Bob Rinear's Take on the Baltimore Bridge Collapse:
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Part 1: General Commentary
Part 2: Market Commentary
The Bridge
When the barge hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, quite a few people asked me if I thought it was an accident, or it was a deliberate attack. Why would they ask me? Because for 30+ years, I've looked into the darker side of how things really work, not what they tell me about events.
For example, They told you there weren't any biolabs in Ukraine. I said we did, and was proven right. They told you that Putin blew up the Nordstream 2. I said we did it via nato proxies. I was right. They told you Ukraine wasn't suffering major losses. I said they're being slaughtered.
They told you that the United States wasn't funding both sides of this conflict.I said they were. They told you masks and vaccines were nearly 100% effective. I warned publicly "don't take that vax" They told you that COVID-19 came from a bat in a wet market in China. I told you it was manufactured in the US and spread via the Wuhan Military games.
They told you that Anthony Fauci wasn't using gain of function. I showed you proof he was.They told you that there is not a southern border crisis. Everyone said there is. They told you there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I told my readers over and over, that would be found to be a lie, an excuse for taking out yet another country.
They told you J6 was the worst attack since 9/11. I said it was an inside job, and you know I'm right. They told you lockdowns were for your health. I said the lockdowns were to destroy the middle class and small business. They told you there was no supply chain crisis. I preached about it weekly. They told you the Epstein client was a baseless conspiracy. I said for the first time in history, a woman was arrested and imprisoned for human trafficing.... to evidently no one??
They told you Donald Trump would do everything that Joe Biden is currently doing. They told you there was no elite child-trafficking ring.Meanwhile "Diddy" is being investigated along with dozens of others. They told you federal agencies don't target Americans. They have the FBI knocking on people's doors for posting their opinions on social media. They told you there was no such thing as the UniParty. There is, and you know it. They told you there was no such thing as the Deep State. Obviously. Once you finally realize how long "they" have been lying to you, the quicker you question the narrative. For absolutely everything.
So it is no wonder that dozens of folks have asked my opinion about the bridge. Well, one thing I've learned over the last 25 years is that when something big happens, give it at least 48 hours before you make your opinions up. That gives you time to weed through everything you're hearing and try and get to the truth. 72 hours is even better.
For the first few days, I could make the case that this was an accident. I grew up on sandy Hook bay, NJ. The north side of the bay is New York harbor. Barges, passenger ships, shuttles, you name it come and go out of that harbor 24/7/365. Sometimes, something goes wrong. I've seen ships stranded, grounded because they lost power and drifted onto the flats. Commuter boats have collided, despite 25 thousand dollars worth of radars and ship ID electronics. I've seen piers get crushed. In other words, accidents do indeed happen. Not every event has an angle behind it.
People asked why there were no tugs guiding this thing. Well, there was initially. The tugs got it away from the dock, got it turned around so it was in the channel and pointed out of the harbor. Then they peeled off and went on to their next job. This isn't terribly out of the ordinary. Once a ship is in the channel, and steaming along on her own power, as long as everything's working, they can send it on its merry way.
I couldn't see it as a terror attack. It's 1:30 in the morning. The bridge was almost empty, and the barge pilot called highway patrol and they shut off traffic. A terror operation would have hit it at 5 pm when there could literally be 200 lives crossing that bridge.
But as the time went on, I had no choice but to lean into the conspiracy camp on this one. There's simply too many red flags. First off the wind lie. The first reports said that a stiff north wind of 13 knots ( 15 mph) was blowing. Well, think of the side of a huge container ship like that of a huge sail. A 15 mph wind hitting directly against the port (left) side of that barge would indeed veer it to the right. But when I pulled up the NOAA maps for that night, it was almost dead calm. 2 to 3 MPH. That was a flag for me.
Next up, the redundant systems. This one gets tricky. Any ship of that size, doing operations in a port as big as Baltimore, is required by Federal law to have two power systems, completely separate from each other, along with a separate steerage system. Why this is tricky, is because while the law says that's what they have to have, it's up to the ship owner/user to make sure they work. So, the emergency back ups could have been hacked, or...not tested in some time. More on that in a minute.
A big red flag is the two minutes of missing data from the event recorder. Every ship like that one has a "black box" sort of like the airlines have. In the most crucial period of the event, it's blank. No data, no voices. That's pretty ugly.
Then there's the Chinese connection. There's a group of Chinese that have been against the CCP and the way they run the country for years. They are saying the ship was hacked via a technology they termed "Remote Towing" where they can hack the steering and electrical systems of ships like this one. Is that real? I have no solid proof, but when you see the video of the ship where the lights are out and the power is down, it looks like the redundant system kicks in, they get power back, They throw her in "full astern" to cut down the speed, and then that goes dark.
If indeed they had a way to remotely shut down the electrical system, it would account for the missing data, and the failure of the redundant system.
So, my bottom line here is that there's too many red flags for me to believe it was merely an accident. Am I 100% sure? No. When it fist happened, there was some scuttle on the loading docks where a guy working a crane said that ship had electrical issues before it ever left. If so, then the 'accident" angle could still be in play. But it's weak, and I'm not in that camp right now.
Which brings up the question, if it's not terror, then why do it? If this was deliberate, what did they expect to get out of it? Some think it's economic terror as this will disrupt shipping for a while, cause some fuel shortages in the nearby region, make workers commute a nightmare. My fear is a bit more concerning. That bridge was often used by trucks that were carrying dangerous loads, toxic loads, loads they didn't want in the Baltimore tunnel, or roads in the city. Now they've got no choice.
There's still a lot of questions, and this isn't over. But it looks like hanky-panky to me.
The Market
What a strange couple of days. On Monday and then again on Tuesday, the yield on the ten year was spiking higher and the market hated it. At one point Tuesday the DOW was down 512 points.
While we ended the day well off that low, it was a soggy day. Which led to this morning. The futures were creeping higher in the pre market, but then Fed head Bostic was on CNBC. He said he's only looking for 1 cut, and not until the 4th quarter. That hit the futures and they all plunged.
Well, at 10 the ISM services report hit, and the prices paid component fell sharply. They loved that and soon the DOW was up 120 points. All three indexes were running higher. But there was still a fly in the ointment. Powell himself was scheduled to speak at noon.
He came on stage at 12:10 and his message was the same as what he said Friday. Yeah cuts are coming, but we need to be patient and get more proof that inflation is still fading and some of the recent jumps are transitory. More Blah blah blah.
Interestingly, the DOW pulled off on his statement. It was up just 11 points after his written statement was released. Then it went green again and stayed there until about 3 pm. Then it went red again.
Very strange day indeed.
But they didn't roll over, and it's my guess they're going to want Monday and Tuesday's points back. So a decent bounce makes sense to me. But that said, we do need to watch the ten year. If it starts spiking higher again... all bets are off.
