Free Republic

I wish The Federal Reserve had created only tiny bubbles. But after Bernanke/Yellen’s zero interest rate policies (ZIRP) and Quantitative Sleazing (QE) for too long, we have a monstrous asset bubble in commercial real estate … that is starting to unravel as The Fed raises rates and shrinks their balance sheet. The NCREIF commercial real estate indices are beginning to decline as The Federal Reserve has finally started to raise interest rates and shrinking their balance sheet after being TLFTL (too low for too long). Hotel (blue) and retail (orange) both got crush with the Covid shutdowns. But while the...

There are two kinds of prosperity, one fake, one real. Bogus “prosperity” depends on credit-asset bubbles inflating, magically creating “wealth” not from labor, production or improving productivity, but from the values of assets soaring as bubbles inflate.This bubble-generated “wealth” then fuels a vast expansion of credit and consumption as assets soaring in value increase the collateral available to borrow against, and the occasional sale of soaring assets generate capital gains, stock options, etc., which then fund sharply higher consumption.When the value of a modest home skyrockets from $200,000 to $1 million in a few years, that $800,000 in gain was...

Bubbles Red Arrow Five centuries ago, Leonardo da Vinci observed air bubbles deviating from a straight path in a zigzag or spiral motion. However, the cause of this periodic motion remained unknown until now. Researchers from the universities of Seville and Bristol have solved the mystery surrounding the unsteady path of an air bubble rising in water. Professors Miguel Ángel Herrada of the University of Seville and Jens G. Eggers of the University of Bristol have uncovered a mechanism that explains the erratic movement of bubbles rising in water. The findings, published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National...

Tularemia Outbreak in Russia –443 Cases-Origins Unknown The ProMed site carried a report this morning concerning a Tularemia outbreak in Russia –updated to 08/29/05. The ProMed heading says 334 cases have been reported, but simple arithmetic shows the number to be 443. Breakdown follows: 135 Moscow (Shatursky District) 99 Nizhny Novgorod 83 Vladimir region ( Gorohovetsky) 67 Ryazan 28 Voronezh 29 Sverdlosk region 2 Yekaterinburg 443 Total Laboratory confirmation has been obtained in 128 of the cases,so far. (This is important, because influenza can cause similar symptoms , and there has been extensive migration of infected/infectious wildfowl into much of...

Bubbles are sustained only by ever increasing amounts of Credit. The most pernicious Bubbles are those fueled by “money” – perceived safe and liquid Credit instruments. Bubbles are mechanisms of wealth redistribution and destruction. Structural impairment caused by Bubble excess escalates over the life of the boom. The pain and dislocation unleashed during the bust is proportional to the excesses of the preceding boom. Though we’re in uncharted waters when it comes to global Bubble Dynamics, I’ll suggest that geopolitical risks expand exponentially over time. My thesis holds that 2022 is a pivotal year for a historic multi-decade Bubble period....

U.S. consumer sentiment fell in early August to the lowest level in nearly a decade as Americans grew more concerned about the economy’s prospects, inflation and the recent surge in coronavirus cases. Consumer sentiment in U.S. plunges on concerns about virus, economic prospects “Consumers have correctly reasoned that the economy’s performance will be diminished over the next several months, but the extraordinary surge in negative economic assessments also reflects an emotional response, mainly from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end,” Richard Curtin, director of the survey, said in the report. The expectations gauge plummeted almost 14 points to...

“Seeding the Cosmos for Life” –From Supernova to Super Bubbles Posted on Jul 29, 2021 in Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Science Supernova explosions release as much energy in a second as our Sun will in its entire 10-billion year existence. Without supernovae, “there would be no computer chips, trilobites, Mozart or the tears of a little girl,” wrote science writer Clifford A. Pickover.When a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the explosion ejects essential elements – carbon, oxygen, and iron – that form the basis for life across the universe. The supernovae also release tremendous amounts of radiative,...

Jeremy Grantham: ‘My confidence is rising quite rapidly that this is, in fact, becoming the fourth, real McCoy, bubble of my investment career. The great bubbles can go on a long time and inflict a lot of pain but at least I think we know now that we’re in one. And the chutzpah involved in having a bubble at a time of massive economic and financial uncertainty is substantial.’ "A market that may be the most bubblicious he’s seen in his storied career." "Grantham is worth paying attention to due to his prescient calls over the years. He said that...

In the early 20th century, sailors near Alaska reported seeing black bubbles seeming to boil out from the sea, each one the size of the dome of the capitol building in Washington, D.C. They weren't the only sailors who reported the bizarre phenomenon, and they weren't mistaken, except for one thing … the bubbles were much larger. When the mostly underwater Bogoslof volcano in the Aleutian Islands erupts, it produces giant bubbles that can reach up to 1,444 feet (440 meters) across, according to a new study. These bubbles are filled with volcanic gas, so when they burst they create...

President Donald Trump is calling on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by at least a full percentage point "over a fairly short period of time," saying that such an action would make the U.S. economy even better and would also "greatly and quickly" enhance the global economy. In two tweets Monday, Trump kept up his pressure on the Fed and its chairman Jerome Powell, saying the U.S. economy was strong "despite the horrendous lack of vision by Jay Powell and the Fed." Powell is Trump's hand-picked choice for the top Fed job. He said Democrats were trying to...

This is the incredible moment a bubble transformed into a delicate snow globe, before freezing completely and shattering. Mesmerising footage shows a bubble balanced on a straw that quickly crystallises in sub-zero temperatures, creating a stunning swirl of delicate icy flakes. The clip captures ice crystals dancing along the fragile surface of the bubble before it collapses in on itself, all in just 14 seconds.

My history with bubble universes began in 1968 when I met Robert Kirshner while we were both undergraduates at Harvard in Massachusetts. He was a lively, funny, interesting fellow. We met up again a few years later, when he was a graduate student at Caltech in California and I was a new postdoc there. At Caltech, he had a piece of good luck that changed the direction of his career and, ultimately, helped reshape modern cosmology. While he was at Caltech, a bright supernova (an exploding star ending its life) became visible, and Kirshner was able to study it using...

My history with bubble universes began in 1968 when I met Robert Kirshner while we were both undergraduates at Harvard in Massachusetts. He was a lively, funny, interesting fellow. We met up again a few years later, when he was a graduate student at Caltech in California and I was a new postdoc there. At Caltech, he had a piece of good luck that changed the direction of his career and, ultimately, helped reshape modern cosmology.While he was at Caltech, a bright supernova (an exploding star ending its life) became visible, and Kirshner was able to study it using the...

Our sense of smell plays an important role in how we interpret the world around us. And for people who love cats, there are few scents as welcome as the smell of the soft fur on a kitten's head. That delectable scent is now available in a bottle. Perfume company Demeter Fragrance Library (DFL) recently announced the release of a new fragrance dubbed "Kitten Fur." The perfume captures "the olfactory essence of the warmth and comfort of that "purr"-fect spot, just behind a kitten's neck," according to a product description on the company's website. Kitten Fur joins a range of...

Harry_DentSeptember 23, 2015 It’s not enough that jobs are less stable, or that the ones we’re adding are increasingly more part-time… It’s not enough that rapidly growing student loan costs are plaguing more young echo boomers and millennials… It’s not enough that the high costs of education are increasing the inequality gap and making upward mobility impossible… Or that, even after the last crash, housing is still expensive and loans are harder to get… Today, the young generation ALSO has to deal with runaway childcare costs. It’s no wonder many of them aren’t having kids! But I believe much of...

While the people sleep, an economic earthquake rumbles underneath. The day that they begin to feel the quake draws near. History will record that in this decade more people will lose more money (forget about the trillions of dollars already lost) than at any time in our history, including during the Great Depression. At the same time, a very small group has made and will make huge sums of money. During the Y2K scare (a real hoax) many people stored food. Then, after Y2K, many people wanted to dump their cache; and some did. We advised readers at the time...

Mario Villalobos, 58, allegedly confessed to the killing when he showed the body to a woman who was visiting Saturday night. The visitor, who goes by the name Bubbles, said Villalobos told her he was going to evict his roommate when the two got into a confrontation. “She kicked his dog … she pepper sprayed him and she was fighting and he was grabbing her,” Bubbles recalled Villalobos telling her. “She scratched him and then he grabbed her by her neck and squeezed it and squeezed it and squeezed it until she stopped moving,” Bubbles claimed Villalobos told her. Bubbles...

When the temperature dropped to 16 degrees in Washington, Angela Kelly got a strange idea. She and her seven-year-old son mixed up some homemade soap and sent bubbles soaring through the air...in the middle of the freezing cold. Angela snapped photos as the frost created intricate designs in the larger bubbles, while the smaller ones froze and shattered as they hit the ground. Before the sun came up, they would freeze entirely and behave as though they were made of glass. But after the sun came up, the tops of the bubbles would defrost. Sometimes, in limbo between freezing and...

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time. So they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming...