Growing resistance to involuntary vaccinations.

Burning building in thick smoke. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

There is growing resistance to forced, involuntary vaccinations.  The most noticable part of the vaccine hesitancy is amongst people who are otherwise happy to receive vaccinations.

We need to be careful on how we proceed.  There is danger ahead.

This post continues the discussion of intentional government policies which have the unintended consequence of creating further strain on the economy and the entire supply chain.

Two more of many recent articles pointing to the risks:

  • Only 55% of firetrucks in New York City were available for dispatch last week,
  • Protestors against force vaccinations tell of willingly getting fired, loosing annual bonuses, or waiting to get fired in next few days.
  • Large number of parents in California kept their children at home on 10/18/21 to protest mandatory vaccination of little children.
  • Large protest in Los Angeles against city requirement for all city employees to be vaccinated.

One has to wonder why so many health care workers are refusing the vaccination.

We as a country are willfully headed for a disaster.

The Epoch Times – 11/5/21 – NYC Firetruck Availability Down to 55 Percent, Manpower Shortages Due to Vaccine Mandate: NY Firefighters – Couple weeks ago or so I read a report that 20% of the fire stations in New York City were closed because of a shortage of firefighters.

Last week, only 55% of firetrucks were available for dispatch because of staffing shortages.

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Just how much money has the Federal Reserve created out of thin air and injected into the economy?

Got to wondering how much money the Fed has created out of thin air and then pumped into the economy.  The answer is a vague “bunches and bunches.”

How do I know that? Because of my reading over the last few years. I pay attention to such stories (yeah, yeah, I know – I’m weird – pray for me as you feel led). I also am aware the Fed pumped a lot of money into the economy when the pandemic started.

There have been lots of news reports commenting they have been pumping something in the range of $100 billion a month into the economy after their initial round.

As I was thinking about things the federal, state, and local government have been doing to harm the economy, got to wondering just exactly how much fiat money the Fed has been creating, out of thin air of course. Yeah, I wonder about such things.

Answer is again bunches and bunches, and is measured in trillions of dollars.

Graph above shows the amount of total assets on the Federal Reserves balance sheet since around 2003.

Wow.

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About that new vaccination mandate for the private sector…

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The promised vaccine mandate for private companies with 100 or more employees were published on 11/4/21.

The federal diktat applies to private-sector employers with 100 or more employees. Companies have to verify employees have been fully vaccinated or require a weekly negative test. In addition anyone not vaccinated will have to wear a mask at work.

The vaccinate-or-test requirement goes into effect 1/4/22, two months from now.

Oh yeah, that mask requirement for the unvaccinated goes into effect 12/5/21, a month from now.

Separate federal diktats applied to federal employees, any company with a federal contract (think airlines, trucking companies, defense contractors), and any health facility with billings to either Medicare or Medicaid program.

Newest rules catch another 84 million people the mandatory vaccinate-or-else requirement.

News flash:  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction against the rules on 11/6/21.This circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah. The ruling cited “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”  Brief coverage from Investing on 11/6/21:  U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies.

Background on the rules and then the beginning points of issues with the requirements.

Wall Street Journal – 11/5/21 – OSHA Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate: What to Know

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Deliberate policies which compound supply chain issues.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

This is start of what will be a series of posts describing steps taken by federal, state, and local officials to compound the supply chain problem we are experiencing. Other policies, deliberately imposed, have the foreseeable consequence of being a drag on the economy. There are lots of recent articles pointing out policies, intentional policies by supposedly intelligent bureaucrats, which have the effect of making it more difficult to get things done.

A few policies that come to mind:

  • Tax on every container not pulled by a zero-emission truck.
  • Only a fraction of the trucks in the country allowed to pick up a container in California.
  • Owner/operators not allowed at the ports.
  • Fines on shipping companies who can’t get their containers out of the port because of congestion in the supply chain.

Additional tax on non-zero-emission trucks picking up cargo

Port Technology – 11/5/21 – Port of Los Angeles accelerates zero-emissions truck efforts – The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissions approved a requirement for trucks picking up cargo at either Long Beach or Los Angeles ports to be zero emission starting 4/1/22. Or else.

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Harsh enforcement of Covid rules against restaurants has started. And of course, the rules don’t apply to the elites. Protests are underway around the world.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Three topics in this post:

  • The ‘papers please’ enforcement efforts are getting serious. The first restaurants are now getting shuttered in California.
  • Another group of elitist ruling overlords ignoring the rules.
  • Protests are running across the planet against restrictions which prohibit living your life.

One restaurant refuses to become law enforcement enforcers

Before you read my description of this article, consider a comment I read the other day from someone who had visited New York recently. There is a mandatory requirement that all restaurants provide police-level enforcement of the vaccination requirement by checking vaccination and ID of every customer before they enter a restaurant.

This person observed that the staff assign responsibility for screening took a brief glance at whatever was presented to them and waved people in. This means enforcement is light. Restaurants there cannot afford to turn away customers (other, several report their income is down 50% to 60%) and cannot take the time to do a serious check of every single customer that ever enters the restaurant. Essentially the enforcement is quite lax, based on this person’s observations.

The Highwire – 10/18/21 – San Francisco closes In-and-out Burger After Defying City’s Vaxxing Rule – Because In-N-Out Burger allegedly would not check vaccination documents and compare them to photo ID and physically bar entrance by anyone who is not completely vaccinated at one particular restaurant in San Francisco, the county Department of Health issued an order to close the restaurant.

In a published comment, the Chief Legal & Business Officer of the restaurants chain defiantly said:

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What’s likely to happen with inflation? More of it and for extended time.

Rising costs and constrained shipping capacity is driving inflation and disrupting supply chain across the economy. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Indicators I can see suggest inflation is going to continue at a high rate for quite some time. Here are a few of the articles I have read recently pointing towards ongoing rise in prices:

  • Rent component of CPI will increase substantially over the next year because of the way the index is calculated.
  • Shipping costs have already skyrocketed.
  • Multiple food producers are struggling with rapidly increasing costs.
  • Major food producer expects their costs go up 11% in the next year with prices they charge to go up by 4%.
  • The phrase “stagflation” is back in play. Oh joy, a possible (likely?) return to the Carter administration.

Asia Times – 8/27/21 – US rent hikes will explode consumer inflation in 2022 – Anecdotal information indicates rental prices are skyrocketing.

A friend of mine priced the apartment they are living in to help a relative who was moving into the area. Price for this exact unit is 50% more than when they signed their annual lease a number of months ago.

An acquaintance reports the price for renting a particular house went up while they were thinking about it for a day or so.

Two friends report landlords renting apartments expect six months rent in advance and some landlords renting houses are expecting a year in advance. A year.

Article mentioned above says the reports floating around in the media indicate rent hikes overall are around 10%. Yet the CPI shows only 2% increase in rent.

How can that be?

Fascinating detail of how the CPI is calculated explains the anomaly and also points towards dramatic increase in the rent component of CPI over the next year.

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Financial conflict of interest on the federal bench and stock trading by presidents of regional Federal Reserve Banks. Alternate headline – Is there any group of powerful people who bother to follow the rules?

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Major investigative effort by the Wall Street Journal revealed 131 federal judges who own stock in one of the firms appearing before them in 685 lawsuits.

The Journal found that about two thirds of all federal judges disclosed ownership in individual stock. Of those who made such disclosure about one fifth had a conflict of interest but did not recuse themselves.

For CPAs, this illustrates the importance of our independence rules, both independence in fact an independence in appearance.

What shall we call judges who were trading stock of litigants who were appearing in front of them? Perhaps a reasonable label would be integrity impaired fools. Even those judges who had a trivial investment and had a mere procedural motion in front of them have a serious appearance of conflict of interest and thus impaired integrity.

It would be wise for CPAs to read this story as a caution to keep a scrupulous eye on their own independence. The same lessons can be drawn by leaders of nonprofit organization.

The story doesn’t end with the federal judges, but we start there. More discussion in a moment about stock trading by presidents of two regional Federal Reserve Banks, who are the ultimate insiders.

Failures to recuse when federal judges have financial conflicts of interest

The investigative report may be found at the Wall Street Journal, published online 9/28/21:131 Federal Judges Broke the Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had a Financial Interest.

A 1974 federal law requires federal judges to monitor their investments, maintain personal awareness of those investments, and then recuse himself of any case in which they have a financial interest, no matter how small their interest may be.

In spite of a 40-year-old law and in spite of software that checks disclosed ownership against parties to the lawsuit, 12% of federal judges completely blew off the ethical obligation. That means one out of eight judges failed to recuse themselves when they had a financial interest in a case before them.

I’m wondering if there’s any group or category of people in this country who have significant power or influence who actually bother to follow the rules

More specific tallies from the article:

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Those Covid bugs are really smart. Alternate headline: The ruling caste knows that masks are useless.

Those little critters are smart enough to follow written instructions from the LA Department of Public Health. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Those little Covid critters are really, reeeeeally smart.

How smart are they?, I hear you ask.

They are so smart that they accessed, read, and comprehended correspondence from the Los Angeles County Department of Health that all those people sitting shoulder to shoulder at the Emmys were perfectly safe without wearing any masks.

Thus, those little bugs obediently obeyed.

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