2002, "Memory of the Sky"
Full screen mode recommended.
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, October 31, 2020
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.
In both, dust reflects starlight to produce beautiful blue reflection nebulae. But unlike the Trifid, in NGC 1579 the reddish glow is not emission from clouds of glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star. Instead, the dust in NGC 1579 drastically diminishes, reddens, and scatters the light from an embedded, extremely young, massive star, itself a strong emitter of the characteristic red hydrogen alpha light."
The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"
"Courage"
"It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out."
~ Anne Sexton
“As I’ve Aged”
“As I’ve Aged”
- Author Unknown
“You ask me how it feels to grow older. I’ve learned a few things along the way, which I’ll share with you…
As I’ve aged, I’ve become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I’ve become my own friend. I don’t chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn’t need, but looks so avante-garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of many years ago, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love… I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don’t question myself anymore. I’ve even earned the right to be wrong. So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it). May our friendship never come apart especially when it’s straight from the heart!”
Free Download: George Orwell, “1984″
“What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold,
is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be
granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.”
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”
– George Orwell,
“Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel” (1949)
Freely download “1984″, by George Orwell here:
Greg Hunter, "Trump Win Offers a Way Forward After US Bankruptcy"
"Trump Win Offers a Way Forward After US Bankruptcy"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Financial writer Bill Holter and renowned gold and financial expert Jim Sinclair warn that no matter who wins this Presidential Election, the next administration will have to navigate the so-called financial reset that has already started. Holter contends, “Mathematically, our financial system is bankrupt. Can they string it along another year or two? I don’t know, but I do know if we go full blown socialism, it’s like pulling the pin on the hand grenade. It goes off right away. Everything blows up faster and harder. A lot of people are not factoring in is when this thing goes down. I hope it goes down under the rule of law. Under socialism, the rule of law is basically what they say it is. The U.S. will immediately move to a financially broken status.”
Sinclair agrees with Holter and says, “If the socialists take over, the system blows up instantaneously. The Green Revolution will have such an impact on business and put so many people out of jobs without any way to replace those jobs. It would actually be a political event and an economic sin.”
Sinclair goes on to say there will be “massive deflation” in this financial reset, and that would be good for gold. Sinclair continues, “Gold will hit entirely different prices that have never been conceived before because of all the debt. So, people think deflation when they see a market rip apart. That clicks in people’s minds that is a negative for gold. It is one of the most important ingredients to significant appreciation in the gold price. There is no comparison to this gold market now and anything we have gone through before. The potential for gold on the upside is extraordinary on the upside. There will be a form of inflation in everything that you need and will cost you more. Everything that you don’t need, like your Tesla, will fall through the floor into a black hole.”
How high can gold go considering exploding federal debt and a Federal Reserve balance sheet that doubled to more than $7 trillion in a little more than a year? Holter does the astounding and yet simple math. Holter explains, “The number is over $100,000 per ounce for gold now. If you take the 260 million ounces that we (U.S. Treasury) supposedly have and take the 260 million ounces and divide it into the current debt which is $27 trillion, it’s well over $100,000 per ounce now. In other words, if we had to back our debt in gold, the gold would have to be priced at over $100,000 per ounce.”
Sinclair offers hope and a way out of the financial mess we face. It involves a Trump Win that will preserve the Constitution and the rule of law. Sinclair explains, “We have a crash that can be built back. There is a road forward. The road forward starts to make itself clear in 2032. 2032 will be the end of the impact to what is about to happen no matter who is elected. The economic problem is quite serious. If the rule of law is respected and the police are not defunded, free speech is allowed, the Second Amendment is maintained, then there is a way forward and there is a repair. It will come back together. However, if none of those exist, it is a total social and political change irreparable in nature. In other words, if we can maintain the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution, America can and will recover. Let’s pray that happens."
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks to Bill Holter
and Jim Sinclair of JSMineset.com in this in-depth one hour interview.
“Wall St. Risk Next Week; Market Reaction; Debt Is Exploding; 401K Gamble; Spending Addiction”
Jeremiah Babe,
“Wall St. Risk Next Week; Market Reaction;
Debt Is Exploding; 401K Gamble; Spending Addiction”
"After All..."
“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.”
- Sydney J. Harris
And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…
“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably
excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”
- Sydney J. Harris
I've always wondered...
Everyone says “Only human…” compared to what?
"We Are Pawns In A Bigger Game Than We Realize"
"We Are Pawns In A Bigger Game Than We Realize"
by Chris Martenson
“I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog,
for one true inference invariably suggests others….
Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.”
~ "Sherlock Holmes", "The Adventures of Silver Blaze"
"Is it possible to make sense out of nonsense? So much these days is an incoherent mess. It’s complete nonsense.
Page 1 excitedly beams about a glorious rebound in GDP. Yay economic growth!
Page 2 worryingly notes the near complete failure of Siberian arctic ice to reform during October and that hurricane Zeta (so many storms this year we’re now into the Greek alphabet!) has made punishing landfall.
Each is a narrative. Each has its own inner logic. But they simply do not have any external coherence to each other. It’s nonsensical to be excited about rising economic growth while also concerned that each new unit of growth takes the planet further past a critical red line. These narratives are incompatible. So which one should we pick?
Well, in the end, reality always has the final say. As Guy McPherson states: "Nature bats last." So better we choose to follow the narrative that hews closest to what reality actually is, vs what we desperately want it to be.
‘They’ Don’t Care About Us: While issues like climate change and economic growth may be difficult to fully grasp and unravel, direct threats to our lives &/or livelihoods are much more concrete and something we can react to and resist. Such immediate and direct threats are now fully in play and, once again, they’re accompanied by narratives that are completely at odds with each other. I’m speaking of Covid and the ways in which our national and global managers are choosing to respond (or not). It’s a truly incoherent mess about which both social media and the increasingly irrelevant media are working quite hard to misinform us.
The mainstream narrative about Covid-19, in the West, is this:
• It’s a quite deadly and novel disease.
• There are no effective treatments. Sadly, no double-blind placebo controlled trials exist to support some of the wild claims out there about various off-patent, cheap and widely available supplements and drugs
• Health authorities care about saving lives. They care so much, in fact, that along with politicians they’ve decided to entirely shut down economies.
• There’s a huge second wave rampaging across the US and Europe and there’s nothing we can do to limit it except shut down businesses and people’s ability to travel and gather.
• You need to fear this virus and its associated disease.
• All we can do is wait for a vaccine.
The alternative narrative, one that I’ve uncovered after 9 months of almost daily research and reporting, is this:
• It’s not an especially dangerous disease and it’s certainly not novel.
• There is a huge assortment of very effective, cheap and widely-available preventatives and treatments including (but not limited to):
Vitamin D
Ivermectin
Hydroxychloroquine
Zinc
Selenium
Famotidine (Pepcid)
Melatonin
Use of a combination of these mostly OTC supplements could reasonably be expected to drop the severity of illness and the already low mortality rate by 90% or (probably) more.
• Western health authorities have shown either zero interest in the results of studies mainly conducted in poorer nations on these combination therapies or… They have actively run studies designed to fail so that these cheap, effective therapies could be dismissed or… Set up proper studies but which started late, have immensely long study periods and most likely won’t be done before a vaccine is hastily rushed through development.
By the way – every single one of my assertions and claims is backed by links and supporting documentation from scientific and clinical trials and studies. I am not conjecturing here; I am recounting the summary of ten months’ worth of inquiry. The conclusion I draw from my narrative (vs. theirs) is that we can no longer assume that the public health or saving lives has anything to do with explaining or understanding the actions of these health “managers” (I cannot bring myself to use the word authorities).
After we eliminate the impossible – which is that somehow these massive, well-funded bodies have missed month after month of accumulating evidence in support of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, NAC, zinc, selenium and doxycycline/azithromycin – what remains must be the truth.
As improbable as it seems, the only conclusion we’re left with is that the machinery of politics, money and corporate psychopathy is suppressing life saving treatments because these managers have other priorities besides public health and saving lives. This is a terribly difficult conclusion, because it means suspending so much that we hold dear. Things like the notion that people are basically good. The idea that the government generally means well. The thought that somehow when the chips are down and a crisis is afoot, good will emerge and triumph over evil. I’m sorry to say, the exact opposite of all of that has emerged as true.
Medical doctors in the UK NHS system purposely used toxic doses of hydroxychloroquine far too late in the disease cycle to be of any help simply to ‘make a point’ about hydroxychloroquine. They rather desperately wanted that drug to fail, so they made it fail. After deliberately setting their trial up for failure, they concluded: “Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help, and it even makes things worse.”
Note that in order to be able to make this claim, they had to be willing to cause harm - even to let people die. What kind of health official does that? Not one who actually has compassion, a heart, or functioning level of sympathy. It’s an awful conclusion but it’s what remains after we eliminate the impossible.
Getting Past The Emotional Toll: Science has proven that cheap, safe and significantly protective compounds exist to limit both Covid-related death and disease severity. Yet all of the main so-called health authorities in the major western countries are nearly completely ignoring, if not outright banning, these safe, cheap and effective compounds.
This is crazy-making for independent observers like me (and you) because the data is so clear. It’s irrefutable at this point. These medicines and treatments not only work, but work really, really well. However most people will be unable to absorb the data, let alone move beyond it to wrestle with the implications. Why? Because such data is belief-shattering. Absorbing this information is not an intellectual process; it’s an emotional one.
I don’t know why human nature decided to invest so much in developing a tight wall around the belief systems that control our actions and thoughts. But it has. I’m sure there was some powerful evolutionary advantage. One that’s now being hijacked daily by social media AI programs to nudge us in desired directions. One that’s being leveraged by shabby politicians, hucksters, fake gurus, and con men to steer advantage away from the populace and towards themselves.
The neural wiring of beliefs is what it is. We have to recognize that and move on. Some people will be much faster in their adjustment process than others. (Notably, the Peak Prosperity tribe is populated with many fast-adjusters, which is unsurprising given the topics we cover…tough topics tend to attract fast adjusters and repel the rest)
To move past the deeply troubling information laid out before us requires us to be willing to endure a bit of turbulence. It’s the only way. For you to navigate these troubling times safely and successfully, you’ll need to see as clearly as possible the true nature of the game actually being played. To see what the rules really are – not what you’ve been told they are, or what you wish or hope they are.
The Manipulation Underway: The data above strongly supports the conclusion that our national health managers don’t actually care about public health generally or your health specifically. If indeed true, then the beliefs preventing most people from accepting this likely include:
• Wanting to believe that people are good (a biggie for most people).
• Trust and faith in the medical system (really big).
• Faith in authority (ginormous).
There are many other operative belief systems I could also list. But this is sufficient to get the ball rolling. Picking just one, how hard would it be for someone to let go of, say, trust in the medical system? That would be pretty hard in most cases.
First not trusting the medical system might mean having to wonder if a loved one might have died unnecessarily while being treated. Or realizing that you’re now going to have to research the living daylights out of every medical decision before agreeing to it. Or worrying that your medications might be more harmful to you over the long haul than helpful (which is true in many more cases than most appreciate). It might mean having your personal heroes dinged by suspicion - perhaps even your father or mother who worked in the medical profession. It would definitely require a complete reorientation away from being able to trust anything you read in a newspaper, or see on TV, about new pharmaceutical “breakthroughs”.
Trust, which is safe and warm and comforting, then turns into skepticism; which is lonelier and insists upon active mental involvement. But, as always, hard work comes with benefits - with a healthy level of skepticism and involvement, the families of those recruited into the deadly UK RECOVERY trial could have looked at the proposed doses of HCQ (2,400 mg on day one! Toxic!) and said, “Not now, not ever!” and maybe have saved the life of their loved one.
Look at that tangled mess of undesirables that comes with unpacking that one belief: regret, uncertainty, shame, doubt, fallen idols, and vastly more additional effort. Are all up for grabs when we decide to look carefully at the actions of our national health managers during Covid. Which is why most people simply choose not to look. It’s too hard.
I get it. I have a lot of compassion for why people choose not to go down that path. It can get unpleasant in a hurry. But, just like choosing to ignore a nagging chest pain, turning away in denial has its own consequences.
The Coming ‘Great Reset’: My coverage of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and Covid-19 (the associated disease) has led me to uncover some things that have made me deeply uncomfortable about our global and national ‘managers’. Shameful things, really. Scary things in their implications for what we might reasonably expect (or not expect, more accurately) from the future.
Once we get past the shock of seeing just how patently corrupt they’ve been, we have to ask both What’s next? and What should I do? After all, you live in a system whose managers either are too dumb to understand the Vitamin D data (very unlikely) or have decided that they’d rather not promote it to the general populace for some reason. It’s a ridiculously safe vitamin with almost zero downside and virtually unlimited upside.
Either they’re colossally dumb, or this is a calculated decision. They’re not dumb. So we have to ask: What’s the calculation being performed here? It’s not public safety. It’s not your personal health. So… What is it?
This is our line of questioning and observation. It’s like the short story by Arthur Conan Doyle in Silver Blaze that many of us informally know as “the case of the dog that didn’t bark”. As the story goes, because of a missing clue – a dog who remained silent as a murder was committed – this conclusion could be drawn: the dog was already familiar with the killer!
The silence around Vitamin D alone is extremely telling. It is the pharmacological dog that did not bark. One true inference suggests others. Here, too, we can deduce from the near total silence around Vitamin D that the health managers would prefer not to talk about it. They don’t want people to know. That much is painfully clear. Such lack of promotion (let alone appropriate study) of safe, effective treatments is a thread that, if tugged, can unravel the whole rug. The silence tells us everything we need to know.
Do they want people to suffer and die? I don’t know. My belief systems certainly hope not. Perhaps the death and suffering are merely collateral damage as they pursue a different goal - money, power, politics? Simply the depressing result of a contentious election year? More than that?
We’ve now reached the jumping off point where we may well find out just how far down the rabbit hole goes. A massive grab for tighter control over the global populace is now being fast-tracked at the highest levels. Have you heard of the Great Reset yet? If not, you soon will.
In Part 2: "The Coming ‘Great Reset’" we lay out everything we know so far about the multinational proposal to transform nearly every aspect of global industry, commerce, trade, and social structure. If you read on, be ready and willing to let go of cherished beliefs and to suspend what you know to be true. Because none of us has that in hand. It’s going to be a wild ride from here. Something very big is afoot and I suspect that Covid-19 is merely an excuse providing cover for a much bigger power grab over the world’s wealth and peoples.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)."
"Danger..."
“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”
- Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”
“All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper,
and the next – who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.”
- Sophoclese, “Philoctetes”
○
Free Downloads:
A little light reading from Tolstoy…
Freely download “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, here:
Freely download “Seven Tragedies of Sophocles- Philoctetes” here:
"Hotel Industry Apocalypse Continues: 70 Percent Of Closed Hotels Will Never Reopen Again"
"Hotel Industry Apocalypse Continues:
70 Percent Of Closed Hotels Will Never Reopen Again"
by Epic Economist
"The hotel industry apocalypse is crushing down the most iconic hotels across the country. In the absence of new stimulus relief, the hotel sector is set up for failure. Dramatic declines in occupancy rates have mired hotel owners in a liquidity crisis, leaving them struggling to pay employees and afford their commercial mortgages, and now they're having to make some tough choices. In this video, we examine the hotel industry downfall and how its consequences will resonate in the US economy in the next chapters of the economic collapse.
The U.S. hotel industry, which is mostly constituted by small businesses, is on the brink of a major collapse. Four out of 10 hotel employees are still out of their jobs. The occupancy rates are at or below 50 percent in about 65 percent of all U.S. hotels while social distancing regulations continue amid another spike in viral infections, consumer travel stands at an all-time low.
Urban hotels have been particularly hit and are facing an extreme meltdown with critically low occupancies of just 38 percent, remarkably lower than the national average. That's to say, the hospitality sector has been suffering like no other, prompting massive lay-offs and considerably reducing state and local tax revenue for 2020 and beyond.
Hotel owners create millions of hotel jobs across the country, making significant investments in their communities through development projects and taxes. But when people stopped traveling, the multi-billion dollar industry started to crumble, dragging some of the most iconic business and touristic hotels with it, such as New York City’s Marriott hotels in Manhattan, Omni Berkshire Place in Midtown, the legendary Roosevelt Hotel, the 42-story Times Square Edition hotel, Hilton Westchester, and W New York Downtown.
According to a recent report, 20 percent of the state’s total hotel supply, which accounts for nearly 250,000 rooms, could be permanently closed, considering over 34 percent of them are delinquent on their debts. Analysts affirm that this is only “the tip of the iceberg”. New York is not alone, in cities like Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, hotel delinquencies are rising significantly.
Those that still have plans to reopen do not anticipate a huge spike in demand due to health safety measures that do not encourage social gatherings. In that sense, they will be unable to host conventions or large sports events, which are an essential part of their business, and aren't expected to return until at least deep into 2023.
The biggest part of the hotels' revenue relies on large conventions where the profits of banquets and. But now that home-office tendencies are rising, but the hotel occupancy figures will never come back to previous levels.
Before all 2020 events, the hotel industry was already facing mounting pressure from the growing private room and home online rental market. People have been coming back to the rental market faster than hotels. As a consequence, 67 percent of all U.S. hotels will only be able to last six more months absent any further relief, which means thousands of hotel workers will be let go.
Furthermore, unable to pay their commercial mortgages the hotel industry apocalypse is not only creating a major debt bubble inside the housing market as it is decimating the hospitality industry and severely impacting the labor market.
Experts on the field affirm the global economy cannot fully recover until the travel industry recovers, considering many communities exclusively depend on tourism to power their economies. Since Congress postponed the pass of “The HOPE Act”, which would immediately provide liquidity to the industry, many hotels won’t survive until another stimulus relief is issued, which means that the memorable hotels where you and your family once vacationed may soon not be there anymore."
"Inflation: Lessons From Last Empire's Collapse"
"Inflation: Lessons From Last Empire's Collapse"
by akrainer
"So far, the dreams of 1,000-year empires and stable world domination have eluded the ruling elites throughout history and across the globe. Empires arise, sustain themselves for a century or two and then rapidly decay and collapse. The collapse may appear relatively fast and obvious in hindsight, but in reality it spans decades, may appear as a series of temporary crises and only become obvious very late into the slow-motion train wreck.
Nonetheless, the fatal imbalances that corrode an empire’s political, economic, and social foundations do become discernible well in advance of the ultimate collapse. As a rule these imbalances emerge as consequences of too much war and too much debt. As they decay, empires always degrade their own currency in the process of extracting wealth from the population to funnel it toward the ruling oligarchy and the military. In ancient times this was done by diluting gold or silver content of the coins in circulation. In modern times, it is done through inflation of the currency.
The most recent instance of this process was the collapse of the Soviet Union through the decade of the 1980s. The Soviet Union was a global superpower counting nearly 300 million people and an empire spanning over 40% of Eurasian land mass. In addition to a large, well educated population and a broadly diversified industrial base, USSR controlled a formidable treasure trove of natural resources containing some of the world’s most abundant reserves of natural gas, oil, coal, iron ore, tin, lead, gold, silver, palladium, platinum, diamonds, timber, rare earth minerals and arable land.
In the post World War II period the USSR developed rapidly and its population even enjoyed a period of relatively high prosperity during the 1960s and 1970s. However, economic growth started to slow down in the late 1970s and from 1977 until its final collapse in August of 1991, the Soviet economy experienced an accelerating economic deterioration leading to the worst post-war economic depression.
• GDP growth: from 1979 through 1982, GDP growth slowed to about 1.4%, picked up slightly, to about 2% in 1983/84 but then declined again, dropping close to zero during most of the 1980s
• Defense spending: defense spending was overstretched at the expense of civilian production; it had grown by 50% from 1965 to 1981, from 45 billion roubles to over 80 billion, bringing the country’s defense burden to nearly 13% of the GDP.
• Constraints to growth: Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to institute reforms of the system and reignite growth were constrained, particularly on the energy front. As the demand for energy grew, cost of offsetting the declining oil production started to rise rapidly.
• Budget deficits: Soviet government spending rose a record 30 billion roubles in 1986 and another 18 billion roubles in 1987 while tax revenues grew only 5 billion roubles. This gave rise to a six-fold increase of the nation’s budget deficit from 1984 to 1987, to 7% of the GDP. CIA’s analysts expressed dismay to find that, “Moscow is essentially financing its deficits by printing money from thin air.”
• Inflation: while inflation held steady at around 2.2% during the five years from 1982 to 1987, in 1987 it shot up to 9% and continued to creep up during the remainder of the decade.
In spite of the many obvious differences between the USSR and the United States, many of these differences are in fact rather superficial while similarities and parallels may be more structural and relevant. The Soviet government was able to stave off economic collapse and hyperinflation because it had full control over the wholesale and retail prices and over central bank’s monetary policy including money supply and interest rates.
However, controlling all the levers of state power did not exempt the Soviet state from fundamental principles of economics. When price controls were finally abolished on 2nd January 1992, inflationary pressures burst through the open dam and prices of industrial and consumer goods recorded an almost immediate 500% jump. Within the year, inflation reached 2,500%. The inevitable readjustments, delayed over decades of central planning and misallocation of resources, plunged the nation into one of the deepest and longest economic depressions ever recorded.
Today, the economy of the United States is similarly mired in a profound crisis, and unresolved economic imbalances: the empire is overstretched militarily, “defense” spending and budget deficits continue to grow and are being covered by printing money out of tin air - a process that's now entirely spun out of control. While the American government doesn’t practice central planning or price controls, the Federal Reserve has effectively taken over this role by manipulating interest rates and commodity prices. As in the Soviet Union, the Fed’s meddling resulted in massive misallocation of resources spawning a large economy of zombie corporations and unicorns.
There can be little doubt that the American economy is more robust than that of the late Soviet Union. But history is clear on this: no empire, regardless how powerful at its zenith, is exempt from the laws of economics and we should expect more economic pain ahead as the empire’s foundations continue to erode. One very likely outcome of the coming crisis could be the collapse of the currency and an acceleration of inflation."
"Maybe..."
"Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be a human. Maybe, we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe, we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate. "
- "Grey's Anatomy "
“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
by Thad Beversdorf
“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,
so I’ll leave it up to you…”
“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.
When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?
We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.
We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.
But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.
But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.
But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.
Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”
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"I Am An Enemy..."
“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”
- George Bernard Shaw
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/31/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/31/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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A highly recommended "Must Read":
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Updated live.
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Daily Update (October 30th to Nov. 2nd)
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Insanity...
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And now... The End Game...
"The Government’s Greatest Trick"
"The Government’s Greatest Trick"
by Brian Maher
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. "
- Carl Sagan
"Today is Halloween. The words “trick or treat” will come issuing from millions of youths this evening. Most - we assume - will receive treats. Yet on this Halloween we reveal how the Federal Reserve has tricked the American people through the use of its currency. We begin by referring you to this $10 bank note, dated 1928:
It bears this inscription: “Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.”
In those antique days, a fellow could march into a bank, hand the clerk a slip of paper as illustrated above, and demand the denominated amount in gold coin. The system imposed a hard discipline upon banks… and held inflation in checkmate. Federal Reserve banks were required to keep a 35% reserve of “gold or lawful money" on hand, lest they make a liar of the United States Treasury secretary - in this case the Hon. Andrew William Mellon. In effect, the private citizen bound the banking system in golden handcuffs.
But one Great Depression, one New Deal and one world war later… we come now to a 1950 $10 bank note:
In appearance it is nearly a perfect twin to the 1928 model — with one infinitely telling exception. Can you sniff it out?
Recall, the 1928 note bears this inscription: “Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.” But reads the 1950 version: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank.”
The fine print disguises a vast swindle: The gold provision was stricken from the record. The bankers had slipped their golden handcuffs. No longer could a private citizen hold them to honest account. But what about “lawful money”? What is it?
In 1947, a certain gentleman - A.F. Davis by name - dispatched the following note to the United States Treasury, accompanied by a $10 note: "I am sending you herewith via registered mail one $10 Federal Reserve note. On this note is inscribed the following: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve bank." In accordance with this statement, will you send me $10.00 in lawful money?" The acting treasurer, M.E. Slindee, responded after this fashion:
"Dear Mr. Davis,
Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of Dec. 9 with enclosure of one ten-dollar ($10.) Federal Reserve note. In compliance with your request, two five-dollar United States notes are transmitted herewith."
Yet these two $5 bills bore the same pledge to redeem in lawful money. And so Mr. Slindee began chasing his tail - what the logicians call circular reasoning. What - again - is lawful money? But this Davis fellow would not be so easily shooed away. He returned one of the $5 bills, once again demanding lawful money in exchange. Finally Mr. Slindee threw up the sponge:
"Dear Mr. Davis:
You are advised that the term "lawful money" has not been defined in federal legislation. It first came to use prior to 1933 when some United States currency was not legal tender but could be held by national banking associations as lawful money reserves.
Since the act of May 12, 1933, as amended by the Joint Resolution of June 5, 1933, makes all coins and currency of the United States legal tender and the Joint Resolution of Aug. 27, 1935, provides for the exchange of United States coin or currency for other types of such coin or currency, the term "lawful money" no longer has such special significance. The $5 United States note received with your letter of Dec. 23 is returned herewith."
Beginning in 1963, all promises to redeem in lawful money were stricken from United States currency. Here, in graphic detail, the devolution of American money:
Thus the American people have been tricked. Yet it was so subtle and gradual that few were alert to the swindle. We nonetheless raise one faint cheer for paper money. In one sense it is redeemable - if you’ll forgive the expression in the present context. That is, it is tangible. A fellow can hold it in his hand, in his wallet, in his mattress. It cannot be erased at the stroke of a key. It is also anonymous. Once out of his hands, it leaves no trace. None of these happy virtues apply to digital money…
Digital money has no tangible existence. It can disappear at a keystroke. The bank can freeze you out of it. And every transaction goes upon your permanent record. Meantime... Digital money is the type of money bound to get itself into mischief.
Wispy as fog, slippery as oil, it is conjured into existence… as if by the magician’s wand. And it can get around the world at electronic speeds. It is also the ideal money for a government swollen to ghastly dimensions - its issue being unlimited in theory.
If paper money invites abuse... what about digital money? Below, Jim Rickards shows you the American people are being “herded into the digital pens” like sheep prior to slaughter. What can you do to protect yourself? Read on."
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"The Ongoing War on Cash"
By Jim Rickards
"The global elites have used negative interest rates (NIRP) to do the same thing as inflation = make your money disappear. One way to avoid negative interest rates is to go to physical cash. In order to prevent that option, the elites have launched a war on cash. Specifically, the No. 1 thing standing in the way of negative rates is cash. If citizens can go to cash, that makes it difficult to impose negative rates on digital bank accounts.
The war on cash has two main thrusts. The first is to make it difficult to obtain cash in the first place. U.S. banks, for example, will report anyone taking more than $10,000 in cash as engaging in a “suspicious activity” using Treasury Form SAR (Suspicious Activity Report). Try withdrawing $20,000 in cash from your bank and you’ll be reported to the government on a currency transaction report. That report will be put in a file right next to ISIS and the drug cartels, with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. That’s not a lot of fun.
The second thrust is to eliminate large-denomination banknotes. The U.S. got rid of its $500 note in 1969, and the $100 note has lost 85% of its purchasing power since then. If inflation gets moving again, the $100 bill will be reduced to chump change.
Why would central banks impose negative interest rates at all? What was the point of this policy? The whole idea of the war on cash is to force savers into digital bank accounts so their money can be taken from them in the form of negative interest rates. Essentially, negative interest rates are a thinly disguised tax on savers. In theory, savers will be dissatisfied with NIRP and react by spending their money. Likewise, entrepreneurs will find negative interest rates attractive because they can borrow money and pay back less to the bank.
This combination of lending and spending by consumers and entrepreneurs alike supposedly lead to consumption and investment that will stimulate the economy, especially after the famous Keynesian “multipliers” are piled on top. But this theory is junk science. The reality is the opposite of what the elite academics project. Instead of inducing savers to save less and spend more, NIRP causes savers to save more and spend less. It’s a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences.
The reason savers are saving in the first place is to achieve some future goal. It could be for retirement, children’s education or medical expenses. When negative rates are imposed, savers don’t save less; they save more in order to make up the difference and still meet their goals. The other unintended consequence of NIRP is the signal it sends. Savers rightly conclude that if central banks are using NIRP, they must be worried about deflation. In deflation, prices drop. Consumers defer spending in order to get lower prices in the future.
When abstract academic theories are applied in the real world by central bankers with no real-world experience, you get the opposite result of what’s intended. These unintended consequences have already appeared in Japan and Europe. And governments always use money laundering, drug dealing and terrorism as an excuse to keep tabs on honest citizens and deprive them of the ability to use money alternatives such as physical cash and gold.
But the so-called “cashless society” is just a Trojan horse for a system in which all financial wealth is electronic and represented digitally in the records of a small number of megabanks and asset managers. Once that is achieved, it will be easy for state power to seize and freeze the wealth, or subject it to constant surveillance, taxation and other forms of digital confiscation.
But there are also practical reasons for holding cash in a safe place outside the banking system. I’m talking paper money now. Having some cash is like having a battery and flashlights. I used to live in a place that occasionally gets hurricanes and nasty storms, so the power would go out on occasion. But no matter where you live, you want to keep some flashlight batteries around. And that means cash.
Remember, when the power’s out, nothing works. The ATMs don’t work. The gas stations don’t work, etc. It’s good to have some what we used to call in Philadelphia “walking around money.” But you can’t withdraw too much from your bank because the government won’t let you.
The point is, you might think you can get your cash, but you can’t. When you go down to the bank and actually try to, you’ll be treated like a criminal. This is of course part of the war on cash. And it’s dangerous. The American people are being led like sheep to the slaughter. They’re being herded into digital pens, which are the banks.
Most people think we have a cash system. But we really don’t. How much cash do you carry in your purse and wallet? Probably not that much. You use your debit card. You use autopay. You use your online banking account. You use your iPhone if you have Apple Pay. You use your credit card. It’s all digital. You don’t actually have that much cash, and if you try to get it, you can’t get it.
I also recommend you own physical gold and silver. For silver, you might consider a monster box. A monster box has 500 ounces of American silver eagles, one ounce each. They cost about $14,000 on the market. You should find a good dealer that doesn’t charge too much commission. But it’ll preserve your wealth. In an emergency situation, people will take it. Many people will gladly give you some groceries for a solid ounce of silver because no one trusts any other money. I also recommend real estate as part of your portfolio. It’ll still be there if there’s a storm or a power outage or your bank’s shut down.
These are some of the things I recommend before the next great crisis strikes. Today’s markets are faced with a number of potentially destabilizing shocks, from post-election chaos, to more economic lockdowns, to geopolitical instability. You don’t have to be helpless in the face of all this uncertainty. There are definitely steps you can take. I hold significant portion of my wealth in nondigital form, including real estate, fine art and precious metals in safe, nonbank storage. I strongly suggest you do the same."
Friday, October 30, 2020
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.
In both, dust reflects starlight to produce beautiful blue reflection nebulae. But unlike the Trifid, in NGC 1579 the reddish glow is not emission from clouds of glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star. Instead, the dust in NGC 1579 drastically diminishes, reddens, and scatters the light from an embedded, extremely young, massive star, itself a strong emitter of the characteristic red hydrogen alpha light."
"The Cruelest Joke Of All..."
“The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life… or end it. One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn’t right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below.”
- Sherrilyn Kenyon
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