Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,197 | 21.5 |
| Oil (WTI) | 80.59 | -0.25 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 3.58% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 6.48% |
Stocks are higher as earnings come in. Bonds and MBS are down.
Stocks continue to rise despite rising rates. Despite the good CPI numbers, the Fed Funds futures are solidly predicting a 25 basis point hike in May.
Housing starts fell 0.8% MOM and 17% YOY to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.42 million. Building permits fell 8.8% MOM and 24.8% YOY to 1.41 million. Single family starts rose while multi-family fell.
Multi-family completions came in at 484k. While housing starts overall have been tepid, multi-family completions has been hovering around 35 year highs. With additional apartment supply coming onto the market, we should see a better balance of housing supply and demand.
Bank of America reported first quarter earnings that came in above expectations. Deposits fell about 3%, and remained above $1 trillion. Mortgage origination fell 25% QOQ to $3.9 billion. This was down 76% from a year ago. Net interest income rose 25%. The stock is up about 2% pre-open.
Bank of America provisioned $931 billion for credit losses, but charge-offs remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Goldman reported disappointing earnings driven by lower trading revenue. The stock is down about 3% pre-open.
The Silicon Valley Bank situation might be more widely representative than people think, at least according to a new paper that analyzes the use of interest rate swaps at banks. The most interesting takeaway: Banks with the most fragile funding – i.e., those with highest uninsured leverage — sold or reduced their hedges during the monetary tightening. This allowed them to record accounting profits but exposed them to further rate increases. These actions are reminiscent of classic gambling for resurrection: if interest rates had decreased, equity would have reaped the profits, but if rates increased, then debtors and the FDIC would absorb the losses.
The regional banks will start reporting in the next few days, and it will be interesting to see if this is in fact true.
Economic bellwether Prologis reported better than expected earnings this morning. Prologis operates logistics facilities and its results say a lot about consumer demand and manufacturing. “Demand remains healthy, despite some moderating in terms of decision-making. Given the macroenvironment, we continue to operate our business with a degree of caution.”
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
Something else that was covered up vis-a-vis COVID vaccines:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/18/period-kate-clancy-coronavirus-vaccines-menstruation/
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my wife ran into that issue.
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and the comments are all complaining about language policing.
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Or trying to blame it on Republicans and “vaccine deniers” for creating a climate where the medical professionals couldn’t afford to tell the truth, lest it be used against them.
“Baby, why did you make me lie to you?”
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No clue what this is since I can’t access WPO but I am curious!
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Hi LMS!
It’s definitive proof that Trump colluded directly with Putin. The transcripts of the Trump-Putin phone call where Trump promised that if Putin gets him elected Trump will pave the way for Putin to invade Ukraine when he loses to Biden 4 years later. Trump, that bastard! also promised to supply Ukraine with lethal aid that President Obama was refusing to give Ukraine (at the time of this phone call).
Pretty damming stuff.
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It says that the vaccine caused changes in the menstrual cycle for many women.
My wife saw me reading the article this morning and mentioned that two years ago when we are in the UK, after the vaccine had come out, a couple of women in her friend group who were post menopausal reported that they actually started to flow again, and had wondered if it was caused by either the vaccine or Covid itself.
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I was reading between the lines on the story.
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Well, at least it wasn’t anecdotal.
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“Emotional stress, physical stress and chemical stress can all affect the hormonal control center, which can result in menstrual cycle changes,” he adds.
Getting a vaccine qualifies as a form of chemical stress, but that doesn’t make it dangerous. Changes to your period are a sign your immune system is responding, which is, of course, the goal of vaccination.
What if you experience period changes after being vaccinated for COVID-19?
In most cases, post-vaccination period changes are minor and shouldn’t cause concern. If you’re noticing a serious disruption in your cycle or significant changes to your menses, talk to a doctor. Dr. Fyffe says you and your healthcare provider can work together to determine the best course of action.
Bottom line: COVID-19 vaccinations remain safe, effective and vitally important to our collective health. And you can roll up your sleeve confident that any period-related side effects will be short term.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/will-a-covid-19-vaccine-throw-your-period-off/
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lms:
Bottom line: COVID-19 vaccinations remain safe, effective and vitally important to our collective health
Gotta recite the liturgy…”Raymond Shaw is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
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Also, instead of just using some kind of friend’s anecdotal observation maybe there are other reasons for post-menopausal bleeding that have nothing to do with the vaccine?
The most common causes of bleeding or spotting after menopause include:
Endometrial or vaginal atrophy (lining of the uterus or vagina becomes thin and dry).
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) (estrogen and progesterone supplements that decrease some menopausal symptoms).
Uterine cancer or endometrial cancer (cancer in the lining of the uterus).
Endometrial hyperplasia (the lining of the uterus gets too thick and can contain abnormal cells).
Uterine polyps (growths in the uterus).
Other causes can include:
Cervical cancer (cancer in the cervix).
Cervicitis or endometritis (infection or inflammation in the cervix or uterus).
Bleeding from other areas, nearby, in the bladder or rectum or bleeding from the skin of the vulva (outside near the vagina).
And anecdotally, this happened to my mother long before the covid vaccine.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21549-postmenopausal-bleeding
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lms:
Also, instead of just using some kind of friend’s anecdotal observation…
Using it for what? All I did was tell you something that happened.
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“Getting a vaccine qualifies as a form of chemical stress, but that doesn’t make it dangerous.”
The point of the article was that when women reported the issue, they were told that they were wrong to link it to the COVID vaccine and it later came out that they were in fact correct and being dismissed by the medical authorities.
If it’s safe, why would they have to lie about the side effects?
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Look, the Narrative must be maintained, much like the Covid Liturgy.
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Since when did science become liturgy? I grew up with scientists and have scientists in children, nieces and nephews. Just sayin’
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lms:
Since when did science become liturgy?
I don’t know if you are being disingenuous, or you truly don’t understand the reference. Either way, it is probably not worth explaining.
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Since when did science become liturgy?
The latest iteration began with global warming and the left using sCIenCE as a lever to push all sorts of shit they couldn’t pass legislatively.
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It’s started with science. There have been scientists cranking out liturgy based on biases and agenda since the beginning. Sagan wrote a book about it—Broca’s Brain. Stephen Jay Gould has written about it a lot because he came up against with his now generally accepted (but initially condemned as heresy) punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution.
Turns out science has always involved humans, who are flawed and biased creatures with agendas beyond the search for truth.
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Here’s the full article lmsinca:
“Why reports of period weirdness after covid shots were ignored
By Kate Clancy
April 18, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EDT
Kate Clancy, a biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Illinois, is the author of “Period: The Real Story of Menstruation,” from which this op-ed is adapted.
One day in early 2021, Katie Lee, a former student of mine who is now a professor at Tulane University, sent a message asking if I’d heard anything about heavier or breakthrough bleeding with the coronavirus vaccines. I hadn’t, and put her message out of my mind. Two weeks later, I received my first dose, and soon afterward I got my period. I bled so heavily that I was swapping out overnight-strength pads every hour.
I decided to tweet out a query: Has anyone else had changes in their periods since receiving the vaccine?
The response was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced on social media. I was bombarded with similar stories. Within a few hours, Lee and I were furiously messaging each other, and soon we developed a survey seeking to explore further whether coronavirus vaccine side effects might extend to changes in periods.
We expected about 500 people to participate — and ended up with more than 165,000 responses.
Our survey was intended to document participants’ experiences with the early vaccine rollout — to collect these data on the ground, as they emerged — and, as such, our sample was self-selected. But the sheer volume of respondents surprised by heavy and breakthrough bleeding was striking. Changes in menstruation were uncomfortable and often painful, people reported. Strangers described bleeding through their clothes at work. Postmenopausal people were terrified they had cancer.
Yet those who endured menstrual side effects described how family members had laughed off their experiences, and how some medical personnel had been dismissive and rude. One respondent reported bleeding so profusely that she expelled her IUD into the toilet; her doctor didn’t believe her and ordered an ultrasound, which confirmed what this participant had seen: The IUD was no longer in her uterus.
Journalists who interviewed us spoke with medical doctors who tended to declare that menstrual changes were from pandemic stress and to suggest that no biological mechanism could link vaccines and menstruation. Much of the coverage of our research foregrounded views that cast us as ridiculous ladies doing ridiculous research.
Yet without our intentions, or our methodologies, the National Institutes of Health might not have been inspired to release funding to support research studying this reported phenomenon, and we wouldn’t have multiple studies and surveys supporting our early findings that the coronavirus vaccines can induce short-term changes to the duration and flow of menstruation.
Here it is important to emphasize: Without a doubt, vaccines save lives; and the coronavirus vaccines reduce severity and the risk of long covid. I continue to advocate for greater access to boosters, and global vaccine equity, alongside measures that reduce transmission, such as masking.
At the same time, it is medical scientists’ duty to predict, look for and, if found, disclose side effects — and here is where I believe some in the medical community fell short.
We have long known that immune responses can influence menstrual cycles and that vaccines can occasionally affect both inflammation and menstrual bleeding patterns. Yet clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccines did not ask questions about menstruation beyond inquiring about date of last menstrual period at the start of the study, to ensure participants were not pregnant. A participant in one of the trials emailed me to say it took two tries to persuade her trial site to include anything in her chart about her menstrual changes — the first time, they refused on the grounds that she was probably just perimenopausal.
As a feminist anthropologist who studies the stigmatized, I am used to this — but I am weary of it. I am tired of menstruating people being questioned, mistrusted or ignored when they report their lived experiences, especially since not addressing side effects risks turning people away from vaccines.
There is a better way — something the team in my lab endeavors to engage in — what the anthropologist Anna Tsing calls the “arts of noticing.”
To explain what she means, Tsing uses the metaphor of polyphonic music: multiple independent melodies played together. To do the work of noticing, she says, we must be willing to step back from the idea that there is one dominant melody — to “listen for the moments of harmony and dissonance they created together.”
How does this apply to, say, a coronavirus vaccine trial? A trial design with more qualitative, open approaches would hear far more melodies. A trial design that considered the multiple systems, such as the reproductive tract, that can be affected by an inflammatory stressor such as a vaccine might not miss multiple refrains. And daily adverse event reporting could last for longer than a week, to give a monthly process such as menstruation time to respond. Noticing allows us to follow multiple threads without allowing one to overshadow — to see variability, subversion and resistance.
Unfortunately, this approach runs counter to the way modern gynecology has been practiced since the middle of the 19th century, when Black and Brown midwives were pushed out and often criminalized. We lost the noticing that comes from experience, in the desire to create an accredited form of “expertise” available mostly to White men. This resulted in just two lines of melody for those who had a uterus: Either you had to be protected at all costs, or any symptoms you might report were a figment of your imagination.
Those limited melodies can be seen in today’s uterine health care. Half the time, there is hand-wringing over fertility (fears of its being reduced if you are White, or of having too much of it if you are not), and the other half, there is minimizing of one’s intimate physical experiences as overblown — as happened with reported responses to coronavirus vaccines.
Anyone who menstruates will bleed a lot, for much of their lives — and changes in menstruation are notable, meaningful and worthy of study. Lee and I did the work of noticing what happened after we got the coronavirus vaccines because we have bodies that menstruate and have scientific knowledge of menstruation. But that noticing also came from adopting a feminist practice and sense of responsibility to acknowledge what some were obstinately refusing to.
Menstrual changes matter to millions of people, and pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals and politicians need to invest in research and provide incentives for redesigning research so that it accommodates menstruation.
Transparency about the experiences of menstruating people is also needed if scientists and clinicians want to earn public trust: What do we notice when we relax the desire to control uteruses and instead respect their complexity? When we listen to what people with uteruses are experiencing?
Medical treatments and vaccine trials — for coronavirus and other maladies — will continue to disserve those bodily systems about which they ask no questions. We deserve better than to be surprised when a new treatment makes us bleed on our office chair.”
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“U.S. charges four Americans with aiding Kremlin efforts
Charges are the latest Justice Department effort against secret foreign propaganda networks on U.S. soil
By Devlin Barrett
April 18, 2023 at 2:02 p.m. EDT”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/18/russian-influence-florida-missouri/
They really want to start the ball rolling to arresting Tucker Carlson and shutting down Fox News.
If Carlson & Fox are smart, they’ll have the members of the African People’s Socialist Party on to denounce the government’s tactics, regardless of who they are targeting.
And I wonder how many “unregistered Ukrainian agents” are running around these days.
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Fox has settled with Dominion. I’d be curious if other news agency’s were looking forward to the courts opening up libel law again.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/18/2164614/-Judge-says-Fox-Dominion-have-resolved-their-case-over-airing-of-false-election-claims
KosKidz losing their minds of course.
One thought occurred to me me is that other media companies could have been pressuring both parties to settle.
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Probably would have been better for Fox to have settled before discovery.
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Glen Greenwald is trying to file a FOIA request to see the Nashville shooter’s manifesto. Two law firms in Nashville have declined to represent him.
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Really admire this about John Lydon (of PiL and previously of the Sex Pistols).
https://www.liveaction.org/news/rocker-johnny-rottens-wife-dies-alzheimers/
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Whatever you do, don’t call the Dems Marxists. That’s just over-the-top crazy talk.
https://abc7.com/utility-bills-income-california/13126671/
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