Canadian Prepper, 3/2/23:
"Top Russian Commander Reveals Plan;
Doomsday Plane On Alert In Euro"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, March 3, 2023
Thursday, March 2, 2023
"Food Banks Will Be Overrun!"
Adventures With Danno, 3/2/23:
"Food Banks Will Be Overrun!"
"Extra SNAP Benefits have come to an end, and has millions of people wondering how they will put food on the table! With grocery store prices continuing to skyrocket we are afraid food banks will get overrun!"
Comments here:
"The Financial Carnage Is Coming Fast And Furious; Blackstone Defaults"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/2/23:
"The Financial Carnage Is Coming Fast
And Furious; Blackstone Defaults"
Comments here:
"Middle-Class Americans Are On The Brink Of Bankruptcy As Hard Times Coming"
Full screen recommended.
"Middle-Class Americans Are On The Brink
Of Bankruptcy As Hard Times Coming"
by Epic Economist
"Millions of American families have lost everything in recent years, and new data shows that middle-class households are going bankrupt at a faster pace than households in other income groups. A scarcity of well-paying jobs, astronomical price increases, and the runaway increase of mortgage rates in an age of stagnant paychecks have all contributed to the financial struggles of middle-class Americans. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to the fact that even with two incomes, becoming and staying in the middle class has never been harder. The current economic downturn is threatening to make things even more complicated for middle-income earners. They are standing on very thin ice, and the cracks are starting to show. Many of them are already on the brink and are likely to the pushed over the edge by an unexpected job loss or emergency expense in the months ahead, experts say.
Middle-class Americans accounted for 66% of personal bankruptcies in the country in 2022. Today, many of the staples of middle-class life such as college education and homeownership carry with them more financial risk, requiring more borrowing and new riskier forms of borrowing, especially at a time of rampant interest rates. And now more than ever, consumer debt has become the go-to pressure valve for squeezed middle-class families. However, more consumer debt puts them in a precarious financial situation, economists say. “It is the people in the middle — not the richest or the poorest — who accumulate the most debt on their credit cards. It is these same people who seek relief in the bankruptcy courts,” highlights economist and management consultant, Amelia Tyagi.
A generation ago, a typical middle-class family with one income committed about 54% of their pay to the basics — housing, health insurance, transportation, and taxes. That is, the one-income family spent about half its income to cover all the bills — “the essential expenses that must be paid even if someone gets sick or loses a job,” Tyagi says. In 2023, these basic expenses, including child care so that both parents can work, consume 75% of the family’s combined income. With 75% of income allocated for fixed expenses, the finances of today’s middle-income households have no margin for error.
“When we think of bankruptcy, we often think of celebrities who have gone broke, companies that failed, and crooks who are trying to cheat the system. But as it turns out, bankruptcy is most common among middle-class Americans,” says MarketWatch financial analyst Jana Kasperkevic. During an interview, bankruptcy lawyer Craig D. Robins emphasizes that nowadays, those who are most likely to file for bankruptcy are middle-class families of the baby-boomer generation – “the typical Long Island family,” he said. “We previously considered middle-class families as a stereotypical group noted for their financial stability and for the vitality they provide to the American economic system. It is the middle-class family, however, that now has become the stereotypical bankruptcy filer,” Robins outlines.
Carrying high levels of debt during such uncertain times may push many of these households over the edge financially in the months ahead. As the recession unfolds, layoffs and the lack of job creation will continue to fuel the personal bankruptcy boom. That’s how you know when a country is broken. The foundation of our economy is desintegrating before our eyes. And many people will be shocked to find out that poverty may be just one headwind away."
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "Market Madness And More War Coming"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 3/2/23:
"Market Madness And More War Coming"
"The Ukraine War continues to rage, with no end in sight. As we have long noted, by the facts, Wall Street and Main Street are worlds apart and have no interrelationship. On the market front, again, as we have continually detailed, the one percent own some 54 percent of all the equities and when you add up the top 10 percent in total, they own 90 percent of the stocks. It is clear proof of who runs and who ruined what was once called “The Land of Opportunity.”
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Magnificent island universe NGC 2403 stands within the boundaries of the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis. Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by the telltale reddish glow of atomic hydrogen gas. The giant HII regions are energized by clusters of hot, massive stars that explode as bright supernovae at the end of their short and furious lives.
A member of the M81 group of galaxies, NGC 2403 closely resembles another galaxy with an abundance of star forming regions that lies within our own local galaxy group, M33 the Triangulum Galaxy. Spiky in appearance, bright stars in this colorful galaxy portrait of NGC 2403 lie in the foreground, within our own Milky Way.”
Chet Raymo, “Under the Surface”
“Under the Surface”
by Chet Raymo
by Chet Raymo
“Somewhere, in something I have written, I recall quoting with approval this passage from Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire": “For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?”
Pleased enough with surfaces. Yes, I know what I meant. Pleased enough with this world, here and now, this world of light and matter. Not wanting or needing that other world that occupies so many people, a world of supernatural agencies, spirits, disembodied presences. Give me a world I can see and hear and touch and taste. Give me a world with heft and substance, a world with surfaces that shine and shimmer. What else is there? What else do we need?
Well, maybe not. I was scanning issues of “Science” and “Nature,” with their usual illustrations of the molecules of life, the nuclei acids and the proteins. The elaborate machinery that unseen, under the surface, endow the apple's flavor, the silk of skin, the abrasion of sand. Think of it. Atoms that are mere whiffs of resonance, binding into molecules, twisting and turning into endless shapes, fitting together like hand and glove, endlessly spinning and weaving, all without the slightest conscious participation on our part. Abbey's world of surfaces spun out of the mysterious, endlessly active, subsurface stuff of the world.
Pleased enough with surfaces? Not really. I want to know what's under the surface, that world of molecular frenzy that cannot be touched or seen, a world that in its own way is as beautiful and as meaningful as the macroscopic world we consciously inhabit. We don't need to know it. We can live a fulfilling life without knowing it. But I want to know it. I want to know what goes on behind the curtain of the senses. I want to hear that silent and ceaseless music of creation.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"A Hammer Blow..."
"Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie."
- Dean Koontz
Greg Hunter, "Deep State Absolutely Wants to Kill You"
"Deep State Absolutely Wants to Kill You"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular books “Deep State” and “Crimes of the Educators,” predicted at the beginning is this year that the Deep State demons will have one crisis after another to keep people confused and afraid. The latest crisis is the economic and ecological disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. Newman says expect many more disasters and explains, “All across the country we are seeing very bizarre things happen. Factories and chemical plants going up in flames, food processing facilities blowing up, airplanes crashing in mysterious ways, and I think we are heading into an era of really serious crisis. Last summer, I was putting together the wave of crises that the Deep State was preparing for us, and one of the terms I used was ‘polycrisis.’ Then, right before the World Economic Forum meeting this year, they actually put on their website is 2023 the year of the polycrisis? Of course, it will be the year of the polycrisis. I think we are prepared and being groomed for cyber-attacks, currency crisis, economic crisis and, of course, Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan. I think all of this is going to be used for a series of never-ending crises until we are ready to give up our freedoms, give up our national sovereignty and self-government, and move towards this crazy totalitarian, technocratic system they want.”
Newman says it’s not going to be a kind transition for most people. Newman says, “The thing that is so hard for people to understand is that there are very powerful people that are working together, and they absolutely want to kill you. That is not speculation. These people have been openly saying for a century that they believe there are too many people on this planet. The eugenics movement never died. Margaret Sanger, the Rockefellers, Dr. Joseph Mengele was funded by the Rockefeller dynasty. These people are very much still around. Bill Gates is the perfect example. His dad was on the board of Planned Parenthood, the largest butcher of unborn babies in America. Bill Gates says openly and frequently that there are too many people on this planet. He wants to use vaccines and healthcare to reduce the number of people on the planet.”
Newman has a dark warning for America and explains, “Now that they are done with America and we are no longer useful and an obstacle to this global agenda, they need to knock us out. They may not want to resort to nuclear bombs, but if they did, it would not surprise me. America is founded on very important ideals, and these are, once again, making a resurgence. Our self-evident truths that are enshrined in our Constitution, that God created us equally, that God gave us the right to property. God gave us our right to life. Government exists to protect these rights. These are Biblical ideas distilled into a political document. These are ideals that are fundamental to liberty, and as long as the United States exists in its present form. America is a major threat to this agenda. I don’t think we should put it past them that they would use nuclear bombs against us. I also think there is a fifth column in Washington that would be more than happy to collaborate." There is much more in the 35-min interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with hard hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the book “Deep State.”
The Poet: Galway Kinnell, "Another Night in the Ruins"
"Another Night in the Ruins"
"How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren't, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames,
our one work is
to open ourselves,
to be the flames?"
"How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren't, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames,
our one work is
to open ourselves,
to be the flames?"
~ Galway Kinnell
“A Sane Person..."
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, "Welcome to the Monkey House"
o
Free Download: Jiddu Krishnamurti, “The Book of Life”
"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing and dance,
and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freely download “The Book of Life”, by Jiddu Krishnamurti, here:
- https://selfdefinition.org/krishnamurti/
"A Long March Through The Night..."
"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair."
- Bertrand Russell
"In Life..."
Strong Language Alert!
"In life you have to do a lot of things you don't ****ing want to do.
Many times, that's what the **** life is... one vile ****ing task after another.
Many times, that's what the **** life is... one vile ****ing task after another.
But don't get aggravated - then the enemy has you by the short hair."
“Al Swearengen”,
Ian McShane's character in “Deadwood”o
"The Sane Who Know..."
“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”
- W.H Auden
"A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart, but at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion. "
- Charlyn Khatero
"Takeover of the Machines"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/2/23:
"Takeover of the Machines"
"Technology will make it so you will never want to be late on your vehicle payment ever again. Ford just filed for a patent where it will have the ability to repossess your car on a whim if you don’t make your payments."
Comments here:
"Ukrainians Are Falling Apart"
Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 3/2/23:
"Ukrainians Are Falling Apart"
"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States and the world. Russia-Ukraine conflict latest news update with Colonel Douglas Macgregor."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/2/23:
"Putin Warns STOP This Now As
NATO Crosses Red Line In Ukraine"
Comments here:
o
Excerpt: "There are numerous accounts from returning mercenary soldiers about what is really going on. Ukrainians slaughtering Russians who surrender. I have videos so horrible of crucifying Russian soldiers and then burning them alive. Zelensky then wants to put out the bullshit that Russia is committing war crimes?"
and all of us, have paid at least $121 BILLION for. Proud?
Bill Bonner, "The Panic Pivot"
"The Panic Pivot"
Sooner or later, the real massacre will begin...
By Bill Bonner
San Martin, Argentina - "A few years ago, we developed what we called Bad Guy Theory (BGT). The idea was that there are good guys and bad guys. The bad guys change, of course. Germany was bad in 1940. Now it is good. Ditto with Japan. Today, Russia and China are bad. The bad guys come and go. But the good guy – the USA, the “one, indispensable nation” – never changes. And since good guys do only good things, bad things miraculously become good things when they do them. Such as, invading Iraq. Or blowing up other peoples’ pipelines. Or assassinating their leaders. Without noticing, the good guy becomes a bad guy.
The Panic Pivot: We’ll come back to that as we puzzle out how China became a bad guy…what America is becoming…and why you should brace yourself as the US rehearses the unhappy comeuppance of empires throughout the ages. But today, let us check in on how the financial reckoning is going.
Our hypothesis: the inflation Indians are off the reservation. The Fed will continue to raise rates, trying to get them under control, until the economy reaches a crisis point. Then, it will panic and ‘pivot’ towards more money-printing.
Here’s one little item from YahooFinance: "Car Debt Is Piling Up as More Americans Owe Thousands More Than Vehicles Are Worth." "The build-up in negative equity - or the amount that debt exceeds a vehicle’s value - is rattling consumers and raising alarms within the industry. Though it’s not unusual for drivers to carry negative equity, some dealers say more people are arriving at their lots up to $10,000 underwater, or “upside down,” on their trade-ins. They’re buying at still-sky-high prices and rolling debt from one car to another and even onto a third. Loans are commonly stretching to seven years.
“As trade-in values begin to cool, each month more and more consumers will find themselves falling from positive to negative equity,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at auto-market researcher Edmunds. “Unless American car shoppers break their habit of buying again too soon, we’ll see the negative equity tide continue to rise.”
Disruptors Disrupted: As cars decline in value, so does the car-selling industry. Carvana – the ‘disruptor” that was once worth $31 billion has lost 96% of its value. It’s lost money every year since it was created in 2014. A $100 million loss one year, $150 million the next. But last year, it lost $1.5 billion, for a total loss of $2.107 billion during its career. Meanwhile, another ‘disruptor,’ WeWork, has wiped out $15.5 billion of capital since it began in 2016.
These are not just the ‘paper’ losses of stock market speculators. This is real wealth – time and resources – squandered on bad ideas, a total of more than $17 billion by these two companies alone. That’s about what the total national debt was during the Dust Bowl drought of 1931 (not adjusted for inflation). Back then, the debt-to-GDP ratio was a mere 22%.
While speculators lose money, so does the middle class; its houses are going down as well as its cars. Mortgage applications are at their lowest level since 1995, while mortgage payments rose 26% last year…and the average sale price fell 16% since last July. Home sales fell for the last 12 months straight…and are now 37% below their level of a year ago…the biggest decline on record.
The Real Massacre: And here’s Breitbart, adding it up: "Homeowners in the United States have lost $2.3 trillion in total value since its peak in June, according to an analysis from Redfin. “The total value of U.S. homes was $45.3 trillion at the end of 2022, down 4.9% ($2.3 trillion) from a record high of $47.7 trillion in June,” an analysis of the Redfin Housing Value Index claimed. The research indicated that the drop in total valuation across the United States is the “largest” drop in total percentage terms from June to December since 2008."
What can desperate consumers do? Borrow! Credit card balances just took their biggest jump since the 2001 recession. Total debt for millennials is up 27% since 2019, the most for any age group. Millennials also had the highest delinquency rate. In other words, so far, so good. Both the rich (investors) and the not-so-rich (the middle class) are getting scalped.
Sooner or later, we think, the real massacre will begin…and the Fed cavalry will, alas, come to the rescue…like Custer to the Little Big Horn. Stay tuned."
"It's Coming Apart: The Economy, World Markets, The Global Financial System"
Gregory Mannarino, 3/2/23:
"It's Coming Apart: The Economy,
World Markets, The Global Financial System"
Comments here:
o
Related:
"Saving Where We Can At Kroger! Major Price Increases On Food!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/2/23:
"Saving Where We Can At Kroger!
Major Price Increases On Food!"
Comments here:
"Col. MacGregor: Ukraine Has Been Destroyed And There's Nothing Left"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/1/23:
"Col. MacGregor: Ukraine Has
Been Destroyed And There's Nothing Left"
"Ukrainian president Zelensky just admitted that American troops will be needed to keep Ukraine from total collapse. At the same time NATO announces Ukraine will become a member of the alliance before too long. This is a non-starter for Russian President Putin. Colonel Douglas MacGregor joins Redacted host Clayton Morris for the very latest developments."
Comments here:
o
Related:
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Warning: The Coming Collapse Of The Food Supply"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/1/23:
"Warning: The Coming Collapse Of The Food Supply"
"Joel Salatin talks about one the greatest threats
to our food production that no is talking about."
Comments here:
"Used Car Retailer And Subprime Auto Lender Collapse As Car Loan Crisis Intensify"
Full screen recommended.
"Used Car Retailer And Subprime Auto Lender
Collapse As Car Loan Crisis Intensify"
by Epic Economist
"In the past, America has seen a massive stock market and housing bubble burst – but a car market bubble burst? That’s new. And yes, it seems absurd but that’s what is happening right now. According to Bloomberg, the dominoes are already starting to fall. A few weeks ago, we discussed the “perfect storm” that was brewing for the U.S. auto market. Fitch data revealed that today more Americans can’t afford their car payments than during the peak of the Great Recession. But that wasn’t exactly a surprise, after all, with the highest interest rates in 15 years, auto loans became too expensive for millions of struggling Americans.
Yesterday Bloomberg exposed that the calm before the storm was actually briefer than we all thought. That’s because on Friday, one of the most famous used car retailers in the United States and subprime auto lender, American Car Center, suddenly shut down all of its operations, closing all of its 50 dealerships across 10 states.
The abrupt collapse of the auto lender and car retailer was likely the first of many and highlights the deteriorating state of the subprime auto loan market. Millions of people are starting to fall behind on their car payments, and the distress cycle is rapidly accelerating.
According to Cox Automotive, 7.11% of subprime loans were severely delinquent in the last month, up from 6.75% in the month prior and from 5.48% in the same period a year ago. Even more concerning, the 7.11% severe delinquency rate was the highest monthly figure since Cox began tracking the data in 2006. A seriously delinquent auto loan means the borrower is more than 90 days behind on payments.
On top of that, IBIS World data shows that about US$19.6 billion of subprime auto loans are expected to be written in the U.S. in 2023. This amount represents only about 11% of the overall U.S. auto market of US$173.2 billion, but the sharp increase in delinquencies among the riskiest auto borrowers could very well be a leading indicator of broader auto loan problems and pose a threat to the overall economy.
Even though the idea of a car market bubble seems quite absurd, as opposed to a stock or housing bubble. That’s the perfect way to define what this is. Encouraged by easy credit conditions, Americans have borrowed huge amounts of money for their cars over the past two decades. At the turn of the millennium, Americans had less than $600 billion in motor-vehicle loans outstanding, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. By the end of 2022, Americans owed just shy of $1.4 trillion on car debt, a full doubling in barely a decade. People have been borrowing more money per vehicle — from about $26,000 in 2010 to $$40,155 in January — an exponential spike!
However, interest rates for auto loans have gone from 7.4 percent to 9 percent in a year, and monthly payments from $506 to $600. Seven-year loans are gaining in popularity. But not everyone can shoulder the higher monthly payments, as well as higher down payments, so car sales, and car prices, are crashing.
The truth is that auto loans have long been what people in the industry call “a shitshow.” When lenders face a day of reckoning for all of these bad loans, shockwaves will ripple through financial markets and panic will ensue. Now it’s understandable why Tesla CEO said the auto loan crisis would trigger “the biggest financial crisis ever”. The outlook is looking gloomier by the day, and now we’re waiting to see the next domino to fall."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy’s stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy’s core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that “If enough color data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies.”
Chet Raymo, “The Uses of Enchantment”
“The Uses of Enchantment”
by Chet Raymo
“There was a time when every wood, every tree, was thought to be inhabited by spirits called dryads, every pool and stream by naiads. Even not so long ago, our road here in Ireland was called “the fairies’ road.” The world, we say, was enchanted - every stone and plant infused with an animate spirit. Science put paid to all that, chased the spirits from their woods and pools, drove the fairies from their hills. Disenchanted the landscape. Well, maybe not. It depends on how you define enchantment.
Remember those spider webs I wrote about the other day, made visible by dew? Once the sun burned away the mist and the dew evaporated, the webs became invisible. But of course they are still there, a thousand silken snares, each with its resident spider. As I walked down the drive today I sensed their presence - the field alive with invisible spirits, a thousand arachnoid dryads crouching in their bowers.
The key to enchantment is to be aware of what can’t be seen. The spiders in their webs. The spinnerets extruding gossamer. The DNA zipping and unzipping in each cell of the spiders’ bodies, the amino acids, A and T, G and C, grasping hands in their dervish dance. The atoms in their resonant vibrations.
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well,” wrote Antoine De Saint-Exupery. The key to enchantment is to never stop thinking about the well.”
The Poet: William Stafford, ”Today”
”Today”
“The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: “Now,” and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.
Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,
you could close your eyes and go on full of light.
And it is already begun, the chord
that will shiver glass, the song full of time
bending above us. Outside, a sign:
a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,
“Be warm.” No one is out there, but a giant
has passed through town, widening streets, touching
the ground, shouldering away the stars.”
- William Stafford
"Making Your Best Guess"
"Making Your Best Guess"
by Arthur Silber
"We are not gods, and we are not omniscient. We cannot foretell the future with certainty. Most often, cultural and political changes are terribly complex. It can be notoriously difficult to predict exactly where a trend will take us, and we can be mistaken. We do the best we can: if we wish to address certain issues seriously, we study history, and we read everything that might shed light on our concerns. We consult what the best thinkers of our time and of earlier times have said and written. We challenge everyone's assumptions, including most especially our own. That last is often very difficult. If we care enough, we do our best to disprove our own case. In that way, we find out how strong our case is, and where its weaknesses may lie.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, we cannot be certain that a particular development represents a critical turning point at the time it occurs. If we dare to say, "This is the moment the battle was lost," only future events will prove whether we were correct. We do the best we can, based on our understanding of how similar events have unfolded in the past, and in light of our understanding of the underlying principles in play. We can be wrong. "
"Food Stamps End For Millions Of Poor People; Kohls"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/1/23:
"Food Stamps End For Millions Of Poor People; Kohls"
Comments here:
"Something Much Worse Than A Recession Is Coming...Just Be Ready For It!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/1/23:
"Something Much Worse Than A Recession
Is Coming...Just Be Ready For It!"
Comments here:
"Discipline, Romans, And Spending All The Money"
"Discipline, Romans, And Spending All The Money"
By John Wilder
"Self-discipline is hard, but it starts with the smallest step. Even (the dead) Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in his book "Meditations" talked about how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning. Marcus talked about how warm and comfy he was under the covers, and how he’d like to stay there, curled up. In then end, though, he got up because he had responsibility to govern the Empire that was a bit more important than his desire to be comfy.
Me? There are some mornings I would have given up Gaul for another fifteen minutes. Okay, maybe not Gaul because of the food, but definitely Judea.
Marcus did the tough (maybe he had a hangover?) thing because he had a responsibility to millions of citizens to do his very best for them, and as nearly as I can determine, he took that seriously. Plus? It’s good to be the Emperor. I hear they didn’t have to wait in the drive through for Chicken McNuggets® and always got enough Hot Mustard™ sauce.
The difficult part of discipline is that it requires, well, discipline. Getting good things in life is difficult – that’s why we work for them. And that’s why it’s called work. It’s tough. But when the seeds are planted, cared for, and weeded, then at harvest it’s time to reap the rewards. Discipline is like that. Heck, some sort of east Asian place that I can’t be bothered to look up has a proverb that says that, “A woman who marries a man who works hard every day will never starve.”
I don’t think that was China, because if it was China, they have been starving every century by the tens of millions, especially when they embarked on the Chinese Diet Plan called Communism. Maybe it was Puerto Rico? Or Applebee’s™? Probably not. But I think it might have ended in a vowel, but not Y, because that’s sometimes only a vowel, and I don’t think that Asians use the same fonts.
So, if even a dead Roman can figure it out, why can’t we? The latest bouts of fiscal insanity in the United States have made me think that none of them have read Marcus Aurelius, or maybe even can read. What triggered this post is the recent Supreme Court Case about ghosts. Oh, wait, that’s later. No, student loans.
Student loans in the United States are a particularly horrible thing that gives money to Leftist professors so that they can indoctrinate youth but the youth has to pay for it until they lose all their teeth or pay it off. I think that was in the terms and conditions of my student loans, but I can’t be exactly sure, since after I signed my name, they gave me $7,500. Duh.
The most pernicious thing about student loans is that they live forever. I paid mine off in January, 2013. I paid ahead, but didn’t want to pay them off completely if the world ended in December, 2012 (which was a thing). Oddly, this is a true story, and illustrates how far I’m willing to take a joke.
But student loan forgiveness is just the tip of the iceberg. For the last five or so years of my life, the government (both Right and Left) has been like a fat girl who decides on a Tuesday night that the diet is over. That cookie dough? Sure. I can eat a tube or two. Covered in frosting. Oh, and I’ll just tidy up the frosting container so it doesn’t go bad. If you’ve given up, why not go all in?
The government (again, both Right and Left) has decided that there is no limit. Every Tuesday for them is time to give Ukraine more money for...(spins wheel) dental x-ray infrastructure. Will $23 billion cover that? Sure, if it were just Ukraine, that would be one thing. But it’s not just that. Biden’s Build Back Better means that we’ll just burn cash to make us warm if we run out of oil.
If I seem a bit cynical, it’s because that at every single turn in my life, that I’ve seen fiscal discipline further erode, and money fly a bit freer each day. At no point have I ever seen (outside of Ron and Rand Paul) and politician say, “stop”. Apparently, when elected to Congress, the “spend money on everything light” blinks on the dashboard of their cars.
There is no discipline. There is no pretending to have discipline. It’s all just comfy warm covers and Chicken McNuggies™ while every sense of fiscal discipline is overridden by another trip of the spoon in the Pillsbury™ chocolate frosting.
But that’s okay. I’m sure it will end fine. Where’s the frosting? I think I want to sleep late today. Oh, but have we spent enough money on Ukraine?"
"Of All Tyrannies..."
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
- C.S. Lewis
"Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll"
"Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll"
by Jeff Thomas
"The baby-boomer generation were perhaps the most privileged generation that the US has ever spawned. Their fathers returned from World War II, eager to get married, buy a house and start a family. The economy was booming, as, during the early years of the war, the US wisely stayed out, but provided tanks, helmets and even toothbrushes to those who were directly involved in the fray.
What’s more, they didn’t accept pound notes or francs; they accepted only gold. So, at the end of the war, when the manufacturing cities of Europe had been destroyed by bombs, the male populations decimated and the governments broke, the US was on a roll. They had most of the world’s gold and had first-rate manufacturing facilities that only had to switch from making jeeps and rifles to making cars and televisions. That wave of wealth allowed the young married couples to spoil their children with whatever they wanted.
The boomer generation reached their teens in the 1960s, and having grown accustomed to receiving whatever they wanted in life, they were young adults and wanted to party. The phrase, "sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll" was coined and it was an apt one. Young Americans opted for plenty of all three. But of course, somewhere in their twenties, most boomers got married themselves and settled into a new life in which they took on professions and sought wealth. Many became bankers, lawyers, trust officers and politicians.
But, although they were now adults, they were not always responsible adults. There was a new objective – money – and they wanted lots of it. The party was to continue, but on a much more extravagant scale. And again, they were in luck, since back in 1944, the US had strong-armed Europe into accepting the Bretton Woods agreement, which made the US dollar the default currency.
Later, in the 1970s, the US was successful in making the dollar the petrodollar – the currency through which oil was traded. And in 1973, the SWIFT system was created, which, although centered in Brussels, was controlled primarily by the US.
If a national leader did not play ball with the US, he could be sanctioned. The US would threaten to cut him out of SWIFT, making international trade impossible for him. And if a small country did not tax its people as the US did, it could also be threatened with the loss of SWIFT.
The US was rolling in dough, as the saying goes, but it wasn’t sufficient for the boomers. Through the creation of debt, they were able to make the party bigger and better. The boomers, who were now older and had become financiers, changed the US from the biggest creditor nation in the 1950s, to the biggest debtor nation a few decades later. By the 1990s, the boomers had financed the party with a powerful trio of financial weapons: the default currency, the petrodollar and SWIFT.
But all parties must end. Along the way, Europe had grown tired of being dictated to by its war ally and was fed up with being expected to support US sanctions against other countries, that were often their trading partners. Instead of the US being the helpful rich friend, it was becoming a liability. Further, Russia had recovered from its 1991 Soviet debacle and was very much on the rise – leaner, meaner, and ready to stand toe-to-toe with the US.
And China had awoken from its Maoist slumber and was charging ahead both productively and economically at a faster rate than the world had ever seen. By 2015, it had overtaken the US as the world’s foremost producer.
But this had zero impact on US bluster. Its leaders continued to act like the big boy on the block and, if anything, became more militarily aggressive and economically threatening. Then the world at large began, slowly but deliberately, to prune the US domination.
A rift began to grow between the US and Saudi Arabia, an alliance that made the petrodollar possible. Soon, Iraq, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries began to accept other currencies and/or gold in payment for oil. This caused the US to invade them in the hope of creating puppet regimes that would stick to the US rules. But after decades of war in a host of Middle Eastern countries, with no end in sight, the US has not gained any petrodollar ground. It has, however, trashed several countries, made the US hated worldwide for its aggression and gotten itself into a level of debt that is now beyond repayment.
Still, the US controlled SWIFT, but in 2014, Russia began to develop its own payment system, SPFS, in response to Washington’s threats to cut Russia from the SWIFT system. Then, in 2015, China introduced its own international payments system – CIPS – and began to offer it to Russia, India and others for trade. In 2019, the EU made a surprise move, announcing its own payment system, INSTEX, into which all of Europe was invited, but the US was not. Only months later, when the US cut Iran from SWIFT, Russia jumped in and offered SPFS to them, so that they could trade throughout the world, if not with the US.
If it appears that the US has gone out on a limb and is now in the process of sawing off that limb, that would be an accurate perception. Still, for the moment, the US retains the third leg of its economic strength. The dollar is still the default currency in the world and the US news media eagerly provide updates that confirm that the dollar is rising against the other major currencies in the world. The decline of these currencies is due to the fact that the countries that produce them have also attended the party for decades and have also gotten heavily into debt. The ability to expand that debt is beginning to crumble, resulting in currency devaluations.
So, will the default dollar save the US, and allow the party to continue? Well, no. In fact the dollar is in far greater trouble than the other major currencies, but it has a bit more lead time before it collapses. I often describe the dollar as being "the best-looking horse in the glue factory." It will be the last to fall, but will most assuredly do so.
When this particular party ends, it will be one for the record books. In its wake, it will leave a generation of now-aging Americans who have always been able to have their cake and eat it, too. As a result, they’ll be unable to cope with the economic hangover that they’ll be facing. This suggests that the recovery will take a very long time – a generation or more. For those who plan long-term, the US will be a poor choice as regards progress and prosperity for a long time to come."
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