Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/21/26
"Alert! All Embassies Evacuated.
'Iran Lifts Nuclear Ban'"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
"Riyadh Says Its Oil System Is Intact. The Numbers Say Otherwise"
"Riyadh Says Its Oil System Is Intact.
The Numbers Say Otherwise"
by Larry C. Johnson
"Earlier this month, Aramco’s chief executive, Amin Nasser, assured the markets that “our system is intact” and that Saudi Arabia could restore its full 12 million barrels a day of capacity within days. It is a comforting message, and Washington, European capitals and oil traders have every reason to want to believe it. It is not true.
Karl Miller has just completed a 37-slide operating assessment of Saudi Arabia’s energy system, covering everything from the oil fields to the fuel depots, as of October 20. I have read it closely. It is the most careful accounting of this damage I have seen, and it is careful in a way that should worry anyone counting on Saudi oil this winter. Miller does not count Houthi boasts, social-media videos or plumes of smoke as damage. He separates confirmed hits from claims, and he refuses to add up the design capacity of every facility that was struck as if it were all offline at once. Even with all of that discipline, the picture is grim.
A quarter of Saudi production is gone: Start with the headline number. In February, before the war, Saudi Arabia produced about 10.88 million barrels of crude a day. In September it was still producing 2.51 million barrels a day less, a drop of 23 percent. In August the shortfall was 4.64 million barrels a day, when output sank to about 6.24 million. From March through September, the Kingdom produced more than 800 million fewer barrels than it would have at its February rate. That is roughly eight days of total world oil consumption that never came out of the ground.
Aramco’s own books say the same thing. In the company’s reported figures, its liquids production fell from 10.56 million barrels a day in the first quarter to 7.57 million in the second, a 28 percent collapse in a single quarter. Natural gas and ethane fell nearly 6 percent. A company whose system was intact does not report numbers like that.
Exports followed production down. In one consistent tracking series, Saudi crude exports fell from 7.27 million barrels a day in February to 3.70 million in August, a 49 percent drop. They recovered to 5.62 million in September, but that is still 23 percent below the pre-war level.
The damage runs through the whole chain: The reason the recovery keeps stalling is that the damage is not in one place. It runs from the wellhead to the gas station. At the front end, the Abqaiq complex, the plant that conditions most of Saudi Arabia’s light crude before it can be shipped or refined, sustained physical damage in July. In March, some 2 to 2.5 million barrels a day were curtailed across the offshore Safaniya, Marjan, Zuluf and Abu Safa fields. In April, Khurais and Manifa each lost 300,000 barrels a day.
In the middle, five of the Kingdom’s major refineries have been damaged or shut down. Ras Tanura, at 550,000 barrels a day the largest domestic refinery, burned and was shut in March. SATORP in Jubail lost three units in April, restarted at half capacity and was still running at only about 70 percent in May. SAMREF in Yanbu was hit in March. The Riyadh refinery caught fire on October 3. Jazan, a 400,000-barrel-a-day plant designed to turn out 250,000 barrels a day of ultra-low-sulfur diesel, shut down on July 27 after its power plant and tank farm were hit, and Ansar Allah attacks in August and September disrupted every attempt to restart it. Satellite imagery now shows tank damage at Petro Rabigh as well. The Juaymah gas-liquids plant, which feeds Saudi Arabia’s LPG exports, has suffered fires.
At the back end, the system for storing and moving fuel is being picked apart. Imagery of the Abha bulk plant from September 13 shows six tanks apparently destroyed and eight more damaged. A depot near Riyadh’s airport burned on September 19. Jazan’s tank clusters have been hit repeatedly.
And the East-West Pipeline, Saudi Arabia’s only way to move crude to the Red Sea and around a closed Strait of Hormuz, has been hit again and again. In April, 700,000 barrels a day of pumping capacity was knocked out. In September, repeated attacks took out three pumping stations and halted the line until a low-rate restart on September 22. On October 4 and 5, another pumping station near Khurais was reported badly damaged. The energy minister now says the line is running at 5.8 million barrels a day, against a rated 7 million. Even Miller notes that no one outside Aramco is metering the actual flow.
Why repairs don’t stick: Miller’s most important insight is that this is a system, and systems fail at their weakest link. Jazan is the clearest example. Fixing the crude units does no good if the gasification and power plant that run the refinery is still damaged, and fixing the power plant does no good if there are no tanks to put the diesel in. A refinery can be “restarted” on paper and still produce nothing useful. The same logic runs upstream. An oil field with every well intact still has to shut in if the processing plant or pumping station downstream of it is broken. Every time Aramco gets one link repaired, another one gets hit. That is why restart announcements keep failing to show up in the production numbers.
Saudi Arabia is running out of fuel to sell: The most alarming numbers in Miller’s report are about refined products. By July, the latest month with complete data, Saudi refinery output was down 534,000 barrels a day from February, nearly 18 percent. Diesel output fell 21 percent. Diesel exports fell 47 percent, from 848,000 barrels a day to 446,000. Gasoline exports fell 40 percent.
The Saudis have been covering the gap by draining their tanks. Diesel stocks fell from 25.6 million barrels in February to 16.6 million in July, down 35 percent. Gasoline stocks fell by the same proportion. The world’s largest oil exporter more than doubled its imports of fuel oil, and it is burning more than twice as much crude directly in its power plants as it did in February. Some of that is the summer air-conditioning load, but it is not the behavior of a country with fuel to spare. Lower stocks mean less cushion for the next attack. And there will be a next attack.
The trap Riyadh is in: Miller’s report spells out one more danger that I have not seen discussed anywhere else. If Saudi Arabia’s export outlets close, its oil has nowhere to go but its own refineries, its own power plants and its storage tanks. In July, domestic refineries and direct burning absorbed about 3.04 million barrels a day. Once the storage is full, that is roughly the ceiling on what Saudi Arabia could keep producing. Close Ras Tanura and Yanbu at the same time, and the Kingdom would have to shut in most of its oil fields. That is exactly the scenario Ansar Allah’s campaign against the pipeline, the Red Sea and the Gulf terminals is built to produce.
Why this matters to everyone else: The rest of the world is already living with the consequences. Saudi diesel exports are down by about 400,000 barrels a day, at the same moment Hormuz is restricted and Russian refineries are under drone attack. The International Energy Agency says the global diesel shortage will last well into 2027. Brent is above $100. Europe, which depends on imported diesel, is already rioting over the cost of living, and winter has not started.
Miller makes no claim that every barrel of lost output was blown up by a Houthi missile, and he is careful to say so. Some of the decline reflects shipping, security and commercial decisions. But the point is that it doesn’t matter to a trucker in Lyon or a farmer in Lombardy whether a barrel was lost to a missile, a closed sea lane or a refinery that has no power. It is gone either way.
So when Aramco says its system is intact, ask what the production figures, the export figures and the fuel stocks say. They say Saudi Arabia is producing a quarter less oil than it did in February, exporting half as much diesel, and drawing down its reserves to keep the lights on. Any new American or Israeli campaign against Iran will land on a Saudi energy system that has no slack left to absorb it."
Musical Interlude: 2002, “When I See You Again”
Full screen recommended.
2002, “When I See You Again”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“These bright rims and flowing shapes suggest to some melting ice cream on a cosmic scale. Looking toward the constellation Cassiopeia, the colorful (zoomable) skyscape features the swept back, comet-shaped clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually melting, but they are slowly dissipating under the influence of ionizing ultraviolet radiation from hot, luminous star gamma Cas.
Click image for larger size.
Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae, just off the upper right edge of the frame. In fact, slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as the ionized hydrogen atoms recombine with electrons. Farther from the star, IC 59 shows proportionally less H-alpha emission but more of the characteristic blue tint of dust reflected star light. The field of view spans about 1 degree or 10 light-years at the estimated distance of gamma Cas and friends.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111103.html
Chet Raymo, “The Universe Becomes Conscious of Itself”
“The Universe Becomes Conscious of Itself”
by Chet Raymo
by Chet Raymo
"By now most of us will have seen this spectacular photograph of a dusty star-birthing region of the Carina Nebula, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. I offer a slightly different cropping from what you may have seen in the media or on APOD. Please click the image to see it it all of its glory.
Click image for larger size.
Let me add some context. The image shows an area of the sky that you could cover with the intersection of two crossed sewing pins held at arms length. Think about that for a minute. Hold two imaginary crossed pins up against the sky and think of the area covered by their intersection, what a tiny part of the visible universe you are looking at. The photo shows a nebulosity that is invisible to the naked eye, in the midst of the southern-hemisphere Milky Way. Where is this object? Our Sun is on the inside edge of an arm of our spiral galaxy, about two-thirds of the way - 30,000 light-years - out from the center. The Carina Nebula is in the same spiral arm, trailing along 7500 light-years behind us as we make our languorous 200-million-year rotation about the galactic axis. There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, including the ones you see aborning here. And the Milky Way Galaxy is just one of tens of billions of galaxies we could potentially see with present telescopes.
Now, in my usual mischievous way, let me juxtapose two images of the heavens (please click to fill your screen). On the left is Gustave Dore's rendering of Dante and Beatrice looking upon the heavenly realm, the choirs of angels attendant upon the Diety, the anthropomorphic Empyrean Fields where the souls of the Blessed find everlasting life, just up there beyond the spheres of air and aether. And on the right, the new image from the Hubble.
Click image for larger size.
I'm confident that anyone who visits here, and probably most educated people, will agree that the image on the right, and my description above, is the truer representation of the universe we live in. But which universe do we psychologically inhabit? I would maintain that the great majority of educated people today have not yet assimilated the picture on the right, and continue to live as if they were contemporaries of Dante. I know I have a hard time grasping the scale of the universe as revealed by modern astronomy - and I have been studying and teaching this stuff for a lifetime. Coming to terms with the vast size and apparent indifference of the universe is not easy when the tug of culture continually pulls us back into the cozy human-centered cosmos of our ancestors.
Where is our contemporary Beatrice who will take us by the hand and lead us into the swirling star-birthing vortex of the Carina Nebula, and say to us, "See, all this is the gift of the human intellect - human ingenuity and human daring - all this is contained in those convolutions of mortal flesh that sit at the top of your spine"?
Where is our contemporary Beatrice who will take us by the hand and lead us into the swirling star-birthing vortex of the Carina Nebula, and say to us, "See, all this is the gift of the human intellect - human ingenuity and human daring - all this is contained in those convolutions of mortal flesh that sit at the top of your spine"?
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"We Don’t Run Out of Time… Time Runs Out of Us"
Full screen recommended.
Luna AI Art Studio,
"We Don’t Run Out of Time…
Time Runs Out of Us"
"A cinematic journey through memory, love, and the quiet disappearance of time. In a world where moments slip away like fading light, two souls reflect on everything they once believed would last forever - love unspoken, dreams unfinished, and the fragile beauty of being alive. As seasons change and years dissolve into silence, they begin to understand a simple truth: it is not us who run out of time… it is time that slowly runs out of us. This surreal AI film blends poetic storytelling, emotional imagery, and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack to explore nostalgia, loss, gratitude, and the meaning of human connection. Some moments are never lost. They only live somewhere beyond time."
Native American Elder, "Why Everything Changes When You Expect Nothing From Anyone"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"Why Everything Changes When
You Expect Nothing From Anyone"
Delta Blues Brother, "Years Go Faster Than Plans"
Full screen recommended.
"Years Go Faster Than Plans"
"Nobody notices how fast time moves while they’re busy making plans. “Years Go Faster Than Plans” is a Delta blues reflection about the quiet shock of realizing life doesn’t wait for readiness. A slow, worn blues guitar carries the weight of passing years without urgency or drama. The harmonica breathes low and patient, like something understood too late. Nothing rushed. Nothing forced. Just truth unfolding. This is the blues of time - not regret, but recognition. For those who learned that someday has a habit of disappearing. The years move quietly… until you finally hear them."
"This Unsettling Feeling Follows You Into Adulthood"
"This Unsettling Feeling Follows You Into Adulthood"
by Thomas Oppong
"Leo Tolstoy was famous, wealthy, happily married. And the father of 10 children at 50. His masterpiece, "War and Peace", was getting a lot of attention. And "Anna Karenina" was almost done. By every external metric, he had succeeded at life. By 1875, he had reached the peak of his writing career and fame. But he couldn’t bring himself to keep living it. He plunged into an existential crisis. He began hiding ropes so he wouldn’t hang himself from the rafters of his study. Tolstoy stopped going hunting because carrying a gun felt like a temptation. He described it as a sudden stoppage of life. His inner clock simply stopped ticking. He was left with one very important question. What is it all for? “I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it,” he confessed. “It was as though I had lived a little, wandered a little, until I came to the precipice, and I clearly saw that there was nothing ahead except ruin,” he wrote.
Existential crisis is a beast. It comes in many forms. It’s not always depression, though. An existential crisis can be a problem of sight. You see the process of your life with brutal, terrifying clarity. You realize that… Philosopher Albert Camus called this realization “the absurd.” “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”
But still, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned, “whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. When you were young, life feels like it’s full of potential. The future may not always be in your control. But excitement came easily. A new video game, a road trip with friends or a weekend hanging out with your best mate. These things had meaning. The world was a puzzle you were just beginning to solve, and every new piece was a revelation.
The mystery was in the solving. As an adult, experiences are not the same. You have responsibilities. A lot of it. You arrange to meet a friend for dinner at cost. You talk about work, maybe minor frustrations of your week. You laugh at the right and wrong things. The food is good. The wine is better. You go home, and suddenly you are aware that you have performed the ritual of a social life without being completely there for it. The feeling is not the same. The excitement is off. This is one of many existential crises of meaning. The realization that the career, the relationships and the status have not given you what you expected. As you get older, you can have more money, stability and even more freedom. But you begin to see through the adult routines of work, earn, pay bills, consume, maintain, repeat. The struggle of adulthood is managing the consistent suspicion that none of it matters.
As a child, you are protected by time. You have decades ahead of you, which makes life’s open-endedness feel like freedom. In adulthood, time shifts from an open horizon into a shrinking hallway. You notice your parents ageing. And your own body changing. You realize that choosing one path means closing the door on a hundred others.
The feeling of meaninglessness doesn’t go away. It changes form. Psychologist Carl Jung observed this mid-life transformation when he said, “Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presumption that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”
The thrill of getting what you want is not the same excitement you used to have. You are comfortable. But your inner self is not awake enough to enjoy what you have. You can’t shake off your personal questions. You’ve probably tried to find answers for questions like “is this it? You try to find the words for what you feel. You are not lost. You know exactly where you are. You could say you feel “bored,” but it’s not that simple. Could it be that you are mourning the loss of a version of yourself from your past? The German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote about Dasein, or “being-there.” He argued that our fundamental anxiety is about the feeling of being “thrown” into existence. You did not ask to be here. You are just here.
And you are responsible for building meaning out of a pile of experiences. So you try to build. You go to work. You sign up for gym sessions. You read the books you swore you would read. Every new activity or experience is a new promise. You think, “this will be the thing that fixes it.” The gym is fun for a month. The work conversations become a habit. The books get read. But the feeling persists. The activities are meaningful. But they are not the meaning. And this is where it gets hard. This is where the feeling reveals itself as a form of depression. But you can’t be depressed, right? You are a high-functioning adult doing life right. You are“fine.”
Except your spirit is low. Even that still can’t fully explain what you feel. You can only say, “I am tired.” Tired of the effort of pretending the sky is blue when you know it is a void. You are looking for something you can’t put into words. This is the most frustrating part. You would fix it if you could name it. You would go out and get it. But you don’t know what it looks like. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke advised a young poet “to live everything.”
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer,” he said.
This is brilliant advice. But is the hardest thing to do. To live the question is to sit with your existential crisis. It is to stop trying to fill the void with meaningless activities. Or the magic pill of a new job, new partner or new city. Can you bear the feeling of missing something, forever? Of course not. But you can’t completely solve it either. There will always be more questions than answers. You look at your parents. They are in their sixties or seventies. They seem content. Do they feel it? Or did they just get better at ignoring it? I’ve never asked my mother if she ever felt a sense of dread. Maybe I should? Over the years, she’s become good at feeding her soul with christain spiritual content. Is this a deflection? I’m older now. And I’m starting to understand her more. She keeps telling me the answer is spiritual growth. But it’s not the only fix for me. It’s not cease-questioning. I will always have more questions than answers.
I’ve read enough existentialism that’s probably taking me on a very different path in life. Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Man is condemned to be free.” We are responsible for creating our own essence. There is no pre-existing meaning. Everything shouldn’t happen for a reason. You are responsible for making life work for your specific life. You find this terrifying. You would rather someone told you how it ends. Or rather, be handed a blueprint. But there’s no rule book for doing life right. You have to write your own story while you are on stage. The feeling that you are not doing life right will always be there. Is it a sign of the freedom to be? I don’t know. freedom. Maybe it’s a sign of infinite possibility becoming finite reality. But it’s not a flaw. Or sickness to be cured. It is a sign of consciousness. It is the price of being awake. The ritual, routine or the ordinary process of your life is life itself.
The feeling of emptiness is the feeling of being human. You will never find the thing you are looking for because it does not exist. And you will spend the rest of your life learning to share a house with that part of you. You will make tea. You will go to work. Spend the weekend with your family. You will feel time is running out. You will feel the old, familiar crisis. But you must keep going. The weight you carry is a side effect of consciousness. It means you can construct your next reality, day by day, through deliberate choice. The unsettled feeling may never completely go away. It might sit in the back seat for the rest of your life. You will keep looking, even though you know there is nothing to find. That is the unsettling feeling. It follows you into adulthood. It follows you into middle age.
It will follow you to the end. And the most human thing you can do is to stop running from it. Turn around. Face your inner conscious self. Acknowledge it. Then make yourself a cup of tea. It gets easier. It never gets better. But it gets easier. But the “why” stays. In fact, it grows stronger as you age. But you’ve got this."
o
Free Download: A little light reading from Tolstoy…
Freely download “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, here:
Full screen recommended.
Tchaikovsky - "1812 Overture" (Full choral with cannons)
"Paris Is Burning, and Brussels Is Still Writing Regulations"
"Paris Is Burning,
and Brussels Is Still Writing Regulations"
by Dr. Robert W. Malone
Excerpt: "Europe’s political class promised prosperity through bigger government, mass immigration, and endless regulation. The results haven’t lived up to the promise of socialism. They never do. Rome is burning, and Europe’s political class is still arguing over how many regulations, subsidies, and government programs it will take to put out the fire.
For decades, Europe’s “progressive” establishment has promoted an increasingly expensive social contract: more government services, generous benefits, shorter working hours, greater regulation, and the promise that someone else will pay for it all. Meanwhile, businesses are expected to absorb the costs, entrepreneurs are buried in paperwork, and governments increasingly look to imported labor to compensate for aging populations and persistent labor shortages.
But importing workers is not the same as creating prosperity. Immigration can strengthen an economy when newcomers possess needed skills, find productive employment, and contribute more than they consume in public resources. When immigration outpaces job creation, housing construction, education, and integration, the costs do not disappear. They are transferred to taxpayers, communities, and already strained public services.
Now look at Poland, France, and Belgium. In 2024, Belgium recorded approximately 116 robberies per 100,000 residents, France approximately 83, and Poland just 12. Meanwhile, the reported foreign-born shares of their populations in January 2025 were roughly 20 percent, 14 percent, and 2.6 percent, respectively. These statistics certainly justify asking harder questions about immigration policy, integration, policing, and public safety.
Meanwhile, Europe’s political establishment has developed another troubling habit: using the machinery of government against politicians who challenge its policies. In France, Marine Le Pen was initially barred from seeking office following an embezzlement conviction, although an appeals court subsequently restored her eligibility.
In Romania, authorities annulled a presidential election after nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round, then barred him from the rerun, citing electoral irregularities and foreign interference. None of which was proven.
In Germany, domestic intelligence authorities classified the opposition AfD as extremist, only to have a court suspend that designation.
Italy prosecuted Matteo Salvini over his decision to prevent a migrant rescue vessel from disembarking, before the courts ultimately acquitted him.
These cases have different legal circumstances, but collectively raise serious questions about political pluralism and the treatment of dissent. Meanwhile, European governments face real problems involving criminal gangs, failed integration, and Islamist extremism. Consider Brussels, the administrative capital of the European Union, where drug-related shootings have become a major public-safety problem, and authorities have had to increase security around railway stations. The British government specifically warns travelers about robbery and theft around Brussels-Midi and Brussels-North. There is something profoundly wrong when European governments appear more comfortable policing political dissent than ensuring that ordinary citizens can safely walk through their own cities."
Full article is here:
“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for
Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
by Maria Popova
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his 119-page philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” in 1942. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.”
One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
In the beautifully titled and beautifully written “A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning” (public library), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his “yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,” and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy: If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest. Our pursuit of meaning, and the consequences should we come up empty-handed, are matters of eternal immediacy.
Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy – the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world – less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase.”
Reflecting on the parallels between Camus and Montaigne, Zaretsky finds in this ongoing chase one crucial difference of dispositions: “Camus achieves with the Myth what the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claimed for Montaigne’s Essays: it places “a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”
For Camus, however, this astonishment results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning. It occurs when our need for meaning shatters against the indifference, immovable and absolute, of the world. As a result, absurdity is not an autonomous state; it does not exist in the world, but is instead exhaled from the abyss that divides us from a mute world.”
Camus himself captured this with extraordinary elegance when he wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.”
To discern these echoes amid the silence of the world, Zaretsky suggests, was at the heart of Camus’s tussle with the absurd: “We must not cease in our exploration, Camus affirms, if only to hear more sharply the silence of the world. In effect, silence sounds out when human beings enter the equation. If “silences must make themselves heard,” it is because those who can hear inevitably demand it. And if the silence persists, where are we to find meaning?”
This search for meaning was not only the lens through which Camus examined every dimension of life, from the existential to the immediate, but also what he saw as our greatest source of agency. In one particularly prescient diary entry from November of 1940, as WWII was gathering momentum, he writes: “Understand this: we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular forms that it takes; we can despair of existence, for we have no power over it, but not of history, where the individual can do everything. It is individuals who are killing us today. Why should not individuals manage to give the world peace? We must simply begin without thinking of such grandiose aims.”
For Camus, the question of meaning was closely related to that of happiness - something he explored with great insight in his notebooks. Zaretsky writes: “Camus observed that absurdity might ambush us on a street corner or a sun-blasted beach. But so, too, do beauty and the happiness that attends it. All too often, we know we are happy only when we no longer are.”
Perhaps most importantly, Camus issued a clarion call of dissent in a culture that often conflates happiness with laziness and championed the idea that happiness is nothing less than a moral obligation. A few months before his death, Camus appeared on the TV show Gros Plan. Dressed in a trench coat, he flashed his mischievous boyish smile and proclaimed into the camera: “Today, happiness has become an eccentric activity. The proof is that we tend to hide from others when we practice it. As far as I’m concerned, I tend to think that one needs to be strong and happy in order to help those who are unfortunate.”
This wasn’t a case of Camus arriving at some mythic epiphany in his old age – the cultivation of happiness and the eradication of its obstacles was his most persistent lens on meaning. More than two decades earlier, he had contemplated “the demand for happiness and the patient quest for it” in his journal, capturing with elegant simplicity the essence of the meaningful life – an ability to live with presence despite the knowledge that we are impermanent: ”We must” be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death.”
But his most piercing point integrates the questions of happiness and meaning into the eternal quest to find ourselves and live our truth: ”It is not so easy to become what one is, to rediscover one’s deepest measure.”
o
Freely download “The Myth of Sisyphus,” by Albert Camus, here:
Joel Bowman, "Camus to France: Résistons!"
"Camus to France: Résistons!"
by Joel Bowman
“To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act,
and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.”
~ Albert Camus, "Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays" (1960)
The Paris of the South, Argentina - "With France still reeling after the weekend’s riots, the worst of which seemed to be perpetrated by those for whom liberté, égalité, fraternité stand as empty concepts in a world beyond their dim comprehension, we thought we might offer something a little different today…
Something rebellious. Something elevated. Something differentiated from the smash-and-grab philistinism of the hooting, clamoring mob. Herewith, some biographical Notes and philosophical insights from one of France’s most original modern thinkers. Trusting the reader will enjoy the myriad ironies at play here, we will refrain from any more introductory remarks, lest we give any of them away. Please enjoy…
"Rebel, Rebel"
By Joel Bowman
"On a bleak and misty day, a luxurious Facel automobile bound for Paris veered off a long, straight country road near Sens and collided with a plane tree. The driver, French publisher Michel Gallimard, died in hospital a few days later. His wife and daughter, in the rear seats, were unharmed. Found among the wreckage were 144 pages of handwritten manuscript, entitled "Le premier Homme" (The First Man). Their author, who believed this would be his finest work yet, had been riding in the passenger seat. He died instantly. Albert Camus was 46 years old. And that was 66 years ago.
In some ways, it was a small miracle that the Nobel prize-winning author made it even that far. Raised in a poor, working class town in his native Algeria, the precocious Camus was awarded a scholarship to study at a prestigious lyceum near the capital, Algiers, when he was just 10-years of age.
Alas, when he was 17-years old, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was thus obliged to move from his family home to his uncle’s residence. Encouraged by Uncle Gustave and guided by his teacher, Jean Grenier, Camus began to read philosophy in earnest. The young man found himself particularly impressed by the ancient Greeks as well as Friedrich Nietzsche, a thinker many consider a precursor to the school of existentialism, with which Camus was later lumped (much to his own frustration and protest).
In a strange twist of fate, Camus’ diagnosis also saved him from a career in academia as a university lecturer and, arguably the more clear and present danger, being accepted into the French army, to which he volunteered shortly after Germany marched on France during the devastating Western Campaign of 1940. nIn lieu of the first scaffold – that of the frustrated college professor – Camus completed what he would call his “first cycle”; the novel "The Stranger", the philosophical essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", and the play "Caligula."
In lieu of the second fate – almost certain death, face down in Somme mud – he completed his second cycle; the novel "The Plague" the philosophical essay "The Rebel," and the play "The Misunderstanding."
The Paradox of the Absurd: As it happened, misinterpretation (either accidental or deliberate, as on the part of his adversaries) would feature prominently throughout Camus’ career. Though he spent much of his life passionately engaged in politics, particularly on the Algerian question, where he abhorred colonialism, his nuanced positions won him no shortage of enemies on both sides of the political aisle.
Briefly a member of the French Communist Party, he nevertheless disavowed Marxism, and was later an outspoken critic of Stalin’s post-war occupation of Eastern Europe and an avid supporter of the uprisings in cities trapped behind the Iron Curtain. He was equally critical of fascism at home in France and across the Continent, leaning instead toward a stripe of anarcho-syndicalism, in which he advocated for solidarity and brotherhood among freely associating, sovereign individuals in the face of governmental totalitarianism emanating from the left and the right.
Throughout his philosophical works, Camus sought to acknowledge, confront and eventually overcome the “Paradox of the Absurd” – as he saw it, the direct result of the “confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” Camus rejected spiraling nihilism in the face of the absurd, arguing that suicide was itself an affront to human values and freedom. Instead, one must live, one must create, one must in the end be, not because he is promised deliverance, but despite the knowledge that he is not. From "The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays":
“To work and create 'for nothing', to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries – this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”
- Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays" (1942)
Defiant Creation: Poetic irony, then, that a diagnosis of tuberculosis (a veritable death sentence for writers and thinkers down the ages, from Kierkegaard to Kafka... Whitman to Weil... Maupassant to Orwell... Rousseau to Shiller to Chekhov to Lawrence, et al. ...) should spare the young Camus a similar fate, delivering him instead to a life of letters and metaphysical contemplation.
Tragic irony, too, that he who rebelled against the absurdity of man’s ultimate fate, his unshakeable mortality, who met the “unreasonable silence” of an indifferent world with his own powerful, deliberate act of living, who created in the face of the nothingness he saw in waiting, should be delivered from the disease’s icy grip, from this world into the rushing void... through the windscreen of a speeding vehicle.
It was the great American author William Faulkner who wrote Camus’ obituary, underscoring the age-old epitaph when he observed: “When the door shut for him he had already written on this side of it that which every artist who also carries through life with him that one same foreknowledge and hatred of death, is hoping to do: I was here.” ~ William Faulkner, "Obituary for Albert Camus"
From his penetrating philosophical essay, "The Rebel" (L’Homme révolté, 1951), one can almost hear Camus calling down the ages to an afflicted nation, addled by despair, his message of solidarity. “I rebel - therefore we exist.”
Those who would tear down the Republic, who dare affront Western civilization, have but sticks and stones. But the West has ideas, culture and, above all, the enduring spirit of resistance. What was lost will be honored. What was torn down will be rebuilt again. And again. And again. For as long as the defiant act of creation demands. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart,” as Camus himself once wrote. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…
Bill Bonner, "The Moral of the Story"
Engraved illustration,
‘Making the Haycock’, from a French field."
"The Moral of the Story"
by Bill Bonner
"This is what awaits Europe with Islamo-leftism.
Barbarians ravaging all that remains of beauty and civilization."
- Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal
Ardmore, Ireland - "What to make of the riots in France...Italy...Portugal…Albania? What set them off? A temper tantrum by Millennials and Zoomers? Or the death rattle for Western civilization?
The media loves fires burning and cops swinging their truncheons. Especially in the streets of Paris, such a photogenic city. The rest of the world looks on in horror...and relief. ‘At least that’s not happening here,’ people tell themselves. The commentariat, meanwhile, struggles to make sense of it. The rioters, what’s their beef? And what does it mean for the rest of us?
As always, there are opinions on the ‘right’ and on the ‘left.’ Sympathy for the mob can be found in ‘leftish’ circles, based on envy. Some people have a lot of money. Many have little. Surely that is the cause of so many of our social ills. Crime, lack of medical care, substandard housing...and so forth...all can be traced back to an unfair distribution of wealth, no?
That is the explicit appeal of socialism, generally, and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani in particular. The solutions are obvious - transfer the wealth from the rich to the poor. The feds should be taxing the rich, they say...and spending more for better schools, environmentally-correct housing, free medical care, cradle to grave - the usual ‘liberal’ agenda, in other words, an ancient tree that has never actually borne fruit. Maggie Thatcher explained the problem with it, ‘you soon run out of other peoples’ money.’
The contrary of the ‘liberal’ agenda is the ‘conservative’ agenda. You don’t hear it very often, because there are few conservatives still compos mentis. But those few will tell you that the problem is not too little funding for the young and the poor, but too much.
While the ‘liberal’ point of view is based in materialism, the ‘conservative’ outlook leans heavily on traditional morality...as in ‘the moral of the story.’ ‘People should get what they’ve got coming to them,’ says the old-time conservative. The grumpy old fellow is ready to share the judgement of time, experience...and scraped knuckles: ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap,’ he says. The French have spent so much on ‘social services,’ he believes, that they now have a substantial population that is idle and, naturally, discontented. ‘What do you expect,’ says the graybeard, ‘they don’t have to get up in the morning and go to work.’
He is about to tell us what use the devil has for idle hands, but he knows he’s said it many times already; we’re probably getting tired of hearing it. ‘Nobody feels good about sitting around all day,’ he says, speaking from the experience of a retiree. ‘You’ve got to learn a skill...and feel the satisfaction of a job well done. They’re cheating these people out of a decent life. No wonder they’re upset.’
There’s also a third interpretation. Neither liberal nor conservative, there are those who think the fault lies not in our stars nor in ourselves...but in immigrants. The Independent: "Trump and Kremlin both claim French riots caused by ‘mass immigration’ in similar statements. “Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” the US president added. Russia’s presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, meanwhile, said he thought it was “Western civilisation’s suicide through migrant chaos.”
This is a popular explanation because it puts the blame squarely on others...and suggests a simple solution: deport them. That may or may not be a good idea, but it doesn’t explain the season’s riots all over Europe. Why are the immigrants rioting now? They’ve been in Europe for many years. Nor does it explain how France, for example, was able to field even larger mobs - in May 1968...in the Paris Revolution of 1848...and in the French Revolution of 1789 - with very few immigrants in sight. They - like Americans - are fully capable of burning down their own town halls; they don’t need foreigners to help them.
But the more dangerous and reckless the rioters become, the more voters will want to get rid of them. The Independent again: "Germany’s Alice Weidel, leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), described the clashes as an “attack on Western civilisation by migrant mobs and far-left agitators,” arguing that “open borders and mass immigration” were responsible for the destruction."
And back in France, Middle East Eye forecasts: "France is on the precipice of a far-right landslide." People don’t like to see shop windows smashed. Especially when it is an ‘immigrant’ doing the smashing. We don’t know if deporting whole groups of people will really make life better for those who are left. But there are several groups we’d like to propose. More tomorrow...including another explanation for Europe’s riots."
"10 Signs We’ll Soon Be Eating Depression-Era Food — and Why Nobody Will Announce It as the Supermarket Sends Us Back to the 1930s"
by John Walter
Excerpt: "Beef has become an occasion, the packages keep shrinking, and the old cheap staples are creeping back onto the plate. The grocery aisle has been telling this story for years - in small print, and almost nobody has been listening.
Editor’s Note: "Nobody will announce it. No president will stand at a podium and explain that the country has begun to eat differently, that the weekly shop has become a negotiation, that the meat counter is now a place where decisions get made rather than taken for granted. It will simply happen, the way most things happen here - one smaller bag, one cheaper cut, one modest substitution at a time - until the food on the table resembles what people ate in 1935 and nobody quite remembers when the change began.
What started this was small, a box of pasta that no longer weighed what it used to, and the argument widened from there. The drift runs back toward the habits of the Great Depression: meat rarer and cheaper, beans and potatoes and bread returning to the center of the plate, fat and preserving back in the kitchen, cooking once more from scratch, substitutions accepted as normal. Hunger is not the problem. The difficulty is more like a slow erosion of standards, and erosion is much harder to notice than famine. (In this video, we’ll go over a tool for this community that can mean the difference between life and death.) Length is part of the point. Read it the way such changes arrive: slowly, and with attention."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
"Electric Bills Are Climbing Again, And Families Are Choosing Between Power And Food!"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1021/26
"Electric Bills Are Climbing Again,
And Families Are Choosing Between Power And Food!"
"Electric bills are climbing again, and families are choosing between keeping the power on and putting food on the table. In this video, Americans show it from their side: a $325 Reliant bill in a Texas rental while sitting in the dark with the thermostat turned up, a bill that more than doubled since last summer to almost $400 a month for two people, an Ohio family using half the power and still getting the same bill, a $500 electric bill that doubled, Alabama Power bills over $400 for a 1,200 square foot home and a faulty meter, a $640 light bill in Texas, a Houston bill that went from $225 to nearly $500, a $450 Duke Energy bill every month even in winter, a $1,000 FPL bill, a $600 bill for an 800 square foot home with the heat off, a Georgia Power bill bigger than other people's rent, a $1,000 bill in Los Angeles where $350 used to be normal, and a light bill that jumped from $168 to $400. We look at why power bills keep climbing, and what actually helps: budget billing, assistance programs like LIHEAP, and cutting the hidden power hogs before the next bill lands."
Comments here:
"Snyder Reports, 10/21/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/21/26
"FED Warns Millions:
Your Credit Cards Get More Expensive in 1 Week"
"The Federal Reserve just issued a chilling warning to every American with a credit card and 3.1 million homeowners. Another interest rate hike is likely before year-end — and you have about 1 week until the October 28th decision. In this video I break down what the Fed actually said, why a 0.25% hike makes your credit card minimums go up while you pay down less principal, why 3.1 million adjustable-rate mortgages resetting now matters so much after 2008, and what to do if you're living off credit to pay rent, mortgage or other bills."
Comments here:
"Americans Can't Live On $15 An Hour Anymore! Rent Takes The Whole Paycheck"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/21/26
"Americans Can't Live On $15 An Hour Anymore!
Rent Takes The Whole Paycheck"
"Americans can't live on $15 an hour anymore, because rent takes the whole paycheck before anything else gets paid. In this video, hourly workers show it from their side: 40 hours a week at $16 to $17 an hour in North Carolina with rent over $1,200, a Kentucky worker on $7.25 bringing home about $1,100 while rent alone is about $1,500, $20 an hour and about $2,900 a month against $1,000 to $1,200 rent, $15 an hour full time in Georgia with about $700 a month for a used car and $1,200 rent, $16 an hour in small-town Texas leaving $60 for the month after rent, food and the car, $20 an hour with half of about $2,600 going to $1,100 rent, a move to Texas to save money with the minimum wage still at $7.25, Wisconsin stuck at $7.25 for 15 years, an hour of Alabama minimum wage buying a cold sandwich, a Madison server evicted on $7.25 an hour and weak tips, three jobs on Auburn's $17 minimum wage to pay the same rent as Seattle, the same $21 an hour while rent went from $700 to $1,200, and a single mom on about $19 an hour left with $194 for two weeks. We look at why the paycheck keeps losing to rent, and what actually helps: every employer benefit, local help with utilities and childcare, and a small emergency fund built a few bills at a time."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Everything Is Changing, Be Ready For Anything"
Adventures With Danno, 10/21/26
"Everything Is Changing, Be Ready For Anything"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "The Economy Is Starting to Crack… And It’s Everywhere!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/21/26
"The Economy Is Starting to Crack…
And It’s Everywhere!"
"The economy is starting to crack, and the financial pressure is showing up everywhere. Car payments are crushing household budgets, auto loan delinquencies are raising concerns, home sales are struggling, and homebuilders are pulling back. Meanwhile, inflation, rising housing costs, credit card debt, and everyday bills are leaving more Americans with little or nothing left at the end of the month. What happens when people can no longer afford the payments they’ve been making for years? In this episode of iAllegedly, Dan breaks down the growing financial squeeze across the auto industry, housing market, consumer debt, and small businesses. We look at the risks surrounding auto loan defaults and repossessions, the challenges facing homebuyers and builders, and the pressure on families trying to stay afloat. Is the economy approaching a breaking point, and how can you prepare your finances for what comes next? Watch, share your thoughts in the comments, and subscribe for more business news you can use."
Comments here:
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Musical Interlude: Peter Gabriel (Feat. Kate Bush), "Don't Give Up"
Peter Gabriel (Feat. Kate Bush), "Don't Give Up"
Col. Douglas Macgregor, "Invading Iran: Another Gallipoli? The Kharg Island Gamble"
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 10/20/26
"Invading Iran:
Another Gallipoli? The Kharg Island Gamble"
"What happens if U.S. troops land in Iran? A new Bloomberg report says some of Washington's Gulf Arab allies want President Trump to escalate, deploy ground forces and possibly seize Kharg Island, Iran's crucial oil export hub. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor warns that such an operation could turn into a modern Gallipoli: small, light forces on waterless islands, exposed to precision missiles and drones, with every evacuation flight at risk. Macgregor reacts live to Trump's new threat to destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. He explains why Iran has no incentive to accept another ceasefire, how strikes on radars across Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain may be designed to blind regional early warning, and why he expects $150 oil within weeks. He also discusses reports of a hidden interceptor shortage, the danger of nuclear escalation, and the return of General Surovikin in Ukraine."
Comments here:
"Evictions Just Exploded All Over America And It's Getting Scary"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/20/26
"Evictions Just Exploded All Over
America And It's Getting Scary"
"Evictions just exploded all over America, and renters are getting a notice on the door and a few days to pack. In this video, renters show it from their side: a Houston student appealing their own eviction on $13 an hour, a $3,142 judgment due by July 15 for a renter out of work since September 2024, rent paid in pieces with the full balance due by the weekend, a Dallas family who paid the rent and still got a 30-day pay-or-vacate notice, a Los Angeles sheriff handing over a notice to vacate by August 8, a family fighting their landlord in eviction court, an Atlanta renter whose rent went from $2,200 to over $3,000 and who was still filed on after moving out, a Fulton County filing while rental assistance had a six-week wait, a same-day sheriff lockout and a rented U-Haul, a widow fired for going to her husband's funeral and then evicted, a 30-day notice the morning after rent came out, a roommate who stopped paying and a complex now demanding the full $5,000, an eviction notice on the door while the rent was paid, an eviction court day with no ride and the kids in tow, a sold apartment with three days to leave and Section 8 gone, a hotel eviction over $7,000 and three months in a tent, an eviction court so packed the tenant got two more weeks, two college degrees and $7.25 an hour in Iowa against $1,500 rent, and a 24-hour notice in Las Vegas with a newborn. We look at why evictions keep piling up, and what actually helps: opening every court letter the day it arrives, showing up to the hearing, calling legal aid about emergency rental assistance, and keeping every rent receipt in one folder."
Comments here:
"5 Signs That The Housing Market Will Be Deeply Frozen For The Foreseeable Future"
by Michael Snyder
"The housing market in the United States has never been more paralyzed than it is right now. For years, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at artificially low levels, and during that time most homeowners in this country were able to lock in fixed mortgage rates that were extremely low. Now that mortgage rates are soaring, many of those same homeowners feel trapped because selling would also mean getting a mortgage on a new home at a much higher rate. Meanwhile, most prospective homeowners feel like they are on the outside looking in because a combination of ridiculously high prices and painfully high mortgage rates has made homes more unaffordable than ever before.
There are only two ways that the housing market will get unfrozen. Either mortgage rates have to come way down or home prices have to come way down. Of course neither of those two things is likely to happen any time soon. So we have a real mess on our hands. The following are 5 signs that the housing market will be deeply frozen for the foreseeable future…
#1 Pending home sales are trending in the wrong direction very rapidly. According to the NAR, pending home sales were 11.3 percent lower in September 2026 than they were in September 2025…Fast-rising mortgage rates in September took a harsh toll on the housing market, according to new monthly data released today. Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped 7.3% from August and were down 11.3% year-over-year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
This count reflects buyers out shopping in September, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose sharply. It started the month around 6.8% and hit 7.6% by the end of the month, according to Mortgage News Daily.
This isn’t just a downturn. This is a historic disaster. At this point, pending home sales have fallen to the lowest level on record…
#2 Just like we witnessed just prior to the Great Recession, foreclosure filings are way up. In the month of August, they were a whopping 13 percent higher than last year…ATTOM’s August report showed 40,277 properties with foreclosure filings, up 13 percent from a year earlier. Foreclosure starts rose 7 percent. Completed bank repossessions jumped 42 percent to 5,794 homes. South Carolina, Nevada, Florida, Texas, and Maryland posted the highest rates.
#3 We desperately need more homes to be built, but home construction numbers are just dismal. Last month, single family housing starts and building permits were both down a lot more than the experts were anticipating…Home construction also took a hit in September. Both single-family housing starts and building permits fell much more sharply than analysts had predicted. Starts were down 4.56% to 859,000 annualized, according to the U.S. Census. That is the lowest level since September 2025. Building permits, which are a measure of future construction, fell 4% for the month.
#4 Homebuilders are not optimistic about the future at all. In fact, homebuilder confidence just dropped to the lowest level in 14 years… The mood among America’s homebuilders is grim. Homebuilder sentiment fell three points to 29 in October, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.
October’s reading marks the lowest homebuilder sentiment the US has seen since June 2012, the NAHB said, when the housing market was still moving through the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. It shows just how much builders have soured on the housing landscape amid rising costs and a record-breaking slowdown in home sales.
#5 The housing market has already been in a depressed state for an extended period of time, and now economist Jim Paulsen is warning that his “Walmart Recession Signal” is peaking just like it did before the start of the Great Recession… Economist Jim Paulsen calls his theory the “Walmart Recession Signal” (WRS). When Walmart’s stock goes up and shares of luxury companies in the S&P Global Luxury Index go down, it’s a sign that the country may be headed for a recession.
“As economic activity slows and recession risk builds, retailing purchasing patterns tend to gravitate toward discounters like Walmart and away from overall or luxury retailers,” Paulsen wrote in a Substack post Monday. “Consequently, a rise in the WRS could warn of a potential recession or at least a significant economic slowdown.” And that warning is getting louder, he said. Just as it did before the Great Recession and two recessions in the 90s, the WRS is peaking.
What we are experiencing now reminds me so much of the middle of 2008. Except this time around those on the bottom rungs of the economic food chain are in far worse shape. As I discussed the other day, 44 percent of all Americans struggle to even pay for the basic necessities each month. And millions upon millions of Americans are now living either on the streets or in their vehicles.
For example, in the Bronx there is a very long corridor known as the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” where large numbers of homeless Americans have been living in “old RVs, trailers and trucks”… Residents along an unsightly stretch of the Bronx are fed up with an eyesore corridor where the homeless have been bedding down in old RVs, trailers and trucks for years, The Post has learned. The “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” along a section of Webster Avenue has been a headache for locals for at least two years - but the desperate folks calling the rundown vehicles home said they were driven to a bare-bones existence by the Big Apple’s sky-high rents.
These people aren’t living there because they want to live there. These people are living there because they can’t afford a real home… Those people told The Post they were driven to live in RVs and trucks by the city’s rents - which left them a choice between the streets, risky city shelters or the vehicles they now call home.
“We need housing,” said Rita Freeman, who said she’s lived in her RV since last November. “I mean, this is absurd. This is bizarre. There’s so many of us. “I went into hotels, I maxed out my credit card for the first time since I had it since 1994,” she added. “Because I did not want to go to a shelter or the street. It’s very dangerous.”
This is happening all over the nation. Every single day, even more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. We need affordable homes, but the housing market is not properly responding to market forces any longer because the Federal Reserve’s insane policies have thrown everything out of whack.
It has been said that if you play stupid games, you should expect to win stupid prizes. Sadly, the Federal Reserve has been playing stupid games for a very long time. Foolish actions have foreseeable and predictable consequences. Now we are reaping what they have sown, and there will be no easy way to fix this mess. There is a reason why I have been ranting about the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades. The choices that they make have a very real impact on all of us. Now we are steamrolling toward a major economic downturn, and they are actually thinking of raising rates again. So much pain is ahead, and much of it could have been easily avoided."
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