Singing the Bankster Blues

Stock futures were pointing to another down opening to markets.  In the wake of the Fed hike Wednesday to the highest level in 16-years.

Naturally, loving free dough, we snagged a little “lunch money” in the deal, but (I know this will sound odd) there’s no real pleasure to making a few bucks on a down market.  Well, some, maybe.

The bigger problem is what the market telegraphs about the Future.  It ain’t pretty in the close-up:

Yessir, we have a problem here, for sure.

But this is only the BEGINNING of the Second Depression, as we figure it.

The run-up from 2009 lows to present – when lined up with the run up to (and collapse following) 1929 is even worse.

As you can see, the stock market has the potential to fall to about 20 percent of its present value.  But, that kind of thing won’t happen overnight.  And if you like delusions?  Remember a great deal of economic collapse can be hidden by good old-fashioned Inflation.

The Job Numbers Count

The weird part of what’s going on now is the Jobs picture.  The JOLTS report Tuesday was kind of meh.  But the ADP Job story yesterday was positively glowing.  And that’s the disconnect tomorrow’s federal jobs report will have to address.

For now, however, we have the Challenger Job Cuts report just out:

Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. ©

The bummer is that red line:

“U.S.-based employers announced 66,995 cuts in April, a 176% increase from the 24,286 cuts announced in April 2022. It fell 25% from the 89,703 cuts announced in March, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

So far this year, employers announced plans to cut 337,411 jobs, a 322% increase from the 79,982 cuts announced in the first four months of 2022. This is the highest January-April total since 2020, when 1,017,812 cuts were announced through April. With the exclusion of 2020, this is the highest January-April total since 2009, when 711,100 cuts were announced in the first four months of the year.”

The hell of it is:  There are still scads and oodles of people who are choosing not to work because (and we get this) why work harder than you have to if the odds of becoming a billionaire are so remote?

Which wheels us to the weekend new filers for unemployment compensation…where the picture isn’t too bad, considering:

If you’re looking for some silver lining to the economic mess, it’s that with the dollar remaining strong and with imports from Asia down significantly for the year, the trade deficit is going down:

All of this lines up the financial collapse brought about by commercial real estate portfolios of major banks which now appear ready to take down their next victim.  PacWest stock plummets after report of potential sale; other bank stocks fall too.

We may be at the point where it’s not IF we’re going to have a bad recession.  More like how long will it take the pain to spread to enough people that it will sour the national mood?

Meanwhile at the Circus

Still no sign of a budget deal.  As Debt ceiling: GOP lawmakers reject short-term debt limit increase (usatoday.com) we have to wonder who will blink first.  The fact (we think) is that neither party will be stupid enough to box in Social Security checks or military retirements.  However, I’ve made something of a career of giving stupid people more credit than they deserve and this kinda has… oh, you know…the same kind of vibe to it.

Of course, while we’re reading fear-stories about A.I. like Godfather of AI Geoff Hinton to advise Musk and White House | Fortune – seems to us someone at the Fed or (God help us) congress ask A.I. for some solutions to the economy.  (World War is not a ‘right’ answer, though it sure creates a lot of job openings…)

Speaking of Wars

A.I. or not, we keep edging over in that direction.

With weather in the Taiwan area settling down into seasonal breaks from high winds, we found it interesting to read Taiwan trade chief warns against ‘unnecessary fear’ of China – ABC News.  This weekend seems to us to be a high-risk one for Taiwan.  But maybe over the next 3-day holiday weekend for the U.S. since that’s when Washington is more out to lunch than usual.

Monday May 28th isn’t that far away.

Maybe You Can Help?

The Climate stupidity of America is breathtaking.  Now NY has put a ban on new natural gas construction: New York State bans natural gas in some new construction. This just isn’t making sense for me because cooking on gas stoves isn’t damaging the environment any more than cow farts.

BUT we do have to ask reader guidance because at the same time cow fart bags and wrecking of gourmet cooking (I dream of a six-burner Wolf commercial stove someday) we have the greenies lining up for nuclear power.  I can’t make this up: Support For Nuclear Energy In The U.S. Is At A 10-Year High | OilPrice.com.  Nuclear pollution for EVs?  Help a brother out…

Can one of our engineer-readers please explain whether you’d be better off with eons worth of genetics damaging nuke waste versus the far more benign Nat Gas heat and cookery?

Maybe I’m just getting old and asking embarassing questions, but is the whole world NUTS?

Nuclear Weekend

Another reason my consigliere is worried about this weekend (besides gentle marine weather off Taiwan) is this whole Russian nuclear saber dance stuff.

The Russians are using threats of nuclear response as Kremlin: Washington obviously involved in drone attacks (pravda.ru).  Naturally, Ukraine says “not us” but it’s getting hard to figure out who (if any one at all) is telling the truth in that part of the world.

Meantime, we’ve been hearing the West now has radiation sensors in place with the mission of figuring out where any nuclear debris was “born.” If and when.  You can tell which country’s reactors were used by the study of radionuclides, we hear.

We’ve been talking about war weather today, so a glance at the weather around Kyiv over here shows north-northeast winds this weekend which would prevent any Russian first use from blowing over, uh, Chernobyl, for example.

And then we have 5-days to load up on supplies before that Nostradamus May 10 earthquake window opens.

Yep, we sure do know how to have a good time, don’t we?

ATR: The First 90

George 2 should be rolling in this evening after a year of server farm site medic work up north.  He’s coming in just in time for the weather to “get hot” on us. 90F may arrive next week.

The weather so far this year in East Texas has been a few degrees cooler and wetter than last year.  In April, Tyler Texas Weather reported a mean temperature for April of 62.9F for the month.  Last year the mean was 67.3 – which made the Spring glorious.

Wetter, too.  Year to date rainfall ending April was 17.81 inches.  A year ago April ended at 12.65 inches.  By comparison, Seattle had 11.9 inches for the year to date after being out-rained by Los Angeles earlier in the year.

G2 will be just in time to get the sunscreen up over the lean-too greenhouse.  Already slipped up and forgot to turn on the swamp cooler fan and got the tomatoes up to 110F, though they should recover with extra water.

Our tomatoes in the greenhouse are about to turn one-year old, and to winter-over tomatoes with the small diesel heater was an interesting experiment.

There’s an art to getting tomatoes to grow right – which means Big.  One of those easier projects in life that’s pleasantly rewarding when mastered.

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net

52 thoughts on “Singing the Bankster Blues”

  1. The recycling yards (use to be junk yards) around here have been bought up by some entity that has put a stop to all shopping. No more angle iron or diamond plate ,all gets exported. All the condemned gas stoves will be remaned into electric by some entity that already has some for us to import. Could this be the same outfit pushing the “zero pollution” electric car ?

  2. Wegman’s, a grocery store in the north just notified their employees that they will be using AI for all their shopping carts. AI will tally their purchases with a total. Customers will take their cart to the register and scan their bar code to pay. can we say CBDC is getting closer?

  3. Parallel to FDIC bailing there are back channels bailing. The ‘Federal Home Loan Bank system’ was created back in 1932. The website offers a lot of data.

    Earlier today 5/4:

    “The Federal Home Loan Bank system extended more than $1 trillion in advances to members in the first quarter of the year, the highest amount on record. FHLB borrowings – which are collateralised by mortgages and other top-quality assets – increased 28% quarter on quarter as demand for liquidity spiked following significant deposit outflows in March.”

    They don’t include April, May bank bailouts are just starting.

    Some folks believe credit unions are somehow different from banks. Financial institutions are all in the same .gov programs. When the institutions go over the falls they all go together.

    FHBL member list.

    Membership Listings

    The Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) members include thrift institutions, commercial banks, credit unions, and insurance companies.

    https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Downloads/Pages/Federal-Home-Loan-Bank-Member-Data.aspx

  4. Yes, every nuclear reactor has a unique fingerprint of fission and activation products. This distribution survives processing of fissile materials. So if a nuke is used we can determine which reactor produced the fissile materials. We used to (probably still due) take samples including air down wind of former soviet block reactors(they are quite leaky compared to western reactors). It can slowly change over time due to aging, maintenance and component repair/replacement. When Chernobyl happened I was working at a reactor in the Midwest. The utility offered radiation monitoring to people who had been in the possible affected areas as a public service. There was one family that was in Kiev when all that went down. Most of them had detectable but below the limits amounts of radionuclides. The mother was a different story. She was a fresh fruit and vegetable addict who bought them from street markets every morning to eat raw. When I performed a whole body count on her with the gamma spectrometer I was surprised. The spectrum building up looked like a reactor coolant sample. I made a bunch of calls to my management on what to tell her. She was refereed to specialists dealing with this type of condition where she probably was treated with chelating agents. We could detect the emissions from Chernobyl in the midwest even after they had circled the globe. They were of low level but detectable. Most people have no conception of just how much naturally occurring radioactivity and radiation is out there.

    James Johnson, ex-nuke

    • Thanks James. George has a treasure trove of people here with expert experience in many areas. What is your opinion on the use of nuclear energy and the concerns about spent fuel disposal that George expressed? It seems to me that nuclear is still the way to go.

      • BIC
        From another BIC. The search for safe repository for nuclear waste is huge and driven by your like minded profiteers. 250,000 year half life. RUFKM
        Not in my backyard and I do not welcome it to yours.

      • oh my.. I am not in favor of nuclear power plants.. if they could work it into their business model..offering solar systems to home owners or giving them a set price for let’s say ten years if they put one up.. solar towers set at the furthest point and put up at every sub station would be the best and cheapest way.
        nuclear Is costly handling waste is expensive.. and any accident is horrific..

      • I am AGAINST the currently designed crop of reactors … and believe we should NEVER build a new reactor of ANY design until reactor waste is actually, and FINALLY, actually being moved into a long term repository.

        UNTIL such a repository actually opens and starts accepting REAL waste (we now have a 60 years supply to ship to it already) we shouldn’t be in the business of creating MORE.

        If you want to understand the reason why we should NEVER AGAIN build a reactor of our current designs look up the problems over many decades of the Davis Bessie Nuclear Power Plant on the shores of Lake Erie, which has come close to melting down THREE TIMES during it’s life!! (pure luck saved it twice, once it was good operators in the control room who saved it)

        (pollute Lake Erie from a meltdown like Fukushima pollutes the Pacific and shortly thereafter Toledo Ohio, Cleveland Ohio, Hamilton Ontario, Toronto, and Rochester NY plus lots of smaller cities and towns along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario would no longer have DRINKING WATER!!)

        AND I am not even go into the issues with the Browns Ferry (TVA plant) and the near loss of control of that plant too.

        We have LUCKED OUT that only a few small reactors in the US have melted down (including Fermi 1, which is on the shores of Lake Erie too) plus the large Three Mile Island Reactor since a number of others have had very serious problems at some point during their operating history (anybody but me remember the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska, which thankfully was closed when the Missouri River went into major flood in 2011 which would have put it and it’s backup generators about 10′ underwater since it was sited entirely WRONG when it was built? …. American Nuclear Engineering AT IT’S FINEST!!, didn’t bother to put into their siting data the height the river would be in the upstream Army Corp of Engineers dam went to full REGULAR release (not even emergency release) which they had to in order to SAVE the upstream dams on the Missouri River (they managed to put up a temporary water dike around the nuclear plant before the flood hit, but only managed to finish it about 24 hours before the water started climbing the water dike’s walls)

        • I am right with you on that one S2…. go solar.. push solar towers.. heck a MW of solar retail is a million two.. so for five million youhave the same output as one of the two billion dollar wind turbines.. put one up at every substation in a tower.. three sided.. v panel arangement with and inverted trapazoid reflector to reflect the suns rays onto the panels evenly.. then a cat walk behind each pannel array.. for repairs and cleaning..
          depending on how much a hundred foot tower forty foot across on three sides costs.. you could put up a couple hundred of these.. start at the furthest point and work back to the power plant.. all at the cost of one of those big turbines.. provide and create jobs for several thousand people.. it is a no brainer .. but it doesn’t fit with the present business model of stuff big buck billies pockets.. for the same cost of one of those big turbines.. a ten kw backup grid tie solar power system could be given to every home in our state and have money left over at todays present costs.. and instead of creating three mw of power potential.. it would create ten thousand megawatts of power potential per hour.. another no brainer.. and it would secure the grid from any catastrophic total failure.. the problem is the business model.. and the in the box mind set of those in control

    • It seems to me that we could burn down the hot waste a whole lot further in other types of reactors, though I’m no nuke expert. Is there a reason that we’re accumulating so much hot “waste” without using effectively in some way? Are we saving it for something? I’ve read that only 2% of the potential energy in reactor fuel gets used in a light water reactor. This is really bad, especially since the remainder gets released as unusable heat and radiation over the next 250 millennia+!

      • the reason we are acumulating it.. is it is hard to safely dispose of it.. kind of like can’s.. you empty a can.. and the can goes into a pile.. if you don’t have anyplace to put the can’s pretty soon you have a pile of them.. there isn’t anyplace safe to put the can’s..
        I know they tried to tell the native american tribes that it was like good for them.. the radiation is similar to being in the sun.. the vitamins and minerals.. etc.. what they didn’t expect is the natives to be smarter than they gave them credit for.. the members of the bikini islands weren’t..

    • naw..now… I bieve they can do absolutely anything.. it’s called absolute power.. the dual standards of law..

      • “They” have plans…

        Lest you think that last bit about rich people building their own private robot armies is just hyperbole, Johnstone goes on to quote from a 2018 article by professor Douglas Rushkoff titled “Survival of the Richest.” Rushkoff claimed to have been engaged by a group of hedge fund billionaires to figure out how to protect their doomsday bunkers when (not if) the world descends into chaos.

        The biggest challenge was how to create — and then control — a security force.

        Now that that technology has indeed been developed, you may be wondering what a world full of armed robots would look like. Well, wonder no more…

        https://www.howestreet.com/2023/05/how-will-the-aristocracy-keep-what-theyve-stolen-part-1/

        • “Survival of the Richest.” Rushkoff claimed to have been engaged by a group of hedge fund billionaires to figure out how to protect their doomsday bunkers when (not if) the world descends into chaos.”

          A friend lives next door to one of those bunkers.. the US govt sold it and all the supplies in it for a million last year.. set up to house a small city complete.. here is the biggest challenge.. HOW DO THEY GET THERE…. it is thousands of miles from where they live on average.. so the challenge is getting there.. one other small thing besides.. sure they go down alright.. how do they come back up..
          fifty something years ago.. a fabulous photo of dc and area came across the desk.. we loved it.. it was sharp it was inspiring and beautiful.. we wanted to frame it and hang it in the hallway… what we were told is NO.. it is a classified photo.. and displaying it in a classified area still wasn’t appropriate BUT.. if we could get a photo like it we could.. so one of the guys wrote to the Russian Embassy asking if they had a good photo of DC and area that they would like one to hang on the wall.. in no time at all a shipping tube showed up with a thirty by forty photo of DC and area that was better than the one we had and it had everything marked.. crap none of our bosses even knew existed… so..they let us get it framed and hung on the wall.. With that in mind that was fifty something odd years ago.. and I am willing to bet that they all know about every entrance.. and what better way to eliminate the three hundred something people that are the string pullers.. once they go down.. come in and assist the remaining population as heros and seal all the entrances..for those thousands of miles away.. the cabin in the woods is just stocked up for someone else along the road because even if they have jet airplanes.. won’t make it to those bunkers.. prep to stay in place.. you know the area you know the people.. you are already comfortable there.. so it is the best place to weather out the storm.. people today won’t walk across the street without a car.. can you imagine them walking two thousand miles.. it aint going to happen.,.
          so have you bought your tocket heater yet.. or backup power supply
          https://rocketheater.com/
          https://shopsolarkits.com/

  5. The Cherokee Purple and Brandywine tomatoes are getting close to blossoming in the hoophouse. Spending time out there is the best way to relax. The wife says my Asshole level goes way down afterwards.

    • Most tomato plants take a couple of months to grow and ripen their fruit once the flowers have been pollinated.

  6. Do you overwinter peppers? They are perennials. In wintertime, chop them down to 30% height, and store above freezing mark. Come spring, they are ready to go.

  7. Amazingly — for all you shade-tree mechanics who have ever looked under the hood of a Citroen car — the French may have a world class, superior design, intrinsically safe when scrammed, nuclear small reactor design. “Neighborhood level.”

    Several French companies can build them, I am told, I am NO expert on this. Look up “Framatone,” I think it is.

    We use (a GovDome approved) older design — called a “Hanford Design,” I think, that is NOT intrinsically safe and stable under sudden scram.

    …or something.

    • Speaking of cars. Luvly Car aims to be the Ikea of electric cars.

      O/T – Big Orange has the electric lawn tractor for 5K. This car is 11K but w/tweaks and tunes could probably handle a 3 point hitch for the 10 acre farmer.

      This Company Ships Electric Cars As Individual Parts – Like the IKEA Of EVs

      “Well, this Swedish startup, Luvly, who is hoping to become the IKEA of EVs has announced its plan to ship its small EV cars as flat packs which can later be assembled at their destinations. The company which specializes in small and affordable electric vehicles is claiming that their unique car model will allow it to fit 20 of its cars into a container that would otherwise only have room for 4 assembled vehicles, thus lowering transportation costs considerably.”

      https://wonderfulengineering.com/this-company-ships-electric-cars-as-individual-parts-like-the-ikea-of-evs/

      Luvly Cars

      https://www.luvly.se/

    • In the US in commercial reactors there are 3 basic reactor vendors. General Electric – boiling water reactor, Westinghouse – pressurized water, Combustion Engineering – pressurized water. All were light water designs. There was a high temperature gas cooled reactor in Colorado but that closed decades ago. And no 2 reactors in the USA are the same. Even ‘sister plants’ differ from each other. For example: Calvert Cliffs has 2 reactors both CE designs. One has a GE main turbine, the other Westinghouse. Even the piping, components and layout differ. Capitalism run amuck. The weapons program reactors run by the Dept of Energy are different, they are not subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission control. At those places you would be breaking the law for reporting them breaking the law, which is one of the reasons I refused to work at one. There are some new proposals for intrinsically safe commercial reactor designs. It remains to be seen whether one ever gets built.

      James Johnson, ex-nuke

      • The future is Thorium. Smaller, but much safer. Gov’t will not approve them, though, apparently because they do not produce weapons grade waste products.

  8. As a public service to the urban survival community in an effort to lift spirits and improve moods…that need lifting and or improving. Music is said to raise or lift ones Soul..so in that spirit I present creepy joe n kamel toe.

    -https://soundcloud.com/niemsong/creepy-joe-n-kamal-toe

    aware and awakey U bee.

  9. George,

    Speaking of tomatoes, my grandfather grew them, and during the sweltering summer heat of August, my grandmother would prepare them for jarring, as seen in in this video. Gina, the Italian old lady seen here knows what she’s doing.

    Do you do this with the tomatoes?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RwuSZDl_do

  10. George,

    This is the case for an interpolated 1981-82 13/30 year first 13 year base fractal and 30 year second fractal major nonlinearity (contained within a larger US hegemonic 1807 36/90/90/54 year series with lows in 1807, 1842-43, 1932, and 2074 and a 90 year third fractal high in November 2021.)

    Both the French CAC and Wilshire are following a x/2.5x/2x/1.5x :: 15/37/30/22 day fractal series starting 12/30/2022 and 12/28/2022 (trading holidays account for he difference of starting dates.) The CAC reached its all time average day valuation high on 4/24/2023, day 30 of the series’ third fractal. The Wilshire’s valuation peaked earlier on 8 November 2021. Both composites are following a March 2020 low 33/66/66-67 week :: x/2x/2x high/lower high valuations. The 22 day 4th decay fractal appears to a 4/21/2023 4/9/7/6 day series with the Wilshire a trading day ahead of the CAC. The Wilshire is currently on day 7 and CAC currently on day 6 of the 9 day second fractal. The 7 day third fractal can be expected to be a valuation increase lateral and upward. The final 6 days would be trade nonlinearly lower with some short counter rallies.

    From 1981 to 1993 there is a 10/26/16 quarter first base fractal series totaling 50 quarters. (the 1987 crash was quarter 11, the end of a second subfractal of a 26 month 5/11/12 quarter series)The 30 year second fractal is composed of 4 subseries:
    1994-2002: 34 quarters: 3/8/6/4 (18) and 3/8/8 (17)
    2002-2009: 27 quarters: 3/7/8 (16) and 2/5/5/3 (12)
    2009-2016: 29 quarters: 2/5/4/3(11) {(6) composed of a 3/6/8 month fractal series)} and 3/7/6 (14)
    2016 to 2024 32 quarters: 4/8/6 (16) 3/7/6/?4 (17)

    The total quarters for the first and second fractals are currently 50/116 pacing the timing between 2x and 2.5x (100 and 125) of the second fractal, where terminal nonlinearity could result in 50 percent valuation losses with a lower low valuation in 4 quarters.

    At any rate, George, this asset-debt system fractal model has the appeal of being internally consistent.

  11. Well., I can’t play my guitar., and I tried about twenty times to draw and aim my 1911 – but deemed it an “unsafe procedure”., too bad, as I was just notified that the new pistol section at the rifle range is finally complete., [two years in the making.] guess it will have to wait. Can use the garden shovel, but only with one hand – which is very slow and tedious. Weed eater is an absolute no-no. I can still manage the shift lever on the Harley – so, I have been taking short hops around town.
    Amazing how one small ‘oops’ changes your every day routine. Looks like I probably would have been better off breaking my little finger, than max-stressing the whole connective system of muscle, joints and tendons. I was figuring on only a few days of down time.., looks more like a couple of weeks !
    .., damn !

    • Yep, six weeks to repair damaged cartilage & tendons… like rolling over an ankle and landing on top of it. Be glad you don’t have the ‘hand’ version of the clamp on ‘boot’ for the ankle… that’s a ‘self-crippling device’, too.

  12. accidentally posted in yesterday’s comment section – meant to post here)

    Interesting graph in yesterday’s NY Times where it showed that the 4 banks closed in the last month (1 was a voluntary liquidation … NO FDIC or FED bailout money used and all customers got ALL of their money back) the TOTAL amount of deposits involved are already MORE than ALL of the closures in the 2007-2010 collapse!!

    Yes, you read that right. Already the amount of money in involved in the 3 bank closures to date are already MORE than the TOTAL amount involved in the 2007-2010 collapse!! (and probably 2 more coming by next Monday)

    Just in case you have not downloaded and printed out your Bank Bankruptcy Bingo Card (see yesterday’s comments) NEVER FEAR … there are MORE closures to come!! and you can still play the game!!

    On a more serious note the credit contraction is going to be severe once it gets going in earnest. Most of the commercial banks are going to have to husband Capitol so as to rebalance their balance sheets from the chaos in Commercial Real Estate where they are heavily exposed. That means FEWER LOANS! even before consumer credit bankruptcy numbers tick up.

    Unlike the 2007-2010 collapse which occurred quickly for banks since their losses were in traded CMO’s (collaterized mortgage obligation bonds) which under bank accounting rules HAD to be “marked to market” relatively quickly, the current losses are mostly in direct real estate loans and government bonds for which entirely different accounting rules apply … which draws out the timeline of the banking collapse.

    US Government longer duration bonds, even if their value is cut in 1/2 by the rise in interest rates, NEVER have to be “marked to market” per the current accounting rules even though REAL LOSSES are sitting there in plain sight for everybody, including the regulators, to see (SVB collapse was caused by this issue – per the books and federal regulations SVB was a solvent institution …. in the real world they were insolvent ).

    Direct real estate loans, if “marked” on the books as to be held to duration, versus sold (ala Fannie May or Freddie Mac type loans), again do NOT have to be adjusted for the collapsed value of those loans due to the rise in interest rates (where the mid size banks do a LOT of lending). It is only when those loan “being held to maturity” go into default … ie: vacancies /reduced rent /etc cause the borrower to be “cash flow short” and can no longer make their payments that the bank FINALLY has to make an adjustment to the value of that loan on the books.

    In most downturns it takes a minimum of 6 months of NON payments for the bank to formally declare an insolvent COMMERCIAL entity in “default” on a Commercial Loan since the banks and borrowers play games with the timing of when the banks are FORCED to finally declare a default. The original loan terms may have put a 90 day clause in the documents … but then the bank and borrower will REWRITE the terms if the bank can get a partial payment and set up a new payment schedule … and once that new payment schedule is defaulted on (another 90 days) then even try to REWRITE the terms AGAIN.

    In fact back in the great recessions of 1974-1976 and 1979-1983 I saw banks jump through hoops for up to TWO YEARS to keep from declaring a Commercial Loan, including real estate loans, in default as they and their customer tried to “Wait Out” the recession.

    The long and short then wrt Banks … it often takes a LONG TIME for the insolvency of a bank to show up on the surface!! and even then it will NOT show up on their audited Financial Statements since the accounting rules that apply to US banks will continue to hide the true condition of the bank’s asset portfolio from being on those statements (except for the CMO’s from the ’00 period where losses HAD to be recognized fairly quickly)

    MORE bank pain to come.
    MORE bank closures to come.
    Slower and longer period to endure than happened in the last go around in 2007-2010

    Get your Bank Bankruptcy Bingo card today!!
    YOU can still play the game as to which 5 in a row wins first (but remember even when there is one winner the game will continue so you will have multiple opportunities to win!)

  13. May 10 earthquake!!!???
    What year?
    Where?
    Says who, Nostradamus/G.A. Stewart, E. Casey?
    I’m west of the San Andreas, do I need to buy another can of beans and batteries?

  14. I’m growing increasingly concerned amid all the saber rattling that the coronation may be too tempting a target to pass up. Putin has already said he would attack London if depleted uranium is used in Ukraine, and the Brits just shipped a load of DU shells for the tanks they sent earlier.

    Given the prospect that one or more of Putin’s tsunami torpedoes may already be in position offshore of Great Britain, the temptation to use it may be too great to resist. With most of the EU heads of state in attendance, one big wave could leave Europe with no leadership.

    But my alternate scenario is even more frightening. Suppose, just suppose, that Biden (who won’t be in attendance) were to seize the opportunity for a false flag nuclear tsunami. Then he’d blame Russia for it, and he’d have his war with Russia that he seems to have been striving for with every move he’s made in Ukraine.

    OK, now that I’ve laid that out on the table, it probably won’t happen. I figure if we keep guessing dates for the teotwawki, the fact that it’s been published might keep it from happening.

    Enjoy the coronation!

    • Your not the only one that is concerned over all the sabre rattling olfart.. all of us are.. the only reason why the MSM isn’t broadcasting the actual news is.. the fears of everyone panicking .. go to any restaurant or any coffee house down isles and you hear the whispers of those talking about the fears they have of what is really going on.. then you get the die hard demo.. that would sacrifice their children for the party..
      One gentleman was at a meeting last night and he was getting all wound up.. he is blaming the republicans for not paying down the debt and letting the illegals cross the border.. needless to say the thirty something people there were trying to correct his viewpoint..
      what was it.. several trillion dollars to repair the infrastructure and nothing being done.. LOL..
      anyway you are not the only one.. I think that is why the shopping still going on.. people are spending money to try and prepare for whatever has been planned for us..
      Look what BLM and Antifa did.. spurred gun sales by the tens and hundreds of thousands by getting the police defunded and placing the most vulnerable neighborhoods in jeopardy .. heck I would buy one to if I lived in a city.. couldn’t walk down a neighborhood sidewalk before and now from what I have been told there are neighborhoods you cannot drive through without being shot..

    • My pet scenario is getting all the illegals into our country then self-nuking with an EMP. The illegals will feel right at home and the rest of us will be at a complete disadvantage.

    • the young woman at the barber shop was saying yesterday.. her boyfriend has been notified that he will be going in the next six months.. He just got back from doing extensive training on the equipment ..

  15. “BUT we do have to ask reader guidance because at the same time cow fart bags and wrecking of gourmet cooking…

    “(I dream of a six-burner Wolf commercial stove someday) ”

    The 6-burner (and sometimes 8-burner) Wolf stoves come up in surplus auctions every couple months and usually sell for less than $300. Want an E-Mail the next time one gets listed…?

    “we have the greenies lining up for nuclear power. I can’t make this up: Support For Nuclear Energy In The U.S. Is At A 10-Year High | OilPrice.com. Nuclear pollution for EVs? Help a brother out…”

    Nuclear power is the cleanest and safest form of mass power generation on the planet. It has potential problems:

    1) The spent-rod issue. Quoting the half-life of the rods is silly. Remember, octane (that stuff we call “gasoline” today) was a dangerous and undesirable byproduct of the process of refining kerosene — until it wasn’t.

    2) Nuclear energy is the safest, until it isn’t, and when its not, really bad things happen. It is like air travel. Flying is the safest means of travel, until it’s not, and then really bad things happen.

    The decay half-life on spent nuclear materials is longer, but the immediate danger from the greentards’ solution (wind & solar) is far worse, and has more potential to kill everything above, on, and under the planet than any nuclear issue short of an unlimited nuclear war.

    The average lifespan of a windmill is about 8.5 years, a solar panel, 26 years (yeah, I know they last longer than that, but that’s the point at which their function drops below the “profit point” on their efficiency curve) and when they die, they leave behind stuff that’s incredibly poisonous and persistent, and much harder to segregate and store than spent rods.

    If it leaches into an aquifer, that water will be unusable by any flora or fauna until Hari Seldon walks Trantor.

    The U.S. Government currently has 600,000 pounds of unrecyclable solar panel guts that no-one has yet to figure out how to dispose. What BP, Exxon, and RDS, and your local electric company has, no one knows.

    There’s an upside and a downside to every form of energy production. Instead of abandoning what DOES work, perhaps we should first develop what might work, to see which directions are viable, before some idiot in D.C. forces a shift into a technology that’s incapable of supplying the essential minimum amount of energy required…

    • Hell yeah, Ray. I figure a nice Wolf and 500 gallons of propane that it’s all been re-jetted for would be just the ticket! With G2 back in these parts, he wouldn’t mind going for a road trip to retrieve one…MAYBE, lol.

      • Understand, those are pretty hefty pieces of cast iron. Some places are downright helpful. The trade schools in Vandalia and Archbold Ohio have loaded me several times, with forklifts. Schools in other places, not so much. When I bought the Powermatic lathe, I had to wend it ~125 feet through building hallways, then load it on my trailer, in a driving snowstorm, with no assistance (took me 9 hours!) I will tell you (if I know) whether you are likely to have help, but even if its likely, you should assume there will be none. I suggest furniture dollies and a “cherry-picker” engine hoist as a bare minimum of tooling, along with a tarp & rigging (both rope and ratcheting tie-downs), a full portable set of mechanics’ tools (sockets & wrenches), and a map, showing the location of, and directions to the nearest Harbor Freight and TSC stores.

        I do not range south of the Tennessee/Mississippi line, and most of these stoves I’ve seen are in Ohio and Michigan, so you’d be looking at a 600-800 mile trip, each way, up either I-69 (right outside your doorstep — if it goes through now) or I-65 from Birmingham.

        {smartass mode on}

        If a stove doesn’t show up until July, you could come yourself, bring E, and hook up with the Dixie Highway for the World’s Longest Yard Sale (https://www.127yardsale.com/). Of course, that might be really dangerous, with an empty trailer…

        Now, if one shows up next week, you could still come along, hop over to Cincinnati on I-71 and take US-42 to the Hamvention, on your way up…

        {/smartass}

        Figuring in the cost of go-juice and a couple nights in a cheap motel, you will save $300 or more on the cost to use Uship. Because the savings is significant, but not fantabulous, I like to make multiple purchases/pickups, then enjoy the scenery or take in an historic site or two (like going to the site of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which I commented about a couple years ago) as both mind-expanding and fun (I’m a history nerd, remember?) — okay, not everyone’s cup o’ tea, but racing everywhere is IMO no way to live, and there’s lots of things more valuable than money…

    • We use the uranium fuel cycle for our nukes. There are others out there but due to entrenched interests are not used even though they offer less high level waste and fewer byproducts.

      James Johnson, ex-nuke

    • Maybe one of the oilmen can discuss what gets put back into the ground at the reinjection well sites: out of sight, out of mind. All technology has adverse consequences. The better the tech, the more persistent the downside seems to be. Don’t leave public landfills out of the discussion; most of them have enough methane and H2S underneath, but still close to the surface, to constitute potential gas cloud bang WMD’s. And that is not theoretical; prior to installation of elaborate gas recovery, scrubbers and a flare system, I witnessed at least two severe gas releases from the local landfill. Apparently they have tamed the beast, at least for now.

    • “The 6-burner (and sometimes 8-burner) Wolf stoves come up in surplus auctions every couple months and usually sell for less than $300. Want an E-Mail the next time one gets listed…?”

      Where the boss works.. they had one of these…
      https://www.build.com/product/summary/1397987?
      The viking sixty inch.. dam beautiful.. four burners.. a steak grilling section in the center and on the right side a full griddle.. the thing was beautiful.. just my kind of kitchen gadget..
      the oven thermostat went out on it… the cost of getting someone to come out and replace that thermostat was enough that instead of repairing the stove.. they gave it away.. I was offered it.. and good lord knows.. I tried I really did try to find a place to stick it.. I just didn’t have sixty inches in the spot of the stove..so it went to someone else.. the whole thing.. I was there when they put it in.. it wasn’t that old.. the griddle didn’t even look like it had been used.. neither did the oven.. almost pristine..
      It is like the comercial electrolux front load washing machine.. I bought it.. the cost of the extended warranty was to expensive.. the salesman told me.. you have until.. to get it.. so I opted to wait on the extended warranty.. when I went to get the warranty.. Nope you gotta buy it when you get the washer.. so I was stuck with the manufacturers warranty.. one week after the manufacturers warranty was over.. a screw or a dime.. something in my pocket went through the pump and blocked the pump rotor.. not a big deal.. but the cost of getting a repairman out was as much as a new washing machine.. so I tossed it and got the new washing machine..
      I have told all the kids to take up appliance repair,, plumbing, or electrical.. HVAC or just general handyman repair.. no one wants to do it.. even now with an extended warranty the cost of sending a tech out is so high that companies just replace the minute a problem comes up.. when I got our comercial dish washer.. there wasn’t anyone local.. the first guy they sent was from four hundred miles away to discover it was a four dollar part he didn’t have on the truck.. a month later.. the board went out.. they had to get someone from almost five hundred miles away to come.. several months later they got the part came back.. I didn’t use it more than a month..the whole year.. no one around to do repairs.. hundreds of miles away.. they just gave me my money back and I bought the cheapest machine they have.. yup I buy the extended warranty.. but it always breaks down about a year before and they just replace it.. rather than fix it.. for the companies.. that is probably not a good thing it would be better if they made it like they use to make it.. instead of the throw away.. but then we do use the products as if they were a comercial unit.. so it goes through the stress test pretty routinely..
      with the last washer and dryer.. the service tech said .. yeah that is why I tell everyone to get a speed queen.. I went right out and got the speed queen set.. so far I have had it longer than anything I had bought in years and no issues rock solid.. best thing ever.. it even has the clean out ports that they use to have .. no lint buildup..

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