Tag: economics

Success in Clown World

Never forget that this is what passes for success in Clown World.

Funding History: The Athletic raised $139.5 million via five funding rounds beginning in 2017.

  • Seed Funding: $2.3 million led by Courtside Ventures
  • Series A: $5.4 million led by Courtside Ventures
  • Series B: $20 million led by Evolution Media
  • Series C: $40 million co-led by Founders Fund & Bedrock Capital
  • C1 round investment: $22 million led by Founders Fund
  • Series D: $50 million led by Bedrock Capital

Operating Losses: The Athletic lost $121 million in just four years.

  • 2019: $54 million
  • 2020: $41 million
  • 2021: $55 million
  • 2022: $36 million

In January 2022, The New York Times paid $550 million for The Athletic.

All “success” in Clown World is manufactured, fake, and usually gay. Don’t chase it. You’d have to be retarded to chase it. Chase the Good, the Beautiful, and the True instead.

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Business When the Bubble Bursts

Karl Denninger explains why businesses – indeed, entire industries – that work as long as credit is expanding fail rapidly once the debt-money supply begins to contract:

In a bubble economy, where the government is pressing new credit into the hands of the public, directly and indirectly, every business plan looks good.

When the impact of that action turns back into inflation, and it always does, wherever that inflation shows up ultimately detonates every one of those firms.

The truth is that every firm is only stable on an continuing concern basis if it can sell its goods and services at a profit without said excess credit creation.

If it can’t then the business model is bankrupt and said temporary success only occurred because of a scam, whether the firm was doing the scamming or they were riding a government scam.

One of the latest examples is “Toast”, which is a company that provides POS systems to restaurants and bars. You’ve probably seen it; I have, several times. They were a “darling” in the space and quite-rapidly took over, providing various services including online ordering. During the pandemic this looked really attractive to places that were not part of a national chain in that it “gave” them said online ordering presence that they otherwise wouldn’t have and couldn’t afford to individually develop.

The problem is that the company, which is publicly traded, is losing money. They partnered with Google and that apparently brought in less than it cost (gee, go figure, you all tried to ride the money-printing wave that came with the pandemic) and now they’ve added a “processing fee” behind the back of restaurants on online orders.

This is likely illegal, incidentally, and definitely is if not disclosed appropriately before the customer places the order. Further it may well breach the implied warranty of fair dealing with the restaurant which neither gets any of the fee nor were they apparently part of a negotiation to add it when they signed their service contract — this appears, from the above-linked story, to be something the firm unilaterally added.

But that’s the sort of thing that happens when you have a bankrupt business model that only “works” due to inflationary credit emission by the government, you appear to be “doing well” and then the inflation rebounds into your face and suddenly you have a big fat net loss.

The same sort of crap went on with the so-called “short-term rental” arbitrage market — AirBNB and VRBO, to name two of several. The embedded costs in this, including the platform fees, cleaning charges that someone has to eat between guests and similar, along with the pure arbitrage nature of these transactions in that the places being rented are neither built or maintained to commercial occupancy standards is obvious. This looks like a good deal but it only is due to inflationary credit creation; the business model is inherently bankrupt as the overhead exceeds that, by quite a bit, of a hotel or other lodging arrangement if the arbitrage and overhead costs are not available to be hidden via said credit creation. The belief in “free” feeds back into property prices which results in a further inflationary price spiral — this time in the acquisition price of said properties.

The reason these businesses tend to collapse so fast is because they live right on the edge. They’re always expanding as rapidly as they can, and funding that growth with debt, so the minute that either a) the growth slows or b) the cost of debt service rises, they can’t afford to continue servicing the debt and the business goes straight into bankruptcy despite being generally sound and profitable at the operational level.

This is why I don’t advocate using debt to grow your business, whether it is by acquisition or expanding production. Slow and steady doesn’t excite anyone, it won’t get you on the cover of any magazines, but it does lend itself to antifragility and long-term survival.

The smart boys in finance always think they’ll ride the wave and exit at the peak, and that’s at least theoretically possible if you’re just trading or in the VC game. But it’s not a viable approach to running an actual business that operates in the real economy.

UPDATE: Let’s not forget that everything in Clown World’s corpocracy is fake and gay.

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Better Late Than Never

A psychiatrist admits that psychiatry is a fake science:

I’ve been practicing psychiatry for 38 years. I love my job, my peers, and my patients. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m participating in the biggest intellectual scam of this era. We claim to be a science, but have no understanding how thought or behavior is generated.

Many billions of dollars are spent each year in an industry built on a corrupt body of pseudoscience, cultivated and exploited by monied interests for decades. This scientific fraud has been more successful than any other of our day. Our diagnoses are contrived by our guild,

the APA, with the collaboration of monied interests—and are so unrelated to actual science that they are copyrighted and published to profit that organization.

In the process of selling a corporatist, medication-oriented model of treatment, psychiatry has been stunningly successful in redefining what it means to be a human being. Meanwhile, 20 years of peak psychiatry has resulted in a 30% increase of suicide in the United States—and American psychiatry has absolutely nothing constructive to say about it.

I’d place more confidence in astrology, phrenology, and haruspicy than in psychiatry or psychology. It’s a fake science concocted by a pervert who was projecting his own perversions on humanity. This was always obvious, but what is less obvious is that Keynesian economics is Freudian psychology applied to the economy.

Which makes all modern economics equally fraudulent, since it is Paul Samuelson’s quantification of John Maynard Keynes’s Freudian construct.

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BRICS Opts for Gold

This move by the anti-Clown alliance is almost the exact opposite of surprising:

In a surprising move, the BRICS+ countries – a group including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, plus additional emerging economies – plan to introduce a new currency, likely linked to a weight of gold. This plan, set to be unveiled at their annual leaders’ summit conference, marks a significant challenge to the dollar’s reign in international finance.

The initiative, principally driven by Russia and China – the world’s largest gold producers – aims to link the new currency to a specific weight of gold. This strategy leverages their gold-rich status and presents a formidable challenge to the dollar’s pre-eminence. Experts are closely watching the development and analyzing the potential repercussions for global markets.

Understanding the implications of this currency shift requires an exploration of the dollar’s standing in international finance. Traditionally, the dollar has enjoyed an unchallenged position, serving as the world’s primary reserve currency. It’s used widely in international trade, providing stability and convenience to global transactions. However, the introduction of a new gold-linked currency could disrupt this balance, challenging the dollar’s omnipresence and potentially displacing it as the dominant payment currency.

The impact on the dollar will be best understood by gauging its strength in gold rather than comparing it with other currencies. If the gold price rises significantly, it would indicate a devaluation of the dollar and a collapse of confidence in major currencies. While this is speculative at the moment, it’s a possibility that global markets cannot afford to overlook.

It’s exactly the right thing to do to undermine the dollar-based financial system that is one of the two pillars of Clown World: the dollar and the US military. I’ve been wondering what has taken BRICS so long to reach this point, since it was an obvious need, but I suppose there has been considerable negotiation behind the scenes in determining precisely who will get to call the shots.

It’s one thing to be mutually opposed to something, it’s another thing to cooperatively work together. But this is probably the biggest global financial development since Russia unexpectedly survived the multiple waves of sanctions.

And the fact that there will be an objective foundation for the alternative currency will make it extremely attractive to unaligned parties.

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Banking in Yuan

Russian banks are openly discussing settlements in the Chinese currency:

The hegemony of the US dollar is seriously challenged by the rise of the Chinese yuan and by Washington’s failed attempt to wreck the Russian economy by weaponizing the greenback, Andrey Kostin, head of Russia’s banking major VTB, told Reuters on Friday.

The major banking figure said that under the current geopolitical circumstances more and more nations are shifting away from trade settlements in dollar and euro, while China is moving towards removal of strict currency policies.

“The long historical era of the dominance of the American dollar is coming to an end,” Kostin said, in an interview with the news agency. “I think that the time has come when China will gradually remove currency restrictions.”

According to Kostin, VTB has been discussing using the Chinese national currency in settlements with third countries.

US Dollar hegemony was always based on US military supremacy which began with the security of the US industrial homeland and was secured by the physical destruction of all of its potential economic rivals from 1939-1941. But now that Clown World is collapsing under the weight of its incoherencies, that global military supremacy has devolved to the mere regional superiority of a traditional Great Power, as evidenced by the recent failures of its proxies in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

And that is a very, very different game than global monopower.

My expectation is that the political structure of the USA will fail before most Americans recognize the extent to which the global balance of power has changed.

UPDATE: The Chinese are directly targeting the US film industry as well.

China Film Association released professional ethics convention for film practitioners, vowing firm opposition to tax evasion, pornography, gambling and drugs.

The association published the convention on its WeChat account on Thursday, saying that the move is aimed to further strengthen the construction of professional ethics of film workers and the construction of film industry style in order to create a clean environment for the Chinese film industry and contribute to building China into a country with a strong socialist culture.

The convention called on Chinese film practitioners to stick to loving the country and the people and to firmly oppose any remark or behavior attempting to split the country, destroy national unity, damage social harmony and stability or infringe people’s interests.

It requires film practitioners to comply with the laws and regulations on environmental protection, cultural relics protection and production safety at filming sites; resolutely resist tax evasion, pornography, gambling and drugs.

It also expresses opposition against violating behaviors like exorbitant pay, ghostwriting by gunmen, malicious hype, fake box office and illegal reprinting, and calls on the industry to abandon abnormal aesthetics.

Translation from the original Mandarin: No more Disney films in China.

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Debt to Infinity and Beyond

I know you’re probably all just as surprised as I am to learn that the House Republicans cucked and caved on the debt ceiling. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are going to stop spending until the financial system collapses and forcibly prevents them.

US President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have reached a “tentative” agreement on raising the country’s debt ceiling.

But it’s worse than you’d think. The ceiling hasn’t been raised so much as eliminated. Because there are no limits to the retarded evil of Clown World.

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The Clowns Know Collapse is Nigh

Whether you read Clown World’s intellectuals, pay attention to the statements by its military leaders, or read the statements by its economic directors, the one thing that is very clear is that all of the leading clowns are highly aware of the probability that Clown World is going to collapse, most likely in a sudden and catastrophic manner. What’s fascinating is the way in which they have literally nothing to offer in response to the situation except bromides about “cooperation” and pathetic appeals to “working together” at a time when the rest of the world has all but openly declared war on the new liberal rules-based democratic world order, or whatever it is calling itself today.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the world is on the edge of geo-economic fragmentation, which she believes could add more “cold water” to already anemic global growth. Speaking by video-link at the Brussels Economic Forum on Wednesday, Kristalina Georgieva called for cooperation at a time when growth across the globe is extremely weak by historical standards.

“After decades of increasing global integration, there is a growing risk that the world may split into rival economic blocs,” the IMF chief said. “And that’s a scenario that would be bad for everyone, including for people in Europe.”

She warned that growth prospects were increasingly bleak at a time when the global outlook is weak both in the near and medium term. The IMF projects growth to remain around 3% over the next five years, the lowest medium-term forecast in more than three decades.

“And yet, central bankers cannot take their eyes off the ball until stubborn inflation is firmly under control,” Georgieva pointed out. “The required monetary tightening is weighing on growth and exposing some financial vulnerabilities.”

Reviving multilateral cooperation is vital for long-term growth everywhere, according to the official, who warned that trade fragmentation could cost up to 7% to the global economy in the long term. That’s “roughly equivalent to the combined annual output of Germany and Japan,” she said, adding that some nations could see GDP losses of up to 12% if technological decoupling is added.

I expect that the economies of the occupied West are going to shrink considerably more than 12 percent. Remember, in the Great Depression, “industrial production in the United States declined 47 percent and real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 30 percent.” And this is a bigger, more permanent contraction that has been underway since 2008, so a peak-to-trough decline of around 50 percent would not be out of line.

The reality is that we will probably never know the true extent of the economic contraction in the USA, because a) the statistics are as fake and gay as everything else in Clown World and b) the USA is not going to survive as a unitary political entity so no one will be calculating the relevant statistics required for the comparison.

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Running Out of Rabbits

What can the Fed do in the face of the growing list of bank failures? Absolutely nothing, according to Karl Denninger.

How’s PacWest doing?

Oh, not so good. Let’s see…oh, looks sort of like an impending zero.

But wait — First Republic was it, right?

Sure it was.

There’s no real problem here, right? The TNX was down a full percent yesterday because….. the Fed will save it all, right?

No they won’t.

Not because they don’t want to.

They can’t this time.

Oh, you think not eh? How’s your homeowner’s insurance premium? Your car insurance? Your food bill? You know, all that stuff you have to buy? Yeah, you’re reading this and you’re probably middle class or better. You’re doing mostly ok. You’re on the right side of the bell curve, right?

Half the people are on the left, and they’re not ok. For them that 20% increase means they are taking payday loans to buy food, effectively and sometimes literally.

That ends the game folks.

If The Fed tries it we get government and social collapse.

The Federal Reserve has surprised us before with its resiliency. It has certainly kicked the can a lot further down the road than I’d anticipated it would be able to in 2008. But sooner or later, no matter how skilled the magician, the hat runs out of rabbits.

UPDATE: The short-term anecdotal evidence tends to support the hypothesis.

Two more US regional banks saw trading of their shares suspended on Thursday, amid the worst crisis to hit the country’s financial sector since 2008. Regulators halted trading in Los Angeles-based PacWest and Arizona’s Western Alliance after their share prices fell dramatically. PacWest Bancorp said late Wednesday it was in talks with potential partners and investors about strategic options after its shares dropped by as much as 60%.

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The Cult of Free is Over

It was always fake, gay, and propped up by free money handed out to the ticket-takers. And now that the free money flow has been shut off, the propped-up organizations are failing one after another.

The American-Canadian digital media and broadcasting company Vice is preparing to file for bankruptcy, New York Times has reported citing two people with knowledge of its operations.

This news of bankruptcy comes just days after after the well-regarded TV and online video outlet laid off staff and canceled its flagship program Vice News Tonight. Last week, Vice Media said it will cancel popular TV program “Vice News Tonight” as part of a broader restructuring that will result in job cuts across the digital media firm’s global news business, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures.

Vice, which operates a cable channel of the same name and creates documentaries and other video content for its own outlets and others, was once valued at $5.7 billion. Investors included Walt Disney Co. and Fox Corp., although their equity may now be worthless, the Times said. Its largest debt holder is Fortress Investment Group, according to the newspaper.

This potential bankruptcy also comes at the time when several other media and technology firms have had to downsize in recent months due to a challenging economy and a weak advertising market.

This is why it is so important to support projects like Arkhaven, Castalia Library, and UATV with your subscriptions. And the strong foundation provided by the subscribers is why these projects not only survive, but continue to thrive, while their much larger competitors are collapsing.

The deplatforming and demonetization by various platforms actually did us a favor when viewed in retrospect, as it forced us to prepare for times such as these several years in advance. Sometimes, the silver lining proves more significant in the long-run than the black cloud.

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Not Alarmist, Avante Garde

An anon at AC’s site has begun to conclude that I might have known what I was talking about when I pointed out the satanic roots of the Enlightenment “freedoms”.

Freedom of speech is gone. Freedom of the press is gone. Freedom of religion is gone. I used to think Vox was an alarmist when he claimed those “freedoms” were actually anti-Christian tactics concocted by Satanic “Enlightenment” thinkers to destroy Christianity. Except it looks like he is right.

I wonder if 9/11 had multiple purposes. Maybe Iraq was a sideshow meant to distract us as they accomplished their true goals: the creation of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, increased domestic surrlveillance, the ruining of air travel, and so on.

Once they got that in place, they began banning speech, first as hate crime, then as “disinformation,” now as “Putin propaganda.” No matter what you call it, freedom of speech is on its way out. Freedom of the press is based on freedom of speech and now reporting the wrong thing gets you thrown off media and potentially arrested. How about freedom of assembly or freedom of religion? On their way out. COVID showed the sham of both. The Oregon decision to forbid a Christian woman from adopting or fostering children, on account of her religion, and the closing of churches, but not BLM rallies, during COVID are data points on the destruction of those so called freedom.

So if you realize all this, and you are a Christian, then what would keep you from instituting mandatory Christianity? After all, if there is no freedom of religion, then what would you prefer, child raping, child sacrificing Satanists ruling this area; or the child protecting Christians who built the European and North American civilization that is quickly being destroyed before your eyes?

Putin has figured this out. Wang Hunin and Xi Xinping have figured this out. The Elightenment concepts of “democracy”, “human rights”, and “freedoms” that have been used to establish and expand the liberal world order are not only lies, they are collectively one gigantic satanic trap for a nation. They are a means of transforming a society of men seeking honor, glory, and righteousness into a society of weak, pleasure-seeking lotus-eaters.

Increasingly commercial societies would be more liberal both at home and abroad. Their citizens would seek prosperity and comfort and abandon the atavistic passions, the struggles for honor and glory, and the tribal hatreds that had produced conflict throughout history. The ancient Greeks believed that embedded in human nature was something called thumos, a spiritedness and ferocity in defense of clan, tribe, city, or state. In the Enlightenment view, however, commerce would tame and perhaps even eliminate thumos in people and in nations.

The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan

Individual freedom is not the sine qua non of human existence or human society. And contrary to the Enlightenment propagandists, neither individual wealth nor national economic growth are the supreme metric that merit government prioritization. To the contrary, they are temptations meant to sap the spirit and morals of the nation.

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