Bill Bonner, "Emergency Bypass"

"Emergency Bypass"

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Auto debt is out of its lane. Carscoops: "Americans Crushed By Auto Loans As Defaults And Repossessions Surge." Many Americans love the feeling of driving a new car, but the price of that thrill is pushing household budgets to the edge. Auto loan delinquencies are spiraling, the nation now owes a staggering $1.66 trillion in auto loans, and some figures show scary similarities to the period right before the 2008 financial crash.

The feds are running into a ditch too. Our friend MN Gordon reports: "The U.S. government is on target to run a budget deficit of $2.2 trillion for FY 2025. Lower interest rates, and thus a lower net interest payment, would only reduce the deficit to around $2 trillion – a difference of just over a half percent of the total $37.5 trillion of outstanding debt. In other words, it would do exactly diddly-squat for the nation’s finances."

Debt...war? Debt...war? US stocks are at record highs. But so far this year, the ‘defense’ segment — as measured by the Dow Jones defense stock index — is up more than twice as much as the Dow itself. Consumers may not be able to afford more autos. But the feds can afford more tanks. And not just the US feds...they’re ‘gunning up’ in Europe even faster than the US. For the first time since WWII, largely on US urging, Europeans will spend more on ‘defense’ than America.

Back in the US, Donald Trump knows that ‘defense’ is not really what the department of that name actually does. The US faces no credible enemy it needs to defend itself against. No country has the military wherewithal to cross the mighty oceans and march on the Homeland. No country has the economic strength to create and supply a fleet that could do so. America’s only real threat is from a missile attack. And only a fraction of the military budget is needed to provide a deterrent. The rest is spent on war...arming for it...preparing for it....and helping a lot of people get rich from it.

The Department of Defense was hypocrisy. The Department of War, alas, is reality. Firepower — a malign partnership of public and private...what Eisenhower called the ‘military-industrial complex’ — is where the money is. It has been America’s defining industry at least since the Iraq War. But there’s more to the story. The US firepower industry depends on the post-1971 fake dollar. It was largely the firepower industry that caused the shift to fake money...and it was the fake money that allowed it to continue to expand.

Lyndon Johnson famously overspent on ‘guns and butter.’ Especially the guns...and especially in Vietnam. The banks in Vietnam were relics of the French colonial empire. So, dollars piled up in Paris. And in 1971, the shrewd finance minister at the time, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, sent a French warship to New York to collect on America’s promise to redeem those dollars at 35 dollars per ounce of gold.

That was the proximate cause of Nixon’s August 15, 1971 proclamation ‘closing the gold window’ at the Treasury department and replacing the good-as-gold dollar with a piece of paper. And since the US could ‘print’ as many pieces of paper as it wanted, it allowed politicians to approve bigger and bigger deficits and bigger and bigger ‘defense’ budgets, much of the money from which -- captured by contractors, lobbyists, politicians, and think tanks — never left the Washington DC area.

And this same dollar, that financed the huge growth in debt and firepower, also gave the US a new weapon. The Trump administration showed the world how the dollar could be used to bludgeon enemies and whip friends to keep them in line. That is what Vladimir Putin is talking about in the quote above.

Trump’s trade wars also revealed to foreign countries that depending on access to US consumers (to dollars!) was less of a sure bet than they thought. Even when the foreigners try to comply with US desires, they can still be victims of shifting trade and immigration policies. The most recent illustration is the ICE attack on Hyundai’s Georgia plant. Hundreds of South Korean workers, who had been posted to the US to boost US manufacturing, are now back at home telling everyone how badly they were treated. Whatever else may come from it, many foreign businesses will surely think twice before locating in the US.

They must wonder too whether keeping dollars in their vaults is such a good idea. Over the last ten years, foreign dollar holdings - between inflation and currency declines - have lost as much as 40% of their value. Even at today’s relatively low inflation levels, the dollar will lose about one-third of its value over the next ten years. No wonder foreign nations are increasingly joining together to by-pass the US...and its currency.

The new gas pipeline from Russia to China, for example, will be paid for, by the Russians, in yuan. It will establish a more-or-less permanent mutual dependency, one on the other. And in the embryonic union between Russia, China, India and Southeast Asia, the biggest consumer market in the world is waiting to be born. These producers, marketers and consumers want to do business with a reserve currency other than the US dollar. Year to date, gold is up 40%. More to come..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"James Webb Detects Something Alive Inside 3I/ATLAS - It’s Moving Toward Us"

Full screen recommended.

Space Tube, 9/15/25

"James Webb Detects Something Alive Inside 3I/ATLAS - 

It’s Moving Toward Us" 

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert: France Moves Nuclear Planes to Poland, Russia Prepares for NATO Oil Embargo!"

Full screen recommended.

Prepper News, 9/15/25

"Alert: France Moves Nuclear Planes to Poland, 

Russia Prepares for NATO Oil Embargo!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Extremely Desperate People Will Cause Chaos Throughout Society; Santa Monica Has Fallen"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/15/25

"Extremely Desperate People Will Cause Chaos

 Throughout Society; Santa Monica Has Fallen"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Even Baby Boomers Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 9/15/25

"Even Baby Boomers Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck"

"A lot of young people think that all the baby boomers got it good and they have all the money, and while there is some truth to that, the reality is, a lot of baby boomers are still struggling and living paycheck to paycheck just like everyone else."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Stillpoint"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Stillpoint"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.

Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"When Empires Die"

"When Empires Die"

by Jeff Thomas

"Years ago, Doug Casey stated, "When empires die, they do so with surprising speed." At the time, that comment raised eyebrows, yet he was quite correct in his observation. Ernest Hemingway made a similar comment when a character in his novel "The Sun Also Rises" was asked how he went bankrupt. The answer was, "Gradually, then suddenly." Again, this sounds cryptic, yet it's accurate.

Any empire, at its peak, is all-powerful, but the fragility of an empire that's in decline is hard to grasp, as the visuals tend not to reveal what's soon to come. Great countries are built upon traditional values – industriousness, self-reliance, honor, etc. But empires are distinctly different. Although it may seem to be a moot point, an empire is a great country whose traditional values have led it to become unusually prosperous. There are many countries, both large and small, that are "great" in their formative values, but only a few become empires.

Yes, the prosperity is brought about through traditional values, but a great country becomes an empire only when its prosperity is sufficient to allow it to branch out – to invade other lands – to plunder their assets and subjugate their peoples.

We tend to grasp, through hindsight, that this is what made the Roman Empire possible. And we accept that the Spanish Empire was created through its invasion of the Americas and the plundering of pre-Columbian gold. And we understand that the tiny island of Britain achieved its empire by covering the world with colonies that it had taken by force. In every case, the pattern was the same – expand, conquer, plunder, dominate.

As a British subject, my childhood understanding was that previous empires had come about through nefarious pursuits, but I was encouraged to believe that the British empire was somehow different – that my forefathers sailed the seven seas to liberate distant populations. That, of course, was nonsense.

The British empire is now long over, and the current empire is the United States. Around 1900, the then-great country of the US sought to achieve empire and, at that time, its president, Teddy Roosevelt, was insatiable in his desire to conquer foreign lands, both near (Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba) and far (Hawaii, Philippines, Japan).

The results of his efforts were mostly successful, and although the countries taken were not called colonies, they were certainly intended to be vassal states. And there can be no question the US government's methods were no kinder than that of the Huns. Some locations, like Hawaii, went fairly peacefully, whilst others, like the Philippines, required brutal slaughter on a grand scale.

And such tactics change the nature of a "great" country. Yes, it does allow it to become even greater, in terms of domination, but it ceases to be great in terms of its values. In most cases, this plants the seeds of empirical collapse. The empire, even as it's growing, is rotting from within, with deteriorating principles and morality – the very traits that created it.

This, in turn, causes the empire to develop a habit of subjugation – even over its friends and allies abroad – those countries that got on board to take part in the prosperity. While, to some extent, these loyalties by other nations are genuine, they are treated as lesser nations, eventually causing resentment of the empire. As such, in the latter days of the empire, ally nations become toadies. Their hatred for the empire is palpable, but they maintain their obeisance, grudgingly.

Empires are built upon monetary prosperity. We can understand that an empire, in its heyday, attracts all and sundry to its shores. It builds up the ability to dictate to others since the whole world hopes to gain favour. But, towards the end of the empirical period, it's resented by all those who were once genuine allies.

In its latter days, an empire becomes hollowed out. It's burdened with a costly and top-heavy government. The middle class is expected to provide largess to the masses through bread & circuses, providing fealty for the political class. Traditional values are largely gone, and "everyone seeks to live off everyone else." At this point, the empire is a mere superstructure – one that's becoming increasingly unsound. Importantly, the prosperity that made empire possible is replaced by the illusion of prosperity – debt.

Concurrently, the political class becomes increasingly tyrannical in order to hold the collapsing edifice together. In the final stages, tyrannical efforts increase in both frequency and magnitude in order to maintain the subjugation of the masses for as long as possible. It may be beneficial for the reader to read this last line again, as this development is the most recognizable symptom of the final stage prior to the collapse of empire.

This final period is not only difficult to cope with, it's highly confusing for those living within a dying empire.

The edifice still stands. With each election, the electorate hopes that somehow, a champion will spring forth and "put everything back the way it was." But it's important to note that, historically, this never occurs. Whilst the average citizen hopes in vain for his political leaders to "wake up" and stop all the nonsense, he fails to grasp that, to the political leader, the most important pursuit is power. He cares not a whit for the well-being of the populace. The political class has no intention of relinquishing even a small amount of power for the good of the people he was elected to represent.

Historically, in every instance, every empire has collapsed from within. Once the apple is truly rotten, it cannot be un-rotted. And so, if we've been observant in the recent years and decades, we'll acknowledge that the present empire has already passed its sell-by date. Its political structure is wholly corrupted on both sides of the aisle; the economy is doomed due to unpayable debt; the population has become unproductive, and it's now in the process of alienating its former friends through increasingly desperate measures.

And here, we return to our opening paragraphs. In its final stage prior to collapse, the empire sells out its toadies and is therefore no longer of any benefit to them. Suddenly, the empire becomes a liability. And, at this point, those who have had to tolerate the indignity of being toadies look forward to a fall, even a partial one, by the empire.

At present, the US empire maintains an illusion of dominance, but it cannot withstand a test. A defeat in warfare, a collapse in finance, the loss of the dollar's reserve currency status, or any one of a host of triggers that are now looming would be sufficient to drop the US to one knee overnight. All that's needed is for one of the triggers to be pulled.

It matters little what the event will be; it's sufficient to understand that we are now drawing quite near and that the event is unavoidable. Historically, when an empire dies, all the notes suddenly come due. The political class of any empire arrogantly depends upon allies to do as they're told, yet, when a decisive blow is dealt to the empire, those who had once been loyal allies are now as ready to abandon the empire as rats would abandon a sinking ship. When this happens, the crutches that the empire has been counting on to hold it up pull away quickly. The collapse will have occurred "gradually, then suddenly."

Once this is understood, the question for the reader becomes where he wishes to be when the edifice falls; whether he has prepared an alternative situation that will increase the likelihood that he will survive the debacle with his skin on. As history shows, empires don’t end with a graceful decline - they collapse under their own weight of debt, corruption, and overreach. The US is no exception. The warning signs are all around us: mounting deficits, relentless money printing, and a political class desperate to hold on to power."

- https://internationalman.com/

"The Heart Has It's Reasons..."

“Passion doesn’t count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has it's reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O’Shea. And if it doesn’t destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one’s life, that one’s brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one’s expended all one’s tenderness, poured out all the riches of one’s soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one’s dreams, who wasn’t worth a stick of chewing gum.”

- W. Somerset Maugham

○

“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.”

- Charles Frazier

o

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;

it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

- Sydney J. Harris

"Douglas Macgregor: 500 Years of Dominance Have Come to an End"

Glenn Diesen, 9/15/25

"Douglas Macgregor: 

500 Years of Dominance Have Come to an End" 

"Douglas Macgregor is a retired Colonel and former advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Col. Magregor argues that we are living in historic times as the era of Western dominance has come to an end. If the West wants to thrive, it must adjust to how the world actually and abandon hegemonic dreams"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Collapse Of Everyday Life In America Is Happening Right In Front Of Our Eyes"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 9/15/25

"The Collapse Of Everyday Life In America

 Is Happening Right In Front Of Our Eyes"

"The American Dream isn't just dying – it's being murdered in broad daylight by inflation, corporate greed, and a system that has completely abandoned working families. What we're witnessing isn't just an economic downturn; it's the systematic destruction of middle-class life as we know it.

Across social media platforms, ordinary Americans are sharing their stories of financial desperation, and the picture they paint is absolutely devastating. These aren't people asking for handouts or looking for sympathy – these are hardworking families who are drowning despite doing everything they were told would lead to success.

Here's someone who captures the raw reality of what life has become for millions of Americans today. $286 for a car battery and $466 for utilities in a 700-square-foot apartment. What makes this particularly devastating is that they deliberately chose the smallest, cheapest living situation specifically to be financially responsible while paying for education. The system punishes even the most careful financial planning.

Grocery shopping has transformed from a routine errand into a psychological warfare zone where basic human dignity gets stripped away in public. Watch what happens when the economic pressure reaches its breaking point. $15.99 for bacon, $8.99 for lunch meat – at a mainstream grocery chain. When basic protein costs more per pound than many people earn per hour, we're witnessing the complete breakdown of food accessibility for working families. When you scale this up to larger households, the mathematics become absolutely brutal.

What we're witnessing isn't market forces or natural economic cycles. This is coordinated wealth extraction across every sector of the economy. When utility bills hit $466 for tiny apartments, when families spend $688 on basic groceries, when educational achievement leads to $170,000 in growing debt, the entire system has become predatory.

The voices you've heard represent millions of similar stories playing out across America. The rage is justified, the desperation is rational, and the abandonment of traditional financial advice is a logical response to a system that punishes responsibility and rewards extraction.

The collapse isn't coming – it's here. And every declined card, every impossible choice between rent and food, every psychological breakdown over basic costs is evidence that the American Dream didn't die naturally – it was murdered by design."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "Beginning of Panic Rate Cut Cycle – Ed Dowd"

"Beginning of Panic Rate Cut Cycle – Ed Dowd"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com had a storied Wall Street career. He got out of Enron and Lucent long before they crashed and burned. A few of the many other more recent correct calls Dowd has made include: interest rates topping and heading lower (they did), housing tanking and going lower (happening now), massive fraud propping up the Biden economy with illegal immigration (20 million brought in by Biden Admin) and the BLS just restated job creation numbers for 12 months ending in March. The restatement revealed an eye popping 911,000 jobs were fake. Dowd said just after the 2024 election that “Trump inherited a turd of an economy.” Now, Dowd says, “Trump has to deal with a turd of a disaster.” On the phony jobs number alone, Dowd says, “You could say this is statistical fraud or bureaucratic incompetence. Let’s say it’s both. It such an egregious 7 standard deviation. 3.4 standard deviation is the chance of lightning hitting you at least once in your lifetime. It’s not likely. 7 deviation is suggestive of fraud – full stop.”

All the frauds propping up the Biden economy isn’t causing inflation now – just the opposite. Dowd says, “The housing market is rolling over because people can’t afford them. What was keeping a floor in the housing market were rents by the illegal aliens. That’s all going the wrong way. Trump is deporting people, and we closed down the border. Our housing report that we put out a month ago... all the indicators are rolling over, and we are going to have a housing recession. We are going to see inflation go lower because housing is 36% of the economy. We expect to see a sub 2% print on inflation.”

What about the Fed cutting interest rates next week? Dowd says, “They cut rates in the Great Financial Crisis starting in 2007. Our stock market did not bottom until 2009. This is the beginning of what I think is the ‘panic rate cut cycle.’ We are going to see the Fed cutting rates all the way down into this asset deflation that we see coming in this panic rate cut cycle. Cutting into slowing growth does not cause assets to reinflate. They are behind the curve, and they are going to be cutting all the way down as we deflate.”

Dowd still likes gold and says his clients are acquiring gold and land, not crypto. He also says there are big problems coming in the not-so-distant future from China and Europe. Dowd says his forecast of the world going into a “very deep recession” will come true soon. There is much more in the 54-minute interview."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

"Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with money manager and investment expert Ed Dowd, author of the updated book called “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023” for 9.13.25. Dowd contends the “sudden deaths” and disabilities are still happening at epidemic levels. Now, there are 6 million Americans permanently disabled from the CV19 injections!"

- https://rumble.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Elyria, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Knowing..."

“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”

- Sue Monk Kidd

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

- Arundhati Roy, "The Cost of Living"

"The Ironic, The Tragic Thing..."

“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”

- Henry Miller

"The Most Horrifying Nuclear War Film Ever Made: 100 Lessons from 'Threads'"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 9/15/25

"The Most Horrifying Nuclear War Film Ever Made:

 100 Lessons from 'Threads'"

I do an in depth view of the most terrifying nuclear war film ever made: 'Threads' by the BBC. I do a scene by scene breakdown of this incredibly accurate depiction of nuclear conflict.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "This is As Bad As 2008!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 9/15/25

"This is As Bad As 2008!"

"The job market is breaking down, and it's worse than 2008! In today’s video, I uncover the shocking truth about layoffs, the real state of the economy, and why the numbers we’re being fed just don’t add up. From Oregon’s alarming job losses to rising financial struggles across the nation, it’s clear we’re heading into turbulent territory. Are you seeing it where you live? Let’s talk about it. Plus, AI engineers making $900 an hour, Elon Musk’s billion-dollar Tesla stock buy, and even homeless communities with tennis courts - this is the wild reality we’re living in right now. The Fed’s interest rate games and what they mean for YOUR finances? I’ve got you covered. Don’t miss the deep dive into how this all rivals the Great Recession of 2008 and what you can do to protect yourself."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Travelling With Russell, "I Went to Moscow's Historical Parade of Trams"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling With Russell, 9/15/25

"I Went to Moscow's Historical Parade of Trams"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Earth3D"

 

"About Us: Keep your directions handy, always!

Get The Best Route Every Time - Discover driving directions and maps with ExploreEarth3D, your ideal driving companion that provides an enjoyable experience, simplifying planning your next road trip to your desired destination!

Smart & Simple - No matter how you travel, you can always find easy-to-follow directions! Confirm your current location, enter your desired destination, and select whether you're walking, biking, or driving.

No Signal? No Problem! Print your directions for convenience and discover the easiest method for obtaining directions to take with you. Printing your directions is a great way to ensure you reach your destination, no matter what happens.

• Find the best route - Begin by entering your starting point and end destination. You can include as many stops or additional addresses as necessary to build a complete route.

• Adjust your route - To reorder your stops, click and drag the box with a named stop. To add a new stop, click the + icon.

• Remove stops - To remove a stop in your journey, hover over the address and click the X button that appears.

• Print your directions - The final step! Click 'Print Directions' to download or print directions with step-by-step navigation.

• Maps in satellite view - Change your default view by enabling maps in satellite view.

• Current traffic - Trying to avoid traffic? Check your local traffic before heading on your way.

• Avoid slowdowns - Skip the traffic jam by selecting Avoid Slowdowns.

• Gas price - Find the cheapest gas along your route and always know where to fill up.

If you have any suggestions or want to help us improve the product, reach us at support@exploreearth3d.com. We are also supported by third-party links, features, and materials so that we can keep providing ExploreEarth3D for free. Ready to plan your next adventure? Begin planning your journey today with ease and convenience!"

- https://www.exploreearth3d.com/

"How It Really Is"