Jeremiah Babe, 8/26/26
"Massive Supply Shock Will Rock The US Economy"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
"Even McDonald's Won't Hire Them Now And Americans Are Giving Up"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 8/26/26
"Even McDonald's Won't Hire Them
Now And Americans Are Giving Up"
"Across America, people are being let go in meetings that last less than ten minutes — and then finding out that the door behind them has closed too. In this video you will hear from Americans who filmed the day it happened to them. A nursing-home worker who walked in at 6 a.m. and was told to grab her bags before 10:15, with HR admitting there was no reason given. A woman laid off twice in two years, whose safety net was already spent on the first one. A product manager at Meta who refreshed his email every minute at 7 a.m. and got logged out of every single app at 7:10, before the letter even arrived. A woman who watched half of her engineering team disappear in one regional decision made "way above my pay grade." Then you will hear what comes after. Ten years of experience and 200 applications. Fifty first-round interviews. Twenty second and third rounds. Rejected by McDonald's for being overqualified. Rejected by Starbucks. Rejected by Target's AI screening. Sixteen months unemployed, two final-round interviews, no offer.
A young man who cannot even get accepted as an unpaid volunteer, because his application was "too generic." A woman whose severance is decent, but who has chronic illnesses and already had to cancel her weekly physical therapy. And the arithmetic underneath it: a $172,389 final paycheck broken down line by line. Unemployment capped at $530 a week that does not cover rent. Interviews held for jobs the company never actually opened. One creator explains why the falling unemployment rate is not good news: the percentage only counts people still receiving benefits. Once you run out, you stop being counted at all."
Comments here:
"WW3: Harvard Professor Makes 1 Year Prediction For Russian War!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/26/26
"WW3: Harvard Professor Makes
1 Year Prediction For Russian War!"
Comments here:
"Beef Prices Skyrocket And Nobody Can Afford It Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 8/26/26
"Beef Prices Skyrocket And
Nobody Can Afford It Anymore"
"There is a moment that keeps repeating in American grocery stores this month. Someone stops in front of the meat case, looks at a sticker, and takes their phone out. Not to complain to anybody in particular. Just because the number on the label no longer makes sense to them. Twenty Americans filmed that moment, and this is what they found. A man picks up a basic ribeye and it is $18. Another looks at a family pack of extra lean ground beef marked $35, with regular ground beef at $24 beside it. A shopper in a Publix meat department holds up a single pound and it is almost $13 - over $3 for a quarter pounder before it ever reaches a pan. Someone else finds ground beef at $6.29 a pound and says flatly that it was $2.99 a year ago. A woman puts a box of Hamburger Helper and a pound of 80/20 in her cart and the till says $15 for a dinner for two. A shopper at Walmart stops mid-aisle because the number on the package does not match anything she remembers paying. And then the arithmetic that has been passed around all month: the average pound of ground beef in the United States is $8.69. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. In 2009, when that wage was last set, a pound of ground beef was two dollars. An hour of work at the legal floor no longer buys a pound of the cheapest beef in the case. That is not a talking point. That is a receipt.
What makes this different from every other price story is who else is in the video. The people who raise the animals are here too, and they are not comfortable either. A rancher watches three-day-old bull calves sell for $2,200 apiece and explains what a bet like that says about where prices are heading eighteen months out, because that is how long it takes to turn a calf into beef. A cattle family loads calves onto a trailer early, before the market moves against them, and says out loud what that decision costs them. A pitmaster shows how a 19-pound brisket bought at $8 a pound cooks down to six pounds of servable meat, which puts his true cost north of $25 a pound before he has paid himself a dollar. A fifth-generation cattleman watches live cattle drop forty cents a pound in a single morning and points out that nothing on the shelf moved at all. The price fell for him. It did not fall for you. That gap is the whole story, and the numbers behind it are not complicated.
The American herd is the smallest it has been in about seventy years. Drought thinned it, feed and fuel costs kept it thin, and rebuilding a herd is a multi-year decision that nobody makes while the future looks like this. Four processors handle over 85% of the beef in this country, and the Justice Department has now said out loud that it is looking at them. Foreign beef is being brought in by the hundreds of millions of pounds, priced under the domestic market - and the ranchers who are supposedly protected by keeping it out are the same people telling you plainly that letting it in will not lower your grocery bill much either. None of the people in this video are analysts. They are standing in an aisle or a field with a phone, and the number in front of them is bigger than the paycheck it is supposed to come out of. That is the only qualification any of them needed. One family here did the sum that everybody keeps talking about. They split a steer with friends: $2,000 for the animal, $750 in feed and hay to finish him, $800 for the butchering and packaging. Split two ways that is $1,700 each, and against a hanging weight of 624 pounds it works out at $5.60 a pound - ribeyes, roasts, ground and all. Cheaper than the case, if you have a freezer and somebody to split it with. That is the workaround people are actually using, and it says a lot that it has come to that.
If beef has quietly dropped off your weekly shop, you are not imagining the change and you are not managing your money badly. The cart costs more than it did and your wages did not follow. There are still a few things that help. Chuck and round still cook down well in a slow cooker and cost a fraction of the steak cuts. A whole chicken still goes further than anything in the beef case. Splitting an animal with another family genuinely does beat the supermarket per pound if you have the freezer space and can put the money up front. And it is worth asking a local butcher what they have that is not on the display - the answer is often surprising, and often cheaper. Tell us in the comments what a pound of ground beef costs where you live, and what you have swapped it for. Somebody scrolling past is trying to work out the same thing, and these comments end up being more useful than the video. If this is what your grocery run looks like now, subscribe. We put out videos like this every week, made entirely out of what Americans are filming themselves."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. The Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), the bright structure just above the image center, houses several of these massive stars and has itself changed its appearance.
The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Eta Carinae is the brightest star near the image center, just left of the Keyhole Nebula. While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that much of the Great Carina Nebula has been a veritable supernova factory.”
"No Special Hurry..."
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.”
- Ernest Hemingway, “A Farewell To Arms”
"How to Remember You're Alive"
"How to Remember You're Alive"
by David Cain
"One way to appreciate virtually any moment of your life is to pretend that the whole thing is already over. Your life came and went a long time ago, but for some reason you’ve just been sent back to this random moment, here in this office chair, or in line at Home Depot.
It isn’t clear why you’ve been sent back. Maybe it was a cosmic accounting error, or a boon from a playful God. All you know is that you’re here again, walking the earth, having been inexplicably returned to the temporary and mysterious state of Being Alive.
Any moment will do for this experiment. In fact, the more mundane the moment, the more profound the effect. You might find yourself, in this instance, pushing a cart through the frozen foods aisle. Or maybe you’re seated in front of a bowl of cereal at the speckled Formica breakfast table you bought on Craigslist. Or you’re carrying a bag of recycling down the back stairwell on a muggy night. It’s definitely your life though, and at least for now, you get to be alive again.
When you view life as something you’re returning to - rather than something that has never not been happening - it feels like the gift it perhaps always should. It’s just so damn interesting to be alive and experiencing things, and choosing what to do during those experiences.
Seeing life as the curious and rare condition it is gives even ordinary events the character of a brilliant film. An oblong rectangle of sunlight on the table flutters with the shadows of leaves. While you fold laundry, your phone lights up: a friend texting you a cheesy pun she knows you will appreciate. A short-lived party of bubbles appears and disappears when you fill a glass of water from the tap. A thin mist pours from the open freezer display onto your sandaled feet. It’s all spectacular, just because it’s happening, and once it’s over you would greatly miss it if you could. So why not miss it now? Or at least understand why you would.
The state of Being Alive also comes with a rich and distinct sense of possibility. You can make any number of interesting things happen by sheer will. You can scrawl sentences on a scrap of paper that will trigger certain thoughts later, for you or someone else. You can touch a few buttons on your phone and be speaking to any of a hundred people you know, and whatever is said would change each other’s day, or life, in some way. You could clean the house this afternoon, or leave it messy, and each option would give a different shape to the evening.
Can you believe that this condition - of being in the world, of feeling stuff and doing stuff - was once happening all the time? Remember being able to open windows and pet dogs and wash your hands in warm water? What an amazing time that was. No matter what happened, whether life was decidedly going “well” or not, it was always so eventful, and you got to decide what to do in each moment of it.
It’s all over, of course, which is too bad. You didn’t realize at the time how small a window it was, and you can’t believe you spent a lot of it complaining. However, for right now at least, for some reason, you’re back. You have at least this moment to enjoy being alive. There may be more coming afterward, but you can’t count on that. Not this time anyway.
Except in moments of extreme emotional tilt, this exercise always seems to work. I can almost always, when I think of it, choose to see the current moment as a certain kind of an unexpected gift - a long-awaited return to the most interesting thing ever, which is being alive.
It works because if it were true - you really had just been sent back to the realm of the living - chances are you really would think it’s unutterably great to be here, even if you didn’t the first time. By mentally jumping out of life and then back in, it becomes clear that the experience of being alive really is a profoundly interesting thing, and we can live with an ongoing awareness of that. That few seconds of contemplation reframes virtually any moment as the best thing that can happen: you, enjoying a rich pocket of Being Alive Right Now, amidst a vast universe that is almost entirely not that.
At least, it becomes interesting when you’re aware that there’s no reason any of this should necessarily be the case. There will not always be things happening. You will not always have the ability to experience the world and respond how you please. But - by the grace of whoever - you do right now. Whatever the metaphysics of it really is, the point is that the window is small, and if you’re in it right now, that should probably be regarded as a profoundly lucky thing, whether it’s your first time here or you’ve been sent back for another tour.
However, because the window is open continuously until it’s closed for good, it’s hard to feel the luckiness of being alive while life is still happening. This is one way to contact that sense of good fortune reliably - see the moment as an inexplicable return to the wild and spectacular condition of Being Alive, which was once so abundant you forgot to appreciate it. This experience you’re having right now, of being here in a body, experiencing the world and choosing how to respond - is gone, and by the Law of Joni Mitchell, you only now know what you had. But by some unbelievable stroke of luck, here it is again."
"Hell..."
“'Why did people call it Hell?' I wondered. No place was Hell, no place could be Hell. It’s the people calling it Hell, that’s the only thing that made it so. People just sticking names on places, so that no one could see those places properly anymore. No, Hell wasn’t anything to do with place, Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people.”
- John Marsden
"Future Generations (If There Are Future Generations)"
"Future Generations (If There Are Future Generations)"
by Caitlin Johnstone
"Future generations, if there are future generations,
will scarce believe that our species once stockpiled armageddon weapons on purpose,
once built our entire civilization around economic models that could only result in the destruction of our biosphere,
once permitted corporations who profit from war to successfully lobby policymakers to start more wars,
once warehoused living beings in factory farms where they were tortured and brutalized,
once starved children to death with sanctions because their rulers disobeyed our rulers,
once made policies which kept people poor so they’d be financially coerced into facilitating military mass murder,
once let people go hungry and homeless if they didn’t have enough imaginary numbers in their bank accounts,
once stripped this planet of biodiversity and old growth forests to turn the gears of an imaginary economy instead of collaborating with our ecosystem.
Future generations, if there are future generations,
will look back in perplexity at our omnicidal madness,
at our blind subservience to the very worst among us,
at our remarkable ingenuity in always finding groundbreaking new ways to hate each other,
at our fanatical devotion to competition and control when we knew that all we really wanted was to be loved,
at the way we’d marginalize and outcast those who thought differently from the rest of us even though we knew full well that our way of thinking wasn’t working,
at the way we’d spend our lives feeding insatiable hungry ghosts only to wind up on our deathbeds wondering why we feel dissatisfied,
at the amount of energy we’d pour into not experiencing the beauty which surrounds us in every moment and rejecting the gifts we were being showered with from every direction,
at the herculean effort we poured into keeping enlightenment from crashing in,
at our nonstop desperate flailing attempts to be anywhere but here and now,
at the amount of work we put into avoiding being at ease.
Future generations, if there are future generations,
I am so glad that you made it past all the many obstacles we put up between our present age and your birth.
Praise be to you and your parents
for cleaning up our mess,
for setting things right,
for becoming conscious,
for valuing a healthy world,
for getting humanity to where you’re at now
so that the real adventure of our species could begin.
Future generations, if there are future generations,
thank you for your kindness and compassion as you gaze back on us through the records we have left you.
It might not be immediately obvious,
but some of us here saw what you’re seeing from there."
○
SoundCloud Reading by Tim Foley:
"Learning from Ants"
"Learning from Ants"
by Jeff Thomas
"If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. [Etc.] The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?"
The above observation by Shera Starr cannot be improved upon. And yet, the answer to the question is fairly simple. But let’s first take a look at this anomaly. It’s natural to identify with some individuals more than others. That tendency occurred before Homo sapiens came into being. In addition, the tendency for animals to group into families or packs also predates humans.
We tend to want to be around those who behave the way we do and have the same perceptions as we do. That only makes sense. We wish to surround ourselves with those who are unlikely to surprise and possibly even endanger us by behaving in a fashion that we would not ourselves choose. This is the basis of trust – an essential in group or herd mentality. And being a part of a group or herd brings to us increased safety.
So, what then, of those who are not within our group or herd? How do we relate to them? Well, any nature program that covers animals gathered around a water hole can provide that answer. We see a small group of wild pigs drinking alongside a group of wildebeests. Neither species is predatory, so they learn to recognize that, even though one group is made up of savannah-living grazers and the other are forest-living foragers, they can easily co-exist, which will increase the ability of both species to use the water hole at the same time.
We might also see a group of hyenas using the water hole, but we notice that the prey animals all seek to keep a distance between themselves and the predatory hyenas. Everyone understands that they are all at the water hole for the same reason and it makes sense to share, even if, in another situation, they are natural enemies. In fact, in most of nature, we see that species adapt to a condition of mutual tolerance in order to be able to coexist.
No surprise, then, that Homo sapiens got on the mutual tolerance bandwagon in its formative stages and, for the most part, has remained that way. But it is also true that predators develop dual habits. They may exercise tolerance at the water hole, but at some point, they mean to make a meal of their water hole neighbors. And when doing so, many species create associations with others of their kind to hunt.
This, too, is true of humans. Most of humanity seeks to live in a spirit of cooperation with others. In the countryside, people erect walls and fences to establish boundaries, then find it expedient to respect such divisions in order to live in peace. Even in cities, people who live cheek by jowl in the same building respect each other’s privacy for the most part. Even if they do not become friends, they either remain polite or ignore each other.
Although there are always exceptions, for the most part, mankind behaves in a manner that is based upon "getting along." He might argue with others, but for the most part, he understands that cooperation generally should be the objective, as it’s in his best interests.
But why, then, are we seeing in so many of the countries of the First World, a rapidly increasing polarity amongst people. Ms. Starr is exactly correct. Those who would be most inclined toward mutual tolerance have, in recent years, become so polarised that they cannot so much as get together with their own families for the holidays without getting into heated arguments.
Why are people of today so solidly in one of two camps? Can this be blamed on the rise of the internet? Well, no, the internet has become the source of a plethora of opinions and perceptions. And more than closing people off to polarized "A" and "B" choices, the internet has served to broaden public discourse.
Of course, most people express distrust for the media, particularly those networks that purportedly deal in "news." What passes for news today is far from objective information that the viewer can then assess at his leisure. On one network, we view unceasing diatribes against one political party. Then we turn the channel and view unceasing diatribes against the opposing party. In turning on the News, we arrive at Indoctrination Central.
But if we really pay attention objectively, we discover that the same programs are dictating to us that it is either our humanitarian duty to vax, or that vaxxing will enslave us to globalists who will inject us with microchips. They are also our source for the opposing beliefs that warfare is essential to protect us against those who seek to destroy us, or that it will be the wars themselves that will destroy us.
In fact, all of Ms. Starr’s concerns find their source in the media. When we ask the question, "Who is shaking the jar… and why?" we find that those who control the media are at the source of the polarization of people, especially in the First World. As to the "Why?" the answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked. Like the ants, the more a people can be made to fight each other, the easier it is to subjugate them. And since the effort to polarize people has become so massive, we can only conclude that the ultimate objective will be to implement a far greater level of subjugation, in an abnormally short period of time.
Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. white. Man vs. woman. Divide and conquer. In such a socio-political climate, the challenge will be to keep your wits about you. As the jar is shaken on a daily basis, it will be vital to recognize that those who control the media are creating a war between the pigs and the wildebeests. This is something that is not desired by either species, but as Hermann Goering stated, "Why, of course the people don’t want war." They must be goaded into it if those who are pulling the stings are to achieve greater subjugation.
In the coming years, this trend can be expected to become far worse than at present. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible."
"Surviving The War"
"Surviving The War"
by The Zman
"There was a time when normal Americans thought about how to survive a nuclear exchange with the Russians. During the Cold War, this seemed like a real prospect, so there was a reason to think about it. Into the 1960’s school kids had to do the hide under the desk thing, which was mostly about conditioning people to accept permanent war, but it conditioned people to the idea of being nuked. How to make it through a nuclear war became something of an industry.
There were two schools of thought on the subject back then. One said that any hint of a nuclear attack by either side would result in a mag dump by both sides. The United States and the Soviet Union were in a prisoner’s dilemma. If either side showed restraint, then they risked the other side striking first and possibly making it impossible to retaliate, so logic said to send all of your missiles first. Both sides accepted this logic which is why a system was put in place to prevent it.
From a survival perspective, such a scenario made the prospects for anyone living through it extremely low. The arsenals at the time were larger than today and the assumption was they could wipe out all life on the planet. The initial blasts would kill most people, but the fallout and nuclear winter would kill the rest. Even if people survived somehow, the numbers would be tiny. There was simply no point in preparing for what would be instant death for almost everyone.
The other school of thought was more optimistic. War would escalate with an initial exchange that might not lead to a mag dump. Even if the will were there to send all the missiles, many people would refuse to push the button. The disruption from the initial strikes would also render communications useless. The example of Vasili Arkhipov seemed like proof that a full scale exchange was unlikely. That meant it was possible to survive a nuclear war if you were prepared.
Today, that last scenario is more plausible. Nuclear arsenals are much smaller than during the Cold War. No one is really sure that the antique systems on which these weapons rely would work under stress. The American ICBM system still relies upon 1970’s technology. The Russian systems are similarly antiquated. The most likely scenario is that the major powers are no longer functional after a nuclear exchange, so lots of people survive the event.
The first step in surviving a nuclear war is to avoid a direct hit. Washington DC will get several direct hits and the initial flash will vaporize most of the population. The shock wave will level most of the city. By now, the Russians and Chinese know to target Northern Virginia, so it will be a saturation bombing. The five percent that survive the initial blast will be radiated and die soon thereafter. Therefore, the first rule of nuke club is to be outside the target zone.
The safe bet is to be away from the coasts. The Rockies or Appalachia are the best bet for making it through the first stage. Denver will be nuked, for sure, but the damage will be contained to that plateau. People in the mountains will escape the flash and the blast, even if Denver takes multiple strikes. The Green Briar will get hit, for old times sake, but most of West Virginia will be spared. There are lots of places to escape the flash and the blast in the mountains.
Once things settle after the final missile strikes, there will be four key things to surviving the aftermath. You will need water, shelter, food and a way to defend yourself from the people who were not prepared. Imagine a land ravaged by mask wearing Covidians and you get the picture. You will have to be prepared to kill a lot of people in order to avoid ending up like them. This means you need to pick a spot that has access to water, a food source and is defendable.
Since a post-nuclear America is going to look like the frontier as far as you are concerned, you are going to need frontier skills. You will need to know how to make a fire, provide yourself basic medical care and know how to hunt and fish. If your location is near a river, then you can initially get by with fishing and water from the river, but you have to boil the water and cook the fish. The ability to make fire without modern items like a lighter or matches is essential.
Once you have sorted the location and provided yourself with the frontier skills required to live in the wild, you need to think about the defense issue. A man alone is easy prey, even to desperate city people roaming the countryside. It would be better to have a tribe that can work together for common defense. That means you either need the skills to create a tribe from who is left or you have to create a tribe now. One way or the other, survival will depend upon community.
This basic framework of preparedness is just scratching the surface, but it does provide the basis for building a survival plan. For example, you will not want modern firearms for defense in the post-nuclear world. Making your own gunpowder for modern ammunition is not realistic. You can make black powder from raw materials. That means the old fashioned muzzleloader is a good weapon to own and master. Of course, older range weapons like spears and bows are an option.
The same applies to tools. Creating your own electric for powering modern tools is possible, but not very practical. If you assume society takes generations to bounce back from the holocaust, then it makes no sense to rely upon modern tools. They will break and you will not be able to fix them. The same would apply to vehicles. Old cars need gasoline and lubricants. Even if you stock those, they will run out eventually and your vehicles become lawn ornaments.
This is why forming communities in advance of the holocaust is critical. You can plan for the two general scenarios. The first scenario is the world steps back to the pre-industrial age and does not bounce back. The other scenario is the people responsible manage to survive and quickly set about recreating the modern world by bringing things like the power grid on-line. Do you want to play a role in that rebuilding or do you want to seek vengeance on them?
Community building in advance lets you wargame these issues. It also makes survival much more likely. No one man can know everything or prepare for everything, so having help increases your odds of survival dramatically. It also provides the means for surviving what comes after the initial devastation. In a post-nuclear world, tribalism will be the key to survival, which means the best tribe wins. Of course, that is also why the world was blown up, but that is a story for another day."
Free Download: Ayn Rand, "AtlasShrugged"
"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
○
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
"Francisco’s Money Speech” from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:
"That's When..."
"It does not count if you believe in yourself when it's easy to believe in yourself. It counts when it's hard to believe in yourself, when it looks like the world's going to end and you've still got a long way to go. That's when it counts."
- Iain Thomas
o
Don Williams, "I Believe In You"
"American Life During The 1930s"
Full screen recommended.
Old Photos Channel,
"American Life During The 1930s"
"Welcome back to the Old Photos Channel! Today, we're taking a journey back to one of the most challenging and transformative decades in American history – the 1930s. Through these incredible old photos, we'll explore what life was when the spirit of resilience and community defined everyday life in the United States.
The 1930s were marked by the Great Depression, a time when millions of Americans faced severe economic hardships. Many lost their jobs, homes, and savings. In these photos, you can see the somber faces of people standing in breadlines, searching for work, or living in makeshift shantytowns called "Hoovervilles." Yet, amid these struggles, there was a deep sense of perseverance. Communities came together to support one another, and families made do with what little they had.
These photos also reveal the strength of family bonds during the 1930s. Despite the hardships, people found joy in simple things: children playing in the streets, families gathering for meals, and neighbors helping each other. This sense of community was a vital part of survival during the Great Depression, showing us that hope and connection can thrive even in the toughest of times.
Surprisingly, the 1930s was also a time of cultural creativity. As we look at these photos, we see jazz clubs thriving, movie theaters offering an escape from reality, and artists like Dorothea Lange capturing iconic images of the era. Despite the economic downturn, Americans found ways to express themselves and find joy through music, film, and art. The 1930s was a decade of both struggle and resilience. These photos give us a glimpse into the lives of those who lived through the hardships, reminding us of the strength of the human spirit in times of adversity.
Comments here:
"How It Really Is"
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
"Americans Are Trapped In Debt, And It's Getting Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/26/26
"Americans Are Trapped In Debt,
And It's Getting Worse"
"America is getting trapped in debt, and the warning signs are everywhere. Auto repossessions are surging, the average new car is approaching $50,000, car payments and insurance are crushing household budgets, and millions of Americans are struggling to keep up with rising costs. Credit-card debt, medical bills, housing costs, gasoline, groceries and utilities are all competing for the same paycheck. This isn't simply about people forgetting to pay their bills - many Americans simply don't have enough money left after paying for everyday life. In this video, Dan breaks down the growing American debt crisis, rising auto-loan delinquencies, repossessions, expensive cars, Cybertruck prices, credit-card debt, medical debt, housing sales and the decline of cash buyers. We also look at personal finance, emergency funds, insurance, household budgets and the difficult choices people are making just to survive. The American consumer is running out of financial room, and these debt problems could become an even bigger economic story. iAllegedly - a news channel focused on the stories that matter to your money, your business and your future."
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Adventures With Danno, "Let's Go Hunting At Kroger"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 8/26/26
"Let's Go Hunting At Kroger"
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Bill Bonner, "Misleading Voters in the Customary Way"
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"Misleading Voters in the Customary Way"
by Bill Bonner
"The ultimate intervention is our military,
and if we have to use that, we will."
- Donald Trump
Poitou, France - "Here’s America’s own Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent. The New York Times: "Bessent’s Warning of ‘Economic D-Day’ for Iran." The headline suggests grim, determined men setting off...their lives in danger...as they try to change the course of history. And Bessent may succeed. He’s been practicing at home. The US government now spends nearly $1.40 for each dollar it collects honestly. That is not a statement of success. Rather it is the kind of thing a doctor says in a hushed voice to a soon-to-be widow. Pretty soon, the monitors will sound the alarm. That’s when you can expect the landing craft to come ashore. In New Jersey, if not in Iran.
Yesterday, we looked at how it’s s’posed to work. Normally and naturally, a boom financed on credit is followed by a bust in which the bad loans - and the asset prices that depend on them - are marked down. And since asset prices are plainly in BubbleLand, it is a bust we are expecting, not a boom.
There have been two dips in AI stocks - one in January...the other in June. Each one knocked about a trillion dollars off the top of the market. But investors have been trained to buy the dip. They followed the plan...and each dip was followed by a bounce. When the real correction begins, yields (and interest rates) will soar – at first. Interest rates are prices; they are what you pay to use someone else’s money. The longer you use his money, the more you pay for the privilege.
But when the financial world begins to shake and shimmy, lenders become cautious. They’re no longer concerned so much about the rate of return ON their money; what they worry about is the return OF their money. That’s what happens in a crash/depression. There are bounces, but they aren’t sustained. And a lot of loans are never paid back. Some of the biggest lenders, however, have political power as well as financial power. And that is really where our story for today begins.
The biggest banks actually own the Federal Reserve. They have their people - economists, bankers, investors - embedded in the Fed and the administration, helping them decide when to lend and to whom. When the bust comes, these insiders are keenly interested in avoiding a system-wide collapse. It is perfectly okay for little banks, Savings and Loans, and mutual lending societies to go belly up. The ordinary foot-soldier of capitalism - the man from Ohio who invests in a strip mall - falls into an unmarked grave. But Goldman Sachs and J.P.Morgan get medevac’ed. They are ‘too big to fail.’ Which is to say, they are powerful enough to demand a bailout when they need it.
And a weapon that the feds have that nobody else has is the little printing press in the basement. They can counterfeit dollars without going to jail. In a pinch, which is what you have when your you-know-what gets caught in a wringer, the feds can ‘print’ up extra money and lend it to you...or to themselves. The price of credit is subject to the law of supply and demand too. So, when the federal government splashes ashore with trillions of crisp, new dollars, interest rates go down.
Scott Bessent is now feeling around in the dark for the right lever. He wants to cripple Iran’s economy...but make the US economy dance. First, he announced that he would buy 30-year US Treasuries. The extra ‘demand’ ought to raise bond prices and lower bond yields. But it was too little...and too obvious. Interest rates fell, briefly, and then went back up.
The too-obvious part was that he had to get the money to buy the bonds from somewhere. Everyone knew that that would mean selling more short-term paper in order to buy the long-term paper. And the shorter the term...the more ‘inflationary’ the intervention. The shortest-term paper is the dollar itself...a ‘bill’ of immediate maturity. No need to wait before using it to buy something. Somewhat less immediate, but with similar inflationary effect (though subject to a delay) are the fed’s overnight, 30-day, 90-day bills, etc. You might as well be ‘printing’ dollars themselves.
It was obvious to one and all that Bessent was really proposing to make mortgages more accessible by making credit card use more expensive. Bond investors were not impressed. They saw the writing on the wall...it said in plain English: inflation ahead. They dumped bonds. Yields rose.
Then, Bessent tried another lever. He pretended that he could get the money to buy long-dated bonds from the feds’ checkbook. This was just silly. The feds’ general account holds, presently, a little shy of $1 trillion. But it is the money they use for paying all their bills. And currently, revenues are running way behind expenses. So, if you suck out money to diddle the bond market, you still have to come up with some new money from somewhere. And the only way - though the exact mechanisms can vary - is to ‘print’ it.
Right now, Bessent is just trying to manipulate long-bonds to lower mortgage rates going into the November elections. Very ordinary stuff...misleading voters in the customary way. But when the bust comes...then you will see Scott Bessent with beads of sweat on his forehead...and maybe a slight stutter. He’ll announce another D-Day attack...Perhaps like McArthur landing at Luzon in 1945, he will step onto the beach at Atlantic City. Stay tuned.
"Rich Man, Richer Man"
"Rich Man, Richer Man"
by Sheila Kennedy
"One of the most trenchant commentators on America’s current disaster of an administration is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Reich’s tenure made him widely admired; in 2008, Time named him one of the Ten Most Effective Cabinet Members of the century, and in that same year The Wall Street Journal –not noted for its liberal bona fides–placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers. He has taught at Harvard, Brandeis and Berkley.
Reich posts opinion pieces regularly, and they are all worth reading and considering. A recent one focused upon just who is “raking it in” as America’s national debt explodes. Much of that explosion, Reich tells us, is the result of the billions of dollars in lost revenue from Trump’s invalidated tariffs, and the effect of Trump’s tax cuts to big corporations and the already very wealthy. And then, of course, there are the soaring costs of Trump’s war.
Reich reassures readers that crossing the forty-trillion-dollar threshold doesn’t mean a depression is looming. But he focuses in on what we can only describe as the actual – and very troubling – effects of that debt.
The problem is that an increasing portion of our nation’s budget - and your tax dollar - is dedicated to paying interest on this growing debt. Annual net interest payments on the federal debt have surpassed $1 trillion, making servicing the debt one of the largest of all federal budget expenditures. That’s money we don’t spend on schools, healthcare, roads and bridges, and social safety nets. We’ll soon be paying more in interest on the federal debt each year than we spend annually on Medicare.
Reich then explains something that is not widely understood–the identity of those who benefit from those interest payments. This is an issue you hear very little discussion about, because the wealthy and powerful of this country would rather you not know. (And don’t expect Trump suck-up Bessent to tell you, because he’s too busy denying that economic inequality is worsening.)
Foreign governments and foreign investors hold only about 30 percent of our debt. The rest - roughly 70 percent - is held domestically. That is, we pay the interest to ourselves. And who, exactly, are the “ourselves” we are paying? Reich tells us that by far the largest amount - nearly half - “is held by mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and banks.” And who owns those funds, companies and banks? Who holds the Treasury bills that are generating the growing amount of interest the rest of us are paying on the ballooning national debt? People at the top. Rich people.
Reich spells it out. The richest 1 percent of U.S. households hold about 35.6 percent of all financial assets - shares of stock, corporate bonds, and Treasury bills - so it’s safe to assume they hold at least a third of all Treasury bills. Here’s where things get really interesting.
Decades ago, wealthy Americans financed the federal government mainly by paying taxes. Their tax rate was far higher than it is today. In the 1950s, under President Dwight Eisenhower, the richest Americans paid a marginal tax rate of 91 percent. (Tax deductions and tax credits lowered this top effective marginal rate somewhat.)
Today, the tax rate on wealthy Americans is far lower. The richest 400 Americans pay an average effective total tax rate of about 24 percent - including federal, state, local, and corporate taxes. Jeff Bezos - America’s second or third richest person - paid no federal income taxes in 2018. Trump paid no federal taxes for years before he became president. So now, wealthy Americans finance the federal government mainly by lending it money and collecting interest payments on those loans.
So while the richest Americans are collecting those growing interest payments, the taxes they pay have reduced government revenues by $10.6 trillion, courtesy of the tax cuts bestowed by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump. As Reich reminds us, since 2000, 65 percent of the benefits from those tax cuts have gone to the richest of Americans - 22 percent to the top 1 percent. As he sums up: “Decades ago, the wealthiest Americans financed the government by paying higher taxes. Now, the government pays wealthy Americans interest on a swelling debt, caused largely by lower taxes on wealthy Americans.”
The taxes on ordinary Americans increasingly go to pay wealthy Americans interest on those loans - rather that funding the government services everyone needs. And that is the real problem with our enormous national debt."
"The Passing Of The American Empire?"
"The Passing Of The American Empire?"
by John Wilder
"The United States sits at the center of the largest empire the world has ever seen. Certainly, that empire is now slipping. But let’s review my first assertion. Is the United States an empire? I mean, I was expecting more trumpets and purple robes. Yes, it is. The definition of an empire is that it cuts across most fields of human life for vast groups of diverse people, having authority over them, economic control, and cultural influence. Yes, we’ve got that. The United States is the inheritor of the mantle of the leading partner in Western Civilization. Before us was Great Britain, paving the way and making it easier for us.
How can we be sure that we’re still in an empire? English is spoken everywhere. Sure, thank the Brits, but the reason they kept speaking it is because it is, by far, the most widely used language in the world. If I got off a plane in Lanzhou or Lillehammer, I could get by without knowing any local languages and rely entirely on English to get me by. Sadly, English is no longer spoken in London or Los Angeles, and my Arabic and Spanish could use some work, so I’d be out of luck there. So, language.
What about centralized authority and governance? Trump is certainly showing that, although the United States pretended to not be the big cheese because France hates that, it really was the big cheese all along. There’s nothing that Europe can do alone to remotely influence the United States. Nor can Japan. In fact, all those hundreds of United States military bases around the world? Yeah, if a country has one of those, it’s an American client. At one point we had more than 850 bases in 90 countries. That’s an empire.
Also, economically. In Rome you could use the denarius (not Daenerys, who was a hot chick with dragons and not a coin, according to Google©) to buy almost anything you wanted anywhere in the empire. In the world today, you can use a dollar anywhere they take money and not shrunken heads, and also in some places you can trade dollars for shrunken heads.
Finally, cultural and ideological leadership. Why did they have a “no kings” protest in Canada, where they have a king? Why did they have BLM® marches in places in Europe where there are no blacks? Why did Botswana legalize gayness in 2019? Why is every little tinpot dictator called a “President” instead of a “Prime Minister”? I mean, if I were a tinpot dictator I’d call myself, “Sovereign Lord and King John Wilder the First, Flayer of Men, Defender of the Faith, Scourge of India, and Former Costco™ Member”. You always have to throw in something silly. I mean, I’ve never even been to Costco®.
Rome proved at the Teutoberg Forest that you don’t need to win every battle to remain an empire. You can suffer astonishing defeats and go, “Well, that stung,” and keep on with the empire. I mean, Rome never really went after the Germans with the intent to subjugate them after that battle. The Germans, however...
But, of course, Rome didn’t face the technological evolution of warfare to the extent we’ve seen in the last 20 years, which greatly levels the playing field between the United States and other countries. The great advantage the Romans had was their empire to draw men from, and their mastery of transport engineering and logistics which could quickly, as measured in 100A.D., put 10,000 men where their enemy wanted them least.
Spain, however, did experience technical obsolescence in its final humiliation of empire. In 1898, the United States was a rising power. The United States wasn’t quite ready to challenge Great Britain in 1898, but it did see Spain. What did Spain have? Oh, overseas colonies, colonies that could help the United States grow in the natural direction of the country: the Pacific. Sure, it came with a short-term rental of Cuba and a long-term lease on Puerto Rico, but the real prize for the United States was Guam and the Philippines, which still looks like it has one too many of the letter “p” in it.
This addition got the United States a leg up in the last part of aligning non-Western nations and established a firm gateway to Asia and military base for projection of force throughout the Pacific. We were, in fact, willing to fight an 11-year war against the Filipinos and develop the M1911 in .45ACP to kill drugged out Filipino guerrillas, because a .38 just wasn’t enough. I digress.
The reason the United States utterly defeated Spain in less than four months was it had an intense technological and logistical lead in every facet of warfare. The numbers speak for themselves: 4,119 American casualties versus somewhere near 56,500 dead Spanish. Oh, and the Spanish ships were still sporting cannon over a century old.
Spain was dead as an empire, only waiting for someone to knock it over, take its stuff, and buy something nice for themselves. That was the United States. By the time of the Spanish-American War, the United States fighting Spain was the geopolitical version of a velociraptor taking on a kitten. The only way the kitten survives is if the velociraptor gets all the kibble.
Where are we now? Are we Rome? Are we Spain? Both analogies are suspect, since I don’t trust either Italians or Spaniards. Too much wine in both countries, and I know how I am after one too many bottles of pinot: I’m in a lot of economic trouble, personal danger, and I can’t remember my past.
Is the United States, like Rome, just taking another L that won’t matter because we’re still the empire? No, I think we’re not. I think we’re beyond the peak of American hegemony, which probably happened on August 15, 1987 while I was throwing a kegger. Woo!
Is the United States, like Spain, passing? Again, no, I don’t think so. We are seeing that some of our main weapons date to designs of nearly 70 years of age. I’m looking at you, B-52. The reason is that the bomber is dead to anyone who isn’t living in mud huts, and we realize that. The B-52 would have been awesome in 1945 but now is just a target.
And we realize that. I think we’ve realized that with our aircraft carriers as well, and now understand that wars in a time where satellites can provide real-time targeting make big ships filled with thousands of sailors liabilities rather than assets. Remember this: no matter what happens, we still irritate the hell out of France. We’ll always have that."
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