‘Stagflation is here,’ following months of rising prices, BofA analysts say

“…Stagflation is a word that conjures up images of 1970’s era double-digit inflation and long gasoline lines, so analysts have been loathe to use it. It’s a scenario that’s basically the worst of all worlds for the average person because it causes real incomes to stagnate or decline while destroying purchasing power.

The scenario currently being articulated by various banks like BofA is more of a stagflation-lite outcome, where inflation doesn’t need to necessarily shoot up much higher from here but lingers for far longer than previously thought.

Vamvakidis says he envisions a scenario where U.S. inflation keeps surprising to the upside and economic growth surprises to the downside, relative to expectations. The core PCE index could stay above 3% into 2022, he says, leaving inflation high enough that the Fed and other central banks might need to tighten monetary policy more than expected at a time when output is weaker and risk asset prices may be volatile. Meanwhile, analysts at in London see an era of higher inflation in the U.S. that lasts for a decade.

“We could easily see inflation at 3% to 4% for a while,” said Gang Hu, managing partner of New York hedge fund WinShore Capital Partners, who trades global inflation-protected securities. “We are not at the end of this supply-side destruction and are entering a period where nobody knows what transitory inflation means.”

“Once this episode passes, I don’t rule out a chance of a prolonged period of deflation” as policy makers “overshoot on the other side,” Hu told MarketWatch Friday. “For now, the market has not lost its confidence in the central bank’s ability to control inflation.”…”

Public Health Officials Blew Up Their Credibility, and We’re Paying the Price

“…With COVID-19 still sickening and killing people even though effective vaccines have been widely available for all since the spring, it’s frustrating to see vaccination rates creep up only slowly against a head-wind of widespread resistance. It’s even more frustrating that much of that resistance can be attributed to self-inflicted wounds on the part of public health experts and government officials. Having effectively discarded their own credibility since the beginning of the pandemic, the powers-that-be find that much of the population no longer places faith in what they have to say.

“Why aren’t tens of millions of eligible Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19?” The Economist and YouGov asked in a recent poll. “Most who haven’t started the vaccination process say it’s a matter of trust.”

“Americans who are sure they will not get the vaccine are especially likely to say their lack of trust in the government is their major reason for rejecting the vaccine,” the polling firm adds, with 22 percent of respondents giving that as their reason for refusing vaccination, second to concerns about side effects.

Critics are certain to wave off the findings as the unfounded concerns of low-information knuckle-draggers who need to be poked and prodded into compliance. But, while such dismissal may confer a warm and fuzzy feeling of superiority, it doesn’t explain why health professionals also have lost faith in public-health officials.

“Trust in the CDC and FDA has decreased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic among health care professionals,” WebMD/Medscape noted in June. “Out of nearly 2,000 U.S. nurses surveyed on Medscape (WebMD’s sister site for health care professionals) between May 25 and June 3, 77% said their trust in the CDC has decreased since the start of the pandemic, and 51% said their trust in the FDA has decreased. Similarly, out of nearly 450 U.S. doctors surveyed in the same time period, 77% said their trust in the CDC has decreased and 48% said their trust in the FDA has decreased.”

Respondents to the WebMD/Medscape poll cited concerns about politics affecting public health decisions as well as contradictory messaging about masks, vaccination, and proper conduct to avoid infection. Both of those concerns were on display last year when public health officials went from condemning anti-lockdown protests to promoting protests against police brutality and racial injustice.

“Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What,” The New York Times headlined an article on the whiplash-inducing change in messaging over the potential health risks of public gatherings.

“I certainly condemned the anti-lockdown protests at the time, and I’m not condemning the protests now, and I struggle with that,” Catherine Troisi, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center, conceded to the Times. “I have a hard time articulating why that is OK.”

“It’s one thing to protest what day nail salons are opening, and it’s another to come out in peaceful protest, overwhelmingly, about somebody who was murdered right before our eyes,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy huffed in an open assertion that only protests with which he agreed were acceptable.

To large numbers of Americans, it’s obvious that many of the people issuing public health dictates base their proclamations not on science but on their personal biases. Those seeking actual medical guidance, or who entertain different values, might feel perfectly justified in ignoring public health officials who reveal themselves as just another class of activists…”

Jan. 6 commission chairman once sympathized with black secessionist group that killed cops

“…Fifty years ago as a Mississippi alderman, Bennie Thompson defended the Republic of New Africa and participated in a news conference blaming cops for the group’s violence even as FBI saw group as waging “guerrilla warfare.”

Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has been a vocal critic of an event he deems an insurrection and offered his sympathy to the police officers injured that day. He’s even gone as far as to sue former President Donald Trump for responsibility for the melee.

But as a young African-American alderman in a small Mississippi community in 1971, Thompson placed himself on the opposite side, openly sympathizing with a secessionist group known as the Republic of New Africa and participating in a news conference blaming law enforcement for instigating clashes with the group that led to the killings of a police officer and the wounding of an FBI agent. Thompson’s official biography makes no reference to the separatist RNA.

Thompson’s affection for the RNA and its members — which FBI counterintelligence memos from the 1970s warned were threatening “guerrilla warfare” against the United States — was still intact as recently as 2013, when he openly campaigned on behalf of the group’s former vice president to be mayor of Mississippi’s largest city.

The congressman’s advocacy on behalf of RNA — captured in documents, newspaper clippings and video footage retrieved from state, FBI and local law enforcement agency archives — is a pointed reminder that some of the far-left figures of a half century ago are now the Democratic Party’s establishment leaders, their pasts now a fleeting footnote in the frenzied vitriol of modern-day Washington…”

Ladies and gentlemen, I present:
The Left pic.twitter.com/2a3LlxEWlU

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) October 5, 2021

BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing "threats."

The letter follows the National School Board Association's request to classify protests as "domestic terrorism." pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 4, 2021

Government goons to enforce police state policies. If you leave your kids in public schools its on you.

We deserve a more resilient system. The UK has 5 parties. Sweden 8. The Netherlands 18. Why are we stuck at 2? It’s made our democracy very fragile, vulnerable and corruptible.

— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) October 4, 2021

Good for him.

Hackers Warn That If Demands Aren’t Met They Will Reactivate Facebook https://t.co/je7FwArw3T

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 4, 2021

Dems Tuck Multibillion-Dollar Handout to Illegal Immigrants Into Reconciliation

Democrats need a new, compliant voter base, beholden to them.

pic.twitter.com/Tqy9hRndlD

— The Right To Bear Memes (@grandoldmemes) October 4, 2021

Related:

Biden On Activists Harassing Kyrsten Sinema In A Bathroom: “Happens To Everybody”

 

Slide above from :

Waning Effect of COVID-19 Vaccines in 5.6M U.S. Study Cohort

Commentary below by Karl Denninger:

“…71% of the Covid-19 cases occurred in these fully-vaccinated people and roughly 80% of the population >65 is vaccinated. In other words they know the vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid.

Both of the mRNA vaccines lose effectiveness between 4-6 months post-injection; the failure rate doubles between 5-6 months as opposed to 3-4 months.

Age is NOT why the vaccines lose effectiveness. It is simply that they stop working.

While Moderna vaccines work slightly better than the Pfizer ones, the key word here is slightly. Both degrade materially and the difference in the 5-6 month timeframe is not statistically significant. Yes, it appears to be slightly better but not statistically so. In other words the damn things do not work to provide durable protection — period.

The nuclear lie: As of August 7th 60% of hospitalizations were among fully-vaccinated individuals. You have heard repeatedly that this is now a “disease of the unvaccinated.” That is a damned, knowing lie and they knew it all the way back to the first of August.

In the 5-6 month timeframe the hospitalization protection also is wildly ineffective; the rate per 100,000 approximately doubles between the 3-4 month and 5-6 month time periods.

Prior infection is highly protective but post six months vaccination has become much less-so. Note that “prior infection” now goes back 18 months to the first wave…”

Related:

Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates

Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States

“…Vaccines currently are the primary mitigation strategy to combat COVID-19 around the world. For instance, the narrative related to the ongoing surge of new cases in the United States (US) is argued to be driven by areas with low vaccination rates [1]. A similar narrative also has been observed in countries, such as Germany and the United Kingdom [2]. At the same time, Israel that was hailed for its swift and high rates of vaccination has also seen a substantial resurgence in COVID-19 cases [3]. We investigate the relationship between the percentage of population  fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases across 68 countries and across 2947 counties in the US…

Findings

At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.

Relationship between cases per 1 million people (last 7 days) and percentage of population fully vaccinated across 68 countries as of September 3, 2021 (See Table S1 for the underlying data)

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Across the US counties too, the median new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the last 7 days is largely similar across the categories of percent population fully vaccinated (Fig. 2). Notably there is also substantial county variation in new COVID-19 cases within categories of percentage population fully vaccinated. There also appears to be no significant signaling of COVID-19 cases decreasing with higher percentages of population fully vaccinated (Fig. 3).

Median, interquartile range and variation in cases per 100,000 people in the last 7 days across percentage of population fully vaccinated as of September 2, 2021

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Percentage of counties that experienced an increase of cases between two consecutive 7-day time periods by percentage of population fully vaccinated across 2947 counties as of September 2, 2021

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Of the top 5 counties that have the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9–84.3%), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies 4 of them as “High” Transmission counties. Chattahoochee (Georgia), McKinley (New Mexico), and Arecibo (Puerto Rico) counties have above 90% of their population fully vaccinated with all three being classified as “High” transmission. Conversely, of the 57 counties that have been classified as “low” transmission counties by the CDC, 26.3% (15) have percentage of population fully vaccinated below 20%.

Since full immunity from the vaccine is believed to take about 2 weeks after the second dose, we conducted sensitivity analyses by using a 1-month lag on the percentage population fully vaccinated for countries and US counties. The above findings of no discernable association between COVID-19 cases and levels of fully vaccinated was also observed when we considered a 1-month lag on the levels of fully vaccinated (Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Figure 2).

We should note that the COVID-19 case data is of confirmed cases, which is a function of both supply (e.g., variation in testing capacities or reporting practices) and demand-side (e.g., variation in people’s decision on when to get tested) factors.

Interpretation

The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants. Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real world effectiveness of the vaccines.

For instance, in a report released from the Ministry of Health in Israel, the effectiveness of 2 doses of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine against preventing COVID-19 infection was reported to be 39% [6], substantially lower than the trial efficacy of 96% [7]. It is also emerging that immunity derived from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may not be as strong as immunity acquired through recovery from the COVID-19 virus [8]. A substantial decline in immunity from mRNA vaccines 6-months post immunization has also been reported [9]. Even though vaccinations offers protection to individuals against severe hospitalization and death, the CDC reported an increase from 0.01 to 9% and 0 to 15.1% (between January to May 2021) in the rates of hospitalizations and deaths, respectively, amongst the fully vaccinated [10].

In summary, even as efforts should be made to encourage populations to get vaccinated it should be done so with humility and respect. Stigmatizing populations can do more harm than good. Importantly, other non-pharmacological prevention efforts (e.g., the importance of basic public health hygiene with regards to maintaining safe distance or handwashing, promoting better frequent and cheaper forms of testing) needs to be renewed in order to strike the balance of learning to live with COVID-19 in the same manner we continue to live a 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus…”

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“F*** Joe Biden, and de Blasio!” chants from the crowd outside the Department of Education here in New York pic.twitter.com/85bKJYCEVf

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) October 4, 2021

FBI Admits It Doesn’t Track Leftist Violence

President Biden to Republicans on the debt limit:

“If you don’t wanna help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.” pic.twitter.com/8Ff4sjxuAQ

— The Recount (@therecount) October 4, 2021

Remember this:

Joe Biden voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2003, 2004, and 2006.

Now, he wants *Republicans* to raise the debt ceiling to give him cover to waste trillions of dollars and make inflation worse.

Not a chance. The Democrats can do this themselves.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) October 4, 2021

"We had no control group" pic.twitter.com/nu1Sf9qHan

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) October 3, 2021

I will be introducing a bill inspired by @RepKellyCassidy that requires all inseminators to undergo #vasectomies within 6 weeks of having their third child or 40th birthday, whichever comes first. /1

Additionally, . . .#ReproJustice #ReproductiveRights #AbortionIsHealthcare

— Rep. Chris Rabb (@RepRabb) October 2, 2021

1,606 People Shot June-August In Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago

But It’s St. Louis As The New Murder Capital Of U.S. – Again

Media does not care because this information destroys the liberal/media/Democrat narrative. It is black on black crime. The real racists expose themselves everyday. They abandon black Americans in large city areas struggling to make a living in crime ridden neighborhoods. They abandon them by ignoring their plight.