Month: October 2021

Look out for Zombie States – not only on Halloween

Mary Pat Campbell
Link:https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/look-out-for-zombie-states-not-only-on-halloween

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Excerpt:

We call it the “Zombie Index” based on the work of Edward Kane, a prolific and respected finance professor at Boston College. Back in 1985 and 1989, Ed wrote two books warning about taxpayer exposure to losses from bank deposit insurance schemes, before we knew what hit us in the savings and loan crisis. Ed coined the term “zombie bank” to identify effectively-insolvent banks that were allowed to remain open by regulators and others. Deceptive accounting principles greased the wheels for regulatory forbearance, making “zombies” appear to be solvent. 

Zombies had incentives, in Ed’s terms, to “gamble for resurrection.” Insiders could capture the upside of riskier investments, while prospective losses could be socialized through the government’s sponsorship (and ultimately, bailout) of deposit insurance systems. These incentives ended up magnifying taxpayer losses during the 1980s deposit insurance crisis. Those losses ran in the hundreds of billions of dollars and helped set the stage for the massive financial crisis of 2008-2009.

Author(s): Bill Bergman

Publication Date: 25 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting

Lockdowns Coincided With Record-Breaking Drug Overdose Fatalities, New CDC Data Show

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://fee.org/articles/lockdowns-coincided-with-record-breaking-drug-overdose-fatalities-new-cdc-data-show/

Excerpt:

An astounding 96,000 Americans died from drug overdoses over that one-year period, the latest figures released by the Centers for Disease Control reveal. That’s a 29.6 percent increase from the previous year. 

“This has been an incredibly uncertain and stressful time for many people and we are seeing an increase in drug consumption, difficulty in accessing life-saving treatments for substance use disorders, and a tragic rise in overdose deaths,” National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow said earlier this year. 

Author(s): Brad Polumbo

Publication Date: 14 Oct 2021

Publication Site: FEE

Missouri Professor Wants Gov. Parson to Apologize

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.governing.com/now/missouri-professor-wants-gov-parson-to-apologize

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A cybersecurity professor who verified the vulnerability that left the Social Security numbers of upwards of 100,000 teachers accessible on a Missouri website is demanding Gov. Mike Parson apologize after he threatened those who exposed the weakness with prosecution.

An attorney for University of Missouri-St. Louis Professor Shaji Khan sent a letter Thursday to Parson, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and other agencies telling them to preserve records related to the episode — often a first step before a lawsuit.

The letter is the first indication that Parson may face a legal challenge over his response to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story last week detailing how Social Security numbers had been left exposed on a DESE website. The day after publication, Parson called a news conference where he threatened the newspaper, its journalists and those who helped them with prosecution — and said law enforcement would investigate.

Author(s): Jonathan Shorman and Jeanne Kuang, The Kansas City Star

Publication Date: 22 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Governing

Your New Woke 401(k)

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-new-woke-401-k-retirement-savings-esg-erisa-biden-administration-department-of-labor-proposal-11634753095

Excerpt:

While Democrats in Congress negotiate over trillions of dollars in new spending, the Biden Administration is quietly advancing its agenda through regulation. Witness a little-noticed proposed rule last week by the Labor Department that will add new political directives to your retirement savings.

The Administration says the rule will make it easier for retirement plans to offer 401(k) funds focused on ESG (environmental, social and governance) objectives. In fact, the rule will coerce workers and businesses into supporting progressive policies.

An important Trump Labor rule last fall reinforced that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (Erisa) requires retirement plan fiduciaries to act “solely in the interest” of participants. The rule prevented pension plans and asset managers from considering ESG factors like climate, workforce diversity and political donations unless they had a “material effect on the return and risk of an investment.”

The Biden DOL plans to scrap the Trump rule while putting retirement sponsors and asset managers on notice that they have a fiduciary duty to include ESG in investment decisions. The proposed rule “makes clear that climate change and other ESG factors are often material” and thus in many instances should be considered “in the assessment of investment risks and returns.”

Author(s): WSJ editorial board

Publication Date: 20 Oct 2021

Publication Site: WSJ

Life expectancy across the UK

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.clubvita.co.uk/news-and-insights/life-expectancy-across-the-uk

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The ONS (‘Office of National Statistics) produces annual updates on period life expectancy in the UK – the so-called National Life Tables. The latest tables are based on the 2018 to 2020 period, and therefore are the first to pick up the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the significantly increased death rates seen in 2020, this fall in life expectancy is not unexpected. However, it is important to note that the headline figures hide a wide variety of underlying impacts at a more granular level.

Author(s): Conor O’Reilly

Publication Date: 27 Sept 2021

Publication Site: Club Vita

Annual Report on the Insurance Industry

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/311/FIO-2021-Annual-Report-Insurance-Industry.pdf

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Catastrophe losses of $61 billion in 2020 were notably more severe than in 2019, with a record number of
catastrophic events in the United States in 2020.46 Despite the more severe catastrophic event
losses, lower losses in personal and commercial auto and workers’ compensation lines kept total
loss and loss adjustment expenses flat from 2019 to 2020. Reserve development was again
favorable in 2020, adding to underwriting profits. Figure 24 shows losses from catastrophic
events in the United States since 2016, and Figure 25 shows reserve development over the same
period.47 The expense ratio decreased very slightly from 2019 to 2020.

Publication Date: September 2021

Publication Site: Federal Insurance Office

Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.yahoo.com/news/delta-tearing-states-despite-high-115328590.html

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Even though parts of New England are seeing record case counts, hospitalizations and deaths that rival pre-vaccine peaks, largely among the unvaccinated, the region hasn’t seen the impact the delta variant wave has wrought on other parts of the country. 

According to statistics from The Associated Press, the five states with the highest percentage of a fully vaccinated population are all in New England, with Vermont leading, followed by Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. New Hampshire is 10th.

….

Case counts in Vermont, which has continually boasted about high vaccination and low hospitalization and death rates, are the highest during the pandemic. Hospitalizations are approaching the pandemic peak from last winter and September was Vermont’s second-deadliest month during the pandemic.

Author(s): Wilson Ring

Publication Date: 3 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Yahoo News

Vital Statistics Rapid Release — Quarterly Provisional Estimates, Mortality Dashboard

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm#

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Quarterly Rates

The crude death rate for all causes in All States for the 3-month period ending with 2021 Q1 was 1118.3, which was greater than the crude death rate of 944.9 in 2020 Q1.

12-Month Ending Rates

The crude death rate for all causes in All States for the 12-month period ending with 2021 Q1 was 1069.9, which was greater than the crude death rate of 878.2 in 2020 Q1.

Publication Date: accessed 25 Oct 2021

Publication Site: CDC

Trying to Make Sense of COVID’s Mysterious 2-Month Cycle

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://news.yahoo.com/trying-sense-covids-mysterious-2-121821028.html

Excerpt:

The number of new daily cases in the United States has fallen 35% since Sept. 1. Worldwide, cases have also dropped more than 30% since late August. “This is as good as the world has looked in many months,” Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote last week.

The most encouraging news is that the most serious forms of COVID are also declining. The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID has fallen about 25% since Sept. 1. Daily deaths — which typically change direction a few weeks after cases and hospitalizations — have fallen 10% since Sept. 20. It is the first sustained decline in deaths since early summer.

These declines are consistent with a pattern that readers will recognize: COVID’s mysterious two-month cycle. Since the COVID virus began spreading in late 2019, cases have often surged for about two months — sometimes because of a variant, such as delta — and then declined for about two months.

Public health researchers do not understand why. Many popular explanations — such as seasonality or the ebbs and flows of mask wearing and social distancing — are clearly insufficient, if not wrong. The two-month cycle has occurred during different seasons of the year and occurred even when human behavior was not changing in obvious ways.

Author(s): David Leonhardt

Publication Date: 4 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Yahoo News (originally at NYT)

Nancy Pelosi Says a Wealth Tax on Billionaires’ Unrealized Gains is On the Way

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://mishtalk.com/economics/nancy-pelosi-says-a-wealth-tax-on-billionaires-unrealized-gains-is-on-the-way

Excerpt:

In the scramble to find a tax hike that all 50 Democrat Senators could support, Senator Kyrsten Sinema OKs a Tax on Billionaires’ Unrealized Gains.

….

The proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren is a genuine wealth tax and easily could be tossed by the Supreme Court.  Warren obviously does not give a damn. 

Regardless, expect legal challenges based on the 16th Amendment.

The proposal taxes unrealized gains. But is there “income” before gains are realized? The courts will decide if this goes forward, but the idea is dubious at best.

Author(s): Mike Shedlock

Publication Date: 24 Oct 2021

Publication Site: MishTalk

40 Years of Trillion-Dollar Debt

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://reason.com/2021/10/22/40-years-of-trillion-dollar-debt/?utm_medium=email

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It’s true, of course, that $1 trillion doesn’t buy what it used to. That amount in 1981 would purchase about $3 trillion worth of stuff today. The best way to measure the national debt over long periods of time is to compare it to America’s gross domestic product (GDP), a rough estimate of the size of the country’s economy in a given year.

In the early 1980s, for example, even as the gross national debt exceeded $1 trillion for the first time, the national debt was less than 40 percent of GDP. The national debt is now equivalent to the country’s GDP and is on pace to be nearly 200 percent of GDP by the middle of the century, as this chart from Brian Riedl, a deficit hawk and former Republican Senate staffer now working at the Manhattan Institute, helpfully illustrates:

Author(s): Eric Boehm

Publication Date: 22 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Reason

Chicago Police: Vaccine Mandates and Pension Threats

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/chicago-police-vaccine-mandates-and

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Both Chicago Police and Chicago Fire plans have active-to-beneficiary ratios of about 90%, and have been at that level for some years. Chicago Police, specifically, had such a ratio starting in 2012.

So, there are more people taking police pensions than are active employees already. If I take the numbers given, and shift 38% from active to beneficiaries, that gives one an active-to-beneficiary ratio of 52% (assuming you don’t get new actives, which you would, but still… this is a point-in-time estimate).

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 21 Oct 2021

Publication Site: STUMP at substack