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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Repulsive psychopath and anti-science cult leader sets even more Covid death records, long after defeat:
| Quote: | Just as the United States greets the arrival of promising vaccines — and prepares to celebrate a starkly transformed holiday season — more Covid-19 deaths are being reported each day than at any time before during the pandemic.
The nation set single-day records on Wednesday for reported deaths, with more than 3,600, and for newly reported cases, more than 245,000. The previous case record was set last Friday, when more than 236,800 new infections were announced, not including tens of thousands of significantly older cases reported that day.
Three times as many people in the United States are dying each day now than three months ago, and the number of new cases is six times what it was then. Also, with large cities already ravaged by the virus, it is now exacting a deadly toll on many midsize cities. |
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/17/world/covid-19-coronavirus
The manslaughtering nutcase that just keeps on manslaughtering.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| pietillidie wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | Billions on unnecessary arms handouts to beloved Saudi Arabia. Billions on handouts to military-industrial donors in order to stockpile useless weapons in the wake of dismantled arms treaties. Billions on a completely useless and entirely ineffective trade war. I mean, who'd have thought that on a crowded, highly-connected planet that pandemics and cyber attacks might prove better military investments than the killing of Yemeni children?
| Quote: | It now is clear that the broad Russian espionage attack on the United States government and private companies, underway since spring and detected by the private sector only a few weeks ago, ranks among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times.
Einstein missed it — because the Russian hackers brilliantly designed their attack to avoid setting it off. The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security were looking elsewhere, understandably focused on protecting the 2020 election. |
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/us/politics/russia-hack-putin-trump-biden.html |
Don't miss the extent of this hack, and the duration it went undetected. It's an absolute monster unparalleled in scope, infiltration and capacity for strategic leverage, interference, blackmail and control. Just mind boggling:
| Quote: | The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months. The Russian S.V.R. will surely have used its access to further exploit and gain administrative control over the networks it considered priority targets. For those targets, the hackers will have long ago moved past their entry point, covered their tracks and gained what experts call “persistent access,” meaning the ability to infiltrate and control networks in a way that is hard to detect or remove.
While the Russians did not have the time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them. It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy.
The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated. But it is unclear what the Russians intend to do next. The access the Russians now enjoy could be used for far more than simply spying.
The actual and perceived control of so many important networks could easily be used to undermine public and consumer trust in data, written communications and services. In the networks that the Russians control, they have the power to destroy or alter data, and impersonate legitimate people. Domestic and geopolitical tensions could escalate quite easily if they use their access for malign influence and misinformation — both hallmarks of Russian behavior. |
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/opinion/fireeye-solarwinds-russia-hack.html |
And it just keeps getting worse:
| Quote: | | The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said. |
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/nuclear-agency-hacked-officials-inform-congress-447855
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Yet another study showing that tax cuts for the rich do not grow economies and achieve only one thing: a widening of the wealth gap.
We already knew this, of course; yet, the very people claiming to feel left behind voted for Trump's billionaire tax cuts anyway, ensuring they are left even further behind.
There is just no helping the blind rage of fist-waving mobs. It's almost a rule that they achieve the complete opposite of what they claim (if indeed those claims are to be believed at face value).
| Quote: | Our results show that, for both matching methods, major tax cuts for the rich increase the top 1% share of pre-tax national income in the years following the reform....
The magnitude of the effect is sizeable; on average, each major reform leads to a rise in top 1% share of pre-tax national income of 0.8 percentage points. The results also show that economic performance, as measured by real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate, is not significantly affected by major tax cuts for the rich. The estimated effects for these variables are statistically indistinguishable from zero, and this finding holds in both the short and medium run.
Our findings align closely with the existing correlational evidence showing that tax cuts for the rich are associated with rising top income shares (Atkinson and Leigh, 2013; Huber et al., 2019; Piketty et al., 2014; Roine et al., 2009; Volscho and Kelly, 2012). |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/20/joe-biden-trickle-down-economics-build-up
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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4 posts in a row and you quoted yourself twice, pace your self he still has nearly 4 weeks left!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Imagine how he'd be going if Trump had won.   
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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I know it's stating the obvious and I think I've probably already said it here, but this ongoing "right in front of me" routine from Trump has to be one of the most pathetic and embarrassing things I've ever seen. I know the man isn't exactly a font of rationality or prudence, but ... mate, get a grip.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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We could probably do with a finance/economy thread, but I'll put this here because of Trump's acceleration of the problem, and complete inattention to risk management.
I don't know enough about the topic to comment either way, but here's how one finance specialist at Harvard Business School reasons his way from an increase in climate disasters to another housing-based financial crisis. Great!
| Quote: | You’ve been warning for years that America’s housing market has been ignoring the risk of perils associated with climate change. Do you believe we are approaching a correction?
Yes. Damage from climate change has accelerated faster than many people anticipated. In USA in 2020, there were 16 weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each (some much larger). The average from 2015 to 2019 was 13.8 such events. The average for the 40 years prior to 2020 was 6.6. What’s more, we are seeing risks we didn’t foresee just a few years ago. We’ve been rightly worried about coastal flooding from sea-level rise but in the last several years there’s also been an increase in river flooding from rain and huge damage from wildfires.
Among other issues, we haven’t faced the tough question of whether people should be restricted from building or rebuilding in these places that are, in the example of California, natural fire corridors that have been recognized for centuries. Instead, in California we’ve required utilities to bring power to homes in these dangerous areas, and now the state is mandating that insurance companies renew fire policies at below-market rates. Similarly, in parts of the east coast, private insurers have long since exited the homeowner flood risk market and instead the coverage is provided with deeply subsidized premiums by state agencies relying on the National Flood Insurance Program.
This is a classic market distortion.
Indeed. It encourages people to make or maintain housing investments that are exposed to more danger than they realize. For now, governmental entities absorb the extra cost of these risks when they repair or rebuild these homes (using the tax receipts from other property owners, by the way).
Insuring, repairing, and rebuilding properties that really are uninsurable has artificially inflated home prices by papering over this risk pricing gap. In the short run many parties benefit from propping up housing prices, but with increased exposure to peril and further tightening of government budgets this cash-hemorrhaging system cannot endure. The question is whether it’s going to settle out slowly or settle out fast. My concern is that all of a sudden it just snaps and there’s this giant reset that leads to a real disruption in housing prices.
Take us through that scenario.
The optimistic scenario is that a gradual sea level rise or a slight increase in fires will lead to gradual declines (or relatively slower appreciation) in house prices. The broader system has time to adjust.
The greater worry is that insurance premium support will suddenly dry up, and at the same time mortgage underwriters will start to factor in the substantial danger of these exposures. The result will be a dramatic consequent rise in insurance premiums, coupled with a reduction in mortgage loan-to-value ratios (and at worst the complete inability to buy fire and flood insurance at all, or to refinance a mortgage). Housing prices will plummet in these areas. For many homeowners the equity in their property is their biggest asset. It’s a real problem if that asset declines in value or even goes negative (if you owe more on your house than its risk-adjusted value).
This scenario will result in a second circle of trouble. Most American municipalities get the bulk of their revenue from property taxes. Property taxes are tied to the value of homes and commercial real estate. If home values fall, then property tax receipts fall without a simultaneous reduction in a city or town’s expenses, so their ability to service their municipal bonds becomes imperiled. That could lead to the ratings of the bonds being downgraded. That puts cities and towns under cost-cutting pressure, which then leads to other stresses on government services. It also increases their cost of borrowing, with both factors leading to a downward spiral.
A knock-on effect will be a potential decline in the ratings and value of certain bonds. Tax-advantaged fixed-income instruments, such as municipal bonds, are a big part of many people’s retirement portfolios (and many insurance companies’ reserves). I argue, then, that this aspect of climate risk touches everyone’s pocketbook. |
https://hbr.org/2020/12/are-we-on-the-verge-of-another-financial-crisis[/quote]
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Meanwhile, everyone's favourite failed dictator has presented Scummo Morrison with a military decoration, the Legion of Merit.
The award is for "for his leadership in addressing global challenges and promoting collective security", which is code for "being rude to China (oh, and distracting everyone from my not-very-secret Putin connections)".
Trump also presented this poisoned chalice to the PMs of Japan and India. Not very subtle.
The result will and can only be to stir up China. Morrison is not in a position to quietly decline (which is what any sensible PM would do) and he is so far out of touch with reality that he probably thinks an award from Donald Trump actually makes him look good.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^It's the John Howard Man of Steel Millstone Award!
Pathetically hilarious.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Time for Boris Johnson to receive the runner-up Anglo-American Dimbecile Award for being the most incompetent and reckless idiot this side of Trump. As with Trump, it was always clear he would flounder in complete cluelessness when actual Brexit and actual responsibility dawned — true to decades of clear and unambiguous public record.
At the end of Empire, the only question worth asking is how two incoherent and psychiatrically malfunctioning idiots who couldn't feed goldfish without killing them attained positions of extreme global power and responsibility.
| Quote: | World's media ask how it went so wrong for 'Plague Island' Britain
The Netherlands’ NRC Handelsblad said that no one in the UK would have a normal Christmas: “not even a tiny bit of one. The ports are closed; London’s stations witnessed a veritable exodus; tens of kilometres of trucks are stranded on the country’s motorways; ministers are publicly saying the virus is out of control.”
And in the meantime, it said, there is “still no deal on future trade with the EU … If governing is about forward thinking, Johnson has failed. From ‘saving Christmas’ to a hard lockdown and looming shortages of fruit and vegetables – how can it all have gone so wrong for Britain?” |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/22/worlds-media-ask-how-it-went-so-wrong-for-plague-island-britain-covid
The truck jam formerly known as Kent:
https://youtu.be/yZoEPfwBQlo
https://youtu.be/u3Ed6fdgOMg
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| pietillidie wrote: | | ^No chance I'd have survived it! |
Recount!
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| think positive wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | ^No chance I'd have survived it! |
Recount! |
Touché!
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| pietillidie wrote: | We could probably do with a finance/economy thread, but I'll put this here because of Trump's acceleration of the problem, and complete inattention to risk management.
I don't know enough about the topic to comment either way, but here's how one finance specialist at Harvard Business School reasons his way from an increase in climate disasters to another housing-based financial crisis. Great!
| Quote: | You’ve been warning for years that America’s housing market has been ignoring the risk of perils associated with climate change. Do you believe we are approaching a correction?
Yes. Damage from climate change has accelerated faster than many people anticipated. In USA in 2020, there were 16 weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each (some much larger). The average from 2015 to 2019 was 13.8 such events. The average for the 40 years prior to 2020 was 6.6. What’s more, we are seeing risks we didn’t foresee just a few years ago. We’ve been rightly worried about coastal flooding from sea-level rise but in the last several years there’s also been an increase in river flooding from rain and huge damage from wildfires.
Among other issues, we haven’t faced the tough question of whether people should be restricted from building or rebuilding in these places that are, in the example of California, natural fire corridors that have been recognized for centuries. Instead, in California we’ve required utilities to bring power to homes in these dangerous areas, and now the state is mandating that insurance companies renew fire policies at below-market rates. Similarly, in parts of the east coast, private insurers have long since exited the homeowner flood risk market and instead the coverage is provided with deeply subsidized premiums by state agencies relying on the National Flood Insurance Program.
This is a classic market distortion.
Indeed. It encourages people to make or maintain housing investments that are exposed to more danger than they realize. For now, governmental entities absorb the extra cost of these risks when they repair or rebuild these homes (using the tax receipts from other property owners, by the way).
Insuring, repairing, and rebuilding properties that really are uninsurable has artificially inflated home prices by papering over this risk pricing gap. In the short run many parties benefit from propping up housing prices, but with increased exposure to peril and further tightening of government budgets this cash-hemorrhaging system cannot endure. The question is whether it’s going to settle out slowly or settle out fast. My concern is that all of a sudden it just snaps and there’s this giant reset that leads to a real disruption in housing prices.
Take us through that scenario.
The optimistic scenario is that a gradual sea level rise or a slight increase in fires will lead to gradual declines (or relatively slower appreciation) in house prices. The broader system has time to adjust.
The greater worry is that insurance premium support will suddenly dry up, and at the same time mortgage underwriters will start to factor in the substantial danger of these exposures. The result will be a dramatic consequent rise in insurance premiums, coupled with a reduction in mortgage loan-to-value ratios (and at worst the complete inability to buy fire and flood insurance at all, or to refinance a mortgage). Housing prices will plummet in these areas. For many homeowners the equity in their property is their biggest asset. It’s a real problem if that asset declines in value or even goes negative (if you owe more on your house than its risk-adjusted value).
This scenario will result in a second circle of trouble. Most American municipalities get the bulk of their revenue from property taxes. Property taxes are tied to the value of homes and commercial real estate. If home values fall, then property tax receipts fall without a simultaneous reduction in a city or town’s expenses, so their ability to service their municipal bonds becomes imperiled. That could lead to the ratings of the bonds being downgraded. That puts cities and towns under cost-cutting pressure, which then leads to other stresses on government services. It also increases their cost of borrowing, with both factors leading to a downward spiral.
A knock-on effect will be a potential decline in the ratings and value of certain bonds. Tax-advantaged fixed-income instruments, such as municipal bonds, are a big part of many people’s retirement portfolios (and many insurance companies’ reserves). I argue, then, that this aspect of climate risk touches everyone’s pocketbook. |
https://hbr.org/2020/12/are-we-on-the-verge-of-another-financial-crisis |
[/quote]
I’d say that’s not just a US problem, I’ve heard people hear whinge about the cost of insurance in certain rural areas, but just like a car, if you drive a sparkly look at me expensive steal me car, your premiums will be higher. If the chance of a flood or fire is 25% higher so will your premium be. In saying that, tornado alley fascinates me, while seeing nature like that is amazing, I don’t think I could live there, and yes I know it’s a massive massive area, same goes for places like New Orleans, so much of it is below sea level.
As for the above, did Trump mandate anything in particular to make this worse? The fire corridor thing should be common sense. Aside from money, the risk to emergency workers, even if just checking they are clear, crazy. At the very least they should have fire proof bunkers, and if you can’t afford that, you can’t afford to live there. A lot of an insurance premium is through the cost of false or dodgy claims.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Sicks Bux 
Hal 2003-2019
Joined: 30 Jun 2020
Location: Me Island Ome
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One America News & Newsmax are Certifiably Insane: https://youtu.be/D9bp6Z2NyDo
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The beatings will continue until moral improves. |
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