ROSS RANT – JUNE 4, 2024
If you are unfamiliar with the Ross Rant, this link will provide information on Joel Ross, the author of the newsletter https://rossrant.wordpress.com/about/
Nancy
I often read the Ross Rant since he seems to have great insights on a huge range of fronts. I found this particular “Rant” to be extremely insightful. As with almost all his posts, it is a long read but it sure puts things together in a cogent fashion.
Steve
ROSS RANT
I hate conspiracy theories, but we all need to look at what is transpiring, and the conspiracy is there for all to see. Put aside all the illegal aspects of how the Trump trial was conducted, and focus instead on the overall bigger picture, and what is really happening. There is a grand scheme to consolidate power in the White House with someone organizing what is, in fact, a non-violent attempt at assumption and retention of power. First, they attacked a lot of the tea party groups by illegally using the IRS when Obama first came to office. They get Trump impeached with the phony dossier. They almost succeeded with the ignorant help of the left-wing press. When that did not work, they tried the impeachment route again on new false claims about a phone call. In 2020, Sanders almost got the primary victory. They needed an easily manipulated Biden to win, and to be the puppet Obama could control by getting many of his senior staff into the top positions in the White House. Clyburn was tasked to manage rounding up the black votes and get Biden a win. They supposedly made some deal with Sanders to implement some of his far-left agenda, which they have done. I believe Biden really won the 2020 election even though there were cases of voter fraud, ballot harvesting, no voter ID, same day registration, and mail in ballots. With Biden in the White House, Obama was able to plant Susan Rice, Blinken, Sullivan and others in key jobs, and control policy. It is not clear if Biden even realized what was happening, or he was able to be convinced to have them as his advisors since he had worked closely with them for several years. Now Rice has disappeared for some reason. Don’t you find it odd that she was this very powerful and very high-profile public person, and now she has just disappeared from sight. Keep in mind congress has paid out millions to cover up affairs and misdeeds by Congressmen. If they prosecuted every CEO who had an affair with an employee, and then paid to keep it quiet, we would have a lot of CEOs in jail. We still do not know exactly what crime he is guilty of as the jury never made that clear.
Now it is 2024, and Trump is in the lead, and Biden Harris is a very weak slate. The Bragg case, according to every objective experienced lawyer who has opined, including Dershowitz, has said the entire case is completely not only without any merit, and was run by a judge who made numerous major errors, but is clearly a set up with the judge being selected outside of normal court routine. The jury instructions were essentially a directed verdict. In another case, the Dems rolled out the woman who accused Trump of sexual assault 20 years ago, well beyond the statute of limitations, and they had the NY State legislature change the statute to allow that case to go forward. The real estate fraud case is total crap. Nobody was damaged at all. Every bank was fully repaid on time. Under banking regs, banks are responsible these days to get their own independent appraisals, and to do their own valuations. That case is as concocted and staged as the Bragg case. It was designed to bankrupt Trump. And then there is the documents case, which it seems has real flaws with an illegally appointed special prosecutor, and the GA case with the prosecutor who has real issues of conflict. All four of the prosecutors went to the White House and met with the lawyers there before filing charges, and then Bragg gets the number 3 official in DOJ to leave his high-level job and become a low-level local prosecutor for this case. Nobody does that. Recall the 51 intel officials who signed a letter saying the laptop was Russian disinformation, and now that laptop is the proof they will use to convict Hunter. There are also the continuing efforts to get Thomas off the court, and now Alito, and to expand the court with Biden appointments. SCOTUS is all that stands between them and saving our nation. If Trump loses, we will lose the Supreme Court and our liberties. Lastly, they have open borders so they can have millions of illegals vote by mail to be ballot harvested with no voter ID. A few dollars to the illegals and they will sign a ballot. That is exactly how LBJ won his TX governor election. It is also how Daley did it in Chicago, and how JFK became the unelected president. Obama learned from Daley. This is going to be Chicago and LBJ revisited. Taken altogether, this is the latest effort by the Dems to get rid of Trump, and to get total control. Piece all of this together for yourself, and you have a many year’s conspiracy, and an attempt to get full control of the government by Obama and Clinton, but mainly Obama. This is the real threat to democracy. A series of events of this nature and magnitude does not happen without someone planning and directing it-Obama. It is all funded by Arabella. If you are old enough you recall Beria, the secret police chief under Stalin. “Show me the man and I will show you the crime.” You just witnessed this.
This may all sound like a right-wing rant and wild conspiracy theory, but sit back and reread the pieces and progression of events, and how they unfolded, and tell me where it is not being directed and managed by someone. The mainstream media are dupes who hate Trump and will happily publish false negative stories and attacks as we saw with the dossier and Covid vaccines. These so-called journalists are a lot of the same university students who protested the Gaza war, except these are the ones who graduated several years earlier. The press has lost all credibility, and now we have all sorts of false stories on social media, like the false claims about Covid and attacks on the existing medicines that could have been used to save lives, and also about the origins of the virus. This has led to the voters being mislead and being barraged with left wing propaganda pushing the same agenda as the professors on campus. We are at a historic turning point now, to determine if the country goes far left and destroys the culture and rule of law that has always been key to America, or if this all can be turned around and headed back to the America we all grew up in. The Bragg trial is the turning point. Many voters saw what is happening as a result of the trial, and are going to now vote for Trump to try to put an end to this. They went too far and voters and donors are saying no more.
There are major elections in many other parts of the world which will have major impacts on what happens next in geopolitics and trade as well as EU politics. The European Parliament, Mexico, India all have major elections going on right now. It appears likely that Europe is turning much more to the right. While the far right does not yet have control, they will be able to influence policy in as yet unknown ways, but the EU is going to be a different political place in the next couple of years away from centrist Merkel policies. Whether that will good or bad we do not know, but real change and more turmoil is coming. This is not likely to be a good period for the EU. The majority of votes are not yet fully counted and despite what you are hearing, Modi’s party likely will win a majority one way or other, and so there will not need to be a coalition government. The India election is a major event that will impact all sorts of decisions and possibly geopolitics in unpredictable ways. India still has massive problems with hundreds of millions still living in real poverty, lack of efficient infrastructure, a bureaucracy that stymies getting things accomplished, and massive corruption. India can become the replacement for China, but it will require major shifts in how the nation functions, and the need for very large infrastructure investments. It will take years. Other countries in SE Asia are moving faster and are building strong economies as they get the production and investments that would earlier have gone to China. The election in Mexico is unlikely to change anything there. Sheinbaum is from a very long-standing communist family who migrated to Mexico from Eastern Europe. She may be worse than the current regime. The Peso is declining, and Pemex production is the lowest since the 70’s. Sheinbaum is being paid large bribes for years and will now collect even more. She is totally corrupt. There will be a lot of changes in world politics over the next couple of years, and that just adds more a lot more uncertainty to markets. What is very likely due to this series of elections is a more chaotic world as the election of Trump, the divided parliaments in the EU and possibly India lead to a lot less unity in each key area. Add this to the serious economic problems in China, the wars and the result is a very unstable and very uncertain world the next couple of years. That is not good for peace nor for markets. Uncertainty will now be even more pronounced. Risk just increased.
Who has the largest army in the world? You guessed wrong. It is Vietnam, which is why China leaves them alone. Vietnam is the leading country now in SE Asia with a booming economy. They have learned how to play nice to both sides. Other SE Asia nations are doing well, but not as well as Vietnam. China has used the huge state-owned companies to buy up a lot of the small entrepreneurial companies that led the major innovations in China. These large entities are very inefficient. Those small businesses are no longer producing the innovation that helped China grow so fast. China is doing a lot wrong now.
The peace proposal for Gaza announced by Biden is filled with huge holes. Israel did not initiate it despite what you hear. It basically tracks what Hamas is demanding, and Biden released it just as the sabbath began, making it harder for Israel and others to respond quickly. Israel has already said it is not acceptable as is, and not until Hamas is totally destroyed, which means there is nobody left to negotiate a deal with. Now the Israelis said they will negotiate the deal in order to look like the good guys, but Hamas has rejected it.. It is unclear who really proposed what. Clearly this was not a product of the Israeli government. Netanyahu may make believe he is interested in a further negotiation, but that is just theater. Start with, it leaves Hamas as the viable political power position in Gaza which is a non-starter for Israel, there is no apparent governing body set up nor who is the new leader or group, so by implication it is Hamas, there is no mention of who provides security if Israel pulls out entirely, who controls the Egyptian border to make sure there are no more weapons or concrete smuggled in, who pays for the reconstruction, does Hamas surrender its leaders, who disarms the remaining Hamas fighters, at what point do negotiations get declared dead, or as it appears in the draft, they go on forever under this proposal, at least long enough for Biden to claim he tried. Those are just a few of the obvious flaws. This has no chance of going anywhere other than a lot of make-believe talk from all sides, lots of pronouncements from the White House to make it appear Biden is doing something useful, and new ways to pressure and blame Israel. Meantime, Israel is now in full attack mode in central Rafah, and is mopping up in the north. There are still several thousand Hamas fighters left to kill, and they need to be located in the tunnels and rubble. That will take time, likely months more. This will end when Rafah is fully conquered and the hostages or their bodies are all recovered, and the top leaders and their fighters are all dead. Until then Israel will continue the war. Biden pushed this out to make it appear he is doing something wonderful and bringing an end of the war. It lets him claim he is pushing Israel to a deal before the election. It just reinforces the reality that Biden is not really backing Israel and is just pandering to the far left, college voters, and the Muslimvote. Israel will be finished wiping out Hamas in Rafah before there is any deal. At that point Hamas has no real negotiating position. The problem is there is no group in Gaza or the West Bank now able to be the leader. Hamas has intimidated the family and tribal groups who might have led to a new leader by murdering the one family group that Israel was considering. There is also no honest person to be a leader. They are all very corrupt and criminal. The world can push Netanyahu to have an after-war plan, but nobody has been able to find someone, or some group, who can fulfill that role. Israel will have to provide some sort of security until a leader emerges. There is a reason no Arab nation will allow Palestinian refugees into their countries. They are very dangerous as Jordan learned. So, Biden wants to bring them here. Then comes Lebanon. It is all election make believe. There is no way Israel will dop any deal that leaves Hamas intact.
China is rapidly building up forces along the India border and has just sent its stealth fighters to the area airbase at Shigatze. Keep your eye on this area as it could potentially become another geopolitical crisis. It is hard to understand why China wants to start a war with India, but there have been serious border clashes for a while.
Oil is being moved by Chinese buying, but also by the Saudis. The Prince has been spending enormous sums to try to remake the country to a modern nation. He is now running a substantial deficit, yet he is also holding back production to try to keep oil prices high to help pay for all this. The current dip in the price of oil will reverse. He is now selling shares in Aramco to raise $11 billion, but he needs $96 oil for the national budget to break even to cover all his spending. He is also issuing sovereign debt to help fill the gap. But the main point is the Saudis cannot let oil prices fall much or they will have finance deficit issues larger than they wish. That puts a floor under prices along with the Chinese buying. It is unclear if Saudis can drive the price of Brent to $100 one day which is the real goal.
One black swan might be N Korea. They are in desperate shape now as the lack of adequate food is a huge issue, and their economy is disaster. He spends so much on weapons there is not money to build the economy nor for food production which is controlled by the government doling it out at your workplace. There is almost no work and the standard of living is very low. At some point, maybe there will be a popular dissent. His father told him if you are going to go down, take the whole world with you. We need to be prepared for some black swan flying out of N Korea in the not distant future. Or maybe Xi will not allow that.
Ukraine continues to struggle to hold back the willingness of Putin to sacrifice tens of thousands additional of his people to the meat grinder of Ukraine which has now resulted in 508,000 Russians dead or wounded. The death toll of Russians is averaging over 1,200 a day. Russia will now find some way to retaliate for attacks on the homeland with western missiles. A US Blackhawk spy drone over the Black Sea has just vanished. We know not if it returned to base or was shot down. French troops are now in Ukraine making believe they are Foreign Legion. The real problem is Biden has never committed to what is required for Ukraine to win, but instead he is always a day late and dollar short with needed weapons. He has continued to be intimidated and in fear of escalation by Putin which has never come. Putin can see this fear and weakness, and so he presses ahead with a new offensive, and his people have ramped up the threats of nuclear attacks to really try to scare Biden. I don’t believe Putin is that crazy to start a nuke exchange right on his own border even if it isonly small tactical weapons at first. If Biden had acted swiftly as Russia built up his army on the border, instead of saying it will just be a minor incursion, the Russians would have been stopped early. Instead, Biden chose to be weak and fearful and now $100 billion or more later and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead, he continues to dribble the weapons. The Europeans see this as well, and now have been forced to step in and ramped up their rhetoric about sending troops into Ukraine which never would have happened had Biden acted with strength and speed. The message of fear and weakness to XI, Iran and N Korea is clear, and if Biden is reelected, the world will be in for more wars, and next time they will involve US troops. Biden’s foreign policies are taking the world to the brink. Weakness and appeasement almost always brings bad outcomes. Peace through strength-Reagan. As you read through all of these differing geopolitical crises, you see they all stem from the weak and incompetent foreign policies of Biden and the direct result of the Afghan pullout. Ukrainian a real mess now and getting ever more dangerous.
Due to budget constraints, Germany recently cut EV subsidies, and sales plummeted. Once again it is very clear that consumers are not making market driven choices about EV’s, and if all government subsidies were to suddenly disappear the whole EV movement worldwide would crash. Even the cheap Chinese EVs that have been delivered to Germany are not selling now. If the US stopped all of the tens of billions of subsidies to auto companies and consumers to buy EV’s, that business would just dry up almost completely and the deficit would be reduced at least a little.
According to a very detailed B of A analysis of consumer spend, they say it is very clear consumer spending is slowing, except at the moment for travel and restaurants. 73% of consumers say they are financially pressed, and 60% say they are cutting their summer travel plans. That might get worse as the summer progresses and inflation continues. What that tells us is travel will get hit soon and hotels will find declining occupancy and strong resistance to rising ADR. This will be occurring just as loans mature, and as huge new supply is hitting the market. This is not a good story for the travel industry. What all of this tells us is the chance for recession is growing. The stock market is overpriced. All of the data indicators suggest the economy is slowing and at an increasing rate. The stock market might be near topping out. Uncertainty is greater than ever. Risk is increased. The economy has been much stronger for longer than almost everyone predicted, but only for a while. I continue to believe the reckoning is coming.
There is almost always some price at which a well-located good quality building will sell, even if it is just as a demolition or repurpose site. There will be some level at which good quality office buildings will sell as we have already seen with the tiny number of trades that have occurred. Eventually owners capitulate unless they have substantial capital and economically viable way forward. Rents will decline. We simply are not there yet with office. It will likely be 2025 before there is again a functioning market for office assets taken back by lenders. These things take time to unfold as we saw in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. It took until 2010 before a well-functioning market really happened to clear the distressed inventory by 2012. It took the RTC in the eighties several years to clear the inventory they took over in the S&L crisis. We are not there yet in this problem period. It is very possible it will take a new RTC to deal with the office default crisis as it is massive and will impact many cities viability. For multi, the time is likely now to begin to be a selective buyer, and for hotels it is still early. Other product types are still doing OK or fine, so there will not be many distressed trades in those sectors. Office will be the sector which causes many years of serious problems for lenders and cities.
A lot of people are starting to realize what some of us have been saying for months. AI is potentially wonderful, and it will materially change how we do certain things, but these technologies take years to get fully integrated into regular routines in how we function as individuals, and in business or medicine or other areas. First, you need to develop usable and reliable programs which are often very expensive and time consuming, then sell it to user companies and institutions or consumers, then train staff how to use it. Fully integrating these AI programs into society and businesses takes time. It then takes time to get wider acceptance and scale up to get to positive cash flow. The main AI programs now already have consumed most of the information on the internet, so from here that aspect of improving these programs moves more slowly. There are hundreds, or likely thousands, of different uses, and so it just takes time to develop reliable programs for each use. There is not one AI program for everyone, like we all don’t even use the same brand computer system or smart phone. Over the next few years, a lot will change as AI becomes more integrated into various fields, and as better versions are created, but in that time a bunch of start-ups will go out of business, just as happened when laptops and mobile phones were invented and a lot of young guys, and even companies, thought they could get market share. Blackberry or Nokia who? Along the way Microsoft, Google and others will be racing ahead with new versions and new operating programs, and leaving the little companies behind. So, be very careful if you are offered the opportunity to invest in an AI start-up. You have a good chance to lose your entire investment. Don’t assume just because NVDA shot to the moon, that all AI related shares will do the same. There will be a day of reckoning sometime soon for some supposed AI companies. NVDA was around a long time before they struck the key to riches, and then only because they have a top notch CEO who drove everyone relentlessly. There is so much future profit in AI that strong competition to NVDA will emerge soon from Intel and ADM and maybe others. This time is not different.
The House passed the Laken Riley act to try to deal with illegals and crime. The Dems in the Senate said no because they claim it is racist. So a try to prevent innocents from getting murdered by illegals is now not Ok to the Dems because to try to stop these incidents is racist which is far worse than the murder of a lovely young lady. On Monday an illegal shot two cops. Alice in Wonderland. What is needed is for a Senator’s daughter to get raped by an illegal and then it would suddenly not be racist.
Remember the $80 billion the Dems approved to hire more IRS agents to go after the rest of us more aggressively. So, in the first 6 months they hired 137 agents out of the first 12 months target of 3500.Audits are still mainly targeting middle class people. $80 billion here, $80billion there, it is just a rounding error to the Left.
The healthcare system is not working. In many locations large hospitals control the system. The docs are just salaried employees now. Sort of like middle or even lower level managers. There is often not much difference between young docs and older more experienced docs as to salary, so merit incentives are not there no win many cases. The hospitals want you to choose the hospital medical group, not a specific doc. There is a huge bureaucracy and company regulations, and org charts, all designed to maximize cash flow. The existence of the individua doctor in his own practice has almost disappeared. In addition, there are shortages of trainable staff including doctors. So now all the docs and nurses are assigned to a specific department and a specific group by specialty or role, and are siloed. So, my internist is in the outpatient internal med group, and even though he is in the same building complex, he was not allowed to make visits to me because he was siloed in the outpatient group. He could only follow my case on his computer. The in-patient care staff work three days on, three days off, or a week on, a week off, so as a patient you are just passed along to the next on duty group who has to read your file on a computer to know what your situation is all about. There is no continuity of your case. Nobody is in charge of you. The longer you are in, the longer and more detailed your computer file, so does the next care group read the entire file. Maybe. My sister, who had been a nurse for 40 years, and at one time in charge of quality control in a hospital, admitted people die as a result of this system. The more different people who are in charge of your care for a few days, the greater the chance for errors. This is what medicine has become now. Everything depends on the Epic computer data base on the patient, and every hospital uses the same program. The patient is just a data file to be processed by the corporate system, and then moved out for the next one. The entire healthcare system is broken.
