Kanye is more right than VOX on slavery

The insidious cultural history of Kanye West’s slavery comments

 Kanye thinks slavery was a choice. He’s not the only one.

The VOX author mostly gets it wrong also.

We have to distinguish between indentured servitude, practiced widely among all races, and Southern plantation slaves, a legally enslaved race.  Southern plantation slavery lasted 50 years, but bad labor law has been around for 250.

So Kayne is partially right, blacks end up on the short end of labor law but it is not slavery.    The constitution itself does not contain racist labor law, but it does hold up indentured servitude.  That labor law came from Europe and widely practiced among Europeans, new migrants being the target.

Priests on a preteen porkathon

“Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all,” the ad says. “Six dioceses, three hundred predatory priests, a staggering 1,000-plus victims. No bishops indicted. The pope’s response? All words, no action — except, insultingly, to call on the faithful to ‘pray and fast.’”

The pope help cover it up, but the grand jury evidence seems solid. 

What is a service sector job?

A job the firm or household cannot execute productively in house, they hire it out.  Service jobs should always be lagging in productivity.  There is a liquidity cost for running a service sector market.  When home or firm is willing to pay that cost, then the productivity lag is inside the firm or home.

Methamphetamine, military grade nerve agent

Dejone Walker, the man arrested in the fatal knife slayings of two Madera women Thursday, likely committed the attacks in a state of psychosis after a three-day drug binge, police believe.Chief Dino Lawson Friday identified the victims as Betty Terrell, 66, and Tonya Terrell, 51. A third woman, Jasmine Miller, 26, was also attacked, but survived to tell officers what happened during the attack. Walker, 23, is a relative of the women.The chief said toxicology tests will establish what drugs were in Walker’s system at the time of the attacks, and it’s possible methamphetamine was involved.

50% of property crime result from methheads needing their pipe. 

In this case, the guy suddenly ran out after a binge, his brain would be very dazed and confused as the neurotransmitter system was fouled, l;ike a concussion.

ICO failure

"No Sign Of The Petro Here": Mystery And Confusion Besets Venezuela's Crypto "Revolution"

Coins are easy, liquidity is hard.

My plan here was the oil discount coin. Oil producers, ports, and transporters buy and sell it, it offers up to 15% discount, and has a futures bet. The oil discount coin allows unanticipated inventory volatility to be spread over a  series of trades, traders have an insurance option. 

Popular because the discount is within range of typical margins.  All parties can make endogenous adjustments, locally, and ad hoc to cover internal planning errors.

The key to successful liquidity networks is the automated S&L, a prequalified party buys the discount coin and drops it into deposit.  Transaction costs low,  S to L matching error bounded makes for a low risk path to fully functional.

Get a few major bankers on the trusted miner list, insuring prequals in the oil reserve business.  The party contracts, up to a small ratio, to accept the coin.    The pricing is set by excursions from the norm, tankers who get caught empty somewhere, can accept the coin from local producers.  

The coin really represents contractual obligations on the part of prequalified traders.  Ledger technology, in a trusted miner situation, is low cost.  The result is this very liquid inventory insurance program, likely shave off 5-10% of inventory volatility.

Liquidity and the curve

Liquidity is dense spectral content, the market can move prices efficiently.  Literally, there is enough mix of traders such that the trade book isn't sparse, prices adjust in time with sentiment.

Liquidity has cost, about 15 basis points, maybe  a bit lower on the treasury curve. So the curve slope, now below 40 basis points, cannot support as many term trades as before.  And that is a liquidity shortage.

A bound:

Federal interest charges, ratio of real GDP.  We don't pay more than 3%. Small discretionary spending absorbs budget risk, favored programs get delayed again, and continuing resolutions continue.

But Trumpster and team see that last jump in charges, on top of an upward trend in interest costs.  They got budgetary jitters.

The Italians seem willing to pay 3.2%, at the moment, on ten year. They are large economy, implicitly backed by German banks.  

We have the tax growth vs interest charges rising, Congress knows the tax collection is growing at real rates, 2.5%, if we are lucky.  They pay the ten year rate, and budget is at risk if that exceeds tax growth for long.  Small programs, the stuff of small states, suffer the worst, but they have the most votes.  The deficit is temporarily worse, we are doing some dead cats on the corporate tax cut.

Boomers retiring

New claims rose by just 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 213,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. After three consecutive weeks of declines, economists had forecast a rise to 214,000, according to Bloomberg.Jo0bless claims are an indication of layoffs and have been closely watched this year for signs that trade disputes might weigh on the U.S. labor market. So far, there are no signs that tariffs have cost the U.S. economy any jobs.

They go on medicare and pension.  Government interest charges rising, relentlessly. The Pentagon fears a continuing resolution.  Trumpster looking for claw backs on spending.  To our horror, we find government contracts tend to have a one way inflation adjustment clauses, an accelerator on interest charges.

Price hikes hit consumers first

The dominating weakness was related to less favorable assessments of buying conditions, mainly due to less favorable perceptions of market prices and to a lesser extent, rising interest rates. Future income and job certainty have become the main reasons cited by consumers for their positive spending views.

The U of Mich consumer survey.

Important to note, consumers affected first  by rising prices, not so much interest charges. Spending plans have been trending lower of late, but we are still within normal volatility on this.    Watch discretionary spending, restaurants, gardeners, and vacations. 

California is not really part of the union

The Trump Administration Doesn't See Latinos as Americans

Eugene Robinson, WP

This is mostly about culture, 'we are not of your stock.'  Different founders, different language, different geography, different neighbors.  Somewhere California is drifting away, again. Trump is North Atlantic, Yawker.  He isn't racist, he just don't like California and the feeling is common back there.  To them, California is like this huge potential boat anchor, a Venezuela in their midst.

Good news

The Defense Department stands a 50-50 chance of operating under the constraints of a continuing resolution for at least the first couple months of fiscal 2019 and quite possibly beyond, a number of Washington insiders predict.What’s more, analysts and lobbyists say, one or more government shutdowns are not out of the question.If the Pentagon had to operate under a continuing resolution, it would be the tenth year in a row that the department’s operations would be hamstrung for some or all of the fiscal year. The military brass has vocally opposed CRs because they do not allow new programs to be launched and funding must stay at current levels.

The Pentagon can 'vocally oppose' kissing my ass as I pay their taxes, ultimately.   Idiots in Montana may like wasting trillions on bogus weapons, but they are mostly a dying, suicidal state.  Listen to me instead.  Make the Pentagon operate under a continuing resolution until they start spending money wisely.

Doing it right

FIDO is a standard certified by the nonprofit FIDO Alliance that supports public key cryptography and multifactor authentication, specifically the Universal Authentication Framework (UAF) and Universal Second Factor (U2F) protocols. When you register a FIDO device with an online service, it creates a key pair: an on-device, offline private key, and an online public key. During authentication, the device “proves possession” of the private key by prompting you to enter a PIN code or password or supply a fingerprint or speak into a microphone.

This leads to our intelligent cash card. 

Napalm Hotel!

NATO weighing whether to rename headquarters after McCain

Vietnamese babes hauling around a dead rice farmer.

Redneck v Kanosian in Silicon Valley

'You can see the dripping of hate': Inside the protest group at Facebook attacking its 'intolerant' liberal culture

Everyone virtue signalling.

The Jews have nothing to do with this.  It's the Rednecks, they can't figure out this diversity stuff.

Salute the flag in Arizona

Bomb rice farmers and salute the flag. Has the man done anything else?

I'm still pissed they banned Sambo

Ron DeSantis Tells Florida Not To ‘Monkey This Up’ By Electing Andrew Gillum

If not for that Sambo story, I would have never learned the miracle of pancakes.

I say, Monkey the hell out of the election, you have a bunch of bozo repub mass shooters, monkeying around can only help.

Now I am confused

CHRISTOPHER STEELE REPORTEDLY WORKED FOR SANCTIONED RUSSIAN OLIGARCH

I notice that all the Russian meetings were about un-sanctioning some oligarch, a normal lobbying function.  Where is the direct knowledge that Ruskie even knew the e mail plot?  Yesterday they said a China company dunnit.  China company told commie rat who told Putin?   Mueller is a mouse in his own cage, nutty.

Buffet goes sandbox

A bewildering array of digital payment businesses from global names like Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp to Google are in a slugfest to win Indian users. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is acquiring a stake in the company behind payments leader Paytm.

Investing in the bewildered. 

Invest in the standard, counterfeit proofed, secure, intelligent cash card, something in your hand that guarantees your contracts.  Useful in a variety of cash and contract ledger systems.  Would be nice to hold a secure python interpreter in my hand with bio-metrics and NFC, not much screen needed. A secure SWIFT protocol interpreter works well enough here, as long as it downloads ledger contracts I can thumbprint.

The market appeal is low verification because of pre-qual contracts.  The user can drop a hundred bucks onto the penny stock ledger system, auto-trade it and keep potential losses bound.  Pre-qual, trading networks with ledger rules and prior contracts, lower transactions costs to negligible. These systems allow 'in advance', margin per agent is current best  estimate and accepted at face value.  Cash.

Not your personal computing device, it is a specialized contract manager, a true credit card.  All the application level logic is on your personal computing device, you see the spreadsheet, rules and pick and choose.  Security and thumbprint via the NFC path back to your card make it happen, make it mobile. Your card securely carries the goodies, web services need not know you personally..

Any group can agree on a cash ledger system

“Akash provides the CPU memory storage and Handshake provides DNS – it’s a marriage made in heaven,” proclaimed Akash founder Greg Osuri, in conversation with news.Bitcoin.com. “I was so excited when I saw Handshake…Any application on Akash will use a Handshake DNS server. It’s a mutual partnership where they help us by giving the value of a decentralized network and we help them with adoption.”

Trusted miners.  

The Handshake is to define an agreed network for validation of transactions. Secure cloud is like an insured 'hot web wallet'.  The small cap stock traders, for example, might define the trading rules for members, and create a small set of trusted validators, make sure rules obeyed.  

Naturally a trading network like this can carry cash, or, more realistically, have a loan and deposit in advance, an S&L attached, auto traded, just a part of the network.  Intriguing, since members know uncertainty, the marginal loan business is simple, asynchronous, automated; a download and attach.

Bliss

Q2 GDP Revised Higher To 4.2%, Strongest In 4 years

Business investment and lower than expected imports.  I say this is partial confirmation of the corporate tax cut.

Corporations are a liquidity contract, corporations agreeing to a set of regulations that allows fair comparison in an auction setting.  By itself that seems a net plus, a thin but useful layer.  Equivalent to force round robin access to tradebook and distributing a known, bounded market uncertainty.

Why tax it more heavily?  Other factors come into play, like the market becomes intertwined with the government debt markets, not necessarily free entry and exit.  Look for net effect on government tax revenue.  Relative deflation can harm the sales tax income a bit.

CPI tracks real growth

Very closely at the moment.  

Real growth will be 3.5% and above, they tell me, making one of two things.  Inflation no longer tracks real growth, all is bliss. Or inflation goes to 3.5% and rates take a jump. Ten year treasury seems to have a stop at 3%, it is 2.88 now.  Someone has to say,'Uncle'.

Sheepdog?

Someday

Turkish Lira Tumbles As Central Bank Intervention Fails

I want a central banker to say, "nah, we will buy it at the bottom."

See you in Federal Court

San Diego employee unions and the California Public Employees Relations Board (PERB) argued even before the measure reached the ballot that it violated state collective bargaining laws because the campaign for the pension changes was led in 2011 and 2012 by then-San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. He claimed that his role in the Prop. B campaign was as a private citizen – not as mayor – and thus he faced no obligation to collectively bargain with public employee unions before touting the direct-democracy initiative.Before reaching the state high court, a trial judge first disagreed with Sanders and San Diego, then an appellate court sided with the city. But all seven state justices joined in a ruling that found that city leaders had not met their requirement to first seek changes at the bargaining table before seeking to impose them through direct democracy.

Bold face mine.

This is the Cal Supremes claiming that democracy comes second to union rule.  Not so if California is a member of the union.  The US Supremes have ruled that access to democracy cannot be constrained, it is fundamental.  No citizen can be specifically denied access to free assembly and speech, sorry.

Nation celebrates mass murder of 2.5 million Vietnamese

Everyone on board with LBJ and McCain engaging in carpet bombing of rice farmers.  Iowa farmers so enthralled with mass murder they demand a few fly over bombing runs in Iowa.  Florida repubs demanded a constitutional amendment making mass murder an American value.

Florida Repubs celebrate mass shooting

Student activist David Hogg took to Twitter to air his grievances directly at Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Republicans.
“How many mass shootings in your state will it take for you to do something?” Hogg asked.

Marco Rubio promptly passed out free AR15s at the mental hospitals.  Rubio was quoted, " Mass shootings are great fun, Florida partents want more of them" .

Why is inflation just right?

Consumer inflation and real growth rate of change, about equal since 2016, and that seems normal.  2015 seems odd with real growth much higher than inflation.

The related question, how come our 82 yard can kick is still on target with 55 yards to go? How can this economy manage with a one to ten year slope of 40 basis points?  

We will not know until we see the next recession, at which time we will get backward revisions to real growth..

New landlord law in California

Part of the kanosian attack on slumlords.

If a guest of a tenant has expectations of staying overnight, they must be evicted, a standard keep out order will not work since the slumlord has already looked the other way.

Now I don't evict, I buy out the rental agreements and get a voluntary vacate.  But I always follow with a restraining order, making suen the ex renter no longer shows up for overnights at a friend's.

In Fresno, Ca, the net effect is another two or three thousand dysfunctionals headed to LA for camptown, courtesy of the mayor of LA.

Still here

Doing my job as slumlord and dealing with deranged methheads.