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Related:
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Must Watch! "Homeless People Rotting Away As Economy Collapses; Los Angeles Walking Through Hell; LA Has Failed"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe,
"Homeless People Rotting Away As Economy Collapses;
Los Angeles Walking Through Hell; LA Has Failed"
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Related:
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"With moratorium ending at the end of June,
more than 40 million Americans face foreclosure or eviction."
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Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: 4th of July Festival, Freedom Peace & Justice"
Gerald Celente,
"Trends Journal: 4th of July Festival, Freedom Peace & Justice"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead. Join us for the upcoming festival, at the Crown Gardens in Kingston, New York. July 4th, 2021, 2pm."
"Starvation And Food Shortage Coming As Food Prices Rise To Dangerous Levels!"
Full screen recommended.
"Starvation And Food Shortage Coming As
Food Prices Rise To Dangerous Levels!"
by Epic Economist
"Americans should brace for a very expensive summer as the price of everything continues to shoot higher and higher. From corn to soybeans to sugar, and sunflower oil, as well as plastic, steel, gasoline, lumber, houses, cars, diapers, and toilet paper - everywhere you look, prices are just exploding. As the economy reopens, global supply chains are still deeply struggling to keep up with the unprecedented demand. Following last year's economic collapse, after businesses were shut down and millions upon millions of workers lost their jobs, consumer demand dropped to record lows. But now, demand has rebounded with a vengeance, boosted by trillions in government stimulus that ended up sharply deteriorating Americans' purchasing power. Companies are also being impacted by shortages and soaring prices. Many of them put their workers on furlough during lockdowns last year, and now they are unable to secure enough raw materials to manufacture the products, make the cars, build the homes or assemble the appliances are suddenly in high demand.
At this point, American consumers already absorbed a huge surge in prices. In May, overall consumer prices went up by 0.6% over April and 5% over the past year, the biggest 12-month inflation spike since 2008. And while restaurants prepare to receive customers back this summer, at least nine fast-food chains and restaurant companies surveyed by Reuters said they are experiencing shortages of key ingredients and products. Food supply shortages are not only affecting people's grocery bills but the very existence of some restaurant locations. Some Starbucks locations are being closed down across the country due to widespread shortages that include cups, straws, peach-flavored juice, and oat milk. For other chains, ketchup packets have become really hard to find.
As a consequence, a dearth in supply is leading some restaurants to boost prices on their own menu in an attempt to stay in business. This week, Chipotle Mexican Grill announced it would raise menu prices by at least 4%. Undoubtedly, it is going to be a muggy summer on the inflation front. That's what Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, has recently noted. He said that the pass-through from higher goods prices to higher prices for services is just beginning. In face of all that, if anyone still believes that inflation is going to be temporary is because they don't know or don't understand how serious this crisis is getting.
Our current monetary policies have created such profound imbalances between supply and demand that even Fourth of July celebrations are going to be affected by a shortage of fireworks and higher prices. "Prices are going up across the board," said William Weimer, vice president of Phantom Networks, one of the largest consumer fireworks brands in the US. "It's impacting everyone in our industry. Nobody expected this hangup in logistics. We have companies that have never worked with us before coming to us for supplies. People are scrambling to get supplies, and we just have enough to stock our own shelves."
And the problems U.S. consumers will face over the summer don't end quite there. Appliances such as air-conditioners are by 12% this year. Prices for washing machines and dryers have also shot up 26% from a year ago, and major appliance makers including Whirlpool have announced across-the-board price increases. In the meantime, the Federal Reserve continues to insist that all of these increases will soon fade away. Politicians and policymakers are actively trying to make our society believe this is just a momentary crisis. But all evidence is pointing to years and years of painful inflation.
In fact, a recent survey found that for Americans earning the minimum wage, rising inflation is making their dollar the weakest it's been in more than a decade. The broad upswing in consumer prices and the enormous expansion of our money supply has been translated into the lowest minimum wage since 2008 in relation to current inflation levels, meaning that millions of low-income Americans are the poorer they have been in decades. Living costs surged again last month, driving inflation to a 13-year high of 5%, making economists worry that we could soon witness runaway inflation just as seen during the oil shocks of the 1970s.
It's just infuriating to know that in one year politicians and policymakers effectively contributed to making a huge part of our society poorer while taking credit for their "generosity" of distributing stimulus money. At the end of the day, that money didn't offer a proper safety net for those who needed it the most because it mostly ended up in the hands of wealthy investors. Now, we are headed to a summer of painful inflation, extremely high prices, shortages of essentials and an economic deterioration Americans have never experienced in their entire lives."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.
The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”
The Poet: A. J. Constance, "All of Us Here On This Spinning Blue World"
"All of Us Here On This Spinning Blue World"
"Let's not plan too much
or expect
or promise
or say how much
or how little
or outline how things must be
or how they must not be.
All of us here on this beautiful
spinning blue world,
let's just love each other
from one millisecond to the next
as much as we can."
- A. J. Constance
"Bank Of America WARNS Of 'Transitory HYPER-INFLATION.' Stock Market Hits NEW Record Highs"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/29/21:
"Bank Of America WARNS Of 'Transitory HYPER-INFLATION.'
Stock Market Hits NEW Record Highs"
"Back to the Future"
"Back to the Future"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "We’re going to stick with Paul Krugman today. Not because his thoughts are especially original or provocative, but because they are not. They reflect elite, mainstream thinking. They tell us what lies ahead. As we showed you last week, the New York Times’ go-to economist’s predictions are almost always amiss. So, if we want a contrarian indicator, who better than the Great Man himself? But Krugman’s pensée is more important than just a shrewd investor’s contrary signal. He is the elite of the elite… It is to him that Washington’s apparatchiks, movers and shakers, politicians, and kingmakers look for guidance. He points to the mushroom. The elites eat it. And Western Civilization turns pale.
Krugman’s Predictions: Just to recap… Mr. Krugman’s solution to the dot-com bubble blow-up was to create another bubble, this time in housing. When that blew up, he urged the Obama team to pump up another one. And when Donald J. Trump was elected, he completely missed the boat. He thought Mr. Trump was going to end the Bubble Epoch. Instead, Mr. Trump fell right into line with the other bubbleheads… and gave us the biggest deficits ever.
Knowing what Mr. Krugman thinks now could be invaluable. It could inform our investment decisions… as long as we remember to do the opposite of what his views imply. But it also helps us understand what is ahead for Western Civilization. Not that Mr. Krugman himself is particularly influential outside of the U.S. But his claptrap ideas are widely consumed by the elites of Europe and other westernized economies. All dine on the same funghi velenosi. All share the same hallucinations. So, we return to the sage’s New York Times column… and see the future.
The Fed has been arguing that recent price rises are similarly transitory. True, they’re not coming from food and energy so much as from pandemic-related disruptions that caused surging prices of used cars, lumber and other nontraditional sources of inflation. But the Fed’s view has been that this episode, like the inflation blip of 2010-11, will soon be over. And it’s now looking as if the Fed was right. There you have it. Inflation is so… “last week,” says Krugman. Which makes us think it must be next week. And the week after.
Statistical Hocus Pocus: In fact, it is already here. And the only reason it is not more obvious is that the feds fudge the figures. It has never been politically attractive to report high inflation numbers. And it became fiscally unattractive, too, after Congress added COLA (Cost of Living Adjustments) to Social Security payments in 1973. Then, the feds had a very strong incentive to redefine the Consumer Price Index (CPI), so as to disguise the real effect of their inflation tax and neuter the COLA increases. This they did in two moves – one in 1987 and another in 1998.
As our friend David Stockman points out, the effect was to turn the inflation index (a measure of rising prices) into a cost-of-living index (a measure of how much it costs to make substitutions and quality adjustments more or less as the feds choose). If strawberries are especially expensive, for example, they’ll take them out of the index and replace them with raspberries. Or if they think the strawberries have been genetically modified to make them better… they can pretend they are less expensive. These adjustments make some logical sense. But they also open the door to all sorts of statistical hocus pocus.
As we’ve shown several times, a new Ford F-150 is much more expensive than a 1971 version – both in terms of dollars… and the time it takes to earn them. But the new truck is much better, say the statisticians.
Back to the Seventies: We’re not here today to quibble with the statistics. We’re just going to point out that inflation is already here… and Krugman is probably wrong about where it is going. In the first place, if you calculated inflation the way they did before the Boskin Commission reworked the formula in 1996, the CPI would be running around 9%. Or, if it were the 1970s, and you figured the CPI as they did back then, today’s raw numbers would give you a CPI between 12% and 13% – almost exactly what it was in the late 1970s.
But Krugman is as calm as a cucumber. He maintains that the Federal Reserve is on the job. And even if inflation were to go back to 1970s levels (he is unaware that it is already there)… the Fed would “step on the brakes if the economy really is exceeding the speed limit.” By its recent “hawkish” statements, says Krugman, “the Fed has largely undercut whatever case there was for worrying about a return to the 1970s.”
Up, Up, and Away: He is wrong about everything. The Fed has been inflating heavily for the last 10 years. And it uses the new cash it prints to buy Wall Street assets. The stock market has risen more than six times from its 2009 bottom. The top 1% of Americans have increased their wealth by $25 trillion. Just yesterday, the S&P 500 hit yet another new high… its 32nd record close of 2021. And Facebook (FB) shares have gone up more than 60% in the last 12 months, yesterday reaching over $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time.
While Fed governors suffered occasional bouts of sanity during this period, never once did they seriously “tap the brakes.” And now, inflation is showing up in consumer prices. That’s not likely to stop either, since more and more of the “stimulus” money is going, via federal deficits, into the Main Street economy as well as Wall Street.
Lessons Learned: But what do we learn from Krugman? He tells us not to worry about inflation – so, it is inflation we should be worried about. He tells us central bankers will “step on the brakes” when inflation begins to go over the “speed limit.” Ergo, central bankers will not put on the brakes at all; they will push down on the accelerator. He tells us not to worry about a replay of the 1970s. But wait… In the 1970s, U.S. national debt stayed under $1 trillion. Now, it is over $28 trillion. Total U.S. debt – households, businesses, and the government – was still under $2 trillion in 1971. Now, it’s over $85 trillion.
And in the 1970s, central bankers – as well as leading economists – still feared inflation and believed they had a duty to keep it under control. Now, they are under Krugman’s spell. Inflation is no problem, they believe. And more government spending is the cure for every problem – from global warming to inequality. So… put Super Fly back on the big screen… and get out the beige leather couches, leisure suits, and disco music. The badass 1970s are ba-a-a-ck! Ba-a-ader than ever. More to come…"
Must Watch! "Is Los Angeles The Worst Ran City In America - Homeless Update"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 6/29/21:
"Is Los Angeles The Worst Ran City In America - Homeless Update"
"Los Angeles is the homeless capital of the world. This is
incredibly disturbing. This is so shocking to see all of this."
"When Expedient 'Saves' Become Permanent, Ruin Is Assured"
"When Expedient 'Saves' Become Permanent,
Ruin Is Assured"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The belief that the Federal Reserve possesses god-like powers and wisdom would be comical if it wasn't so deeply tragic, for the Fed doesn't even have a plan, much less wisdom. All the Fed has is an incoherent jumble of expedient, panic-driven "saves" it cobbled together in the 2008-2009 Global Financial Meltdown that it had made inevitable. The irony is the only thing that will still be rich when the whole rotten, corrupt, fragile financial system of illusory stability collapses in a heap of runaway instability. The irony is that the Fed's leaky grab-bag of expedient "saves" was not designed to ensure systemic stability, though that was the PR cover story.
The Fed's leaky grab-bag of expedient "saves" had only one purpose: save the fat-cats, skimmers, scammers, fraudsters and embezzlers who had gotten rich off the Fed's cloaked transfer of wealth: the purpose of all the 2008-2009 extremes was not to impose the discipline required to truly stabilize the financial system; the purpose was to elevate moral hazard-- the separation of risk from the consequences of risk--to unprecedented heights, backstopping every skimmer, scammer, fraudster and embezzler from well-deserved losses as the entire pyramid of fraud collapsed under its own enormous weight of risky bets gone bad.
To save its cronies from the catastrophic losses that should have been taken by those making the bets, the Fed instituted one expedient "save" after another: backstopped global banks with $16 trillion, dropped interest rates to zero, eliminated truthful reporting by ending mark-to-market pricing of risk, flooded the financial system with free money for financiers, all designed to signal that the Fed will never let its cronies suffer the consequences of their risky bets, i.e. the perfection of moral hazard.
The Fed's perfection of moral hazard has now spread to the entire market and populace: it's not just the skimmers, scammers, fraudsters and embezzlers who are supremely confident the Fed will never allow them to experience the consequences (i.e. crushing losses) of super-risky bets going bad; the entire American populace now shares that supreme confidence that one can put all of one's life savings on any roulette number (GME or AMC option, Doge cryptocurrency, etc.) and the Fed will guarantee every roulette number is a winner--a big winner.
As a result of the Fed's perfection of moral hazard, systemic risk has exploded to unprecedented levels. As risk cannot be extinguished, it can only be transferred, the Fed has transferred geometrically expanding risk to the system itself.
The Fed's fig-leaf for this vast transfer of wealth to the top layer of gambler sociopaths is the wealth effect: if the Fed triples the value of stocks, then all that new wealth will encourage people to borrow and spend freely, keeping the economy from the cleansing of a recessionary contraction of risky credit.
The wealth effect was just another fraud, as the concentration of wealth in America is so extreme that the tripling of equities only benefited the already-wealthy. All the Fed accomplished with its grab-bag of expedient "saves" was new and destabilizing extremes of wealth-income inequality: the earnings of the top 0.1% exploded higher 15-fold while the earnings of the bottom 90% stagnated; virtually all the gains from the Fed's expedient grab-bag of consequence-free winnings accrued to the top 0.1%.
Having engineered the greatest transfer of wealth and risk in human history via its expedient "saves" of those who shouldn't have been saved, the Fed is now trapped: if it stops inflating the stock market, and allows consequence to re-connect with risk, then the losses will be catastrophic for everyone who blindly believed that the Fed's powers to suppress risk and guarantee every roulette number is a big winner was god-like.
But if they keep inflating the stock market and signaling "no one will ever lose a penny buying stocks" (i.e. the perfection of moral hazard), then the entire system's stability is increasingly at risk. (Not to mention the potential for rip-your-face-off inflation to become embedded in expectations.)
By making expedient "saves" permanent policy, the Fed has ensured the destabilization of the entire financial system. If you promise no amount of risk will ever deliver any consequence other than "every roulette number will be a big winner," then risk rapidly approaches near-infinite heights. If the Fed attempts to backstop and bail out every institution and punter who believed in the Fed's power to extinguish risk, that expedient "save" will collapse the system.
Here's the Fed's choice: continue making expedient "saves" permanent policy, the system collapses. Withdraw the guarantee that risk will never have any consequences, and the system collapses. The Fed's "choice" is as illusory as the "wealth" the Fed has created with its perfection of moral hazard--a perfection that could only end in the collapse of the entire fraudulent fantasy of risk-free gains forever."
"We're Headed For Doom"
Success Attraction, 6/29/21: "We're Headed For Doom"
Peter Schiff Interview with Ben Shapiro on
economy, money printing, taxes, inflation and more.
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Related:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/29/21: “So It Begins! Banks Start To Buy Back Their Own Stock And Raise Dividends”
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/29/21:
“So It Begins! Banks Start To Buy Back
TheirOwn Stock And Raise Dividends”
Monday, June 28, 2021
"5 Signs That Show That The Depravity In America Has Reached An Entirely New Level"
"5 Signs That Show That The Depravity In
America Has Reached An Entirely New Level"
by Michael Snyder
"No matter how bad things get in this country, you can rest assured that we will always find a way to sink even lower. From the very lowest levels of society all the way to the very highest levels of society, the level of depravity that we are now witnessing all around us is absolutely stunning. At this point, most Americans do not have any sort of a solid moral foundation, and it shows. Everyone is just basically doing whatever seems right in their own eyes, and that has resulted in complete and utter chaos. We are a very, very sick nation, and we are getting even sicker with each passing day. Let me give you five examples of what I am talking about…
#1 25-year-old Joel Davis was supposed to be one of the good guys. He was nominated for a Nobel prize after founding an organization that sought to end sexual violence against children, but how he has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for doing things that are absolutely unthinkable… "The founder of an organization dedicated to ending child sex abuse has been sentenced to 13 years in prison on child rape and child pornography charges. Joel Davis, 25, was convicted of ‘enticing a child to engage in illegal sexual activity,’ possession and distribution of child pornography, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss announced on Tuesday."
Of course Davis is far from alone. There are 780,407 registered sex offenders in America today, but that number only includes those that have actually been caught. At this point, our society is absolutely teeming with sexual predators, and they are represented on every level of society.
#2 Country music fans are supposed to be much better behaved than most other music fans, but even they are starting to behave like crazed mindless zombies. During a “Redneck Rave” in Kentucky this past weekend, there were numerous acts of violence and four dozen people were charged with various crimes… "Police said that by the end of the five-day bash, dubbed the “Redneck Rave,” one man had been impaled, one woman had been strangled to the point of unconsciousness, and one throat had been slit. In all, Edmonson authorities arrested 14 people, and charged four dozen people from five states." If even country music fans are starting to get this wild, I think that is a really troubling sign for our society as a whole.
#3 Chicago has been a very violent city for a long time, but when Yasmin Perez and Gyovanni Arzuaga were dragged out of their vehicles and shot by an angry mob, it shocked the entire world… "Disturbing video footage circulating on social-media that apparently captured the 9:15 p.m. assault shows the victims either being pulled or falling out of their car — which was flying a Puerto Rican flag — then blasted at close-range by a single gunman. Arzuaga, 24, was fatally shot in the head, while Perez, the 25-year-old mother of the couple’s two children, was left in critical condition from a gunshot to the neck, according to the Chicago Sun-Times."
We have now learned that Perez has died too. The couple had two children together, and now both of their parents are dead. What are those two children supposed to do now?
#4 According to text messages obtained by the Daily Mail, it appears that Hunter Biden paid a Russian prostitute $25,000 using a financial account that was linked to his very famous father… "Hotel bills show Hunter then moved to a $470-per-night room at The Jeremy in West Hollywood later that month, where he hired another escort while under the protection of two recently retired Secret Service agents. And messages saved on the laptop show Joe Biden might have inadvertently been the person actually paying the bill for the wild week, according to the messages obtained by the Post."
In recent days, a number of extremely shocking revelations about Hunter Biden and the Biden family have come out in the British press. But the bigger story is that the corporate media in the United States is almost completely ignoring these revelations. Telling the truth about the Bidens would hurt the agendas that they are trying to push, and so the Bidens are off limits for now. Our corporate media is deeply, deeply corrupt, and that isn’t going to change.
#5 The week, we learned that a CDC “safety group” has acknowledged that COVID shots are causing many teens to develop a “heart inflammatory condition”… "A CDC safety group said there’s a “likely association” between a rare heart inflammatory condition in adolescents and young adults mostly after they’ve received their second Covid-19 vaccine shot, citing the most recent data available. There have been more than 1,200 cases of a myocarditis or pericarditis mostly in people 30 and under who received Pfizer’s or Moderna’s Covid vaccine, according to a series of slide presentations published Wednesday for a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices."
Even though they know that this is happening, they are just going to keep giving injections to more kids. In the end, how many thousands upon thousands of young Americans will develop myocarditis or pericarditis as a result?
I could make this list much longer, but I think by now you get my point. From the very top to the very bottom, the very fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams. So many of the “good guys” turn out to be quite evil, and often the wickedness in the halls of power is even worse than it is in our streets.
Millions of Americans are working so hard to find a political solution to our problems, but the truth is that there is great depravity all across the political spectrum. Replacing one set of depraved politicians with another set of depraved politicians is not going to accomplish much of anything.
In the end, what we are facing is a heart problem. The hearts of the American people need to change, but at this point much of the population is eagerly rushing toward more evil as rapidly as they can. Many of us will continue to call for a renewal in America, but time is running out. There is a little bit less sand in the hourglass with each passing day, and it won’t be too long before we reach the moment when it is entirely empty."
"Stock Market Crash Like No Other Coming In Weeks Or Months: Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"
Full screen recommended.
"Stock Market Crash Like No Other Coming In
Weeks Or Months: Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"
by Epic Economist
"According to many stock market experts, investors are now experiencing the “biggest US fantasy trip of all time,” thanks to reckless Federal Reserve policies, trillions in government stimulus, and the speedy vaccine distribution. However, the crazy market mania will likely end in tears, as major risks are being overlooked. It's been just over a year since the last stock market crash, which led to a 35% drop, and then the fastest rebound ever recorded. Fueled by an unprecedented amount of printed money and record low-interest rates, investors' speculative frenzy resulted in what is being called "the greatest stock market bubble of all times," and various measures can prove so. “The last 12 months have been a classic finale to an 11-year bull market,” said Jeremy Grantham, financial historian and co-founder of the investment firm GMO. “Checking all the necessary boxes of a speculative peak, the US market was entitled historically to start unraveling any time this year.”
Things are even more dangerous this time around because the bond, stock, and real estate markets are all inflated together, Grantham added, highlighting that even commodity prices are soaring. To analyze today's market bubble, it's necessary to start by looking at what Grantham and several others have been calling "the most inflated asset": Bitcoin. Grantham, a historian of bubbles, explained in a wide-ranging Bloomberg interview that bitcoin is in a bubble similar to the Nasdaq at the peak of the dot-com frenzy of the early 2000s. Back then, the Nasdaq 100 fast and furious 50% drop was a major warning sign for the broad market, but many decided to ignore it. Right now, the same is happening to bitcoin, which declined by 50% over the past two months.
Of course, bitcoin is not the only bubble out there. But its downward trajectory is making market veterans who predicted previous crashes extremely worried. A couple of weeks ago, Robert Kiyosaki, famous investor and author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad tweeted the following: “The biggest bubble in world history is getting bigger. The biggest crash in world history is coming. [I'm] waiting for Bitcoin to drop to $24k". Grantham and Kiyosaki's warnings were just the latest of the cautionary advice coming from long-term market watchers. In an interview with Business Insider, Toews Asset Management CEO and founder Phil Toews compared the insanity of the current market to tulip bulb mania in the Netherlands.“We’re living in history through something that’s as bizarre as tulip mania. And everybody’s just like, ‘It’s fine.',” he described.
Over the past 12 months, the pace of stock price growth has been simply outstanding. Despite all of the economic turmoil we are still facing, the S&P 500 and other indexes have been recording one record high after the other, and several stocks are hitting new highs with each passing day. Amongst the telling signs of rampant speculation in the market are the huge increases in volume and prices in formerly "under-the-radar" stocks as well as the enormous popularity of "penny stocks" and the increased amount of dubious investing advice on message boards and stock touts. It's in times like these that speculation reaches a fever pitch, and since valuations aren't supported by tangible economic prospects, investors are set to get bitterly disappointed.
Suze Orman, a personal finance media personality, has also warned about this issue. “I don’t like what I see happening in the market right now. The economy has been horrible, but the stock market has been going,” she said in a video for CNBC. Exceedingly high valuations, both Toews and Orman add, have considerably contributed to making the current stock market bubble ready to burst. One major example of it can be seen in tech stocks, which skyrocketed this past year, despite the fact that many of them failed to meet their earnings expectations. Orman emphasized that these kinds of markets do not benefit the average American at all and cautioned investors of an important thing to always keep in mind: the stock market is not the economy.
But one thing is certain: When the stock market bubble bursts and an epic crash occurs, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell won't be able to sit before Congress and tell lawmakers that nobody could have seen it coming. All of these market veterans have been warning for months that we are about to witness a crash of unprecedented proportions - and all of those who have decided to ignore the risks will face a reckoning they will never forget."
Musical Interlude: Yanni, "One Man's Dream"
Full screen recommended.
Yanni, "One Man's Dream"
Live At The Acropolis, 25th Anniversary
"A Look to the Heavens"
"NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a about 25 light-years across blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. A triumvirate of astroimagers (Joe, Glenn, Russell) created this sharp portrait of the cosmic bubble. Their telescopic collaboration collected over 30 hours of narrow band image data isolating light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. Visible within the nebula, NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years.
The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away."
"The American Republikflucht"
"The American Republikflucht"
by Jeff Thomas
"Shortly after World War II in 1945, the USSR occupation began limiting the freedom of East Germans to travel into West Germany. At first, the restrictions were mild, much as we’re seeing in countries like the US today – more red tape, longer waits, etc. Not so much a ban on travel as a nuisance. Today, as in Germany in 1945, the would-be traveler is getting used to the idea of gaining approval to travel. Just a formality, folks, sorry for the inconvenience.
But then, with little fanfare, East Germany was officially declared the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the prospect of international travel began to change. Emigration laws were tightened. A propaganda booklet published at that time read: "Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness. Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a ‘guaranteed future’ one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favors a new war and destruction?
Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labor in our republic, to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness?" Workers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists."
Republikflucht was the term given to those who sought to leave the GDR. It’s significant that the translation into English is "desertion from the republic." An unapproved exit from East Germany soon became punishable by imprisonment. It was only then that East Germans understood that they were prisoners in their own country. They had not seen the warning signs and had failed to leave when it was still possible. After that time, the numbers of those who were able to escape dropped to several hundred per year (Some 75,000 failed and were caught and imprisoned.)
But surely, all that’s old news. Of what interest is it to us today? Well, as mentioned above, a soft-closing of the US borders (and indeed all of the countries that comprise the First World) has begun. After 9/11, security tightened considerably. Then, with the onset of the COVID hysteria, actual permission to travel fell under the whim of the government. It ceased to be a right and is now a privilege that could be approved or removed as the government sees fit.
Many people welcomed this step, feeling that it assured them greater safety, whilst others regarded it as a bit of a nuisance, but understandable under the circumstances. Very few treated it as a warning. But the hysteria over COVID-19 is dying down. Masks are beginning to disappear; children are beginning to go back to school, churches are beginning to re-open, so, surely, it was all for the best.
But there are now rumors that a new, more worrisome variant of COVID-19 may be on the way. Should this occur, it would be understandable if the government were to declare that "We warned people that everyone needed to take the vaccine, but many didn’t listen. Now the whole country will be paying for the error of a selfish few." So, will the jab become mandatory, as some people hope but others fear? Well, it is more likely that a back-handed mandate would be imposed: "We are not going to mandate that all residents receive the vaccine, but based upon past failures of those who refused vaccination, we would be irresponsible if we were to allow those who are unvaccinated to leave their houses to shop, go to work, or travel."
And a new danger has been announced by the White House: the danger of a "Climate Change crisis" to be addressed with "a unified national response to Climate Change." And this is already being taken up by other countries in the First World cabal. The UK and Australia in particular have called for a World Health Organization climate lockdown. Under it, travel by air would only be approved "when it is morally justifiable."
That phrase is an interesting one. First, it suggests that travel by air, especially to leave the country, will only be by permission. But there’s a secondary implication: If you seek to travel, you’d better have a damn good reason because you’re a threat to the Greater Good. And at this juncture, it might be prudent to reread the East German pamphlet above. The implications in the pamphlet are the same as the language now in use in select countries.
The period of pre-conditioning the populace is now complete. Americans and citizens of the other First World countries have now successfully been indoctrinated into the concept that their desire to live freely is not their right. They now live by permission. It has been accomplished almost without notice. We now move into Phase II: the imposition of rules governing escape from the country. In essence, we have reached East Germany circa 1961. At that time, the pamphlet referenced above was published, and barriers of cinderblock and barbed wire began to appear between the GDR and "free" West Germany.
The image above gained international fame at that time. It shows GDR border guard Hans Konrad Schumann. He was one of the rare few who saw the writing on the wall and understood that his window of opportunity would be brief. He tossed off his rifle and jumped over the new barbed wire barrier to the West. It’s important to note that, in 1961, this was still quite easy to do, yet the vast majority of East Germans were too afraid to make the move. "Surely," they thought, "things are not as bad as they seem."
The photo was entitled "Leap into Freedom" and became an iconic symbol worldwide. Schumann committed his Republikflucht – his "desertion from the republic". If the reader lives in one of the countries that are leading the way to the new collectivism, this may be the time to consider whether Hans Schumann was right and whether this might be the time to follow him before the barrier becomes insurmountable."
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