Friday, June 14, 2024

Bill Bonner, "Megapolitics"

The Roman Forum
"Megapolitics"
But oversimplifying can cause big mistakes. ‘Enemies’ are 
not always real enemies. Wars are not always worth fighting. 
And stock market prices do not always go up.
by Bill Bonner

Paris, France - "Megapolitics attempts to extract major structural patterns that repeat throughout history. The factors leading to megapolitical change include topography, climate, microbes and technology. By taking into account how different factors influence human incentives, you can better identify the implications of change. This perspective allows you to perceive with greater clarity the rising and falling of governments, economies, cultures and violence." - Matthew Siu

“Megapolitics” is our not-so-secret weapon. It gives us an edge, we believe, by helping us understand the deeper currents of politics and economics. You could, for example, watch the weather. Day by day, it changes. One day is hotter. The next day it rains. You could guess about what will happen as the days go on. But it is very useful to know that there are seasons... patterns that repeat themselves... never exactly the same, but always, reliably present.

Megapolitics is really nothing more than an insight, but an important one: there are seasons in our markets and politics too. You may think, for example, that ‘the government would never allow that to happen’... or that it won’t happen because ‘no one wants that.’ But then... it happens anyway.

People - smart people especially - fool themselves. Regularly and consistently they over-rate their ability to understand what is going on...and their competence to control the future and take the kinks out of history. They undertake vast programs and projects to make the world a better place - the Crusades, WWI, the Russian Revolution, the Great Leap Forward -and end up making history kinkier than ever.

The problem arises from the nature of life itself. It is, as Wallace Stevens put it, ‘an old chaos about the sun.’ There are an infinite number of things going on... and an infinite number of ways to look at them. We humans, however, do not have an infinite amount of time or an infinite brain capacity. So, we put things into categories (a process that Kant described as the ‘categorical imperative’) in order to simplify them.

Danger: Proto-humans had to make quick decisions in order to survive. If they saw a big, hairy thing charging in their direction, for example, they didn’t have time to wonder about what genus or species the thing might be... or if it was not some optical illusion caused by the setting sun... or a practical joke played on us by one of our own tribe members. They had to run... as fast as possible... to survive. Our ancestors, the survivors, were those who ran... not those who wondered for too long.

Today, we receive thousands of ‘messages’ - advertising, notices, data, opinions, and observations. We go through them on our computer screens... as quickly as possible... picking out those that are worth our attention. Most are disregarded immediately. Some are noticed... and studied carefully. A few actually change our ideas or behavior. Most people are busy; they sort things into very simple categories - good or bad; red or blue, friend or foe. Enemies are ‘bad’ people; that’s all you need to know.

The world of finance too can be reduced to the simplest dichotomy. Prices are either going up or down; why complicate it? But oversimplifying can cause big mistakes. ‘Enemies’ are not always real enemies. Wars are not always worth fighting. And stock market prices do not always go up. For a hint about what is really going on, we need to understand the seasons. We can look out the window and see the sun peeking through the clouds... but it also helps to know that it is springtime.

Natural Patterns: In the most simplistic, superficial sense, people make their choices and try to get what they want. But in the deeper, mega-political world, what they want has nothing to do with it. Megapolitics describes the profound currents of history... like the Gulf Stream... an immense underwater river. On the surface, it is not even visible. But underneath the waves, it carries warm water across the Atlantic and makes Northern Europe habitable. It is a natural pattern. It influences us; we have no influence over it.

Megapolitics recognizes that ‘stuff happens’ whether you want it to or not. Who wants to die, for example? But everyone does. And who can imagine that the US empire will be brought to its knees? But that will happen too.

Megapolitics encourages us to look beyond the slogans and platitudes we take for granted. The Titanic was considered unsinkable... until it sank. And now, many people think the Fed ‘wouldn’t allow’ a major recession, runaway inflation, or long-lasting bear market. But can the Fed really prevent these natural corrections? Probably not.

At another level, we believe that ‘all men are created equal,’ for example... and that we should ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us.’ But when power shifts dramatically, equal rights vanish. Imagine an invasion by a race of aliens with vastly superior technology. They might treat humans like we treat cattle... or snakes. Even among humans, huge disparities in power lead to relationships that are in no way ‘equal.’ That was the underlying story of the 18th and 19th centuries, when Europeans had such a big advantage in firepower over the indigenous peoples of Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Americas that they were able to colonize huge expanses of territory. The locals may have had ‘rights,’ but only those the conquerors chose to give them.

Megapolitics exposes the patterns and realities that few people want to think about. It makes us suspicious about ‘what everybody knows’ and skeptical about ‘what everybody believes.’ Does the war in the Ukraine really make any sense? Can the Fed really know what interest rates America needs? Does US democracy really work the way the voters believe? We have more questions than answers. But merely asking them gives us an advantage over most people.

Questions: How, when, why does a great empire die? The US/Anglo/Western empire seemed to peak out around 1999. Since then, despite record highs in nominal terms, US stocks and bonds have lost ground in real terms - measured in gold. This has happened against a background of soaring debt - from $5 trillion to $35 trillion of government debt alone - which was supposed to ‘stimulate’ growth.

And what is going on in the markets? In addition to the trends of days, weeks, and months, there are “Primary” trends that can take decades to play out. It appears that a major turning point was reached between the summer of 2020, when US bond yields bottomed out, and the end of 2021, when US stocks hit all-time highs. Where to now? Checking with CNN or Bloomberg won’t tell us. Maybe the Primary Trend patterns will.

And what about inflation and debt cycles? What’s in store for a country that has nearly four times as much debt as GDP? And what’s ahead for a democracy in which most voters want neither candidate and the most important issues are decided by big money influencers?

Few people will want to go too deeply into these questions. Good guys versus bad guys, us versus them, red versus blue - that’s enough for most of us. But in the difficult years ahead, shallow analysis could prove disastrous. Stay tuned."

Jim Kunstler, "Sick Of and Done With"

"Sick Of and Done With"
by Jim Kunstler

“Biden is not well. Everyone knows this even those who support him…the 
difference is they don’t care and that’s the most frightening aspect of this situation.” 
- Edward Dowd

"They’re kidding, right? That “Joe Biden” is capable of being president? Not just for another four-year term, but right here and now? This has got to be the most pitiful case of national gaslighting since 218-AD when the Romans installed 14-year-old Heliogabalus to front for their empire. Like “JB,” he reigned for four years (before the praetorian guard offed him). The Danish historian of ancient Rome, Barthold Niebuhr, said of him: “He had nothing at all to make up for his vices, which are of such a kind that it is too disgusting even to allude to them.”

Lately, even the news media has begun to report “Joe Biden’s” senile mishaps. On Thursday at an outdoor photo op during the G7 meet-up in Italy, the ol’ dawg just wandered off from the assembled pack of world leaders until Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni went and reeled him back in.
Earlier in the week at a Juneteenth party, they rolled him out on the White House lawn like a cigar-store Indian where he stood utterly frozen while all around him boogalooed and clapped to the music of jubilee.
Do you think that folks are starting to notice? Even many mind-f*cked Democrat Party regulars who have been just fine with the controlled demolition of our country under this human door-stop of a president are murmuring ominously that the scam has become too obvious. Not Rachel Maddow, though. America’s Woke lunatic-in-chief reigning on MSNBC warned this week that the return of Trump would lead to her (and millions of her fans) getting jammed into “concentration camps.”

Maybe you’ve already noticed that Rachel Maddow lives in a concentration camp of-the-mind located inside her own batshit-crazy skull. Dunno about you, but for the first time in a life lived through many decades of purportedly rational post-war Modernity, I’ve developed a sympathetic view of how come people in earlier eras resorted to burning witches. They are obdurate public nuisances. Their “magic” lately is the ability to provoke a mass formation psychosis, an actual “threat to our democracy” or, more precisely, to our republic. Maddow, the proudly out-front lesbian non-breeder is living proof that renouncing motherhood is a predictor of Cluster-B personality disorder - the condition that defines the “progressive” Wokery of these times.

I’m a little sorry to go all quasi-supernatural with you about this, but we are truly faced with the fact that the devastation in sexual relations and failures of family formation in recent decades has produced a very particular form of anomie in Western Civ’s female population - and the dynamic has badly deranged increasingly feminized men, too. Covid-19 was basically a Munchausen-by-proxy event, which ChatGPT describes accordingly:

" A psychological disorder wherein a caregiver, typically a parent, exaggerates, fabricates, or induces illness or injury in a person under their care, usually a child. The primary motive is to gain attention, sympathy, or praise from medical professionals and others, rather than any tangible benefit like financial gain.”

Actually, ChatGPT was wrong about the financial gain part. There were billions made off Covid by Big Pharma, including hundreds of millions in royalties doled out to public health employees. The government played the role of “mother” in the Covid caper, keeping you (her “children”) safe. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that claims about safety and safe places have been major themes in Wokery both before and during Covid. Anyway, as usual with Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome, the “children” (i.e., the US population) were injured badly by the “treatment,” the mRNA vaccines. And also as usual with mothers displaying Cluster-B personality disorder, the “bad” children who refuted the narrative and refused the specified “treatment” were punished severely. (Cluster-B is sadistic.)

One thing this suggests is that the cabal running things behind the empty suit “Joe Biden” is dominated by women, and my guess would be the women directly associated with Barack Obama: Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco, Kathryn Ruemmler, Sally Yates, Valarie Jarrett, Samantha Power, Avril Haines, Torie Nuland, give-or-take some combo of them, et al. I have alleged for years that the motif driving batshit-crazy, Cluster-B Democratic Party women is that Donald Trump represents Daddy’s-in-the-house. In their boundaryless state-of-mind nothing threatens the Cluster-B ladies as much as the imposition of boundaries by a fearsome daddy figure. Daddy = the monster of monsters to them.

Thus, the “Biden” regime’s remorseless persecution of Mr. Trump - like the village rabble hunting down Frankenstein with torches and pitchforks - and the fantasies, were he allowed to live, about being sent to concentration camps by the likes of Rachel Maddow. There’s nothing like barbed-wire and sentry towers to vividly suggest the imposition of “boundaries” on your behavior.

I have strayed a bit from my initial theme concerning the grotesque game of “pretend” being played around “Joe Biden’s” re-election candidacy. Let’s say this: it is the terminal op being run by an out-of-control Deep State blob now losing its mojo in big gobs each day as its epic dishonesty gets exposed. This blob had some very potent tools at its command to jerk around the people of this land, especially the legacy news media. Most of that consisted of deception which is to say the tactical application of untruth. The op was tragically effective for some years, but its victims - US citizens - are onto the game now and they are angrily flipping over the game board. Mark this essential fact of life: truth is sturdy and lies are fragile. So, now you know what must, in the end, prevail.

“Joe Biden” is not long for this world as a token in that game. Mere days, I’d say. There is no way that the Democratic Party can afford to put him in a debate arena June 27th with Mr. Trump. Two minutes in, “JB” would be leaking sawdust and stuttering incoherently. The Party would be revealed as a fraud for the ages. And then, by the time you’re scarfing down blueberry pie on the Fourth of July, Hillary Clinton (better known here as Rodan the Flying Reptile, or She-Whose-Turn-It-Is) will be flapping her leathery wings on-high in triumph as “JB’s” emergency replacement. "I am here to save our democracy, caw caw!" Wait for it! Trouble is, batshit crazy women are exactly what our country is sick of and done with."

"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East, 6/14/24"

Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 6/14/24
"Douglas Macgregor: Lebanese Troops Enters 
Northern Israel In Shocking Escalation!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 6/14/24
"Iran’s Big Warning As Israel-Hezbollah Tensions 
Escalate Amid Gaza War; ‘Tehran Will Not Allow…’"
"Iran issued a massive warning to Israel amid tensions with Hezbollah. The Iranian Foreign Minister said Iran will not allow Israel to attack Lebanon and achieve its goals against Hezbollah. This comes after Israel killed a Senior Hezbollah Commander in a recent attack."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 6/14/24
'"Netanyahu Is Scared': Israeli Residents Blast 
'Coward' Army & Govt Amid Hezbollah Blitz "
"Israeli leaders in Northern Israel have slammed PM Netanyahu and IDF Chief for alleged lack of action against Hezbollah amid ongoing rocket fire from the Lebanese side. According to Jerusalem Post, Moshe Davidovich, head of the Mateh Asher Regional Council, said the residents of the north are used as cannon fodder for Hezbollah chief's whims, and the Israeli government is falling asleep while standing."
Comments here:
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Owen Jones, 6/13/24
"Israel's Strategic Defeat Explained - w/. Dr. Alonso Gurmendi"
"Why isn't there more discussion about the huge strategic defeats suffered by the Israeli state? No better to discuss this with than Dr. Alonso Gurmendi, a brilliant expert in international relations."
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/14/24"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/14/24"
Dollar Dying, Russian Missiles Here, CV19 Vax - NOT!
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"This past week, the so-called petrodollar officially died. What does this mean to Americans? The petrodollar ending will affect everything from interest rates and inflation to solvency of the Treasury market, and it can even affect whether the US survives as a country. In short, the US dollar is dying, and that death just got kicked into overdrive. Now that Saudi Arabia will accept many currencies for its oil, the world does not have to hold dollars. Get ready for hard times as all these useless dollars find their way back to America. When you have a lot of something, the price goes down. The dollar will survive, but the buying power of it won’t be anything like it is today.

A few weeks ago, the Biden Administration started supplying missiles to Ukraine and gave the evil regime their permission to start shooting them into Russia. What could go wrong with that hairbrained decision? How about Russia is now sending nuclear armed subs and stealth submersible craft to patrol the US coastline. How long will Russia allow the US to shoot missiles into Russia before it shoots a few into the US? If a nuke hits Saint Louis, there will be no Republicans and Democrats anymore. It will be just “We the People” sinking in the same boat. Call your Congressman and Senator and ask them if they have lost their minds to be pulling this reckless stunt with Russia, a hypersonic nuclear armed country. Really—call them.

It’s official. The CV19 vax is NOT a vaccine. It is a “treatment,” and it does not stop the spread of Covid or provide immunity. The 9th Circuit Federal Court came to this conclusion this past week. The CDC honchos changed the definition of vaccine when the CV19 shots came out a few years ago, and they have been lying to the public ever since. The 9th Circuit ruling is the official admission that the entire country, with 700 million CV19 injections, was hit with one big deadly and debilitating fraud. One thing the CV19 injections are good at is disabling and murdering its victims. Don’t be surprised because, this week, Harvard Law professor Francis Boyle, who drafted the 1989 Bioweapons Act, went on record to say the CV19 injections are, in fact, “weapons of mass destruction.” That is exactly what biotech analyst Karen Kingston said nearly three years ago on USAWatchdog.com. There is more in the 50-minute newscast."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
 stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 6/14/24.

Thursday, June 13, 2024

Jim Rickards, "The Economy Is Going To Be Destroyed..."

Jim Rickards, 6/13/24
"The Economy Is Going To Be Destroyed..."
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "Time To Load The Boats... We're F#%@ed"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/13/24
"Time To Load The Boats... We're F#%@ed"
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "It's Too Late For You, The Worst Is Yet To Come; Here Come The Job Losses"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/13/24
"It's Too Late For You, The Worst Is Yet To Come;
Here Come The Job Losses"
Comments here:

Gerald Celente, "WW III: Israel And Ukraine Wars On Fire"

Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/13/24
"WW III: Israel And Ukraine Wars On Fire"
Comments here:

Oh, Gerald's in fine form here... lol

"San Francisco Has Become HELL, Full Tour of The Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
ThisisJohnWilliams, 6/13/24
"San Francisco Has Become HELL, Full Tour of The Collapse"
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Judge Napolitano, "Pepe Escobar: Russia Readies War With NATO"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/13/24
"Pepe Escobar: Russia Readies War With NATO"
"In this eye-opening discussion, we sit down with the renowned geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar to delve into the escalating tensions between Russia and NATO. Escobar provides an in-depth analysis of Russia's strategic maneuvers, the implications for the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and the potential for a broader conflict. We also explore the recent deployment of Russian warships and submarines to Cuba, adding a new dimension to the geopolitical chessboard. Don't miss this critical conversation that sheds light on the future of global stability."
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "We Are Always"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "We Are Always"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured exposure, taken from Florida, USA, covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon.
Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight."

"The Invitation"

"The Invitation"

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know
if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by
life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance
with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember
the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. 
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
 if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
 if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand
on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to
know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like
the company you keep in the empty moments."

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear The Mask”

“We Wear The Mask”

“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!”

- Paul Laurence Dunbar

A Comment

Moody Blues, "Don't You Feel Small?"

"See the world, ask what it's for,
Understanding, nothing more.."

A comment: I'm quite aware this blog's content has progressively turned into a virtual chamber of horrors - devastating economic and social collapse, governmental corruption and loss of civil liberties, wars and very possible nuclear war which we cannot and will not "win", exploding poverty, drug epidemics, police state surveillance, and on and on - one disaster or horror after another - everything's going to Hell in a hand-basket and it's as clearly displayed here as I can make it. The world's a complex place, so the articles are lengthy of necessity. Not by choice - I'd much rather focus on other, better things, or be doing something else, but take a glance at the main-stream liars and propagandists, you won't see any of these things covered truthfully there, just more of the sensationalistic garbage and pure propaganda from all those cheaply bought low-life money whores. I've always believed you CAN handle the truth, given the chance to know it. Of course you can find truth, or the best version of it, elsewhere on many sites, if you know where to look, and I hope you're doing that. I can only speak to what you'll find here. 

Please, don't come here expecting all sweetness and light, you'll be rudely disappointed. Anymore the blog article selection is really a threat-analysis and prioritization process, in hopes of keeping you informed about what's really happening behind the smoke screens and lies, and alerting you to imminent crises. We've run out of time, hence the sense of urgency. These things are upon us, they're here now, and you have an absolute right to know and understand how and why it's all happening as it is. That knowing may help you prepare, help you deal more effectively with things you can change, and inevitable changes we can do nothing about. But we will NOT go down without a fight! So, apologies for the sometimes grim article content, but that's real life, just how it really is, whether any of us like it or not. Stay informed, stay aware, and stay strong, always, never give up, and most of all thanks for stopping by!
- CP

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"; "Ten Rules For Being Human"

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOm

"Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul. Life is the province of learning, and the wisdom we acquire throughout our lives is the reward of existence. As we traverse the winding roads that lead from birth to death, experience is our patient teacher. We exist, bound to human bodies as we are, to evolve, enrolled by the universe in earth school, an informal and individualized academy of living, being, and changing. Life’s lessons can take many forms and present us with many challenges. There are scores of mundane lessons that help us learn to navigate with grace, poise, and tolerance in this world. And there are those once-in-a-lifetime lessons that touch us so deeply that they change the course of our lives. The latter can be heartrending, and we may wander through life as unwilling students for a time. But the quality of our lives is based almost entirely on what we derive from our experiences.

Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul, as well as the intellect. The scope of our instruction is dependent on our ability and readiness to accept the lesson laid out before us in the circumstances we face. When we find ourselves blindsided by life, we are free to choose to close our minds or to view the inbuilt lesson in a narrow-minded way. The notion that existence is a never-ending lesson can be dismaying at times. The courses we undertake in earth school can be painful as well as pleasurable, and as taxing as they are eventually rewarding. However, in every situation, relationship, or encounter, a range of lessons can be unearthed. When we choose to consciously take advantage of each of the lessons we are confronted with, we gradually discover that our previous ideas about love, compassion, resilience, grief, fear, trust, and generosity could have been half-formed.

Ultimately, when we acknowledge that growth is an integral part of life and that attending earth school is the responsibility of every individual, the concept of "life as lesson" no longer chafes. We can openly and joyfully look for the blessing buried in the difficulties we face without feeling that we are trapped in a roller-coaster ride of forced learning. Though we cannot always know when we are experiencing a life lesson, the wisdom we accrue will bless us with the keenest hindsight."
"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have 
drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."
- Richard Bach
"Ten Rules For Being Human"

Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.
Rule Two: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.' Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.
Rule Three: There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.
Rule Four: A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.
Rule Five: Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
Rule Six: 'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.
Rule Seven: Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about  another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
Rule Eight: What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.
Rule Nine: Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
Rule Ten: You will forget all of this at birth. You can remember it if you want by unravelling the double helix of inner knowing.
- Cherie Carter-Scott, 
From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

"Do You Want..."

"Do you want to live life, 
or do you want to escape life?"
- Macklemore

"You May Wonder..."

"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."
- Stephen King

"In This World..."

"In this world, the thing people fear the most, and what pains people the most - is giving more than they receive. God forbid I cut off more of my fingernail for you than you cut from your fingernail, for me! Heaven forbid I hold my breath in longer while thinking about you, than the amount of time your breath is held in for me! Not a second longer! It is a sad fact of human nature that there you stand as an Infinite Soul and yet your greatest fear is not receiving from another person in proportion to what you give. Your viewpoint is low, your vision is clouded. You have become, in your eyes, a funny little drawing on the paper pad of the universe. Indeed, this race is yet to evolve. And yet, I am surrounded by such fear, to such a great extent that I begin to fear the same!"
- C. JoyBell C.

Dan, I Allegedly, "Things are Choppy and Scary"

Dan, I Allegedly, 6/13/24
"Things are Choppy and Scary"
"Today we bring back Bob Kudla from Trade Genius. There are numerous potential Black Swans on the horizon. We will hear him talk about the state of the economy and where he feels the market is headed. This will include crypto, energy, stocks, and precious metals."
Comments here:

"NUKEMAP"

"NUKEMAP"
by  Alex Wellerstein

"We live in a world where nuclear weapons issues are on the front pages of our newspapers on a regular basis, yet most people still have a very bad sense of what an exploding nuclear weapon can actually do. Some people think they destroy everything in the world all that once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. The reality is somewhere in between: nuclear weapons can cause immense destruction and huge losses of life, but the effects are still comprehendible on a human scale. 

The NUKEMAP is aimed at helping people visualize nuclear weapons on terms they can make sense of, helping them to get a sense of the scale of the bombs. By allowing people to use arbitrarily picked geographical locations, I hope that people will come to understand what a nuclear weapon would do to places they are familiar with, and how the different sizes of nuclear weapons change the results. There are many different political interpretations one can legitimately take away from such results. There is not intended to be a simple political "message" of the NUKEMAP."
Access NUKEMAP here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 6/13/24
"Russian Army's 'Electronic Launch Of Nuclear Missile' Drill: 
Putin Nuke-Ready Amid West's New Moves"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 6/13/24
"'Ready To Use Nuclear...': 
Russia Openly Brandishes Nukes After NATO's New 'Trigger'"
"Russia has pulled out its nuclear weapons as NATO nations permit attacks on its soil. Russian and Belarusian troops have started the second stage of tactical nuclear drills. Moscow said the drills were aimed at ensuring that the two countries' military personnel and equipment were ready to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity."
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Russians do not bluff, ever...

The Daily "Near You?"

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Problem With The World..."

 

"We Are Doomed And Challenged...:

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin
to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."
- Arthur Miller

Chet Raymo, “Examination of Conscience”

“Examination of Conscience”
by Chet Raymo

"I have been reading Stephanie Smallwood's “Saltwater Slavery,” a close examination of the trade in human beings between the coast of West Africa and the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a sobering read, but if there is one thing I came away with, it was this: We have an enormous capacity to rationalize the most horrendous crimes. Everyone involved in the slave trade - the European owners of the ships, the masters of the trading companies, the ship captains and crews, the plantation owners in the West Indies and the Chesapeake, the African tribal chiefs who captured and sold their neighbors to the European merchants - knew in some part of their souls that what they were doing was wrong. All of them - good Christians among them, pillars of their communities - found ways to rationalize their participation.

Who among us is immune to self deceit? To what extent am I implicated in the horrendous tragedies that are Darfur and Iraq? What do I owe to the global environment? Is there such a thing as innocence when we are so intimately connected that people in Fiji and Japan will read these words only moments after I write them?

What about science, the favored subject of this blog? Here is Smallwood: “The littoral [of the West African coast]...was more than a site of economic exchange and incarceration. The violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied upon a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas.”

Even science, like religion and democratic politics, can be pressed into the service of evil. We are all of us to some extent in the grip of economic forces as powerful and sometimes as pernicious as those that drove the saltwater slave trade. Few of us are required to personally face the direst evils. We are saved from moral anguish only by the fact that our acts of commission and omission ripple outward until their consequences are diluted and lost in the general happiness or unhappiness of humankind.”

"Everywhere in Chains"

"Everywhere in Chains"
By Joel Bowman

“Man is born free,” Rousseau reminds us, “and everywhere he is in chains.” The exiled Genevan’s point, if we grasp it correctly, is that our natural state is one of liberty... of rights unalienable... of freedom. It is the world we make, held he, that makes us unfree.

How does Rousseau, himself a scalawag of the highest order, resolve this conundrum? By supposing a “social contract,” of course, the deus ex machina of the Gordian philosophical knot, in which everyone is beholden to everyone else because of something Rousseau calls the “general will.” “Each of us puts his person... under the supreme direction of the general will.” Rousseau posits the body politic as a single entity, composed of each participating individual, in which the “common good” outweighs the rights of the component parts. Collectivism, in other words.

“Let us set equal terms for the truce” Rousseau begins his treatise (quoting from Virgil’s epic poem, "Aeneid"). Departing from Hobbes’s cynical assertion that, without the civilizing agent of government, man would be left in a state in which existed “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau holds that force alone (such as exerted by the State) does not itself create right.

Allow us to preempt your next question, dear and incisive reader: “Then why create a state in the first place?” Perhaps it is useful here to consider the State not as a civilizing agent, as Hobbes had it, but as an expression of the many, varied and reliable ways in which man is uncivilized. This would be the inverse of what the much overpraised eugenics enthusiast, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, argued: “Taxation is the price we pay for civilization.” Properly considered, civilization is the price we surrender when permitting the gang of thieves calling itself the State to rob, coerce and enslave us, to deny us our individual sovereignty."

"Going Broke the Traditional Way"

"Going Broke the Traditional Way"
Capital cannot be consumed; it must be saved and invested
 wisely, skillfully. Everything else is distraction…fraud and fantasy.
by Bill Bonner and Dan Denning

"History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities."
- "Gerontion", TS Eliot

London - "Investors heard the lure of the Lorelei yesterday. So sweet. Irresistible. What lush pleasures they suggested. What otherworldly satisfactions they offered. Yes, word came that inflation was “cool.” Business Insider reports: "Inflation came in softer than expected, with consumer prices remaining flat over the month of May. On a yearly basis, inflation was up 3.3%. That's slightly lower than the 3.4% yearly increase recorded in April, marking the second month in a row that prices have cooled. Bond yields plunged after the report. The 10-year US Treasury dove 11 basis points to 4.287%."

"Wednesday's weaker-than-expected CPI will allow the Fed to start cutting interest rates as soon as September since we have now seen multiple encouraging inflation readings, after the concerning spike in inflation earlier this year," Skyler Weinand, the chief investment officer of Regan Capital, said in a note. "There's a clear path to a soft landing and the Fed may very well be coming to the market's rescue in as little as three months."

Markets Insider followed up: "US stocks rose on Wednesday as investors took in cool inflation data and the Federal Reserve's latest guidance on rate cuts, helping the S&P 500 to another record close."

But then, the Dow gave back all its gains when it became clear that Jerome Powell was not exactly on the rate-cut bandwagon. It was “certainly a better inflation report than almost anyone expected,” he said. But he added that he wanted to be sure inflation was under control before cutting rates. Boo hoo. Investors will have to wait for the lavish satisfaction they crave.

But Fed rate cuts do not magically create more real wealth. Wealth is created by increases in productivity…with more output per unit of labor and resource input. It is the result of hard work…and forbearance. Immediate pleasures must be put off…lessons must be learned. Capital cannot be consumed; it must be saved and invested wisely, skillfully. Everything else is distraction…fraud and fantasy. After revealing the Fed’s decision not to cut rates any time soon, CNN added: ‘That means borrowing costs on everything from car loans to mortgage rates will remain elevated.’

Lowering the cost of credit makes it easier to buy things….but it doesn’t necessarily make it easier to pay for them. As we’ve seen, more credit creates short-term ‘fictitious’ wealth, not long-term real wealth. Sellers record the increase in sales as a plus. The feds record the extra sales as an increase to GDP. But until the bill is settled, the transaction is incomplete.

As debt increases so does the cost of debt service (interest) and the number of debtors who won’t be able to pay – including the biggest debtor in the world, the US government. And so does the amount of wealth that is likely to vanish in the next crisis. This is especially true when the borrowing was done under false pretenses – that is, at interest rates that are unrealistically or artificially low.

And lo…the debt rises. The latest figures are out. The Congressional Budget Office says that the feds’ deficit for the month of May was $348 billion – up $108 billion from last year. Whew. The CBO is forecasting deficits between 5.2% and 6.3% of GDP over the next 10 years. This is a nation going broke in the traditional way…by adding phony wealth and real debt. And here at Bonner Private Research, we’re not the only ones to notice. The Financial Times is on the case:

The IMF’s second-in-command has urged the US to shrink its mounting fiscal burden, saying strong growth in the world’s largest economy gave it “ample” room to rein in spending and raise taxes. Gita Gopinath, the fund’s first deputy managing director, said it was time for advanced economies to “invest in fiscal consolidation” and address how they plan to bring debt burdens back down to pre-pandemic levels.

“For the US, we see ample ground for them to reduce the size of their fiscal deficits, also given the strength of the US economy,” she told the Financial Times in an interview. The warnings come as economists and investors fear that years of fiscal profligacy by both Democrats and Republicans are storing up trouble for the US economy.

Yes, dear reader, there is ‘ample ground’ to cut spending. But fraud is more agreeable than truth…and increasing debt is much more appealing than paying it off. For now, policymakers and investors are enchanted by the song of the Lorelei and the fake wealth it produces. Later, they will crash upon the rocks. Until tomorrow..."

Research Note, by Dan Denning: "Three years and two months ago, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank would like to see sustained inflation over 2% ‘for some time.’ Mission accomplished. Yesterday’s ‘cool’ CPI figure of 3.3% would have been hotter if not for the 9% fall in the used cars and trucks category (repos, perhaps).

Today I want to share three charts with you. These are the sort I’d normally share in my Friday Research Note for paying subscribers. But if you’re a new reader, you may not have seen them. And all of them are important to BPR’s investment strategy now, and for the rest of the year.

First, a slower rate of change doesn’t mean inflation is going down. It means - assuming it’s even accurate - that inflation is growing less fast (although still above the Fed’s ‘target’). The first chart below shows the entire price level shifted 22.26% higher in four years from May of 2020 to today. It’s this shift that’s killing the quality of life for the American Middle Class (by contrast, the S&P 500 is up 25% since the Fed started raising rates in March of 2022).
Click image for larger size.
Second, the velocity of money is on the uptick. The chart below shows the year-over-year change in broad money supply (M2). Money supply ballooned with the Covid stimmes and giveaways. Then it appeared to contract, even as inflation remained ‘above target.’ Now, the very latest data point shows money supply expanding again. A ‘second wave’ of inflation is building.
Click image for larger size.
When you get high inflation with a recession it’s called stagflation, a throwback to the great monetary policy mistake of the 1970s. But that’s where we may be headed. As the chart below shows, each of the last eleven recessions began either just before or right after the Fed started cutting rates (the recessions are the grey vertical lines on the chart while the blue line is the effective Fed funds rate)."
Click image for larger size.

"How It Really Is"

 

Free Download: F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"

"The Road to Serfdom"
by F.A. Hayek

"An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, 'The Road to Serfdom' has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944 - when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program -'The Road to Serfdom' was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy."
Freely download "The Road to Serfdom," by F.A. Hayek, here:

"The Corporatization Of Everything - Serfdom In Our Time"

"The Corporatization Of Everything -
Serfdom In Our Time"
by Paul Rosenberg

"I’m quite serious about the serfdom part. Please read on. If you want millions of dollars thrown at your new company, the way to do it is in “tech,” which usually means a new Internet service. If you can find a way to suck a new part of people’s lives from the world of atoms to the world of data, your odds are good… far greater than trying to launch a construction company. For the construction company you’ll have to beg for loans. For a clever new Internet service, Venture Capitalists (VCs) with huge wallets will happily listen to your pitch.

Here, in brief, is how this works: Most of the things VCs fund will fail, but the ones that work (the “unicorns”), can make them fortunes. The VCs end up owning most of the equity in the companies they finance. The people who start and operate the company bleed more equity with each new round of financing.

The VCs cash in when they take companies public. Once listed on the stock exchanges and promoted, people will pay enormous multiples of what those companies actually make. Lots of unicorns have sold billions of dollars worth of shares without ever turning a dollar of profit. The investing psychology of the age is such that people are eager to buy these stocks. For the past generation, this model has worked, and so it continues without any serious examination. This model works by corporatizing activities which were previously personal and private.

Consider these cases:
٭ Facebook corporatized friendship.
٭ Google corporatized finding information.
٭Visa corporatized payments.

And so on, some for the better in ways, but always at the expense of the private sphere. By this model, the corporation gets a cut, where previously there was no cut to be taken.

At this point, corporations are trying to rent you everything. Private ownership, after all, can’t really be corporatized. If a corporation is to make money this way, they need you to rent from them. And so they portray their systems as having some sort of added value, get you to believe that all the cool kids are doing it, and convince you to rent from them, for life. Most people no longer buy DVDs or CDs, for example. Rather they “stream” music and video, never owning anything and forever dependent upon operations like Netflix.

There’s a reason Klaus Schwab blathered on about “You will own nothing and be happy.” That’s what this model produces. This was also the model of serfdom. The Schwabbian model breaks down the populace into owners (“stakeholders”) and renters (“people”). The old words for this relationship were lord and serf.

You can see this in hedge funds buying up the houses of America, then renting them back to the old owner’s family and neighbors. The hedge funds get massively better financing that Joe Shmoe could get, and Joe’s younger relatives aren’t doing terribly well these days anyway. And if corporatization requires some regulations to be made or altered, the corporations can purchase them easily enough… while Joe’s kids can’t.

Where This Goes: Klaus Schwab may have been evil, but he was not entirely stupid. He saw where this would go, and he ran with it. The trajectory of this trend is for you to own nothing… for you to rent everything from stakeholders, leaving you beholden to them for almost everything.

Now, while the Schwab types get off on enserfing you, the corporate types usually don’t: they’re just following a model that works. They’re eager to get rich, and so they turn a blind eye to their roles in enserfing the masses. (“Hey, I’m not holding a gun to their heads.”) They get caught up in the unicorn fetish and become sociopathic in that area of their minds. (See The Mystery of Iniquity for an explanation.)

If you don’t like where this is heading, the fix is simple: Just drop out of their game. The price of that fix is to let people call you names… just as they did to those who ditched serfdom back in the day."

"What Being Governed Really Means"

"What Being Governed Really Means"
by Brian Maher

"And to be governed, noted 19th-century philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: "Is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded… registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished… drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed… repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored."