"People Will Be Furious When They See Why Gas Prices Didn't Come Back Down"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 8/19/26

"People Will Be Furious When They See 

Why Gas Prices Didn't Come Back Down"

"Crude oil cost the same in July 2026 as it did back in January. Gasoline hit $4.003. So where did the rest of it come from? Not the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait carries crude and crude barely moved. From January 2nd to February 27th, 2026, Brent averaged $68.69 a barrel. On July 1st it was $69.24. A penny apart, per gallon. What moved was the refining margin: the money made turning a barrel into fuel. It went from about 44 cents a gallon to $1.45. Over the same stretch the pump went up 97 cents. And the clearest test is this: at crude's absolute peak - April 7th, Brent at $138.21 - the refining margin was BELOW its pre-war level. The margin moves against the crude price, not with it. That alone breaks the "war scarcity" explanation on its own terms. Four big US refiners - Marathon Petroleum, Valero, PBF Energy and HF Sinclair - reported a combined operating-income swing from $3.51 billion to $14.96 billion in a single quarter. An $11.4 billion difference, filed with the SEC on July 30 and August 4, 2026. 

Nothing in the public record we read broke a law. This video does not allege wrongdoing by any company or executive. What it does is follow the arithmetic to where the money actually sits - and the answer isn't an ocean away. The world did not lose crude. The world lost the machinery that turns crude into diesel. Ukrainian strikes took out roughly a third of Russia's refining capacity (18 refineries hit in July 2026 alone; Russia banned diesel exports on July 8). American capacity was retired years ago - 18.8 down to 18.2 million barrels a day since 2019. Roughly two-thirds of the margin expansion is diesel and jet fuel: the fuels that move food, freight and nearly everything you buy. Ken McClure's family started K&P McClure in Lansing, Michigan in 1992 with one truck. He runs forty-four. In March, on local television, he named a month. The school district in Yakima, Washington runs sixty buses. At its own contract price, those buses cost it $213,000 more a year - roughly what two teachers make, in a district where student poverty runs 86 percent. There is no federal price-gouging statute. Just a hole in the law, exactly the size of their fuel bill."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Where did this big ball of stars come from? Palomar 6 is one of about 200 globular clusters of stars that survive in our Milky Way Galaxy. These spherical star-balls are older than our Sun as well as older than most stars that orbit in our galaxy's disk. Palomar 6 itself is estimated to be about 12.5 billion years old, so old that it is close to - and so constrains - the age of the entire universe. 

Containing about 500,000 stars, Palomar 6 lies about 25,000 light years away, but not very far from our galaxy's center. At that distance, this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope spans about 15 light-years. After much study including images from Hubble, a leading origin hypothesis is that Palomar 6 was created - and survives today - in the central bulge of stars that surround the Milky Way's center, not in the distant galactic halo where most other globular clusters are now found."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211019.html

"How to Bear Your Desolations"

"How to Bear Your Desolations"

by Maria Popova

"The morning after a relationship of depth and significance long bending under the weight of its own complexity had finally broken with an exhausted thud, I opened the kiln to discover a month’s worth of pottery shattered — two pieces had exploded, the shrapnel ruining the rest. All that centering, all that glazing, all the hours of pressing letterforms into the wet clay — all of it in shiny shards. And meanwhile spring was breaking outside and a little girl in bright blue rain boots was jumping in a puddle, smashing the reflections of the clouds with savage joy. And I thought, this is all there is: breaking, breaking apart, breaking open. Breaking alive.

It is not an easy assignment, being alive. Coming awake from the stupor of near-living that lulls us through our days, awake to the knowledge that on the other side of the neighborhood ICE trucks are handcuffing people and on the other side of the planet children are dying in gunfire, while outside the first birds of spring are singing and everywhere people are falling in love and in some faraway mountain village a shepherd is singing under a thousand stars. And somehow, somehow, all of it has to cohere into a single world in which we, in all our incohesion, must live this single life.

Ellen Bass reckons with all of this in her splendid poem “Any Common Desolation,” originally published in The Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day newsletter and later included in James Crews’s lifeline of an anthology How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (public library), shared here with Ellen’s blessing.

“Any Common Desolation” read by Maria Popova

"Any Common Desolation"

by Ellen Bass

"can be enough to make you look up

at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few

that survived the rains and frost, shot

with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep

orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird

would rip it like silk. You may have to break

your heart, but it isn’t nothing

to know even one moment alive. The sound

of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant

animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.

The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.

Warm socks. You remember your mother,

her precision a ceremony, as she gathered

the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,

drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath

can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,

the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything

you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves

and, like a needle slipped into your vein -

that sudden rush of the world."

Complement with Henry James on how to stop waiting and start living and Hermann Hesse on how to be more alive, then revisit Ellen’s magnificent poem “How to Apologize.” And if you are looking to break your poetry open, I couldn’t recommend her Living Room Craft Talks more heartily."

- https://www.themarginalian.org/

"We All Run Out of Time…"

Full screen recommended.

oltsev art,

"We All Run Out of Time…"

"We always thought we had more.More summers. More mornings. More time to say the things we meant to say. This one is for everyone who has ever wished the clock would just slow down. And for everyone who finally made peace with the fact that it won't.

All lyrics and concepts are written by me. Every frame is built from my own creative direction - the story, the feeling, the reason it exists. I use AI the way a composer uses an instrument. I'm open about that. I think AI can be something more than noise. It can carry real human emotion if a real human puts it there first. Not for speed. Not for shortcuts. I want you to feel it. Thank you for watching."

Delta Blue's Kings, "The Weight of Unspoken Words"

Full screen recommended.

Delta Blue's Kings,

"The Weight of Unspoken Words"

"Some things don’t haunt you because they happened. They haunt you because they never did. “The Weight of Unspoken Words” is a deep Delta blues reflection on silence, pride, missed conversations, and the emotional weight carried by the things we never say out loud. Some words don’t disappear. They stay."

Native Elder, "Why You Hear Your Name Called When Nobody Is There"

Full screen recommended.

Native Elder,

"Why You Hear Your Name 

Called When Nobody Is There"

The Daily "Near You?"

Metamora, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Essence Of Life..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."

- Philip José Farmer

"Future Uncertain, Part II"

"Future Uncertain, Part II"

by Joel Bowman

“No man of sense, even if he is prosperous for the moment, 

will ever reckon with certainty on the future.”

~ Polybius, "Histories (written between 160 – 146 BC)

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "When we left you last, we were reckoning on a theory of time: it’s speeding up. Alas, we ran out of time to finish the thought! (Readers can get themselves up to speed, right on time, in Part I.)

We’ll pick up that thread in just a moment. But first, what’s the point of all this? Why bother thinking about such abstract concepts at all? Isn’t there something more pressing, more immediate, au courant over which to cogitate? Has POTUS dropped another “Truth bomb” on social media? Is the Iran War on/off again? Has the Empire crested the $40T debt summit? Have the forests all burned and the oceans all boiled? And what happened to inflation figures and GDP measurements and consumer confidence indexes? Where’s “the meat”?

A little patience, if you would be so kind. At least some good things come to those who wait...Besides, we’re teasing out a paradox, dear reader: the idea that the more we come to “know” – about our past, about the human condition, about the world around us – the more uncertain our future becomes. But how could this be so? Conventional, post-Enlightenment wisdom assures us the opposite ought to be the case... that the more we refine our measuring tools, the more we apply cold, hard reason to the questions outstanding, the more easily we’ll be able to “peek around the corner.”

Surely with all our whizz-bang technology... our doubt-free “thought leaders”... our globalist gatherings and press corps. blatherings... we’re closer to “The Truth” than ever before, no? But let us save that laughable conceit for the end of our little tale. Today, we pick up where we left off, hot on the heels of man’s marvelous technological adventure...

Old School Rock ‘n’ Roll: From the humble wheel, which probably got rolling in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) sometime around 3,500 BC... to iron smelting, for which we thank the Hittites, c. 1,800 BC... to the precursors to the modern day alphabet, courtesy of the Phoenicians, c. 1,200 BC...

We watched as man plodded along, dragging his simple tools and fractured languages around with him for centuries, sometimes millennia, before his best and brightest (or at least, most fecund) ideas began to catch on. Sometimes these ideas were spread by trade and commerce... other times by war and conquest... and often by pure chance.

Other times, they were simply lost along the way... see the The Baghdad Battery or the Antikythera mechanism or the Greek “Lycurgus Cup,” a dichroic glass artifact whose optical properties weren’t properly understood until modern science... for just a smattering of the ideas History “forgot.” (Our friends at Classical Wisdom have delved into these and other wonders. See more here.)

Indeed, in many ways, the record of History itself, as far as we may claim to “know” it at all, survives largely as a result of chance and contingency, much of it invisible to us. Consider, for example, that it is only because the population of Pompeii was so completely annihilated by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (in 79 AD), that their history was preserved for us.

Call it “conservation through extermination.” Convenient for historians, perhaps... not so much for Pliny the Elder and his “fortune favors the bold” shipmates. Ah, but that’s another story, for another time...

Upstream to Mainstream: In any event, it was not until the Renaissance, in general, and Johannes Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press, in particular, when technology really began to reach escape velocity. Cue the Scientific Revolution (c. 1540–1700), the Age of Enlightenment (c. 1680–1800) and the Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–1850), and before you could say “a car in every garage,” Henry Ford’s automobile production plants are cranking out 2M new sets of wheels per year in the United States alone.

Mankind had come a long way since his original rock ‘n’ roll days, back in the cradle of civilization. And he was only just getting going...From the mid-19th to the early 21st Century, technology underwent an acceleration so dramatic it became impossible to ignore, at least for anyone with eyes to see. Herewith, a pithy breakdown of some nifty breakthroughs. (Shown is the number of years it took for each technology to reach 25% of the US population, the so-called tipping point where a technology is said to safely “cross the chasm” into the mainstream)...

Electricity: 46 Years (1873 to 1919)

Automobile: 35 Years (1886 to 1921)

Radio: 31 Years (1920 to 1951)

Television: 26 Years (1926 to 1952)

Personal Computer: 16 Years (1975 to 1991)

The Internet: 7 Years (1991 to 1998)

Smartphones: 4 Years (2007 to 2011)

Faster than Light: This is a phenomenon economists, investors, policy wonks, and fringy newsletter scribblers sometimes call “adoption curve compression,” wherein the time from innovation to saturation... from lab to “fab!”... significantly shortens over time.

The “The Law of Accelerating Change,” as the futurist Ray Kurzweil described it, happens in part because each new technology is able to benefit from the previous technology in order to better “build itself.” Once man had fashioned the first wheel, the first iron tool, the first computer, etc., he could use it to help build a better, faster, more efficient wheel, iron tool, computer, etc. In this way, the rate of technological advancement went from linear... to exponential.

Another contributing factor is the speed at which knowledge (not wisdom, mind you) can travel. In the ancient world, ideas spread as fast as men could physically carry them... about 3 miles/hour. By the industrial era, seated aboard trains and ships, he could manage perhaps 60 mph. And by the time he was surfing the web of fiber optic cables, man’s ideas (good, bad and ugly) could travel at the speed of light. (Actually, it is potentially infinitely faster than that.. as a single piece of information can now travel from Point A to any number of destinations simultaneously, thereby collapsing the denominator of the speed equation from the very outset.)

All of which makes the arrival of Artificial Intelligence entirely unsurprising post factum… but next to impossible to have predicted ante hoc. But is A.I. itself another Gutenberg moment… or a Mt. Vesuvius rumbling underfoot? And is there any way to know for sure? More on all that, next time...Stay tuned for your Notes From the End of the World..."

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

"The Duty..."

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you 

damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, 

the duty to take the consequences."

- P. J. O'Rourke

Travelling with Russell, "Moscow Metro: The Best Metro Line in the World"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell,

"Moscow Metro: 

The Best Metro Line in the World"

"Let's discover what the Moscow Metro looks like. Having just opened 3 brand new stations days ago. The new line consists of 7 new stations opened within the last 4 months. Discover with amazement just how complex the Moscow Metro really is."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

"The World's Most Beautiful Underground

Subway Station - Moscow!"

"Join us to discover the breathtaking beauty hidden beneath the streets of Moscow! In this 4K walking tour, we'll explore some of the world's most stunning underground subway stations, often called "underground palaces" because of their incredible architecture, grand chandeliers, colorful mosaics, marble columns, and historic artwork. The Moscow Metro is more than just a transportation system - it's a living museum that reflects Russia's rich history, culture, and artistic heritage. Join me as we walk through these iconic stations, capturing their unique beauty and atmosphere in stunning ultra-high-definition."

OMG...Absolutely stunning, incredible what

a sane, civilized society can achieve...

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

And then, in America the beautiful, there's this, 

watch full screen if you can stomach it...

"Inside Kensington, Philadelphia Homeless Streets"

Canadian Prepper, "Russia is Done F%*king Around, The Gloves Are Off"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 8/19/26

"Russia is Done F%*king Around, 

The Gloves Are Off"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Greatest Time Of Financial Chaos Will Be Here Soon"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/19/26

"The Greatest Time Of Financial 

Chaos Will Be Here Soon"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

The Jiang Exclusive, 8/19/21

"These 21 States Will Collapse First 

as USA Enters Recession 2026"

"America is facing a growing debt burden, with $39.4 trillion in national debt and an enormous annual interest bill putting increasing pressure on the economy. But when a recession hits, the impact isn't the same everywhere. Some states have stronger economies, healthier finances, and greater resilience. Others face a combination of pension obligations, population decline, housing pressures, industry concentration, and weakening tax bases that could leave them more exposed during an economic downturn. In this video, Professor Jiang Xueqin examines 21 U.S. states that could be among the most vulnerable if economic conditions deteriorate in 2026. 

We'll look at the warning signs behind each state, including economic growth, debt and pension pressures, demographic changes, employment concentration, migration trends, and the ability of state governments to withstand a prolonged downturn. The goal isn't to predict that any state will literally "collapse," but to understand **which states may face greater economic pressure - and why. Watch until the end to see which states rank highest on the vulnerability list and what these trends could mean for households, businesses, and investors."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"The Collapse Is Here! Global Bond Market 

Implodes, US Treasury to the Rescue!"

"Nationwide Blackout On Deck? Get Ready For False Flag Attack On U.S. Power Grid, Likely To Be Blamed On Iran"

"Nationwide Blackout On Deck? Get Ready For False 

Flag Attack On U.S. Power Grid, Likely To Be Blamed On Iran"

by Leo Hohmann

"It’s important to read the government’s favored propaganda organs on the right and on the left because they are very useful in helping us predict the future. In my previous post I featured an article by Fox News about rapidly advancing humanoid robot soldiers, a clear signal that the power elites among Washington’s Epstein class are wanting to prime the pump and get people on the right used to the idea of robots serving in military and law enforcement roles.

Like with the Flock surveillance cameras, don’t worry about your civil liberties being trampled upon, because these armed and dangerous AI robots are “for our safety and security.” They’ll be protecting the border, Fox News tells us. What’s not to love about that? Your typical Fox News viewer will lap it up and feel reassured that their president is using everything at his disposal to keep those nasty illegals from entering the country. They won’t even think about all of the nefarious and brutal possibilities for AI robots, once they’ve been unleashed. But I guarantee you the government is thinking about it, and planning for it.

What better way, for example, to disarm law-abiding Americans who believe in the Second Amendment than to send robot soldiers into their homes to confiscate weapons that can be made illegal with the stroke of a president’s pen? With 6G technology, they will be able to see through walls, through your clothing, etc., and know who has weapons on their person or in their homes. They will no longer need to risk the lives of a human SWAT team breaking down people’s doors. They will simply sic the robots on you under the color of law. They could simply declare you a danger to yourself or your community by virtue of having too many guns, or the wrong type of guns, while speaking out against the surveillance state.

Trump has already signaled his support for so-called red-flag laws, which allow the government to disarm people before presenting any evidence that they could pose a threat to anyone. On Feb. 28, 2018, Trump said, “Take the guns first,” and worry about due process later. The federal government has also already decided, earlier this year, to add people they deem “anti-technology” and “anti-data center” to its list of “potential” domestic terrorists who need to be watched.

Fox News never asks the right questions, connects the right dots, or approaches a story like militarized robots from the right angle. It’s just about using them to protect the border, which sounds wonderful to the average Fox News watcher.

Similarly, we see an article in today’s Daily Mail, that merits our attention. The Daily Mail, like Fox, is a notorious pro-war, pro-deep state propaganda outlet read by millions of mostly right-wing Brits, Canadians and Americans, and in an article today it promotes the idea of the U.S. power grid being attacked and taken down by an outside entity. The article, titled, "Warning that mammoth nationwide blackout could last 18 MONTHS as power grid’s appalling weak spots exposed," tells you everything you need to know about what’s coming.

Remember, Klaus Schwab, former director of the World Economic Forum, said six years ago that a major cyber attack would hit the world and “the Covid-19 crisis would be seen, in this respect, as a small disturbance, in comparison.” These demons always tell us their plans ahead of time. Hollywood is another favorite tool for telegraphing their plans. How many movies were churned out about society-altering pandemics before they launched Covid? They’ve been telegraphing a debilitating cyber attack for almost as long but that still hasn’t happened. I’d say it’s overdue.

The time to prepare for it is now. Previous government studies from years ago have warned this exact same scenario is likely and that a nationwide outage of one year or longer would result in 90 percent of Americans losing their lives. The Daily Mail article says the entire power grid could be collapsed, simply by taking out nine key substations. Below is a brief excerpt: "The United States is at risk of a nationwide blackout that could last 18 months, according to the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Jon Wellinghoff became aware of the alleged vulnerability after a shooting at a Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s San Jose substation, according to the The New York Times Magazine.

He conducted a power flow analysis that modeled the large-scale effects of knocking out the most critical substation in each of America’s three power grids: the Western, Eastern and Texas interconnections. He said this led him to discover just how easy it would be to cripple America’s power supply. “We came up with some very astounding numbers,” Wellinghoff said. “If you knock out nine total substations among these three grids, you can black out the entire United States.”

Their quoted expert, Jon Wellinghoff, says it’s so easy to pull off that “a bunch of 12-year-olds with the internet could do pretty easily.” He then provides a few helpful instructions, almost like he’s hoping someone will attempt the deed he’s warning about, saying “All you have to do is look at a map of the grid and figure out where most of the wires go into the substations—that’s a critical substation.”

First off, we didn’t need the Daily Mail or Mr. Wellinghoff to tell us our power grid has been left vulnerable by our traitorous politicians. People like the late Dr. Peter Vincent Pry started sounding alarm bells about this 20 years ago, and Congress has never appropriated the money to harden the grid against an EMP or cyberattack, even though it would cost a fraction of what it costs to wage even one overseas forever war on the scale of Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.

Our politicians are quick to attack other countries, slow to defend our own. While an attack of this nature could very well be carried out by a foreign power such as China, Russia or Iran, the chances are just as good that our power grid has been designed to be easily taken down, or that the U.S. government itself has aspirations of someday taking it down and blaming it on a foreign government it wants to attack.

BOTTOM LINE: The U.S. power grid is ripe for a false flag attack. This could happen either by leaving it intentionally vulnerable to an attack from a foreign enemy that has already been provoked (like Russia or Iran) or from our own government. Let’s pay attention and see if similar stories about America’s vulnerable power grid start getting planted in other mainstream news sites, because in today’s carefully cultivated and orchestrated news cycle, everything gets reported for a reason.

If the Trump regime is running out of conventional munitions and still hasn’t subdued the Iranians six months from now, then what? Thanks to Marjorie Taylor Greene, we already know Trump has been considering the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. We already know the U.S. military is rewriting its nuclear doctrine to allow for a broader use of tactical nukes. What better way to justify such a heinous attack than to have a massive cyber or EMP attack against the U.S. power grid? Blame it on Iran. Americans will clamor for revenge. Then it’s nuke time. The seeds for such an attack have already been planted. All that’s needed is the false flag that can be pinned on the desired target country. Prepare accordingly."

- https://leohohmann.substack.com/

Bill Bonner, "Is this ‘Peak Bubble’?"

Click image for larger size.

"Is this ‘Peak Bubble’?"

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France -  "The pin approaches. It is a patient pin. It will take its time, but not forever. In all of the bubbles we know of — from tulips to railroads to suburban mortgages — it has never missed its mark. But when we turn our eyes to the bubble itself, we are shocked. This is no ordinary bubble. This is a SuperBubble...bigger...more flamboyant...and more charged with gas than any that came before it. When the pin gets close, watch out.

But first...a ray of sunshine on a gloomy day. Bloomberg: "Parents are hiring $6,500 sorority consultants."Worried about people being out of work because of AI? Well, you can stop worrying. People who will pay a consultant to help a daughter choose a sorority will never lack for ways to take on new hires. But the transition could be rough. And when pin and bubble finally meet, the poor girl can go back into the dorm.

Between the election of Obama and today, the feds have added about $30 trillion of debt — three quarters of the total. So much debt has been added in the last 18 years that a real correction can’t happen without massive bankruptcy, chaos and inflation. That $30 trillion (we are not including private sector credit) was ‘ghost demand’ that came out of nowhere. Nobody earned it. Nobody saved it. But it added to sales, profits...capital values...and the SuperBubble.

The total of US debt in 2008 was only $10 trillion. Now it is approaching $40 trillion — four times as much. And the cost of servicing the debt this year is $1.3 trillion. In 2008, the interest cost was still less than $200 billion...only a fraction of today’s bill.

AI has an important role to play in the SuperBubble too. Just as Alan Greenspan anticipated a big boost to output from the internet (giving him cover to increase the money supply), today Kevin Warsh believes AI will do the job: “AI will be a significant disinflationary force, increasing productivity and bolstering American competitiveness.”

So far, there is no sign of it. Like the internet itself, AI is focused on the ‘paper industry’ of ‘knowledge workers’ — ideas, analyses, contracts, reports, plans, programs, entertainments. The ‘paper’ is a cost...not an asset or revenue. And if the lessons of the internet apply, the machine will produce more paper, making business more expensive, slower...and requiring three more meetings.

Last week, we looked at how incestuous the AI complex had become. A dollar of speculation may show up as income in several places — boosting capital values in all of them. But where did the dollar of investment come from? Where was it earned? When was it saved? Maybe nowhere and never. Like federal debt, it comes out of nowhere...from the credit market or from the bubble itself. In the case of Oracle, for example, the company is putting more than 100% of its earnings into its AI bet. Other speculators are drawing on their bubble gains elsewhere to keep the bubble expanding. The Nasdaq has doubled over the last four years; there’s plenty of wealth to draw on. But it’s bubble wealth, not real wealth. Actual output rises only half as fast as the stock market. Myrmikan Research:

The hyperscalers plus Nvidia plus the three U.S.-based Nvidia suppliers comprise 29.7% of the S&P500—eighty million working Americans every two weeks have part of their paychecks shunted into retirement accounts that buy that index. The inflated market caps provide the collateral that backs over $600 billion in margin loans, used either to boost consumer spending or to fund more stock speculation. An additional $152 billion of consumer debt has been borrowed by life insurance policy holders against their policies, that is, debt borrowed against the debt owned by the insurance companies, increasingly comprised of illiquid private credit held offshore.

In what might be a peak for the whole Bubble Epoch, Google sold a 100-year bond in February. You may wonder why a $4 trillion company...with earnings of $400 billion...would want to borrow at all. Or why sane investors would want to lend money to a company that doesn’t need the money and probably won’t be in business when its bonds finally mature? And what about the dollar; will it be just a collector’s item? But that is just the nature of a SuperBubble. You may already be hoist to dizzy heights, but there is nothing that says you can’t go higher.

Except history. And math. And newer tech. And competition. And physics. The gap between fetching up info, as Google does, and analyzing it, as Claude does, is wider than most people think. It turns out that it takes much more energy to ‘think’ than to fetch. That’s why there are so many ‘data centers’ popping up in cornfields throughout the nation. But it might turn out that the real return is much lower than expected. Myrmikan Research:

According to an April 2026 academic paper: “agentic tasks are uniquely expensive, consuming 1000X more tokens than code reasoning and code chat…” Even worse for businesses: “Task difficulty rated by human experts only weakly aligns with actual token costs, revealing a fundamental gap between human-perceived complexity and the computational effort agents actually expend…Frontier models fail to accurately predict their own token usage….and systematically underestimate real token costs.”

And here’s more good news, recent surveys hint that humans may already be making a comeback. The cost of AI is so high, in some cases, that humans can be cheaper. More effective. And they’ll sit down and have a cup of coffee with you. What’s more, China is developing its own AI...and, as in so many other things, seems to be undercutting US prices. In the normal course of events, it could turn out that the AI industry is smaller and less profitable than we imagined...and that the Chinese own it. Two Chinese companies — Deepseek and Moonshot — are already on their way, according to press reports.

So, how big is the SuperBubble? The ‘hyperscalers’ — Microsoft, Amazon, Google, et al — are worth about $16 trillion. The chipmakers — Nvidia, et al — are worth about $10 trillion. And the AI companies themselves — Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI et al — are worth about $4 trillion more. That’s $30 trillion altogether. Add the feds’ unpayable debt, another $30 trillion, and you have $60 trillion of hot air. A trillion here. A trillion there. Pretty soon you’re talking about one helluva bubble."

-https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Bond Market Just Flashes Red"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 8/19/266

"The Bond Market Just Flashes Red"

"The economy is entering increasingly dangerous territory as the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield reaches levels not seen in nearly 20 years, pushing borrowing costs and mortgage rates higher. In this video, Dan breaks down what rising Treasury yields mean for mortgages, real estate, inflation, consumer spending, the credit markets and the financial system. We also look at the Japanese yen, Japan's bond market, geopolitical risk, oil prices and why global markets are becoming increasingly unstable. But that's only part of the story. We also examine the potential AI bubble, the sale and use of personal communications to train artificial intelligence, privacy concerns surrounding license-plate readers, Spirit Airlines, Nike, Costco entering Medicare Advantage and the growing pressure on American consumers. From interest rates and housing to technology, privacy and business news, Dan explains why these seemingly separate stories may be connected by a much bigger economic problem. Subscribe to iAllegedly for daily business news, financial news, economic analysis and consumer alerts."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The U.S. Faces A “Historic” Cattle Shortage As The Size Of The U.S. Herd Shrinks To The Smallest Since 1951"

by Michael Snyder

"A multi-year cattle shortage has pushed the price of beef into very painful territory. In fact, in some areas of the country the price of ground beef now exceeds the federal minimum wage. This is the first time in U.S. history that this has ever happened. At the start of 2026, there were only 86.2 million head of cattle and calves in the United States. That is the smallest the national herd has been since 1951. Just think about that for a moment. This is an enormous problem because in 1951 there were 154 million people living in this nation, but there are 342 million people living in this nation today.

We are being told that we are facing a “historic” cattle shortage, and it is causing some of the biggest meatpackers in the country to shut down facilities…America’s ranchers are facing their smallest cattle herd in 75 years, a shortage now rippling from pastures to some of the nation’s largest meatpackers. Tyson Foods announced last week that it will close beef facilities in Illinois and Utah and pursue the sale of another in Washington as it reshapes its beef business amid what the company called one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced. Tyson said recent USDA data suggest supply constraints are likely to persist.

This is a major national crisis. According to the USDA, the size of the U.S. cattle herd has fallen by 8 million just since 2019…USDA data shows the U.S. entered 2026 with about 86.2 million cattle and calves, the smallest herd since the early 1950s. That’s down from roughly 94.7 million cattle and calves in 2019, a decline of more than 8 million animals. This is another instance where the trend is not our friend. I asked Google to create a graph of the size of the U.S. cattle herd by year, and the decline that we have been experiencing since the beginning of the decade is unmistakable…

So why is this happening? The answer to that question is very clear. Ranchers throughout the middle of the nation have been dealing with severe drought… “The biggest thing has been drought,” Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University, previously told Fox News Digital. He said years of dry weather have depleted grasslands across the West and Plains, leaving ranchers without enough feed or water to sustain their herds. Many have been forced to sell cattle early, including cows needed to produce the next generation of calves, making the road to recovery even longer.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, according to Wikipedia a multi-decade drought in the Southwest actually began in the year 2000… The southwestern North American megadrought is a multidecadal drought in the southwestern region of North America that began in 2000. The 2000–2021 period was the driest 22-year period the region had experienced since at least 800 CE. The megadrought contributed to the first-ever declaration of a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the two largest reservoirs in the United States by storage capacity. Climate models project increased drought risk and drier soil-moisture conditions in the region through the end of the 21st century.

There had been hope that perhaps the region may be pulling out the megadrought, but then last winter was the driest winter that many areas of the Southwest have experienced in recorded history. It is really hard to raise cattle if it doesn’t rain, and pastures throughout the Southwest are in very rough shape right now… Drought is hammering pastures and rangeland across the Plains and Southwest, pushing conditions significantly below where they stood a year ago.

The states with the highest percentage of pasture and range in the very-poor-to-poor category are in those two regions, according to USDA’s weekly Crop Progress report released on Monday. Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming have the highest percentage of pastures in this category at 73%, 72% and 71%, respectively. These states also lack pasture in the good-to-excellent category, with Nebraska and Colorado both at 8% and Wyoming at 4%.

The reason why all of us should deeply care about this is because the consequences are being keenly felt at the grocery store. Since 2021, the average price of ground beef in the United States has risen by well over 50 percent…

Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. In some areas of the country the price of ground beef is still a little bit less than the federal minimum wage, and in some areas of the country the price of ground beef is actually higher than the federal minimum wage. Ground beef is now more unaffordable than it has ever been in the entire history of our country.

In 1988, the average price of a pound of ground beef was $1.36. In those days we ate like kings. But now everything has changed, and it isn’t just the price of beef that is going up.It is being reported that Oxford Economics is projecting that global food prices will go up 11.8 percent this year alone…

"Oxford Economics projects that global food prices will rise 11.8% in 2026 and 4.8% in 2027, with the heaviest toll expected on crops—including grains, fruit, and vegetables—as well as dairy products. This outlook follows Europe’s extreme heat and drought, which have harmed harvests, while growers also grapple with steep energy and fertilizer costs, further aggravated by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine."

We saw a similar spike in global food prices just prior to the Arab Spring riots in the Middle East many years ago. And JPMorgan just released a report that is projecting that global food prices will go up another 5 percent during the first half of next year… That’s a fitting attitude for Americans staring down the possibility of even higher grocery bills. A new report from JPMorgan, Food Security is National Security: A Compounding Storm, warns that global food costs could climb 5% in the first half of 2027.

Personally, I think that JPMorgan’s forecast is way too optimistic. But that is just my opinion. JPMorgan is concerned about the dual impact of the Super El Niño and the worldwide fertilizer shortage…There are two prongs to JPMorgan’s predicted food deficits: a fertilizer shortage and a monumental weather event. And the Strait of Hormuz’s closure wasn’t just bad for gasoline prices. The strait also sees about a third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer — an essential form of fertilizer for around half of the world’s crops. Nitrogen fertilizer shortages are a ticking time bomb. Because it’s needed during the early stages of crop growth, we could still be feeling the effects of a shortage as much as a year later.

Most experts are still anticipating that supplies of fertilizer will be flowing normally through the Strait of Hormuz once we get to next spring. Of course if that doesn’t actually happen we will have a real nightmare on our hands. Already, we are facing a harvest season in the fall in which yields will be way down all over the planet thanks to a lack of fertilizer. Everyone is counting on conditions bouncing back to normal in 2027, but I do not believe that is going to happen. Approximately 733 million people on this planet go to bed hungry at night now, and I anticipate that number will only grow during the challenging months ahead."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

"Alert! WW3 Goes into Overdrive! Multiple Ships on Fire! Planes Surround Russia"

Canadian Prepper, 8/18/26

"Alert! WW3 Goes into Overdrive! Multiple

 Ships on Fire! Planes Surround Russia"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Diesel Crack Spread Screams Economic Red Alert, and Inflation Will Soon Surge"

"Diesel Crack Spread Screams Economic Red Alert,

 and Inflation Will Soon Surge"

by Mike Adams

"Diesel at $102 Over Crude: The Economy's Canary Is Dead, and Inflation Will Follow: The most important number in the American economy right now is not the stock market, the jobs report, or even the price of crude oil. It is the diesel crack spread -- now $102 over crude. That figure is so far outside historical norms that it does not represent a market correction. It represents a structural collapse in fuel supply. The economy runs on diesel, you see, not oil. Crude is just a raw material. But diesel is what moves food, medicine, construction materials, and every physical good in this country. When diesel breaks, everything breaks. And the crack spread -- the canary in this economic coal mine -- just died.

The Diesel Crack Spread Is Screaming: The crack spread is the pricing difference between a barrel of crude oil and the petroleum products refined from it. [1] When it widens, it means refineries cannot keep up with demand for specific fuels. Back in January 2023, analysts were alarmed when the spread hit a three-month high of $42.41, against a five-year January average of just $15.56. Today we are staring at $102. That is not an outlier; it is an emergency.

Jefferies, one of Wall Street's sharpest energy desks, put it in exactly these words: the Hormuz shock is "manifesting itself in cracks, not crude." Politicians can easily manipulate crude prices, releasing strategic reserves and spinning narratives. But they cannot fake diesel supply. And when diesel supply tightens, the whole economy follows.

Why Refining Matters More Than Drilling: Everyone watches crude. Almost nobody watches refineries. That is a fatal blind spot. A refinery's configuration determines which fuels it can produce, and American refineries were largely optimized for light sweet crude. Diesel, however, comes disproportionately from the heavier sour barrels that flow through the Persian Gulf (and Venezuela, for those keeping track of the global RISK gameboard).

The war with Iran has cut off exactly those supply lines. Saudi Aramco reported a 33 percent jump in quarterly profits while redirecting what crude it could through its East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea. But pipelines cannot fix a chemistry problem. When refineries are forced to run suboptimal crude slates, diesel output falls, and the crack spread blows out. This is why I have been warning that drilling alone is a fantasy. You can drill a million new wells and it will not produce a single gallon of diesel unless the refineries can process what comes out of the ground. Refining capacity is the bottleneck -- and that bottleneck is now poised to strangle the economy.

The Permanent Destruction of US Refining Capacity: While Washington wrings its hands over crude prices, America's refining capacity is being dismantled from within. California -- the state that lectures the rest of the country about energy virtue -- has lost two major refineries. The Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles and the Valero Energy Corp. refinery in Benicia are closed down, reducing California's refining capacity by 21 percent. 

These are not maintenance shutdowns. They are permanent closures. They come on top of the earlier shuttering of the LyondellBasell refinery in Houston, a sprawling 700-acre facility that produced over 200,000 barrels of fuel per day before its owners decided the upgrade costs were simply too high. Every one of these closures permanently removes diesel production capacity. Meanwhile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been drained to a 43-year low. There is no buffer. No cushion. When the next disruption hits -- and it will -- there will be nothing left to absorb it.

When Diesel Prices Spike, Everything Breaks: Here is what the financial press refuses to tell you: diesel is the fuel of physical reality. Approximately 7 billion ton-miles of freight move by truck every single day in the United States, consuming upward of 2.9 million barrels of diesel per day. Retail diesel has already surged from $3.55 a gallon to $5.60 -- a 56 percent increase in the cost of moving every physical good in America. By the end of this year, it could easily reach $8 or even higher.

Farming runs on diesel. Construction runs on diesel. Trains, mining, shipping, manufacturing -- all of it runs on diesel. Diesel inflation does not stay in the fuel tank; it works its way into food prices, consumer goods, and construction materials. JPMorgan is already warning that a global food crisis could erupt next year, driven by what its analysts call the "Five Ws": War, Weather, Warehousing, Water, and Waste. Higher diesel prices will make food inflation far worse. And the claim that "demand destruction" will fix this? Not without a lot of economic chaos happening first. Shortages cascade from fuel to food to everything else. A fuel shock becomes a food shock, and a food shock becomes a social shock with dire political consequences.

How to Prepare for the Diesel Supply Shock: If you live in California, prepare for diesel at $8 to $10 a gallon. The rest of the country may not be far behind. Do not expect the government to save you - the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is nearly empty, and no amount of political spin can rebuild refining capacity that has been permanently destroyed.

What actually protects you is self-reliance. Grow your own food. Store fuel safely if you can. Learn to live without the just-in-time delivery system that is about to break. I have been growing a portion of my own food for years, and it remains one of the most powerful acts of resistance available to a free citizen. The practical knowledge found in books like John Seymour's classic "Farming for Self-Sufficiency" is worth more than any government program. The crack spread is the canary. At $102 over crude, that canary is dead. The inflation that follows will be neither polite nor temporary. Prepare now, while you still can."

Watch my video interviews at Decentralize.TV to learn practical steps for off-grid living and decentralizing away from banks, the broken medical system and the stressed power grid.

Explainer Infographic:

- https://www.naturalnews.com/

Musical Interlude: Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia")

Full screen recommended.

Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia")

(Live In London 2011)

English lyrics here:

- https://genius.com/Il-divo-wicked-game-melanconia-lyrics

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Sprawling emission nebulae IC 1396 and Sh2-129 mix glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds in this 10 degree wide field of view toward the northern constellation Cepheus the King. Energized by its bluish central star IC 1396 (left) is hundreds of light-years across and some 3,000 light-years distant. 

The nebula's intriguing dark shapes include a winding dark cloud popularly known as the Elephant's Trunk below and right of center. Tens of light-years long, it holds the raw raw material for star formation and is known to hide protostars within. Located a similar distance from planet Earth, the bright knots and swept back ridges of emission of Sh2-129 on the right suggest its popular name, the Flying Bat Nebula. Within the Flying Bat, the most recently recognized addition to this royal cosmic zoo is the faint bluish emission from Ou4, the Giant Squid nebula."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210723.html

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

"Heaven And Hell..."

“Many people don’t fear a hell after this life and that’s because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn’t end. The kind of hell that doesn’t burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can’t see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It’s where you feel freedom, where you’re not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing.”

- C. JoyBell C.

o

John Milton,

"Paradise Lost: Book 1" (1674 version)

o

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"

"I Keep Saying That..."

"Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it.

Kate Lockley: And now you do?

Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help, because I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

Kate Lockley: Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany.

Angel: I keep saying that, but nobody's listening."

- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0512846/quotes

"First Of All..."

"First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?"

- Thomas Merton

"The Top Banana"

"The Top Banana"

by Jeff Thomas

"The United States emerged from World War II as the top banana. Having entered the war late, it not only was in the enviable position of expanding as a manufacturing nation to supply the allies with war materials, it also insisted on being paid in gold for whatever it shipped. (Pretty nice deal.) At the end of the war, it only had to switch from building tanks and radio equipment to building cars and televisions for the peacetime population. The icing on the cake was that it had not been invaded, so, in 1945, it was poised to take off as the world’s foremost supplier of goods.

For several decades, the US reigned as the top banana, and indeed, that’s still true in many ways, except the peel of the banana is rapidly turning brown. The US has, in recent times, devolved from being the world’s greatest creditor nation to becoming the world’s greatest debtor nation. And in fact, were it not for the residual image of its past laurels, it’s likely that the US would already have collapsed under its unprecedented debt-and-deficit burden. But whilst we’re making a comparison of the US to the yellow fruit, there are a few other parallels that come to mind.

Banana Republic: The term "banana republic" was coined in 1904 to refer to those economically unstable countries that rely on just one product that they sell to the rest of the world, with no backup plan should that product fail. The banana republic remains functional only as a result of money and goods shipped to it in trade for the one product. Sooner or later, something goes wrong with that product, and the republic crashes as a result. At one time, the US supplied the world with its manufactured goods, but American manufacturing facilities have long since moved to countries where costs of operation are far lower than in the US.

Today, the foremost US export product, by far, is debt. US Treasuries are held by countries across the globe and the present debt is at a world record level. If even a portion of the Treasuries were to be redeemed, the US economy would quickly collapse. And yet, the debt is increasing by three billion dollars every day. It’s important to remember that this is not a problem created by one political party or the other. Both parties are responsible for the rises in debt. This is therefore not a situation that can or will be corrected "if our candidate could just win the next election." And so, the US can therefore unquestionably be categorized, at this stage in its development, as a banana republic – one with no plan for a solution to its situation.

Going Bananas: Another aspect that seems to always emerge in banana republics is the tendency to steadily diminish basic freedoms and the rule of law. In recent decades, constitutionally guaranteed freedoms have been steadily removed in the US, but more rapidly in the last decade.

In addition, the government on both sides, but particularly on the left, has been destroying the rule of law. All branches of the government are playing high and loose with their authority. In the past, the legislature did all it can, regardless of whether it is lawful, to unseat the president. Most disappointing of all, the judicial branch has become an extension of the legislative branch, basing their decisions on political prejudices rather than on law.

This now takes place even with regard to the Supreme Court. The Court is seen by both political parties as an agency for enforcement of political beliefs, with each party locked in a struggle to gain dominance by having the majority of justices be loyal to one party or the other, not to the law. Not surprisingly, since law and principle have been tossed aside in the post-constitutional era, the American people are left with no moral compass whatever. The best that they can hope for is that their chosen group will vanquish the other somehow.

And so, we see a constant game of one-upmanship amongst both the American people and the political parties – a continuous attempt to win as many of an endless series of "moral" battles, played out each evening on the news. In such an environment, those who attempt to inject quiet reason are unable to be heard. Only those who "go bananas" get enough attention to possibly edge forward in the fray.

Slipping on a Banana Peel: And so we ask ourselves what the outcome of this charade is likely to be. Well, if we see a banana peel before us, hopefully, we’d be looking where we’re going and sidestep it. However, what we’re seeing in America is a pathway filled with banana peels and an obsessive populace that shows every sign of placing more attention on individual agenda than where it’s walking.

To be sure, this conundrum is nothing new in the world. Over the millennia, such situations have played themselves out countless times. The net result tends to be the same. There’s a dramatic socio-economic–political collapse, followed by a period in which both wealth and order have been lost. Once they realize that there have been no real winners in the debacle, the populace shakes its collective head and wonders, "How did we let it get so crazy?"

Eventually, they begin to ask themselves what can be done to rebuild the system, but historically, this does not happen quickly. In most such cases, a hardworking and successful generation have raised a spoiled generation, who want quick answers and immediate gratification. They in turn raise an apathetic generation, who don’t see any real light at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, the US is in the latter stage. Such a generation of apathetic individuals is typically incapable of creating a recovery. In almost all cases, what’s necessary is that the following generation recognize that their parents have left them with virtually nothing and that, if they want more, they’ll have to work for it.

And so the cycle begins anew. But make no mistake; it’s not a quick process. It tends to take decades. But as the declining nation slides into the doldrums, others come forward to take its place. As anyone who has raised bananas knows, when one tree begins to fruit, small banana "suckers" begin to come out of the ground. By the time the tree is in full fruit, the suckers are big enough to be firmly rooted.

Once the tree has fruited and collapsed under its own weight, the suckers feed off its moisture and minerals to grow. The position of top banana is not perennial. It passes from one to another from time to time. But this is by no means the end of the world. The trick is to recognize the warning signs and, when we see them, to uproot and move on to a more favorable grove."

- https://internationalman.com/