The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free

I wish that I could say that these words were facetious or, seeing as they aren’t, that I had said them first. Unfortunately, neither is true – the quote is from Current Affairs on August 8th and it pithily crystallizes the current conundrum….fake news abounds and it’s free – Breitbart, Fox, Q’Anon…as are all the conspiracy mongerers not fit to print.

The 17 year-old shooter in Kenosha was “defending himself” – the number of Covid dead in the USA is vastly overstated due to a government conspiracy and is more like 10,000. And, if you missed those headlines (sic) or can’t read, just wait and President Trump will espouse them from his bully pulpit, “Government Conspiracy” – wait, isn’t he the head of the government? Didn’t he say that he would “clean it up”? Hey, the majority of his followers aren’t asking you to think – actually, it would be better if you didn’t.

But, just as all those conspiracies are out there and portrayed as news under the rights of free speech, and even if the perpetrators would willingly deny that to others, most of the real news is available by subscription only – New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Financial Times, and, of course, Bloomberg.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t stop at the USA. I reported previously that the Head of the Beijing Liaison Office in Hong Kong had the temerity to state that only since Beijing took over in 1997 has there been “democracy in Hong Kong”….under the guise of that democracy, 12 candidates for the Legco elections were recently barred from running…I guess that they were too democratic (sic), or something because then the elections themselves were summarily postponed the same day by the Head of Hong Kong’s government, Carrie Lam, until next year “due to the virus”.

In the latter part of August, Ms. Lam publicly posited that she is an Administrator, not a politician. Under her guidance (sic), the satisfaction level of the population with the government has fallen from 80+% 2 years ago to about 30% and the satisfaction with the police has fallen even more. As to satisfaction with the school system, it was never high before her arrival and is now so low that they don’t even bother with the paddles because they can’t find a pulse.

She has demonstrated her administrative capabilities by the response to the coronavirus – she tried summarily ordering it out of Hong Kong but that didn’t work. She then proceeded to muck up the supply of masks, the supply of tests, the supply of quarantine housing, just to name 3. Of course she didn’t accomplish all that without help (sic). But, as she’s the Chief Administrator, she wears the hat and pounds the gavel (and takes home the whopping paycheck) – ultimately, it is her responsibility. And, by corollary, she has admitted that the virus has rendered her incapable of organizing polling stations to accommodate only 8 million people in a small area….even Donald Trump is doing better. Major score, Donald, big, really big, super, YUGE!

What has been done to Hong Kong? What has been done to the place where the number one topic was business and the number two topic was the price of recent condo developments (notice to reader – sometimes the two changed in numerical order 😊) – and now? Now the first 2 topics are when are you going to move, and where are you going to move.

It has been a noticeable fact for some time now that, from the top in Beijing all the way down, the bureaucrats of the CCP have a bad taste in their mouths from low level manufacturing. Bearing in mind that most of these factotums have never worked a day getting their hands dirty but have had no compunction about reaping the benefits that resulted from people who did, they no longer feel that they have any face by being the world’s factory and, under the guise of reducing pollution, they want those industries gone (except for those that are owned by the State of course – and the State’s friends).

On the 17th of August, the CEO of Hon Hai (also known as Foxconn) said that, “the days of China being the world’s factory are over” – even before that, the SCMP ran a headline on the 6th about migrant workers being the hardest hit as “the concept of the world’s factory winds down”. But here’s the thing – there are 200 million of these workers ….where are they supposed to go and what are they supposed to do when they get there? Right now they have gone back to their villages – but farming isn’t what it was for a number of reasons and, except for a small percentage, subsistence farming is no longer even a subsistence. The genie is out of that bottle.

And, speaking of farming, SCMP reported that the CCP stated that “the harvest is at an all-time high” – truly this is the age of miracles and must be thanks to Comrade Xi and the Chinese Communist Party…the worst floods of the Yangtse in decades which wiped out all the crops, a horrible drought which wiped out more, and the infestation of the armyworm is now completely across the country voraciously consuming anything that’s left – and “it’s an all-time high harvest” anyway! If it weren’t considered to be a case of negative thinking, I would be wondering about now what was in those coronavirus vaccines that they are touting.

Yet the big economic deal of Mr. Xi is “inward economic strategy” – as the SCMP reported on August 4th, weak consumer spending could undermine that precept. Leave aside the condition of the banks – on August 7th, as reported by the Financial Times and others, China allowed the first commercial bank to go bankrupt in almost 20 years. The same bank that I reported in trouble several issues earlier, Baosheng, is now officially gonzo – the thing is, does/can it stop there?

There are 3 other banks associated with them and all three are plagued with the same management (or dare I say mismanagement) issues – and, not to be outdone, on August 26th Bloomberg reported that every bank (all of whom are State-owned Enterprises) had a decline in profit of at least 10% and also increased their loan-loss provision by anywhere from 27 – 97%. Sounds bad, right – but the figures seem a little out of whack (sorry, behind the paywall).

But Nikkei reported “robust Chinese factory activity (for July) on August 4th and Xinhua quantified (sic) it on August 14th by saying it was up “4.8%” (yet another of those government coincidences with an 8 in them) – but where the goods came from with all those workers laid off and what was produced given the fact that imports are down and who they were sold to…silence is golden. The Financial Times nailed it in one on August 25th with an article that stated that, despite the rise of wages in the period, the Chinese domestic consumption now compared to the base year of 2007 is only two (2) percentage points higher but the debt to GDP is 100% more (ie. doubled)! Put it yet another way (BBG, Aug. 12), China’s recovery is threatened by surging prices but stagnant wages.

But those bureaucrats are still guzzling the Kool-aid – on September 4th, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese banks are planning to sell US$29 billion “to replenish capital” – there was no reporting as to who was intending to buy them. Better yet, Xinhua reported on August 14th that China has added 400 new Public-Private Partnerships from January 2019 to July…this is a massive shell game that’s left over from the days of IOU’s between state enterprises prior to China’s opening.

Public entities are well known – the private entities almost all have government investment ….so it is all just legerdemain on a huge scale and it worked until the funds stopped flowing and the mistakes started catching up. The problem is they only have one bullet in their economic gun and they shot it long ago.

But, hey, we know the score – hear no evil, see no evil, and hope that the food you buy doesn’t have toxic chemicals. But the USA, that bastion of freedom and hope …if you think Carrie has done a number trashing HK, just come and see what Donald has done. He has trashed it large, I mean big, I mean very very big, I mean absereffinglutely YUGE! He has stated numerous times (August 12th being one) that they are doing too many tests for the coronavirus, this even as the infection rate climbs and the totals remain officially the world’s highest.

The truth is that the USA has among the lowest testing rates for countries that have been hard hit (QUARTZ, Aug. 11). And he also mewingly opines that the US has the lowest mortality rates (HILL, Aug. 7th), even though it is twice that of Canada, among others. You know Canada – that’s the country that Donnie Donkey alleges whenever he can that, “it takes advantage of us” (August 7th).

This is the same homo erectus (I will not call him a man because a man does not call soldiers who died, “losers”, especially not when he is their Commander-in-Chief) who insisted that no one need wear masks to protect against the coronavirus, that there would be more than enough testing kits available by March (then April) (then May) (now no longer taking that question), that the virus would be gone by May, (then June) (then not taking that question either) and that it wasn’t serious, that the virus would be gone by August (now again not taking that question), that you could take an injection of bleach to cure it/prevent it (he was right – you could do that and would die and that would prevent the virus), that you could cure the virus by getting UV (and then get skin cancer, with the same result as the bleach), that QAnon adherents are fine and “they love our country”, that the punk with the automatic rifle who killed two Black Lives Matter protesters by shooting them in the back “was acting in self defense” – this hairy deadhead has the nerve to postulate that the deaths in the USA are actually closer to 10,000 (thank you QAnon) when a tally of the deaths in the past 8 months show that there have been 200,000 more than average indicating, if anything, that the number of dead due to the virus have been under-reported by at least 10,000.

And, when he couldn’t get the lie across, he leaned on the CDC to do it for him – and, like true political harlots everywhere, they bent right over.

Who in their right mind as leader of a country ignores that China and Russia have been buying up all the free gold they can on the market for the past 10 years and have now made a financial alliance that totally sidesteps the needs for any US dollar exchange? Who steps all over his country’s proven historical friends and cottons right up to the antithesis of everything that the USA is suppose to stand for if none other than Donnie Doofus, that masterful great wonderful YUGELY talented blower of his own horn, Donald J. TRUMPET. Treat people with respect X Tell the truth X Actually do the job X – an interesting fact is (golfnewsnet) Donald has played golf 291 times since taking office to September 6th/20; take that another way… he has basically been on the golf course close to 20% of all of his time in office and the vast majority of that has been at his own clubs. And don’t forget the travelling time to and from.

Why do I mention all this? The average bill for the Secret Service per stay for room and board exceeds $500,000 per visit. Wasn’t this the guy who stated in August 2016, “I’m not going to have time to play golf. I’m going to be working for you”? Can’t you see Donald J. during a sleepless night in the White House with the concern for the world weighing heavily on his shoulders staring at that famous portrait of George Washington and saying, “You should have denied chopping down that cherry tree!”

But there are fools everywhere – on August 4th, the Montreal Gazette reported that a recent poll throughout the Province of Quebec (Canada) showed that fully 23% of Quebecers believed that the coronavirus was manufactured (ie. man made) in a laboratory and that another 6%, not content with that disproven fallacy, decided to trump (pun definitely intended) that whopper with the contention that the coronavirus is related to 5G. I just hope that they don’t help their kids with their homework, eh!

Think that’s bad? – Mr. E of Turkey (hint – he thinks that the E stands for “excellency”), in a fit of Trumpian pique, took over control of the Central Bank of Turkey some months ago, as I reported in a previous edition of Global Gab. The results speak for themselves – Bloomberg reported on August 7th that the cost of borrowing offshore in foreign currency is now 1000% interest, making Argentina and Zimbabwe almost seem like bargains….I would have also mentioned Venezuela, but it’s been embargoed so you can’t buy its bonds even if you were brain dead enough to want to do so.

But let me try to close this on a positive note – it was reported in HUSTLE on August 12th that the Krone Circus in Germany has found a money-making proposition during these tough times. It has to be rough – no one is going to see the circus, the animals are depressed etc.. So they came up with the idea to sell the lion’s leavings in bottles so that, when people put it in their gardens, the pests will go elsewhere…AND IT WORKS! You know what they say, if you have lemons make lemonade…and if business has gone to s—t, then ?????. I guess you could say that the lions get paid by pisswork 😊

Thanks for reading. Stay safe.

Comments? Let me know.

Bennett

benlittle@facetedproducts.com

Global Gab #43