Full screen recommended.
Josh Groban, "You Are Loved (Don't Give Up)"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, December 31, 2021
"The U.S. Is a Powder Keg"
"The U.S. Is a Powder Keg"
by Brian Maher
"Inflation is soaring, economic growth is slowing, and the nation is bitterly divided politically between Red and Blue. It is further divided over vaccine mandates. Blue State America favors mandates, Red State America opposes them. There appears to be little middle ground of national consensus, for good or ill. And Americans are rapidly losing faith in the institutions that have held this diverse country together. Add it all up and the U.S. is a “powder keg,” argues Jeffrey Tucker today. Read on."
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The U.S. Is A Powder Keg
By Jeffrey Tucker
"I don’t shop at high-end stores with philosophies. I go for el cheapo places that don’t have olive bars and don’t play Schubert on the intercom. I just want the stuff I need at the lowest possible prices. So, I was stunned at the 40% increase in my usual bill I recently received at the cheap place. I thought I was buying in a minimalist way.
Later I looked more carefully at what went wrong. I bought beef and bacon. Beef price increases are now at double-digit rates, and bacon is even higher. You are paying much more per pound than one year ago. Pork and chicken are less, but that could change. Turkeys were in short supply for Thanksgiving. It was the most expensive Thanksgiving meal in our lifetimes. Christmas dinner was no better for most Americans.
Stores don’t tag groceries based on the percentage increases in prices. Those you have to remember from last week and last month. Indeed, stores have every reason to disguise this. Manufacturers too, which is why packaging these days is holding ever less product. This is called “shrinkflation.” It is an epidemic right now, as manufacturers are struggling to survive huge increases in their own costs.
Biggest Inflation Spike in Over 30 Years: We’re currently seeing the biggest inflation spike in over 30 years. Even the Fed has dropped the term “transitory.” And inflation is probably even worse than the official figures show. Meanwhile, the Producer Price Index reveals that the year-over-year change in the index for construction materials has been up almost 20%. And have you looked at gasoline prices? Hopefully not.
Most important here are the monetary effects. All the money that the Fed sloshed up in the last 20 months reduces the value of money or what it can buy. This inflation will never hit all products and all sectors evenly. It moves from sector to sector. But these days the toxin is moving so fast and in so many directions it makes one’s head spin.
Not So Thrifty: We keep hoping each month to get good news. Perhaps the Fed will prove correct that inflation is only transitory. Sadly, that is not likely. They have been way off in their predictions. The Producer Price Index is the one to watch because these price increases get passed on to consumer prices as inventory is depleted.
Clothing is a case in point. We’ve already been facing high prices and shortages on the shelves. This is driving people to the thrift stores. The major headlines are starting to show this. Thrift store prices too are on the increase, as I predicted two months ago. The percent change in the producer prices that go into making polyester clothing is now up something like 25%.
Even if monetary policy is fixed, even if supply chains are repaired, even if the clogs at the dock are unclogged, it will be months before this figures into consumer prices. Sadly, there is almost no chance that any of these good changes happen, meaning that these higher and higher prices are here to stay.
A Broken State: As I’ve mentioned before, there is something about American political culture that is especially averse to inflation. People frankly hate it, especially since we’ve lived 40-plus years without consumer inflation being a particularly pressing problem. Now looking at price trends creates shock and even hatred. It is hitting the Biden administration particularly hard. Biden’s approval rating is absolutely tanking. His approval ratings are historically bad. We can speculate why. Inflation plays a role. But also the vaccine mandate seems to have hit the Biden approval rating very hard. His Tuesday speech did nothing to change perceptions.
In the coming month, millions of jobs could be affected by this. The protests are growing in every city, and the people protesting are union members, city employees and even tech workers. They are furious that the government would presume the right to tell people what medicines they must inject into their bodies, especially when triple-vaxxed people are coming down with the omicron variant.
Think of what they’re saying: The government wants to punish the unvaccinated, even though the triple-vaxxed are still catching the virus. They say the vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalized or die, but data from around the world indicates that the omicron variant is pretty much benign, even for the unvaxxed. For most, it amounts to a mild cold.
But politicians are once again looking to lock down society, based on a minimal threat. You have to wonder why. The good news is that we still have a vestige of federalism in this country, unlike most European nations. The courts have ruled that many of these vaccine mandates are unconstitutional. The administration continues to fight back, of course. But individual state governments are a bulwark against federal overreach.
Yet the Biden administration has gone completely lawless, not just ignoring the U.S. Constitution but also advocating that businesses ignore the courts. That’s dangerously close to announcing that we now live with dictatorship. It’s no wonder that even Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is talking about secession from the union. If he is saying this, I truly cannot imagine the kind of anger there is among the citizens.
If you wanted to live in exciting times, you chose a great time to be alive. The conditions are ripe not only for continuing electoral bloodbaths but more street protests, explosive town halls, hate-filled school board meetings and much worse. A more divisive and destructive policy is hard to imagine.
Sadly, these policies are dividing friends and family. Some people with vaccinations don’t see the big deal here. Just get the jab, they say, and then you can be free. Others find this idea to be outrageous, an immoral acquiescence to power that can only lead to even worse outcomes.
Powder Keg: Yet many politicians and their bureaucratic lackeys continue to push the vaccines that most everyone knows by now have failed to live up to their promise. Indeed, if the vaccines were as good and safe as they say, the government wouldn't need to mandate them. The mandates, ironically, undermine public confidence. It’s hard to imagine that public confidence in everything could fall further, but it will. To top it off, making all the above much worse, they’re mandating vaccines for the kids. You want revolution in this country? This is a good way to foment one.
The U.S. has become a powder keg. Only time will tell if it blows."
"Beware of New IRS Income Reporting - Thieves Now Have to Report Income"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 12/31/21:
"Beware of New IRS Income Reporting -
Thieves Now Have to Report Income"
"The IRS has just issued some unbelievable recording requirements for 2021 tax returns. Even criminals have to report their ill gotten gains. Whether you are with a smash and grab crew or do other nefarious things you are responsible to report your income."
Celente and Mannarino, "2022 Stock Market Forecast"
Celente and Mannarino, "2022 Stock Market Forecast"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"In the heart of the Rosette Nebula lies a bright open cluster of stars that lights up the nebula. The stars of NGC 2244 formed from the surrounding gas only a few million years ago. The featured image using multiple exposures and very specific colors of Sulfur (shaded red), Hydrogen (green), and Oxygen (blue), captures the central region in tremendous detail.
A hot wind of particles streams away from the cluster stars and contributes to an already complex menagerie of gas and dust filaments while slowly evacuating the cluster center. The Rosette Nebula's center measures about 50 light-years across, lies about 5,200 light-years away, and is visible with binoculars towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros)."
Chet Raymo, “The Sound And Fury”
“The Sound And Fury”
by Chet Raymo
“Not so long ago, I mentioned here Himmler and Heydrich, two of Hitler's most terrible henchmen. A friend said to me: "If there's no afterlife, no heaven or hell, then those two diabolical creatures got away with it. Their fate was no different than that of any one of their victims, an innocent child perhaps." And, yes, if there is no God who dispenses final justice, then we are left with an aching feeling of irresolution, of virtue unrewarded, of vice unpunished. Heydrich was gunned down by partisan assassins, and Himmler committed suicide a few hours before his inevitable capture, both fates arguably less tragic than that of their victims. How much more satisfying to think that the two mass murderers will spend an eternity in hell, while their victims find bliss.
This may not be a logically consistent argument for the existence of God, but it is certainly compelling. My friend says: "If there's no afterlife, then it's all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Of course, this emotive argument for the existence of God is balanced by another argument against his existence – the problem of evil: How can a just and loving God allow the existence of a Himmler or Heydrich in the first place. Here the argument is not just emotional, but consists of a thorny contradiction.
It comes down, essentially, to head vs. heart - what we would like to be true with all of our heart, vs. what our head tells us is an unresolvable conundrum. So each of us decides: To follow our hearts and make the blind leap of faith, or to follow our heads and learn to live with the sound and the fury. For those of us who choose the second alternative, the relevant words are that distressing coda, "signifying nothing." Our task is one of signification, of finding a satisfying meaning this side of the grave.
For many of us, that means finding our place in the great cosmic unfolding, and of recognizing that our lives are not inconsequential, that by being here we jigger the trajectory of the universe in some way, no matter how small, and preferably for the good and just. Yes, we make a leap of faith too, I suppose- that love, justice, and creativity are virtues worth living for- but at least it is a leap of faith that is not into the unknown, does not embody logical contradiction, and is consistent with what we know to be true, or at least as true as we can make it.”
"I Rescued A Human Today..."
"I Rescued A Human Today..."
"Her eyes met mine as she walked down the corridor peering apprehensively into the kennels. I felt her need instantly and knew I had to help her. I wagged my tail, not too exuberantly, so she wouldn’t be afraid. As she stopped at my kennel I blocked her view from a little accident I had in the back of my cage. I didn’t want her to know that I hadn’t been walked today. Sometimes the overworked shelter keepers get too busy and I didn’t want her to think poorly of them.
As she read my kennel card I hoped that she wouldn’t feel sad about my past. I only have the future to look forward to and want to make a difference in someone’s life.
She got down on her knees and made little kissy sounds at me. I shoved my shoulder and side of my head up against the bars to comfort her. Gentle fingertips caressed my neck; she was desperate for companionship. A tear fell down her cheek and I raised my paw to assure her that all would be well. Soon my kennel door opened and her smile was so bright that I instantly jumped into her arms.
I would promise to keep her safe. I would promise to always be by her side. I would promise to do everything I could to see that radiant smile and sparkle in her eyes.
I was so fortunate that she came down my corridor. So many more are out there who haven’t walked the corridors. So many more to be saved. At least I could save one. I rescued a human today.”
"This World..."
"This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle;
wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it."
- Thomas Carlyle
The Poet: Fernando Pessoa, “I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”
“I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”
“I don’t know if the stars rule the world,
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything.
I don’t know if the rolling of dice
Can lead to any conclusion.
But I also don’t know
If anything is attained
By living the way most people do.
Yes, I don’t know
If I should believe in this daily rising sun
Whose authenticity no one can guarantee me,
Or if it would be better (because better or more convenient)
To believe in some other sun,
One that shines even at night,
Some profound incandescence of things,
Surpassing my understanding.
For now...
(Let’s take it slow)
For now
I have an absolutely secure grip on the stair-rail,
I secure it with my hand –
This rail that doesn’t belong to me
And that I lean on as I ascend...
Yes... I ascend...
I ascend to this:
I don’t know if the stars rule the world.”
- Fernando Pessoa
"Insane..."
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be
insane by those who could not hear the music.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Biden’s Staring into the Abyss - And So Are We"
"Biden’s Staring into the Abyss - And So Are We"
by Pat Buchanan
“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson. “And sore must be the storm/That could abash the little Bird/That kept so many warm.” Staring ahead on New Year’s Eve, at what appear to be the coming storms of 2022, this once-hopeful country is going to have to fall back on its reserves.
What storms? Suddenly, the omicron variant of the coronavirus is sweeping the nation, shutting schools, shops, restaurants and bars that were only lately reopened. In this last week of 2021, new infections twice set records. Is a fifth wave of the pandemic arriving, just two years after the first wave hit in March 2020?
What is hopeful here? While the numbers of infected are exploding and deaths are rising anew, the omicron variant appears to be less severe and less lethal than the delta variant — and possibly less enduring. From the medical community one hears the hope that the omicron variant could displace the delta and, as has happened in South Africa, burn itself out. Still, if the present rate of infections and deaths continues, we could have a virus-related million American deaths by spring.
A second storm is economic, with inflation now running at 6.8%, the highest rate since the last days of Jimmy Carter and first days of Ronald Reagan. Should this trend continue, inflation could be crushing to President Joe Biden’s party and presidency next November. And, according to Thursday’s Washington Post, that may be what is coming: “Strong consumer demand, continuing supply chain troubles and the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus threaten to prolong sharply rising prices well into 2022, potentially making inflation the premier economic challenge of the new year.” As for U.S. economic growth, forecasts for the first quarter of 2022 are being cut back from 5.2% to 2.2%.
Nor does the world look any more tranquil from this vantage point. In the second week of January, U.S. talks with Russia begin, probably in Geneva, on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand for assurances that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO and no U.S. offensive weapons be stationed in a border nation from which they can be used to attack Russia with only minutes notice. The hopeful news: Putin reportedly ordered 10,000 of the 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border back to their bases deeper in Russia. Still, it is hard to believe Putin is bluffing when he says that if Ukraine is invited to become a full member of NATO, Russia will see to it that the consummation never comes to pass.
As for China, there is no sign it is backing off from any of its territorial demands — on its Himalayan border with India, with half a dozen rival nations in the South and East China seas, or with Taiwan. Probably the best we can hope for in the simmering Taiwan crisis is that China will put off its insistence on annexation of the island of 24 million while it digests the lately free city of Hong Kong.
Negotiation with Iran on a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal appears to be nearing the fish-or-cut-bait moment. Should the talks collapse without Iran’s return to the restrictions of the deal, we will, early in the new year, hear more animated talk of “other options” and “Plan B” — synonyms for U.S. attacks on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.
Hovering over all of the above is the gnawing and growing concern among the American people about the physical and mental capacities of their president. A month ago, a Politico poll found that while 46% of Americans believe Biden is mentally fit for his office, 48% disagree. In the same poll, only about one-half of all Americans felt Biden was “in good health.”
All that talk of a few months back of Biden being a statesman of superior competence, perhaps a second Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson, has died out. Yet the maladies and crises the country confronts from inflation, China, Russia, Iran, the explosion of shootings and murders in major cities, and our bleeding border are not Biden’s alone; they are America’s. They are ours. If Joe Biden fails, the country does not succeed.
Yet, since mid-August, an average of national polls has shown Biden to be slipping underwater and sinking deeper. His disapproval rating is now 10 points higher than his approval rating, which sits in the low 40s.
What does the future hold? The latest news brought to 23 the number of House Democrats who are retiring or looking for another position rather than running for reelection in 2022. Yet, to regain the House majority, the GOP needs a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member chamber. Most pundits believe the Democrats will lose the House and, if they do, the U.S. government will grind to gridlock for the next two years. Not exactly a formula for the restoration of a lost national unity or purpose."
"Forecast 2022 - Dumpster Fire Blazing on the Frontier of a Dark Age"
"Forecast 2022 - Dumpster Fire
Blazing on the Frontier of a Dark Age"
by Jim Kunstler
"If 2021 was the year of maximum corruption, political decadence, and mind-f**kery in US history, 2022 is looking like a convulsive snap-back to the harrowing rigors of reality, spiked with shocking losses, reckonings, and not a little retribution for the rogues and reprobates who drove our country into a ditch. Quandaries abound now in the wreckage of economy, culture, and polity. The years of anything-goes-and-nothing-matters have ended — though you might not know it yet, at this very advent of Twenty-Double-Deuce. Welcome to the banquet of consequences. Soup’s on!
The American people have been played backwards and forwards, inside and out, through and through, and up and down; driven to the very edge of national suicide by a combine of enemies within and without. If China’s CCP wanted to take maximum advantage of a weakened, confused USA, they couldn’t have found more zealous help-mates than the seditious Democratic Party, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s treasonous public health empire, the murderous pharmaceutical companies, the recklessly dishonest news media, and a demonic host of federal agencies, especially the three-stooge “Intel Community” — the CIA (Moe), DOJ (Larry), FBI (Curley) — plus the many secret horror chambers in the Pentagon. Throw in the Big Tech tyrants, the Marxist mandarins on campus, and the satanic narcissists of Hollywood. Oh, and let’s not forget the evil principality of grift and swindling that is Wall Street.
We still don’t know exactly what role the CCP and its Peoples’ Liberation Army played in the origins of Covid-19, and we don’t know because the US government doesn’t want us to know — because they had a role in it — and the news media won’t lift a finger to find out, either, because they are the propaganda arm of the regime in power. We do know an awful lot about the operations of Dr. Fauci and his colleagues in funding the development of the virus in Wuhan for the purpose of introducing a wildly profitable set of “vaccines” which, if anything, prolonged and exacerbated the pandemic, and harmed or killed millions all over the world.
We also know that this same set of players in public health and Big Pharma gamed the clinical trials that preceded the emergency use authorizations that loosed the “vaccines” on the people, and that they deliberately obstructed and suppressed proven treatments with inexpensive off-patent drugs that would have saved many hundreds of thousands of lives if they had been allowed within so-called standards-of-practice that rule medicine these days. The same gang fudged their statistical reporting wherever possible, especially by failing to fix the kludgy CDC VAERS website for listing adverse reactions to the “vaccines,” but also in creating conditions that made it impossible to discern actual Covid deaths from “vaccine” deaths, and deaths either caused by co-morbidities or extraneous occurrences such as highway accidents or gunshot killings.
In 2021, a mountain of evidence was accumulated about all this criminal mischief, capped by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s massive book about Dr. Fauci’s unholy career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a virtual prosecution manual, meticulously annotated, that will be used in countless lawsuits against Dr. Fauci, his colleagues who outlive him, and the many agencies and NGOs — and perhaps in actual criminal trials of these very well-known perps.
This is where things stand at the turning of the new year 2022. Who doesn’t want to know where this historic game goes from here? A lot of story-lines are changing and quickly. It’s obvious that the “Joe Biden” admin wants to run the pandemic for at least one more year, most particularly to keep in place the “emergency” mail-in ballot scam that perverted the 2020 election. But more than half the country is onto that con and I predict that we’ll see more rigorous voting rules and regs in place — or, if those reforms meet resistance, a battle so fierce over them that the elections may not even take place on schedule.
Just now, too many Americans are already fed up with being pushed around by public officials supposedly for their own good. They see through the evils of the Covid-19 racket. They’ve watched the rape of the public interest. They understand that the “vaccines” were a disastrous experiment run lawlessly. They’ve witnessed the harms done to themselves and their loved ones. They’re appalled at the hijacking of science by people as scientifically profane as the necromancers, astrologasters, and inquisitors of yore.
They won’t submit to any more lockdowns, to any more attempts to interfere with and destroy small business. They’ve had enough of the race-and-gender hustles that have disordered society, ruined cities that were already struggling, traduced the basic principle of public safety, and forced people to play pretend around obvious psychopathology and depravity. They are not going to play along anymore. They are going to resist and fight — in the city councils, in the school boards, in the courts, and on battlefields, if it comes to that.
Ol’ Man Pandemic: He just kept rollin’ along. The weaker but more infectious Omicron variant of coronavirus currently ripping through global populations looks like a signal that the end of this vicious melodrama is in sight. Let’s predict that the actual disease phase of Covid-19 burns itself out by spring at the latest, unless malign actors have more lab-grown monsters they can release into the general population whenever they feel like it. But the demonically-installed harms built into the vaccines will keep killing and disabling people for a long time to come.
We know that the spike proteins have been clinically observed lurking in human bodies as much as fifteen months after a shot of mRNA, and that they induce a lot of damage to blood vessels, organs, and immune systems. We’re just coming into the first anniversary of the vaccines — not to mention that millions have gotten additional shots and then boosters right up to this week — so those harmful spike proteins will be working their hoodoo all of 2022 and beyond.
As the Thai-German doctor Sucharit Bhakdi warned recently, the compromised immune systems of the vaxxed may provoke a large-scale revival of age-old killer diseases like tuberculosis that are ever-present in small amounts in our bodies and usually suppressed. The people of Asia and Africa are particularly susceptible because public sanitation and clean water there is sketchier. The vaccines are also said to provoke the expression of lurking cancers, especially among those in remission from illness. The residual mortality from the vaccines may end up being greater than the deaths from the virus itself.
In the background of all that lurks that ominous prediction made by the Deagle military analysis company several years ago that estimated the population of the USA would crash to 99-million in 2025 — down from over 330-million now. Deagle never even explained that, and they took down the web page last year when their alarming forecast suddenly started looking plausible. Just sayin’.
Any way you cut it, the Covid-19 episode will thunder through the lives of many millions of people, especially in the nations of Western Civ, which has taken the hardest hits in terms of self-destructive government policy. The pandemic has accelerated the collapse of industrial economies, a process I call the long emergency, and eventually it will end up affecting all nations, even if the West happens to go down first. Societies will be propelled through a period of disorder, surely longer and more difficult in some places than others, depending on local resources. The destination of this journey is a place where the human project is run at much lower scale and pitch than we have gotten used to in our time, with far fewer “modern” comforts and conveniences, and shocking losses in knowledge and applied science. It won’t be the first time this has happened in human history, but the wreckage will be much greater.
Economy, Finance, and Money: Our economy is hitched to our energy resources. The business model for providing fossil fuels to the global economy is broken in many ways, and therefore the business model of a high-tech industrial production economy is also broken. The shale oil industry was launched on a high tide of near-zero financing and over a decade since then it produced an enormous quantity of oil (though less-than first-rate, short on heavy distillates such as diesel and heating oil). In the process, shale oil producers proved they could not make any money on these very expensive operations, and we now enter a period of capital scarcity that will make it harder for them to attract new investment and continue performing. Besides that, they are exhausting the “sweet spots” for drilling and fracking.
What’s left after you subtract shale oil are the conventional fields that were in steep decline in 2008 when the shale campaign got underway. In 2022, expect US oil production to fall below 9,000 barrels a day. We consume just under 20-million barrels-a-day, and import the difference. You would have every reason to expect that a more disorderly world scene may interfere with our pool imports in 2022. Expect consumption to drop too, as economic activity weakens. Let’s predict consumption will fall to 15-million barrels-a-day. The oil markets will therefore be disorderly, with price oscillation as shortages and demand destruction push and pull each other. Remember the basic equation: oil over $75-a-barrel weakens economies; oil under $75-a-barrel crushes oil companies.
The wish persists that we can run the complex systems of modern life on alternative energy sources, but that wish is just not panning out. The realization that this is so will spread through western civ in 2022 and create more anxiety, more disordered thinking, cultish behavior, and breakdown of social norms. For now, the public arena is entirely occupied by the mass formation psychosis that first erupted around Donald Trump and then shifted to Covid-19. The stresses and tension of these demoralizing dynamics may lead in 2022 to the outbreak of political violence that will make it even harder to reach consensus on a way through our economic quandaries.
Let’s agree to compress our recent economic history, since I’ve rehearsed it many times in weekly blogs at Clusterf**k Nation: We replaced our on-the-ground goods manufacturing activities with so-called financialization, essentially the manufacture of debt — borrowing from the future to run our complex systems today, to compensate for the losses accrued by our broken energy business model. It was all a swindle, since you can’t create prosperity with the sheer management of instruments purporting to represent wealth if there is no real production of material wealth behind it. Debt is not wealth. You can play games with it in financial markets, buy and sell it, manipulate interest rates and prices to give the appearance of things functioning. But that only goes so far — specifically to the point where reality overcomes artifice, and that’s where we are now. Substituting debt for wealth introduced perversities into the economy. Now you can’t tell the real value of anything — “price discovery” is disabled — and that bleeds into socio-economic behavior, too. Now, many business activities, including the supposedly self-consciously ethical fields of higher-ed and medicine, have become dreadful rackets, which is to say efforts to make money dishonestly. We can’t pretend that all this okay anymore. We’re left with a gigantic edifice of debt that will never be paid back and a whole lot of bad behavior that is corroding our humanity.
After two decades of papering over our inability to pay for running our society, the Federal Reserve has finally achieved old-school inflation — the destruction of money itself — not just the pumping up of share prices, their specialty for so many years. They kept inflation at bay all that time by exporting it to other countries who sent us real stuff in exchange for our paper promises: treasury bills, notes, bonds. Covid lockdowns and the destruction of business finally killed that longstanding equilibrium and then growing ill feeling between the US and China starting killing supply chains. Now, globalism is on the ropes and with it our ability to export US treasury paper. All the “helicopter money” flushed into the system during Covid now chases goods that have a tougher journey to their points-of-sale. Parts of machines, cars, and many other things become hard to get. Prices go up. Systems break down and their failures ramify in other systems.
With inflation running officially around 8 percent, and unofficially more like 15 percent, the real interest rate on a ten-year treasury bond is the nominal 1.49 percent minus between 8 and 15 percent, a deeply negative number. Owning that paper is a dead loss. If the rate of inflation continues merely apace of 2021 in 2022, the loss will steepen. If inflation continues greater than apace of 2021, treasury paper will be like so many smallpox blankets on the global bond market and America will be verging on Weimar-style runaway inflation. We won’t be able to offer any more bonds in return for stuff. The Fed will have to eat them. We’ll be importing inflation, the prices of goods will keep going up. America is in a hole of our own digging. What can be done?
The Fed has two choices, both of them unpromising. 1) “Tightening.” By measured increments, the Fed quits QE, (quantitative easing, buying bonds, a.k.a. “monetizing debt”) not just US treasury paper, but also corporate bonds, and mortgage-backed securities. They move to raise interest rates to above par with real inflation rates to give people back the old reality-based incentive for buying bonds in the first place, which is a reliable stream of interest greater than inflation. The last time inflation threatened America, 1981, Fed Chairman Paul Volker jacked up fed fund (short-term) rates to 20 percent, which put the schnitz on borrowing for a time, caused a recession, but got-er done. The catch is, the national debt and the balance sheet of the Fed were minuscule then compared to the incomprehensible trillions on-board now. And there was still a lot of actual productive industry left in the country.
An end to quantitative easing combined with raising interest rates would recalibrate markets to equilibrium — which is to say, crash them, because the end of near-zero interest would mean no more using leverage (borrowed money) to buy stocks, which are wildly overvalued after years and years of these shenanigans. The bid on stocks would end. Not enough buyers to meet sellers. Markets go down. That prompts more selling… a rush to the exits… look out below….
Tightening would crash the value of bonds, too, because bond value has an inverse relationship to interest rates — as they rise, the tradable price of bonds goes down. So, bond-holders would take a bath. Tightening actually makes money disappear — phhhtttt! — because it causes defaults (people not paying off their debts). In our system, money is loaned into existence and welshed-on loans sends money out of existence. People and corporations go broke. Higher interest rates also will make corporations default on their bond payments. Without access to more debt, many big companies may have to shut down, go out of business, perhaps forever. Government, buried under massive debt, would choke on higher interest payments. As money goes out of existence, capital becomes scarce and small business, which desperately depends on revolving credit, goes broke. The net effect of all this damage in financial markets is of deep economic depression, in this case, the long emergency case, probably a depression that becomes permanent since the basis of this particular high-energy economy, the oil industry, collapses along with everything else.
The Federal Reserve’s choice number 2) is: Don’t tighten. Rather, continue to print money like crazy, maybe even more than before, and keep trying to suppress interest rates. Keep buying bonds, notes, whatever debt paper the system pukes up. This is just the tired old scheme called kicking the can further down the road. The problem is, we’re at the end of the road. Old-school inflation had already kicked off in 2021 from two decades of QE, which was then greatly aggravated by the massive government spending to mitigate Covid. There’s no more jiggering with bond-buying and finagling the interest rates, and playing hide-the-salami with bank reserves, and stashing money in “special purpose vehicles” and other banking hidey-holes that will avail to keep things stable and happy. From here on, printing money like crazy only destroys the value of our money. You’ll have plenty of money, only it’ll get more worthless by the day — which is just another way of going broke.
Then, as the dollar purchases less and less stuff, dollars held overseas get dumped in exchange for whatever stuff is on offer: ores, grain, finished products, US real estate, precious metals, other less-damaged currencies, what-have-you. Better to own things of actual value than dollars that are fast-losing their purchasing power. Foreigners dump US treasury bonds, too, since inflation destroys their value. As foreigners do this, the dollars return home to the US provoking yet more inflation. Before long, America is awash in dollars and short on goods that you can buy with those dollars. You’re rich in dollars yet broke at the same time.
The outcome in both cases is substantially the same: the standard-of-living in America goes way down. What I predict for 2022 is that the Federal Reserve will embark on a much-heralded tightening program — and then abandon it at the first sign of trouble, the inevitable stock market downturn. Then the Fed will be back to buying our own debt paper and attempting to stuff interest rates back down, if they can, which may not be possible anymore. The Fed soon loses all control over American money. They may try to retire “old” dollars and replace them with “new” dollars backed by something, gold and silver being the obvious candidates. That will lead to a severe upward re-pricing of both metals. Let’s predict gold at $5,000 and silver at $200 by the end of 2022.
There may be a half-assed attempt to establish some kind of official US digital currency (this has been rumored for years.) The experiment will fail. Americans will resist being herded into that corral where their every financial transaction is traceable, taxable, and punishable. They will have learned their lesson about that from the Covid-19 tyrannies. They are sick of being pushed around. They no longer trust the authorities in money, government, medicine, or anything else. Anyway, as a practical matter, too many Americans operate on the fringes of the system already and depend on cash for doing all their business. Many of these are what’s called “un-banked.” They cannot participate in computerized payment systems. They will remain outside the digi-loop doing business with silver, gold, or various kinds of stuff. They’ll operate like 14th century Venetians.
I kind of doubt Bitcoin and its imitators will survive a whole lot longer after the financial system is forced to recalibrate to reality. They have thrived solely as targets of speculation. The block-chain is very clever, but ultimately Bitcoin and its ilk represent… nothing… no-thing(s). They attracted a lot of money that was just sloshing around the system during the years of artificial pseudo-prosperity, and that’s over. Anyway, they depend utterly on a stable Internet and electric grid to function and you’d be surprised at the fragility lurking in both those systems. Early 2022 may be your last chance to get out of Bitcoin with anything to show for your adventures in it.
Politics and Society: The mass formation psychosis described by Mattias Desmet of the University of Ghent is behind much of what we’ve been seeing in US politics for some years now. It was apparently triggered by the election of Donald Trump. But it seems to me the syndrome was groomed and cultivated by America’s “deep state” security, surveillance, and intelligence apparatus for decades before. Liberal Democrats didn’t have to go batshit crazy over Trump. Rather, they were manipulated into it by the deep state’s agents in the major media, starting with the preposterous RussiaGate collusion psy-op and extending through four years of nefarious schemes to disable and oust Mr. Trump. Though portrayed as the arch-enemy of the pets and pet projects of the Left — identity Marxism, open borders — as president, Mr. Trump was really much more a threat to the deep state itself, and to its matrix of wealth, power, and privilege, and they pulled out all the stops except assassination to shove him off the game-board.
His perseverance and resilience in the face of all that, was remarkable. But in the end, his enemies engineered an election marinated in various flavors of fraud, and managed to get rid of the Golden Golem of Greatness. How “Joe Biden,” the empty husk of a grifting, ward-heeling pol, came to be nominated by the Democratic Party is one of the abiding mysteries of modern times. His victory in the Super Tuesday primary, which cinched the nomination for him, was surely rigged by the DNC. His campaign, from start to finish, was a sham of hiding from the public. If the voters had been allowed to see the material on his son, Hunter, and the slime-trail of bribes recorded in hundreds of emails, contracts, and other documents on the “laptop from Hell,” “Joe Biden” would be in federal prison rather than the White House. But Facebook, Twitter, and Google conspired to censor all mention of that, and the people never got the news. So, now what?
Well, moving into the early winter of 2022, Americans are discovering just how badly they have been played on Covid-19, and how badly “Joe Biden” & Co. have handled economic matters and other things, like the daily invasion across the Mexican border, and how poorly “JB” & Co. have managed our foreign relations — the Afghan withdrawal fiasco, etc — and generally what a pathetic a figure “JB” presents to the world… and all this is looking like the ghost dance of the Democratic Party. Let’s predict the party will not survive the 2022 midterm elections intact as a coherent political faction.
I’ll give 70/30 odds that “Joe Biden” steps aside “for health reasons” well before the midterm election. He’s falling apart before our eyes. He can barely utter a comprehensible sentence. He embarrasses himself and the country every day. His poll numbers are in the sub-basement…. So, okay, he basically takes a dive and retires from the scene. Kamala Harris is sworn in. President Harris nominates Barack Obama as vice-president. Say, what…!
Mr. Obama is back in charge — like, was he ever not in charge since Jan 20, 2021, really? — going so far as to brazenly occupy the Oval Office as Veep for daily business — consigning Ms. Harris to a broom closet. Democrats clamor for Ms. Harris to resign and officially hand the reins to Mr. Obama. (Presidents are limited to two elected terms in office, but the constitution does not stipulate such a circumstantial appointment to office.) Kamala graciously steps aside. For the sake of “unity” and gender balance, Mr. Obama nominates Liz Cheney as the new vice-president. That’s one possible scenario. Rewrite that play with Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama. The Democrats are going to have to try some desperate move to retain power.
Even so, it’s hard to imagine any circumstances in which the Democratic Party retains effective control of the government. In the event that the midterm election is actually held, let’s predict Republicans regain majority control of the House and Senate, with many new faces of the MAGA persuasion among them. The Dems hopes and dreams for transformative change get flushed down the toilet. Government at the national level becomes impotent, ineffectual, unable to discharge its duties or manage anything — all this predicted explicitly, by the way, in The Long Emergency (Grove-Atlantic, 2005). Will our foreign adversaries take advantage of the situation? Can the fifty states manage their affairs without subsidies from Washington DC? Governors had better be planning for strange times.
The political right has been careful and cautious since the debacle of the January 6, 2021 march on the Capitol building. The poor boobs cajoled by FBI plants to break into the joint have been treated abominably by their government, and probably extra-legally. But mainly, the Jan. 6th caper put a damper on any more right-wing street action during “Joe Biden’s” year in office. That may change in 2022. The mood of politically-motivated people on either side of the spectrum has got to be aggravated by the tanking economy. And as the year rolls on, it will just be hungry, angry Americans of all sorts raising hell because they don’t know what else to do.
All the anxiety driving the mass formation psychosis that had first focused on Trump, and then on Covid-19 (and the unvaccinated), may now finally shift its energy at the actual source of our woes and sorrows: the DC establishment. The decline and fall of Covid-19 is going to leave a big hole in the nation’s anxious, wasted soul, and it will have to be filled with something. We’re thrust into a scene that resembles Civil War, but it becomes harder and harder to determine who is on what side, or what the sides even are — or as Mick Jagger famously hollered at Altamont CA in. ’69, “Who’s foit-ing an’ whut faw?” It’s sheer clusterf**k. Murphy’s Law meets Zombieland during "Seven Days in May."
Geopolitics: Gawd, who knows…? The Russians are sorely pissed because thirty years ago after the Soviet system clocked out, and eventually Vlad Putin tried to paste some kind of functioning nation back together out of the debris, we promised them in plain talk to not expand NATO, and then, year after year, we proceeded to add more countries to NATO including former Soviet Republics hedging right up to Russia’s border. Then, the US under Mr. Obama ran the “color revolution” in Ukraine, attempting to strong-arm that pathetic punching bag of a state to come over to our side… and having done that, we’re now threatening to bring them into NATO, meaning we would like to station rockets and perhaps troops and all kinds of other military stuff on what has been the doormat for every attempted invasion of Russia in modern history. Are you surprised that Russia has drawn a line in the sand there?
One can’t have a whole lot of confidence in Anthony Blinken’s State Department or in General Milley’s Woked-up, transsexual army that calling Russia’s bluff on this might work out well for the USA. Considering how economically weak we are now, how tragically disunited we are, how pussified and squishy we’ve become, maybe starting a war over Ukraine isn’t such a hot idea. One can only hope.
On the other side is China, Uncle Xi’s re-born Middle Kingdom, with gleaming skyscrapers, dazzling new airports and highways, the fabulous social credit system for controlling her huge population Orwell-style. China has a lot going for her, but what’s going against her isn’t so obvious, starting with the fact that she’s hurting for long-term fossil fuel supplies. China just doesn’t have that much oil or natgas, and she’s using ever-lower quality coal to drive her industry. Her oil imports have to travel through two global choke-points, the Straits of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. In short, despite China’s great strides moving from the twelfth century into dazzling modernity, she might stumble on the energy quandary — like all the other “advanced” nations.
It’s no secret that under the ambitious Marxist emperor Xi Jinping, China wants to occupy the World Hegemon role that America is struggling not to abandon. Hegemon-ship usually requires geographical expansion. We’re certainly concerned about a takeover of Taiwan, which is, effectively, America’s offshore microchip facility. China could conceivably gain control over Taiwan by a thousand tiny steps without firing a shot — as the CCP has infiltrated US politics, media, and education — or by force, if only to make a theatrical point, but why invite the possibility of a nuclear exchange?
China has been adventuring in many remote parts of the world for years without drawing much international attention, buying farmland and mining sites throughout East Africa, and now she is eyeing openings in several resource-rich South American nations that recently elected friendly socialist presidents. China was awarded contracts to operate ports at both ends of the strategically important Panama Canal over twenty years ago, and Panama signed a memorandum of agreement to join China’s Belt-and-Road initiative in 2017. That got the attention of the Trump administration, which was meeting China’s expansionism with tariffs and sanctions. Mr. Trump caused several Chinese infrastructure projects for bridges, high-speed rail, and port improvements in the Canal Zone to be suspended. “Joe Biden,” a major Chinese client, is now looking the other way.
Can China actually control the unruly lands of Central Asia vital to her Belt-and-Road ambitions. For instance, Afghanistan, where China looks to establish giant mining operations, but has yet to tangle with the feisty Taliban. Let’s predict that China in 2022 is stymied in expansion and hamstrung by her energy problems. And add to that trouble in her export markets of the USA and Europe, as they begin to implode financially and the demand for Chinese manufactured goods declines.
Then there is China’s banking morass, bazillions of loans gone bad, giant businesses wobbling, and collateral in the form of a thousand skyscrapers built out of cement so inferior that it’s a miracle the buildings still stand up. How will China’s fragile banking system contend with contagion from the financial problems of the US and Europe? Let’s predict that China finds herself in enough economic difficulty that domestic disorder breaks out, the government over-reacts to it, and she becomes too paralyzed with internal political problems to make any mischief beyond her border for now.
Finally, Europe. Oh, lovely Europe, the tourist theme-park of my lifetime with its beautiful cities, tidy landscapes, its cafes, cathedrals, girls on motorbikes, its fabulous deep culture. Looks like the whole shebang is going down the chute now, with intimations of a return to 20th century political upheaval. Somehow, Covid-19 has provoked Austria and Germany to return to behavior that smells a little bit like what went on in the Hitler years. Hard to believe, I know, but look at them! Police state tactics! Forced vaccinations! Lockdowns! Harsh punishments for those who resist. It’s sickening, and looks like it’s getting entrenched.
Euroland’s economy is a mess. Its energy problems are worse than China’s. Except for Norway, with its dwindling North Sea oil fields, and some played-out coal mines, Europe has next to nothing for fossil fuels. Germany’s feckless “green” wind-and-solar project hasn’t worked out. She is more and more dependent on Russian oil and gas, and Germany’s position in NATO subjects her to the machinations of the USA against Russia, which has stymied the opening of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea. They may end up freezing this winter, and starving the following winter. The European banking system is a laughable fraud, since the EU has no control of the fiscal decisions made by member governments that issue increasingly worthless bonds. It’s going to be a rough year there with governments coming and going — stumbling as they go. Perhaps France gets a little lucky. The maverick journalist Éric Zemmour wins the election as president and spurs a revival of French national spirit. He’s still stuck with the rot in financials, but at least he bolsters the country’s morale. And unlike the Germans, France did not choose to close down its nuclear power industry, so the lights stay on there.
There you have it, ye denizens of Clusterf**k Nation. I can do no more with this. I wish you all fortitude in the twelve months ahead, and courage, and kindness, and all the good things that we are capable of. We’ll need that. There is still a lot to cherish about this country of ours, the good old USA, and I believe we’ll rediscover that in Double-deuce, along with some ability to tell ourselves the truth about things that matter and act consistently with it! Excelsior, brave hearts!"
Gregory Mannarino, "Market Crashes And Meltdowns, More Bears Showing Up To The Party"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/31/21:
"Market Crashes And Meltdowns,
More Bears Showing Up To The Party"
Gerald Celente, "Happy New Year? Yes, If You're On 'Trends!"
Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, PM 12/30/21:
"Happy New Year? Yes, If You're On 'Trends!"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/31/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/31/21"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The CV19 vax narrative continues to crumble, and it will be breaking apart at a much higher rate in 2022. The big unreported story of the week came from the mouth of Green Bay Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers who took Ivermectin, among other treatments, a few weeks ago to beat a covid infection. Rodgers spilled the beans on the “fully vaxed” NFL by saying “behind the scenes, there are many teams who are recommending the same treatments that I got for their players.” Yes, the same as in the Nobel Prize winning drug Ivermectin that has been scientifically shown to be very effective in curing CV19. I guess even the NFL is waking up to the facts that the CV19 injections just don’t work, and this is yet another example of the CV19 narrative crumbling going into 2022.
It is clear that the economy has been propped up since the 2008-2009 financial meltdown. The Fed wants to stop the easy money policies and “taper” the $120 billion it is pumping into the repo market each and every month. Is the patient well? Can it survive the Fed pulling the plug? The answer is a resounding NO on both counts, and all we need is a little recession to prove it. Inflation is now out of control, and the Fed cannot afford to tame it, especially if a recession comes. People like Elon Musk and many others are saying a downturn is coming in 2022. With the amount of astronomical debt and derivatives out there now, even a small correction could cause a full-on meltdown. Buckle up people, the Fed is flying blind.
The one other story that gets honorable mention for 2022 is the election fraud story and fixing the voting system. The mainstream media and Democrat globalists wanted this narrative to vanish in early 2021, but forget it. There are plenty of people still fighting to stop voter fraud, and the issue will boil over in 2022 just in time for the midterms. I am not saying the Democrats won’t cheat. With Biden’s record low poll numbers, they are going to be forced to cheat. I am saying it is going to be much harder because there will be no lockdowns and massive ballots printed and sent to everyone like what happened in 2020. This is one of the positive outcomes of the vax narrative imploding in 2022."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble com as he talks about
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/31/21.
"Trouble Is Coming; Another Bank Outage; Terrible Experience At DMV; Service Sector Is Dying"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 12/30/21:
"Trouble Is Coming; Another Bank Outage;
Terrible Experience At DMV; Service Sector Is Dying"
Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Stardust"
Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland, "Stardust"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"The first identified compact galaxy group, Stephan's Quintet is featured in this eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive. About 300 million light-years away, only four of these five galaxies are actually locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. The odd man out is easy to spot, though. The interacting galaxies, NGC 7319, 7318A, 7318B, and 7317 have an overall yellowish cast. They also tend to have distorted loops and tails, grown under the influence of disruptive gravitational tides. But the predominantly bluish galaxy, NGC 7320, is closer, just 40 million light-years distant, and isn't part of the interacting group.
Stephan's Quintet lies within the boundaries of the high flying constellation Pegasus. At the estimated distance of the quartet of interacting galaxies, this field of view spans about 500,000 light-years. But moving just beyond this field, up and to the right, astronomers can identify another galaxy, NGC 7320C, that is also 300 million light-years distant. Including it would bring the interacting quartet back up to quintet status."
"The Price Increases Of 2022 Will Be More Painful Than Anything We Have Experienced Before"
Full screen recommended.
"The Price Increases Of 2022 Will Be More Painful
Than Anything We Have Experienced Before"
by Epic Economist
"We're on the verge of a catastrophic economic emergency, but the vast majority of our population doesn't even know what's about to unfold. This year, much of the optimism that fueled rallies in the financial markets was based on the expectation that the health crisis would soon be over. Well, that obviously hasn't happened. In fact, the United States is facing one of the worst waves of newly confirmed virus cases ever. We all have witnessed what happened to the economy during the peak of the health crisis last year, and it seems like we're headed to many other peaks in the coming months.
The impact of this new strain is going to be tragic and potentially fatal to millions of lives. To make it worse, our economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating, so we will have to face a twofold blow. This new wave is already weighing heavily on production all over the globe, with many manufacturing economies shutting down plants to contain the spread of the virus. As a result, the shortages and delivery delays we have been experiencing are only going to intensify from now on.
At the same time, our supply chain problems are about to be severely aggravated by another series of disruptions, and it will be even more challenging to move goods around the globe in a timely manner next year, so we can start bracing for even more empty shelves and price increases.
People are paying almost double to afford the same things they used to in 2019. And if you think your bills are high right now, just wait until next month. Retailers are announcing that a fresh wave of supermarket price hikes will begin on January 1st, with several companies raising prices anywhere from 2% to 20% on a wide range of staples including pasta, condiments, soups, cookies, produce, dairy products, and meats.
According to the Wall Street Journal, some food producers will be implementing much larger price increases, such as Kraft Heinz, announcing a dramatic 20 percent increase in some of their most popular items. The price of the company’s Grey Poupon mustard, for example, will go up by 13%. Other food manufacturers including Campbell Soup and General Mills, maker of Cheerios, have also warned that they will be raising prices on their goods in January. On the same note, a major regional wholesale supplier leaked to CNN a notice that General Mills sent retailers to inform them that the price of some products is about to go up as much as 20% starting in mid-January.
All of these acute increases are certainly concerning. Many economists are getting extremely alarmed about the near-term outlook. “Inflation is outpacing increases in household income and weighing heavily on consumer confidence, which is at a decade low. It is only a matter of time before it impacts consumer spending in a material way,” explained Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst.
In addition to extreme weather, supply chain problems, and a shortage of workers, retailers noted that some of the other factors contributing to the jump in food prices are higher oil prices and companies passing on the cost of more expensive transportation. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning, and even Goldman Sachs is now warning that “the inflation overshoot will likely get worse”. Economic optimists continue to believe that policymakers at the Federal Reserve will come up with a plan to solve the crisis they created. But the Fed only has two “solutions” to any crisis.
They can either suppress interest rates even further - but they have already been pushed all the way to the floor and that doesn't seem to be working anymore, - or, they can print and pump more money into the system, as they've been doing for years. Both possibilities will only make the problem worse. In fact, these exact policies created the raging inflation nightmare we're currently in, and now they don’t even know how to put the fire out. As inflation spins out of control, millions upon millions of Americans will start to see their purchasing power collapse to the lowest level in decades.
Sadly, the Federal Reserve will continue to make the same mistakes, and the insane inflation surge we're witnessing right now is nothing more than an alarm bell for the depression we might be facing in 2022. Don't be mistaken -- we're already on the edge of a recession right now. If you thought that the outlook for 2022 was gloomy before this new virus wave, now things have gotten downright horrifying."
Gregory Mannarino, "This Is What The FED Will Do Moving Forward; Expect Inflation To Surge Much Higher"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/30/21:
"This Is What The FED Will Do Moving Forward;
Expect Inflation To Surge Much Higher"
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Lead"
"Lead"
"Here is a story to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter the loons came to our harbor and died,
one by one, of nothing we could see.
A friend told me of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one just where that is.
The next morning this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world."
- Mary Oliver
"Today Is The Day..."
"We are fast moving into something, we are fast flung into something like asteroids cast into space by the death of a planet, we the people of earth are cast into space like burning asteroids and if we wish not to disintegrate into nothingness we must begin to now hold onto only the things that matter while letting go of all that doesn't. For when all of our dust and ice deteriorates into the cosmos we will be left only with ourselves and nothing else. So if you want to be there in the end, today is the day to start holding onto your children, holding onto your loved ones; onto those who share your soul. Harbor and anchor into your heart justice, truth, courage, bravery, belief, a firm vision, a steadfast and sound mind. Be the person of meaningful and valuable thoughts. Don't look to the left, don't look to the right; we simply don't have the time. Never be afraid of fear."
- C. JoyBell C
"The Lolita Express"
"The Lolita Express"
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Gradually, painfully, slowly…the “Inflate or Die” trap grips the Fed. Here’s Doug Hoenig, former Fed governor, The Hill: "The Fed is now in a vise. Inflation is rising faster than the Fed believed it would even a few months ago, with higher prices for gas, goods and automobiles being fueled by the Fed’s unprecedented money printing programs. This comes after years of the Fed steadily pumping up the price of assets like stocks and bonds through its zero-percent interest rates and quantitative easing during and after Hoenig’s time on the FOMC. To respond to rising inflation, the Fed has signaled that it will start hiking interest rates next year. But if that happens, there is every reason to expect that it will cause stock and bond markets to fall, perhaps precipitously, or even cause a recession." “There is no painless solution,” Hoenig said in a recent interview. “It’s going to be difficult. And the longer you wait the more painful it will end up being.”
This week we are looking at the big stories of 2021 that never appeared in the newspapers… and the big questions reporters never asked. “How is the Fed going to get out of its ‘inflate or die’ trap” is probably the most important of them. We now have inflation officially at 6.8%... the highest rate in 40 years. And by the time the press gets around to asking the question, the inflation rate will probably be 50%.
If it seriously tries to fight inflation – as it did in 1980 – the stock market will crash… bonds will be wiped out… and the economy will go into a recession/depression mode. The richest 10% – who incidentally control Congress and the Fed – will lose an estimated $30 trillion. But if the Fed continues to ‘print’ money, consumer prices will go higher and higher… leading to an even bigger economic disaster, probably accompanied by social upheavals, riots, military takeover, dictatorship, or something else equally disagreeable.
Just the Facts, Ma’am! But the press no longer reports the facts or raises its hand to ask the difficult questions. Instead, it recites White House press releases… passes along the latest politically-correct claptrap… and turns away from any story that might call into question America’s deciders or their elite agenda. This morning, for example, comes news of a verdict in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. Even a casual follower of the trial story could see that there was something very fishy going on. Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sexually molesting under-aged girls, hung himself in his cell. Hmmm...
He had been taken off ‘suicide watch.’ Hmmm... His CCTV was turned off... And the guard was AWOL... Hmmm... and Hmmm...
Epstein had the best lawyers money could buy… and friends in the highest places – such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and even Bill Gates. He probably had compromising video on all of them. The press covered the case as a ‘sex trafficking’ story. But wasn’t anyone curious about where Epstein got his fortune, reported to be $500 million? Or why he was shuttling major world leaders back and forth across the Atlantic… or down to his Caribbean paradise island? What actually happened aboard his private plane - the Lolita Express? And why would Ms. Maxwell want to recruit young women for Epstein et al?
Ms. Maxwell, by the way, is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, widely believed to be an Israeli spy. When he died, Israel gave him a state funeral… at which none other than the stepfather of our current Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, recited the Kaddish. Pure coincidence!
Spy-vs-Spy: If we were a reporter, we’d be trying to connect the dots. And if we were the prosecutor we’d want some help from Bill Clinton. Flight logs show he took the Lolita Express 26 times. It was as if he were commuting to work on it. And since he has a proven history of taking advantage of young, foolish women… mightn’t he have some evidence to share… some tidbit of insight or recollection that would help the judge and jury understand what was up? How come the prosecutor didn’t call him to testify?
Oh my… another coincidence! The prosecutor is another elite insider, Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey, former head of the FBI who pushed the “Russian interference” fantasy to undermine the 2016 election results. Ms. Comey, like Ms. Maxwell, seems willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. She apparently ‘lost’ the video footage of the hallway outside Epsteins’s cell the night he had suicide committed on him. Most likely, Mr. Epstein was involved in the shady world of spy-vs-spy. And most likely he had a lot of dirt on a lot of people. Who exactly done him in, we don’t know. But neither the media nor the prosecutors have any intention of finding out.
The Affair Epstein/Maxwell is of little interest to us. We take it for granted that many US leaders are corrupt. They have their axes to grind, their secrets to hide, and their accounts to fatten. But the press’s lack of interest – in what should be a bombshell story of sex, power, intrigue, betrayal, money – just shows us how far it will go to avoid asking tough questions.
How, exactly, can the Fed fight inflation… when the whole economy… and the fortunes of the elite who control it… depend on money-printing and super-low interest rates? How, exactly, are we going to transition away from fossil fuels, when they support 7.8 billion people? Why are the feds still pushing vaccines and lockdowns when they seem to have done little good?
Curious minds want answers. But they can count on the mainstream media not to ask."