Watch Chairman Powell's testimony before Congress on Tuesday.

Seriously. Americans need to understand and know what the future looks like and move in that direction. If we had done what New Zealand had done this would have been over already. BUT, it didn't go that way and now we have a Congress that cares about American lives effected by a really dangerous virus.

We have to put the puzzle pieces together and find a way. If nothing else, it's been a great ride. We are alive. The kids are home and safe. Americans are capable. Tomorrow looks different than before, but, we are better and stronger for it.

QAnon. It is where Trump finds his conspiracy theories.

May 15, 2020
Rachel E. Greenspan

...Pfeiffer (click here) is a follower of QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that believes an embedded "deep state" operative sympathetic to the Trump administration is sending coded messages fateful for our culture and politics via an anonymous message board. Of the movement's many bizarre theories, most revolve around the idea that there is a secret plot against President Donald Trump....

No lie. This is where Trump gets his ideas about the "Deep State" and these are real voters he wants to attract. Bleach and all.

...What does the group believe? (click here)

There are several conspiracy theories this group has latched on to, especially the belief there is a network of people, including in the U.S. government, that wants to take down Trump and his administration, according to The New York Times.

With the outbreak of the Coronavirus, QAnon followers have begun to spread false "treatments" for the virus. Furthermore, the group have accused liberal billionaire George Soros of rigging the Iowa Democratic caucuses following its flawed outcome.

A previous theory, according to NPR, held that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was not actually investigating allegations of Russian interference and collusion in the 2016 election. Rather, the former FBI director looked into prominent Democrats — including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent — and their relationship with Russia or potential connections to a massive (unsubstantiated) pedophile ring....

May 16, 2020
By Alla Elassar

An extremely rare blue bee (click here) that was last seen four years ago has been rediscovered by a researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The metallic navy insect, a blue calamintha bee, had only been previously found in four areas "totaling just 16 square miles of pine scrub habitat at Central Florida's Lake Wales Ridge," the Florida Museum said in a news release.

The discovery marks an incredible breakthrough as scientists race to learn more about the blue bee, which is currently listed by Florida's State Wildlife Action Plan as a species of greatest conservation need.

"I was open to the possibility that we may not find the bee at all so that first moment when we spotted it in the field was really exciting," postdoctoral researcher Chase Kimmel, who found the bee, said in the release....

Brookings

March 27, 2020
By Grace Enda, William G. Gale and Clare Haldeman

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, (click here) passed by the Senate on March 25 and expected to be rapidly approved by the House and President, is the largest aid package in history. The bipartisan deal allocates $2 trillion in an effort to mitigate the mounting fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, including $1.5 trillion in spending and tax cuts and $500 billion in loans—$454 billion of which was allocated to the Federal Reserve as the basis for additional lending.

The Act hits the mark in several key respects. It is big, it is timely, and it directly helps individuals, businesses, and state and local governments. Naturally, a mammoth package that moves rapidly through the Congress will have shortcomings. But the CARES Act is not the last COVID-19-based package Congress will need to enact, so there will be opportunities to correct mistakes and fix oversights. Here are 10 perspectives on the Act.

1. RELIEF MORE THAN STIMULUS

Though many have compared this legislation to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Congress and President Obama enacted during the Great Recession, CARES is more appropriately thought of as relief—not stimulus.

What’s the difference? Relief addresses immediate fallout while stimulus aims to restore robust economic activity. This bill is relief; it ­cushions people and businesses from the immediate losses caused by COVID-19 and makes it easier for them to comply with public health guidelines and mandates. Stimulus programs will come later. Only after the disease is under control can pre-pandemic levels of economic activity be safely restored....

Of course, it is someone else's fault.

May 13, 2020
By Ben Winck

Some prominent investors (click here) using media platforms to warn of a stock market crash are doing so to pad their short positions, President Donald Trump alleged in a Wednesday tweet.

"When the so-called 'rich guys' speak negatively about the market, you must always remember that some are betting big against it, and make a lot of money if it goes down," the president wrote. "Then they go positive, get big publicity, and make it going up."

He continued: "They get you both ways. Barely legal?"...

Let's see what Warren Buffet has to say. Warren doesn't tweet that I know of. Warren makes purchases of stock and makes investments the old fashioned way, based on company GDP. I betcha we can find Warren's pearls of wisdom that Trump was talking about.

Warren Buffett (click here) has navigated multiple market crashes including Black Monday in 1987, the dot-com crash in 2000, and the 2008 financial crisis. As a result, many people are looking to the famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO for guidance on how to protect and grow their wealth during the coronavirus pandemic.

Buffett has shared plenty of tips during past downturns. They include acting boldly when others are scared, capitalizing on cheaper stock prices, and not waiting too long to buy or trying to time the market. He also warned against panic selling and betting against America at Berkshire's recent shareholder meeting.

"If you owned the businesses you liked prior to the virus arriving, it changed prices, but nobody's forcing you to sell."

"Investors and managers are in a game that is heavily stacked in their favor. Charlie and I believe it's a terrible mistake to try to dance in and out of it based upon the turn of tarot cards, the predictions of "experts," or the ebb and flow of business activity. The risks of being out of the game are huge compared to the risks of being in it."

"Bad news is an investor's best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America's future at a marked-down price."

"Like Cinderella at the ball, you must heed one warning or everything will turn into pumpkins and mice: Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to guide you."

"When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the "Hallelujah Chorus" in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up, we weep."

"If you wait for the robins, spring will be over."

"We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful."

"Never bet against America. That is as true today as it was in 1789, during the Civil War, and in the depths of the Depression."

Well, what do you think? Are those words of wisdom barely legal? It isn't as though there wasn't a virus. Honestly, who else is he going to blame?

May 13, 2020
By Carmen Reinicke

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell (click here) cautioned on Wednesday that the US economic recovery from the fallout of the coronavirus would likely be slow and require more fiscal stimulus.

The recovery "may take some time to gather momentum, and the passage of time can turn liquidity problems into solvency problems," Powell said in an event for the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

He continued: "Additional fiscal support could be costly but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery."...

FINALLY, climate stereotypes are going away.

May 16, 2020
By Matthew Cappuci

Average path length of tornadoes within 25 miles of a point. Note that while the greatest density of tornadoes occurs in Oklahoma, tornadoes in Mississippi carve longer tracks, and the risk of being impacted there is greater. Tornado data between 1950 and 2018 was utilized.

Anyone who’s ever seen the movie “Twister” (click here) is aware of Tornado Alley — known for its reliable and, at times, hyperactive swarms of tornadoes that swirl across the landscape like clockwork each spring. The term brings to mind the strip of land stretching across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. But meteorologists fear that imaginary zone may be leaving out areas at an even greater risk for damaging tornadoes.

In recent years, the South has come to prominence for its encounters with violent tornadoes. As recently as Easter weekend, an outbreak of more than 150 tornadoes wrought havoc across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and even into the Carolinas. A week later, a high-end EF4 tornado struck near the previous hardest-hit counties in Mississippi, marking the third EF4 to hit within a 15-mile radius over the course of seven days....

The powers that be met, decided and the big financial aspects of the USA are just fine.

May 12, 2020
By Ben Winck

The Federal Reserve announced Monday (click here) that it will begin buying corporate-debt exchange-traded funds on May 12 to further aid markets buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The ETF purchases were first announced on March 23, when the central bank unveiled its Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility alongside a spate of emergency lending pools. Though the program's reveal was enough to lift credit stresses, markets have been eagerly anticipating its rollout as firms grapple with the pandemic's economic toll.

The facility will buy up funds "whose investment objective is to provide broad exposure to the market" for corporate debt, the Fed said in a Monday statement. Direct purchases of corporate bonds through a separate facility will begin "in the near future," the authority added....

March 16, 2020
By James Chen

What Is an ETF? (click here)

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of security that involves a collection of securities—such as stocks—that often tracks an underlying index, although they can invest in any number of industry sectors or use various strategies. ETFs are in many ways similar to mutual funds; however, they are listed on exchanges and ETF shares trade throughout the day just like ordinary stock.

Some well-known example is the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 Index. ETFs can contain many types of investments, including stocks, commodities, bonds, or a mixture of investment types. An exchange-traded fund is a marketable security, meaning it has an associated price that allows it to be easily bought and sold....

May 14, 2020
By Michael Hawthrone

Weeks of clear skies over Los Angeles (click here), New Delhi, Wuhan and other smoggy, soot-choked cities are signs of how the coronavirus lockdown improved air quality around the planet.

Animated satellite maps and daily reports from monitoring networks back what people see with their own eyes. In city after city, levels of lung-damaging, life-shortening pollution dropped abruptly as COVID-19 restricted daily commuting and grounded national economies to a halt.

But for reasons that have yet to be fully explained, people in Chicago and its suburbs aren’t breathing dramatically cleaner air during the pandemic.

Average daily soot concentrations in the region declined by only 1% last month compared with April 2019, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of federal and state monitoring data....

To the right is a picture from 2016. The air in Chicago still looks better today than in 2016.

July 27, 2016
By Rueben Unrae

In response (click here) to the National Weather Service’s air quality alert, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has declared an Air Pollution Action Day for the Chicago area on Wednesday....

The CARES Act is a huge lesson for this country about emergencies.

The Federal Reserve is where huge amounts of money are accounted for and handled. It is very capable of taking care of big banks and big companies. It does nothing to directly assist communities or the banks that serve them. The Federal Reserve is not the place for such a policy either. The policies that care for the American people come from Congress. Congress giving huge sums of money to big banks and businesses is simply the wrong ane leaves the American people abandoned.

March 24, 2020
By Breedan Greeley

While the Federal Reserve (click here) has promised to pump trillions of dollars through large banks to keep financial markets moving, and rolled out support for large company debt, perhaps the most serious economic aspect of the coronavirus crisis is yet to be solved: how to get funds all the way to families and small businesses bearing the brunt of the shutdowns across America.

The country’s thousands of community banks and regional banks may be part of the answer.

Using a playbook they have developed over years dealing with crises from floods and tornadoes to superstorm Sandy, which ravaged the east coast in 2012, many have already started to help their own customers.

OceanFirst, a 118-year-old bank with $10.2bn in assets headquartered in the coastal town of Toms River, New Jersey, confirmed with the Fed on March 15, a Sunday, that it would grant 90 days of forbearance to customers on both mortgages and business loans....

May 13, 2020
By John Murphy

For the next 81 days, (click here) the sun will go without setting in the northern Alaska city of Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow.

At 2 a.m. on May 11, the descended below the horizon in Utqiagvik just enough for the city to enter what's known as the civil twilight stage. Civil twilight occurs when the sun is about 6 degrees below the horizon and it's the first phase after sunset. During civil twilight, artificial lighting isn't necessary because sunlight is still illuminating the area, but the sun itself is no longer visible in the sky, according to the National Weather Service.

Sunset in Utqiagvik was short-lived, though.
.
Just 45 minutes later, at 2:45 a.m, the sun rose above the horizon again - and it won't descend below the horizon until the early-morning hours on Aug. 1.

There are four phases of daylight after a sunset, the first being civil twilight and after that comes nocturnal twilight, which occurs when the sun is 12 degrees below the horizon. During nocturnal twilight, outdoor light from the sun will diminish to the point where activities will need artificial lighting to continue....

The CARES Act was spot on.

The Democrats lead the way and it worked to protect Americans' housing and food needs where it was received. There is some concern all of it hasn't reached the people that need it most.

It would do everyone a good service in they spend time worrying about the path forward for the USA.

This is the Senate preparing for the appearance of the Federal Reserve Chair on Tuesday. There is a representative from the Federal Reserve at this meeting and she is highly supportive of the approach of the CARES Act and it's payments to American homes and small businesses. Highly Supportive of troubled debt restructuring and community debt relief.

Just one thought about the CARES Act. It was no act, it was sincere relief for the American people. But, it allowed for unemployment claims plus $600 per week. Not every state is carrying that through, unfortunately. Where it is utilized by the states, Americans receiving it are making ends meet and many don't have to accept food stamps either. I think that is helpful more so than single large payments. It allowed for 14 weeks. That is about 3 and a half months. The states need to report in as to the number of weeks actually remaining on those payments so we know where we stand. It may be different from state to state.

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee (click here) held a virtual hearing on oversight of financial regulators, amid the coronavirus pandemic. Witnesses included Federal Reserve Board Supervision Vice Chair Randal Quarles, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chair Jelena McWilliams, National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Chair Rodney Hood and Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting. They outlined the regulatory and supervisory activities of their respective agencies. In addition, committee members asked about the overall state of the financial industry, Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and the Federal Reserve’s Mainstreet Lending Program, which provides loans to small and medium-sized businesses.

May 15, 2020
By Erica Werner

House Democrats (click here) on Friday passed a $3 trillion tax cut and spending bill aimed at addressing the devastating economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak by directing huge sums of money into all corners of the economy.

But the White House and Senate Republicans have decried the measure’s design and said they will cast it aside, leaving uncertain what steps policymakers might take as the economy continues to face severe strains.

The sweeping legislation, dubbed the “Heroes Act, passed 208-199. Fourteen Democrats defected and opposed the bill, reflecting concerns voiced both by moderates and liberals in the House Democratic caucus about the bill’s content and the leadership-driven process that brought it to the floor. The bill won support from just one Republican: Rep. Peter T. King of New York....

It's Sunday Night

I suppose they need a mask.

I think the USA is facing a great deal of danger on several fronts.

Danger Zone By Kenny Loggins (click here for official website - thank you)

Revvin' up your engine
Listen to her howlin' roar
Metal under tension
Beggin' you to touch and go

Highway to the danger zone
Ride into the danger zone

Headin' into twilight
Spreadin' out her wings tonight
She got you jumpin' off the deck
And shovin' into overdrive

Highway to the danger zone
I'll take you right into the danger zone

You'll never say hello to you
Until you get it on the red line overload
You'll never know what you can do
Until you get it up as high as you can go

Out along the edges
Always where I burn to be
The further on the edge
The hotter the intensity

Highway to the danger zone
Gonna take it right into the danger zone

Highway to the danger zone

Ride into the danger zone

Highway to the Danger Zone

Gonna take it right into the Danger Zone
Highway to the Danger Zone
Ride into the Danger Zone

Highway to the Danger Zone
Gonna take it right into the Danger Zone
Highway to the Danger Zone
Ride into the Danger Zone

Highway to the Danger Zone
Gonna take it right into the Danger Zone
Highway to the Danger Zone
Ride into the Danger Zone

Highway to the danger zone 

Right to the danger zone

Trump is the perfect president to declare bankruptcy. It is something he fondly knows about.

US Senator Crapo wants to restructure the USA national debt without stating what exactly that means.

The last time the USA restructured it's national debt was between WWI and WWII.

In 1933, (click here) the U.S. unilaterally restructured its debt by declaring that it would no longer honor the gold clause in Treasury securities. We study the effects of the abrogation of the gold clause on sovereign debt markets, the Treasury's ability to issue new debt, investors' willingness to hold Treasury bonds, and on the Treasury's borrowing costs. We find that the restructuring was followed by a flight to quality in the sovereign market. Despite this, there was little effect on the Treasury's ability to sell new debt or the willingness of investors to roll over restructured debt. The Treasury incurred a marginally higher cost of capital by issuing new bonds without the gold clause.

If the USA decides unilaterally to change it's US National Debt global partners may look to other currencies as more stable and change the status of the USA Dollar.

Fed Reserve Chair Powell (click here) & Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Testifies on $3T Coronavirus Relief Bill

Program ID:   472163-1
Category:  Senate Committee
Format:  Senate Committee
Location:  Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Will Air:  May 19, 2020 | 10:00am EDT | C-SPAN 1

Airing Details (click here)

May 19, 2020 | 10:00am EDT | C-SPAN 1

Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees (click here)

Public Message

Each year the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare (click here) trust funds report on the current and projected financial status of the two programs. The reports include extensive information about these
important social insurance programs and careful analysis of their
outlook. We believe they fully and fairly present the current and
projected financial condition of their respective programs, subject to the
following caveat.

The projections and analysis in these reports do not reflect the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Social Security and Medicare programs. Given the uncertainty associated with these impacts, the Trustees believe that it is not possible to adjust their estimates accurately at this time....