So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, January 22, 2021
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Must Watch! "Bank Crisis Unavoidable; Stimulus Won't Save Economy; Economic Losses Will Be Alarming; Jobless"
Jeremiah Babe,
"Bank Crisis Unavoidable; Stimulus Won't Save Economy;
Economic Losses Will Be Alarming; Jobless"
FUBAR, on steroids...
"Be Ready For Global Currency Reset And Central Bank Digital Currencies"
by Epic Economist,
"Be Ready For Global Currency Reset
And Central Bank Digital Currencies"
"The global health crisis has impacted millions of lives and caused unprecedented damages to the economy of several countries, but it also brought to light a series of social and financial issues that were previously overlooked. In view of the unsustainability of the current financial model as well as the growing social upheaval in the face of the enormous inequality gap - which has been further expanded by the crisis -, economists, central bankers, politicians, and globalists have been treating the health crisis as a perfect opportunity to start the global currency reset.
Evidently, the reset will not come without huge consequences for the entire world population, including increased surveillance and dominance over our lives, greater dependence on governments, and according to some analysts, this elites' masterplan is just a delusional idea that will prompt people to grant some of their freedoms in exchange for a "greener economic plan" that will never be effectively put into practice. Meanwhile, the wealthy will find the perfect cue to pursue their infinite money fantasy by making Modern Monetary Theory policies permanent. That's why, in this video, we are going to expose how these changes will affect all of our lives, and discuss how we are already inevitably diving into the establishment's plan of widespread monitoring, endless money printing, and the creation of digital identities.
Recently, a new hot topic amongst world leaders and central bankers is how the sanitary outbreak has highlighted the need for a major change in the global financial and economic system. Central bank digital currencies are being developed by numerous countries but, of course, politicians and policymakers are justifying their creation as the next "obvious move" to make in a society where technology is taking over.
By making extraordinary policies permanent, such as the limitless issuance of printed money, world governments are essentially making us more reliant on their financial "support" while they put the economy and financial markets in a huge bubble. Leaders are setting the stage for a financial catastrophe that will give us no choice but to accept their "help". In the United States, the Federal Reserve has already announced plans to launch a digital currency so that they could deposit UBI in digital wallets for all Americans. It sounds good in theory, but how would you feel knowing that cash will essentially have no more value and that federal agencies can track, block, and tax all of your virtual money transactions?
Considering that pretty much everything that is done in Wall Street offices is already digital, this transition is expected to happen smoothly. But, on the other hand, this will certainly trigger more job losses and accelerate the commercial real estate collapse. Meanwhile, with traveling stalling and remote working expanding, we're about to experience an irreversible transformation in the job market. Conversely, as more and more employees will be working from home, employers won't have to hire local workers. Instead, they will be able to employ highly qualified workers from places where wages are considerably lower, such as China and India.
The U.S. middle class has already undergone unparalleled financial setbacks during the current recession, with millions of previously well-off families falling right into poverty in a timespan of months. The measures put in place to avoid the total meltdown of the country and to allegedly aid the American citizens have immersed this group in more debt, and amid a tragic outlook for the economy and the job market, debt canceling will sound like a practical option. However, what seems to be a debt reset to repair some of the damages caused by reckless government policies, is actually a plan to expand government power and suppressing liberty through enhanced surveillance state via real-time tracking worldwide.
Initially, the introduction of such measures will be conceived as a response to the health crisis, but the creation of a digital identity that includes contact tracing and immunity passports are means to an end. They can sell us the idea of the formation of a new system that would improve the livelihoods of millions, but on the flip side of the coin, they will also guarantee access to private information that could be used by authoritarian governments to profile and police citizen behavior. And one thing we clearly learned about fascism from past crises is that it's better not to ever count on authorities not to abuse their power because they will if they can. So beware of the Great Reset, because just as all the other elites' plots, it's not as good as it sounds and, this time, it’s not only our finances but our freedoms that are on the line."
Gerald Celente, “Biden Presidency = Obama Team 2021”
Gerald Celente,
“Biden Presidency = Obama Team 2021”
The incomparable Gerald... lol
Gregory Mannarino, "WAKE UP! You Are Continually Being Lied To"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/21/21:
"WAKE UP! You Are Continually Being Lied To"
Musical Interlude: Foy Vance, Ed Sheeran, "Make It Rain"
Foy Vance, "Make It Rain", Original
Ed Sheeran's cover version, "Make It Rain"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Cradled in cosmic dust and glowing hydrogen, stellar nurseries in Orion the Hunter lie at the edge of a giant molecular cloud some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning nearly 25 degrees, this breath-taking vista stretches across the well-known constellation from head to toe (top to bottom). The Great Orion Nebula, the closest large star forming region, is right of center. To its left are the Horsehead Nebula, M78, and Orion's belt stars. Red giant Betelgeuse is at the hunter's shoulder, bright blue Rigel at his foot, and the glowing Lambda Orionis (Meissa) nebula at the far left, near Orion's head.
Of course, the Orion Nebula and bright stars are easy to see with the unaided eye, but dust clouds and emission from the extensive interstellar gas in this nebula-rich complex, are too faint and much harder to record. In this mosaic of broadband telescopic images, additional image data acquired with a narrow hydrogen alpha filter was used to bring out the pervasive tendrils of energized atomic hydrogen gas and the arc of the giant Barnard's Loop.”
"The Extra Ounce Of Power..."
"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can
reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the
extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even."
- Muhammad Ali
Chet Raymo, “The (Unattainable) Thing Itself”
“The (Unattainable) Thing Itself”
by Chet Raymo
“Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations- one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.”
"Simplicity. Morning. Forty minutes till sunrise. Coffee. An English muffin. Sit on the terrace. The sky a deep violet. Then rose. Then gold. Simplicity. The senses fill to overbrimming, displacing thought. The moment is sweet and pure. Distilled. The shackles of conscience fall away. One simply is.
“Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.”
Now I wait with my eyes fixed on that place along the horizon where the Sun will rise. The sky itself holds its breath, anticipates the flash of green. I try, I try to empty myself, Zenlike, to become an empty vessel for nature to fill. A gathering vessel, brilliant edged. To exist entirely in the moment, outside of time, this moment, just now, now, as the disk of the Sun bubbles up on the sea horizon, that orb of of molten gold.
“There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”
It's no use, of course. No way to obviate the conscious mind. Perhaps a Zen master might do it, a mystic in transport, a drunken sailor who walks into a lamppost. Even as the Sun's disk inflates, swells, unaccountably huge, the mind parses, frames, construes. I close my eyes to shut out thought and the words fill up the space behind my eyelids. The thing itself is out of reach, the moment adulterated by mind. The blessing of consciousness. And the curse."
(The three stanzas are Wallace Stevens' "The Poems of Our Climate.")
“Requiem for a Ladybug”
“Requiem for a Ladybug”
by Frankly Francis
“You lie still less than a foot away on top of the soft mouse pad that protects me from carpal tunnel syndrome. I noticed this morning, through eyes not yet clarified by my first coffee of the day, your presence in my study. Odd, I thought, that you would even be present now. It is certainly past your time of the year in these parts.
I had the presence of mind to reckon that your life must be short. Rather than remove you from my space, both physical and mental, I decided that if these were your final moments then my study could be your Hospice and I your companion.
Your flight and movement were a little chaotic, seemingly random. You nestled in the heat of the light in the globe of my desk lamp, you circled my cranium, you landed in various spots, and in and on various objects on my desk while I got about the business of the day.
Sometimes I could see you, other times I did not know where you were. Then you would rise again to a new location. I wondered if you had any purpose in this, if there was more going on than my conscious programming allowed me to realize.
Perhaps it was, in your reality, some last business to be done? Or perhaps a ritual of your species’ existence? I hoped that if there is any pleasure in being a Ladybug that it was satisfying in some way, even so far from your natural habitat. Then you landed on your final resting spot and moved no more.
For me, my study is a place of many good things. I hope in your last moments it was to you as well. Rest in Peace my little Ladybug. And thanks for reminding me of the preciousness and fragility of life.”
The Poet: James Kavanaugh, “Searchers”
“Searchers”
“Some people do not have to search -
they find their niche early in life and rest there,
seemingly contented and resigned.
They do not seem to ask much of life,
sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously.
At times I envy them,
but usually I do not understand them -
seldom do they understand me.
I am one of the searchers.
There are, I believe, millions of us.
We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content.
We continue to explore life,
hoping to uncover its ultimate secret.
We continue to explore ourselves,
hoping to understand.
We like to walk along the beach -
we are drawn by the ocean,
taken by its power, its unceasing motion,
its mystery and unspeakable beauty.
We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers,
and the lonely cities as well.
Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter.
To share our sadness with the one we love is
perhaps as great a joy as we can know -
unless it is to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself,
for everything beautiful it can provide.
Most of all we want to love and be loved.
We want to live in a relationship that will not impede
our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls.
We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
We are wanderers, dreamers and lovers,
lonely souls who dare ask of life everything good and beautiful.”
- James Kavanaugh
"River of No Return"
"River of No Return"
By Bill Bonner
"Today, we drift downriver… It is the same stream we were on yesterday… leading from the crystal source, way up at the top of America’s imperial glory at the end of the 20th century… and then down to a muddy, bitter, confusing puddle in the 21st.
You’ll recall from yesterday’s Diary that there are only two important things a president has to do: He has to protect the American people… and their property. Like two banks of a river, they can never be entirely separated.
Wealth Erosion: We’ve been exploring the financial side… looking at the ways the feds have failed to protect Americans’ wealth. According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s calculation – shown here yesterday – normal, pre-fake-money growth rates would have produced twice as much additional GDP in the last decade, an extra $10 trillion to divvy up over the last 10 years. So most people are deprived of both wealth and income as a result of the feds’ fake economy. Even more egregious, the Federal Reserve gave some $7 trillion of fake money to the richest people in the nation. Relatively, everyone else is poorer.
More Capital: But today, we’re going to cross over to the other bank of the river. We will take a look at how America’s presidents have protected our freedom… or not. On neither side of the river is the U.S. blazing any new trails. This process of government-led impoverishment is nothing new. Or strange. Or mysterious. The Soviets and the Chinese took nearly full control of both sides of the river – their citizens… and their wealth. The results were stark and obvious – famines… empty shelves… shoddy products… bad food… and so forth.
But as we cast off, let’s take a look at this important island in the stream… connecting the two sides. Economists call it “capital formation.” It refers to the thing that separates free, rich societies from poor, slave economies. “Net real investment” is the amount of savings put to use training people, building new plants, and buying new “capital” equipment. That is, it’s the part of what we earn that is not consumed… but used to create more wealth.
It’s why wages are higher in the U.S. than in Mexico, for example; because America has more accumulated “capital.” Free people, once they get the taste for it, build capital. They save their money. They start new businesses. They create goods and services that add to the wealth of the whole group. Unfree people don’t. They are not allowed to. Or sometimes, they fear their new wealth might be taken away from them, so why bother? Or they are faked out by fake money, false interest rates, regulations, subsidies, bailouts, stimmy checks… and other abominations.
Small Government = Good: And here, we will make it even simpler for the new president to understand what he is supposed to do. Time and resources can either be used to create more wealth (capital formation)… or they can be consumed.Government, with some small exceptions, is a consumer of wealth. The private sector creates it. So the smaller and less intrusive the government, relative to the private sector, the richer and freer the society. There’s only so much time and space available. The more of it that is taken up by gun-toting, bossy-pants politicos, the less is left for the free, win-win, private sector. How hard can it be to remember that?
Small government = good. Big government = bad.
Power Balance: But there is no point putting this on Joe Biden’s desk. It is the last thing he will want to read. The governing elite gain power and wealth by forgetting that kind of logic. That is, after all, the aim of all politics – to hold onto power at any price… and use it to reward your friends and supporters.
Which is why America’s founders aimed to keep the feds from getting too big for their britches…by balancing the power of the executive with the power of the legislation… and restraining both with the power of the judicial branch…by having two houses of Congress. One was supposed to represent the people – carefully studying new laws to make sure they served the interests of their constituents. The other was meant to represent the states – which were sovereign members of the union… and able to walk away whenever it no longer served them…
by making sure that the House of Representatives had the “power of the purse”… recognizing that everything the feds did – whether passing out $2,000 stimmy checks or $2 billion defense contracts – came at the expense of the people. Leaving all spending bills to the discretion of the House guaranteed that no expense would be undertaken without the prior consent of the voters (through their representatives)…
by insisting that only Congress (not the president) had the ability to declare war and the responsibility to raise the troops and the money to pay for it…
by enacting a Bill of Rights to lay out clearly what the federales couldn’t do, no matter how good an idea they thought it would be at the time…
and by limiting the Republic’s money to “gold and silver”… so the feds couldn’t just print up paper money and use it for any foolish thing they wanted.
Out of Date: But all of those things seem quaint and out of date today. Congress never declares war… or raises money to cover the costs. Congressmen don’t even read the laws they pass. The power of the purse is meaningless; there is no money in the purse… Our money is fake. The states now look to the federal government for support. They are no longer sovereign and cannot leave the union or just say “no” to the feds’ rules and regulations.
The Bill of Rights is still there… but there is hardly a single part of it that has not been eroded away. All the feds have to do is declare an emergency – terrorism… plague… you name it – and they can get away with murder. Americans’ freedom has been taken away… one pettifogging regulation, one fake dollar, one lie… at a time.
Falling Apart: And now, the whole system seems to be coming apart. Nothing is too extreme. Or too absurd. Some 100 Democratic members of Congress have proposed a law expelling Republicans who challenged the election results. According to the charges, the Republicans are guilty of “insurrection.” Said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), expelling the duly elected representatives was a way of “healing” the nation. Representative Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, said that those who disputed the election results had “blood on their hands.”
While these were clearly over-the-top rhetorical excesses, they revealed a sad trend. Even the new president himself proposed to treat those who broke into the Capitol Building as “domestic terrorists.” The Wall Street Journal reports that one of his first priorities is to pass a law against “domestic terrorism.”
And now, the War on Terror comes home. Here’s General Stanley McChrystal – for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan: "…a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America. […] I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize."
Get ready, Guantanamo! Order some more yellow jumpsuits… More to come…"
"Memento Mori"
"Memento Mori"
by Ryan Holiday
"Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We're tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers." - Seneca
Born with a chronic illness that loomed large throughout his life, Seneca was constantly thinking about and writing about the final act of life. "Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life," he said. "Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."
Most interestingly, he quibbled with the idea that death was something that lay ahead of us in the uncertain future. "This is our big mistake," Seneca wrote, "to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death." That was Seneca's great insight - that we are dying every day and no day, once dead, can be revived.
So we should listen to the command that Marcus gave himself. He wrote,"Concentrate every minute like a Roman on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions." The key to this kind of concentration? "Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life."
That's the power of Memento Mori - of meditating on your mortality. It isn't about being morbid or making you scared. It's about giving you power. It's to inspire, to motivate, to clarify, to concentrate like a Roman on the thing in front of you. Because it may well be the last thing you do in your life.
The Stoics were philosophers, but more than that they were doers. They didn't have room for big words or big ideas, just stuff that made you better right here, right now. As Marcus Aurelius said: "Justice, honesty, self-control, courage, don't make room for anything but it - for anything that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours."
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/21/21"
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/21/21"
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JAN 21, AT 7:35 AM: "US COVID Hospitalizations Reach Turning Point; Dr. Fauci Confirms Joining WHO's Gates-Backed Vaccine Plan: Live Updates"
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Jan. 21, 2021 7:40 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 96,942,500
people, according to official counts, including 24,496,018 Americans.
Globally at least 2,075,900 have died.
Jan. 21, 2021 7:40 AM ET:
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count○
"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
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Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
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"Heading Down The Dangerous Road To Despotism"
"Heading Down The Dangerous Road To Despotism"
by Christine Flowers
"People often try and sound profound by quoting Santayana's apocryphal statement, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." But Santayana had his finger on the pulse of my nation in this moment. There is a lot of hysteria spreading among the cultured classes, but since they are the cultured classes, it is repackaged as concern for social norms and national security. What appears to the naked eye and the unbiased mind as a dance with totalitarianism is described by the dancers as "damage control."
Silencing voices that we don't like isn't new. It has happened since time immemorial. Having practiced immigration law for over two decades, I am intimately familiar with what happens when governments decide that certain thoughts are dangerous, certain views are unwelcome and certain questions should never be asked.
My asylum clients have ranged from the Haitian journalist who fled the bloody regime of Baby Doc Duvalier in the 1980s to an Albanian poll watcher who had the teeth beaten out of his mouth by political opponents. I represented a Pakistani schoolteacher who thought that girls should be given the same education as boys, and saw his one room school house burned to the ground in retaliation.
Add these people to the religious refugees, the Baha'i businessman in Iran who was stripped of his license because the mullahs called him an "apostate," the Maronite Christian police officer in Lebanon who was beaten with electrical chords by his Syrian persecutors, and the Evangelical Christian in El Salvador who was raped because she wouldn't stop preaching to the gangs.
When the tech companies started shutting down conservative social media accounts, starting with Donald Trump's, my friends on the left started ridiculing those of us who raised the red flag of censorship. But when a governmental role is taken up by non-governmental actors with the winking acquiescence and dog-whistle complicity of the official ruling body, you can no longer easily distinguish public acts from private ones.
Remember what happened in East Germany? The communist overlords used their Stasi secret agents to spy on possible dissidents. In order to make their jobs easier, they enlisted the help of average East Germans, the neighbors down the road and-chillingly-in the same homes as the targets. If you've ever seen the Academy Award winning movie "The Lives of Others," you know exactly what I'm referring to. Tina Rosenberg also mentioned this phenomenon in her book "The Haunted Land," which described what happened when the Stasi books were made public after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In many cases, wives found out that they had been spied on by their own husbands, children by their parents, and vice versa.
The horror was that ordinary human beings, private citizens, had been enlisted in the effort to silence the uncomfortable non conformists.
And then you have the memorable example of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who filled their Killing Fields up with the intelligentsia, professors and doctors and lawyers and other people with independent minds so they could more easily manage the masses. A friend of mind called what is happening now, this silencing from the left as a Khmer Bleu. I laughed, until I started crying.
That's why when I hear people say that it's whining and overkill to worry about the suspension and cancellation of conservative voices, I remember what happened in the past, and how it was excused. People are using those same excuses again, "public safety" and "keeping order" and "making people accountable." It is chilling that they do not hear themselves echoing the words of the totalitarian elders.
I do not agree that everything should be said. There are limits, and not every move to keep someone from speaking is a human or civil rights violation. But to suggest that someone who says "stop the steal" or who questioned the validity of an election is an enemy of the state, is itself a toxic injection into the civic body. It is also wrong to demand capitulation, penance and some sort of begged-for absolution from those who voted for and supported a president who is being compared to Hitler. As an aside, anyone who dares to compare anyone but the actual Hitler, to Hitler, is a pure and unadulterated anti-Semite, in my opinion.
So while it may seem trite to throw out quotes that end up on cards or embroidered on pillows to make a point, I don't think it's out of line to suggest that we crane our necks backwards to check on what happened to our ancestors. Ignoring the obvious is a very effective way to guarantee the inevitable. You can quote me on it."
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Christine Flowers is a Philadelphian who loves the Eagles but can leave the cheesesteaks. She writes about anything that will likely annoy the majority of people, and in her spare time practices immigration law (which is bound to annoy at least some people.)
"The Dangerously Diminishing Returns on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus"
"The Dangerously Diminishing Returns
on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The euphoria of ever greater monetary and fiscal stimulus overlooks the diminishing returns and higher risks generated by near-exponential increases in stimulus. I prepared a chart that graphically displays the extraordinary increases in stimulus and the declining results in the primary goals of economic policy: broad-based opportunity to get ahead and reducing systemically destabilizing wealth inequality.
Looking back on this era, the fatal irony that all this stimulus has rocket-boosted wealth and income inequality while gutting the bottom 90% will be glaringly obvious. It's actually glaringly obvious right now to those not blinded by euphoria. Consider this excerpt from the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, an article entitled Monopoly Versus Democracy (paywalled): "Like their forebears in the early twentieth century, today's Americans have experienced decades of growing inequality and increasing concentrations of wealth and power. The last decade alone witnessed nearly 500,000 corporate mergers worldwide. Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans." (Editor's note: emphasis added.)
In most industries, a few companies control the field, dictating terms, squeezing out competitors, and using differential pricing to extract cash and power. Three companies control digital advertising, four companies dominate beef packing, and an ever-shrinking number own the country’s hospitals.
While RobinHood stock traders may reckon their hot hand will boost them into the ranks of millionaires, it would take trillions of dollars of gains to even move the needle of our immense inequalities of capital and income: the top 10% skim 97% of capital income and own about 90% of all capital.
The ugly truth is all the monetary and fiscal stimulus of the past decade has only served to boost wealth and income inequality and reduce opportunity to gain a foothold in the New Gilded Age. In terms of offering those in the bottom 50% a stake in all this ballooning wealth, monetary and fiscal stimulus has failed completely: The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans.
The euphoric faithful also overlook the systemic risks created by exponential increases in stimulus that overwhelmingly benefit only the top 10%, top 1% and most especially the top .01%. The exponentially asymmetric benefits of ever greater stimulus generate social disorder that eventually breaks down the entire social order, while the exponential increases in debt, leverage and speculation increase the risks of a systemic financial collapse.
Allow me to translate the risible claims of Jay Powell and Janet Yellen that their stimulus policies haven't boosted wealth inequality to the moon: Let them eat cake. And we all know how that worked out."
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/21/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/21/21"
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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
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"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Daily Updates, Jan 20th to 21st
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Daily Job Cuts
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
"The Masks Are Coming Off"
"The Masks Are Coming Off"
by Rob Slane
"I had intended to start the New Year with a heart-warming piece entitled, “2021: The Year of Censorship of Dissent”. It would have been a somewhat prophetical piece, shocking some readers with predictions of a coming crackdown on dissent, and causing others to hoot with laughter because they haven’t quite caught up with the times we are in. You know, the types who say things like “Oh perrrlease! Social Media companies are private companies and they have the right to decide who they allow on their platform” and “Stop making out it’s the gulag” etc.
Unfortunately, my plans were scuppered by the fact that media and social media companies - let’s call them Global Pravda - have come out of the blocks even earlier than even I anticipated, and have been censoring left right and centre. As a result, my intended “prophetical” utterance seems like yesterday’s news.
We’ve had the censoring of Talk Radio on YouTube. Although this was then restored after intervention at the highest level, I understand some of the wonderful conversations between Mike Graham and Peter Hitchens are still banned. YouTube have also banned videos from extremely qualified scientists around the world, including two lengthy interviews given in English by one of the most qualified microbiologists on planet earth, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi.
We’ve then seen the President of the United States being banned from Facebook, Instagram and more recently Twitter. I am no fan of Donald Trump, but it is clear that he had never used these platforms to “incite violence” – the excuse given for his ban –, and it is obvious that there was something else going on there. And we’ve also seen numerous conservatives and scientists who oppose or question the mass quarantining of healthy people literally losing hundreds of Twitter followers in the last few days. Their followers are simply being deleted by Jack’s Magical Dissent Removing Algorithm, which has been invoked with a vengeance.
Last year really was nuts. It was a year when the authorities managed to convince people that even though they have no symptoms of an illness and feel as right as rain, they need to go get tested for the illness they don’t have, using a test that is not fit-for-purpose, such that they come away telling others that they have the illness they don’t actually have. Imagine doing that before 2020:
“Doctor, doctor, I think I have flu.”
“Oh really, what symptoms have you got. A cough? Achiness?”
“Oh no, I feel perfectly well. No symptoms whatsoever.”
“Then what makes you think you’ve got the flu?”
“I just think I might have it. Can I have a test?”
I imagine you’d have been laughed out of the surgery. Yet not only is this what people have been doing for over 9 months, but we’ve been told that people who aren’t ill need to be placed in quarantine and cover their respiratory passages with a piece of cloth, lest they spread the illness they don’t have to others. It’s quite mad, but we can at least comfort ourselves that it will be a source of amusement for our descendants.
It makes me quite nostalgic for the past. Well, 2009 anyway. Back then, when certain folks were trying to ramp up the fear and hysteria over the H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak (one Neil Ferguson prophesying 65,000 deaths in Britain), and Mexico announced a shutdown of much of its society for a time, the then Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Margaret Chan, appealed for calm: “In this regard, let me make a strong plea to countries to refrain from introducing measures that are economically and socially disruptive, yet have no scientific justification and bring no clear public health benefit. Rational responses are always best. They are all the more important at a time of economic downturn.”
Yet despite 2020 craziness, it doesn’t seem like it will hold a candle to 2021. If the first week or so is any barometer, it may be that 2020 was just the trailer or the warm-up act for the real thing. We’ve already seen the Chief Medical Adviser telling people who don’t have an illness to act as if they do have an illness. We’ve already seen the rollout of a vaccine, the study for which is not due to be completed until 27th January 2023. And we’ve already seen international organizations telling us that restrictions are likely to continue for the foreseeable future, Salvation by Vaccine notwithstanding – although those of us who have followed things carefully knew this anyway.
Yet the real story of 2021 - if anyone is allowed to tell it - is likely to be mass censorship. What we are already seeing is, ironically, an unmasking. If 2020 was the year in which people put their Masks on, 2021 is already shaping up to be the year when the Globalists and Global Pravda really take theirs off. They are really going for it, blatantly censoring dissent, brazenly de-platforming alternative views, and shamelessly using technology to ensure that reasoned, fact-based challenges to establishment narratives are silenced.
It is ugly, its sinister and its menacing. And unless you are someone who longs to live in a more totalitarian state, you need to get wise to it now, you need to pray against it now, and you need to fight against it now. The masks are coming off and freedom is being crushed. Choose which side you want to stand on.”
"Maybe..."
"Maybe this is kind of cliche, but animals, well, dogs, are what I do for a living. One reason I like spending time with them so much is they seem to think people are really good. They live with us, and obey our rules, most of which make no sense to them. And the main reason they do it is because they like us. When I watch them, sometimes I'm so blown away by how enthusiastic they are about everything we do that I have to go out and buy them something squeaky or chewy, just because I love proving to them that it's not a mistake to see the world as a great benevolent place. I hope one day to react to something with as much pure ecstasy as I see in Chuck's face every time I throw the ball. Sometimes he looks so happy, it reminds me of the way blind people smile way too big because they can't see themselves. And if none of this links to anything in you, well, I think you don't know who I am. "
- Merrill Markoe
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Related:
Musical Interlude: The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"
The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"
Full screen highly recommended.
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
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