Karl Denninger writes about markets, finance, government policy, and fraud, with a combative and opinionated tone.
HN commenters recommend it for documenting the 2008 financial crisis since 2007. One calls its author cantankerous but knowledgeable, citing his past as an ISP CEO.
Early (i.e. existing) Covid vaccines are NON-STERILIZING, unlike almost every vaccine given to kids. There are sterilizing Covid vaccines in development, e,g. delivered nasally directly to the upper respiratory tract, but none have yet reached the market.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243127
> To be sterilizing a vaccine must prevent infection. Since you never get infected you never replicate the virus and thus do not shed it. If you do not shed it the potential path of the viral life-cycle for that particular infection ends with you and thus you cannot pass on or cause a mutation. You are sterile against that disease; from the point of view of the virus you are a lifeless rock. Among commonly-used sterilizing vaccines are MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), Varicella (chicken pox), OPV (oral polio) and others. The only time that such a vaccine fails is when you do not build immunity (such as due to immune compromise.) This is extremely rare and the protection from such vaccines tends to be either decades-long or lifetime.
> A vaccine that is not sterilizing permits the virus to infect you and replicate and as a result you can infect others. Technically it is not a vaccine at all (which by definition prevents infection); it is a prophylactic therapy. Such a "vaccine" instead acts to reduce or eliminate symptomatic disease. You don't know you're sick and you don't get sick. You don't go to the hospital and you don't die. Unfortunately since you don't know…
If anything, the US is implementing the worst aspects of gigging. If you want a truly market-oriented gig economy, in the US at least the following factors among many others must be addressed.
* Healthcare costs. This is non-negotiable. On an unsustainable path, and will collapse soon. Read around at Karl Denninger's Market Ticker site. He makes the point more forcefully than some would be comfortable with, but we're in a pretty dire, advanced stage so strong words and stronger action are warranted. [1]
* Payment term games. Small vendors abound with stories of customers yanking their chains, playing legalistic games around hyper-specific terms of delivery, or flat-out spuriously denying payment, etc. Once you climb the value ladder this tends to diminish quickly (at sufficiently high levels of operation, you become a key troubleshooting component of their organization, and they take care not to piss you off), but very small operators (1-10 man shops) preyed upon by big customers is unfortunately all-too-common to hear about. I'd prefer to see a Brandeis quote-styled mitigation. He said, "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." Some kind of information exchange, similar to a central clearinghouse of blockchain-secured documents in a transaction: if either side raises a dispute, the documents become viewable by all, with classification by…
I recommend reading Karl Deninger at https://market-ticker.org/ ; I don't know if his archive back to 2007 are available to non-subscribers, but he's been documenting these issues, quite well presented, since 2007.
The bottom line is, for the 2007/8 crisis, there are hundreds if not thousands of people guilty of fraudulent misrepresentations, and for inventing their own laws, with no reprecussions. I think the most egregious case is the "robo-signing" and MERS case (which are intertwined), which appear to involve thousands of cases of perjury, non of which were prosecuted, or even investigated -- but the publicly available evidence is damning enough, even if no justice official decided to investigate.
But why go back so far? So far, the recent wells fargo fraudulent account opening case [0] has resulted in a slap on the wrist and no one being charged. I don't know who committed fraud specifically, and it seems no one who can find out wishes to find out either. In 8 years, someone like you is going to ask "but who specifically committed fraud? this always comes up". There are clear examples of fraud; if there aren't clear examples of who committed that fraud, it is only because the powers that be decided they do not want to know.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_account_fraud_scandal#Effects_on_Wells_Fargo_and_management
Well, I'd say that calling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- along with a major recession to rival that of the Great Depression -- within a 6 month time window was a pretty good prediction. The other predictions that I can recall were related to that: the collapse of consumer credit availability, investment money being driven to treasurys despite the US predicament, problems with municipal bonds. He also warned about PIIGS pretty early, and that the measures that were being taken would only result in kicking the can while increasing the pain. But perhaps that's more of a stopped clock kind of prediction.
As I said, I haven't followed him much lately, and he admits that he gets an F in terms of predictions for 2012: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=215356
Regarding the freshness of his views: his post was written to his current audience (he runs a forum for investors). I don't think he had any idea this would end up on HN, if he even knows what HN is!
http://tickerforum.org/
Search for 'Genesis'. Ignore the political discussions, and don't bother with context, just find the few posts where he elaborates enough that you don't need the context of the rest of the thread. Or start reading his blog, http://market-ticker.org/ starting back at the beginning around 2006.
He's unabashedly conservative/libertarian, but he has had the strongest grasp of the mechanics of the financial crisis going all the way back to 2006 of anyone I've yet seen, even vs famous economists like Krugman. Originally an engineer, made his fortune as an entrepreneur, now manages his money from Florida, blogs about the crisis, and runs that discussion forum for investors.
I submitted the following:
"I would Make America Great Again by forcing the medical monopolies to break up, by prosecuting them under 15 USC (the Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson-Patman Acts), which the President can direct to be done on his own, without input from Congress. This would cause prices of medical goods and services to drop by 50-80% or more, solve many of our economic problems, and usher in a new era of prosperity. See the writings of Karl Denninger for details, www.market-ticker.org."
If we don't do this, and if it isn't done within a year, the Federal Budget and economy are headed for collapse. See: https://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231661