Wednesday, September 26, 2012
QE4? The Big Wall Street Banks Are Already Complaining That QE3 Is Not Enough
QE3 has barely even started and some folks on Wall Street are already clamoring for QE4. In fact, as you will read below, one equity strategist at Morgan Stanley says that he would not be "surprised" if the Federal Reserve announced another new round of money printing by the end of the year. But this is what tends to happen when a financial system starts becoming addicted to easy money. There is always a deep hunger for another "hit" of "currency meth". Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was probably hoping that QE3 would satisfy the wolves on Wall Street for a while. His promise to recklessly print 40 billion dollars a month and use it to buy mortgage-backed securities is being called "QEInfinity" by detractors. During QE3, nearly half a trillion dollars a year will be added to the financial system until the Fed decides that it is time to stop. This is so crazy that even former Federal Reserve officials are speaking out against it.
For example, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker says that QE3 is the "most extreme easing of monetary policy" that he could ever remember. But the big Wall Street banks are never going to be satisfied. If QE4 is announced, they will start calling for QE5. As I noted in a previous article, quantitative easing tends to pump up the prices of financial assets such as stocks and commodities, and that is very good for Wall Street bankers. So of course they want more quantitative easing. They always want bigger profits and bigger bonus checks at the end of the year.
But at this point the Federal Reserve has already "jumped the shark". If you don't know what "jumping the shark" means, you can find a definition on Wikipedia right here. Whatever shreds of credibility the Fed had left are being washed away by a flood of newly printed money.
Those running the Fed have essentially used up all of their bullets and the next great financial crisis has not even fully erupted yet.
So what is the Fed going to do if the stock market crashes and the credit market freezes up like we saw back in 2008?
For example, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker says that QE3 is the "most extreme easing of monetary policy" that he could ever remember. But the big Wall Street banks are never going to be satisfied. If QE4 is announced, they will start calling for QE5. As I noted in a previous article, quantitative easing tends to pump up the prices of financial assets such as stocks and commodities, and that is very good for Wall Street bankers. So of course they want more quantitative easing. They always want bigger profits and bigger bonus checks at the end of the year.
But at this point the Federal Reserve has already "jumped the shark". If you don't know what "jumping the shark" means, you can find a definition on Wikipedia right here. Whatever shreds of credibility the Fed had left are being washed away by a flood of newly printed money.
Those running the Fed have essentially used up all of their bullets and the next great financial crisis has not even fully erupted yet.
So what is the Fed going to do if the stock market crashes and the credit market freezes up like we saw back in 2008?
Story and Sources Here
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Flu vaccine shot recipients MORE likely to catch influenza
New information has emerged concerning the Great Swine Flu Hoax of 2009 and the mass vaccination hysteria that accompanied it. As it turns out, the seasonal influenza vaccine that was pushed on everyone as an added preventive measure against H1N1 appears to have been responsible for actually inducing more cases of H1N1 infection, this according to shocking new data procured by an influenza expert at Canada's B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Dr. Danuta Skowronski from the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently observed as part of a comprehensive analysis that individuals who received an annual flu shot during the 2008-09 winter season had a disproportionately higher risk of developing H1N1 infection than individuals who were not vaccinated. Confirming earlier suspicions, Dr. Skowronski and her colleagues observed after recreating the phenomenon in a group of ferrets that the annual flu shot from that year was definitively linked to higher rates of H1N1 infection.
Presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco, the study included evaluating 32 ferrets, half of who received the 2008-09 seasonal flu shot, and the other half of who received a placebo shot. The researchers did not know which ferrets received which vaccine until the end of the study.
Upon conclusion, all the ferrets ended up developing H1N1, but the ferrets from the vaccinated group were the first to get it. The vaccinated group also became much sicker than the unvaccinated group, and appears to have very likely infected the unvaccinated group. These findings match up with those of five other Canadian studies conducted in other provinces outside British Columbia where elevated rates of H1N1 infection were also observed among individuals who had received their annual flu shot.
"The findings are consistent with the increased risk that we saw in the human studies," said Dr. Skowronski to the Vancouver Sun.
What this all goes to show, of course, is that not only was the seasonal flu shot a failure at preventing H1N1, but it was also apparently a cause of H1N1 infection. If the seasonal flu shot had been properly tested, which it most definitely was not, it would have become apparent that the shot was not only ineffective at preventing H1N1, but also a definitive cause of H1N1 infection.
Dr. Danuta Skowronski from the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently observed as part of a comprehensive analysis that individuals who received an annual flu shot during the 2008-09 winter season had a disproportionately higher risk of developing H1N1 infection than individuals who were not vaccinated. Confirming earlier suspicions, Dr. Skowronski and her colleagues observed after recreating the phenomenon in a group of ferrets that the annual flu shot from that year was definitively linked to higher rates of H1N1 infection.
Presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco, the study included evaluating 32 ferrets, half of who received the 2008-09 seasonal flu shot, and the other half of who received a placebo shot. The researchers did not know which ferrets received which vaccine until the end of the study.
Upon conclusion, all the ferrets ended up developing H1N1, but the ferrets from the vaccinated group were the first to get it. The vaccinated group also became much sicker than the unvaccinated group, and appears to have very likely infected the unvaccinated group. These findings match up with those of five other Canadian studies conducted in other provinces outside British Columbia where elevated rates of H1N1 infection were also observed among individuals who had received their annual flu shot.
"The findings are consistent with the increased risk that we saw in the human studies," said Dr. Skowronski to the Vancouver Sun.
What this all goes to show, of course, is that not only was the seasonal flu shot a failure at preventing H1N1, but it was also apparently a cause of H1N1 infection. If the seasonal flu shot had been properly tested, which it most definitely was not, it would have become apparent that the shot was not only ineffective at preventing H1N1, but also a definitive cause of H1N1 infection.
Story and Sources Here
Government Bullies
Bully. (bul-ly) Noun. A person who uses strength or power to harm, intimidate or manipulate those who are weaker.
To me, the government bullies are the worst.
Under the threat of violence, they tell you what kind of light bulb you can buy, what size your toilet can be, what kind of plant you can grow and consume, and what kind of tax penalty you’ll have to pay for doing absolutely nothing. They read your emails, monitor your bank accounts, fly drones everywhere imaginable, drop bombs on people around the world and claim the power to indefinitely detain you without due process.
Even the worst bullies in all the other categories can’t get away with these kinds of things on such a grand scale.
These politicians are nothing more than the mafia – with tax revenue to pay their expenses – which actually makes them worse.
To me, the government bullies are the worst.
Under the threat of violence, they tell you what kind of light bulb you can buy, what size your toilet can be, what kind of plant you can grow and consume, and what kind of tax penalty you’ll have to pay for doing absolutely nothing. They read your emails, monitor your bank accounts, fly drones everywhere imaginable, drop bombs on people around the world and claim the power to indefinitely detain you without due process.
Even the worst bullies in all the other categories can’t get away with these kinds of things on such a grand scale.
These politicians are nothing more than the mafia – with tax revenue to pay their expenses – which actually makes them worse.
Story and Sources Here
Appeals Court Rules Drivers Can be Detained Indefinitely for Paying Tolls with Cash
In one of the more insane rulings recently – the appeals court decision to block the judge’s ruling on the unconstitutionality of the Obama administration’s indefinite detention notwithstanding – a federal appeals court ruled that motorists can, essentially, be held indefinitely at toll booths if they pay the toll with a large denomination bill.
The ruling (PDF courtesy of The Newspaper) came down in the U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, on September 19, 2012 in the case of Chandler v. FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation).
The chandler family, consisting of Joel Deborah and Robert Chandler, filed the lawsuit last year in which they argue that they were “effectively being held hostage by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and the private contractor in charge of the state’s toll road, Faneuil, Inc.”
The FDOT policies at the time dictated that any driver who paid with a $50 bill, or, as The Newspaper reports, “occasionally even $5 bills,” was not to be given permission to proceed until the toll collector completed a so-called “Bill Detection Report.”
These reports include data about the driver’s vehicle and details obtained from their driver’s license as well.
Obviously these reports completely nullify the privacy protection offered by opting to pay with cash instead of installing a “SunPass” transponder on their vehicle which records their travels for later retrieval.
Indeed, detailed papers have been written in an effort to preserve driver privacy when using these toll collection technologies in order “to resolve the tension between the desire for sophisticated road pricing schemes and drivers’ interest in maintaining the privacy of their driving patterns.”
“Many of those who chose to pay cash did so to avoid the privacy implications of installing a SunPass transponder that recorded their driving habits,” reports The Newspaper.
It is hardly surprising to learn that these same drivers who opted to use cash for privacy reasons were unwilling to provide their personal information to the toll collector.
The drivers were then essentially forced to give the toll collector their private information because the barrier in the toll booth would not be raised until the driver complied with the Bill Detection Report.
The drivers would then be in quite a pickle since FDOT policy does not allow anyone to exit the vehicle. Similarly, backing up is illegal and usually a physical impossibility due to the presence of other vehicles.
The ruling (PDF courtesy of The Newspaper) came down in the U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, on September 19, 2012 in the case of Chandler v. FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation).
The chandler family, consisting of Joel Deborah and Robert Chandler, filed the lawsuit last year in which they argue that they were “effectively being held hostage by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and the private contractor in charge of the state’s toll road, Faneuil, Inc.”
The FDOT policies at the time dictated that any driver who paid with a $50 bill, or, as The Newspaper reports, “occasionally even $5 bills,” was not to be given permission to proceed until the toll collector completed a so-called “Bill Detection Report.”
These reports include data about the driver’s vehicle and details obtained from their driver’s license as well.
Obviously these reports completely nullify the privacy protection offered by opting to pay with cash instead of installing a “SunPass” transponder on their vehicle which records their travels for later retrieval.
Indeed, detailed papers have been written in an effort to preserve driver privacy when using these toll collection technologies in order “to resolve the tension between the desire for sophisticated road pricing schemes and drivers’ interest in maintaining the privacy of their driving patterns.”
“Many of those who chose to pay cash did so to avoid the privacy implications of installing a SunPass transponder that recorded their driving habits,” reports The Newspaper.
It is hardly surprising to learn that these same drivers who opted to use cash for privacy reasons were unwilling to provide their personal information to the toll collector.
The drivers were then essentially forced to give the toll collector their private information because the barrier in the toll booth would not be raised until the driver complied with the Bill Detection Report.
The drivers would then be in quite a pickle since FDOT policy does not allow anyone to exit the vehicle. Similarly, backing up is illegal and usually a physical impossibility due to the presence of other vehicles.
Story and Sources Here
The drugs don't work: a modern medical scandal
Reboxetine is a drug I have prescribed. Other drugs had done nothing for my patient, so we wanted to try something new. I'd read the trial data before I wrote the prescription, and found only well-designed, fair tests, with overwhelmingly positive results. Reboxetine was better than a placebo, and as good as any other antidepressant in head-to-head comparisons. It's approved for use by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (the MHRA), which governs all drugs in the UK. Millions of doses are prescribed every year, around the world. Reboxetine was clearly a safe and effective treatment. The patient and I discussed the evidence briefly, and agreed it was the right treatment to try next. I signed a prescription.
But we had both been misled. In October 2010, a group of researchers was finally able to bring together all the data that had ever been collected on reboxetine, both from trials that were published and from those that had never appeared in academic papers. When all this trial data was put together, it produced a shocking picture. Seven trials had been conducted comparing reboxetine against a placebo. Only one, conducted in 254 patients, had a neat, positive result, and that one was published in an academic journal, for doctors and researchers to read. But six more trials were conducted, in almost 10 times as many patients. All of them showed that reboxetine was no better than a dummy sugar pill. None of these trials was published. I had no idea they existed.
It got worse. The trials comparing reboxetine against other drugs showed exactly the same picture: three small studies, 507 patients in total, showed that reboxetine was just as good as any other drug. They were all published. But 1,657 patients' worth of data was left unpublished, and this unpublished data showed that patients on reboxetine did worse than those on other drugs. If all this wasn't bad enough, there was also the side-effects data. The drug looked fine in the trials that appeared in the academic literature; but when we saw the unpublished studies, it turned out that patients were more likely to have side-effects, more likely to drop out of taking the drug and more likely to withdraw from the trial because of side-effects, if they were taking reboxetine rather than one of its competitors.
I did everything a doctor is supposed to do. I read all the papers, I critically appraised them, I understood them, I discussed them with the patient and we made a decision together, based on the evidence. In the published data, reboxetine was a safe and effective drug. In reality, it was no better than a sugar pill and, worse, it does more harm than good. As a doctor, I did something that, on the balance of all the evidence, harmed my patient, simply because unflattering data was left unpublished.
Nobody broke any law in that situation, reboxetine is still on the market and the system that allowed all this to happen is still in play, for all drugs, in all countries in the world. Negative data goes missing, for all treatments, in all areas of science. The regulators and professional bodies we would reasonably expect to stamp out such practices have failed us. These problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a soundbite. This is why they've gone unfixed by politicians, at least to some extent; but it's also why it takes detail to explain. The people you should have been able to trust to fix these problems have failed you, and because you have to understand a problem properly in order to fix it, there are some things you need to know.
Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques that are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don't like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug's true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drug's life, and even then they don't give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion.
But we had both been misled. In October 2010, a group of researchers was finally able to bring together all the data that had ever been collected on reboxetine, both from trials that were published and from those that had never appeared in academic papers. When all this trial data was put together, it produced a shocking picture. Seven trials had been conducted comparing reboxetine against a placebo. Only one, conducted in 254 patients, had a neat, positive result, and that one was published in an academic journal, for doctors and researchers to read. But six more trials were conducted, in almost 10 times as many patients. All of them showed that reboxetine was no better than a dummy sugar pill. None of these trials was published. I had no idea they existed.
It got worse. The trials comparing reboxetine against other drugs showed exactly the same picture: three small studies, 507 patients in total, showed that reboxetine was just as good as any other drug. They were all published. But 1,657 patients' worth of data was left unpublished, and this unpublished data showed that patients on reboxetine did worse than those on other drugs. If all this wasn't bad enough, there was also the side-effects data. The drug looked fine in the trials that appeared in the academic literature; but when we saw the unpublished studies, it turned out that patients were more likely to have side-effects, more likely to drop out of taking the drug and more likely to withdraw from the trial because of side-effects, if they were taking reboxetine rather than one of its competitors.
I did everything a doctor is supposed to do. I read all the papers, I critically appraised them, I understood them, I discussed them with the patient and we made a decision together, based on the evidence. In the published data, reboxetine was a safe and effective drug. In reality, it was no better than a sugar pill and, worse, it does more harm than good. As a doctor, I did something that, on the balance of all the evidence, harmed my patient, simply because unflattering data was left unpublished.
Nobody broke any law in that situation, reboxetine is still on the market and the system that allowed all this to happen is still in play, for all drugs, in all countries in the world. Negative data goes missing, for all treatments, in all areas of science. The regulators and professional bodies we would reasonably expect to stamp out such practices have failed us. These problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a soundbite. This is why they've gone unfixed by politicians, at least to some extent; but it's also why it takes detail to explain. The people you should have been able to trust to fix these problems have failed you, and because you have to understand a problem properly in order to fix it, there are some things you need to know.
Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques that are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don't like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug's true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drug's life, and even then they don't give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion.
Story and Sources Here
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