Category: Little Known Facts

Debt Defaults: coming to a city near you

It's Probably Nothing Little Known Facts 20 Comments

Remember when the central banks were tapering their asset purchases in the belief that the economy was strong enough that interest rates could “normalize”? There’s a reason why this narrative has disappeared down the memory hole. It’s not just because of Covid.

As Economist Daniel Lacalle points out in this article,  economies that are addicted to rising debt eventually find themselves unable to tolerate what historically seem like tiny increases in the rate of interest.

“What happens when the central bank makes the highest-quality and lowest-risk asset extremely expensive? That savers take more and more risk for lower yields in other assets and that the perception of risk is clouded, driving investors to take too much risk in equities and bonds because the central bank is manipulating the most important risk signal: rates.”

“A mild increase of US 10-year bond yields to 2%, a more than logical move considering inflation expectations and the recovery of the economy, may cause a financial crisis not because of this modest rise, but because of the massive level of risk built in the economy from the prior artificial depression of those yields.”

I have to disagree with Lacalle on one point: I think the economy will be hit by a wave of debt default long before we see rapidly accelerating prices for consumer goods. The main concern of many folks will not be the price of a steak, but their ability to make the next mortgage payment on a million dollar home.

Where did these endless lockdowns come from?

Baiting The Left Little Known Facts Wuhan Flu 14 Comments

Against the advice of the W.H.O., a series of politicians have been imposing endless lockdowns on “their” populations.  Such pseudo-incarcerations are always deemed to be “based on data & science” but, in fact, they’re not.  Rather, they’re arbitrary, highly political, and are clearly destroying the livelihoods of large numbers of private sector workers.

How did this all get started?  The idea of lockdowns and social distancing came about from the 2004 science project of a 14 year old girl in Albuquerque named Laura Glass, daughter of Robert J. Glass, a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories.  Together, father & daughter and two others published Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza in 2006.  This was then championed in federal government circles in 2006-2007 by Dr. Carl Mecher, a Department of Veterans Affairs physician and by February 2007 this approach became official U.S. policy.

While the science behind this paper is arguably sound, it does not take into account the human cost of never-ending lockdowns.  The furthest they go is as follows:

Implementation of social distancing strategies is challenging. They likely must be imposed for the duration of the local epidemic and possibly until a strain-specific vaccine is developed and distributed. If compliance with the strategy is high over this period, an epidemic within a community can be averted. However, if neighboring communities do not also use these interventions, infected neighbors will continue to introduce influenza and prolong the local epidemic, albeit at a depressed level more easily accommodated by healthcare systems.

Even Dr. Mecher had some reservations about applying the lockdown and social distancing policy this year:

Dr. Mecher was a key voice on the “Red Dawn” email chain of public health experts in raising early warnings this year about the coronavirus outbreak and Mr. Trump’s reluctance to embrace shutdowns and social distancing. The shutdown this year is much bigger than Dr. Mecher and others imagined would be necessary or practical. Testing has been limited and some states issued social distancing orders even before confirming the coronavirus was spreading within their borders.

Dr. Markel called it “very gratifying to see our work used to help save lives.” But, he added, “it is also horrifying.”

“We always knew this would be applied in worst-case scenarios,” he said. “Even when you are working on dystopian concepts, you always hope it will never be used.”

It’s too bad that most politicians who have imposed lockdowns and social distancing have been oblivious to the grave human and societal costs of this disastrous policy.

There Goes The Narrative!

Little Known Facts The Deplorables 10 Comments

From The Guardian, no less – The truth behind America’s most famous gay-hate murder

A new twist came last year with the publication of another book, this one by investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez, who has spent 13 years interviewing more than 100 people with a connection to the case. His conclusion, outlined in The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard, is that the grotesque murder was not a hate crime, but could instead be blamed on crystal meth, a drug that was flooding Denver and the surrounding area at the time of Matthew’s death. This new theory has, understandably, caused a lot of anger.

Your Property Is Theft

Little Known Facts 35 Comments

Exempting favoured identity groups from the normal consequences of predatory and antisocial behaviour is the Hot New Fairness, apparently, at least among the enlightened. And if someone steals your phone or laptop, it would be wrong of you to protest, especially if the thief happens to be “of colour” and therefore, obviously, entitled to your stuff. Mugging, it turns out, is a form of “social justice.” We’ve been here before, of course. As when the Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the recreational looting of trainers, in bulk, and other fashion items, on grounds that the law-abiding are “hoarding resources.”

Woke academia, breathe it in.

Former Liberal

Little Known Facts 31 Comments

Martha Hall Findlay on the supply managed dairy sector.

On the other hand, the dairy lobby is one of Canada’s richest and most powerful. It spends more than $100 million every year on lobbying and marketing — aimed at politicians, the public, trade negotiators, and, most frustratingly, farmers. The myths they tell have their own farmers scared, the public inured to exorbitant dairy prices, and politicians completely cowed.

The Oil Information Cartel Is Broken

Ethical Energy Little Known Facts 21 Comments

Keith Schaefer, of Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin

A determined James Stafford of OilPrice.com just busted wide open an oil industry information cartel that has existed for decades.
Most investors look at WTI and Brent prices at Bloomberg or CME Futures, and figure the oil price is in the public domain. You would be about 2% correct, because there are hundreds of different grades of oil, and hubs where it is bought and sold. And they all have different prices.
Since the age of oil began until a few months ago, most real time oil prices were jealously guarded by marketers, who used it to their advantage in the daily multi-billion dollar physical oil trade.
[…]
Stafford’s quest started well over a year ago when he received a phone call from a reporter working for the Wall Street Journal. The journalist wanted help finding a simple piece of information.
He was writing an article about the African oil industry and simply wanted to know the current price for Bonny Light crude oil (the main benchmark price for Nigerian crude).
Now remember, this is a Wall Street Journal writer with access to an incredible network of contacts and research. This was not a casual retail investor sitting at home with pedestrian internet search skills and no industry contacts. You would expect that finding the current price for Africa’s main brand of crude for a Wall Street Journal writer would be a simple internet search or phone call away.
You would be wrong.

The price charts.

“Holistic” Is A Chinese Word for “Can’t Afford Antibiotics”

Little Known Facts Science stuff 10 Comments

…there’s a small subset of individuals that say that they are practicing what they call “Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine” (TCVM) on animals, including horses. They say that they’re practicing according to how the ancient Chinese practiced veterinary medicine on animals, practicing in a way that’s different from the unnatural, reductionist, drug- and surgery-filled “western” medicine that most veterinarians are taught. And in some sense, I’d say that they’re right; what they are doing is certainly different. And it also has essentially nothing to do with the way that the Chinese practiced veterinary medicine on animals throughout history.

Related.

American States: Economic Competitiveness vs. Political Leanings

Baiting The Left Little Known Facts 28 Comments

Yesterday a Democrat friend posted on Facebook about “how obvious” it was that liberal (ie. Democrat) run states were much more prosperous than conservative ones. I was curious about this statement so decided to check the facts. Using this link and this one, I compiled a table of the 10 most and 10 least economically competitive states:
US_Prosperity_Ranking.JPG
Incidentally, I passed on this information to my friend but have not heard a peep back from him about it. Imagine if a major news outlet had published a similar headline. How many people would bother to investigate? Yet after seeing multiple MSM outlets repeat the same things over & over again, it’s easy to see how people’s opinions get quickly shaped.
Update: Tim made an excellent comment which deserves follow-up. To further the discussion, here is the NY Times article he referred to, along with this rebuttal to it.

Target’s Failure in Canada: An Expose of Rampant Incompetence

Little Known Facts 27 Comments

Canadian Business magazine has recently published a detailed investigation of what all went wrong with Target’s attempt to enter Canada. Anyone who has been involved with logistics, software projects, and/or large retailing likely has similar stories of how incredibly difficult it is to do things right, especially when introducing new technologies that don’t have the kinks removed.

Justin’s “struggling middle class” vs Record Auto Sales (note SUVs, pick-ups)

2011 Federal Election Little Known Facts 25 Comments

Our new PM on November 4:

…
Our country faces many real and immediate challenges – from a struggling middle class…

One aspect of reality:

…
Canadians registered more new vehicles in the first nine months of 2015 than during the same period of any prior year.
Record auto sales volume in 2015 is powered by a boom in the SUV/crossover market and very healthy pickup truck sales…

Even Mother Corpse ran a–business–story:

Canadian auto sales up 5.1% in October
Light trucks dominate, but Toyota says it’s still selling hybrids
Canadian consumers bought 163,053 new vehicles in October, with sales up 5.1 per cent from last year, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.
Canadian auto sales are on track to top 1.9 million units in 2015, setting a new record and proving consumers are still willing to spend despite somewhat slower economy. That would follow on record sales for 2014.
Once again, light trucks are the hot sellers, with more than 104,300 rolling off the lot in October…

Just wondering why these facts are treated by the MSM as strictly business news not relevant to things generally or middlingly; are all those trucks and SUVs being bought by mainly the rich and poor? Struggle on, eh?

We Need Another Stinking Icebreaker

Little Known Facts 23 Comments

Who’d a thunk it? It’s the ice that’s rising!

Second icebreaker sought for Great Lakes shipping
icebreaker.jpg
GREEN BAY – A brutal winter that slowed the start of the 2014 shipping season on the Great Lakes has one organization asking Congress for another heavy icebreaker.
The Lake Carriers’ Association said it would like to see a second vessel built to keep shipping lanes open on the lakes during harsh winter conditions. The group is requesting another ship similar to the Marinette Marine Corp.-built U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw.
“I want to stress that Lake Carriers’ Association and our members’ customers deeply appreciate the efforts of the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards this past ice season,” James H.I. Weakley, president of the association, said in a news release. “It is clear that the ice conditions that prevailed last winter call for a reassessment of both nations’ icebreaking fleets.”..

The theme continued:

Great Lakes Freeze Cost Economy $705m, 3,800 Jobs [2013-14]

Great Lakes ice makes a leap after January cold snap [note map]
…
As of Thursday [Jan. 15], ice covered 34.1 percent of the Great Lakes, up from just 5.6 percent on Jan. 1, and 10.8 percent on Jan. 5 — the first day of a polar plunge that gripped most of the eastern U.S. for days to come.
“Last year, the Great Lakes were 21.2 percent ice-covered on Jan. 14, making this year’s ice cover 13 percent higher to date,”..

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