Jeremiah Babe, 12/18/21:
"Do You Own Anything? Financial Gunslingers Will Lose;
Warning Signs Of Collapse"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind I: "Ambience Minimus"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind I: "Ambience Minimus"
"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 Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"
"I Was Never Able To Pray"
"Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.
Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.
I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves
and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night."
- Edward Hirsch
"All It Takes..."
"Not knowing you can't do something
is sometimes all it takes to do it. "
- Ally Carter
"Return of the 10 Minute Eviction - Foreclosures and Evictions are Back"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 12/18/21:
"Return of the 10 Minute Eviction - Foreclosures and Evictions are Back"
"The Rent Moratorium is over. Landlords are electing people by the hundreds. Some states are very pro landlord and people are being kicked out with just 10 minutes. Foreclosures are escalating as well."
"We Are Terribly Confused..."
"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson
"Get in Crash Positions"
"Get in Crash Positions"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Everyone with some gray in their ponytails knows the stock market has ticked every box for a bubble top, so everybody get in crash positions. Let's run through the requirements for a bubble top:
1. Retail investors (i.e., dumb money) are all in and buying the dip with absolute confidence. As the gray-ponytail traders know, there are many moving parts to the retail dumb money going all in:
• The pain of the last bubble bursting has finally faded and been replaced by greed as retail punters watch everyone else mint fortunes by buying the dip and gambling with abandon at the casino's trendy tables: crypto, NFTs, Mega-Tech, EVs, uranium, etc.
• Prudence and caution (i.e., holding cash in low-risk accounts) are thrown to the wind as the more money you put into the bet, the bigger the rewards
• Punters realize the key to the really big gains is maxing out margin and leverage, preferably by foregoing owning the underlying equity in favor of options and futures contracts
• Confidence in the Federal Reserve's godlike powers and determination to never let stocks decline more than a few percentage points over a few hours or days is off the charts
• Confidence that this is a new era and so old rules no longer apply is in the stratosphere. Retail punters believe that cryptos, NFTs and blockchain are can't-lose bets as these are A) unstoppable and B) revolutionizing finance and the economy.
As for stocks, retail traders have discovered the power of the herd: If the herd all buy call options by the thousands, this forces market makers to buy the underlying stocks, pushing the prices higher in a self-reinforcing feedback loop that is guaranteed to succeed.
• Retail investors view all these bets as extremely low risk and so there's no financial sense in hedging bets or limiting margin debt, leverage or risk, because risk has been abolished by the Fed Put.
The Smart Money:
2. Insiders (i.e., the smart money with asymmetric knowledge of what's actually going on beneath the surface PR) are selling with unprecedented enthusiasm. The gray-ponytail traders know the only way to anticipate the next trend change and benefit from this knowledge is to follow what the smart money (insiders) are doing, not saying, because they know the smart money will always talk their book, i.e., promote a confident happy story about future prospects even as they're dumping their own shares as fast as they can without crashing an increasingly precarious market.
3. Market leadership shrinks from 50 to five companies even as the majority of stocks are faltering. The absolutely classic sign of a bubble top is the indexes continue rising even as the majority of stocks stagnate or enter bear market territory with stairstep declines.
How can indexes continue marching higher if 80% of stocks are falling? Easy: big gains in a handful of mega-cap stocks. The current concentration of market-moving heft in a few mega-tech stocks is unprecedented. Last week all three market indexes - the Dow 30, S&P 500 and Nasdaq - were all led higher by one company, Apple, which added hundreds of billions of dollars in capitalization in a few days. When the market depends on a NIFTY 50 for the vast majority of its gains, it's already getting toppy, but when it's entirely dependent on a Fabulous Five for gains, then the top is in.
Suckers:
4. Short sellers give up and short interest falls to multiyear lows. The gray-ponytail traders can savor the irony: As short sellers give up and the percentage of shares sold short dwindles, the retail bulls declare victory (Ha ha, we've wiped out the shorts and bears! We won!). What the jubilant bulls don't understand is the hated short sellers were the last line of defense against a market decline gathering momentum into a crash, as shorts covering their bets by buying stocks are a reliable source of buying when greed turns to fear. Wipe out the shorts and there's nobody left to buy as stocks tumble and margin calls proliferate.
5. Buy-the-dip euphoria continues sucking in money even as market internals weaken and extremes of risk are ignored. When gamblers are putting all their capital on the table and boosting the bets with margin and leverage, the dumb money is all-in; not only do they not have any cash left, but their sky-high margin debt guarantees even a modest dip will result in margin calls and forced selling: The self-reinforcing momentum everyone assumed could only be bullish reverses into selling that begets more selling.
6. Punters are confident that the Federal Reserve will manage to tamp down inflation while keeping the stock market at a permanently high plateau. Never mind rising real rates, never mind the need to reduce monetary stimulus as the only means to take the air out of inflation — the Fed will never let stocks decline. The Fed Put is unbreakable.
How Low Can Stocks Go? And so here we are: Every box of a bubble top about to burst with unimaginable force is ticked. Traders sporting gray streaks in their ponytails know from experience that every bubble pops, and all the endless analysis after the fact boils down to: Things changed.
Nobody can fathom how low stocks can go at the eventual bottom. In a recent example, consider the price action in a marijuana-sector stock, Tilray (TLRY). Believers in the future prospects of the sector pushed the share price of TLRY to over $300. At the eventual capitulation low, shares traded hands in the $3 range - a roughly 99% decline.
History is full of examples of 80% declines, 90%, 95% and, yes, 99% declines. No one predicted the eventual capitulation low because such declines were inconceivable. Any decline could not possibly be more than three or four steps; a nightmarish fall into a chasm could not even be imagined.
And so here we are, witnessing the switch from risk-on to risk-off in real-time. Retail investors are buying every dip with gusto, margin debt is at record highs and insiders are selling quietly but furiously as they race to dump all their overvalued shares on buy-the-dip believers in the permanence of risk-on euphoria and valuations.
"Hell Is the Truth Seen Too Late": From $900 to $90 is unimaginable. Yes, it is unimaginable now, but it will become conceivable as the risk-on bubble deflates, but too late for all those who clung on to the faith that risk-on euphoria is permanent. The final redoubt of risk-on markets is the confidence that I will get out at the top. The problem with this notion is there is no top in greed and hubris, and greed and hubris are the engines of risk-on markets. So please fall carefully into the chasm.
How do I know all this? Experience. Like most participants, I learned about risk-off markets and bubble pops the hard way, falling not so carefully into the chasm. Timing is everything in a crash: As Thomas Hobbes is reputed to have observed, "Hell is the truth seen too late." Well said, T.H. When the market goes bidless, it's too late to preserve capital, never mind all those life-changing gains.
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Related:
“Mass Formation Psychosis: Understanding the Psychology Behind the COVID Pandemic"
Full screen recommended.
“Mass Formation Psychosis:
Understanding the Psychology Behind the COVID Pandemic;
Billions Of People Are Affected By This & They Don't Realize It"
"A psychological condition of society known as “mass formation psychosis” is a condition for totalitarianism. Under mass formation psychosis, a population enters a hypnotic-type trance that makes them willing to sacrifice anything, including their lives and their freedom. That’s what’s happening right now.
Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine, breaks down the "mass formation" phenomenon that makes it difficult to reason with those who have fallen victim to the globalist leader propaganda. Hear what he says is the hope we have before a total takeover."
"CDC Just Warned at That 15,000 Americans Will Die EACH WEEK by Christmas"
"CDC Just Warned at That 15,000 Americans Will Die
EACH WEEK by Christmas; But It’s Actually VACCINE DEATHS
That Are Accelerating Just As Independent Doctors Told Us All Along"
by Mike Adams
(Natural News) "In a stunning development that confirms the mass vaccine die-off is accelerating, the CDC now openly admits that 15,600 Americans will die each week by Christmas, with deaths continuing through the first part of 2022. (Source: UK Daily Mail citing the CDC)
The CDC claims these are “covid” deaths, but of course they are actually vaccine deaths. Covid vaccines inject people with toxic spike proteins or the mRNA instructions to manufacture spike protein nanoparticles. These particles are the disease, and they cause widespread vascular, neurological and reproductive damage. The side effects of these vaccines are identical to the “symptoms” of covid for the simple reason that the vaccines are the pandemic. Thus, when people are injected with the vaccines, they are “given” covid. Once they die, they are said to have died from covid instead of from the vaccine.
Natural News has learned that the CDC’s early warning alert system which is tied into US hospitals is throwing out a large number of red flags indicating the leading edge of a mass die-off wave among the vaccinated. In a panic, the CDC put its propaganda machine into gear and issued announcements that have been picked up by the world’s controlled media, including the UK Daily Mail which covered the CDC news, describing the upcoming mass deaths prediction as “grim.” From the Daily Mail, we see the shocking admission that one of the “largest outbreaks” of Omicron in the USA occurred among the “fully vaccinated:”
It is feared that a ‘tidal wave’ of Omicron is headed for US shores, with the UK recording its biggest one day case total ever on Thursday- 78,610 – with 10,000 of those cases confirmed as Omicron. One of the largest US outbreaks of the Omicron variant to date is believed to have occurred at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where almost all 930 cases over the past week are believed to be of the variant. All of the confirmed Omicron cases in the Cornell University are among people who are fully vaccinated, and some of them are in people who’ve also had booster.
Understand that so far, to our knowledge, there isn’t a single recorded case of an unvaccinated American dying from Omicron. Rather, the Omicron variant - and Delta before that - appear to inflict the vaccinated. That’s because the vaccinated have destroyed their immune systems by taking vaccine shots and booster shots. Get the body bags ready… the vaccines are kicking in
The 15,600 deaths per week that the CDC says will take place in America by Christmas are actually deaths of vaccinated people who are dying from: 1) Destroyed immune systems colliding with Omicron, a very mild strain. Or 2) Antibody Dependent Enhancement effects caused by the vaccines which result in the body waging a hyperinflammatory reaction against simple infections such as the seasonal flu.
The CDC is anticipating over 60,000 Americans will die per month through the winter, meaning we can anticipate somewhere around 200,000+ Americans to be killed by these vaccines before the spring. This is further worsened by the nationwide vitamin D deficiencies that always occur in the winter due to a lack of sunlight and outdoor activity (which has been further worsened by lockdowns and quarantines).
Already nearly 400,000 Americans are DEAD from the vaccines, and by April, it will exceed 600,000 As pandemic analyst Steve Kirsch has correctly pointed out, even using very conservative estimates, covid vaccines have already killed at least 388,000 Americans. With another 60,000+ dying each month over the winter months, we can very conservatively estimate that by the end of the 2021/2022 winter, 600,000+ Americans will have been killed by covid vaccines. That’s the equivalent of more than ten Vietnam Wars in terms of the number of US casualties. Or about 200 9/11 tragedies.
It puts the vaccines into the category of a holocaust. Yet Biden continues to falsely claim that everybody who gets a vaccine will be safe from covid, even when the data clearly show that it’s the vaccinated who are dying. In reality, Kirsh and other analysts are being very conservative with these numbers. In all likelihood, we are approaching one million deaths from the vaccine in America right now and will almost certainly exceed one million total deaths by the spring of 2022. The jab is a depopulation weapon, not a vaccine.
Globally, total vaccine deaths will likely exceed ten million people by mid-2022, dwarfing the number of Jews who were murdered by the Nazi regime in World War II. Yet we are all told to keep taking vaccine shots even though they don’t work. The very fact that they don’t work, in fact, is the justification being given to us for why we need to take booster shots.
Bombshell new study finds vaccines are virtually useless against Omicron: At the same time, a bombshell new study out of Columbia University - covered by the NY Post - finds that the Omicron strain is almost entirely resistant to covid vaccines. This means, in effect, that covid vaccines are now utterly useless and offer no protection whatsoever. Yet they have destroyed the immune systems of those who took the vaccines, leaving them vulnerable to all other infections that might coming along (including the common flu).
From the NY Post: "A new study out of Columbia University says the Omicron variant is “markedly resistant” to vaccines and boosters might not do much to help, spelling bad news for the country as Omicron spreads and COVID-19 cases rise nationally. The scientists express concern in the study published Wednesday that the variant’s “extensive” mutations can “greatly compromise” the vaccine, even neutralizing it.
Study authors even warned that all the antibodies from current covid vaccines may be made obsolete without warning due to natural viral adaptation, saying, “It is not too far-fetched to think that this [COVID-19] is now only a mutation or two away from being pan-resistant to current antibodies.”
In other words, every person who took covid vaccines got NO benefit but took HUGE risks and destroyed their immune systems in the process. Plus, they will now grow cancers at ten times the normal rate due to suppression of anti-cancer components of the immune system (including chromosome repair mechanisms in cell nuclei). In conclusion, the so-called covid “vaccine” really is a depopulation death jab. And the depopulation is now accelerating, exactly as myself and independent doctors and scientists have long warned."
Get full, shocking details in today’s Situation Update podcast:
○
Related:
"The Vaccine Death Report"
Evidence of millions of deaths and serious adverse events
resulting from the experimental COVID-19 injections.
By David John Sorenson & Dr. Vladimir Zelenko MD
"The purpose of this report is to document how all over the world millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions of serious adverse events have occurred, after injections with the experimental mRNA gene therapy. We also reveal the real risk of an unprecedented genocide.
Facts: We aim to only present scientific facts and stay away from unfounded claims. The data is clear and verifiable. Over one hundred references can be found for all presented information, which is provided as a starting point for further investigation.
Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world. The severity of this situation compels us to ask this critical question: will we rise to the defense of billions of innocent people? Or will we permit personal profit over justice, and be complicit? Networks of lawyers all over the world are preparing class-action lawsuits to prosecute all who are serving this criminal agenda. To all who have been complicit so far, we say: There is still time to turn and choose the side of truth. Please make the right choice."
Download "The Vaccine Death Report" here:
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Related, essential:
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Friday, December 17, 2021
"Supply Chain Crisis Triggering Mass Liquidation Of Businesses As Shipping Prices Shot Up By 700%"
Full screen recommended.
"Supply Chain Crisis Triggering Mass Liquidation
Of Businesses As Shipping Prices Shot Up By 700%"
by Epic Economist
"We're heading to a new year, but our old problems aren't going away. In fact, according to several industry leaders, Americans haven't seen the worst of shortages and price increases just yet. That's because the ongoing supply chain bottlenecks that have been disrupting global trade for almost two years are likely to persist through the entire year of 2022, and possibly extend until late 2023. A new report just released by insurers Euler Hermes and Allianz pointed that supply chain problems around the world are expected to intensify in 2022 due to renewed virus outbreaks, China's strict virus containment policies, and extreme weather. But disruptions can last even longer in the U.S. due to a lack of investment in shipping infrastructure capacity, the insurers predict.
Short-term shipping contracts and spot prices rocketed to the highest level ever ahead of this year's Christmas. Another company known as TASNEE, one of the largest manufacturers of car batteries in the world, revealed that on the week ending on December 10, shipping prices jumped by 700 percent compared to the same time in 2019. Due to a shortage of available containers, and given that China has stopped the production of new containers amid nationwide factory closure orders, the rental price of a single container climbed from $800-1,200 to $7,500-8,500 on the spot market.
The big problem is that only industry giants, such as Amazon and Walmart, are able to close long-term contracts or charter their own vessels to fight those volatile shipping costs. A 700 percent shipping price hike means hotter inflation and more acute price spikes at the stores. Considering that over 90% of the world's merchandise is shipped by sea, we are going to feel the impact of this extraordinary increase right in our wallets. And the worst part is -- although some of this jump in shipping costs may be seasonal, the chief analyst at the freight rate benchmarking platform Xeneta, Peter Sand, says that container shipping costs aren't likely to normalize before 2023.
"This means the higher cost of logistics is not a transitory phenomenon. For inflation, that means trouble. The element of shipping, in overall prices, small as it may be, is much bigger than ever before, and it could be a permanent lift to prices going forward," Sand warned. Last month, a United Nations report sounded the alarm about the impact of higher shipping and freight rates on consumer prices. It said that the container crisis might derail the global recovery and boost import prices by 11% at the beginning of 2022. The report also noted that the price of cheaper goods will disproportionally rise compared to the price of more expensive items.
On the other hand, there's a 50 percent shortage of truckers in the ports. Roughly 4,000 positions remain vacant, according to Seroka. Many truckers don't want to wait for hours in extremely long lines only to be refused entry for failure to report on time. The fact that the Los Angeles port is not operating is not operating at full capacity is undermining efforts to ease the backlog. Several ships are being diverted to the nearby port of Oakland, which is already congested as chaos roars in LA and Long Beach.
Approximately 75 cargo ships, the highest number in six months, are waiting to get unloaded in the port. With transit times for vessels arriving from Asia in the ports of LA and Long Beach more than doubling to 62 days compared with 2019 levels, nearly 7% more imports are being handled by the Port of Oakland. In contrast, export volumes declined 9.4% due to lack of ships heading to foreign markets, the port said. This entire situation is affecting consumers much more than they realize. Surging transport costs and rampant inflation costed millions of Americans more than $3,000 in additional expenses this year, according to a Penn Wharton University of Pennsylvania Budget Model analysis published on Wednesday.
The PWBM, a nonpartisan research-based initiative, estimates that the record levels of inflation will require the average U.S. household to spend at least $3,500 more in 2022 to achieve the same level of consumption of goods and services as in 2020 or 2021. This entire situation is affecting consumers much more than they realize. Surging transport costs and rampant inflation costed millions of Americans more than $3,000 in additional expenses this year, according to a Penn Wharton University of Pennsylvania Budget Model analysis published on Wednesday. Unfortunately, we're moving towards another painful year, and our leaders' lack of action are only worsening the current economic outlook. The devastating inflation crisis economists have been warning about for months is here, and the months ahead are going to be more chaotic than most people would dare to imagine."
"My Bank Closed Again; Stock Market Rattled; JP Morgan Guilty Again; Banking Fraud"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/17/21:
"My Bank Closed Again; Stock Market Rattled;
JP Morgan Guilty Again; Banking Fraud"
"A Fast-Moving Cancer"
"A Fast-Moving Cancer"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"In retrospect, all economic events seem inevitable. The cause and effect become obvious. You can look back and easily see the policy disasters. It is always easy to predict backward in time. But there are certain things you can know in advance. For example, if you shut down an economy by force, you will wreck investor confidence in the future. We’ll get to that in a moment. For now, let’s talk about wholesale prices and inflation.
A law of economics says: All else equal, with no change in velocity and productivity, more money pumped into the economy will lead to higher prices. Real-world conditions can vary, but when monetary aggregates of every sort show hockey stick-like patterns, you can be pretty sure the inflation is going to rock up at some point. We’ve known this for the better part of a hundred of years. And we’ve known for a year and a half that we would likely see inflation in this country without precedent in our lifetimes.
A Fast-Moving Cancer: I’ve been reporting on component parts rising 40–200% over the last six months. These extreme cases get filtered out in the indexing process, making it all seem less severe. From the individual producer point of view, we are dealing with near-emergency situations. These price increases in components and materials can be absorbed for a few months but not over the long haul. They devour profitability like a fast-moving cancer. Combine that with labor shortages and you have major problems.
Wages keep being bid up, faster and faster, but still not in a way that increases the purchasing power of the money workers receive. That’s because consumer prices are chasing the producer prices very closely behind. The trajectory here is striking. This is not a stable rate of high increase. It is an increasing rate of high increase. Forecast this out over six months, compounded, and you are looking at something truly horrific. Already these are the largest increases in wholesale prices on record. But keep in mind that this is getting worse.
Cover Your Eyes: Worried yet? If not, let’s take another look. Consider the 108-year chart, which is built of very reliable data. Set the 1982 dollar at 0 and consider the year-to-year percentage change in the Producer Price Index. Sit down. Be prepared to cover your eyes:
This is the on-the-ground reality. Correction: The on-the-ground reality is worse because the data seen in this chart is all dated. In a fast-moving inflation like this one, it is not possible for the data collectors to stay up to date. That the Fed has been completely dopey about this is a complete scandal. They unleashed this hell and now they are saying that they will fix it.
The Fed Fix: It is about as likely that the Fed can fix inflation as it is that the CDC will fix a virus. Whatever they do will cause even more harm. So let’s ask the question: What can they actually do? Raise rates thus tanking the economy quickly into a depression, in times of inflation. Inflationary depression: It’s already here and worse than the 1970s.
They can stop their bond purchases, which throws all this grotesque debt to the private sector. The banks will likely bail if they begin to doubt the presence of the Fed as the last-resort buyer. This will do nothing to curb present inflationary pressure; that only addresses the problem in the future. I simply do not believe that there is any taste in D.C. now for doing what Reagan did in 1981: tolerate a downturn on the promise of a future upturn.
Loss of Confidence: As bad as all this news is, and as grim as the trends look, there are even worse things happening right now. Business investment has taken a downturn not only in the U.S., but in all OECD countries. The data mavens cannot figure out why. They look at the world opening post-pandemic and cannot fathom why companies large and small are unwilling to commit to capital investment over the long term.
The blindness on this point speaks to the problem with digging through numbers alone to provide the answers. The real reason is, for lack of a better term, psychological. The belief in the stability of institutions has been shattered due to lockdown.
Governments all over the world have for two years given a big “F You” to the private sector. They have shut them down, masked their workers, jabbed them silly and otherwise abused private property for their own ruling-class fantasies.
A Scene Straight out of a Dystopian Movie: I spent last week in the nation’s capital doing interviews and meetings. It was productive. But it was also shocking in many ways, starting with prices. Just getting across town breaks the bank. I paid $40 to get from Foggy Bottom to Union Station in an Uber. I swear this trip used to be about $7.
The labor shortages have profoundly affected the transportation sector in cities. Cabs are actually few and far between in D.C, simply because 1) so many people among the driving class have left the city, 2) many have abandoned cabs for Ubers and 3) many workers are just too demoralized to bother.
Another thing I noticed was very troubling. I looked around the airport and saw multitudes of masked people shuffling along with their heads down, arriving early in case of flight troubles and lines, and so not rushing anywhere. The shops were mostly empty. Passengers sat in bars swilling liquor even at early hours. The rest of the travellers were sitting with their masks, not talking to their neighbors (how can you with masks?) but instead staring at their phones, clicking from app to app and vaguely texting with friends who were not there. It was a dreary scene straight out of a dystopian movie.
Regime Uncertainty: After all of this, is there really any wonder why there is reluctance to invest? There is regime uncertainty out there today. No one knows what is next. Long-term capital investment requires a stable legal environment, not an arbitrary bio-fascist dictatorship. One is exclusive of the other. I suspect it could take 10 or 50 years to repair the economic damage of the last two years. That media prognosticators look at this trend with confusion speaks volumes.
Another striking point that this makes: There has been a huge decoupling taking place between real business investment and the stock market. I am going to assume that stocks will perform well throughout this inflationary period. When I say “perform well” I mean that they will keep track with inflation, not rise much in real terms. That says nothing about the long-term hopes for a restoration of prosperity.
Bad times are here, my friends, and it is going to get much worse. Will we learn? It’s happening, but too slowly to find a reliable fix. The ruling class is unwilling even to admit what they have done much less fix it anytime soon."
Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Stocks Fall, Massive FEAR Campaign Under Way"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/17/21:
"Alert! Stocks Fall, Massive FEAR Campaign Under Way"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"The most distant object easily visible to the eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, details of a bright yellow nucleus and dark winding dust lanes, are revealed in this digital telescopic image. Narrow band image data recording emission from hydrogen atoms, shows off the reddish star-forming regions dotting gorgeous blue spiral arms and young star clusters.
While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept in the 20th century. Were these "spiral nebulae" simply outlying components of our own Milky Way Galaxy or were they instead "island universes" - distant systems of stars comparable to the Milky Way itself? This question was central to the famous Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, which was later resolved by observations of M31 in favor of Andromeda, island universe.”
"You Are My Brother..."
“You are my brother, but why are you quarreling with me? Why do you invade my country and try to subjugate me for the sake of pleasing those who are seeking glory and authority?
Why do you leave your wife and children and follow Death to the distant land for the sake of those who buy glory with your blood, and high honor with your mother's tears?
Is it an honor for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honor, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel.
Is self-preservation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, "Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!" I say unto you but this: protecting others' rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for the protection of my honor, I will not hesitate to take my life by my own hands for the sake of Eternity before Eternity comes.
Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.
The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression - that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.
The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.
What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?
You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.”
Is it an honor for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honor, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel.
Is self-preservation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, "Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!" I say unto you but this: protecting others' rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for the protection of my honor, I will not hesitate to take my life by my own hands for the sake of Eternity before Eternity comes.
Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.
The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression - that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.
The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.
What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?
You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.”
- Kahlil Gibran
The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"
"In a Dark Time"
"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood-
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks- is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is-
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."
- Theodore Roethke
"The Trick..."
“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
- Carlos Castaneda
Chet Raymo, “Why Cranes Fly”
“Why Cranes Fly”
by Chet Raymo
"There were a few Comments here recently about herons, from right around the world. What is the power of this bird to touch our minds and hearts? The naturalist Aldo Leopold was intimately familiar with the cranes of Wisconsin, cousins of our New England great blue heron, the Irish gray heron, and Adam2's aosagi from Japan, and wondered about their ability to move us so deeply. In A Sand County Almanac he watches as a crane "springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun with mighty wings." Our ability to perceive beauty in nature, as in art, begins with the pretty, he says, then moves into qualities of the beautiful yet uncaptured by language. The beauty of the crane lies in this higher realm, he proposes, "beyond the reach of words."
Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.
John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."
Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."
In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."
Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.
John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."
Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."
In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."
"You Better Decide..."
“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”
- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"
"Fare Thee Well"
"Fare Thee Well"
By Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "This is the final Diary you will receive from us via Rogue Economics/Legacy Research. Yes, we’re moving on. But we’ll still be “connecting the dots” as best we can. And any dear readers who still have the stomach for it are invited to join us. But perhaps we owe you an explanation?
Thank You: Let’s begin with a “thank you.” Many dear readers have been suffering through our Reckonings and Diaries now for more than 20 years. Sometimes, they are hard to write; but they must be even harder to read! Because we never know exactly what we are writing about. Instead, we are just looking… and wondering. What’s happening? Why? Where does it lead? Sometimes, the questions take us down blind alleys and waste our time. Often, they simply lead to more questions. Only occasionally do they lead to useful insights.
Still, fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And writers gotta keep writing. Many thanks to you, Dear Reader, for sticking with us… especially to those dear readers who have taken the time to write and tell us why they thought we were a fascist… a communist… or simply a moron. Heck, they may be right. And we hope you’ll come along for the next part of this adventure. Our dear readers are like our old friends; we would be sad to lose you.
Benefit of Experience: And now, in the home stretch of our career, we hope to make the relationship worthwhile for you. Fortunately, writing about money is one of the few métiers where age is actually a benefit. After all, you have to be over 70 to have lived through, as an adult, the inflation of the 1970s. You have to be at least in your sixties to recall how Paul Volcker stopped it. As you get older, you may become more vulnerable to the coronavirus, but you become more resistant to claptrap. You remember the WIN buttons… the lime-colored leisure suits… and the Vietnam War.
You’ve heard too many something-for-nothing claims, seen too many new gadgets that didn’t work, and voted for too many politicians who didn’t do what they said they would do. We bring this up because we think we are approaching a period of Peak Delusion. A good dose of geezer cynicism may be the only way to survive it. The “new” dollar – without gold backing – was introduced more than 50 years ago. When it came out, the old-timers preached doom. Now, we’re going to see that they were right. No pure paper money has ever survived a full credit cycle. Our guess is that this dollar will be gone, too, when interest rates reach their next top.
Public Interest: Looking back over our half-century of work, we see different stages. First, we thought we could change the world. Young people often think they have the answers; so did we. And we were worried, in the early 1970s, as now, about the growth of government. The central competition in public life is not really between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives. It is between those who go about their business… helping each other… providing goods and services to each other… building wealth and families…and those who want to stop them.
It is the difference we described in much more detail in our book, “Win-Win or Lose,” between those who make and those who take… between those who get what they want by honest, consensual exchange and those who use armies, sanctions, laws, and regulations. It is the difference between violence and persuasion. We were naïve and foolish. We saw the tilt toward coercive government as some kind of “mistake,” that people just failed to realize that “win-win” was a better way to go.
Private Interest: But after seven years in Washington, heading up a group called the National Taxpayers Union, we finally had to face facts: A lot of people prefer power to prosperity… and that includes almost all the denizens on both sides of the Potomac. We left “public interest” and decided to focus on private interest.
We were supremely lucky. It was just the beginning of the financialization phase of the U.S. economy. In 1971, the feds had switched to a paper money system, unconnected to and unrestrained by gold. It was off to the races. Everyone wanted to know what horse to bet on. We were, however, woefully unprepared for our new role. We didn’t understand much about economics or investing.
So we teamed up with people who did. Gary North, Mark Hulbert, Adrian Day, Doug Casey, Jim Davidson, John Dessauer, Porter Stansberry, Steve Sjuggerud, Alex Green, and many others. Sometimes, they were right. Sometimes, they were wrong. But we were always learning. And we are grateful to them all.
Starved for Wisdom: Then, in the late 1990s, along came the internet. People said it would make “information” available – for free – to everyone. That would put us newsletter publishers out of business, they said. But we knew that “information” was worthless… less than worthless… without context, trust, training, preparation, circumstance, and all the other things that give it value.
“Imagine Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow,” we invited readers. “His soldiers are freezing to death. Starving. Getting slaughtered by partisans. And then… as if by some miracle… someone hands him the plans for building a nuclear bomb! What value would that have had? Zero.” Our point was that the precise “information” you need, when you need it, is extremely valuable. Otherwise, it’s just excess baggage.
We went on to speculate that with the buildout of the internet, “the world may soon be stuffed with information… and starved for wisdom.” In the following years, investors gorged on ideas, recommendations, and revelations… about new tech breakthroughs, trading techniques, cryptos, pot stocks, penny stocks, and much, much more. Many of these turned out to be astonishingly profitable. But your editor, who began writing a daily “blog” in 1998, was a wet blanket. He doubted that these innovations would produce lasting wealth – after all, what did they produce at all? As to the new tech, he urged caution.
Trade of the Decade: In retrospect, his counsel lost money for many dear readers… and made money for many others. He eschewed investments in dotcoms… even in the most successful of them all – Amazon. He wondered aloud if the whole “information revolution” was anything more than a time waster. And he ridiculed many of the most sacred tenets of tech believers… including the doctrine that technology always means progress and that progress will free humans from work, thrift, and sin.
On the other hand, his very simple “Trade of the Decade” – sell stocks, buy gold – turned out to be the best trade of two decades. At the end of the 1990s, gold was trading at $282 an ounce. The Dow was just over 11,000. Since then, gold has gone up about 6 times. The Dow is only up three times. Investors who made our trade have coasted calmly through the three major crises of the 21st century… and are still way ahead.
Search for Wisdom: But now, we see a bigger challenge ahead. Wisdom seems to have disappeared. Where it still appears in residual clumps, like survivors after a worldwide plague, it is furtive… fearful… and almost ashamed of itself. Nature knows that real progress… and real wealth... require real work, real investment, real reflection, and real self-discipline over what is generally a really long time.
So that is our goal. We’ve joined up with Dan Denning and Tom Dyson to plug our ears with wax and tie ourselves to the mast. Yes, we search for the rarest and most precious thing in the financial world – wisdom. And we fully recognize that we may not find it. We leave it to you to judge. We’ll be back at the keyboard on Monday morning. We hope you’ll still be with us."
"The Fed Knows When the Recession Will Start - The Countdown Has Begun"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 12/17/21:
"The Fed Knows When the Recession Will Start -
The Countdown Has Begun"
"It’s not all good news. The Fed has discussed tapering its asset purchases in the spring time. The bank of England has just started to raise interest rates to curb inflation. The Fed has issued a new warning saying that they know the “countdown to recession.“
Gregory Mannarino, "Expect A Massive 3rd Wave Of Inflation To Hit And More Control - You Must Comply"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/17/21:
"Expect A Massive 3rd Wave Of Inflation
To Hit And More Control - You Must Comply"
"Where Do You Stand?"
"Where Do You Stand?"
by Jim Kunstler
"The public health bureaucrat who styles himself as “the Science” is at it again. In his quest to eliminate the control group for his experiment in hazardous mRNA injections, Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated his warning that the nation faces “a crisis of the unvaccinated.” Omicron is upon us, he told a US Chamber of Commerce meet-up this week, and the hospitals will soon be overwhelmed by the unvaxxed.
Oh really? In fact, the gravest threat to America’s public health is… Dr. Tony Fauci and his debauchery of medical science. This will surely come as a surprise to readers of The New York Times, who see in the two-year (so far) Covid-19 event a splendid opportunity to hasten the destruction of the US economy and our culture in order to consolidate their own power to coerce and control the population. Clear the offices! Shut down the social spaces! Make ordinary business as difficult as possible! Cancel Christmas! That’ll git’er done!
In fact, Dr. Fauci is likely responsible for a preponderance of the total 802,000 US Covid deaths — putting aside the number of people who actually died from highway accidents, cancer, diabetes, old age, and other causes, but were listed as covid deaths by hospital accounting personnel avid for federal subsidy cash.
It was Dr. Fauci who organized the suppression of easily marshaled and inexpensive early treatments for the disease, namely hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, budesonide, azithromycin, monoclonal antibodies, Vitamin D, etc. It was Dr. Fauci who promoted the protocol of sending sick patients home from the ER without any treatment to await the further development of fatal clotting in their lungs. It was Dr. Fauci who designated the drug remdesivir — which he developed years ago for hepatitis-C (it did not work) with a financial stake in the patents — as the primary inpatient treatment for Covid-19. And then it turned out that remdesivir destroys patients’ kidneys and is ineffective anyway in late treatment of the disease when viral loads wane and spike proteins have already created the fatal capillary clots in the alveoli of the lungs and in other organs.
It’s Dr. Fauci who is responsible for the emergency use authorization on the mRNA “vaccines” that may have killed hundreds of thousands more Americans — based on the CDC’s VAERS system and statistical analysis of its inherent under-reporting at only 2.2 percent of all actual events— and you can add multiples more in non-fatal adverse reactions, including permanent disabilities. It’s Dr. Fauci who finagled the inadequate and botched trials of the mRNA vaccines in order to rush them into use. And now it’s Dr. Fauci who wants to vaxx up all the children in America, despite evidence that the mRNA shots permanently disable children’s innate natural immune systems and can cause lasting heart, blood vessel, brain, and reproductive damage, and also despite the fact that few children are susceptible to serious Covid illness in the first place.
The omicron moment may be the power-mad little weasel’s last stand. Reports so far indicate that omicron is a mild form of the virus. The one death reported to date did not include any information about the patient’s co-morbidities. For all we know, it was a motorcycle wreck with an omicron-positive label slapped on.
Dr. Fauci is now warning that America’s hospitals will be overwhelmed (and that it will be the fault of the unvaxxed). Consider this: He predicted the same thing for the first wave of the virus in the winter of 2020 and then the giant emergency hospital set-up in New York’s convention center was never used, nor was the US naval hospital ship brought up for Covid duty. Consider also: going forward, there may be more deaths from the delayed pernicious effects of the vaxxes — namely, the spike proteins which are now observed to linger in the organs and blood vessels as long as fifteen months after the shot — than deaths from the Covid-19 virus itself.
By the way, while Dr. Anthony Fauci may represent the leadership of the corrupt US public health bureaucracy, we cannot let the medical establishment itself off-the-hook for this epic fiasco of crisis mis-management. There are roughly a million doctors in America, and all but a tiny fraction of them have gone along with Dr. Fauci’s wrongful and harmful edicts. The doctors were the ones who flushed sick people out of their ERs without treatment. The doctors had to be forced by court orders to administer useful non-vaxx treatments to sick patients. The doctors continue to administer remdesivir despite its obvious toxcicity and uselessness. US Doctors went along with the lockdowns and the destruction of livelihoods, households, and futures. Doctors appear to support vaxx “passports” and other coercive measures. And now US doctors are going along with the malevolent effort to vaxx-up all the kids.
American doctors have proven to be cowards, cravens, zombies, and fools facilitating Dr. Fauci’s evil campaign — in concert with the rapacious pharmaceutical industry and a government in thrall to sinister forces that seek to destroy the country. The doctors have disgraced and dishonored themselves. The doctors have probably undermined their own vocations, as well as the entire armature of US health care, which they have allowed to become history’s worst racketeering operation. You can be sure it is going to collapse now, along with the equally degenerate financial system and, alas, much of the on-the-ground daily business of our country. For that you can also blame the geniuses behind “Joe Biden.”
The question is: will the people of this land submit to continued coercion and to the engineered demolition of their lives? So far, we have not rolled over like the pathetically servile Europeans and Australians. Here, there is apparently some will to resist further pushing around by this demonic elite. Several federal judges recently defined clear constitutional red-lines in their published decisions against the vaxx mandates.
Plenty of ordinary citizens are furious over the insidious and insane incursions of the political Wokery hitched to the Covid emergency — the race and gender hustles, the efforts to rig elections, the absurd spending programs aimed at countless grifting operations, the disastrous monetary inflation, and the invasion of opportunists from all over the world across our border with Mexico. Even at Christmas time, with all its transient preoccupations, it’s not too much to ask: where do you stand?"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/17/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/17/21"
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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
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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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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Dec. 16th to 24th, Updated Daily
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
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