Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, “My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, March 18, 2023
"A Look to the Heavens"
"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust.
Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."
"What If..."
~ Author Unknown
A truly terrifying thought...
"Urgent Warning: "The Game's Over" - Prepare Immediately!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/18/23
"Urgent Warning: "The Game's Over" -
Prepare Immediately!"
Comments here
"4th US Bank Is On The Brink Of Collapse: We Are In Far More Trouble Than Most People Realize"
Full screen recommended.
"4th US Bank Is On The Brink Of Collapse:
We Are In Far More Trouble Than Most People Realize"
By Epic Economist
"Every single day there are more twists and turns to this new banking panic. In fact, we just learned that the big banks have gotten together to save First Republic. That is good news, because a collapse of First Republic would have been a major catastrophe. But First Republic is just one in a very long list of banks that are in very serious jeopardy. For months, I relentlessly warned that our financial system could not handle higher interest rates. It was inevitable that financial institutions would start to break, and that is precisely what has happened. We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis.
Initially, there were rumors that a buyer was being sought for First Republic, but instead the “too big to fail” banks agreed on a plan to deposit a total of 30 billion dollars into the troubled institution…Needless to say, executives at First Republic are greatly relieved. So much money had been pulled out of the bank in recent days, and at one point on Thursday the stock was selling for less than 20 dollars a share…
So why was First Republic in so much trouble? Well, just like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, they were sitting on enormous unrealized losses because the government bonds that they were holding had lost a ton of value thanks to rapidly rising interest rates. Ultimately, those unrealized losses made a potential purchase of First Republic quite “unappealing” to the “too big to fail” banks…
This crisis is just getting started. Every domino that falls is just going to make things even worse, and ultimately I believe that the entire system is headed for an unprecedented meltdown. So I would encourage you to do whatever you need to do to protect yourself, because things are only going to get crazier from here."
Comments here:
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"
"What I Have Learned So Far"
"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone."
~ Mary Oliver
"For The Most Part..."
"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."
- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"
"Financial Assassins"
"Financial Assassins"
From bank runs to CBDCs and the
controlled demolition of American finance...
By Joel Bowman
Buenos Aires, Argentina - “Does the Fed’s bailout of Silicon Valley Bank bring us closer to a Central Bank Digital Currency?” It’s a subject we’ve covered before in these weekend pages... and one BPR macro analyst, Dan Denning, posed in last night’s research note to paying members. We’ll get to that, and what it might mean for your money, below. But first, a quick look at the markets...Let’s start with the bad news... and work our way back into the light.
Weekend Wrap: Concerns over systemic risk in the banking sector had traders on edge this week and sent stocks into the red in Friday’s session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 400 points during the day to finally end the session down 384 points, or 1.2%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed lower by 1.1% and 0.7% respectively.
For the week, the three major indices were mixed. The Dow finished slightly lower, -0.2%, while the S&P 500 ended higher by 1.4%. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, put in its strongest weekly performance since early January with a 4.4% rally. For the year, the big three are as follows: Dow -3.85%, S&P 500 +2.4% and Nasdaq +12%.
Meanwhile gold, that go-nowhere, do-nothing, barbarous relic, had a decidedly go-somewhere, do-something kind of week. The Midas Metal popped $60/oz in Friday’s trading alone to break through the psychological $2,000/oz threshold. It was last seen trading right around the $2,010/oz mark, up around $150/oz, or 8.9% for the year. Gold also took out fresh all time highs in Aussie dollars (AUD$2,965/oz) and pound sterling (£1,570/oz).
Impressive as that looks, it’s nothing compared to the runs posted over in the crypto world. Top dog, Bitcoin, stacked on a massive $4,600 this week. At BTC $26,800, it’s up a whopping 60% year to date. At least, it was last we looked. It could be anywhere by the time you read this. One recalls the great Friedrich Hayek’s prophetic words from an interview he gave at the University of Freiburg back in (wait for it...) 1984. “I don’t believe we shall ever have good money again before we take it out of the hands of government,” he told the interviewer. “But we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government. All we can do is by some sly, roundabout way introduce something they can’t stop.”
Of course, there’s a world of difference between a free market digital money – which lives and dies to the extent that it prioritizes and meets real world demands like privacy and security – and a government issued Fed Coin, which is little more than a tool of direct state oppression and control in the hands of financial assassins.
Yellen at Banks: Which brings us back to the question of what our mate up in Laramie has called the “controlled demolition” of the financial system... and the CBDC “solutions” proposed by Big Gov. Here’s Dan with some context..."Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank became the second and third-largest bank failures in American history in a matter of days. SVB had assets of $209 billion at the time. Signature Bank had assets of $118 billion. The largest bank failure in American history was Washington Mutual in 2008 at $307 billion (it would be around $386 billion in today’s money, adjusted for inflation)."
The bad news is that there is a lot more fake wealth to be destroyed. And you’ll only be protected if you’re part of the too-big-to-fail Washington/Wall Street/Silicon Valley class. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made that clear earlier this week when she testified in front of Congress that depositors in community banks would not be bailed out or ‘made whole’ with government guarantees because those banks are not ‘too big to fail.’
For reference, here’s Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma, pressing Ms. Yellen on why the Federal government is incentivizing large depositors to move their funds away from community banks and into the concentrated hands of “approved players.” "Sen. James Lankford Presses Janet Yellen on FDIC Special Exceptions Which Are Accelerating Big Bank Consolidation": "We have seen the mergers of banks over the past decade. I'm concerned you're about to accelerate that by encouraging anyone who has a large deposit in a community bank to say 'we're not going to make you whole but if you go to one of our preferred banks we will make you whole'"
Once you’re in the system, then comes the digital currency, the CBDC. And that, as we’ve written about before, is nothing more than permission based money that gives the Feds the power to control how and when you spend money or receive government benefits." This is the direction we’re heading... and all road signs indicate there’s danger ahead."
"Are You Ready for What’s Coming?"
Full screen recommended,
Dan, iAllegedly 3/18/23
"Are You Ready for What’s Coming?"
"Business is becoming more and more difficult to conduct on a weekly basis. GM is halting production on their vehicles again. Small business owners are having a difficult time getting employees and customers people need to prepare for what’s coming."
Comments here:
"Overwhelming Prices At Kroger! This Is Getting Crazy! What Now!?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 3/18/23
"Overwhelming Prices At Kroger!
This Is Getting Crazy! What Now!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing some overwhelming price increases on groceries! It's getting rough out here as prices continue to skyrocket in the grocery stores!"
Comments here:
"The Gathering Storm" (Excerpt)
"The Gathering Storm"
by Douglas Macgregor
Excerpt: "The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes” - feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants - suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.
American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.
Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago.
Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000.
Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility."
Full article is here:
Col Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls, 3/18/23
"Three Ukrainian Armies Destroyed By The Russians"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current
geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world."
Comments here:
Friday, March 17, 2023
"What If All Banks Shut Down Tomorrow? Would You Survive? Hungry People Will Take Your Food"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 3/17/23
"What If All Banks Shut Down Tomorrow?
Would You Survive? Hungry People Will Take Your Food"
Comments here:
“15 Weird Foods That Were Common During The Great Depression And Will Come Back Soon”
Full screen recommended.
“15 Weird Foods That Were Common During
The Great Depression And Will Come Back Soon”
by Epic Economist
"The Great Depression was an era of scarcity induced-creativity. With millions of people out of work and widespread shortages of foods and goods, families had a hard time scraping money together to feed their children. They had to make things work without household staples and other products that weren’t readily available at the stores when they needed them. Their innovations came out of necessity – from women dying their legs with tea instead of using stockings to men mending their shoes with cardboard, Americans during the Great Depression used their resourcefulness to make do with what little they had. Inventiveness became a survival mechanism.
Soup kitchens sprung up across the country to ensure that unemployed workers got at least one meal daily. It was precisely in the kitchen that you could see the biggest reflection of the ingenuity and the desperation of that era. Those who lived in rural areas typically planted gardens and raised chickens and cows. Men used to go to the woods to hunt and fish. New recipes were concocted, and many food combinations that would be considered disgusting today were actually delicacies during that time.
For example, people used to eat snapping turtles. Snapping turtles are cold-blooded reptiles and a cousin to lizards, snakes, and alligators. On average, they weigh 10 to 36 pounds each. Capturing them is not easy. They hiss like a cat if you get too close, and their jaws can easily bite off a finger. Folklore claims that the head can still bite you even after a snapping turtle is beheaded. While that may be a part of the myth, turtles could be acquired in the spring during mating season when they were on the move and were spotted crossing roads. When they leave their natural water environment, they’re much easier to catch. Turtle soup is essentially a vegetable stew with green onions, carrots, and turtle meat instead of beef or chicken. People say it tastes like a combination of pork, clams, and chicken thighs. Although it may seem weird, this soup was a way to survive during such hard times. Today, they’re still considered a delicacy in many famous restaurants.
Spurred on by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who encouraged families to save money and resources by practicing savvier home economics, many meals that people didn’t consider eating were now consumed without question. In face of hunger and misery, our society was forced to adapt.
It’s safe to say that many of these dishes aren’t for the faint of heart – or the weak of stomach. But at the end of the day, they represent the American spirit of adaptability, resilience, and for better or worse, creativity. Food scarcity was real, and some people who lived through the Depression never overcame the fear of going to bed hungry.
As hard as times were, families kept trying to find ways to survive the storm, and they did. We have a lot to learn from our ancestors because one day, we will need to develop our own sense of resourcefulness too. The recipes of that period may come back to our tables as the economy moves towards another devastating crisis. That’s why today, we decided to compile unusual foods that were very popular in the 1930s."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known.
The galaxy’s protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872′s spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”
"The Center Of The Universe..."
"When science discovers the center of the universe
a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not."
- Bernard Baily
Chet Raymo, “As Time Goes By”
“As Time Goes By”
by Chet Raymo
“Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God’s wristwatch say? Time doesn’t exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we’re just not there anymore. The future exists; we’ll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…
Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won’t understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like “Consciousness Explained”. Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?
As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it’s going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word “entanglement,” from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.
Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”
"Casablanca", "As Time Goes By",
Original Song by Sam (Dooley Wilson)
"Not Such An Easy Business..."
“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”
- Woody Allen
○
Joe South, "Walk A Mile In My Shoes"
The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "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
"Mencken, Where Are You Now That We Need You?"
"Mencken, Where Are You Now That We Need You?"
"Henry Louis Mencken, The “Sage of Baltimore”, (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial," also gained him attention."
○
'The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.'
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre."
"When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money."
"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."
"The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought."
"I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy."
- H. L. Mencken
○
"Words..."
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they
are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. "
- John Maynard Keynes
"The Days of Easy Money Are Over"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/17/23
"The Days of Easy Money Are Over"
"The economy is in a precarious state. Today we cover everything
from metals, real estate to crypto. Jack Hanney joins us to talk again."
Comments here:
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/17/23"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/17/23"
Banks, Inflation, Bailout, War & Collapse – Dr. PCR & Bill Holter
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"This Weekly News Wrap-Up is featuring a double header of expert guests. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (PCR), former Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration, and Bill Holter, who is a financial writer and precious metals expert. First up: PCR weighs in on possible nuclear war with Russia and the possibility of a total collapse of the financial system. PCR, who is also an award-winning journalist, says, “Five banks have derivative exposure of $188 trillion. That is twice the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the entire world. How can that happen? Where were the regulators that let this type of situation develop? It’s mindless, and no one can know what the consequences are. How are you going to examine these derivatives? This is just as dangerous, in its own way, as the fact that Putin allows this Ukraine war to drag on and on and on. It’s mindless. Both bets are mindless, and in the mindlessness is the danger. In the Ukrainian danger, it could end in nuclear war, and the financial danger is the entire western world financial system could collapse. Nobody is watching anything. It’s just one stupidity after another.”
Bill Holter also has dire warnings about the ongoing banking crisis. They want the public to think all is under control, but that is not the truth. The idea of control and calm is coming at a very high price. Holter explains, “The U.S. has on-book debt of $31 trillion. it has to borrow $1 trillion a year to keep the doors open. That tells you we have already stepped through the door of banana republic land. Now, they are going to take on a $17 trillion obligation to cover the entire banking system (meaning all U.S. bank deposits). That is ridiculous. This is like one drunk trying to hold up another drunk. They have now put the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury in the crosshairs of speculators, which will destroy the Treasury’s balance sheet.
This is an ongoing collapse, and I think they believe they still have control. This is like a giant 1993 when George Soros broke the Bank of England. That’s where this is headed. It also ends up with the dollar no longer being the world reserve currency.” There is much more in the 1-hour newscast."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he interviews two heavy weights. You are getting analysis from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and Bill Holter in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 3/17/23.
"Hunting Icebergs"
"Hunting Icebergs"
Looking for trouble, the Feds get just what they're after...
By Bill Bonner
San Martin, Argentina - “The ship is sinking! To the lifeboats!” “I’m sorry, Lady. Just the first-class passengers!” The feds are going to bail out the banks and their high-end customers. California governor Gavin Newsom’s wineries will have a place in the lifeboats. So will billionaire Mark Cuban’s drug company. But down on the lower decks, they cross themselves, put on life-vests and hope for the best.
Silicon Valley Bank…Signature Bank…and now…CNN Business reports: "Global markets mixed as Credit Suisse accepts $54 billion lifeline."
And here comes a San Francisco bank, First Republic, racing to the public trough. Wall Street Journal: "Stocks Close Higher on Hopes for First Republic Rescue."
The Swiss bank was rescued by the central bank of Switzerland. The American bank got $30 billion from fellow US banks. Banks are in trouble because they got caught up in the spirit of the Fed’s bubble. They made risky loans. They bought risky assets. And when interest rates rose…and real risk reasserted itself…the seas turned rough and boats began to sink. So let’s rehearse.
Disappearing Money: The feds lowered rates to below zero, adjusted for inflation; they kept real rates negative for more than 10 years. People borrowed…US total debt is now over $90 trillion. Consumer prices rose; inflation is now at 7% on a 2-year ‘stacked’ basis.
Then, to fight inflation, the Fed raised the cost of debt. Homeowners now face mortgage payments up 30% from last year. And banks find that their collateral and reserves have fallen so much they can no longer meet withdrawals.
What happens next? A lot of investors, speculators, banks, and businesses are in a tight spot. Many cannot pay their debts. They default…money disappears. Silvergate was worth nearly $6 billion in November ’21. That was $6 billion of wealth that people thought they had. Then, 16 months later, almost all of that ‘wealth’ has vanished. Poof! And the electric truck maker, Rivian, is down 90%...another $100 billion – gone.
The middle class stores much of its wealth in its houses. Solid. Bricks-and-mortar wealth…that won’t go away in a crisis. But what’s this? The house doesn’t go away…but the equity disappears. House prices have been falling for 6 months in a row, according to the Case Shiller 20-City Index. Only 20% of the homes sold last year were “affordable” based on median income/home prices.
Outflanked: The middle class is getting attacked on both flanks. Its wealth falls along with house prices. And its real income falls as consumer prices rise. Adjusted for inflation, wages have fallen for 23 months in a row; for nearly 2 years, ordinary households have gotten poorer. MarketWatch: ‘Net worth of median household is basically nothing,’ says Carl Icahn. ‘We have some major problems in our economy.’
And now, the middle class will pay for the bank bailouts too. If the feds won’t allow the correction to continue – with bank failures, defaults, bankruptcies, and market crashes – the only plausible way out of the debt burden is inflation. Ordinary households will pay for it – in the form of higher consumer prices.
In the meantime, the money supply itself is falling. Over the last year, it dropped 1.7%. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is the biggest drop ever recorded. And our guess is that the situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. What we’ve seen so far is just the beginning of the correction. Based on the traditional relationship of debt/GDP, we figure the economy should have about $40 trillion in debt, not $90 trillion. This means that there’s a lot of bad debt still to be reckoned with.
And despite all the blah-blah…about Republicans vs. Democrats…conservative vs. liberals…blacks vs. white…there are only two groups that really matter. There are the deciders. And there is everyone else, those who don’t decide. In an honest, free economy, Mr. Market puts the losses where they belong. You make a bad bet; you lose. And you serve as a moral lesson for everybody else. ‘We won’t do what that dumbbell did,” they say to each other. In a dishonest, un-free economy, the deciders put the losses onto whomever they want. Who pays? Would it surprise you if they put them on the un-deciders? And reserve the lifeboats for themselves?"
"Strange Prices At Family Dollar! This Is Ridiculous!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 3/17/23
"Strange Prices At Family Dollar! This Is Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Family Dollar, and are noticing some strange price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"Be Ready! Confidence In The System Is Failing As This Systemic Meltdown Worsens"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/17/23
"Be Ready! Confidence In The System Is Failing
As This Systemic Meltdown Worsens"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "SVB + FTX + SBF = WTF?"
"SVB + FTX + SBF = WTF?"
By Jim Kunstler
“Deny, deflect, minimize and mock your enemies questions. Don’t engage them in good faith, they’re attacking you with a view to undermining you. Don’t fall for it. Don’t give them an inch.”
- Aimee Terese on Twitter
"The net effect of all the lying propaganda laid on the public by the people running things lo these many recent years is a peculiar inertia that makes us seemingly impervious to gross political shocks. Momentous things happen and almost instantly get swallowed up by time, as by some voracious cosmic amoeba that thrives on human malignancy. Case in point: the multiple suicide of several giant banks just days ago that prompted “Joe Biden” to nationalize the US banking system.
As if all the operations around finance in this land were not already unsound and degenerate enough, the alleged president just cancelled moral hazard altogether. It’s now official: from here forward there will be no consequences for banking fraud, poor decision-making, fiduciary recklessness, self-dealing, or any of the other risks attendant to the handling other people’s money. Bailing out the Silicon Valley Bank and Barney Frank’s deluxe Signature Bank means that the government will now have to bail out every bank every time something goes wrong.
The trouble, of course, is that the government doesn’t have the means to bail out every bank. Its only resort is to ask the Federal Reserve to summon new money from a magic ether where the illusion of wealth is conjured to paper-over ever greater fissures in the splintering matrix of racketeering that America has become. That will quickly translate into US dollars losing value, that is, accelerating inflation, which is how nature punishes you when your government lies and pretends that it has a bad situation well-in-hand.
Be advised: the situation is not in-hand and is going to get a whole lot worse as new and subsidiary shocks thunder through the weeks and months ahead, until the whole wicked business blows. Likewise, the reactions of our government will only get more tragi-comically pathetic. The harder this gang of feckless, wannabe control freaks pretends to control events, the faster events spin out of control.
Money dies when it loses its direct connection to the generation of wealth from the real things of this earth: fuels, crops, metals, materials, labor, and the value-added products made from them. Since that divorce has already happened, the need arises for something else that can function as money (a store of wealth, an index of value, and a medium of exchange). The government will pretend that a Central Bank Digital Currency is that something else. Since banking is now nationalized by the Federal Reserve backstopping everything and everybody, then theoretically all the wealth of the nation is under its command. That would be another illusion.
This CBDC would not be “money” representing wealth because America’s wealth is going, going, gone, pissed away, falling apart, de-laminating, oxidizing, rusting in the rain, going up in a vapor. Think of all those mortgaged cars on the road racking up the mileage until they’re worthless and all those mortgaged suburban houses built out of particle-board and vinyl smeared all over the landscape, decomposing into their constituent chemicals — over time, a dead loss. And that’s what’s left of our American Dream: coldcocked by entropy and, by extension, the laws of the universe. The CBDC would just be a computerized tracking apparatus for zombies lurching pointlessly around that dead zone… a final insult. The CBDC is already DOA, only the CB doesn’t know it.
One big mistake so many commentators and observers are making takes us back to the matter of cancelled moral hazard, and of consequence in general: it is the failure to appreciate how much disorder will manifest from the farrago of mindf**kery and misconduct we’ve been subjected to. By which I mean things stop working, including the elemental things like your ability to get food, fix whatever breaks, and keep the lights on.
The potential disorder is why our government will probably not be able to fix itself. The disorder may go on for quite a while, but eventually the survivors will synergetically fix their circumstances themselves working in-step with the emergent mandates of reality. Having lived through a reality-optional period of history, it will come as an ecstatic shock to learn that the world requires us to pay attention to what is really happening and to act accordingly. We’ll find ways to get food, make some things work, and shine some lights in the darkness, if perhaps not by means we’re familiar with now.
In the meantime, expect more disordering tragi-comedy from the “Joe Biden” led psychotic regime ruling over us with its drag queen commissars, lawless Lawfare vandals, race hustlers, agents provocateurs, informers, censors, prosecutors, inquisitors, jailers, and propagandists — the worst collection of imbeciles, grifters, and villains ever assembled into political party."
"Washington’s Panicked Bailout of Bank Deposits… Here’s What Comes Next" (Excerpt)
"Washington’s Panicked Bailout of Bank Deposits…
Here’s What Comes Next"
by David Stockman
Excerpt: "Why would you throw-in the towel now? We are referring to the Fed’s belated battle against inflation, which evidences few signs of having been successful. Yet that’s what the entitled herd on Wall Street is loudly demanding. As usual, they want the stock indexes to start going back up after an extended drought and are using the purported “financial crisis” among smaller banks as the pretext.
Well, no, there isn’t any preventable crisis in the small banking sector. As we have demonstrated with respect to SVB and Signature Bank, and these are only the tip of the iceberg, the reckless cowboys who were running these institutions put their uninsured depositors at risk, and both should now be getting their just desserts.
To wit, executive stock options in the sector have plunged or become worthless, and that’s exactly the way capitalism is supposed to work. Likewise, on an honest free market their negligent large depositors should be losing their shirts, too. After all, who ever told the latter that they were guaranteed 100 cents on the dollar by Uncle Sam? So it was their job, not the responsibility of the state, to look out for the safety of their money.
If the American people actually wanted the big boys bailed out, the Congress has had decades since at least the savings and loan crisis back in the 1980s to legislate a safety net for all depositors. But it didn’t for the good reason that 100% deposit guarantees would be a sure-fire recipe for reckless speculation by bankers on the asset-side of their balance sheets; and also because there was no consensus to put taxpayers in harms’ way in behalf of the working cash of Fortune 500 companies, smaller businesses, hedge funds, affluent depositors and an assortment of Silicon Valley VCs, founders, start-ups and billionaires, among countless others of the undeserving.
And for crying out loud, forget this baloney about the bailouts aren’t costing taxpayers a dime because they are being paid for by the banks via insurance premium payments to the FDIC fund. Well, yes, when the Congress wants to disguise a tax they call it an “insurance premium”, as if its victims had the choice to elect coverage or not. But when $18 trillion of deposits are being assessed in order to bailout careless large depositors who paid no attention to what was happening to their money, then that’s an onerous tax by any other name.
Accordingly, Washington’s panicked bailout of $9 trillion of uninsured deposits held by big and small companies, hedge funds and affluent customers over the weekend was therefore nothing less than a gift to the undeserving. And now we find out the two banks that have been explicitly funded 100% by Uncle Sam—SVB and Signature Bank—were deep into woke investing and conduct. That makes the bailout by Janet Yellen & Co. especially galling.
For crying out loud, this is how the poison of wokeness and ESG spread like wild-fire among American businesses in the first place. The latter should have ordinarily been a bulwark of conservative values and common sense, but years of ultra-easy money from the Fed and the precedent of bailout-after-bailout since the 1980s allowed top executives to take their noses off the grindstone of safe and sustainable profitability in favor of a purely political agenda."
Full article is here:
"That's When..."
"It does not count if you believe in yourself when it's easy to believe in yourself. It counts when it's hard to believe in yourself, when it looks like the world's going to end and you've still got a long way to go. That's when it counts."
- Iain Thomas
*
Don Williams, "I Believe In You"
"Oh SH*T, Bank Collapse Spreading Fast As Deposits Dry Up"
Redacted, 3/16/23
"Oh SH*T, Bank Collapse Spreading
Fast As Deposits Dry Up"
"The fallout continues from three major U.S. bank failures, accompanied by bank bailouts. Europe seems to be bearing the brunt of the damage as the Euro falls to a low to the dollar for the year. Is there anything we can "bank" on? Maybe it's time to change that saying, huh?"
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Thursday, March 16, 2023
"The Banking System Is Collapsing Right Before Our Eyes – These Banks Could Fall Next!"
Full screen recommended.
"The Banking System Is Collapsing Right Before Our Eyes –
These Banks Could Fall Next!"
By Epic Economist
"We’re now witnessing the Great Banking Collapse of 2023, and you should probably buckle up because this is going to be a wild ride. The dominoes are falling faster than anyone expected, and if you thought the bank failures were over – think again. The whole system is at risk, and a new report from credit rating firm Moody’s Analytics confirms that more institutions are about to crumble in the months ahead.
The demise of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank won't be unique cases. The Federal Reserve generated a 620 billion dollar black hole in our banking system by aggressively raising interest rates, and our quadrillion-dollar derivatives pyramid scheme is shaking right upon us. Now policymakers are desperately trying to fix things by recklessly spraying money around when they’re actually going to need a much bigger hose.
The speed at which financial institutions can break down in the digital era is absolutely breathtaking. According to the Wall Street Journal, in a single day last week 42 billion dollars were withdrawn from Silicon Valley Bank, leaving the financial institution with $1 billion in negative cash balance, the company said in a regulatory filing.
On Tuesday, a new report by credit rating firm Moody’s Analytics revealed some alarming information about the U.S. banking sector. “In a harsh blow to an already-reeling sector, Moody’s cut its view on the entire banking system to negative from stable,” CNBC reported. The firm said the action was a response to the key bank failures that prompted regulators to step in with a dramatic rescue plan for depositors and other institutions impacted by the crisis.
The firm’s move can have ripple effects because it can impact credit ratings and thus borrowing costs for the entire sector. In the report, the rating agency said that despite the extraordinary actions taken to shore up impacted banks, other institutions with unrealized losses or uninsured depositors still could be at risk. Moody’s warned it was carefully reviewing the rates of First Republic Bank, Zions, Western Alliance, Comerica, UMB Financial, and Intrust Financial. The firm had previously cut the rating of Signature Bank, which then has been seized and turned into junk.
Needless to say, we must keep a very close eye on those six names. Oftentimes such complex crises just take time to fully play out. A major example of that is the fact that insiders knew that Silicon Valley Bank was “technically insolvent for months” before it fatally collapsed.
The problem is that we have many other financial institutions that are “technically insolvent” right now. And although they may survive for a while, a day of reckoning always arrives. This is like watching a slow-motion train wreck playing out right in front of our eyes, and neither policymakers at the Federal Reserve nor politicians in Washington will able to stop it.
Things will eventually get a whole lot worse than they are right now. That’s why we encourage our viewers to get ready for the incredibly challenging times that are approaching us because they will truly change life as we know it."
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