John T. Reed’s news blog

I am half-way through reading Michael Pillsbury’s book The Hundred-Year Marathon China’s Secret Strategy To Replace America as the Global Superpower..Pillsbury is an extremely hard-working scholar who has spent his adult life deep diving into all of this..The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are lying, paranoid, conniving murderers who want to take over the world and kill us non-Chinese. They are trying to prevent us from knowing that, although they are not very good at keeping it secret—a word that is in Pillsbury’s subtitle..Hard to call it secret if Pillsbury wrote a book about it and I am writing about it...

The FDA actually took some responsibility for the baby formula shortage in a Congressional hearing. Wonder of wonders. Apparently they FDA head did not get the Biden memo that his administration never takes the blame for anything ever..But the FDA head also poured abuse on Abbott Laboratories..Memo to government. Drug companies, and I will include baby formula as a drug here rather than just a food, Have much incentive to develop, produce, and sell patented drugs. But when a drug comes off patent—about ten years as a practical matter—that incentive almost all disappears..The drug in question then become generic. People...

WSJ headline today: “Flight to Safety Benefits Treasurys.”.By what definition of “safety” are US government bonds (Treasurys) safe?.1. They were safe in the 1930s. WSJ cannot afford to buy a more recent dictionary?2. S&P downgraded the credit rating of the US in 2011 and still has never raised it. “Standard & Poor's credit rating for the United States stands at AA+ with stable outlook.” All the rating agencies should have lowered that rating farther than that. They did not because the DOJ tried to bankrupt S&P when they dared lower it.3. Treasury bonds pay fixed interest rates—2.76% at present on...

Guess what? Targeted or target-date mutual funds which adjust as you get older are now hurting older people. . Well, duh. . All targeted means is that as you age, they shift more of your money out of stocks and into bonds. That is the same as the hoary notion that the percent of your savings that should be in bonds should be the same as your age or other similar formulas. . When did that last make sense? . In the Great Depression, US government bonds and Post Office Savings account were the champion investments. That is because the...

The vast majority of real estate rehab do NOT make money. They lose money. But the amount of time that lapses is so great that marketwide appreciation that would have happened withOUT the rehab is the actual source of the profit, but the rehabber incorrectly claims it was his rehab that caused the value increase. What types of rehab ARE profitable? Adding a bedroom to a one-bedroom house or apartment (Adding a third bedroom is less likely to be profitable) Cleaning dirty property by power wash, scrubbing, brass polish brass, etc. is rehab, not just painting or carpeting which are...