Perhaps the choice of the pharmaceutical companies "windfall profits" was a poor choice for an analogy given the profits made by them, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and a host of other investors, for supplying a useless concoction that DID NOT STOP the virus. If anything, it made matters worse. A video from awhile back demonstrates that Tony "The Needle" Fauci believed that natural immunity was far better than any vaccine Big Pharma could concoct.
This is good criticism but no alternative is given. Since the 2008 recession the wealthy has gained something like 300%. Pfizer profited in the 100s of billions the last two years. Middle class has gained little, if nothing since the 1970's. I agree that regulation has gone overboard, but it is also regulation that has created this ridiculous economic gap. Most, if not all politicians are in on the scam. So - where do we go from here? It is almost like one has to abandon all government and start from scratch with a universal law of "do no harm". If we think of the harm these big corporations have done to the planet and our bodies, they own a "fk" of a lot!
The $200 Billion or so that is being demanded of the likes of Amazon or the major banks isn’t a tax, it’s a bill. The rewards of neo-fascism are rich and stand to get even richer for the business side of the various complexes - military/industrial, public health/Pharma, Big Business/Education, on and on. But for the likes of Amazon, the “bill” represents the payback price for the mighty windfall produced by the lockdowns. For Chevron and Exxon and the like the bill is a ransom - pay up or we kill your legacy business even faster. Don’t call it a tax. These criminals are all working together. They are winking and nodding in the elevators and at the fancy restaurants.
Where Big Business is concerned, ‘Tax’ is a word from the old world that no longer applies. There are windfalls, and bills, followed by more windfalls, followed by bills.
'Buffett’s company is digging even deeper into Occidental’s stock as surging oil prices buoy the U.S. shale driller. Berkshire disclosed in early March that it had built up a common stock investment in the oil giant in addition to its preferred stock holding, a little less than two years after Berkshire exited a common stock holding in Occidental. Buffett told CNBC in March 2021 that he started buying the stock after one of Occidental’s earnings calls.
Occidental surged this month after Berkshire’s earlier investment and as the war in Ukraine drove oil prices higher. The company hiked its dividend 1,200% in February and has sought to cut debt by buying back some of its bonds. Even as Occidental benefits from higher prices, Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub warned that U.S. oil drillers can’t significantly expand production in the short term to fill the gap caused by sanctions on Russia, citing labor shortages and supply-chain challenges.'
1200%...let that sink in.
Buffet also loaded up on Kroger stock about 6 months ago. Coincidence ? I don't think so.
In all fairness, petroleum companies have been ruthlessly targeted/vilified by the "save the planet" crowd in the US/Europe for many years. Drilling rights are being restricted along with a heaping helping of additional regulations and restrictions on how they operate their business. It's easy to be mad at the petroleum companies, but they're not the ones who decided to pick a fight with Russia and endanger our access to cheap Russian oil. Nope, our government did that. Thanks, CIA!
Let's face it: the world runs on fossil fuels, whether we like it or not. We can't build EV's and other "alternate power source" gizmos without factories to produce the raw materials. And those factories still run on fossil fuels!
So what's the solution here? Let's be angry at the petroleum companies.
Governmental diktats to big business mandating elimination of fossil fuel usage in the not-too-distant future are a mesmerizing cocktail of pipe dreams, bullshit, grandstanding and delusion. But let's keep running down that road, wasting mountains of tax dollars on alternate energy projects that will never pay for themselves.
"The book <Atlas Shrugged> depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against "looters" who want to exploit their productivity. Dagny and Hank discover that a mysterious figure called John Galt is persuading other business leaders to abandon their companies and disappear as a strike of productive individuals against the looters. The novel ends with the strikers planning to build a new capitalist society based on Galt's philosophy."
"Who is John Galt?" which means: "Don't ask questions nobody can answer"; or more broadly, "Why bother?".
"Looters" are Rand's depiction of bureaucrats and government officials, who confiscate others' earnings by the implicit threat of force ("at the point of a gun"). Some officials execute government policy, such as those who confiscate one state's seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others exploit those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad's supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.
"Moochers" are Rand's depiction of those unable to produce value themselves, who demand others' earnings on behalf of the needy, but resent the talented upon whom they depend, and appeal to "moral right" while enabling the "lawful" seizure by governments.
What a great novel that was. Coming to a book burning near you, any day now.
In Bernies world, windfalls are to be divided up and shared equally among those that made it possible by consuming or benefitting, goes his and fellow socialist Obama's logic. After all, business makes its money off our infrastructure transporting their goods, paid for by taxpayers. It's only fair.
The pharmaceutical companies knew the virus was coming, the NIH funded the gain of function research in the Wuhan lab, they also own a patent on the Moderna vaccine, which went into clinical trials in March 2020. Moderna stock was up 2000% in 2020, although has lost most of its gains now as the insiders took their profits.
Democracy is two wolves(Communism/Zombies and Dictatorship/Cronies)and a lamb(Capitalism) voting on what to have for lunch. Lamb is draining out even faster now with inflation. The two wolves will now focus on the most nutritious Lamb that is left over. Once no much Lamb left, wolves may have to face each other soon i.e Inflation can be the way Democracies die.
Love the analysis, shining light on the short sighted grift of taking from the productive class and giving to the destructive class. It seems no human should be able to put themselves in a position of such a privilege to accomplish such a task. But there is yet another layer (or two)... the public-private partnerships. Only with these can one accomplish a full measure of destruction associated with shortsighted grift. CDC, FDA, WHO, NASA, CIA, DARPA, USDA etc etc... only through these artificial mechanisms can you fully accomplish the fascist utopia these psychopaths imagine. Watch for the next pandemic- bird flu. Testing healthy fowl with the PCR test which in fact is not a test of health nor disease (just like the Covid nonsense) resulting in “positive cases” and the culling of millions of healthy birds/animal protein. This is not accidental nor the result of incompetence.
In my opinion Mr. Powell is a Lakey for the rich bankers. It is ludicrous for a Govt. agency to meet in an elite location (Jackson Hole) to fix interest rates. Heavens, we did not vote for these unelected officials to control our lives. They had their chance in 2008 to save the dollar, albeit the Fed is owned by the Haves.
Ayn Rand described these bureaucratic socialist urchins in living detail in “Atlas Shrugged”, 65 years ago. I always thought it was fiction. Amazing.
Perhaps the choice of the pharmaceutical companies "windfall profits" was a poor choice for an analogy given the profits made by them, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and a host of other investors, for supplying a useless concoction that DID NOT STOP the virus. If anything, it made matters worse. A video from awhile back demonstrates that Tony "The Needle" Fauci believed that natural immunity was far better than any vaccine Big Pharma could concoct.
This is good criticism but no alternative is given. Since the 2008 recession the wealthy has gained something like 300%. Pfizer profited in the 100s of billions the last two years. Middle class has gained little, if nothing since the 1970's. I agree that regulation has gone overboard, but it is also regulation that has created this ridiculous economic gap. Most, if not all politicians are in on the scam. So - where do we go from here? It is almost like one has to abandon all government and start from scratch with a universal law of "do no harm". If we think of the harm these big corporations have done to the planet and our bodies, they own a "fk" of a lot!
The $200 Billion or so that is being demanded of the likes of Amazon or the major banks isn’t a tax, it’s a bill. The rewards of neo-fascism are rich and stand to get even richer for the business side of the various complexes - military/industrial, public health/Pharma, Big Business/Education, on and on. But for the likes of Amazon, the “bill” represents the payback price for the mighty windfall produced by the lockdowns. For Chevron and Exxon and the like the bill is a ransom - pay up or we kill your legacy business even faster. Don’t call it a tax. These criminals are all working together. They are winking and nodding in the elevators and at the fancy restaurants.
Where Big Business is concerned, ‘Tax’ is a word from the old world that no longer applies. There are windfalls, and bills, followed by more windfalls, followed by bills.
'Buffett’s company is digging even deeper into Occidental’s stock as surging oil prices buoy the U.S. shale driller. Berkshire disclosed in early March that it had built up a common stock investment in the oil giant in addition to its preferred stock holding, a little less than two years after Berkshire exited a common stock holding in Occidental. Buffett told CNBC in March 2021 that he started buying the stock after one of Occidental’s earnings calls.
Occidental surged this month after Berkshire’s earlier investment and as the war in Ukraine drove oil prices higher. The company hiked its dividend 1,200% in February and has sought to cut debt by buying back some of its bonds. Even as Occidental benefits from higher prices, Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub warned that U.S. oil drillers can’t significantly expand production in the short term to fill the gap caused by sanctions on Russia, citing labor shortages and supply-chain challenges.'
1200%...let that sink in.
Buffet also loaded up on Kroger stock about 6 months ago. Coincidence ? I don't think so.
They destroy families to make more billions.
In all fairness, petroleum companies have been ruthlessly targeted/vilified by the "save the planet" crowd in the US/Europe for many years. Drilling rights are being restricted along with a heaping helping of additional regulations and restrictions on how they operate their business. It's easy to be mad at the petroleum companies, but they're not the ones who decided to pick a fight with Russia and endanger our access to cheap Russian oil. Nope, our government did that. Thanks, CIA!
Let's face it: the world runs on fossil fuels, whether we like it or not. We can't build EV's and other "alternate power source" gizmos without factories to produce the raw materials. And those factories still run on fossil fuels!
So what's the solution here? Let's be angry at the petroleum companies.
Governmental diktats to big business mandating elimination of fossil fuel usage in the not-too-distant future are a mesmerizing cocktail of pipe dreams, bullshit, grandstanding and delusion. But let's keep running down that road, wasting mountains of tax dollars on alternate energy projects that will never pay for themselves.
When will U.S. homo sapiens that are productive stop voting?
Who is John Galt? <courtesy of Wikipedia>
"The book <Atlas Shrugged> depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against "looters" who want to exploit their productivity. Dagny and Hank discover that a mysterious figure called John Galt is persuading other business leaders to abandon their companies and disappear as a strike of productive individuals against the looters. The novel ends with the strikers planning to build a new capitalist society based on Galt's philosophy."
"Who is John Galt?" which means: "Don't ask questions nobody can answer"; or more broadly, "Why bother?".
"Looters" are Rand's depiction of bureaucrats and government officials, who confiscate others' earnings by the implicit threat of force ("at the point of a gun"). Some officials execute government policy, such as those who confiscate one state's seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others exploit those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad's supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.
"Moochers" are Rand's depiction of those unable to produce value themselves, who demand others' earnings on behalf of the needy, but resent the talented upon whom they depend, and appeal to "moral right" while enabling the "lawful" seizure by governments.
What a great novel that was. Coming to a book burning near you, any day now.
In Bernies world, windfalls are to be divided up and shared equally among those that made it possible by consuming or benefitting, goes his and fellow socialist Obama's logic. After all, business makes its money off our infrastructure transporting their goods, paid for by taxpayers. It's only fair.
They should be paying for use of the infrastructure, not taxing their revenue.
They would find a way.
The pharmaceutical companies knew the virus was coming, the NIH funded the gain of function research in the Wuhan lab, they also own a patent on the Moderna vaccine, which went into clinical trials in March 2020. Moderna stock was up 2000% in 2020, although has lost most of its gains now as the insiders took their profits.
QAnon ?
Democracy is two wolves(Communism/Zombies and Dictatorship/Cronies)and a lamb(Capitalism) voting on what to have for lunch. Lamb is draining out even faster now with inflation. The two wolves will now focus on the most nutritious Lamb that is left over. Once no much Lamb left, wolves may have to face each other soon i.e Inflation can be the way Democracies die.
Love the analysis, shining light on the short sighted grift of taking from the productive class and giving to the destructive class. It seems no human should be able to put themselves in a position of such a privilege to accomplish such a task. But there is yet another layer (or two)... the public-private partnerships. Only with these can one accomplish a full measure of destruction associated with shortsighted grift. CDC, FDA, WHO, NASA, CIA, DARPA, USDA etc etc... only through these artificial mechanisms can you fully accomplish the fascist utopia these psychopaths imagine. Watch for the next pandemic- bird flu. Testing healthy fowl with the PCR test which in fact is not a test of health nor disease (just like the Covid nonsense) resulting in “positive cases” and the culling of millions of healthy birds/animal protein. This is not accidental nor the result of incompetence.
It wouldn't be quite so ridiculous if it specifically was designated to reduce the impossible-to-repay debt we have acquired.
' Shock Doctrine '
Naomi Klein
A great book and a great documentary online.
This reminds me of the story of the "Ant and The Grasshopper".
In my opinion Mr. Powell is a Lakey for the rich bankers. It is ludicrous for a Govt. agency to meet in an elite location (Jackson Hole) to fix interest rates. Heavens, we did not vote for these unelected officials to control our lives. They had their chance in 2008 to save the dollar, albeit the Fed is owned by the Haves.
The Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by private Wall Street and European banks. It is not a government agency.
Shalom