John T. Reed’s news blog

Tenants are not paying their rent today. Landlords are asking for the federal government to pay them. Trump has said, “If it’s not your fault, the federal government will pay.” Job loss is not the tenants fault so they are entitled to steal free residency from their landlord. It is not the landlord’s fault either so they are entitled to demand the rent be paid by the federal government. Overnight, with that “it’s not your fault” logic, Donald Trump has turned into not Bernie Sanders but AOC. Overnight, he has turned millions of Republican voters into full on socialists. And...

 Soft-peddle headline in the WSJ reveals monster money printing by fed..There is one agency of the Federal government that is responsible to prevent inflation or deflation: the Federal Reserve Bank. No other agency has any authority, tools, or responsibility for the stability of the US dollar..The headline is “Fed Breaks Its Taboos To Prop Up The Economy.” Google it to read it..The proper role of a central bank was established by Walter Bagehot. Walter Bagehot ( 3 February 1826 – 24 March 1877) was a British journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, literature and race....

Is it possible that some of the stuff we are not buying these days is stuff we should not have been buying?.When I was a kid, we ate at a restaurant about twice a year. All other meals were at home or a bag lunch at school. Fast food restaurants did not exist then, but I lived in Wildwood, NJ and our parents would sometimes buy us a hot dog and a Coke on the boardwalk in summer..Now, before the shutdown, I probably ate an average 1.5 meals per day in restaurants. My wife was complaining about the total when...

Trump’s suggestion of using disinfectant inside the body was idiotic. His statement that he was being sarcastic is a lie..His suggestion that UV light inside the body might be safe and effective is being considered by the medical profession, but it is a matter for the doctors on his covid 19 panel, not him, to discuss..Trump went nuts over one of his covid 19 panel doctors being misquoted by the Washington Post about the Covid 19 virus returning in the fall like the seasonal flu does. The doctor said he was not misquoted in the body of the story, but...

Pennies and nickels I have already discussed US pennies and nickels at length. They are made of copper and nickel and zinc so inflation causes the metal to rise in dollar value. Deflation can cause the metal in the coins to fall in value, but from a financial standpoint, the coins cannot fall in value below the face value amount engraved on them.   Mortgaged real estate How about mortgaged real estate? In inflation, the dollar value of a house or other property rises in value. In deflation, it falls in value. But suppose you have a mortgage?   You...