hollywood got interested in the big mega Blockbusters. movie making is so fractured now it’s like journalism. no single source of moderation and all you need is a high-end computer to edit these digital movies. the result is a massive glut of movies ranging from truly awful to decent. Hollywood will take care of junk like the Avengers but even MGM couldn’t bear the weight of making another James Bond movie for near a billion dollars. It’s too bad but California and Hollywood have totally blown it when it comes to movie production. Most of them deserve it and after the fires the city is in real dire straits now The lesson of On Golden Pond was lost on Hollywood. Just make a really good movie that people enjoy. Will cowboy movies make a comeback? Headline April 15 in The Hollywood Reporter: Hollywood At Risk of Becoming the “Next Detroit Auto.” L.A. Production Insiders Voice Alarm Who wants more unemployed Americans? Unemployed Americans can’t particularly afford even low prices. Haven’t been to a movie since before Covid. Hollywood hasn’t recovered from the long strike two years ago. Unions created a self inflicted wound. Studios aren’t particularly profiting from streaming channels, other than Netflix. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/post-production-los-angeles-music-tax-incentives-1236190752/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us Photo of Hollywood sign from next to Paramount Studios, on Gower, which was once the entrance to Desilu Studios. On the other side of the hill, directly behind the sign, Walt Disney Studios. AI was going to kill Hollywood, at least in its current form. In a few years, you’ll be able to write something, dump it into a prompt and create your own TV series or movies. I am already creating my own artwork and songs with AI, movies are the next thing to fall. You can also create books with AI, i tried it and it’s scary. “…I am already creating my own artwork and songs…” Which is tantamount to saying you don’t have any creativity. BTW, I have published six books (all without AI, except for one cover which combined a dozen AI images out of hundreds, and lots of editing on my part). I also made a three-minute video using AI-generated images and video clips to market one of the books.The extent of my creativity was to combine the imagery/video clips with music and voice over. BTW, I find your use of ‘dumping’ offensive. Most Hollywood movies look like they’ve been made with regurgitated scripts anyway. Only the names are changed to protect their paycheques. movies have always been art by committee. its the nature of the effort that requires many parties to produce the final product. Even Chaplin had input from trusted parties and he was a bit of a perfectionist. Damn fine movies though. Hollywood could sure use a couple Chaplins right now… AI music sucks. Have heard it. It’s like if Katy Perry got dumber than she already is, wrote a song worse than she already does and posted it. Finally, Trump has done something smart. He’s drawn attention to the lack of creativity in Hollywood, and its goal of ramming down a social/political agenda. How to ‘fix’ Hollywood? 1) Get rid of the Screenwriters Guild. 2) Enable greater (not less) competition in the industry What a freakin’ idiot. Movies are basically a digital good nowadays, essentially treated like a service. Gawd help the US economy if other countries start retaliating by imposing tariffs on US digital products and services. Besides maybe agricultural commodities, that’s the one thing we are actually competitive in. The magnificent 7 can kiss their earnings goodbye. BTW, various US states and localities provide tax incentives to the film industry to shoot locally… just in case the Orange fool doesn’t know. Just randomly throw sand in the gears, and threats in all directions, and we’ll all get richer. It’s so simple. This is getting further and further from Hayek — liberty — to centralized price-setting which is a proven disaster. And the price-setter is about as clueless as one could imagine, on top of it. When has he bought a movie ticket or even groceries, or bothered to read through a report of major indicators? He looks at a few cherry-picked numbers (trade deficit) and decides to arm-twist all kinds of things.I can’t see how he ever got through Wharton. There should also be a 100 tariff on foreign players in the NFL and NBA … those foreigners have a devastating effect in those leagues, especially in the NBA. There is no need to tariff foreign soccer players because Americans don’t know how to play soccer. LETS DECLARE TARIFF, AND THEN TRY FIGURE OUT what todo! Jesus!!!!! biden/Harris look more and more better! and i am not even talking about clinton/obama. those were pretty much geniuses from 2025! Marxism does not look good at all. Fron the reaction this morning from Hollywood, he’s wrong. I mean he should listen to the industry he is supposedly interested in saving. many films by US studios are stories taking place in other countries, and they are filmed in those other countries. he should leave it to the states to decide how to deal with issues. If LA is worried about losing the film industry it can roll back taxes and regs to make it more affordable. it’s not a federal issue. The high cost of making a movie in Hollywood is one of the reasons why the industry has studios in other parts of the US. You’re partially correct about movies filmed in locations outside the US. However, the pre- and post-production stuff is a major part of the cost. Given the union cost, regulation, and risk of failure, Hollywood execs have little choice but to look for low cost alternatives. ere’s Wall Street’s response (courtesy of Bloomberg): Barclays ==== you would think IF NORMAL STABLE PERSON WHO WANTS to change something , to make it better, would do some consultations w/in industry, seek upstream/downstream discussion. ====== or no. !! FOR STABLE GENIUS disguised as president IT IS TOO HARD. LETS DECLARE TARIFF, AND THEN TRY FIGURE OUT what todo! Jesus!!!!! biden/Harris look more and more better! and i am not even talking about clinton/obama. those were pretty much geniuses from 2025! alx You have a problem with ‘tossing out an idea’ to see reaction? When is the first monthly CPI MAGA-MEGA-Delta Increase coming? Movies have always been a national security threat,hence the “Hays Office”. If the internet has taught us anything, it is that people are easily influenced. The Hays office made sure that the influence wasn’t immoral,obscene or puerile. If Red China owns the eyeballs of movie goers, Chairman Mao will be glorified, first subtly, then with a sledgehammer. See “Hero” (2002) for a taste of the brainwashing. it’ fiction. the governmetn should not be in the business of controlling fictional stories. not to mention, plenty of US films are US propaganda. you make my point my disagreeing with my point by supporting my point. If you want to see ‘brainwashing,’ look for ‘good triumphs over evil.’ People actually believe it, so they never realize ‘evil’ is right there in front of them. without bitter we would not recognize sweet, nature/god often provides a duality to balance the world. Evil exists that we might recognize good. Surely just because evil exists, we should not glorify it? It is not propaganda to desire that good triumph over evil. I sympathize with the criticisms but what would really be helpful if economically literate people or politicians come up with a framework that can solve the trade issue correctly. I know that running fiscal deficits contribute to this, I believe up until we went off the gold standard we were running trade surplus’s. However there must be a more competent way of dealing with foreign govt subsidies to undercut US prices on products .Many of the products they sell here are much more expensive in China. Also why did we ever allow the Chinese to steal our IP? We gave them the rope to hang us with. I would like to hear some constructive suggestions on a framework for fixing this problem. Maybe Mish could give us a bullet point plan. We went off of the gold standard on Sunday August 15, 1971, over six years after the start of the Vietnam war buildup. As I recall at the time, France and then other countries lost confidence in the US ability to continue to redeem gold at $35 US an ounce and began to cash in its official holdings of $US for gold prior to the closing of the gold window. But as late as June 1973, I could still by regular gas for less than 30 cents a gallon in the western suburbs of Detroit. Inflation took off after the start of the Arab oil embargo in October 1973. be helpful if economically literate people or politicians come up with a framework that can solve the trade issue correctly. == USA is too much of empire!! cut war bases. 90% gone cut DOD (= defense) budget , at least 50% . it would still more than Russia-china-Iran combined ( and n. korea too) stop being policemen for whole world. USA does not have any enemies,.outside drugs from mexico. that would start, probably upto 1 trln in yearly savings ======= then, fix monopolism inside USA fix health care, 4 banks control all 2-3 companies (blacklrock, etc) control all passive money 4 companies controls media etc alx Egg foo yung for Chairman Mao. Do all that you suggest and you still have NOT fixed the trade issue. To succeed in free trade, and not just survive, a country needs a competitive advantage. Maybe list those for the USA as a starting point. For example… the US has 1) an efficient and effective government 2) an education system generating graduates capable of critical thinking, motivated to work hard, and ready to innovate 3) an effective financial system providing a market-generated cost of capital relative to risk. 4) a taxation system that encourages productivity and punishes dependence NOT! “A very fast death” like all those media companies that were “Dying” in 2017 and are still getting about the same ratings today. He is only speaking to the idiots among us. The problem is, his audience is unfathomably large. Who cares? No one watches movies anymore. They killed the movie industry with all their woke crap and self congratulatory awards. Just like the MSM, when the product sucks people will move on to better forms of entertainment. RIP Hollywood. If your statement is true then why tariff a product that sucks and no one is watching? Posturing. it seems the strategy is to trigger, the easily triggered (which one can see here on a daily basis, imagine the real world..) thus pulling their miniscule attention spans away from anything worth actual inquiry and debate. or for those logically challenged, its a “look over there squirrel !!!!” thats seems to get them every time.. Idk This Zero Hedge headline might explain it: Rabobank: The Foreign Film Tax Reads Like A Tax On Wealthy Democrats It’s easy? It makes the industry less competitive in the long run? You anticipate support from said industry? You really don’t understand what you’re doing….. I still watch lots of movies, just not at movie houses. I am disappointed that more movies have not been released in 4K versions to take full advantage of my 4K player and 4K TV. just get 2k eyeballs, you won’t even notice the difference. I stopped at 1080p and I’m quite happy. I pay more attention to the qualities of the plot, than the quality of the image. sometimes you have to go to 480p to watch some rare old films, so be it.. that boy ain’t right in the head “Foreign Lands”? Lol. Another midnight post? The dems imported twenty million illegal immigrants – built a bridge to the world – for their illegal votes, which will seal the uniparty as the only party, to save our democracy. The dems were bursting at the seams, like an inflated soccer ball bursting at the seams. It’s useless. U can’t glue it. Pump air and u get a woush. Don’t blame Trump for kicking the dems ball. Portugal deports 20K illegals. The EU want to produce more internally. EuroArabia and Canada problems are growing. NATO cannot save them. China might be bursting at the seams. Why not claim it was 50mm illegals? That’s a much bigger number, backed by no more hot air than your claim. Quite soon, maybe this week, SMART PHONES MADE ANYWHERE ELSE, and PC’s and TABLETS will have an added 1,000% tariff. How’s that for a new BEAUTIFUL TARIFF REGIME. And, even Hardware made in AMERICA will be taxed and paid by US. What a BEAUTIFUL TIME TO BE ALIVE. I am waiting, however, for the next 911. You just HAVE TO KNOW that a FALSE FLAG OP is being planned! And, BOMBS will now have TARIFFS! EVEN MADE HERE! We are gonna be RICH! fewer tablets and smartphones, would a smarter nation make. If it takes economic pressure to get people to act in their own interest, then so be it. As the average american inflates to obesity (current rate is 41% of americans) something must occur to trigger in their sugar addled brains, that life is more than a screen and a trough of corn syrup. Digital goods aren’t really subject to any tariff or pricing schemes. You can download everything on peer to peer networks from the famous Swedish website that shall not be named here. But to avoid higher prices for shoes, clothes, lawn mowers, underwear, steel, aluminum, cars, and trucks, just move to where you don’t have psycho leadership. This will become a recurring theme for many until the light goes on, move to where you are treated best. Only 1356 more days of Trump crazy left then we switch to woke crazy. Sadly I find the Trump crazy more entertaining than the Woke crazy. Norway… its next to Sweden, but has less 3rd world immigrants.. The Innovation and Technology party, formerly The Pirate Party is a Norwegian political party which was founded in 2012. Its basic principles are “full transparency in state management, privacy on the internet, as well as better use of IT and technology to make a better democracy” I concur, if you don’t like America, and are driven by only the price of consumer goods, it would be best for the USA and her peoples, if the malcontents and price obsessed move to foreign shores and allow this nation to continue rebuilding with a supportive population. Agreed. Have at it, follow in the footsteps of the central planning giants of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. I’ll be watching from afar living it up. as you should… the MAGA cult of lumpenproles in amerika are begging to be clubbed like baby seals. this has occurred in world history before. you TDS is calling you to commit crimes of violence against your fellow citizens, perhaps it is best to continue the medication and understand everything is not a plot against you.. If you are in favor of “Beautiful Tariffs” – – then you are a stupid MAGA type. I do not vote, so BOTH sides sound Inane. “Lack of VITAMIN K” (Kamala, lacking brains) was not a choice. Voting for Mr T was “Better” but he left behind his business SENSE, if he had Any – – and he went bankrupt and ran up huge debts as a Builder – – then this shit would not be going on@ Trump could have made FAR better choices: 1) stick with DOGE. 2) Reduce inflation! 3) Deal with Homelessness. 4) Put IMMIGRATION CONTROLS IN and deport ONLY criminals and fast-track Illegals with workable solutions so we do not run low on available labor from other countries. BUT, NoooOOOOooo! He started with TAXING US! you didn’t vote..but complain. thats like not cooking, but you hate the meal. nobody’s fault but yours. Next thing is that Trump will declare himself a living god. I guess that’s how it feels like when you live in a place like North Korea. the fear is palpable. so many must rein in their inner demons. what country has the most guns in the hands of its citizens? what are the actual chances of Trump becoming emperor god king of America? find another focus for your obsession, its driving you mad. And bend your knee to the God King Trump. A French distribution vet posited: “He will kill the U.S. industry quicker as this will increase the cost of U.S. films that already weren’t selling well internationally. Creating an incentive for shooting in the U.S. would have been smarter but I’m not sure he has that much intelligence.” Deadline. US films don’t sell well internationally, due to content. the mandatory, lesbian, trans, homosexual and people of colours in every film, no matter if its a documentary on Amish or a historical drama, has killed story telling on film All the distribution in the world, cannot force people to watch deranged swill from equity obsessed studios. The American film industry has committed suicide before our eyes. Fortunately over a hundred years of film archives exist of proven well told, enjoyable films. Mine the archives until the madness passes and we bury Hollywood and wait for new growth from the ashes. US films DO sell well internationally, what are you talking about?? Blockbusters in the US are global blockbusters, and the smaller artsy films often do better abroad than here. right enjoy your Marvel pap.. try watching the academy award winners from 1937 or 1939. Trump is consistent. SchroedingerTalk is erratic. If our next president will be a dem all our movies will be produced in Bollywood India. Shekhar Kapur is against Trump. Take your meds Trump’s Tariffs Are Lifting Some U.S. Manufacturers Levies on imports are giving early boosts to some American factorieshttps://archive.is/20250504095647/https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trumps-tariffs-are-lifting-some-u-s-manufacturers-06b4c6e1#selection-1909.0-1913.68 Surprise! Trump was talking about himself … when he said “the enemy is within”. – Hooray for Hollywood! > We shall see, as they will have to work for it, but will they be willing to do so is the far bigger question, isn’t it? – U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the country, saying the U.S. movie industry was dying a “very fast death” > Trump is 100% Correct! The “Movie Industry” is dying a “very fast death” when is the last time You saw a “Decent Movie” at the box office? When is the last time You we’re even at the box office. – “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda,” > Trump is 100% Correct Again! Trump has waged a massive campaign, and with Total Support from American Citizens too! It is against what America doesn’t stand for as a Country, and as People. The Racist crap has to stop, the Manipulation and Deception in the MSM has to stop. So does the messaging from Countries like the UK and England, as two of many examples. Trump washed DEI as well as other unfair practices, out of our way of life, thank goodness, but other Countries and Organizations Desire It, as it’s extremely profitable for them! Not good for America, but they don’t care about America obviously. NATO is yet another Propaganda Arm, trying to pull America into its grasp. They also could care less about America, well except for Our $$$ (Digital Currency) is there Goal! So No they do not have any interest of Ours In Mind in the least… – Trump said he was authorizing the relevant U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Commerce to immediately begin the process of imposing a 100% tariff on all films produced abroad that are then sent into the United States. > There are very few places or sets that can’t be done in America. Why ship the money producing events to other Countries, when we have Our Own Country to care about. They can do there Movies where they live, and we can too… – Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details on how the tariffs would be implemented. > They may not be at all. He may be seeing if Hollywood Cares Enough to jump on His Bandwagon, and if not, then “Out to Pasture” for good perhaps, for them. You make your bed, you sleep in it. Trump will NOT help those that Do Not wish for Help (See Zelensky). – Trump appointed three Hollywood veterans Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, in January, to bring Hollywood back “bigger, better and stronger than ever before.” > In typical Trump Fashion, He backed up His Words, and appointed people in the know, to get this done!! Good for Trump! I Hope Hollywood plays ball… – Hooray! Higher Prices for Movies > ONLY if Americans are stupid enough to pay for it. They come down in cost, and the $248 Billion Industry takes a Hit!! OR WE DON’T GO. – Higher prices for shoes, clothes, lawn mowers, underwear, steel, aluminum, cars, trucks, and now movies. > Sad you had to go there… yet again! – Who wouldn’t want that? > Who said (with proof) that we are going to in fact get that? Looks like you are just as mentally ill as Trump. Why? Because I’m a realist? Are you against America? Do you not like it, when Your Countries President, stands up for your Country’s Citizens? Do you like having your Citizens TAX $$$ spent on Non-Citizens? Where is your Proof, that President Trump, and I are “Mentally Ill” Did you just Make That Up? What else do you “Make Up” when you’re pretending about things? I am at least Authentic, and Consistent and that appears as something that You will never be… Sadly, you are a shrinking minority. Liberal mind control has taken over Mish Talk. The absence of critical thinking was very evident in the lead-up to the election. There is also buyers’ remorse, but mostly negative mass media continues to drive opinion. Obama ran with Hope and Change. One could only hope for change–there wasn’t any change of significance. At least Trump is trying to change a situation doomed to failure. Movie theater prices are higher for a number of reasons, 1st of which is less people attending films at theaters. Home screens are larger, and sound systems as well, the more well to do movie buff, at this point, owns a home theater, which provides clean bathrooms, no lines, no parking, sensibly priced snacks, always fresh, as well as a plethora of favorite beverages and the management will pause the film for potty breaks and rewind and rewatch a scene to clarify details or just enjoy a great scene one more time. Theaters were a product of the technology of their time. Most people didn’t have room or the technology to watch movies at home. 100 years later they do now have the abilities and the means to enjoy home theatres. I have not been in a theatre since early 2000’s. I’m told they are infested with cell phones, people talking loudly, and exhibiting poor public manners as well as occasional fights and gunfire. To sell anything and especially overpriced anythings, one must guarantee a pleasant and enjoyable experience. basic business 101. fail this and your business fails.. I do agree. I also do Love A Good Movie at the Cinema!! I know countless others that do as well. I would happily pay a premium for it too! Problem is the crowd I speak about (Older), is not represented much in Hollywood, so I agree that my flat screens are just fine. “If and When” they ever start producing good movies again, on the Big Screen, I will be there!!! Hollywood is a Me-Too industry. With one success, others copy. Endless franchise spinoffs…. Add in a political agenda, and the result is exactly as expected. If you don’t fit in, you don’t survive. Outsiders do not get access to the theater chains. My feature film, ‘Mother Trucker’ will never see a theater, even though she kicks butt, crashes police blockades, saves puppies, and raises a family of randy Bonobo monkeys. So, the failure belongs to Hollywood. Tariffs simply reduce the competition and encourage more of the same Me-Too crap. The net drove audience away from main stream Cinema, with its variety on offer.. We have not seen a great USA Created Film in quite a long time. We will not miss them. Ah yes, your blanket absolutism painting with the broadest brush available. You MUST be 100% correct! try the “wild robot”. you may be pleasantly surprised. As an Australian I find this quite hilarious. The American film industry is amazingly successful, especially in the English speak world. But it is so successful that is readily spreads to non English speaking countries. Though in a way Trump is right. We in Australia do have “unfair trade” rules here. We have a bunch of subsidies for locally produced content and a rules and requirement requiring a minimum amount of local content. However despite all this most local content is still mediocre. And US content is significantly better. Honestly Trump can tariff away. You are just making life harder for US content creators. You are correct, Sir. He could have started on REAL problems with REAL solutions. BUT NoooooOOOOOOooo! He begins with Taxing us! Trump is economically illiterate, and proves it every day You need more shrimp on the barbie, mate! or more barbie on the “shrimp” if you know what I mean.. US content is a really low bar. Production value is state of the art though. the kakistocracy is in full frontal exposure. this clown needs to go. The Emperor has no film subsidies, the long awaited to sequel to The Emperor has no clothes, which involved an invasion of killer moths from a lab in Wuhan, that left the world naked, confused, and angry. Will there ever come a day when we can turn on a TV news program and there isn’t any mention of Trump? Legacy media would be dead without Trump. It does make for some entertainment value. Trump makes me LOL at times. The distinction is that 1/2 of the time I am laughing WITH HIM and other half: AT him! You would have to ask the TV News Programs: “Would you survive without Trump”. There is your answer, so No it won’t stop… Yeah about 10 years after he’s dead maybe for one day. The news Media LIVES/FEEDS off of CONTROVERSIES. Death. Weather. Politics is WAY too covered and it bores me to death. I wish it would stop and that TRUMPCO and the rest of Government would get to FUCKING WORK! when zion don dies, his cult will form a new religion. perhaps grow larger than mormons and muslims and christians……..in the next few thousand years. trump tower the new vatican city. Mike Lindell 2028 /s the mind is a terrible thing to waste. when we focus on our fears, they own our thoughts. Perhaps welcome more useful thoughts into your mind, you might be surprized at how your life changes. That is why he photoshopped the Popey hat! He’ll probably pull a Fatal Attraction! “Higher prices for shoes, clothes, lawn mowers, underwear, steel, aluminum, cars, trucks, and now movies. Who wouldn’t want that?” Who wouldn’t want that?” This is called WINNING! THE CONSEQUENCES OF COLLECTIVE SELF-DELUSION As some readers will know, I recently chose to use a period of necessary travel to isolate myself, for a space, from all forms of purported “news” and “information”. It is something that I can heartily recommend to anyone, even if it involves just a few hours spent fishing at a place where no fish are to be found. During this period of reflection, I gained a much clearer perspective on how a chapter of instability masquerading as “modernity” will end, even if the basics – the unfolding failures of money and technology – were already apparent. Whilst our understanding of these basics will continue to improve, the task now is to strengthen the correlation between the calculated and the experienced. What is particularly striking is the contrast between the abundant evidence of economic contraction and a near-universal refusal to accept this reality. In practical terms, this means that “modernity” will end, not gradually, but very rapidly indeed. 1 When we once stand aside from the slings and arrows of outrageous narrative , it quickly becomes clear that the fundamentals in our economic and broader predicament are comparatively few in number. The first is that growth in global material economic prosperity has been decelerating relentlessly towards contraction , a process that we are utterly powerless to prevent. Equally, there is, at the collective level, an absolute refusal to accept this reality , or to prepare to manage its consequences in practical and constructive ways. Economic inflexion has become something ‘ almost everywhere experienced, but almost nowhere admitted ’. Instead, we have been invited to swallow ideas that even Lewis Carroll’s White Queen – who prided herself on her ability to believe “at least six impossible things before breakfast” – would have found wholly indigestible. Chief amongst these notions are the beliefs that we can spend our way to prosperity , borrow our way to solvency , and innovate our way past material limitations demarcated by the planet’s resources and the laws of physics. Our specific ‘remedies’ for the ending and reversal of growth are monetary innovation and technological advance. Such propositions disregard the facts, which are that money commands value only as an exchangeable claim on the material, and that the potential scope of technology is bounded by the limits of physical possibility . 2 These considerations define two of the greatest shocks that we will encounter as reality refuses to submit to the imperatives of wishful thinking. Bluntly stated, the financial system will crash into cascading defaults and runaway inflation, whilst technology will fail to deliver on the unrealistic expectations vested in it. Both of these failures are already unfolding . Debts and quasi-debts are expanding at wholly unsustainable rates, whilst the activities that we term “tech” are trapped in a relentless process of diminishing returns. The latter involves investing ever more to deliver ever less, a trend that is unlikely to be changed by a version of AI which is customarily assessed on the basis of what it can accomplish rather than what it can deliver . The public is caught up in this process of denied inflexion , which is why, over the past year, incumbencies have lost ground, or been ousted from power altogether, in countries as diverse as Britain, America, India, Japan, Germany and France. The Canadian administration would doubtless have gone the same way, had the Liberals not replaced an unpopular leader, and ridden the tide of resentment unleashed by Mr Trump’s tariffs and territorial tantrums. Essentially, the problems of government are a compulsion, knowingly or not, to promise a prosperity, and a continuity, that cannot be delivered. The public, for the most part, seems to believe that all and more of the benefits of growth are being skimmed off by an already super-wealthy minority. The underlying reality – which might come as scant comfort to a discontented majority – is that the economy has started to contract, and that the much-publicised gains of the elites exist only in a paper form which is GTC (“good till cancelled”) by the looming financial crisis. In these conditions, cherished notions will be invalidated just as surely as existing systems will fail. Far from being the highest possible iteration of the human project, a post-capitalist economic model, powered by consumerism and dominated by multinational corporations, is nearing its end. A further denied truth , visible everywhere but admitted nowhere, is that of nations and societies scrapping over decreasing resources. None of this is to say that better outcomes are impossible, but ‘better’ can no longer mean an extrapolatory ‘more of the same’ now that less has become the irreversible tendency of the economy . 3 – https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/05/05/302-at-the-end-of-modernity-part-one/ Gobbledygook I don’t usually read through such long comments but this was worthwhile – a thought provoker. I see Doug 78 displays again his dislike of anything requiring putting a few brain cells to work but I enjoy the comments section for the opposing views. Tim Morgan was head of research for https://tpicap.com/tullettprebon/ so worth listening to… Tullett Prebon is a broker in the wholesale financial, energy, and commodities markets. We are a TP ICAP Group company. Our role is to facilitate trading for commercial and investment banks, hedge funds, buy-side institutions, corporates and trading houses. As one of the largest inter-dealer brokers in the world, we cover all major asset classes including global fixed income securities, money markets, capital markets, equities, credit, and associated derivatives products. In energy and commodities, we again cover all major asset classes including power, gas, renewable energy credit, and liquified natural gas (LNG). We have offices in 24 countries and operate voice, hybrid, electronic, volume matching, algorithmic matching, and risk mitigation platforms. The clown calling this gobbledeegook is clearly operating with an IQ that is equivalent to room temperature… so his comment is understandable. The thing is … if you step back and look at what is going on … something fundamental has changed… we are most definitely on the cusp of a massive and likely permanent collapse empires come and go. study anthropology for a few years. human primate history for the past 50,000 years is an eye opener. if we go out further back, and hence forward, this planet is just a rock flying around which ends when the sun flames out. actually it can end in a number of ways, but the most common is the sun flaring up, not flaming out. examine the 6k & 12k cycles of coronal mass ejections, it helps explain the ice ages as well as the lack of history of previous civilizations beyond Gobekli Tepe The world is frequently cleansed by fire and ice and there is litle we can do but watch. The TL:DR from your two posts of well over 1,000 words can save your reader 99% of their time: “ we are most definitely on the cusp of a massive and likely permanent collapse” Same argument as most are making, anyway. Not so fast Fast Eddy. Gobbledygook often comes from large brokers because their job is to sell and not to predict so they have to come up with something almost every day and it often comes out as gobbledygook. You are talking to someone who knows that market well and I have even written some of this gobbledygook myself so I know what I am talking about. It certainly impresses the easily impressed which is why it works on you. It’s a selling tool. Well John it is because I have read so many bullshit reports in my life I learned to spot them early. Everything said there could have been said in one paragraph but the author had to stretch it out with verbosity till it meant nothing. “the much-publicized gains of the elites exist only in a paper form which is GTC (“good till cancelled”) by the looming financial crisis” So your average billionaire loses 50% or even 75% now he’s just a multi-millionaire, who could live on that? Your audience cannot possibly misunderstand a word of this terse set of unbreakable truths Brevity is not just the soul of wit, it is also of great help in communicating ideas effectively. basically what you are saying is, “what can’t go on, won’t go on.” while true and self evident, the world is doing all it can to hide this fact via mass media and illusions. More and less are relative terms, what is important is not the quantities of a given element, but the qualities of these elements and which ones shall we give a higher status in our desires and our lives? More cell phones? or more love? More discussion, or more screaming past each other? More corn syrup and sloth, or more activity and a varied diet. our choices have consequences, we build our world around us with our choices. There is indeed a wall of propaganda around us trying to influence those choices, and if we silence that wall of propaganda we can find what we truly need in the world. The real declining resource is meaningful thought and understanding rather than fear and reaction which are in massive surplus, everywhere, always. You lost me by postulating a difference between accomplishment and delivery. We have R friends who think that anything goes, with their MAN. The problem is THEIR MAN is losing it mentally. NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE. WOULD ANY OF YOU HAVE STARTED YOUR PRESIDENCY WITH ADDING TAXES TO OUR GOODS and NOW SERVICES? most of us are barely competent to operate a motor vehicle. I doubt most of us are qualified to be president no matter how much we may dream. asking how we would start our presidency is a empty fallacy, we possess insufficient knowledge and experience to even contemplate the situation. I would be a great President! In fact, I would be a GREAT Emperor of the world. no, you’d be a beautiful, amazing Emperor of the world. Great isn’t a big enough word to describe your reign. Why sabotage your legacy with insufficient words? I’m aiming for Lord of the Universe as i feel it has more options for growth(expanding universe and all that rot) as well as advancement (extra dimensional mostly) been watching the dailies for an opening but no ones hiring right now.. Fiction is stranger than truth… No, wait, truth is stranger than fiction… No, that does not seem right either…. Potus Fiction is stranger than plebs fiction! Movies are just another service like Google or Amazon. Look up Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) in Europe on American service companies. This has nothing to do with Hollywood and everything to do with American service companies operating in Europe. DSTs and VATs are a very contentious point between the US and Europe and it looks like it just got hotter. Trump says it’s national security, you say it’s taxes. You sayin’ Trump’s a liar? He is saying whatever you decide he is saying, now isn’t he? I said it is part of negotiations which it is. Why don’t you take a look at the DSTs and come back. We can discuss it then. It makes sense once you remember that the same people who run Hollywood also run Israel and dictate US foreign policy. Vote MAGA, get MIGA. Oy vey. Trump appointed three Hollywood veterans Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson ===== Jon Voight, = 1938 born Sylvester Stallone 1946 born and Mel Gibson is not exactly born in USA! is he going be deported first? jesus! Trump is more and more deranged Mel Gibson was born in New York City. A 5 his parents moved to Australia. when I was 5, my parents took me to the zoo. But i found my way back home.. travel widens one’s experience and abilities at self reliance.. No doubt the SAG is solidly against this. They should be. US has a large surplus in this area. On deck is only using American actors and actresses. Sigh. No problem. Instead of shooting my next Hallmark Special in BC as usual, I’ll do it all using generative AI at AWS:Oregon2. What about Aunt Becky? Aunt Becky is red right down to her underwear..ask any chinaman.. Self-appointed King Herod believes he has the authority who lives and who dies. Hahahahaha! What a show! always keep the microwave popcorn handy when visiting this site. I’m working on an AI that can trigger the microwave based on the URL. I’mma call it “MishPop”. i’ll leave a link and you can beta test it for me.. This is the kind of economically foolish thinking you’d expect from a guy like Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has a couple really nice houses, he does allright for a socialist, I think he knows what kinda foolish thinking makes his bank account fatter.. a lot of politics is theater. what’s that saying ?? politics is hollywood for ugly people or something like that.. after some reflection I realize the saying is “politics is show business for ugly people” The clown show continues and the sheep clap. as long as we can get butts in the seats, alls well that ends well.. one clown hates Shakespeare? can always count on mishtalk to bring out the mentally challenged.. You will receive all messages from this feed and they will be delivered by email.

"This Is Going To Surprise Some People": Leading Biden COVID-19 Figure Embraces The Lab Leak TheoryAuthored by Jonathan Turley,Former Biden White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha this weekend became the latest denier of the lab theory to do a 180-degree turn.During the interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Jha admitted that he now believes that the most likely explanation is a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As pundits and politicians quietly admit that the natural mutation theory is not as credible, the courageous scientists who were blacklisted for years remain persona non grata in higher education.Jha stated:"This is going to surprise some people. You know, when I went into the White House, my view was, 'This was almost surely a natural outbreak, maybe a lab leak.' Based on information I learned and based on information I've seen, I have come to conclude that it is more likely to have been a lab leak."I commend Jha for publicly addressing his change. Inde...

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times , Then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins , around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledged that he secretly assisted with a paper stating the virus that causes COVID-19 "is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," according to a newly released missive. "This is work that Tony, Jeremy, Larry, and I helped with, but are appropriately not mentioned explicitly in the paper," Collins said in the March 6, 2020, email to NIH officials, which was released by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on June 11. Tony refers to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through late 2022. Jeremy refers to Jeremy Farrar, at the time the director of the Wellcome Trust. Larry refers to Dr. Lawrence Tabak, an NIH official. Collins noted the conclusion that stated, "The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered." SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The first COVID-19 cases appeared in Wuhan, China, in 2019, near a laboratory that was conducting enhanced experiments on coronaviruses funded by the NIH. Collins was responding to an email from Kristian Andersen, one of the authors of the paper, which was titled "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2." Andersen and other scientists said in the paper, published on March 17, 2020, in Nature Medicine, that they analyzed data and concluded that it came from nature. To date, no natural source has been identified for the virus. The Trump administration maintains the virus came from the Wuhan lab. The paper did not mention any contributions from Collins, Fauci, Tabak, or Farrar, who made at least one critical change to the document, according to emails released by lawmakers in 2023. It thanked American virologist Michael Farzan "for discussions" and the Wellcome Trust "for support." Nature did not return a request for comment by the time of publication. Collins did not respond to a request for comment. Collins told lawmakers in 2024 that his role "was for information, not for me to edit," that he never edited or suggested edits to the paper , and that, to his knowledge, neither did Fauci or Farrar. He also said he is not a virology expert. Early drafts of the paper had the authors stating that it was possible that the virus came from a lab. In private messages, since made public, the authors also said that characteristics of the virus indicated it was manmade. They have defended the changes in their stances as being driven by evidence. In the newly released emails, Andersen, who has said that the paper was "prompted" by Collins, Fauci, and Farrar, had written to the trio. " Thank you again for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 'origins' paper, " he said. He told them he welcomed comments, suggestions, and questions about the paper, which had just been accepted for publication. Collins said in a previously released email to Fauci, Tabak, and others in April 2020 that he was wondering whether the NIH could "help put down this very destructive conspiracy," linking to an article alleging the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan. " I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this," he said. "But probably didn't get much visibility. Anything more we can do? " Collins told lawmakers in 2024 that in the email, "I meant that we should do what we can to get the truth out there, as opposed to statements that were reckless and speculative that were not based on evidence." He said that the possibility that the virus came from the lab, whether it originated there or not, was not a conspiracy theory. Fauci, who has denied allegations that Proximal Origins was written to disprove the lab origin theory, met on multiple occasions with intelligence officials in 2020 and 2021. James Erdman III, a CIA operations officer, told Paul and other senators in May that Fauci provided a list of experts to whom the intelligence community (IC) should talk, and that the list included the Proximal Origins authors. "Dr. Anthony Fauci influenced the IC's analytic process and COVID origin's findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated Subject Matter Experts (SME), public health officials, and scientists," Erdman said. Fauci has not returned emails seeking comment on Erdman's testimony and the missives Paul just released. One of those emails showed Fauci wrote to Beth Cameron, a National Security Council official, on July 8, 2021, a day after he took part in a council briefing. "The article accessible from the link in the subject line above just came out as a 'preprint' yesterday. It is from a group of highly qualified virologists," Fauci wrote. "Please show it to your team. It summarizes what I said yesterday." The article, titled "The Origin of SARS-CoV-2," included Farrar and Anderson as coauthors. The authors said that there was "currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin" while there was evidence supporting links to animal markets in Wuhan. Fauci "was pushing the natural-origin story while secretly getting classified briefings on the actual origins," Paul wrote in a post on X. "The American people were told one story. These documents - and a CIA officer's sworn testimony - tell another," he added in a follow-up post.

• • • I have not commented on Case-Shiller for a while. Here is a batch of new charts. Change Since January 2020 Case-Shiller National: +52.3% Case-Shiller 10-City: +52.0% CPI: +22.0% Owners’ Equivalent Rent: +26.0% Rent +26.4% Case Shiller 10-City Index Three cities in the 10-city index are below levels hit in 2020. Denver is down 3.4 percent, Las Vegas is down 1.1 percent, and San Francisco is down 8.3 percent. All other cities are at or near peak prices. Rent, OER, Case-Shiller Percent Change From Year Ago Except for a small window of time year-over-year Case-Shiller measures have outpaced the CPI, often dramatically. Case-Shiller Home Price vs Hourly Earnings, the CPI, and Rent Percentage Change Since January 2020 CPI: 22.8 Percent Average Hourly Earnings: 28.2 Percent Rent: 26.2 Percent Case-Shiller National Home Price: 52.3 Percent Those numbers do not reflect property taxes that vary by state nor mortgage rates. Mess Entirely of Fed’s Making This is a mess entirely of the Fed’s making. And it’s what happens when the Fed, and economists in general do not count home prices as inflation. Home prices are not directly in the CPI or PCE. The latter is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation. Economists consider home prices a capital expense not a consumer expense. The problem is simple: Inflation is not just a consumer price concern! The Fed ignored obvious inflation in the Great Recession and did so again in the Covid recession. Related Posts January 24, 2025: For the Full Year, 2024 Existing-Home Sales Lowest in Nearly 30 Years 2024 was a terrible year for Realtors. Will 2025 be any better? February 18, 2025: NAHB Housing Sentiment Flounders, the Market Needs Lower Mortgage Rates Homebuilder sentiment has been low since mid-2022. Buyer traffic is dismal. February 21, 2025: Existing-Home Sales Drop 4.9 Percent in January, More Than Expected After three months of increases, sale took a big dive in January. Fedthink! The Fed Is Incompetent by Design and Can’t Be Fixed On February 3, I commented Fedthink! The Fed Is Incompetent by Design and Can’t Be Fixed Regarding Fedthink Reader: Sometimes I wonder if people like Mish really think that the Fed plays it straight in times like this, versus telling us what is ostensibly the straight dope while they are actually playing some complex metagame. Mish: I have commented on this before. The Fed believes the nonsense they preach on 2% inflation, inflation expectations, the Phillips curve and other economic nonsense that amusingly even the Fed’s own studies prove wrong. There is no diversity in thought at the Fed. You get in the position of Fed Governor or President by thinking the same way as the rest of the members. People confuse diversity with race and sex. True diversity is in thought. But there is no diversity of thought at the Fed. They have all been trained to be ignorant. And you do not get into the group unless you believe the same things. This we call Fedthink. The Fed destroyed liquidity in the housing market with massive QE that allowed existing owners to refinance at cheap rates fueling inflation via permanent lower mortgage rate (extra money in pockets), while screwing all potential new buyers with runaway prices and higher mortgage rates. Change Since January 2020 Case Shiller 10-City Index Three cities in the 10-city index are below levels hit in 2020. Denver is down 3.4 percent, Las Vegas is down 1.1 percent, and San Francisco is down 8.3 percent. All other cities are at or near peak prices. Rent, OER, Case-Shiller Percent Change From Year Ago Except for a small window of time year-over-year Case-Shiller measures have outpaced the CPI, often dramatically. Case-Shiller Home Price vs Hourly Earnings, the CPI, and Rent Percentage Change Since January 2020 Those numbers do not reflect property taxes that vary by state nor mortgage rates. Mess Entirely of Fed’s Making This is a mess entirely of the Fed’s making. And it’s what happens when the Fed, and economists in general do not count home prices as inflation. Home prices are not directly in the CPI or PCE. The latter is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation. Economists consider home prices a capital expense not a consumer expense. The problem is simple: Inflation is not just a consumer price concern! The Fed ignored obvious inflation in the Great Recession and did so again in the Covid recession. Related Posts January 24, 2025: For the Full Year, 2024 Existing-Home Sales Lowest in Nearly 30 Years 2024 was a terrible year for Realtors. Will 2025 be any better? February 18, 2025: NAHB Housing Sentiment Flounders, the Market Needs Lower Mortgage Rates Homebuilder sentiment has been low since mid-2022. Buyer traffic is dismal. February 21, 2025: Existing-Home Sales Drop 4.9 Percent in January, More Than Expected After three months of increases, sale took a big dive in January. Fedthink! The Fed Is Incompetent by Design and Can’t Be Fixed On February 3, I commented Fedthink! The Fed Is Incompetent by Design and Can’t Be Fixed Regarding Fedthink Reader: Sometimes I wonder if people like Mish really think that the Fed plays it straight in times like this, versus telling us what is ostensibly the straight dope while they are actually playing some complex metagame. Mish: I have commented on this before. The Fed believes the nonsense they preach on 2% inflation, inflation expectations, the Phillips curve and other economic nonsense that amusingly even the Fed’s own studies prove wrong. There is no diversity in thought at the Fed. You get in the position of Fed Governor or President by thinking the same way as the rest of the members. People confuse diversity with race and sex. True diversity is in thought. But there is no diversity of thought at the Fed. They have all been trained to be ignorant. And you do not get into the group unless you believe the same things. This we call Fedthink. The Fed destroyed liquidity in the housing market with massive QE that allowed existing owners to refinance at cheap rates fueling inflation via permanent lower mortgage rate (extra money in pockets), while screwing all potential new buyers with runaway prices and higher mortgage rates. Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts. Subscribers get an email alert of each post as they happen. Read the ones you like and you can unsubscribe at any time. This post originated on MishTalk.Com Thanks for Tuning In! Mish Mike Shedlock Comments to this post are now closed. It’s also the fault of Congress, both the Republicans and Democrats, Trump, Biden, back to Obama at least: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSHOMCB Congress and the presidents appointed and confirmed the fed governors who have done all this socialist interest rate suppression by debasing the US dollar. Our citizens need to be better informed and educated about whats going on. The people could change this by not electing politicians who support policy thats done so much senseless damage to our country. On an episode of “Gilligan’s Island”, Mr Howell tried to piece together the wrong section of a broken ancient stone map. He exclaimed: “A Howell is never wrong, cut off a piece and make it fit”. The Fed followed the same egotistic method, to wedge a decade of ZIRP, into an archaic 1938 theory of secular stagnation. The Fed could only achieve this by finagling the BLS to ‘cut off’ the rise in home prices from the measure of inflation. Otherwise their scheme would quickly end. A strategy the Fed took from the mortgage crisis. When brokers bribed the major credit rating agencies to give AAA ratings to their worthless CMOs. The Fed still holds $4T from the liquidity disaster on their balance sheets. The Fed’s repurchase of these 10-year Treasuries maintains long-rates a few basis points above the low levels of the Greenspan years, that sparked the mortgage fiasco. These low rates will continue to inflate home prices. The TV episode ended with a pieced together stone map that gave directions ‘to’ the island. A parallel to the decade of Fed trillions in ZIRP, that only led back to a wealth gap, only wider this time. And a greater number of lower economic class, working just to pay inflated rent, with no hope of achieving the American dream of ownership. Next week, Gilligan and Mr Howell discover a gold mine, and flood the island economy with liquidity, inflating the cost of goods and services. It is amazing how much better the online appraisal tools are getting at Zillow and Redfin. For most single family homes, they are so much better than they were just a few years ago. You can use their metro data to watch house price inflation in near realtime. I don’t think the main problem for housing prices and affordability is the Fed. It’s the structure of our mortgage market, which is exceptional (in the bad sense) as anybody who has looked at mortgage markets across countries would readily admit. The mortgage-backing institutions were the cause of the 30-years fixed interest mortgage lock-in effect, which in turn has driven up house prices, depressed building new housing, and frozen new buyers out of the market. Obviously, this was all unintended by the designers of Fannie and Freddie. But government interventions in markets more often than not have serious unintended effects, in this case pretty bad ones. Fannie’s and Freddie’s dominance was predicted in May 1980. So was the GFC, as a result of the reduction in legal reserves. But the U.S. Golden Age in Capitalism was driven by the thrifts. Trump’s version of a soft landing is winning, Fed is useless at best 😃 Mish, your closing comment nails it,👍 In west coast and northeast cities, the housing market is shockingly strong. Most likely, people are being forced to return to the office. In contrast, home prices are sinking in cities that are favorites for remote workers. Even in most of Florida where inventory is up huge, prices have for the most part stayed incredibly resilient. That said, inventory does continue to build at a rapid clip. “The Fed ignored obvious inflation in the Great Recession and did so again in the Covid recession.” The FED ignores that a 2% target inflation rate is not stable prices. If one looks at the value of the dollar since 1913, it has always gone down over time, the inverse of the mantra that the stock market always goes up over time (pay no attention to that 76% drop in the Nasdaq). Modern Monetary Theory is Gaslighting. The laws of math never change. Thus Volker “rediscovered” the business cycle, which was there all along. Noteworthy Pg. 224 “Keeping At It” “Now, in recognition of the need for discipline, a remarkable consensus has developed among modern central bankers, including in the Federal Reserve, that there’s a new “red line” for policy: a 2 percent rate of increase in some carefully designed consumer price index is acceptable, even desirable, and at the same time provides a limit. I puzzle about the rationale. A 2 percent target, or limit, was not in my textbooks years ago. I know of no theoretical justification It’s difficult to be both a target and a limit at the same time. And a 2 percent inflation rate, successfully maintained, would mean the price level doubles in little more than a generation. I do know some practical facts. No price index can capture, down to a tenth or a quarter of a percent, the real change in consumer prices. The variety of goods and services, the shifts in demand, the subtle changes in pricing and quality are too complex to calculate precisely from month to month or year to year. Move over, as an economy grows or slows, there is a tendency for prices to change, a little more up in periods of economic expansion, maybe a little down as the economy slows or recedes, but not sideways year after year. Yet, as I write, with economic growth rising and the unemployment rate near historic lows, concerns are being voiced that consumer prices are growing too slowly—just because they’re a quarter percent or so below the 2 percent target! Could that be a signal to “ease” monetary policy, or at least to delay restraint, even with the economy at full employment? Certainly, that would be nonsense. How did central bankers fall into the trap of assigning such weight to tiny changes in a single statistic, with all of its inherent weakness? Three underground crematoriums in an extermination camp were discovered near Guadalajara Mexico. Body parts, bone and shoes were found. The Mexican Nazi are our biggest enemies They are within. “Today is a great day to buy a home!” – NAR, every day since I’ve been alive. Marketing one’s own self interest. And, that advice turned out to be true. that depends on a host of variables, such as price, ability to repay, location, etc. Putin’s hokey stick stretched all the way to Kherson on the Dnipro river. A trade can happen: Russian troops retreat east, away from the Dnipro, Ukraine move west away from Donetsk, no French or British troops in the middle. If signed money will pour in. There are 6 seasonal, endogenous, economic inflection points each year. (they may vary a little from year to year): Pivot ↓ #1 3rd week in Jan. Pivot ↑ #2 mid Mar. Pivot ↓ #3 May 5, Pivot ↑ #4 mid Jun. Pivot ↓ #5 July 21, Pivot ↑ #6 2-3 week in Oct. These seasonal factors are pre-determined by the FRB-NY’s “trading desk” operations, executing the FOMC’s monetary policy directives: in the present case just reserve “smoothing” and “draining” operations, the oscillating inflows and outflows, the making and or receiving of correspondent and other interbank payments by and large using their “net free” (as opposed to “net borrowed”) excess reserve balances). Each, and every year, the seasonal factor’s map (economic time series’ cyclical trend), or scientific proof, is demonstrated by the product of money flows, our means-of-payment money times its transaction’s velocity of circulation (the scientific method). –Michel de Nostradame As I said in response to where stocks are headed in 2025: “ I don’t do levels, only directions. I think most stocks are headed down.” December 27, 2024 at 7:57 AM As Dr. Philip George says: “The velocity of money is a function of interest rates” Dr. Philip George wrote: “The Riddle of Money Finally Solved”. As Dr. Philip George puts it: “Changes in velocity have nothing to do with the speed at which money moves from hand to hand but are entirely the result of movements between demand deposits and other kinds of deposits.” But MMMFs have grown by 19% y-o-y. All the motives which induce the holding of a larger volume of money will tend to increase the demand for money – and reduce its velocity. Bernanke censored the FED’s technical staff back in 2008. Otherwise, you’d see some dissention amongst the Ph.Ds. in economics. The real culprit behind our mess is the Keynesian macro-economic persuasion that maintains a commercial bank is a conduit between savers and borrowers. Not so. All monetary savings originate within the payment’s system period. The bankers pay for, compete for, the deposits that they already own. How perverse as this impounds savings and reduces R-gDp. The payment of interest on interbank demand deposits is responsible for the artificial suppression of long-term interest rates. This led to the diversion of savings from the bond market to housing and stocks. It was a deliberate policy blunder. Bernanke, pg. 287 in his book “The Courage to Act”, “Lower long-term rates also tend to raise asset prices, including house and stock prices, which, by making people feel wealthier, tends to stimulate consumer spending” (aka the “wealth effect”). “Housing is considered unaffordable if it costs more than 30% of an individual’s income”. Some esteemed people are actual idiots. Paul Volcker was dumb as a rock. Paul Volcker was quoted in the WSJ in 1983 that the Fed: “as a matter of principle favors payment of interest on all reserve balances” … “on rounds of equity”. [sic] Contrary to Friedman, reserves were never a tax. They were “Manna from Heaven”, showered on the bankers and costless to the banks. The money multiplier in 2008 was 206:1. Charles Hughes Smith put it @ 219:1 Link: “Bank Reserves And Loans: The Fed Is Pushing On A String” by Charles Hugh Smith Bank Reserves and Loans: The Fed is Pushing On a String – InvestingChannel You get higher real rates of interest for saver-holders by driving the banks out of the savings business, which doesn’t reduce the size of the payment’s system. In the circular flow of income, unless savings are expeditiously activated, then a dampening economic impact is generated. It was called secular stagnation. Who would have imagined that people pooping on the sidewalks of San Francisco may have lowered real estate values … With big creativity and freedom, presumably, comes volatility of outcomes. There are domains of creative freedom there, despite the stereotype, or it would not have remade the world. You can smooth outcomes in that domain, is that what you are advocating? And the real estate values are quite high. The rush outward from the pandemic seems to have settled down some. Networking still matters. Proximity to Stanford matters. So, are you saying that sidewalk poooping is just a small price to pay for creativity and freedom? san fran is KNOWN for its artistic shit… Says a lot that people will pay much more to live in a place with poop on the sidewalk than they would to live wherever you are. that says a lot about the people that choose to live with public shitting. One of the 1st prerequisites to modern society is hygiene, physical,social, and infrastructure. California in general went mad in the 20th century, there is some doubt if sanity will ever return in our lifetimes. Yeah, the doc that headed the free health clinic in Haight-Ashbury said heroin is so good, don’t even try it once. CSPAN: every day boomers are retiring/dying. Biden built a bridge to the world to replace them. RRP money poured into 3/6 month bills, CDs and MMF which supported $8T of new gov debt within 4 years to ensure the final 100Y uniparty victory. If JP will cut rates the “Rent” money will pour into the economy, reduce mortgage rates and ease gov debt payments The “Rent” money is 1/3 of US GDP. … and nudge inflation to other products and services. Meanwhile, what will stop the surge into asset bubbles? The “Rent” money financed gov spending. When gov spending rises productivity fall. Higher gov debt payments finance by higher debt, higher payments, higher interest rates and higher budget deficit. The private sector cannot raise debt forever like the gov. It’s not fair: private companies will go bk High inflation deflate assets value and RE. Rent is higher than wages. “Built a bridge to the Third World to replace them”. There. Fixed it for ya. ‘The Fed’ has profited in the 100’s of billions since its inception. the classic insider project. The Fed, enriching its members daily since inception after a secret meeting on Jekyl Island, Georgia. Peanuts for the gov. Biden did nothing,his wife and handlers used the demented dementia patient for their own desires. Biden was simultaneously an all powerful king and an impotent old man? Do you clowns even listen to yourselves? Biden was never a King, at least not since Obama was in office and Biden was the King of Crime. a large scale grift, like a corporation, takes on a life of its own, that can continue long after a founding partner ceases to be cognitively aware. Its interesting to note Danielle DeMartino Booth who Mish follows, keeps stating were are deflating based on the govt inflation data. She worked for the Fed and has called out their hypocrisy so I don’t understand her conclusions. Housing inflation is eroding our standard of living as well as all the other rising expenses conveniently excluded in the CPI/PPI. We are being conned by our dear leaders. The underpinnings of civil unrest are being stirred by our incompetent and corrupt government. Part of the fourth turning. DDB is certainly a well learned economist, but like Mish a year ago, she said the US had entered a recession in Oct 2023. A year ago, she was saying that unemployment was going to spike. So, she’s far from infallible. The real problem with DDB, me or anyone else making predictions the amount of money we’ve pumped into the system over the last 5 years and continue to do so via $2T annual deficits. Therefore, we can all throw out just about any past comparisons. In addition, we’ve got a president who’s turning almost everything on its head in an attempt to make long-term structural changes to how America runs government, trade, immigration, etc. In Iran inflation is high. Assets and income deflate. Income deflate faster than rent. They use mazut to heat Tehran. Daily stoppages. Workers do nothing all day. The Baluchi terrorize both Iran and Afghanistan. Centrifugal forces threaten to rip them apart. The Baluchi state spread between Karachi and the straights of Hormuz. Ruling Iran with an iron fist might not work. Trump dbl down on the Iranian inflation. Yes but what about Iranian Bitcoin mining in the digital mountains of the Quantum range. CIA spies posing as hikers in the Quantum range have photographs indicating a near infinite supply of ones and zeros. You can do a thought experiment. Incorporate Case-Shiller housing prices into a new version of the CPI. Then try to stabilize the new version of the CPI around some inflation target rate, using whatever monetary policy instruments you want. Given that housing prices are an asset price that can easily move by 10-20 percentage points up or down, I predict that you are to end up destabilizing the old version of the CPI. For example, if housing prices have a share of 1/3 (replacing housing cost), and housing prices go up by 20 percent, we need deflation of 10 percent in all other CPI items. This may well be the reason why it seems no central bank in this world has tried targeting inflation measures that include housing prices. Instead of thanking the Fed for saving them during covid people complain about the high inflation, high rent and RE prices. The FED didn’t save anybody during Covid. That’s your opinion. Mine too, M.E. The Fed is there to source (sauce?) the $ the gov., in its infinite wisdom, threw at you. boy or boy your conclusions are amazing My memory has been having lapses since my last 7 boosters, but I seem to remember the FED giving out certificates to anyone who got the initial MRNA vaccine series, it said on the back if you survived 10 years, you could cash it in for $1.25 or a Big Mac, which ever value was less. Wondering, whom did The Fed save? ‘The Fed’ is privately owned. The name is just a way of conferring validity. gradually then suddenly… gated communities surrounded by slums, the United States of Brazil. “Gated communities” is the keystone of understanding Trump’s psyche. It is the centerpiece of every last thing he does. Extracting natural resources and turning them into gleaming very exclusive walled sanctuaries for the rich (no matter the provenance of their wealth) is his ethos. For the enthusiastic, I would intone, ask not for whom the velvet rope bars access, it bars it for thee (in all probability). The masses are to be waiters or soldiers or such, dutiful and smiling brightly and lacking inner life, or to be thrust outside the barriers, into the despoiled former open spaces. Trump didn’t invented Gated Communities. they’ve existed since the barbarians were borrowing books from the library of Alexandria and not returning them or tearing out the pages and coloring in them. The FED is working perfectly for its shareholders. They don’t include housing on purpose. Their use of hedonic models to make price increases negligible have increased their ability to serve their shareholders even better. As is most the government the FED is not really working for us! Between Mar 2020 and Mar 2022 the Federal Fund Rate was zero. When the eon was comatose and everything was closed the Fed transferred money to the poor and the middle class to keep them alive. They did it several times. They created a money tsunami and tsunami of gov debt. When the econ was opened RRP sucked liquidity first, before raising rates from zero in Mar 2022 to 5.33% in Aug 2023. During the pandemic people escaped high rise buildings and major cities to work from home. Lower mortgage rates enabled them to buy existing housed and condos in the suburbs and the flyover areas. Demand was high. The RE market was saved, The econ was saved. CRE and the bond market were massacred. In 2022 when the stock market collapsed the Fed poured in RRP money into the economy. Now the Fed is handling the aftershocks of covid, the flow of twenty millions new immigrants and the sudden flip from tranquility volatility. I disagree that the fed’s money printing helped the poor and middle class. I think it did the opposite. Their rate repression pushed house prices out of reach for those people and caused inflation and worse debt that common people usually bear the brunt of. Correct It is ludicrous to claim money printing helps the poor. Printing benefits those with first access to money. 1. the wealthy 2. the asset holders 3. politicians A true diversity in Mish, Over a 5 year period, it seems illogical that the price of a home should go up by 52%, while rents only go up by half that, including the figment of Ivory tower imagination, OER. Half!!! (and am I right that the avg. wage has gone up less than rents?) The government’s use of CPI as defining inflation seems more fraudulent than incompetent. the whole point of mass media is to create a fictional reality, statistics are a means of adding a concreteness to that which is ephemeral. They make the illusions appear to have foundations in reality. The numbers are buried in a morass of fictional constructs, that bury those on a quest for knowledge like a sea of quick sand. Well said, Gwako. Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is interesting; what they conceal is critical. Its actually very COMPLEX. We actually sold a home and a Chinese market bought it, the highest bid. Read the American Realtors, the Chinese are one of the biggest buyers?? YIKES So, the migrants, California GREED, foreign markets are causing the housing prices to go up. Its complex, everyone is messing up our markets, and yes GREED. Your Curves don’t account for ANY of these complex issues. Now in my neighborhood we have multiple homes empty, yes Empty, and sold for a MILLION. So go figure, what is happening? EMPTY!! No one moved IN. “Homes” are repositories for money. The owner can borrow against that, and use the cash. Often this is a component of laundering. No small surprise that the Trump Treasury just suspended the rule requiring disclosure of beneficial ownership of shell companies. This is the pipeline through which endless streams of money flow to his folks. No surprise that the most expensive art piece traded in history (a similar asset) went in and out of the hands of a guy who also traded RE with Trump in Florida, a quick flip with plenty of profit for Trump. It doesn’t matter and is a distraction (right?) that the guy is Russian. So Trump will “liberate” OUR forests (his words) for development. I was in an open house today in Minneapolis that had close to 200 attendees. There was no room to move around. Buyers are rabid. Supply is constrained by people unwilling to leave their 2.75% rate. Covid not only didn’t warrant the paranoid lockdown, it also discombobulated the economy for years. F’ng Faucci and his gain of function Wuhan lab. He should be executed. Compassionately, of course. I’m down with that, as long as “ Compassionately” includes hanging by rope. Velvet rope, maybe. infinity shots of vaccine? sand flies, after being restrained in a comfortable chair, we are after all not barbarians. As if we’re gonna have enough trouble finding anyone to work in government with tens of thousands getting cut loose, and now people like you wanting to kill everyone who doesnt agree with Trump’s lying mental illness. We’ll end up with bible thumpers tell us to pray more. Thanks. God forbid we won’t have enough government workers. We shouldn’t execute everyone, silly. Just Tony Fauci. If you know anyone else who went around the ban on gain of function research by opening a lab in China, well, they could probably just be maimed. Scott comes from the school of thought that the free market is the jungle full of wild animals, germs, and dangerous plants and fungi; he cleans his house 7 times a day – a lucky number for OCD sufferers. In Scott’s world, the government is like pure white cube of justice, logic, and reason, a fortress of soap that cleanses the world of all danger, and decorates it with soft furnishings – but this is mainly for the pigs of this version of Animal Farm, and the serfs outside toil for the glory of the perpetual revolution, safe from the terrors outside in the jungle. “everyone” …when only one person was mentioned… exaggeration is part of your psychosis. Bat parmigiana for dinner … at my house we just call it, “The Wet Market Special”… If what you state are facts (I have No Doubt), then how are these numbers any good at all? If the numbers do not “reflect property taxes” that vary by state nor “mortgage rates” then they are incomplete pictures of actual occurrences, are they not? As an example, my Town just had a new assessment and our Taxes increased by 50% in some cases for people (mine 40%). This is an occurrence by all towns and cities etc. every so often (States vary) by their laws. It must be included, as it’s absolute to change, and nearly “Always Higher” Same with “Mortgage Rates”, but even more unknown as to how often, as there are no rules to the “Economy” in that regard. Key Issue: I agree that “QE that allowed existing owners to refinance at cheap rates” and the results of that were very damaging. Now many of those people spent the savings, and have less money coming in now, due to inflation, and savings have been depleted. They can’t and may never be able to refinance or sell and buy again imo. This scenario also can lead to less spending as well, for obvious reasons. It’s as if the “Cure” was actually the “Disease” for the Economy. I dare say it was a reflection of “Covid Reactions” as well which was just as devastating to the Economy. The Fed lost their way in so many ways, and over such a short period of time. It’s almost impossible that it could have happened without guidance, assistance, and massive agreement by ALL! What Town are you in where your taxes increase 50% in a year? Here in WA our property is assessed at the County level and when the assessed values go up, the tax rate goes down. Any tax increase is also constitutionally limited to 1%. Last year my assessed value went up but my taxes went down. Mine in Chicago are set to increase 26% in August (in one year) …. my building’s value kept getting increased after many years of valuing it relatively cheaply. It can happen. Especially in socialist sancturies. Except CA has the same kind of limits on tax hikes. So that will be interesting, when the bill here for migrants’ medical comes in. The CA legislature is mouth-foaming insane. I am sure none of them have ever run a business. Fortunately the RE taxes are above them constitutionally, or they would’ve turned this place into Venezuela. Well, someone has to pay for all those gov. workers and their gold plated pensions. Only people like you, idiots and ignorant, non-gov workers/pensioners stay to transfer their money to those rich people. Mish spoke with his wallet. And all the overpay just flows into housing bubbles. I know a retired CA teacher traipsing around Europe with the wife, retired cop lolling in a Caribbean sipping cocktails while listening to stupid music. Both with generous houses in SoCal and plenty of disposable income. Meanwhile, streets full of potholes, and the younger generation they purported to help and support is working 2 jobs to pay rent on a bedroom in somebody’s house. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave… Midnight and I are fighting about this and so far he is winning (10 year yield still stuck at 4.3% — not that I mind since my retirement pays based on the 10-year yield), but Im still of the mind Trump and his rich private equity friends still want free money (0% rates) to continue to buy up America as they did 2006-2022. And Im still betting those interest rates are going to zero by any means necessary. That crowd has access to capital, and collateral, and leverage, so can cash in on such things. It is a flywheel that so far seems never to stop. Three of the top 25 hottest real estate markets have been in Waterbury, Bridgeport, and Hartford Connecticut. These are cesspools of crime and violence. That shows how irrational buyers are behaving. The housing market is about to burst. The reason for the huge price increases in the northeast US is immigrants. I saw a news story about Waterbury in particular being a magnet for migrants. Upstate NY is seeing crazy price increases (+20% over the last year) for the same reasons. Connecticut saw a housing ‘crash’ back in 2022 that lasted about a month. The price increases since 2022 have actually been higher than during the pandemic. My prediction is house prices nationally are not going to fall because of recession. Lower mortgage rates and pent up demand will offset the effect of job losses. Real-estate values are still relatively tied to location. That being said, I don’t know if a real-estate crash is coming, but here in FL the tied appears to have turned into a buyer’s market. The days that homes are on the market has increased and there are subsequent price drops to the original listing price when the house sits too long without any offers. Its actually “tide”, but tied is a nice pun and maybe more appropriate for those economic serfs now bound to the financial insanity of the modern world. Maybe they ship the inhabitants over to wherever they are shipping the Palestinians. No doubt, the fed and government will make whatever “adjustments” are necessary to support their desired income on “inflation.” more F the veterans Arlington Cemetery website drops links for Black, Hispanic, and women veteranshttps://taskandpurpose.com/news/arlington-cemetery-scrubs-website-dei/ Hyperinflation is the only way to pay off the national debt and default on transfer payments. The US Treasury is manipulating the value of the dollar to gain a trade advantage. War is hell. Nope, for other nations throughout History, yes, but the “evil genius” Eurodollar system and Petrodollar systems combined are so powerful that nothing is going to replace it for decades still. There is simply no heir apparent to the US on the planet for quite a while. a couple large x1000 solar flares, arriving nearly concurrently will wipe out the electrical grid, and barter will become the means of exchange. happens every 6,000 years or so. The precision of so called “egyptian” vases, indicates they were made with computer controlled tooling and design. We haven’t found a 6,000 year old computer and none are likely to have survived. But we have the evidence of their use. History is cyclical, and the sun determines those cycles. Higher inflation will demand higher bond yields even if the Fed monetizes it. The deficit will go parabolic (already happening). Surely as the central banks increase the issuance of treasuries, and the price for treasures flatlines with excess supply, driving yields up mathematically? Though, yes, the market leads the process of rate rises, central banks follow not lead. It’s either a fast default (crash of the financial system) or a slow default (debasement of the financial system)… or expansion into space, where the potential for continual growth is galactic. [you can’t have inflation without credit expansion, price rises are not inflation]. The logic of a tumor: permanent growth. that requires the death of the host. Homes in the World’s Largest 3D-Printed Neighborhood Take One Week to Print. This Is What They Look Like https://www.xatakaon.com/robotics-and-ai/homes-in-the-worlds-largest-3d-printed-neighborhood-take-one-week-to-print-this-is-what-they-look-like Nice. Housing needs creative disruption . Housing just needs the government to get out of the way and allow the free market to work. Biden shoveled billions of taxpayer dollars to the banks so that they’d “prevent foreclosures” aka preemptive backdoor bailouts. The democrats also had four long years to attack the most obvious issue…institutional/corporate investors in residential real estate, and they did nothing. Sometimes it is not the government but NIMBY lawyers who don’t want apartment projects anywhere near them. Sort of seems like they meant to do so. Regardless, I agree it’s a mess, and “Free Markets” must be allowed to come back. How about when you want to remodel them? How does that pan out? https://www.ecohome.net/guides/3846/3d-printed-homes-is-this-the-future-of-residential-construction/ AI Bob Villa comes by and breaks out a wall or two, films a show, comes back in a couple a years with a new truck, and tidys up and shoots a commercial, by the time the grandchildren are graduating college, its all done … You will receive all messages from this feed and they will be delivered by email.

Via the Brownstone Institute , Hollywood loves a good sequel and so does politics and pharmaceutical development. Since Covid, there have been several attempted disease scares – Mpox, Swine flu, Bird flu, Chikungunya, Measles – but nothing has really caught the attention of audiences like the new Hantavirus frenzy. Today’s evidence comes from DRUDGE REPORT : global effort to stop the spread. Is “flatten the curve” next? Let’s remember how this began last year, with of course, a hantavirus death in the family of one of America’s most beloved Hollywood actors . It was Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman’s wife, who died February 12, 2025, from apparent hantavirus infection from rodents in the home. Terrifying image. At that point, no regular person had ever heard of such a disease. There is a reason. It’s rare and human-to-human spread is nearly unknown. Strange that it would hit the wife of the appropriately named Gene Hackman (get it?), leading man of the prescient 1998 movie Enemy of the State . Next up we have a reprise of the Plague Ship motif. Like the Diamond Princess, it is a cruise ship, the MV Hondius operated by Oceanwide Expeditions with 147 passengers, departing from Argentina and now anchored off Cape Verde, West Africa. It was headed to the Canary Islands when three people died, two with lab-confirmed hantavirus. No port would allow the ship to dock. With the assistance of rescue boats, the dead have been carefully removed by workers in hazmats and masks. A flight attendant who came in contact with a dead body is now hospitalized and in rough condition, suggesting that even coming close to a person with hantavirus is risky stuff. No one can figure out how this is even possible. So mysterious, so unusual, so terrifying, just like the movie Contagion . This fits with the theory of Drs. Fauci and Morens that we need not worry about lab-created pathogens when animal-to-human spillover is becoming more common. This is why, they wrote in August 2020, that we must commence to “rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.” Ready to opine for the press is the World Health Organization’s Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, she of Stanford University pedigree, now widely quoted as the go-to authority. You might remember Dr. Kerkhove from the original cast of the Covid production. It was she who wrote the WHO’s report to the world following the February 2020 junket to Wuhan . (We know this from the metadata of the report, which she failed to cleanse in the rush to publication.) “Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures,” she wrote of the CCP’s extreme lockdowns, “ has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities.” Many close observers credit Kerkhove’s report with inspiring the worldwide lockdown of all nations but four in the following weeks. She still works at the WHO. Hardly anyone remembers any of this. There is no mechanism in place for her to be held to account for her role. There is no known cure but a vaccine is in development by Moderna based on the mRNA platform. As a result, Moderna’s stock, down dramatically from its highs, is now starting to recover. It is now up 100 percent year over year. The buy signal is strong with this one. Looking back at the Covid prequel, there was always a flaw in the coronavirus caper, namely its short period of latency, roughly that of a cold or flu. You are infectious for a few days without symptoms while you pass it on. A genuine disease panic needs a longer period of latency. You need to be infected for weeks while spreading it far and wide. Why is this? Because every infectious disease confronts the logic of survival. A smart virus does not kill its hosts – it needs them to infect others – but a dumb one does, which is why dumb viruses are not good candidates for pandemics. This persistent trade-off between severity and prevalence can only be gamed by a long period of latency. That’s extremely rare and not even lab-created viruses manage this balancing act well. As it turns out, this hantavirus does have a very long period of latency, we are assured by the Harvard School of Public Health. It has issued a pronouncement : “The incubation period – the time between when a person is infected and when they begin to experience symptoms – is usually in the range of two to three weeks, but may be as long as eight weeks.” Two months! Imagine that. Here we might finally have our candidate for the silent killer about which Deborah Birx fantasized during the last iteration of this story. Keep in mind that no high institution in the US has repudiated lockdowns , even if two-thirds of the public believes they were pointlessly damaging. The call for Covid Justice has now 37,300 signatures but not enough to cause the Senate, House, or any other legislative body to speak clearly that this will never be tolerated again. To this day, the plan of the World Health Organization – which is already practicing for the next pandemic – is to push for lockdowns until vaccination in the event of a new disease scare. “Every country should apply non-pharmaceutical measures systematically and rigorously at the scale the epidemiological situation requires,” they say. Meanwhile, the Biden plan was for a 130-day lockdown in the event of a new pandemic. There are few mechanisms in place in any country to prevent this from happening. There are good people in government who would oppose this with strong conviction but will they even be asked their opinions? Or does this all occur with any obvious evidence of democratic volition? Who precisely is directing and producing this sequel? No one knows for sure . Will it be a box office hit like the last time or only have a limited release to test market interest? All the ingredients are here for an Academy Award: rodents, long latency, spread through casual contact with the dead, workers in hazmat suits, no known cure, a vaccine in rushed development. The real beauty of disease panic is that it has broad audience appeal and crosses partisan lines. National Review is all in already, as it was with Covid, and surely The Nation will join the effort in days. These are well-worn plot devices and sequels are rarely as compelling or profitable as the original. But when one is out of other ideas – and the public clamor to indict Fauci grows by the hour – it’s always worth a shot.

• • • Technology stocks are hammered today over AI concerns and a failure of US export bans. China’s DeepSeek AI Models Raise Doubts The Wall Street Journal reports China’s DeepSeek AI Models Raise Doubts Over U.S. Tech Dominance Global chip stocks slumped Monday after Chinese artificial-intelligence company DeepSeek said it had developed AI models that nearly matched American rivals despite using inferior chips, raising questions about the need to spend huge sums on advanced gear provided by Nvidia and other tech giants to train AI models. DeepSeek said last week that the performance of its latest R1 model was on par with OpenAI’s o1-mini model that the ChatGPT maker released in September. The announcement came after DeepSeek said in a late-December report that it used a cluster of more than 2,000 Nvidia chips to train its other V3 model, compared with the tens of thousands of chips that are normally used for training models of a similar size. The company said training one of its latest models cost $5.6 million, compared with the $100 million to $1 billion range cited last year by Dario Amodei, chief executive of AI company Anthropic. “There is a new AI challenger in town and investors are spooked at what they’ve discovered,” AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould wrote in a note to clients. “Its assistant is free to use and runs off lower-cost chips and less data—implying a major challenger to the established AI names in the West.” DeepSeek’s perceived success risks intensifying the AI war between the U.S. and China, Quilter Cheviot’s Ben Barringer said in a note to investors, particularly after the recent announcement of Stargate—a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank Group, Oracle and MGX to build data centers in the U.S. for OpenAI. News Corp, owner of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. Is AI Spending Justified? AI spending is just one of the concerns that Sends U.S. Tech Stocks Reeling. The sudden popularity of a Chinese artificial intelligence model called DeepSeek pummeled stocks Monday, with the tech-focused Nasdaq composite index down 2.7 percent in morning trading. Several tech companies that have banked on a surge of AI interest sold off, with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia down more than 12 percent at the opening bell. Microsoft lost around 3.5 percent, Meta Platforms lost 1.6 percent, and Oracle dropped more than 7 percent. Analysts said the sell-off underscores anxieties about whether the massive spending on artificial intelligence ― and the specialized chips, data centers and related power infrastructure ― are justified. Nvidia has exploded in value in recent years because it dominates the market for the chips at the center of the global AI race. It’s now one of three companies with a market capitalization above $3 trillion. But some analysts have raised questions about how soon those investments will translate into straightforward moneymaking use cases for U.S. companies. The emergence of a low-cost Chinese competitor adds to skepticism over those investments. The emergence of the model from China has escalated concerns about the U.S. adversary’s tech prowess amid a global race to develop advanced artificial intelligence. China’s advancements in the technology are viewed as a national security threat to the United States, and the success of DeepSeek has only exacerbated those concerns. DeepSeek is a China-based start-up that last week launched a free AI assistant that it says can operate at a lower cost than American AI models like ChatGPT. The company was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of the hedge fund High-Flyer. By Monday, it had rocketed to the top of downloads in the Apple Store.It also reported outages and limited registrations due to “large-scale malicious attacks” amid the uptick in interest. President Donald Trump has said that the United States needs to remain competitive with China in developing artificial intelligence, and he appeared focused on the technology during his first week in office. He told reporters Saturday that he was considering using emergency powers to provide the “tremendous energy” that U.S. companies need to develop AI models. We’re already leading,” Trump said on Air Force One. “Very shortly, we’re going to be leading by a lot.” Longtime technology investor Marc Andreessen, a Trump ally , called DeepSeek’s AI model “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen” and “a profound gift to the world” in a post on X . Leading tech firms have spent billions building out artificial intelligence technology for sale to large businesses. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post last week that his company plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion on AI and build a massive data center. OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank recently announced a Trump-supported joint venture, called Stargate, that seeks to spend up to $500 billion building out data centers to support AI projects. China’s DeepSeek Turns AI on its Head Sherwood reports China’s DeepSeek turns AI on its Head DeepTrouble The weekend buzz around the large language model — the fact that it “thinks” before it speaks, shows its workings, and matches OpenAI’s most powerful model, the o1, on a range of metrics — seems to have left much of Silicon Valley wowed and worried, in almost equal measure. Per DeepSeek’s own figures , the R1 model outperforms the OpenAI o1 on a variety of key tests, shining particularly brightly in math, where it beats the latest model from Sam Altman’s company on three different tests. While it’s less consistent on coding and language tests — it fared particularly badly on the “SimpleQA” (not shown in chart above), a test evaluating the simple factual accuracy of the info that LLMs spit out — the differences are fairly slim, making the cost-effective R1 look impressive. The Chinese company’s slimmed-down training costs, use of cheaper chips, API, and open-source model have hauled the endless drive for more chips and compute that’s driven much of the market for the last 18 months into question. Meta is planning to spend more than $60 billion on capital expenditures just this year. At a time when people are wondering if we can trust TikTok due to Chinese government ties, many have similar questions about DeepSeek. Tech evangelist Marc Andreessen was among those singing R1’s praises over the last few days — though he may not have asked it about Tiananmen Square yet. Another Sanction Failure Biden placed numerous exports bans on chip technology to prevent this from happening. Instead DeepSeek said in a late-December report that it used a cluster of more than 2,000 Nvidia chips to train its AI. No one should be surprised by this. To Those Hard of Learning, Here’s a Repeat Lesson on Why Sanctions Fail On September 26, 2024, I commented To Those Hard of Learning, Here’s a Repeat Lesson on Why Sanctions Fail Let’s discuss a claim that sanction failures are due to a lack of political will. Robin Brooks on X : “When someone tells you that sanctions can’t and won’t work, that’s basically pro-Russian propaganda. Are we seriously to believe that nothing can be done to stop the shameful flood of transshipments to Russia via Central Asia? Come on. This is just about a lack of political will. “ I am pretty sure that “someone” is me because we have gone round and round on this. When someone tells you that sanctions do work. Ask them for evidence. The above post was on oil-related sanctions. The next article is how and why chip sanctions failed. On August 26, 2024, I commented China Gains Secret Access to Nvdia Microchips by Renting Computers The US has blocked export of Nvdia chips to China. But where there’s profit, there’s a way. Know Your Customer’s Customer’s Customer China sets up an AI company in Singapore. AI developers buy cloud time through a subsidiary that further masks the operation by paying in Bitcoin. In turn, the subsidiary buys time from a company Dubai or Singapore that hosts the servers. US politicians are outraged. But some of us are amused knowing full well that sanctions don’t work. So instead of cloud profits going to US corporations, the profits go to Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Dubai, and South Korea. Only Amazon is forced to “know your customer”. Where Art Thou EU? Trump secured pledges to spend $500 billion on data centers. However, If the benchmarks are accurate, China caught up on AI development by renting NVDIA chips. Meanwhile, the EU is doing nothing but attempting to regulate AI to death. For discussion, please see The EU Will Suffer Because it Is Hostile Territory for the AI industry China’s DeepSeek AI Models Raise Doubts The Wall Street Journal reports China’s DeepSeek AI Models Raise Doubts Over U.S. Tech Dominance Global chip stocks slumped Monday after Chinese artificial-intelligence company DeepSeek said it had developed AI models that nearly matched American rivals despite using inferior chips, raising questions about the need to spend huge sums on advanced gear provided by Nvidia and other tech giants to train AI models. DeepSeek said last week that the performance of its latest R1 model was on par with OpenAI’s o1-mini model that the ChatGPT maker released in September. The announcement came after DeepSeek said in a late-December report that it used a cluster of more than 2,000 Nvidia chips to train its other V3 model, compared with the tens of thousands of chips that are normally used for training models of a similar size. The company said training one of its latest models cost $5.6 million, compared with the $100 million to $1 billion range cited last year by Dario Amodei, chief executive of AI company Anthropic. “There is a new AI challenger in town and investors are spooked at what they’ve discovered,” AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould wrote in a note to clients. “Its assistant is free to use and runs off lower-cost chips and less data—implying a major challenger to the established AI names in the West.” DeepSeek’s perceived success risks intensifying the AI war between the U.S. and China, Quilter Cheviot’s Ben Barringer said in a note to investors, particularly after the recent announcement of Stargate—a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank Group, Oracle and MGX to build data centers in the U.S. for OpenAI. News Corp, owner of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. Is AI Spending Justified? AI spending is just one of the concerns that Sends U.S. Tech Stocks Reeling. The sudden popularity of a Chinese artificial intelligence model called DeepSeek pummeled stocks Monday, with the tech-focused Nasdaq composite index down 2.7 percent in morning trading. Several tech companies that have banked on a surge of AI interest sold off, with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia down more than 12 percent at the opening bell. Microsoft lost around 3.5 percent, Meta Platforms lost 1.6 percent, and Oracle dropped more than 7 percent. Analysts said the sell-off underscores anxieties about whether the massive spending on artificial intelligence ― and the specialized chips, data centers and related power infrastructure ― are justified. Nvidia has exploded in value in recent years because it dominates the market for the chips at the center of the global AI race. It’s now one of three companies with a market capitalization above $3 trillion. But some analysts have raised questions about how soon those investments will translate into straightforward moneymaking use cases for U.S. companies. The emergence of a low-cost Chinese competitor adds to skepticism over those investments. The emergence of the model from China has escalated concerns about the U.S. adversary’s tech prowess amid a global race to develop advanced artificial intelligence. China’s advancements in the technology are viewed as a national security threat to the United States, and the success of DeepSeek has only exacerbated those concerns. DeepSeek is a China-based start-up that last week launched a free AI assistant that it says can operate at a lower cost than American AI models like ChatGPT. The company was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of the hedge fund High-Flyer. By Monday, it had rocketed to the top of downloads in the Apple Store.It also reported outages and limited registrations due to “large-scale malicious attacks” amid the uptick in interest. President Donald Trump has said that the United States needs to remain competitive with China in developing artificial intelligence, and he appeared focused on the technology during his first week in office. He told reporters Saturday that he was considering using emergency powers to provide the “tremendous energy” that U.S. companies need to develop AI models. We’re already leading,” Trump said on Air Force One. “Very shortly, we’re going to be leading by a lot.” Longtime technology investor Marc Andreessen, a Trump ally , called DeepSeek’s AI model “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen” and “a profound gift to the world” in a post on X . Leading tech firms have spent billions building out artificial intelligence technology for sale to large businesses. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post last week that his company plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion on AI and build a massive data center. OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank recently announced a Trump-supported joint venture, called Stargate, that seeks to spend up to $500 billion building out data centers to support AI projects. China’s DeepSeek Turns AI on its Head Sherwood reports China’s DeepSeek turns AI on its Head DeepTrouble The weekend buzz around the large language model — the fact that it “thinks” before it speaks, shows its workings, and matches OpenAI’s most powerful model, the o1, on a range of metrics — seems to have left much of Silicon Valley wowed and worried, in almost equal measure. Per DeepSeek’s own figures , the R1 model outperforms the OpenAI o1 on a variety of key tests, shining particularly brightly in math, where it beats the latest model from Sam Altman’s company on three different tests. While it’s less consistent on coding and language tests — it fared particularly badly on the “SimpleQA” (not shown in chart above), a test evaluating the simple factual accuracy of the info that LLMs spit out — the differences are fairly slim, making the cost-effective R1 look impressive. The Chinese company’s slimmed-down training costs, use of cheaper chips, API, and open-source model have hauled the endless drive for more chips and compute that’s driven much of the market for the last 18 months into question. Meta is planning to spend more than $60 billion on capital expenditures just this year. At a time when people are wondering if we can trust TikTok due to Chinese government ties, many have similar questions about DeepSeek. Tech evangelist Marc Andreessen was among those singing R1’s praises over the last few days — though he may not have asked it about Tiananmen Square yet. Another Sanction Failure Biden placed numerous exports bans on chip technology to prevent this from happening. Instead DeepSeek said in a late-December report that it used a cluster of more than 2,000 Nvidia chips to train its AI. No one should be surprised by this. To Those Hard of Learning, Here’s a Repeat Lesson on Why Sanctions Fail On September 26, 2024, I commented To Those Hard of Learning, Here’s a Repeat Lesson on Why Sanctions Fail Let’s discuss a claim that sanction failures are due to a lack of political will. Robin Brooks on X : “When someone tells you that sanctions can’t and won’t work, that’s basically pro-Russian propaganda. Are we seriously to believe that nothing can be done to stop the shameful flood of transshipments to Russia via Central Asia? Come on. This is just about a lack of political will. “ I am pretty sure that “someone” is me because we have gone round and round on this. When someone tells you that sanctions do work. Ask them for evidence. The above post was on oil-related sanctions. The next article is how and why chip sanctions failed. On August 26, 2024, I commented China Gains Secret Access to Nvdia Microchips by Renting Computers The US has blocked export of Nvdia chips to China. But where there’s profit, there’s a way. Know Your Customer’s Customer’s Customer China sets up an AI company in Singapore. AI developers buy cloud time through a subsidiary that further masks the operation by paying in Bitcoin. In turn, the subsidiary buys time from a company Dubai or Singapore that hosts the servers. US politicians are outraged. But some of us are amused knowing full well that sanctions don’t work. So instead of cloud profits going to US corporations, the profits go to Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Dubai, and South Korea. Only Amazon is forced to “know your customer”. Where Art Thou EU? Trump secured pledges to spend $500 billion on data centers. However, If the benchmarks are accurate, China caught up on AI development by renting NVDIA chips. Meanwhile, the EU is doing nothing but attempting to regulate AI to death. For discussion, please see The EU Will Suffer Because it Is Hostile Territory for the AI industry Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts. Subscribers get an email alert of each post as they happen. Read the ones you like and you can unsubscribe at any time. This post originated on MishTalk.Com Thanks for Tuning In! Mish Mike Shedlock Comments to this post are now closed. The Chinese product is supposedly rife with hallucinations. so exactly the same as chat- gpt Clearly, DeepSeek does not have any DEI hires on the staff. never miss a change to blame black folks for all the worlds problems AI is a tough sell because all of it’s users are brainless. Deep Seek can’t discuss Tiananmen Square or the killing of all those sparrows by the CCP that caused millions to die. Things will shake out. There is lots of room in AI for everyone to censor what they need to censor. most business that are investing in AI arent doing so because they want to build bots that talk about politics. the trillion dollar wall street investment is with the hope that they can create business applications that can lead to cost cutting. deepseek works just as well and siginfigantly cheaper and open source… undercutting investers wild dreams Oh thank God. Value investing is back A big aspect of this AI situation is Altman changing the now misnamed openAI to closed source private operation killing innovation. These “tech titans” should know better but nothing like short term greed interfering with long term what’s best for the US. What a massive squandering of resources. Lina Khan and Elon Musk were correct, let’s give them the credit they deserve. DeepSeek trade secret REVEALED: All queries are actually referred directly to classrooms of Chinese 4th graders who provide the needed info in real time. This technology is so vastly superior that all other AI attempts are doomed from the start. Lol. Command economy at its best. What better use for 1 billion 4th graders? The AI bubble was going to pop sooner than later. My significant other has tried several AI tools for writing. One highly rated tool gave the same character 3 different names within 10 pages. Another used the same descriptions frequently. She is attempting to feed one AI tool’s output into another. She finds there is little time savings since more is now used for distilling good ideas from mundane, as well as increased time editing in general. Same issue with AI coding On a lighter note we find out that the Covid did start in the chinese lab with grants from the US and Fauci. They were trying to treat chinese bats . Anyone who spoke out on the social media about these things were locked out for spewing misinformation marginalized and ridiculed . Millions of lifes lost many millions suffered extreme sickness from covid or from the vaccine affects . You wonder why it took 4 years to get the truth out . To think we are worried about a few thousand illegal invaders being rounded up and flown out to where they came from . Go figure . And Fauci got a pardon. Disgraceful So did 1600 of my favorite violent morons! Pardons for all! Ratcliffe confirms what everyone else has known for 5 years — The Covid virus came from Wuhan lab where they were conducting gain of function research on bat viruses while searching for a SARS Vaccine. https://x.com/ More to come… Not my post, but relevant and I thought a good summary: First we have the grant applications from the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak for Gain of Function research on SARS COV1 in 2014 that continued all the way up through 2019. The sub award was to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Specifically this grant was for conducting research to determine the spillover propensity to humanized mice (i.e. humans) using the SARS COV 1 backbone. Specifically, they cut the spikes off the original SARS COV1 virus and swapped it with a spike that was more capable of infecting humans. This is exactly the definition of gain of function research that the Obama administration put a moratorium on. Here is the link to the NIH grant application if anyone doubts ( https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8674931 ) Second, we know through our own intelligence agencies that researchers at the WIOV were infected as early as November 2019. Here is the link to a CBS news article covering this (www.nbcnews.com/…) Third, the spike protein on SARS COV2 was a commonly known spike protein (ACE2) that was used in GoF research because of its likelihood to bind to ACE2 receptors in the lungs. The grant application clearly spells this out. Additionally, the genetic sequencing between SARS1 and SARS2 is so similar that we would have seen clusters of infections near known bat habitats if it were a natural event, rather than it conveniently popping up in and around the WIOV without any other recorded infections.. Fourth, the actions of the NIH are very telling. In May of 2020, Dr. Fauci publicly stated that the evidence “was very very strong” supporting a natural zoonotic spillover event, even though the NIH can’t produce a shred of evidence to support this claim. A good scientist evaluates all evidence before making a conclusion and putting their reputation on the line. I find it extremely odd that the NIH and Fauci would issue a definitive statement as such, without having a wealth of evidence to support it. The CIA’s own analysis, that was conducted under the Biden administration, claims that it most likely came from the WIV. Here is a link to the New York Times if you don’t believe me (www.nytimes.com/…) Sorry, I believe nothing coming from the NY times they have been exposed as habitual liers . They are nothing but a liberal government mouth piece . They lied about Hunters Laptop , Russia collusion , covid to name a few . NY times and W Post are nothing more than a propaganda arm of the US government . The only thing truth that ever leaks out of the NYT or WaPo is when they accidentally make an admission against interest usually around the 19th paragraph . Will Trump ban DeepSeek for “national security reasons? They compete with my stuff. You bet he will. Thanks for confirming Mr. President. its open source. it runs locally. There is not way to “ban” it We had a choice: harness the talents of millions of brilliant, educated Chinese for profit, or tariff the hell out of everyone and fall into obscurity. We chose wrong out of egoism and ignorance. Idiotic post. China tariffs us more than them on most items. But faux outrage is my fave. All goods imported into China are subject to the nation’s value-added tax (VAT) of either 13 percent or 17 percent. The 13 percent tax is available for certain goods that fall mainly within the categories of agricultural and utility items, while the 17 percent tax applies to other goods subject to the VAT tax. If it is a VAT it also applies to Chinese domestic goods. USA has sales taxes in many states. Only an army of H1Bs can save us! Americans are too dumb. (double post) Maybe NVDA isn’t really worth 30 times sales. LOL… And also: Because Trump wants to use military—not civilian—flights to transport deportees, “American taxpayers are paying 300% more for Trump’s immigration plan than they should. “ The important part isn’t deporting immigrants. It’s putting on a popular show for the rednecks. The chains were my idea! Those military planes would be doing touch and go practice if they did not deport illegal aliens. Something that’s getting lost in yesterday’s was-it-or-wasn’t-it US-Colombia trade war: “Colombia accepted 475 deportation flights from the US from 2020 to 2024. “ Trump won this one. He was ahead of the MSM the whole time and the story is over. Normally, I scrutinize “stories” like Colombia refusing the planes because there’s always more to the story. It’s a moot point to rebut Trump because, as I said, Trump won this one. The planes didn’t land. The stinky guy failed. That’s what I keep him around for. Hope you have a little more cash for coffee. I know you can’t afford eggs now. Depending on how good DeepSeek turns out to be, this could be our generations ‘Sputnik’ moment where we suddenly realize that that we do not have anywhere near the tech lead we think we do. Whether that spurs an equivalent prioritizing of research equivalent to what happened in the space race remains to be seen. Sputnik led to a huge increase in funding for primary and technical education. I’d love to see that happen again but I don’t think we’re interested anymore. Sanctions and tariffs work. Look at the price of the rouble and yuan since they were announced. The goal of tariffs was to increase export – It failed The goal of sanctions was to stop exports – failed everywhere We just need more sanctions to reach the Golden Age! I thought the goal of tariffs was to force deadbeat Marxist countries to take back their criminal aliens here in the US? The goal of sanctions and tariffs is to reduce the advantages of low cost (i.e. low wage) nations from eroding the wages in the issuer nation. Most studies focus and GDP, or sales, as a measure of success. What you need to look at the pace of reduction of discretionary income for the average worker post tariffs and the time it gives the issuer nation to rebalance the economy. Low tariffs always benefits the rich people as they always benefit from labor arbitrage. Tariffs gives local substitutes a better chance and gives you time to adjust. You need to look at the bigger picture over the longer term for the median consumer, not the rich equity holder… China is doing amazing things in biotech, too. In some cases, they are ahead of US efforts and US pharmas are now in-licensing their stuff. Scientists from China come to the US where they provide cheap labor to academic labs, and then return to China with the know-how. Much easier to test experimental therapeutics there, and so they are in the lead in some areas. What to do? John Thune recently lamented our diminished number of Navy ships. I think he’s trapped in the ’90’s. Or listens to Hugh Hewitt – also trapped in the ’90’s. I have read that China is investing heavily in photonic chips, so they’re probably not worried about catching NVIDA et al with regards to traditional semiconductor chips. They’re trying to get to next level ASAP. So are we, of course, and everyone should expect Chinese companies will periodically make these announcements that remind us that they got tech mojo. And they avoid the woke mind virus. China knows how detrimental wokeness can be to a country, which is why they directly support it here in the US. They call it baizuo and laugh at us for it. Photonic chips execute algorithms, like silicon ones. So that has more to do with TSMC and Intel than Nvidia. Photonic chips are what’s coming after semiconductor technology. I would imagine China, like America, is trying to incorporate photonic chips with quantum computing. That would be the Holy Grail. I don’t think the NVDA bubble has popped. This is just a temporary correction. I think the whole AI bubble has a ways to go. Hundreds of billions more need to be spent and wasted before it has played itself out and pops. Another Y2K dot.bomb collape? What companies are peddling today is not AI. It’s a very good parlor trick, based on statistics. Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer, once said that the approach we’re using today will not achieve AGI, though I can’t find that quote anymore. Necessity, the mother of AI invention…and this is open source! Hmm, a financial guy I know says the Chinese lie about everything and thinks China is just focusing on “low end” AI. Could be true, or could be yet another “Exceptional American” whistling past the graveyard? I don’t know, but the story and post is fascinating. Thanks, Mish. China’s AI is 3 kids in a raincoat. If not China, there will be other competitors. Ten dedicated software developers could build a system that beats current techniques by 10x, and it will happen over the coming years. Last time I checked, the cost of supporting 10 exceptional software developers and a high powered building of compute servers is well below $500 billion. There are politicians to be bribed out of that… the smarter ones are expensive. I saw a quote on CNBC on this today, “I’d have to be crazy to have my developers keep paying ChatGPT when Deepseek is cheaper.” It’s amazing what you can do with enough cheap quasi-slave labor aint it? NVIDIA has lost $500 billion in market cap today. 600 at one point. Let the bubble burst My SPY puts are up 24% today but still underwater. I have until Jun 30 to cash out though…..wait till Feb 1 tariff mania starts and watch it fly! Bloated market. Antagonistic Fed moving forward. A long way down. All asset prices are absurd. An eccentric chemistry professor in upstate NY has said the market is overvalued by 3x for the past 2 years. Nothing to do with Trump and Tariffs. Greenspam turned the whole thing into a Greater Fool Ponzi. Powell is gone in June 2026. I’ll put someone in there that will get rates back to 0… maybe even let the stinky guy send out some personally signed checks. It makes him feel like he’s in charge. This is why H1Bs are the path to American Greatness, just like the old days. There is a great discussion on H1Bs between Lex Fridman and Andreesson on Fridman’s youtube channel. Andreesson is in the club. I’m sure he comported himself properly. It’s been in a massive speculation bubble for many years now over AI. Now a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money. I presume you are readying your put options on NVidia. I mentioned NVidia was going to crash last evening in one of Mish’s threads because of this (even posted a link). I had the misses sell her stake plus her Oracle stock late last night even though she didn’t want to because I knew it was going to be a bloodbath. You will receive all messages from this feed and they will be delivered by email.