• CYBERCRIMINALS ARE INCREASINGLY TARGETING BUSINESS IDENTITY THEFT, now on track for a 258% spike this year from “organized fraud rings who specialize in running up unauthorized lines of credit, particularly those dormant or inactive as result of the pandemic,” according to Dun & Bradstreet. Their M.O. is generally searching Secretary of State records for owner & exec names/addresses which enable acquisition of tax ID numbers, then fabricating official-looking documents, creating email and domain names which mimic data, and submitting to small business search websites. “After bogus profiles are approved by D&B, criminals wait a few weeks or months then apply for new lines of credit at major stores and go on a buying spree with deliveries to bogus addresses, as well as defrauding governments by filing unemployment claims and for pandemic assistance programs.” Eventually, collection agencies identify the fraud, but small business owners should be aware.  [KREBS ON SECURITY – 7/27/20]
  • BLACKOUT BABIES THEORY’ is “folk wisdom that humans will copulate when left with nothing else to do, like in the aftermath of disasters,” but demographers predict the opposite from today’s pandemic, and latest study from Brookings Institution forecasts that America is headed for a “large lasting baby bust… with fewer children meaning fewer consumers/workers/taxpayers in the future… since parenthood no longer pencils out, given lack of access to affordable child care, education costs, income & job security.”  Combined with trauma of national health emergency, economic crisis, postponement of some 60% of weddings, and Planned Parenthood reporting increased abortion pill requests, birth forecasts are already down 10% from last year, with statistical suggestion that delayed births tend never to recover. Beyond these factors having pushed down fertility rates, “the penalty to women’s careers and some state childcare costs more expensive than college” have impacted the 2.1 Replacement Rate – required to stabilize population over the long term – down to only 1.7 last year, and is projected by Social Security Trustees to not exceed 1.95 through the rest of this century – a lasting toll on U.S. growth.   [BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK – 8/3/20]
  • “COVID FATALITY RATES ARE MASSIVELY INFLATED – PERHAPS UP TO TEN TIMES.” One recent audit found less than a third of alleged Palm Beach fatalities had actually died because of the virus. How can this be? (1) “Anyone who dies WITH Covid 19 gets put on the fatality list regardless of their other symptoms – heart attack, gunshot wounds, road accidents or any other normally occurring cause of death… Of nearly 13,000 reported Covid deaths in New York, audit found over 99% already suffering from often several ailments including Diabetes, Lung/Kidney/Liver/Heart Disease, Cancer, Immunodeficiency, Hypertension, Asthma or Obesity.”  (2) Dying WITH is being intentionally conflated with dying FROM by official direction of CDC to put Covid 19 on death certificates, even without any confirming test so long as they’ve assumed the deceased had it, and that it caused or contributed, with no reason required for that mere assumption; i.e. adding people to the tally is being encouraged without any medical justification whatsoever; (3) Medicare pays more, and Hospitals are being reimbursed for treating any uninsured patients diagnosed with Covid (plus $39K – three times greater if on a ventilator).  “When financial reward is incentivized by anything (whether solar power, illegitimacy, or false medical diagnosis), you get more of it. The question is not whether Covid fatality numbers are inflated, it’s by how much.”  Why isn’t this misreporting remedied? Because inflated rates support the fear and willingness of people to accept the shutdowns, burdens and economic hardship which support varying political motives. [RED STATE – 7/31/20]
  • BEING AWARE OF YOUR BLOOD TYPE COMPATIBILITY MAY BE IMPORTANT SOME DAY: Types O and A positive are a third of the population; Types O and A negative are 1 in 16; B positive is 1 in 12; B negative is 1 in 67; Ab positive is 1 in 29; Ab negative is 1 in 167.
  • THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:

          The most NON-essential workers in today’s crises are the 500 U.S. Congressmen/women who have now taken ‘recess’ instead of putting aside partisan bitterness, philosophical differences, personality clashes and lust for power to resolve the most serious and urgent issues faced in the lifetime of Americans (who elected, compensate & reward them solely to perform that role). “Power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Kurt Vonnegut