Jeremiah Babe,
“FED Saves Wall St Again; Debt Clock Overheating;
$Trillions Not Going to Save Markets; Cash”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, September 21, 2020
"Swamp Thang"
"Swamp Thang"
by Jim Kunstler
"There’s the Swamp teeming with scaley, slithery, sharp-toothed, many-footed predators, but then there’s the miasma hanging over the Swamp, a toxic mist of lies, misdirection, dis-info, propaganda, bad faith, and sedition, illuminated by pulsing blue gaslight that affords a toxic blanket of protection to the denizens of the Swamp. Now a storm is brewing. The critters are evacuating their mud-holes and moiling about desperately among the cypress knobs as a mighty wind rises - the election hurricane - threatening to sweep it (and them) all away!
The climate is changing, all right, but not in the way that some think it is. The political climate is changing, and what has been a pestilential subtropical sink on the Potomac is overdue for that cleansing we’ve heard about. Weeks from now, as the fetid water subsides, the protective miasma above will dissipate and the people from sea to shining sea will finally get a good look at the landscape revealed and the pitiful, wriggling, dying life-forms of the order Democratica stranded on it.
Case in point: Joe Biden. Many will wonder in the days to come whether the sole and otherwise inexplicable reason for his elevation to candidate-for-president was a ruse to avoid prosecution - his own and others. The matter was neatly laid out a year ago during the impeachment ploy: After the color revolution in Ukraine, 2014, Mr. Biden was designated not just “point man” overseeing American interests in that sad-sack country, but specifically as a watchdog against the notorious deep corruption of Ukraine’s entire political ecosystem - as if, you understand, the internal workings of Ukraine’s politics was any of our business in the first place.
The evidence aired publicly last year suggests that Mr. Biden jumped head-first and whole-heartedly into the hog-trough of loose money there, netting his son Hunter and cohorts millions of dollars for no-show jobs on the board of natgas company, Burisma. And then, of course, Mr. Biden stupidly bragged on a recorded panel session at the Council on Foreign Relations about threatening to withhold US aid money as a lever to induce Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to fire a prosecutor looking into Burisma’s sketchy affairs. Naturally, the Democratic Party impeachment crew accused Mr. Trump of doing exactly what Mr. Biden accomplished a few years earlier.
The impeachment fizzled, but the charges and the odor of the Biden-Burisma scandal lingered without resolution - all the while that Mr. Biden posed as a presidential candidate in the primaries. This week two Senate committees (Finance and Homeland) are expected to release a joint report detailing findings of their investigation into the Biden family’s exploits abroad. It is expected to not look good. Also implicated are the State Department officers in the Kiev embassy who pretended not to notice any of this, pointing also to their engagement in further shenanigans around the Trump-Clinton election of 2016 - a lot of that entwined in the Clinton-sponsored RussiaGate scheme. Will the committees be so bold as to issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department? If Mr. Biden actually shows up at next week’s debate, do you suppose that Mr. Trump will fail to bring up the subject? Does this finally force Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from what has been the most hollow, illusory, and dispirited campaign ever seen at this level in US political history?
All of which is to say that the Democratic Party has other things to worry about besides who will replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. That may be hard to believe but it’s how things are now after four years of implacable, seditious perfidy from the party. A week ago, all the talk was of the Democrat’s election coup plan, as publicized stupidly by the so-called Transition Integrity Project. Nice try. What if all those mail-in ballots sent out recently have Joe Biden’s name on them and it turns out that he is no longer a candidate? Hmmmm… No doubt the recipients were so eager to fill them in and send them out that there’s no going back on that scam. Apparently, a Biden withdrawal was not one of the scenarios scrimmaged out in the Transition Integrity Project’s “war game.” What? then A do-over?
Hence, panic in the swamp. Joe Biden’s misadventures, and his pitiful fate, are but the outer rainbands of the brewing storm. There’s the threat of further and widespread riots, of course, but since when has insurrection proved to be a winning campaign strategy in a country not entirely gone to the dogs? People who are not insane usually object to their businesses being torched and their homes invaded. At this point, after months of violent antics by criminal nihilists, one can even imagine Multnomah County, Oregon, turning Trumpwise. Closer to the eye-wall of the hurricane looms the stern visage of John Durham. That’s where the most damaging winds whirl and there is reason to suppose they are heading for landfall. Whatever he’s been up to lo these many months has had a tighter lid on it than the tomb of Tutankhamen. It must be making a whole lot of political gators, centipedes, and pygmy rattlesnakes nervous. Perhaps New York Times editor and miasma generator-in-chief Dean Baquet is up at three a.m. thinking about it, puking into his wastebasket."
"2020 Has Been A "Nightmare Year" For America, And The Economic Fallout Is Just Getting Started"
"2020 Has Been A "Nightmare Year" For America,
And The Economic Fallout Is Just Getting Started"
by Michael Snyder
"Most of us have never experienced a year that has been as tough as 2020 has been for our nation. It has just been one major crisis after another, and the month of September has brought us even more trouble. The worst wildfire season in the history of the state of California has been making headlines day after day, and now the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg threatens to escalate the political turmoil in this nation to an entirely new level.
Many had such high hopes for 2020, but at this point this year has been such a disaster that USA Today is calling it “an American nightmare”, and it is difficult to argue with their reasoning: "First the pandemic, which divided us, economically devastated us, and has killed nearly 200,000 of us. Then the racial unrest, erupting at the deaths of more Black Americans at the hands of police: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude.
Now the extreme weather. For only the second time in history, the National Hurricane Center has moved into the Greek alphabet for storm names. This season’s wildfires are bigger, deadlier and more frequent than in years past. In the West, people can’t breathe.
And now a member of the U.S. Supreme Court has died with about a month and a half to go until we get to election day. The shocking death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has stunned the entire country, and I will share my analysis on where things could go from here on The Most Important News later tonight.
In this article, I want to focus on the economic impact that all of this chaos is having. Since the pandemic first started, more than 60 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits, and that is a threshold that has never been crossed before in all of our history. And we have also seen businesses shut down at a pace that is hard to fully grasp. If you can believe it, more than 160,000 businesses listed on Yelp say “that they have closed”: "Yelp on Wednesday released its latest Economic Impact Report, revealing business closures across the U.S. are increasing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll. As of Aug, 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed. That’s down from the 180,000 that closed at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, it actually shows a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July."
I was most alarmed by that last sentence. Things were supposed to be getting a lot better by now, but instead we have seen “a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July”. That is not good. And the percentage of businesses on Yelp that are indicating that their closures are “permanent” just keeps rising: "In addition to monitoring closed businesses, Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening."
So what this means is that none of us should be expecting a return to what we considered to be “normal” prior to 2020. In fact, it is likely that we will see large numbers of businesses continue to fail in the months ahead. According to Fox Business, a whopping 40 percent of all U.S. restaurants “could go under within the next six months”: At least 40% of restaurant operators struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic believe their businesses could go under within the next six months if there is no additional stimulus package from the federal government, according to a new survey by the National Restaurant Association. With one in every six restaurants closed permanently or for the “long term,” the industry is on track to lose $240 billion in sales by the end of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association’s findings on the impact COVID-19 has on the restaurant business."
So what do you think? Should we bail out the restaurant industry? By the way, the airline industry really wants a bailout too. And just about every other industry is looking for government help as well. The reason why almost everyone has their hands out is because we have plunged into a crippling economic depression, and everyone is starting to realize that there is no end in sight to this downturn.
Of course most average citizens also want another round of “stimulus checks” from the federal government, and we are being told that there is a really good chance that “the economy backslides” if that does not happen: "Lawmakers remain deadlocked over a measure to provide another round of $1,200 checks to most households and more aid to struggling small businesses and unemployed Americans. Most saw the money they received from Congress’s $2.2 trillion CARES Act run dry over the summer. “If they don’t” approve another stimulus, “they’re taking a huge risk, says Mark Zandi chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The odds are better than even the economy backslides.”
We have already stolen several trillion dollars from future generations of Americans so far this year to fund “stimulus packages”, and so a lot of people figure that it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference if we stole several trillion more to fund another one. And the Federal Reserve has been flooding the financial system with so much new money that it makes everything that they have ever done in the past look completely insignificant.
In the process, our authorities are systematically destroying the reserve currency that the entire globe depends upon, but at this point very few people seem to care. So we continue to steamroll toward economic oblivion, and nobody is even thinking about hitting the brakes.
In the USA Today article that I quoted at the start of this piece, the author stated that it is “impossible to know if the worst is behind us or still lies ahead”: "Many of us are vacillating between horror and disbelief at what can only be described as an American nightmare. Devastation doesn’t cover it. It’s impossible to know if the worst is behind us or still lies ahead. Of course that is not true at all. In fact, it is exceeding clear that what is ahead of us is going to be much, much worse than what we have already experienced. But most Americans don’t want to hear that.
Most of us just want to cling to the belief that someday we will wake up and everything will have returned to normal. That may happen in fairy tales, but this is real life, and real life simply does not work that way."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed, including its nearly perfectly round ring of stars and gas, remains unknown. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and the gravitational effect of a central bar that has since vanished.
Click image for larger size.
The featured photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and recently reprocessed using an artificially intelligent de-noising algorithm. Observations in radio waves indicate that Hoag's Object has not accreted a smaller galaxy in the past billion years. Hoag's Object spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 600 million light years away toward the constellation of the Snake (Serpens). Many galaxies far in the distance are visible toward the right, while coincidentally, visible in the gap at about seven o'clock, is another but more distant ring galaxy."
Chet Raymo, “Moments of Being”
“Moments of Being”
by Chet Raymo
“A passage from the “Pensees” of Teilhard de Chardin: “Though the phenomena of the lower world remain the same- the material determinisms, the vicissitudes of chance, the laws of labor, the agitations of men, the footfalls of death- he who dares to believe reaches a sphere of created reality in which things, while retaining their habitual texture, seem to be made out of a different substance. Everything remains the same so far as phenomena are concerned, but at the same time everything become luminous, animated, loving…”
Whatever we think of Teilhard’s Christocentric phenomenology, however much we are baffled by his vague and gushy prose, it is clear from his writing that he was a man who was in love with the world and experienced it as luminous, animated, and loving. Certainly, the experience he describes is not restricted to “he who dares to believe,” by which Teilhard means a specifically Christian faith, or at least a faith which for him involved an image of the “cosmic Christ.” No, I would suggest that the interior experience of the world he describes- as luminous, animated, and loving- is an predisposition of the human condition, part of our evolutionary makeup. It finds expression in religion, certainly, but also in art, music, poetry, scientific discovery, and in even in the quiet contemplation of a single flower or grain of sand.
It is an experience we all consciously or unconsciously seek, with varying degrees of success. For certain people- an artist like Kandinsky or a mystic like Teilhard- the interior rhapsodic state seems more or less permanent. For most of us, its achievement is a struggle against the humdrum and superficial, the “habitual texture” of things.
The challenge is not to abjure the world of immediate sensation, but to experience the world as fully as our present knowledge allows- not just earthworms and nematodes, wind and weather, Sun, Moon and stars, but also the ineffable flow of atoms, the ceaseless dance of the DNA, the whirling of the myriad galaxies, the infinite and the infinitesimal- to see in the mind’s eye and feel in the mind’s heart the fire and the flow that animates all things. We may not experience the universe as “loving,” but we might certainly find it lovable.
“The whole universe is aflame,” wrote Teilhard. His vision was partly informed by his science and partly by his religious faith. And partly, surely, because he was born with a particularly acute sensitivity to the ineluctable wholeness of things. Those of us of a less sensitive nature will settle for the occasional moments when the gates of our senses unaccountably fling themselves open to the unspeakable and unspoken mystery of the world.
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
The Poet: Donald Justice, “The Evening of the Mind”
“The Evening of the Mind”
“Now comes the evening of the mind.
Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood;
Here is the shadow moving down the page
Where you sit reading by the garden wall.
Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises,
Shudder and droop. Your know their voices now,
Faintly the martyred peaches crying out
Your name, the name nobody knows but you.
It is the aura and the coming on.
It is the thing descending, circling, here.
And now it puts a claw out and you take it.
Thankfully in your lap you take it, so.
You said you would not go away again,
You did not want to go away - and yet,
It is as if you stood out on the dock
Watching a little boat drift out
Beyond the sawgrass shallows, the dead fish…
And you were in it, skimming past old snags,
Beyond, beyond, under a brazen sky
As soundless as a gong before it’s struck-
Suspended how? – and now they strike it, now
The ether dream of five-years-old repeats, repeats,
And you must wake again to your own blood
And empty spaces in the throat.”
- Donald Justice
"Somehow..."
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: 'The ways we miss our lives are life. '"
- Richard Ford
"The Nuclear Election"
"The Nuclear Election"
by Jeff Thomas
"On sixth August 1945, the US dropped the world’s first nuclear weapon on Japan. Not surprisingly, the devastation that it caused changed the way the US looked at its power in the world. That perception has never changed since. For Americans, though they may not know it yet, the 2020 presidential election will be an atomic bomb of sorts.
It will purposely be designed to be a close race and the stage is being set to ensure that, whoever the losers are, they will be hopping mad – convinced that the other side rigged the election. Both Democrats and Republicans have been pre-conditioned to believe that this is the big one – the one that will decide whether the US is controlled by Good or Evil.
Roughly half the population is now convinced, courtesy of the polarizing media, that the sitting president is pure evil and that they’re doomed if he is re-elected. And the other half of the population is convinced that the challengers are evil and will doom the country if elected. What’s being overlooked by each side in this quandary is that they’re both correct. The US is doomed to a socio-economic crisis, regardless of the outcome of the election.
But why should this be? Admittedly, all is not well, but surely this can be remedied? Well, unfortunately, no. In 1971, the US went off the gold standard, which had ensured that the dollar was actual money. Once it was only paper, with no gold backing, the dollar was merely a promise – no more. As long as other countries were prepared to treat the dollar as real money, the ruse could continue. And that’s just what occurred. For decades, the US printed more and more dollars, which allowed a spoiled US to operate far beyond what was economically reasonable.
But this edifice was without a foundation. Sooner or later, a building without a foundation will most certainly come tumbling down, and the higher it is built, the greater the devastation when it does fall. Today, the US debt is beyond any possible redemption. A collapse is, if anything, overdue, and when it comes, it will arguably be the greatest crash in history.
The fallout will be devastating. What remains of the middle class will be largely destroyed. This does not appear to be understood by most Americans, but it’s clear that, at this point, they feel in their gut that something is dramatically wrong, even if they can’t put their finger on it.
And the media’s handling of the upcoming election plays directly into that fear. Liberal voters are being programmed to not only disapprove of conservative voters, but to literally hate them. And conservative voters are being programmed to hate liberal voters. America is now at the point that families can no longer get together for the holidays without heated arguments ensuing between those of differing party loyalties.
In the run-up to the election, we shall see increased tensions, which will be played out on the evening news – media hosts vilifying the opposing party in the strongest possible terms – plus, on the city streets, violence and destruction that’s steadily escalating.
But despite all the unrest, I contend that we are now living in the quiet time. At present, each half of the electorate vainly hopes that the opposing bogeyman will be defeated and all will be right with the world. This will not happen. The stage has already been set for the electorate to believe that ballot box fraud will take place. Each side is accusing the other well in advance of election day. More than in the 2016 election, the entire population is being prepared to be enraged over whatever the outcome will be.
It matters little which cardboard cut-out of a candidate is elected. Come fourth November, we can expect to see televised reports that there have been numerous errors in the voting. Each side will accuse the other of stuffing the ballot boxes, mailing in false votes and improper vote-counting at the polling stations. In every state, the accusations will be rife – and they’ll be aimed at each party by the opposing party.
Far from resolving itself through a recount, or whatever other method is employed, this issue will prove impossible to resolve. The supporters of each party will claim that they are the true victors. Regardless of which party is declared the final "winner," the anger will not subside. The winners will gloat and the losers will rise up to a new level of fury. It will be after that that the real chaos is likely to begin.
But is this not mere conjecture? A fanciful "What if?" Unfortunately, no. This is much the same as a "planned demolition." The US economy is on the cusp of a government-created economic crash, and whenever governments find themselves facing a crisis of their own creation, the standard procedure is to create a distraction, so that the blame does not fall on them.
In a case where the crisis is a major one, a major distraction is needed. Above all, the people must be made to blame each other rather than blame the government itself. When an entire people realize that their government has destroyed their lives, they tend to rebel against the government. Therefore, the government must create as much hatred within the populace as possible – ideally a 50/50 hatred in which the two opposing sides are as close to equal as possible. This would ensure that each side will be committed to the notion that, unless they maximize their ire, they’re in danger of becoming the losers.
The warnings are already in place and are escalating. The president has warned many times, publicly, that he will not accept an electoral defeat, stating that, if necessary, he will place police at polling stations. Likewise, his opponents have made claims that the president plans to keep his opponents from voting, even to the extent of removing mailboxes so that mail-in voting cannot be done. In case this warning does not generate the necessary anger, the president’s opponent in the last election has issued a strong statement that her party must be just as aggressive in maximizing their position as the president and his party.
Surely, this will be a heady election season, but the real furor will begin after the election. As unlikely as it may seem, what we are presently viewing is the calm before the storm. This is no accident. The reader may wish to ponder whether the powers that be are pursuing a larger agenda – a change in US governance, ushered in by a divisive nuclear election. Disturbing economic, political, and social trends are already in motion and now accelerating at breathtaking speed."
"The Prelude to World War II: The Spanish Civil War and Today's America"
"The Prelude to World War II:
The Spanish Civil War and Today's America"
by Ammo.com
Past Is Prologue
Excerpt: "America is definitely not Europe, but we can find a number of parallels between European history and contemporary America. For example, we’ve previously written about the "Italian Years of Lead" as a possible template for urban unrest and low-level inter-tribal warfare in the United States. Another example of how things might play out in the United States is the Spanish Civil War.
The Spanish Civil War is known to historians, amateur and professional alike, as the “dress rehearsal for the Second World War.” It is so termed because it pitted one side – which was equipped, armed and funded by Europe’s fascist regimes (Germany and Italy) – against a government largely funded and propped up by the Soviet Union. However, it is worth noting that General Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces were not themselves fascist (though there were fascists within their ranks) and that Spain remained neutral during the Second World War, later becoming a close ally of the United States in the fight against Communism internationally.
While there are few perfect analogs to be found anywhere in world history, there are parallels between the contemporary domestic political situation in the United States and the period immediately before and during the Spanish Civil War. And while the situation in the United States might play out in a much similar way to the Spanish Civil War, it is worth noting that our previous Civil War was the bloodiest in human history. There is little doubt that a Second American Civil War would not be significantly more destructive."
• Prologue: The Situation in Spain Prior to the Civil War
• The Coup d’Etat of July 1936
• The Spanish Red Terror
• A Spanish White Terror?
• The Course of the War
•The Relevance of the Spanish Civil War Today
Please view this complete article here:
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After the last 8 months and all that's happened, and is happening,
don't even dare to say, "Oh! That could never happen here!"
- CP
"For The Most Part..."
“Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.”
- Michael Crichton, “The Lost World”
"When to Fix the Roof"
"When to Fix the Roof"
By Bill Bonner
"Now is not the time to worry about shrinking
the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet."
– Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, September 14, 2020
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "If not now, when? If not us, who? When is the right time to fix the leaking roof? The sun was shining in 2017 when Mr. Mnuchin joined the White House team as Secretary of the Treasury. Then, unemployment was low… and U.S. GDP had been growing for eight years straight.
At this point in the cycle, Keynesian theory tells us that the prudent thing to do is to run a budget surplus and pay down your debt. That is the essence of contra-cyclical policy; as if taken directly from the Old Testament, it seeks to flatten out the booms and busts by running deficits in the lean years and surpluses in the fat years.
Exact Opposite: Instead, the deficit for the 2017 financial year was $665 billion (inherited from the Obama team). In other words, the feds were doing the exact opposite of what Joseph recommended to Pharaoh and what Keynes recommended to policymakers. They were exaggerating the trend, not moderating it. In 2018, when the Trump team was fully in charge, unemployment went even lower. The boss said the skies had never been clearer. But instead of taking advantage of the good weather to repair their balance sheet, the feds cut taxes… and the deficit rose to $779 billion. And in 2019… it still didn’t rain. What a gift! But nobody got up on the roof. And the deficit rose to almost $1 trillion.
Time to Normalize: The gist of the following words is that the feds will never fix the damned roof. This house will fall down first. Here’s how… During those 10 sunny years from 2009-2019, instead of fixing the leaks in federal finances, Mr. Mnuchin and his predecessors punched more holes. You’ll recall that by 2015, the Federal Reserve was getting out its ladder and strapping on the tool belts. Since 2009, it had maintained that its zero interest rate and vast bond-buying scheme were “emergency measures.” The emergency over, it was now time to “normalize” its policies.
Big Mistake: But when Mr. Trump arrived, he fiercely opposed any attempt at normalization. He saw, correctly, that “normal” was a thing of the past. He wanted abnormally low rates and more printing-press money from the Fed to keep the “recovery” going. By then, it was obvious that the whole shebang was in trouble. The crisis of 2008-2009 had been followed by the most aggressive money-printing campaign in U.S. history – in which the Fed added $3.6 trillion to its balance sheet. But this produced the weakest recovery in history.
A thoughtful person might have wondered, “How come? What’s wrong with this money-printing scam?” But neither the Eccles Building (Federal Reserve headquarters) nor the White House is a safe place for thinking people. They are now places for action figures – cartoonish characters, who take action without thinking.
In 2017 and early 2018, Mr. Trump repeatedly insisted that it was a big mistake to try to “normalize” interest rates or reduce the Fed’s balance sheet. He and Mr. Mnuchin hoped to extend the boom further – at least through the 2020 election. But the Fed continued its timid baby steps up the ladder toward “normalization”… until October 2018. Then, with the federal funds rate barely above the official inflation rate… under pressure from the Trump team… and with a 3,000-point sell-off in the Dow… the Fed decided to climb down. It never got close to normal.
Four months later, the stock market crashed… the feds shut down large parts of the economy… GDP fell 32% in the second quarter… and the Fed cut rates back down to zero, and then went on another money-printing spree.
Stormy Weather: And now what? Now, there are clouds everywhere – cumulus, cirrus, and an occasional killer funnel, too. We saw on Friday that nearly 100,000 businesses have closed their doors – permanently. As for jobs… millions have been lost. Eleven million? Thirty million? The numbers are fishy.
But if these jobs come back at the same rate that they did after the crisis of 2008-2009 – 1.6 million per year, on average, over five years – it will take until 2027… or to 2038, if we base our calculations on the 30 million figure… to get them back. Most likely, many are gone for good. An economy evolves. It finds new ways of doing business. It needs new skills… new businesses… new people. The old ones are left behind… each one with a cloud over his head.
Hot Market: “It’s amazing what’s happening out here,” said friends calling from Deer Valley, Utah. “People are buying houses sight unseen. The realtors say they’ve never seen such a hot market. Everybody wants to get away from the big cities. They’re coming in from California… New York… Baltimore…” Wealthy people are enjoying their new digs. The rest are standing in lines waiting for handouts from the government. Or, they’re waiting for the helicopters.
In 2019, U.S. GDP was $21.7 trillion. This year, the Federal Open Market Committee says the final tally will be about 6.5% less. Rents are not being collected. Mortgages are not being paid. There are still some 30 million Americans on unemployment… and 44 million with student loans totaling $1.5 trillion. Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren now propose forgiving $50,000 of student loans per person… (This must make students who didn’t borrow really feel good!)
No Chance: The clouds are not going away any time soon. And no matter who is in the White House, he is not going to get out on the slippery roof any time soon, either. Heck, he might get struck by lightning! 8 million people lost their jobs in the crisis of 2008-2009. And while the economy recovered over the following decade, the feds never had the brains or guts to return monetary policy to “normal.” This time, as many as 50 million people signed up for unemployment benefits. And there is almost no chance – in the next 10 years, anyway – that deficits will be reduced and interest rates will be normalized.
No Trust: So, the money-printing goes on… And it inevitably leads where it always leads – to a drop in the value of the money itself. And then, people will look for alternatives. Traditionally, in the “sh*thole” countries and banana republics, they found it readily – in the U.S. dollar. But what happens when you can’t trust the greenback either? That is what we will look at tomorrow…"
"I Have Accepted The Fact..."
"One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless. I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke Gods blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side."
"There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. "
- Henry Miller
“Now Is the Time of Monsters”
“Now Is the Time of Monsters”
by Jeff Thomas
“In ancient Rome, interregnum was the term given to the period between stable governments when anything untoward might occur, and sometimes did – civil unrest, warfare between warlords, power vacuums and, finally, succession wars. But eventually the dust would settle and the victors, whoever they might be, would at some point restabilize the empire, often with a new map, showing the latest lines of geographic possession.
In 1929, the Italian Antonio Gramsci was in a fascist prison, writing about what he considered to be a new interregnum – a Europe that was tearing itself apart. He anticipated civil unrest, war between nations and repeated changes in the lines of geographic possession. At that time, he was attributed as saying, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”
And, of course, looking back from our vantage point in the twenty-first century, we have no difficulty in confirming that he was correct in his prognosis. The world war that followed brought forward the worst traits in mankind. The sociopaths of the world came centre-stage. By the time the dust had settled, tens of millions were dead.
What we do have difficulty with is recognizing that the same pattern is again with us. National leaders and their advisors are spoiling for war, building up weaponry, creating senseless proxy wars in other nations’ backyards and playing a dangerous game of “chicken” with other major powers. This will not end well. It never does. Once the shoving-match has begun, it only escalates. At some point, whether it’s the false-flag assassination of an Archduke, as in World War I, or the false flag invasion of Germany by Poland, as in World War II, we can always count on some excuse being created to justify diving headlong into war.
It’s also true that, when empires get into economic trouble that’s too far gone for any viable solution, a trick that’s always employed by political leaders to keep the citizens from removing them from their seats of power, is to start a war. A people will, if they believe their homeland is in peril, accept the “temporary” removal of their freedoms. Even in the United States, the famed “Land of the Free,” political leaders have routinely imprisoned dissidents in times of warfare. People tend to get behind their leaders in wartime, no matter how undeserved that loyalty might be.
And so, now is the time of monsters, as Mr. Gramsci rightly stated. A time of uncertainty, when countries are in turmoil and would-be leaders are jostling for power with existing leaders. An interregnum.
Troubled times tend to bring out all the crazies – all the sociopathic-types that would find it hard to succeed in stable, prosperous times. In such times, the average person becomes worried that things are not going to turn out well. That’s perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, most people lack both the imagination and the courage to cope with how the times are impacting their lives. They instead rely on others to provide a torch that might help them escape from the darkness. Not surprising then, that every snake-oil salesman in town sees an opportunity to offer big promises – promises that he has neither the ability nor the inclination to fulfill.
At such times, the people of a country tend to become polarized, placing their faith in one political party or another, hoping that their party will “make the bad stuff go away.” In the US we see, on the liberal side, promises for “free health care for all,” a guaranteed basic income, housing for those who cannot afford it, and an endless stream of promises that, if the government were to implement them all, they will not be able to pay for them, even with 100% taxation from those who presently pay tax.
On the conservative side, we see promises such as “Make America Great Again,” with tax rebates that do not rejuvenate the economy, breaks for firms that have expatriated, but do not fool them into returning, claims to cut budgets, only to increase them, and promises to eliminate debt, only to expand it.
We see presidential elections in which one of the two leading candidates is a textbook narcissist, whilst the other displays all the traits of senility. And we see a waitress elected to Congress by a substantial margin, raised to the status of heroine merely for promising all things to all people, whilst offering no plan as to how that might come about. Record numbers of candidates pour into the political arena, seeking a last grab at power prior to systemic failure.
To be fair, the US is by no means alone in delivering incapable people with nonsensical solutions to the higher offices. In the UK, each leading party states emphatically that a hard Brexit would be a disaster, yet neither party can come up with a working alternative. What they can do, as in America, is point fingers and shout invectives at each other.
In France, riots have become a weekend staple, whilst the disconnected president essentially says, “Let them eat cake,” serving only to create further fury on the street. To be sure, the problem begins at the top. But it doesn’t end there. It sifts down to the proletariat, who, unable to come up with constructive solutions, create their own monsters, trashing the shops and burning the cars of people who had no hand in creating the problem.
But surely this is just a one-off phase, in which the best and brightest are temporarily pushed offstage, but will soon return, yes? Well, unfortunately, no. Historically, a period such as this one is followed by one of increased madness. Historically, the next step is societal breakdown. Riots, secessions and revolutions become commonplace, accompanied by economic collapse.
Out of these events come the worst monsters of all. It’s in the wake of such developments that the people of any country then turn away from those that made the empty promises and toward those who promise revenge against an ill-defined group who are characterized as having caused the problems. That’s when the Robespierres, the Lenins, the Hitlers – the greatest monsters – are swept into power. They invariably deliver the same message – that they’ll seek out the aristocracy, the gentry, the patricians, and strip them of their positions and possessions.
Invariably the way that this shakes out is not that the average man rises up, taking his “fair share” of the spoils. Instead, the leaders take the spoils and the proletariat are reduced to an equality of poverty. Our friend Mr. Gramsci found himself imprisoned by Benito Mussolini and died from illnesses incurred in prison. Unfortunately, his approach was to complain, but remain, as his country deteriorated around him. This proved, for him, to be the worst of choices. And, so it is today.”
"The Many Ways Our Brains Are Broken"
"The Many Ways Our Brains Are Broken"
by Mark Manson
"Each week, I send you three potentially life-changing ideas to help you become a slightly less awful human being. This week, we’re talking about: 1) cognitive biases and how they can make you an asshole; 2) that new Netflix documentary about social media; and 3) how people are mostly the same, even if we never realize it. Let’s get into it.
1. The many broken ways of the brain - A couple of months ago, in response to the rising protests for racial justice, I spent much of that week’s newsletter discussing cognitive biases and how they distort the way we see the world. I spent a few paragraphs going over some of the major biases that seemed relevant to reading news: negativity bias, confirmation bias, impact bias, recency bias, etc. That newsletter ended up being one of the most popular and shared emails since this newsletter’s inception. In the couple months since then, I’ve been meaning to write a more thorough article about cognitive biases but never got around to it… until now.
Read: "The Cognitive Biases that Make Us All Terrible People" (or read it in the iOS app)
For those who don’t know, cognitive biases are basically inherent “flaws” in our psychology—they're the predictable ways we misjudge situations, filter information incorrectly, or jump to irrational conclusions about people or events. We all have them. We all succumb to them. And it’s only in understanding them that we can develop the self-awareness to guard ourselves against them. Therefore, I’ve come to believe that they are one of the most important subjects to get out into the world right now. So, please read the article. Coming to grips with these biases is crucial if we’re going to survive the age of social media clickbait without killing each other… maybe literally…
2. The Netflix Dilemma - A few weeks ago, Netflix released a new documentary called "The Social Dilemma" that has since taken the internet by storm. About two dozen readers have emailed me since it came out wanting to hear my opinion on it. I finally got around to watching it this past week and I have a few thoughts.
The main thesis of the documentary is nothing new or surprising at this point: that social media presents a lot of challenges and threats to the social order and Big Tech has not been held accountable. The documentary employs the “throw everything at the wall and see if something sticks” strategy of airing grievances about fake news, political polarization, mass surveillance, anxiety and depression, creepy advertisers, and so on.
I should start out by saying that I agree with the intent of the documentary — there are risks to social media, many of which we are just starting to understand. This is something I started writing about back in 2013. I then continued to write about it in 2014, 2016, 2017 (twice), 2019, as well as the beginning of this year. Social media and its effects also gets quite a bit of treatment in my book "Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope."
So this is not a new subject for me. I bring this up simply to say that in the years I have been studying this issue, I have learned that this is a far more nuanced subject than most of the treatment critics give it.
For example, despite all of the kvetching about social media making people more anxious or depressed, the most solid research we have shows that it does not make people more anxious or depressed (the exception here might be teenage girls.) After all, anxiety, depression, and suicide have been increasing for decades. So has political polarization. So has mass surveillance. Fake news was a thing as far back as the 1800s. And while fake news may travel faster on social media than real news, evidence suggests that, by and large, most people who read and share these stories don’t actually believe them. They’re just trying to score points for their ideological team. None of this is to say that social media doesn’t have problems. It certainly does. It’s just to say that, as always, it’s complicated.
So, on the one hand, I’m glad a documentary is out there bringing these questions to more people. We do need to be aware of these issues and, as I’ve argued for years now, we need to take a proactive approach to how we use technology. On the other hand, Netflix has become the master of producing documentaries with a hysterical, “sky is falling!” tone to them. And this documentary was no different.
Speaking of which, while watching, it was impossible to ignore a brutal irony: Here I am, on Netflix, watching a 90-minute documentary about how addictive these algorithms are by big tech companies, how they steal our time and feed us disinformation and give us skewed perceptions of the world, how the companies are so big and powerful no one can keep them accountable — Wow, Netflix, tell me more!
3. Everyone is the same in that they hate those who are too different - But let’s try to end on a positive note. Let’s talk about the truths that are right in front of us, but we seem to be perpetually unable to see them.
A reader passed along a cool study he found a couple of weeks ago. Whereas most studies attempt to calculate the differences between populations, this study decided to take a massive dataset and calculate the similarities between the populations. The study took a large international survey of 86,272 people and categorized them by age, gender, education, nationality, education, and religion. The survey asked them all questions to gauge their values around 22 different topics (trust in science, the importance of education, morality, etc.)
The researchers then cross-analyzed the data in every way they could to determine which groups of people around the world are the most similar and dissimilar. In all, they ran over 168,000 comparisons and found that, on average, people’s values were 93.3% the same. Of all of the comparisons, only 0.66% of them produced results where populations were more dissimilar in their values than they were similar.
Basically: the vast majority of the time, in the vast majority of circumstances, people are the same. They want the same things. They value the same things. They see things in the same way. Anyone who has traveled extensively to other cultures has probably noticed this themselves.
Yet, why do we focus so much on our differences? If we’re basically the same 93% of the time, why do we have so much war and bigotry and prejudice and anger over the other 7%? It makes no sense. Freud called this phenomenon “the narcissism of the slight difference.” He argued—long before we understood what cognitive biases were—that the small differences between us are magnified in our minds and thus drown out our similarities. We take our common humanity for granted and instead obsess over subtle divergences in culture and character as if they are world-ending.
And I think this is what is driving the social problems that social media gets blamed so much for: The internet takes the narcissism of the slight difference and multiplies it a thousand times before you can get out of bed in the morning. Our minds are already primed to loathe any dissimilarities we spot between ourselves and others. The internet simply gives us millions and millions more dissimilarities to spot.
As I put it in an article six years ago, reflecting back on my years traveling across the world: “Humans are by and large the same with the same needs, the same values, the same desires... and the same awful biases that pit them haplessly against each other.” Until next week,"
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Also by Mark Manson:
“5 Tips to Get Out of Your Own Head and Free Your Mind”
“5 Tips to Get Out of Your Own Head and Free Your Mind”
by Joe Mirelli
“Editor’s Note: Today we are taking a step back from politics to motivate a different kind of freedom. The base of a free society is free individuals, confident in their abilities, and secure in pursuing their happiness. Joe Mirelli is a passionate musician and creative writer from the UK. Previously, he worked in various engineering organizations and 9-5 ‘dead end’ jobs until he realized– if he really wanted to be happy, he must free himself from this way of living. When participating in an apprenticeship in Mechanical Engineering, he was once ‘reassured’ that in years to come he would be on a great wage in the factory. Forget the ‘great wage’, nothing scared Joe more than the idea of still being in that environment in ‘years to come’. Not that engineering cannot be great, of course it can. But he knew he was destined for something different. Since 2013 he has been following his dreams and pursuing his passions as a Musician, Creative Writer, and Visionary. You can find examples of his musical work on his website JoeMirelli.com.”
“How do you define freedom? Sit back for a second and ponder it.
Freedom.
What do you think?
There are many aspects to achieving true freedom. Most importantly and where to start is freedom of the mind. We must first free our minds from the shackles that society has kept us in. At birth, we are a blank canvas. We have no knowledge of school or college. We know absolutely nothing about the money we must give to various governments when we start earning money. At that point in our lives, we know nothing. Ignorance is bliss as they say. From then on, however, things change. We learn to walk and talk, to eat, to laugh, to cry. Before we know it, we are being bundled off into an unknown environment and left by our parents with many other confused, crying and crazy characters. School.
1. Choose Your Course, Don’t Let Others Dictate: We pick up various habits and characteristics throughout our school journey. The education system seems to neglect crucial life skills, for example, the importance of following our passions and focusing on the things we love to do.
One of the flaws in the public education system is that the mindset acquired through this method of learning is far from free thinking. It prevents us from reaching our true potential. To reach optimum creativity we must be in an unchained environment. We must have the freedom to think and create without restriction. Public school systems support the standard: work hard, take few risks, get a good job, slave away for years, retire, and die.
Once you step out of the rat race mentality you realize how important it is to reject that programming. Nowadays, the pupils are treated as statistics based on how they perform on tests. The most effective ways of learning have slipped down the drain. The fun and willingness involved with passionate creativity are minimal.
How can you force somebody to do something well, if they have no interest in the outcome? With students valued only as ‘percentage of grades achieved,’ the pressure imposed on the administration by the government, the teachers by the administration, and the pupils by the teachers is ridiculous. Does that sound like efficient learning to you? The goals and incentives are all wrong.
Surely, a real key to feeling freedom is to be actively involved and passionate about something in our lives. It gives us a sense of purpose and encourages us to improve ourselves. Finding and pursuing our passions can really ignite our happiness levels and the people around you will notice. Energies are powerful!
2. Be Careful Who Influences You: To free the mind further, you could evaluate the company that you keep. As the motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” meaning we pick up traits and habits from them. This can be great! On the other hand, it might not be so beneficial.
Aim to spend time with people you can build with, people who are in a place where you would love to be. If you want to become successful at something, spend time with people who are succeeding at the same thing you wish to. Yes, some things are easier said than done, but where there’s a will, there’s a way! Send that email. Call them. Approach them in the street and say hello! Start building a relationship. Network! At least take the first step, however small. Remember – life really does begin at the other side of your comfort zone.
3. Exercise: Exercise is a major part of accessing mental and physical freedom. It is proven to reduce risk of illness, to increase confidence, it increases mental clarity, reduces stress and depression and the list goes on. Gym memberships cost money, but exercise is free. Walk, jog or a bike if you don’t know where to begin. Get out into nature! Just be as active as possible – the benefits are incredible. Try and exercise in some way at least three times per week, but ideally, every day. Habit helps.
4. The Law of Attraction: Have you heard of an exciting subject called ‘The Law Of Attraction’? As the Greek philosopher Plato noted, ‘like attracts like’ meaning that whatever you are feeling at any given moment you are attracting more of. Simply put, if you feel happy, you are on a positive vibration, (good vibes) attracting more positive experiences to yourself. If you’re sad, guess what? The same applies.
It almost sounds ‘magical’, doesn’t it? But it actually makes sense when you think about it. Being in a positive mindset means you are more likely to connect with others, and notice opportunities. Networking by meeting others and showing interest in what they are doing has an uncanny way of bringing the people we need into our lives. But again, it isn’t magic. It is being in the mindset to notice paths forward, instead of focusing on the negatives.
Studies in areas such as neuroscience, psychology and philosophy show masses of evidence proving it exists. Scientists at the Welcome Trust Centre at the Institute of Neurology in London discovered that people who visualize a better future have much more chance of creating it. That doesn’t mean you can achieve only by visualizing. It is just a good place to start. And it really isn’t all that different from having a plan.
A great introduction to the Law of Attraction is a book called “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne. Byrne takes the reader on her own journey whilst explaining the law alongside talented and successful individuals, such as Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Admittedly, it can seem very surreal at first glance. Applying it increases confidence, instills self-belief and fuels motivation. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe you can achieve something, so you work harder toward achieving it.
5. Believe in Yourself: If you think you can’t do something, you are right. There is no point in being negative about things. Even when you fail, learn the lesson, but don’t dwell on it. Successful people are successful because they moved on after their first, second, or tenth failure. Self-belief is a huge key to unlocking the door to freedom. And while it is great to consider others’ opinions, don’t let people drag you down from trying to achieve.
Look at some of the most successful people in the world – the likes of Sir Richard Branson, Eminem, Steve Jobs. All of these people have had to undergo hardships and leap over ridiculous obstacles to reach ‘the top’. Virtually nobody believed in them at first, apart from themselves.
Did losing his hearing stop Beethoven from creating beautiful musical masterpieces? Thankfully, it didn’t. Did being told there was “no place in modern music for three guitarists and a drummer” stop The Beatles? Nope. Did being turned down one thousand and nine times before finding a taker for his chicken recipe prevent Colonel Sanders and the creation of KFC?! If you’re a chicken lover, you definitely know the answer! Practice self-belief as much as possible and you’ll see massively positive improvements in your life.”
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