DRY RUN

General Milley Chairman, Joint Chiefs and Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense have both committed the most egregious and potentially mortal sins of not only disagreeing with the impeached president, but having their tiffs being made public.  The day after the display of force in Lafayette Park, the impeached want-a-be law and order president had a plan, sans Richard Nixon’s initial presidential campaign.  Remember he won. 

In a meeting in the Oval office, petulant dotard impeached Trump was adamant that General Milley send troops into all the major cities to quell the protesters.  Milley protested and told the dotard that having the local police handle it, was the correct response, as it was a domestic problem.  It was leaked by a source witnessing the exchange, that Trump got testy.  The general should have said the president did not command any troops and only the generals and admirals have command of military soldiers.  Mark Espy had agreed with the general and  the fuming dotard acquiesced not to have soldiers deployed.

Trump has tried to make the impression to his tribe, that he is both a law and order and also a strong, religious leader?  The question I have is this…  Was the attempt to deploy troops a dry run if he loses the election?  Was Trump seeing how far he could push the deployment, like a child that presses the boundaries?  Or is he testing his leaders to see which would blindly do his bidding for the optics? 

I would be very, upset if Trump firies these two for not agreeing to his imprudent and unwarranted actions.  If these two military advisors and up being replaced with sycophants that drool and salute in order to accommodate his orders, this would be tragic.  Will he order troop deployment in the streets of America if he loses in November?  If it’s a close election, will he declare widespread fraud as a result of mail-in-ballots?

The problem becomes this, even if the military won’t obey an order to deploy, due to a close election, which Trump already claims to be rigged without proof, there is an alternative military deployment Trump could use. 

The alternative to the above in a close election is, if the military refuses to deploy, then Trump can call on sympathetic republican governor/s and request a deployment of the National Guard to Washington D.C. Other receptive republican governors do likewise within their state.  You then have anarchy. 

The election of 2016, that Impeached President Trump won, the electoral college had 25% participation that used mail-in-ballots.  Trump voted by mail in 2018, however was initially denied, as he had his official residence as N.Y. and had to move his mailing address to Florida in order to legally to vote.

One of Trump’s first acts as president was to look into his perception of massive fraud and illegal voting, that would have made up the 3+ million votes Clinton had over Trump.  Trump had a commission formed and found no sign of any fraudulent voting, after looking into the problem and gave a clean bill of health for the election.  The irony is, a group of republican operatives in the 2018 election were caught harvesting and signing ballots that were to be mailed in.

OTHER ANOYANCES

The problem I see is it’s all a big bubble based on magic thinking.  The employment numbers are fudged for optics, the stock market has been artificially inseminated with an influx of massive amounts of cash and liquidity. Retail traders are betting on insolvent companies, despite bankruptcy rules that could wipe out shareholders? Why I ask? Partially due to TINA (There Isn’t aNother Alternative?) Or is it that individuals see the known company like Hertz that have filed, and the stock price was at an all time low.  Are Investors banking on a bailout of the company? 

In a bankruptcy, the debtors of the company are paid first and the stockholders are last in line for any residual payouts. The equity of the company is usually lost long before the filing for chapter 11.   So why have the prices for bankrupt big name companies still rising in market price?  Are the investors just looking at the stock name and the low price?

Here are some of the oddities in the market due to bankruptcy;

• Hertz climbed 95% since it filed for chapter II May 22nd
• J.C. Penney up 167% since May 15^th
• Pier 1 Imports Inc. price doubled in the last week, although still down from its high by 97%
• Whiting Petroleum up 835% since April 1
• Companies planning for bankruptcy also gained Monday 8 June:
  • Chesapeake Energy Corp. up 181%
  • GNC Holdings Inc. up 106%

Are other market forces in play?  Is there information that normal individuals are not seeing, that is creating this unusual run up?  Are the plans for the Fed buying out debt of these defunct companies buoying the stock prices with the taxpayer holding the bag?  Who is getting all these gains that appear to be not of a sound investment, so why?  Anyone that knows bankruptcy laws knows the shareholder usually is the one holding the bag.

 Impeached Donald Trump brags about how well everything is going when almost 1/3 of the population is under or unemployed and the pandemic rages on?  The economy is doing very well for the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else.

With 110,000 deaths in the U.S. and only 401,000 deaths world-wide and with the U.S. population at only 4.5% of the total, the question is, did we do a great job controlling the pandemic or not?   Will the $4.5 trillion dollars of Fed bailout cover that?  Why are we 27% of the total world-wide deaths?  Planning? Leadership? Both?

The good news is, with testing we see the death rate per infection is getting closer to that of the flu annual rate.  The current rate is 110K deaths and 2 million infections is a rate of .6%.  Annual flu is about .2% or only 3 times more deadly.  Prior to increased testing the rate was over 1%.  This is a bad comparison due to no one having antibodies for covid, and flu is contained with an annual vaccine.

Testing is at a pathetic 3 million tests per week, which barely covers the health care workers,  EMT’s, and rest home requirements.  The number should be at least 3 million tests a day with contact tracing follow-ups.

14 states + Puerto Pico have all experienced the highest 7 day moving average since the pandemic started.  Is this the beginning of a second wave?  Arizona experiencing increases that have exhausted the supply of ventilators.