"Housing Crash Is Coming! Supply And Demand Crisis Set The Stage For An Apocalyptic End Game"

Full screen recommended.

"Housing Crash Is Coming! Supply And Demand 

Crisis Set The Stage For An Apocalyptic End Game"

by Epic Economist

"The housing market madness is currently marking a clear shift in buyers' mood and sentiment as the health crisis drags on. Whereas the Fed plunged mortgage rates to record lows and the federal government delayed the foreclosure wave via forbearances, a mass exodus from major metro areas due to the growing socio-economic chaos resulted in an unprecedented demand for new homes and a fierce bidding war. According to several housing experts, homes are being snatched up right after being listed, and buyers' euphoria is quickly draining the market's supply and plunging inventory to ultra-low levels. A recent study shows the U.S. housing market is months away from completely running out of supply. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve policies continue to take the market towards another enormous housing bubble as prices explode all across the nation. However, the threat of rising mortgage rates, inflationary spikes, and a complex affordability crisis can lead to a catastrophic housing market crash that would sharply collapse property values just as seen during the mid-2000s bubble burst. And that's what we're going to expose in this video.

The equation of low inventory plus low mortgage rates has resulted in skyrocketing home prices, making it increasingly harder for Americans to afford a home. Now, first-time buyers are facing extra pressure to enter the market, as the cited factors have set the stage for a speculative and extremely competitive market. Bidding wars are being reported all across the country, oftentimes with buyers making all-cash offers with no contingencies whatsoever. Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist, noted "new listings are getting snatched up right away," adding that nearly 50% of US homes are selling within a week of hitting the market.

In a fresh CNN Business report, a 40-year veteran of the real estate industry and the CEO of KB Home, Jeffrey Mezger, said homebuyers should be careful as this is the most highly leveraged housing market he has ever seen. "It's crazy. There is no inventory," exclaimed Mezger, noting that the rapid pace of home price appreciation is a clear evidence the housing bubble is nearing a dangerous bust. The same report features the story of Ellen Coleman, a real estate agent who works for RE/MAX Realty Centre. She recently listed a fixer-upper in suburban Washington, DC for $275,000, and within three days, she had 88 offers.

The 1,800 square-foot home was sold for $460,000, roughly a 70% surge from the asking price. As housing becomes unaffordable for larger swaths of the population and the market seems to be overheating, Redfin's chief economist Fairweather remembers that this scenario is something "we've seen before, and it never ends well". In essence, the US housing market is facing a tricky dilemma. Either home prices will hit a wall and drop from there, or demand will start waning and, as a result, it will deflate the housing bubble. In any of both cases, it means that a correction has to occur as the current valuations are out of the reality of most consumers. That's why experts say all signs are pointing to a fast-approaching housing market crash.

Every day it goes by, the inventory crisis worsens and, with builders unable to build fast enough while more and more potential homebuyers battle over a smaller share of listed homes, a new JPMorgan study suggested that it could take about two months to exhaust the entire supply of existing single-family homes and approximately five months of new single-family-homes at the current sales pace. According to a National Association of Home Builders survey, 96% of builders surveyed reported building materials as the top challenge in 2021, up from just 66% in 2020. The main culprit is lumber. The material has been so scarce, prices have soared almost 200%, adding over $25,000 to the cost of a new home.

At this point, there is no doubt current housing valuations are based on misconceptions that distort reality. The truth is that all asset bubbles artificially inflated by the Federal Reserve throughout the past year won't resist a sudden increase in interest rates. In other words, it will not only trigger a devastating housing market crash, and lead property values to experience a sharp drop, but create big risks to the economy too, as homeowners become delinquent while watching their main asset collapse."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal: "Vaxula"

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal: "Vaxula"

- https://trendsresearch.com/

As only Gerald can do...

Musical Interlude: 2002, "An Ocean Apart"

2002, "An Ocean Apart"

Best viewed here in default mode:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Look to the Heavens"

“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the below gorgeously detailed image was taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch.

The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130422.html

"The Trick..."

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,

or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

- Carlos Castaneda

"Like The Poet Said..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."

- Richard Ford

"What's He To Do Then?"

"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on."

- "Penny Baxter", Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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Get up, get up! Don't you dare give up!

You're gonna shine again...

Full screen recommended.

The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”

“Starting With Little Things”

“Love the earth like a mole,

fur-near. Nearsighted,

hold close the clods,

their fine-print headlines.

Pat them with soft hands-

Like spades, but pink and loving; they

break rock, nudge giants aside,

affable plow.

Fields are to touch;

each day nuzzle your way.

Tomorrow the world.”

- William Stafford

Chet Raymo, “Living In The Little World”

“Living In The Little World”

by Chet Raymo

"My wisdom is simple," begins Gustav Adolph Ekdahl, at the final celebratory family gathering of Ingmar Bergman's crowning epic “Fanny and Alexander.” I saw the movie in the early 1980s when it had its U.S. theater release. Now I have just watched the five-hour-long original version made for Swedish television. Whew!

But back to that speech by the gaily philandering Gustav, now the patriarch of the Ekdahl clan and uncle to Fanny and Alexander. The family has gathered for the double christening of Fanny and Alexander's new half-sister and Gustav's child by his mistress Maj. A dark chapter of family history has come to an end, involving a clash between two world views, one- the Ekdahl's- focussed on the pleasures of the here and now, and the other- that of Lutheran Bishop Edvard Vergerus, Fanny and Alexander's stepfather- a stern and joyless anticipation of the hereafter. It is not the habit of Ekdahls to concern themselves with matters of grand consequence, Gustav tells the assembled guests. "We must live in the little world. We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it."

The little world. I love that phrase. This world, here, now. This world of family and friends and newborn infants and trees and flowers and rainstorms and- oh yes, cognac and stolen kisses and tumbles in the hay. The Ekdahl's are a theatrical family; we will leave it to the actors and actresses to give us our supernatural shivers, says Gustav. "So it shall be," he says. "Let us be kind, and generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Lagrange, Wyoming, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 4/13/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 4/13/21"

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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!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/13/21:

"Critical Updates." 

- https://traderschoice.net/

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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

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

April 13th to 15th, Updated Daily 

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

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Oh yeah...

"The 'Helicopter Parent' Fed and the Fatal Crash of Risk"

"The 'Helicopter Parent' Fed and the Fatal Crash of Risk"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The Federal Reserve is the nation's Helicopter Parent, saving everyone from the consequences of their actions. We all know what happens when over-protective Helicopter Parents save their precious offspring from any opportunity to learn from mistakes and failures: they cripple their child's ability to assess risk and learn from failure, guaranteeing fragility and catastrophically blind-to-risk decisions later in life.

Helicopter Parents generate a perfection of moral hazard, defined as there is no incentive to hedge risk because one is protected from its consequences. Moral hazard perversely increases the incentives to take on more risk because Mommy and Daddy (the Fed) will always save me/bail me out.

For example, when Mommy and Daddy make their reckless teen's DUI charge go away, the teen's already potent sense of godlike liberation from real-world consequences floats even higher. So next time the teen gets into his car drunk and takes his friends on a high-speed spin down Mulholland Drive, he loses control and kills everyone in the car - not just himself but those who trusted his warped sense of risk.

The Fed is the ultimate Helicopter Parent, protecting all the power players in our economy and society from the consequences of their risky actions. By crushing interest rates to near-zero, the Fed has perversely incentivized increasingly risky expansion of credit, and given the green light to there's no limit, spend as much as you want government borrowing.

The Fed's implicit promise to never let the stock market drop for more than a few days - the Fed Put - has incentivized every punter from billionaires to corporations to unemployed people with stimmy checks to max out their credit (or margin accounts) to increase their bets in the market casino.

The Fed has implicitly informed the bigger players that they can bet as big as they want because the Fed will always bail them out, transferring private losses to the public via Fed bailouts, lines of credit, backstops, etc. The Fed has also signaled it will change the rules as needed to save its Players from loss. Mark-to-Market reveals the insolvency of the Players? Well, we'll just get rid of that. All fixed! (heh)

Once the path of moral hazard has been taken, a fatal feedback loop takes hold: as reckless punters take on more risk to boost their gains, the fragility and brittleness of their positions increases geometrically. This soon endangers not just their own bets but the entire financial system, as it's not just one punter who responds to the Fed's Helicopter Parenting promise of no consequences for taking on more risk - every punter gets the green light to take on more risk because the Fed has our back.

Indeed, now that the Fed Put has been established as unbreakable, it would be irrational not to max out margin to increase one's exposure to risky bets. And voila, margin debt has soared as the Fed has signaled its commitment to bail out every risky bet in the market casino.

Now that every punter has maxed out their margin account to increase their bets on markets lofting ever higher, the Fed has no choice but to increase the system's moral hazard: as punters respond to the Fed's incentives to take on more risk, the Fed has to expand its protection of punters from the consequences of their recklessness, which then increases their recklessness.

Nobody's ever had a more generous and godlike Helicopter Parent than the Fed. But alas, just as actions have consequences (first-order effects), those consequences have consequences (second-order effects): in the case of the Fed, credit and markets, the second-order effects are as catastrophic as the drunken teen's there's no risk I can't handle last race down Mulholland: all the risk that the Fed has supposedly dissipated into nothingness has been transferred to the entire financial system.

All the risks generated by gambling with trillions of borrowed and leveraged dollars didn't actually vanish; they were transferred by the Fed to the entire system, which is itself now too fragile and brittle to withstand even the slightest intrusion of consequence. The entire financial system is now careening down a treacherous stretch of curves and blind spots, absolutely confident that being dead-drunk on the Fed's promise of never-ending gains in the market poses no risk whatsoever because the Fed has our back.

Unfortunately for the drunken teen, Mommy and Daddy could make the DUI go away but they can't bring the lifeless bodies of those who reckoned their distorted view of risk was actually accurate back to life. Once the fragile, brittle, disconnected-from-reality system the Fed has created crashes, the Fed will be as powerless as all the other grief-stricken Helicopter Parents to reverse the irreversible consequences of their meddling with moral hazard."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Whimpers, Whines, and Wonders"

"Whimpers, Whines, and Wonders"

by Bill Bonner

“It is the mynd, that maketh good or ill,

That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore:

For some, that hath abundance at his will,

Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store;

And other, that hath litle, askes no more,

But in that litle is both rich and wise."

– "The Faerie Queene," Edmund Spenser

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "How does the empire die? With a whimper… and then a bang. Today, we will look at the whimper. It comes from millions of voices… distracted… confused… insipid. Headlines that make no sense. News stories that are almost completely fake. Hysteria. Hallucinations. Bombast and bunkum. We have it on the authority of Yahoo! that model Paulina Porizkova is “rediscovering dating and sex in her 50s.” We’re so relieved. And former House Speaker John Boehner says Senator Ted Cruz is a “reckless a**hole.”

Whimper and Whine: Meanwhile, people worry about whether they are using the right personal pronoun… or committing a micro-aggression by telling the truth. We’re not supposed to read Dr. Seuss, either – there’s a stereotype of a “Chinaman” in there… And put down that "Gone With the Wind". Don’t you know that Scarlett O’Hara was a white supremacist?! Oh, and are you still the same gender you were assigned at birth? Boring! And don’t forget to play your part in the war against COVID-19. Remember, no one is safe until we are all safe. Or something like that.

We’re a racist society. We’re killing the planet. See something, say something. The patriarchy is unfair to women and minorities. Smoking is bad; recycling is good… Oil is bad; solar is good… Stimulus is good; austerity is bad… Democracy… Equality… Diversity… Sobriety… Blah, blah, blah.

Two percent inflation… excellent! Zero percent inflation… bummer. (Just yesterday, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said he wasn’t budging from his ultra-low interest rates… no way… no how… until inflation is securely at 2% or more.) NFTs… SPACs… TESLA… GameStop… bitcoin... MicroStrategy… Michael Jackson lactating? Sure… they’re investments, right?

Whimper… whimper… whine… whiffle… waffle… Trivia. Obiter dicta. Claptrap.

Banished Gaucho: And here’s poor Saddleback College… From the LA Times: "After years of turmoil and heated debate, Saddleback College announced this week that it’s getting rid of its mascot, one that many see as a racist caricature. Saddleback President Elliot Stern made the decision to retire the school’s gaucho mascot following a petition signed by hundreds, several community forums and recommendations from the school’s three governing bodies. “It became our college’s Confederate flag,” Stern said over the phone, alluding to the controversial banner seen by many as a symbol of racism and slavery.

The Gaucho mascot, depicting an angry Mexican man riding a horse, has long drawn comparisons with the Frito Bandito, considered one of the more racist brand logos. A gaucho is an Argentinian cowboy.

Blackest Blemish: Gone, too, is the statue of John O’Donnell from Baltimore. O’Donnell was born in Ireland… and emigrated to the U.S. in the 18th century. But he “owned dozens of slaves.” That was enough for the city, now under the enlightened eye of Mayor Brandon Scott. It doesn’t want any reminders of its past… or at least that part of it.

The world’s blackest blemish – America’s slave past – is cast as such a monumental evil that beside it, all else shrinks into good. But when John O’Donnell left Ireland, the country had been through two centuries of conquests, rebellions, famine, and ethnic cleansing. In some places, a quarter to a half the population had been exterminated by English invaders.

Edmund Spenser, an English officer (and later, author of The Faerie Queene), described what he saw... “notwithstanding that [Ireland] was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet eare one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same.

Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spoke like ghosts, crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions [corpses], happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, their they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast.”

But after so many tears shed for America’s unfortunates, who has any left? Certain groups are approved for whimpers; others are met with a stony heart. Many Irish fled to France… Spain… Argentina… America. In the 19th century, so many Irish immigrants had come to America, that Irish labor was cheaper than slave labor. The Irish were put to work on the most dangerous jobs – such as digging the Pontchartrain Canal in New Orleans. Yellow fever and cholera were endemic in the lowland canal area; slave owners didn’t want to lose their valuable property. Back then, who cared if the Irish died?

All That Matters: And who cares now? John O’Donnell owned slaves; that’s all that matters. John O’Donnell ran away from home – in Limerick, Ireland – at age 10. He rocked up as a young man in India, where he seems to have stolen money from the East India Company. Later, he went into privateering and was charged with murder. And the fortune he brought to Baltimore, at least by some accounts, was made by selling the most lucrative trade item in Asia – opium.

But no one wanted to take down John O’Donnell’s statue because he might have been a thief or a drug dealer. Or a murderer. We no longer ache for any sin committed earlier than the founding of America… and none against anyone outside of its borders. And so keen are we to appear to right the wrongs of the past (we cannot undo the past… we can only be smug and superior about it)…that we can spare no indignation for the crime going on right now… nor any alarm for the catastrophe that follows…to which – the big bang – we return tomorrow."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/13/21: "Banned Again! Alert! Consumer Prices Are Surging With Much More To Come!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/13/21:

"Banned Again! Alert! 

Consumer Prices Are Surging With Much More To Come!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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"Margin Debt Has Exploded by 49 Percent in One Year to $814 Billion. 

The Actual Figure May Be in the Trillions. Here’s Why"

Then of course there's the $2.4 QUADRILLION in derivatives...

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The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"

To paraphrase Chief Brody in "Jaws", "You're gonna need a bigger shelter."

"Woke-a-Cola: How To Destroy A World-Leading Brand In 60 Seconds"

"Woke-a-Cola:

How To Destroy A World-Leading Brand In 60 Seconds"

by Tom Luongo

"I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Get Woke, Go Broke.” In the curious case of Coca-Cola, going woke may be the single biggest branding mistake in the history of marketing. In late February a whistleblower came forth with screenshots, posted on YouTube, of slides from Coke’s internal ‘diversity training’ course urging its employees to quote, “Be less white.” And by ‘less white’ they mean subservient. They don’t mean be more sensitive.

When this happened, I immediately said to myself, “Scratch ever buying another Coke product off my list.” Not a moment’s angst or energy went into it. “Be less white?” “Drink no Coke.” Why? Because choosing not to buy a Coke on the rare occasion I buy a soda anymore is an easy one. Sugar (or aspartame) and water in and of itself isn’t anything to get excited about, it’s the association of Coca-Cola with a past positive experience that is. And they just told me I’m a bad person because of the heritage of my birth. Not a positive, relationship-building experience.

Now I know that Critical Race Theory hustlers think they can immunize themselves and their real agenda with rhetoric, justifying their racism and hoping they’ve conditioned enough of us into feeling guilty to allow the inversion of society where blacks are in power and whites are not. While words certainly have power, nothing has more power than action. This incident sparked an enormous controversy which has yet to die down. But it wasn’t one that made headlines for more than one news cycle. And yet, millions of people made the same effortless decision I did.

Immediately Coke went into damage control and pulled the training course, issued statements that it wasn’t true and all the typical backpedaling a cowardly management team does when caught insulting a core customer base. You would think they would have learned from the NFL. But, no, sadly. In their quest to be all things to all people, if I’m being generous, Coke will quickly find themselves hated by everyone. Hated by whites for telling them they’re bad people. Hated by the race baiters for sucking up to their fragile white overlords.

I’ve spoken to dozens of people who work in modern corporate America and Coke isn’t the outlier, but rather the norm. And the backlash against this race hustling isn’t just coming, it’s here. For some companies, they can survive a mistake like this because their business doesn’t depend on brand loyalty.

Take airlines, for example. When planning a trip is the choice of airline at the top of your priorities? Or are flight availability, timing, proximity to home and about a hundred other things far more important than the particular company operating the plane? Of course not. Air travel is one of the most heavily regulated and, by extension, homogenized industries one can think of. Choosing an airline is like choosing a brand of gasoline. Air travel is a commodity and the most convenient one will most likely determine your shopping preference.

But what is Coca-Cola’s business based on if not its brand? It’s the alchemy of Coke’s secret formula and its marketing which imbues Coke with its profit engine. Famously, Warren Buffett owns a big position in Coke precisely because it had a bullet-proof brand, what he calls, in investing terms, a moat around its business.

And with three little words they just torched more than a century of brand nurturing that has been the standard by which such things are measured. Business schools use Coke’s brand maintenance as a primary case study in how to do it right. Soon, it will be the primary case study on how to do the exact opposite. That is, when we’re allowed to teach such things again.

So, what possessed them to think they could turn on 70+% of Americans already sick to the gills of the anti-white rhetoric coming at them from every angle and not drain that moat?Arrogance? Maybe. Incompetence mixed with mandated virtue signaling is a better bet. Like I said at the outset I didn’t give this much thought when it first happened more than a month ago. But something happened the other day that got my attention.

My private boycott of Coke wasn’t something I thought much of until I went to my local CVS to buy a Diet Pepsi… and found that I couldn’t because there were none in the cooler.

Right next to it was the coke cooler… stocked to the gills. I live in North Florida, practically Georgia, which is literally Coke Country. Remember, Atlanta is Coke’s headquarters. And in my small town there wasn’t a Pepsi to be bought? Needless to say, I chuckled knowing that Donald Trump – 2021’s version of Lord Voldemort – may not be allowed in the public communications space but his words still have tremendous power. He said boycott Coke and my conservative North Florida town said, “Yes, sir.”

Companies like Coke don’t get it. Their management, just like our politicians, live in bubbles too far removed from their customers to have any sense for what they’re feeling. And Trump voters feel marginalized. The free market is a brutal thing. It’s unforgiving and uncompromising. Every seller on Ebay lives in fear of the dreaded negative feedback. So does every Uber driver. Marketing people know that for every hundred positive comments one negative one will depress sales.

It’s why a restaurant that gives you great service a dozen times in a row is forever on your ‘avoid list’ after one bad meal. Don’t get me started about my personal war with Subaru, Netflix and General Motors.

When the barrier to your choice of one product over another is low, there’s no reason to have brand loyalty if that brand doesn’t 1) satisfy your needs or 2) treat your money with respect. Branding is all about identifying with your customer, telling them that buying this product will not just improve your life but make you the kind of person you want others to see you as. And Coke just told seven out of ten Americans they’re scum.

Brand creation takes a lifetime to create and a minute to destroy. Brand destruction of this type is happening all across America right now. I wrote recently about Patreon’s willingness to join the Big Tech censorship brigade but it’s everywhere.

From Disney’s movies to Major League Baseball all the uniquely American things we could find common ground on despite our political differences are under direct attack. Critical Race hustlers are culture warriors obsessed with destroying anything and everything beautiful. They are Leninists never content with what they’ve achieved and will not stop until they have poisoned everything we’ve ever held dear. Amplifying a race war between whites and blacks by turning every institution of culture into a hotbed of fabricated conflict built on false dichotomies has been their modus operandi for generations.

Companies like Coke think they can bargain with these folks, that there is a limit to their behavior. But there isn’t. Coke has committed the critical sin. The race hustlers won this round. If Pepsi is smart they’ll fire their entire Diversity Division tomorrow, and put on a third production shift at the market rate for labor. If they don’t then they too simply want to go broke."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Guns Of April And Global War"

"Guns Of April And Global War"

by J.B. Shurk

"War between Russia and Ukraine looks imminent. Israel and Iran are engaging in tit for tat maritime altercations. And China is ratcheting up provocative incursions into the airspaces and waters of Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.

Any one of these regional conflicts is incendiary enough to ignite World War III (or, more accurately, each one is capable of transforming the cold, hybrid warfare of cyberhacks, technology thefts, financial markets manipulation, and perhaps even biological attacks that has been underway for many years into total and unrelenting global bloodshed), yet trading markets and news media are largely ignoring what's unfolding. It's as if the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1999 Kargil War between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan, and the Soviet and Nazi Invasion of Poland were all happening concurrently, and the world decided it was too busy enforcing face mask mandates upon religious congregants and following the turmoil of Khloe Kardashian to care.

Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" paints a vivid picture of European elites so mentally imprisoned by the mores and cultural etiquette of the nineteenth century that they failed to grasp the reality of the geopolitical chessboard before them or the likelihood of the monumental carnage of WWI. Something eerily reminiscent of those miscalculations is going on today. 

In the thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has squandered much of its time as the world's sole superpower. Rather than winding down NATO's mission in a post-Soviet world, the West redirected and revitalized the alliance after 9/11 into a global military engagement against "extremism," with the U.S. fortifying its role as the world's policeman. And rather than using the end of the Cold War to balance budgets and fix America's unstable financial footing, the U.S. aggressively burdened itself with new and unsustainable levels of debt. In effect, the U.S. rejected the possibility of multipolar peace, assumed the role of global hegemon, and never saved up for a rainy day.

Instead of broadly integrating a shaky post-communist Russia into European and trans-Atlantic institutions, the U.S. has wobbled between treating Russia as an ally in the "war on terror" and as a Cold War adversary that must be contained by driving the expansion of NATO-allied member countries all the way to Russia's borders. One moment Hillary Clinton is promoting a "Russia reset," and the next moment Barack Obama and Victoria Nuland are orchestrating a Ukrainian coup d'état to swap a Russia-friendly government with a fiercely anti-Russian replacement. In order to prevent Russia from becoming a thorn in the side of New World Order types utilizing the IMF, WTO, and World Bank as engines for maintaining American-led global governance, U.S.-controlled NATO and E.U. technocrats intent on building a European superstate have kept Russia relegated to the sidelines. And in recent years, Democrats in the U.S., "Remain" Brits opposed to Brexit, and European integrationists who have taken umbrage at Central European countries such as Poland and Hungary defending their own sovereignty have tried to scapegoat lost referendums on illusory "Russian disinformation" campaigns. The effect of this intentional ostracism has been to push Russia closer to communist China and into adversarial brinkmanship with U.S.-E.U. interests.

Likewise, by largely ignoring China's decades of human rights abuses and normalizing trade relations at the turn of the millennium in an effort to tame a large but poor communist country through globalization and cultural assimilation, the United States has instead elevated China to an economic powerhouse increasingly capable of bending the West to its will. After hollowing out America's manufacturing and industrial capabilities and orchestrating the largest intercontinental transfer of wealth in history from America's post-WWII middle class to China's emerging middle class, the U.S. now finds itself in a defensive geopolitical posture with a combination of national debt, crumbling infrastructure, and dependence on Chinese raw materials and imports endangering America's rules-based international order. In what should be seen as a shot across the bow of the U.S. financial system, the recent (and almost certainly intentional) self-destruction of the Chinese-controlled family firm Archegos that destabilized Western credit markets and threatened the solvency of numerous Western investment banks was a pointed reminder from China to the U.S. that the latter's days of unilateral control of the global economy are over.

Both China and Russia are deleveraging from American dollars, increasing their gold stores, and preparing for a future when the dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. Without that ace in the hole, the U.S. loses not only its ability to continue printing and spending money without enduring the normal consequences of monetary devaluation and collapse but also its ability to inflict financial sanctions as a way to "club" other nations into obedience.  A Sino-Russian alliance that utilizes Russia's oil, coal, and natural gas leverage over Europe and its outsized military capabilities; China's manufacturing dominance and Belt and Road Initiative extending across and linking Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America; and both nations' wealth of natural resources puts them in a strategic position to forge a stable gold-backed digital currency that will instantly interconnect most of the world's population.

It is in this volatile reshuffling of global power that an often addled and confused Joe Biden attempts to confront the military chess moves of Russia and China while somehow transforming Iran from a destabilizing regional belligerent (almost certainly already in possession of nuclear weapons) into some kind of U.S. and European partner capable of playing nice with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg have laid out a military strategy in NATO 2030 that explicitly calls for the alliance to combat "Russian threats and hostile actions," to "expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia," and to defend against Chinese "security challenges." Ol' Joe has reportedly given personal assurances to President Zelensky that the U.S. stands with Ukraine, and he's publicly committed to defending Taiwan's freedom. But "red lines" coming from America are not the same after Barack Obama's presidency.

U.S. warships have entered the Black Sea and are sailing through the Taiwan Strait. Meanwhile, even though the Biden administration has capitulated to Iran by unilaterally dropping sanctions, Iran has promised to "respond" against the U.S. and Israel for the recent Red Sea mine attack against a vessel purportedly used as a covert Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forward base.

Russia has been very clear. It will not allow Kiev to reacquire Crimea or the Russian-aligned breakaway proto-states of Luhansk and Donetsk. It has responded to Ukrainian President Zelensky's signing of Decree No. 117/2021 directing the Ukraine Army to recapture and reunify these areas by flooding the Ukraine-Russia border with weapons, troops, tanks, and elite paratroopers.  Russia is ready for war.

China has been very clear. It considers Taiwan a renegade province and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as territorial possessions. It has promised to use military force to safeguard these claims and has built artificial islands in disputed territorial waters and sent fleets of "fishing vessels" to surround disputed island chains. China is ready for war. And Taiwan is ready, too.

Israel has been very clear. It will not allow a nuclear-empowered Iran to become a Damocles sword threatening Israel's very existence. Israel is ready for war.

How will Joe Biden respond to these three powder kegs? The more important question is this: Is his mind so trapped in last century's geopolitics that he's now overestimating American strengths, miscalculating other nations' resolve, and stumbling headfirst into global conflagration?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

Short answers: yes, yes and yes...

○

The Alan Parsons Project, "Lucifer"

"And there was war in Heaven..."

A curiosity... Why did God need an army?

And what if His army lost? Ahh, what then?

○

"It is well that war is so terrible, 

otherwise we should grow too fond of it." 

- Robert E. Lee

Oh, the human race has always been far too fond of it...

Bloodthirsty monsters that we are by nature...

"You Are Not Alone..."

"Many people need desperately to receive this message:

I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things

 you care about, although most people do not care about them. 

You are not alone."

- Kurt Vonnegut

Must Watch! "Prepare To Lose Your Job; Total Collapse; Millions Borrow Money To Survive; Financial Hopelessness"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Prepare To Lose Your Job; Total Collapse; 

Millions Borrow Money To Survive; Financial Hopelessness"