HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Would you hire a Race and Resistance Studies major? No, but plenty of Dem-linked organizations probably would.
Archive for 2022
April 11, 2022
ANALYSIS: TRUE. FBI Kidnapping Caper Was Flagrant Election Interference.
THE TRAGIC KINGDOM: Disney’s Colossal Political Error in Challenging DeSantis Will Cost It Dearly. “What matters is that, in the struggle between Disney and the Republican governor and potential 2024 candidate for president, Disney is currently losing. And if it doesn’t cut its losses and go back to making kids smile and stockholders happy, the fallout will cost it dearly.”
“RECESSION SHOCK”: Bank of America is the latest major institution to deliver a grim warning for the future.
It’s been over a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to an unforeseen and prolonged fallout for the global economy. Combined with an inflation problem that was already spiking the prices of virtually every commodity, global institutions have begun ringing the alarm bells that we are on the brink of a long-anticipated recession.
In an investment strategy report sent to clients on Thursday, Bank of America analysts warned that “inflation always precedes recessions” and that tighter monetary policies being put in place to control surging prices make a “recession shock” very likely.
Inflation has been the bane of the U.S. economy for months, and rates have hit new highs since the war began. The annual inflation rate jumped to 7.9% in February, the highest it’s been in four decades, and the latest forecasts suggest March’s rate could reach 8.5%, according to investment bank UBS. Such a rate would be the highest since 1981.
At this point in 1981, the Fed funds rate was nearly 15%. Right now it’s at 0.33%.
The Fed’s a day late and an inflated dollar short of getting ahead of what ails us.
THEY’RE AFRAID OF STRONG BLACK MEN: Sen. Chris Murphy and other blue-checks triggered by photo of Herschel Walker with Justice Clarence Thomas.
Murphy’s not having a great week: Murphy Under Fire for Pushing To Lift Sanctions on Top Iranian Terror Group.
THINGS ARE WEIRD AND DESPERATE IN CHINA, NOT JUST IN SHANGHAI: Shanghai Lockdown Horror: Starvation And Suicide.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Do Republicans Have a Legit Shot at the Senate in November? “Mark Kelly has been flying under the radar as he finishes out the late John McCain’s term. He hasn’t distinguished himself but he hasn’t really made many enemies. The real problem here is that Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is the candidate who would almost be a slam-dunk to beat Kelly but he’s not running.”
He meant that the war would never really be over, that Ukraine would be on a permanent war footing, just as the Jewish state is. He meant that it would view its neighbors the way Israel has long viewed its own: As enemies waiting to pounce. Most importantly, he meant that Ukraine would never again rely on anyone else for its security: not the West, not the international community, not the so-called liberal order. It would be, like Israel, a nation apart, answering to no one but its people, in control of its own destiny.
It said something heroic about Ukraine, which has gone from pleading with NATO to save it from imminent destruction to fighting—forcing—the Russians into peace talks in a matter of weeks.
It said something not so heroic about the West, which had failed to admit Ukraine to NATO and, more recently, to wean itself off Russian oil and gas.
But mostly it said something profound about Israel—a country whose behavior over the past seven weeks has confused and confounded. How did the Israelis—scrappy, abrasive—become the convener of presidents and nations? . . .
But the bigger reason is waning American hegemony. America’s post-Iraq war exhaustion with the Middle East led Israel to begin to see what Ukraine has just discovered: That it cannot rely on the assurances of an America that has turned inward—and away from the rest of the world. As the United States backed away from its “red line” in Syria and pursued a nuclear deal widely viewed in Israel as an existential threat, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu shifted Israel away from relying on the vaunted special relationship, forging new ones with China, India, and Russia, among others. Israel’s position in the Ukraine war has brought the Jewish state’s new geopolitical reality into stark relief.
Our ruling class only wants hegemony at home.
TOP SELLER: Tramontina 10-Piece Cookware Set Stainless Steel. #CommissionEarned
CHINESE REAL ESTATE DEBACLE: Zhenro Defaults for First Time After Missing Bond Payments.
Zhenro Properties Group Ltd. defaulted for the first time after the debt-laden Chinese developer said it was unable to pay interest on two dollar bonds before a grace period ended Saturday.
The builder, which in February asked holders of about $1 billion of bonds set to mature this year for more time to repay, said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing Sunday it didn’t pay a combined $20.4 million of interest on two dollar bonds. That has resulted in events of default, according to the company.
Zhenro also said it might not be able to pay a combined $32.6 million of interest due on three other dollar bonds before grace periods end between April 10 and May 14. Failure to meet the obligations would also constitute events of default, the company said. However, the firm said it intends to pay the due interest on all five notes by May 31.
The missed payments are a reminder of the fragility of the Chinese property sector, which is grappling with a cash crunch and sales slump following a government crackdown on excessive leverage. Shares of Chinese developers fell on Monday morning, curtailing a three-week rally that was fueled by optimism policy makers may be preparing steps to support the industry.
Related: China Shadow Banks Snap Up Property to Rescue Own Investments.
China’s shadow banks are emerging as unlikely white knights for embattled property firms by becoming mini-developers themselves.
Trust companies including MinMetals Trust Co. and Zhongrong Trust Co. have bought stakes in at least 10 real estate projects this year, betting that the unfinished homes will eventually yield cash to pay off some of the $280 billion in property-backed funds sold by trusts to investors.
The push by these lenders to get into the real estate business offers some relief for investors and developers in the wake of China’s property collapse that has rattled global markets and led to more than a dozen defaults. The moves free up cash to help real estate firms tackle some of their $3.4 trillion in liabilities.
The shadow banks are doing these deals now, knowing creditors may have limited room to negotiate payments or deals with developers like China Evergrande Group once restructuring plans are announced, according to one trust executive.
“Taking up property projects during an enduring downturn is more about saving themselves,” said Zhu Yiming, a property analyst at China Real Estate Information Corp., referring to the trusts. Rather than await credit improvement, “it’s better for trusts to regain the initiative through getting a controlling stake.”
More: What Doomed China’s Much-Anticipated Property Market Reform Plan?
In Xi’s eyes, the real estate market is the epitome of China’s unsustainable growth model. It supports nearly 25 percent of China’s GDP, a rate higher than both Spain and Ireland before the Eurozone crisis. Since the housing market reform in the late 1990s, Chinese housing prices have grown so fast that a typical apartment in Beijing now costs 25 times the annual wage. Thus, high housing prices add a tremendous burden on Chinese people and suppress their consumption and innovation power.
In addition, the collapse of Evergrande Group, one of China’s biggest real estate developers, showed that the real estate sector might become a ticking time bomb for the Chinese economy. As a result, Xi has made reforming the real estate sector his primary target for the Common Prosperity campaign, declaring that “houses are for living, not for speculation.”
Related flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.
REMEMBERING WHEN THE LEFT ATTACKED DISNEY FOR BEING ANTI-FAMILY:
Although their methodology is Marxian and their aims overtly anti-capitalist, their allegations foreshadow the American Right’s current concerns in surprising ways. . . .
In particular, they focus on Donald Duck and his extended family. As they note, this is an odd family: Donald Duck, along with Mickey Mouse and much of the rest of the Disney pantheon, exists in a “universe of uncles and grand-uncles, nephews and cousins”. Indeed, “there is one basic product that is never stocked in the Disney store: parents”. The “innocence” of this world, it turns out, required even the exclusion of normative heterosexual coupling.
But the consequences of this exclusion are by no means innocent. “One is forced to the paradoxical conclusion,” they argue, “that in order to conceal normal sexuality from children, it is necessary to construct an aberrant world” — an “asexual sexuated world” that is nevertheless “suggestive of sexual games and innuendo”. The real significance of the disappearance of parental relationships is to universalise the capitalist “law of the jungle”.
Even as a kid, I did notice the absence of actual parents.
DEFEND THE REPUBLIC, DEFUND THE LAW SCHOOLS? Are Law Schools Now Woke Factories?
Students at three recent college events threatened violence against conservative speakers, along with the student groups that invited them to speak on campus.
This may be commonplace today, but what makes this hostility so much more shocking is that it occurred at colleges once considered eminent law schools: Georgetown University Law Center, Hastings College of Law at the University of California, and Yale Law School.
These future lawyers and their professors have shown us precisely what they think of free speech and open inquiry when the wrong people with the wrong views come to campus.
These identity politics-fueled attacks threaten to undermine legal education. As we have learned, nothing stays on campus anymore. Rank illiberalism in law schools will ripple through the profession and its institutions in due course.
Related: US Senators, Governors Call on Yale Law To Punish ‘Vitriolic Mob’ That Disrupted Free Speech Event.
“Instead of engaging with the panelists, a shocking number of Yale Law students hurled constant insults and obscenities at them and tried to prevent them from speaking and being heard,” the letter reads. “Our nation desperately needs the next generation of attorneys, legislators, judges, and Supreme Court justices to be marked by the character and values that undergird the American legal profession and a free society.”
To that end, the letter calls on the law school to “condemn the behavior of students who violated other people’s rights” and “take appropriate disciplinary actions in keeping with Yale’s free speech policies.” It also demands that the law school “retract and/or issue corrections to” its initial statement about the protest, which the law school claimed had not disrupted the event or necessitated police assistance. Both claims were subsequently debunked by audio from the event.
Governors and members of Congress weren’t the only ones to sign the letter. Ben Carson, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, added his name to the list, as did 24 state attorneys general and a number of academics and nonprofit leaders. All told, over 1,400 people signed.
Speaking truth to entitlement.
THERE’S A SURPRISE: DOJ Election Threat Taskforce Appears to Have ‘Something to Hide’: Watchdog Group President. “Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is being weaponized against opposing voices. Fitton’s group filed a lawsuit against the DOJ recently to get documents connected to the department’s election threat task force, after almost a year of no response to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.”
To be fair, the entire bureaucracy is being weaponized against opposing voices.
OK, GROOMER: Leftists Try, Fail to Paint Republicans as the Real Pedophiles. “Christina Pushaw, who is press secretary to the mighty Gov. Ron ’47’ DeSantis and thus at ground zero of the anti-grooming law debate, tweeted out examples of the lockstep leftist media as it tries to fight the label that creepy rainbow-pimping educators have earned.”
EVERY SUNDAY I HAVE THIS THING WHERE I DO A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE AUTHORS ON MY BLOG: Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
There is also a vignette challenge people have fun with. Any suggestion I do this to have some time off on Sunday is of course the wildest slander. Oh, okay, fine, that’s actually why I do it. People do enjoy it, nonetheless.
EXPECTING RETURNING AN OSCAR TO RESTORE OUR “NATIONAL CONSCIENCE” IS LIKE WAITING ON JOE BIDEN TO RESTORE OUR NATIONAL HONOR: Academy member says Will Smith must return Oscar to restore ‘national conscience’.
IF YOU GIVE A HORSE A DOUGHNUT: Horse becomes a weekly regular at Dunkin’ Donuts in Florida.
OH, BRANDON THINKS THAT WILL STOP IT? ‘I did that!’: Man arrested after placing Biden decals on gas pump, as fuel anger grows.
I’ll bet you money Americans will find even more obnoxious ways to necklace Brandon with his deliberate malfeasance. Let’s go Brandon: far away from us.
AS THEY SHOULD BE: Media On The Defensive At Disinformation Conference.
There is no such thing as disinformation. There’s truth and there’s lies. Any journalist who talks of disinformation has swallowed the idea that there is an “approved truth” instead of competing streams of disinformation. This is enough to condemn him in the eyes of any impartial observer.
OH, DEAR LORD: John Hinckley, Reagan Shooter, Launches Music Career.
IT’S BEEN NOTED: Putin’s New Ukraine General Was ‘Butcher Of Syria’.