Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "The Royal Albert Hall Concert" ( 2010 )
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The southern Milky Way appears spectacular in this composite image taken from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. Few sources of light pollution exist here, home to only 500 people.
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri. They point to Crux the Southern Cross. Near the horizon, two of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, the Small (left) and Large Magellanic Clouds are easy to spot.”
"Your Only Choice...:
”There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.”
- Graham Greene
○
“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no
return when you no longer have enough breath to double back.
Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown… and pray for an exit.”
- Dan Brown
"Inflate AND Die"
"Inflate AND Die"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "That was fast! Already… the inflation threat is over. Bloomberg tells us more: "With investors anxious to hear the Federal Reserve’s latest take on inflation after last week’s hot reading, certain corners of the market are already simmering down.
Take lumber, one of the biggest gainers among commodities in the past year as stuck-at-home Americans poured money into remodeling. It’s slumped 40% since its peak in May. The booming housing market has also cooled, with an index that measures consumer plans to buy homes tumbling last month. And copper has eased from an all-time high.
[…]
The Treasury market, for one, has shown itself unperturbed by the latest readings that highlighted the fastest year-over-year acceleration since 2008. Stocks haven’t minded either, with the S&P 500 breaking out to its first record since early May last week."
Or is it? Breitbart reports: "Worries About Big Ticket Item Inflation Hit Worse Level Since 1982." "The University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment showed U.S. consumers more concerned with higher prices of appliances, houses, and cars than anytime in 39 years, according to the survey’s chief economist Richard Curtin."
Critical Distinction: So what’s ahead? Tomorrow, the Federal Reserve will announce its latest policy move. Most recently, it has been “thinking about thinking about tapering.” What that means is that if it thinks it is already reaching its inflation target – 2% per year – it might begin to think about backing off from its $120 billion-a-month counterfeiting program. But it’s this money-printing itself that is the real “inflation,” not the price increases you see at the grocery store. The point of today’s Diary: While the future price of strawberries is unknowable, the future of the Fed’s inflation is unavoidable.
True Prices: We saw last week that prices are not a problem. It doesn’t matter that they are high or low… as long as they are true. A true price tells us something important – input costs, supplies, demand. A phony price misleads, confuses, and defrauds us all – investors, producers, and consumers alike.
When the U.S. was flooded with imports from China, Mexico, and Vietnam, for example, prices fell. The lower prices told us that the foreign manufacturers could produce many things more cheaply than we could in the U.S. American retailers rushed to source their goods from overseas… and consumers rushed to Walmart to buy them. American labor, meanwhile, lost its bargaining power.
But when Wall Street prices rose – without the additional profits to justify them – the information content was ersatz. It misled investors into supporting zombie companies, gambling on further capital gains, and wasting precious time and resources.
Real Prices: And it soured the social stew. Artificially low interest rates, an implicit stock market guarantee, and bond purchases (such as its current $120 billion-a-month program) shifted trillions of dollars’ worth of wealth. The elite, who own stocks and bonds, took the Fed’s money without even a “thank you.” The factory girls and toolbelt guys, who provide real goods and services, got nothing – leaving them, relatively, even worse off.
Real prices – based on shifting labor and raw material costs, shipping patterns, retailing methods, consumer preferences, and innumerable other factors – are inherently unpredictable. Bad summer weather could raise the price of watermelons, for example. (The Fed’s attempt to raise prices at a steady 2% annual rate is therefore as preposterous as it is unattainable.)
Inflate AND Die: But while we can’t know what will happen to real prices… we can make a fair guess about what’s ahead for the Fed’s inflation campaign. It’s now inevitable… deliberate… and disastrous. Dear reader H.R.E. has suggested a revision of our “Inflate or Die” description. It’s now “Inflate AND Die,” he says. He’s got a point. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. The feds gotta inflate. No matter when or how real prices react, the fake signals and hidden robbery in the feds’ inflation is gonna kill us all. Everybody must get stoned. How? When…? Woody Allen remarked, “Just tell us where… and we’ll avoid the place."
No Escape: But as we saw yesterday, there may be nowhere – at least in the G7 nations – you will be able to escape to. France, Japan, Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom – all the other G7 nations are in on the caper. All G7 nations have staggering levels of debt – Japan, for example, has government debt greater than 250% of its GDP… or more than twice the U.S. level… All have more and more old people and fewer and fewer young people to look after them. Italy’s population is expected to be cut in half by the end of the century… All are facing huge social and political problems, since they are unable to make good on the promises they’ve made to voters… All are caught in the “Inflate AND Die” trap… forced to finance deficits with printing-press money… All believe they can and should switch to “green” energy, though none has the huge amount of capital that the “great transition” would require…
Global Spree: Yes, Dear Reader, the scam has gone global. And we are looking at the first international, coordinated inflation spree in history. Hundreds of millions of people will be ripped off… by globalized inflation, globalized taxes, and globalized claptrap. And it will be harder than ever to avoid it."
"Alert! Inflation & Shortages at Critical Levels"
Full screen recommended.
Dr. Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity PM 6/15/21:
"Alert! Inflation & Shortages at Critical Levels"
"Inflation Is a Huge Problem and Only Getting Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 6/15/21:
"Inflation Is a Huge Problem and Only Getting Worse"
"The Experts want you to believe that inflation will only be temporary. This will destroy every aspect of peoples lives in the coming months. Rent, food, supplies, business services and cars are skyrocketing before your eyes. #Economy #Inflation".
“Warning! Your Money Can Be Seized; Economy Will Crash The Stock Market; Retail Sales Slammed; Cash”
Jeremiah Babe, PM 6/15/21:
“Warning! Your Money Can Be Seized;
Economy Will Crash The Stock Market; Retail Sales Slammed; Cash”
"Carry On Spending!"
"Carry On Spending!"
by Bill Bonner
"Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago, it took two people
to carry ten dollars’ worth of groceries. Today, a five-year-old can do it."
– A Henny Youngman quote sent by a dear reader.
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Newsflash from the G7 summit in Cornwall! Here’s the Financial Times: "Biden wins backing from G7 leaders to “carry on spending” …as western leaders rejected austerity in a post-Covid world and vowed to tackle inequality at home and abroad.
What can you say in response? Is there any sarcasm worthy of the task? With inflation figures on the rise… debt levels reaching beyond those of World War II… and deficits that even a sh*thole country would be embarrassed to admit…
Here’s our longtime sidekick, Dan Denning, with an update: "Did you see the deficit numbers? $2.6 trillion in revenues through May. But $4.7 trillion in spending. Maths: $2.1 trillion deficit."
Addressing Inequality: You’d think leaders might want to show some restraint. Some moderation. Maybe even trim a little fat. “Austerity” – aka not spending money you don’t have on boondoggles you shouldn’t do anyway – is what the situation calls for. Instead… the spend-a-palooza continues. And why? To “tackle inequality”?
Right. The U.S. leaders, who shifted (by our rough estimate) $30 trillion to the top 10% of the population, are now going to address the “inequality” issue. How? Cutting off the tall man’s legs and lowering the smart man’s IQ by making him watch TV? Forcing thin women to eat more so they will be as roly-poly as the fat ones? No, Dear Reader, the leveling will be done with money. And like the rest of the stimmy program – fraudulently.
Intentional Inflation: Last week, we saw that “inflation” is not just a matter of rising consumer prices. It is an intentional “inflation” of the money itself – like counterfeiting. It’s not the higher prices that do the damage. It’s the fraud behind them. Throughout the “western” world, the feds are deliberately robbing people by printing up fake money and pretending it is real. And if that weren’t bad enough, they are setting the economy up for a catastrophe of runaway inflation (who will stop it? Not the elite!)… bubbles… busts and boondoggles galore.
Three Important Decisions: But let’s take a break. It’s a beautiful morning here in Ireland. A shame to waste it. Last weekend, we drove up to Dublin. The sun was shining. People were out and about. St. Stephen’s Green, in the center of the city, is stunning this time of the year.
Some photos from our stroll through St. Stephen’s Green.
Long ago, we noticed that there are only three important decisions you make in your life: What you do, where you do it, and whom you do it with. How much money you make didn’t make the list. As we strolled through the park, it occurred to us that there was nowhere else we would rather have been at that moment. It was beautiful… and with a kind of old, manicured charm that raw nature never matches.
The park was once a marshland, adjacent to the city, used for “grazing sheep and public executions.” It was given the name of a leper hospital that used to be on the site, Saint Stephen’s. Stephen was the first Christian martyr. According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was stoned to death in Jerusalem in 34 AD. The lapidation was supposedly witnessed by Saul of Tarsus who, in spite of what happened to Stephen, decided to become a martyr himself and was later beheaded in Rome.
In 1663, the Dublin Corporation thought it might get a better price for the surrounding property by turning it into a private park, for use by the gentry only. Then, at the initiative of Sir Arthur Edward Guinness, the source of whose wealth needs no explanation, it was made public in 1880.
Freedom Fight: St. Stephen’s Green played a role in the Easter Rising of 1916, when members of the Irish Citizen Army dug into positions in the park where they might resist the British troops. The campaign against British rule in Ireland was remarkably amateurish… even for a nation of poets. The British took over the nearby Shelbourne Hotel, from which they had a clear field of fire directly onto the Irish positions. The Irish, led by Christopher “Kit” Poole and Constance Markievicz, among others, had to withdraw. Both Poole and Markievicz were captured. Poole was sent to a prison camp in England, but was granted amnesty, and later led a detachment to raid an American ship – the USS Defiance – robbing her of a shipment of guns and ammunition. Markievicz narrowly missed lapidation herself. She had apparently shot and killed an unarmed Dublin policeman (the report is disputed). The military court recommended the firing squad. Instead, she, too, was amnestied, returned to Dublin, and made a nuisance of herself until she died at age 59.
What, Where, With Whom: Why are we telling you these things? Hmmm… we can’t remember… It must have something to do with that stray thought… that few things really matter – just the what, where, and with whom.
Inflation? The trouble with the feds’ plan to “carry on spending,” is that it eventually comes crashing through the window like a rock. We may not be able to live where we want (the United Nations says 4 million people have been forced to leave their homes in Venezuela because of the hyperinflation there, for example). We may not be able to do what we want, either – businesses close… holidays are cancelled… projects are delayed, then forgotten. And with whom? Under pressure… families get separated. Work teams are broken up.
Federal spending is the main way that monetary inflation (in the Fed’s balance sheet) gets transmitted to the economy and into consumer prices. Then, once prices begin rising in a substantial and sustained manner, people all over the world take out their dollars and try to get rid of them. That’s what causes the “velocity” of money to increase… giving “inflation” a life of its own. We’re not there yet… but the feds are piling up the stones."
"Seven Things Nobody Talks About That Will Eventually Matter - A Lot"
"Seven Things Nobody Talks About
That Will Eventually Matter - A Lot"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that everything that will eventually matter is ignored until it does matter - but by then it's too late. Here's a short list to start the discussion:
1. The Federal Reserve has transformed the American populace into a nation of dismayingly over-confident gamblers. I've been writing about moral hazard - the separation of risk from consequence - since 2011. Punters who are insulated from risk will have an insatiable appetite for risky bets, which is precisely what we see on a mass scale, as the confidence that the Fed will never let markets drop is 99.99% because the Fed has indeed reversed every decline, no matter how modest, month after month, year after year.
The Fed has perfected moral hazard: everyone from the money manager betting billions to the punters gambling their stimmy money is absolutely confident I can't lose because the Fed will always push the market higher. Hence the advice to never sell and keep increasing the size of one's bets because losing is transitory (heh).
2. The Fed's perfection of moral hazard radically incentivizes increasing debt and leverage to maximize one's bets because the bigger the bet, the bigger the payoff - the Fed guarantees it! Margin debt is at extremes, and many wildly successful stock and options punters have reaped fantastic gains by maxing out their Robinhood margin as their winnings increase. Since the Fed guarantees that anyone holding until the Fed gooses markets higher will be a winner, maximizing leverage is completely rational: hedging is a foolish waste of money that could have been placed on a sure winner - any long bet.
Margin and shadow-banking leverage is through the roof, but nobody sees any risk from this extreme expansion of debt and leverage. Never mind that leverage unwinds faster than it builds...
3. As longtime technician Louise Yamada reminds us, volume is the weapon of the Bull. Yet volume is lower than the holiday season before New Years. The Bull is nowhere in sight if we look at volume, yet every new high is proof-positive that the Fed doesn't need no stinkin' volume - markets will loft higher forever with or without volume. OK, if you say so...
4. Inflation is Kryptonite for markets, yet nobody feels any need to discount the possibility that inflation isn't "transitory". There are numerous reasons to doubt the Fed's bleatings, reasons I've laid out in
5. Everyone seems to be assuming the calendar has been reset to September 2019 with absolutely nothing different, yet profound cultural changes have occured beneath the status quo's radar. I addressed a few of these cultural shifts in
The incentives to opt-out - and the quiet time needed to realize this provided by the lockdown - are weighing on the entire spectrum of the workforce from professionals to the working poor. But conventional pundits are blind to the consequences of 'Take This Job and Shove It'.
6. The insanity of leaving the nation dependent on foreign suppliers for essentials goes largely unremarked. Never mind the national security risks - all that matters is Corporate America squeezing the last few dollars of profits out of the dead carcass of globalization.
7. Nobody seems to notice the diminishing returns on Fed manipulation, oops, I mean intervention: what $1 trillion accomplished 12 years ago takes almost $4 trillion - and what about the next fireball of deleveraging/margin calls? What will that take to reverse? $8 trillion? $10 trillion? And all of that will be consequence-free, no matter how bloviated? If you say so..."
"Just Remember..."
“I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs. Never Let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.”
- Cat Winters
"Isochronic Tones: Upbeat Study Music Progressive House Mix for Peak Focus"
Full screen recommended.
Jason Lewis - Mind Amend,
"Isochronic Tones:
Upbeat Study Music Progressive House Mix for Peak Focus"
"What is this? This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Listen to this when you need a strong burst of intense focus to concentrate and study things like advanced mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any other complex mental activity. Isochronic tones produce a stronger and more powerful brainwave entrainment effect, compared to binaural beats study music tracks or standard music. Use this track when working on advanced and complicated topics like coding/programming, mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any complex mental activity.
How to use it? Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Headphones are NOT required. Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.
How is this session constructed? The session starts off beating at 10Hz and ramps up to 18Hz by the 6-minute mark. It stays at 18Hz until the final 5 minutes where it ramps back down again.
When to listen? Because this track increases your beta brainwave activity, it's best to listen to this during the daytime and early evening. If you listen to this too close to bedtime, it might disrupt your sleep, in a similar way to how you might respond if you drank coffee just before going to bed."
"9 Signs That Some Of America’s Long-Term Trends Are Starting To Become Very Serious Short-Term Problems"
"9 Signs That Some Of America’s Long-Term Trends
Are Starting To Become Very Serious Short-Term Problems"
by Michael Snyder
"Ignoring long-term problems can work for a while, but eventually they catch up with you. Over the years, I have written many articles about alarming long-term trends in our society that desperately needed to be addressed. Of course the vast majority of those long-term trends never got much attention, because our political system tends to reward politicians that focus on short-term issues. As a result, many of the long-term trends that I have written about previously have now gotten to a point where they have started to become very serious short-term problems. In this article, I would like to share 9 examples of this with you.
#1 I have been warning about exploding debt levels for as long as I have been writing about the economy. Most people know that the U.S. national debt has now crossed the 28 trillion dollar threshold, but hardly anyone is talking about the explosion of corporate debt that we have been witnessing in recent months. According to the Federal Reserve, total corporate debt in the United States is now up to a whopping 11.2 trillion dollars… "Before the pandemic, U.S. companies were borrowing heavily at low interest rates. When Covid-19 lockdowns triggered a recession, they didn’t pull back. They borrowed even more and soon paid even less.
After a brief spike, interest rates on corporate debt plummeted to their lowest level on record, bringing a surge in new bonds. Nonfinancial companies issued $1.7 trillion of bonds in the U.S. last year, nearly $600 billion more than the previous high, according to Dealogic. By the end of March, their total debt stood at $11.2 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve, about half the size of the U.S. economy."
#2 Needless to say, this level of corporate debt is not even close to sustainable, and we are starting to see a lot of prominent names go bankrupt. In fact, one of the largest mall owners in the entire country officially filed for bankruptcy on Sunday… "Washington Prime Group, a major mall owner of more than 100 locations across the United States, filed for bankruptcy, citing pandemic-related shutdowns. The Columbus, Ohio-based company filed for Chapter 11 late Sunday, saying Covid-19 “created significant challenges” and that the move is “necessary.” Washington Prime secured $100 million in new funding to support its day-to-day operations so it can “continue in the ordinary course without interruption.”
#3 The standard of living in the United States has been going down for a very long time. Here in 2021, inflation is growing at a much faster rate than wages are, and this is squeezing middle class families like never before. One of the ways that families are dealing with this is by putting off major purchases, and that is one of the reasons why the average age of the vehicles on our roads has now reached an all-time record high… "The average age of vehicles on U.S. roadways rose to a record 12.1 years last year, as lofty prices and improved quality prompt owners to hold on to their cars longer. It was the first time the average vehicle age rose above 12 years, according to data released Monday by research firm IHS Markit. While the average vehicle age has risen steadily over the last 15 years, the trend accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic partly because of a drop in new-car sales, IHS said."
#4 America’s growing homelessness crisis has accelerated greatly during the pandemic, and the big cities in California are being hit the hardest. At this point, it is really difficult to navigate through the streets of San Francisco without stumbling over a tent or stepping in human excrement… "For a city as opulent as San Francisco, it’s long been jarring to see the extreme poverty of those experiencing homelessness on its streets. If you walk around downtown, tents, makeshift cardboard beds and human excrement can be seen littering the sidewalks. Impoverished people lie on the ground as a blur of highly paid professionals whiz by."
#5 The homelessness crisis is also one of the factors that is fueling the dramatic rise in crime rates that we have been seeing all over the nation. Once upon a time, millions of eager tourists would flock to Venice Beach, but now the phrase “like hell went to hell” is being used to describe conditions at that once pristine tourist trap… "Year-to-date numbers show that robberies have nearly tripled since the same period last year. Homeless-related robberies are up 260 percent; homeless-related assaults with a deadly weapon is up 118 percent; property crimes and area burglaries are up 85 percent; and grand theft auto is up 74 percent. According to Embrich, felony arrests are up 68 percent, while misdemeanor arrests have grown by 355 percent. But arrests aren’t enough: Suspects are often released back onto the streets within hours."
#6 The police are the ones that are supposed to protect us from crime and restore order when things get out of control, but now they are leaving public service in record numbers. After being endlessly demonized by leftist activists and the mainstream media, police officers are either retiring or resigning at a staggering rate…. "Police retirements have risen by 45 percent in the past year, with officers opting out of forces across the country amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations that fueled anti-cop rhetoric. The alarming statistic was revealed by the Police Executive Research Forum on Sunday, with the organization also revealing that resignations rose by 18 percent during the same twelve month period."
#7 Have you noticed that many of our cities are becoming disgustingly filthy? When I was growing up, I often heard the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness”, but you never hear anyone use it anymore. These days, filth and grime are everywhere, and that has resulted in widespread infestations. Many of our cities now have massive problems with rats and bed bugs, but Chicago is the worst of them all… "The Windy City is known for quite a few things: hot dogs, deep dish, baseball. But here’s one thing you probably don’t associate with Chicago: bed bugs. Turns out these tiny hitchhiking pests are quite fond of our city, according to the latest numbers available through Atlanta-based Orkin, a company that specializes in pest control services. In fact, Chicago ranked no. 1 on the 2021 list, according to Orkin, reclaiming the top spot for the first time since 2017, when it slipped to no. 3, just behind Baltimore and Washington. For the sixth year in a row, Orkin also ranked Chicago the “rattiest” city in America."
#8 I have been writing about the drought in the western half of the country for years, but here in 2021 it is the worst we have ever seen. As I write this article, an astounding 88 percent of the West is officially in a state of drought… "Lakes at historically low levels, unusually early forest fires, restrictions on water use and now a potentially record heat wave: even before summer’s start the US West is suffering the effects of chronic drought made worse by climate change. Eighty-eight percent of the West was in a state of drought this week, including the entire states of California, Oregon, Utah and Nevada, according to official data."
#9 When drought gets bad enough, it leads to water shortages, and we will want to watch developments in California very closely. Water supplies have gotten very tight throughout the state, and officials in Santa Clara County just officially declared “a water shortage emergency”… "Santa Clara County is in extreme drought. We can’t afford to wait to act as our water supplies are being threatened locally and across California. We are in an emergency and Valley Water must do everything we can to protect our groundwater resources and ensure we can provide safe, clean water to Santa Clara County residents and businesses.
To better deal with these threats and the emergency they are causing, today my fellow Board Members and I unanimously declared a water shortage emergency condition in Santa Clara County. This declaration, which is among the strongest actions we can take under law, allows Valley Water to work with our retailers, cities and the county to implement regulations and restrictions on the delivery and consumption of water. We also are urging the County of Santa Clara to proclaim a local emergency and join us in underscoring the seriousness of the threats posed by the extreme drought."
Over the past few years, America has been hit by crisis after crisis, and many are yearning for a return to the good old days. Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen. The United States is never going to be like it once was. Too many things have changed, and our culture has been radically transformed over the past several decades. Many of the items that I have shared in this article are simply symptoms of much broader cultural problems. We are a deeply, deeply sick society, and it is getting worse with each passing day."
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/15/21: "MELTDOWN: The US Economy Continues To CRATER"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/15/21:
"MELTDOWN: The US Economy Continues To CRATER"
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Related:
Monday, June 14, 2021
"It Gets Ugly: Dollar’s Purchasing Power Plunged at Fastest Pace Since 1982 And It Won’t Bounce Back"
Full screen recommended.
"It Gets Ugly: Dollar’s Purchasing Power Plunged
at Fastest Pace Since 1982 And It Won’t Bounce Back"
by Epic Economist
"The purchasing power of every dollar in circulation is sharply collapsing right now, and experts are warning that lost value won't bounce back even if economic conditions improve. The decay of our currency is actually a lot more acute than it appears. Americans are already realizing their dollars don't buy nearly as much as they did in the past. And to make things worse, the price of everything is skyrocketing. All of this is happening because by attempting to increase consumer price inflation, the Federal Reserve is decreasing the buying power of the consumer dollar, so consumers end up paying more for the same products. In that way, the Fed is actually decreasing the purchasing power of labor paid in those dollars, which means, the value of your labor is being suppressed in the name of higher inflation. Therefore, every hour you dedicate to your work just to afford to have a nice and comfortable lifestyle - and oftentimes, having to spend time away from your family and your loved ones - is sadly worthing less than ever before.
That's what Wolf Richter exposed in a recent article published on his website Wolf Street. Richter explained that, in essence, what the Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks is the “loss of purchasing power of the consumer dollar,” and thereby the loss of purchasing power of labor denominated in dollars. And new data shows that the purchasing power of the consumer dollar has plunged to a new all-time low. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index jumped 0.6% in May, after having jumped 0.8% in April, and 0.6% in March – all three the steepest month-to-month increases in almost 12 years. For the three months combined, CPI has jumped by 2.0%, or by an annualized rate of 8.1%. That is to say, in a three months span, the purchasing power of U.S. consumers collapsed by 8.1% compared to the same period one year ago.
However, by adjusting those rates on an annualized basis, the numbers are even worse. Recent data divulged by the BLS suggests that this month, the purchasing power of the consumer dollar - which includes everything denominated in dollars for consumers, even their labor - has dropped by 0.8%, and over the past three months it fell 2.4%, marking the biggest three-month plunge in purchasing power since 1982, amounting to a drop of 9.5%. Even more worrying is the fact that the current plunge in purchasing power is permanent, and the purchasing power loss we will experience in the future will also be permanent. Richter outlines that the only factor that might make it seem like a "temporary" loss is a period of consumer price deflation. The same has happened in 2008 after the economy faced the most severe recession since the 1930s. "The rest of the time, we’ve had lots of decline in purchasing power. And that has proven to be rock-solid “permanent,” and we never got that lost purchasing power back," he said.
Bearing in mind that a 10 percent drop in the value of the dollar represents a 10 percent loss of buying power, this means that not only the products we buy are getting more and more expensive, our money is also becoming gradually worthless. The current monetary policies are actively destroying our currency, suppressing our purchasing power, and downgrading our living standards. In one recent article published by FXStreet, the financial analyst Chuck Butler alerted that inflation can be shown in dollar weakness, and a weak dollar invites inflation to be imported into the country from other countries. So with inflation soaring right now, and the dollar losing purchasing power, our economy is already facing a double whammy, and things are about to get a whole lot worse as the weak dollar trend has just started to show its early effects. We're going to witness a widespread loss of wealth as our money turns into valueless paper, and the financial hardships faced by most Americans will only intensify while our living conditions deteriorate."
Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, “Elastic Heart/Not The Only One”
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, “Elastic Heart/Not The Only One”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.
Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Lead"
"Lead"
"Here is a story to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter the loons came to our harbor and died,
one by one, of nothing we could see.
A friend told me of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one just where that is.
The next morning this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world."
- Mary Oliver
"You Know..."
“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”
- Maria Popova
"So We Never Live..."
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
- Blaise Pascal
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The Marmalade, "Reflections Of My Life"
Chet Raymo, “Thinking About Thinking”
“Thinking About Thinking”
by Chet Raymo
“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living," wrote the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch. And, of course, he was right. Our brains are separated from the world by a permeable membrane. Attention flows outwards. Sense impressions flow inwards. Of this two-way traffic - this awareness - we create a soul.
At this moment, as I sit at my desk on a hillside in the west of Ireland, I try to be aware. Sunlight streams across my computer keyboard; eight minutes ago these photons were on the surface of the sun. A Pholcus phalangioides spider spins its web under the shelf above the desk; I touch the web with a pencil point and the spider does a dervish dance. Outside the window, clouds scud in from the Atlantic; there will be rain in the afternoon.
Continuous awareness: It can be exhausting. Which is why, I suppose, we sometimes wish for the mind to go blank, for the windows of the soul to close, for darkness to fall.
Fortunately, the one thing we don't have to attend to is awareness itself. The brain does its thing without the least bit of conscious control on our part. And a good thing, too; if we had to attend to what is going on in the brain when we attend to the world, we'd... We'd go nuts.
Nothing we know about in the universe approaches the complexity of the human brain. What is it? A vast spider web of neurons, cells with a thousand octopuslike arms, called dendrites. The dendrites reach out and make contact at their tips with the dendrites of other cells, at junctions called synapses. A hundred billion neurons in the human brain, with an average of 1,000 dendrites each. A hundred trillion octopus arms touching like fingertips, and each synapse exquisitely controlled by the cells themselves, strengthening or weakening the contact, building webs of interlinked cells that are knowledge, memory, consciousness- self.
A hundred billion neurons. That's more brain cells than there are grains of salt in 1,000 one-pound boxes of salt. A roomful of salt grains, floor to ceiling. Each in contact with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of others. The contacts flickering with variable strength. Continuously. Unconsciously. Never ceasing. Remembering. Forgetting. Feeling joy. Feeling pain. Thinking. Speaking. Lifting a foot, moving it forward, putting it down again. Flickering. A hundred trillion flickering synapses. Just thinking about it is exhausting.
Neuroscientists are busy trying to figure it all out. Some folks would say that bringing the scrutiny of science to bear upon the human soul is the height of presumption. Others would say that the more we learn about what makes our brains tick, the more we stand in awe at the mystery of soul.
The sheer complexity of the human brain makes any adequate description a daunting task. Which is why some neuroscientists choose to work with simpler organisms- sea snails, for example- to get a grip on the basic structure and chemistry. In recent years, new scanning technologies enable neuroscientists to watch live human brains at work. Active neural regions flicker on the screens of computer monitors as subjects think, speak, recite poems, do math. Continuous awareness, displayed on the screen of a scanning monitor, can look like a grass fire exploding across a prairie.
Still other scientists attempt to model the brain in silicon, building electronic circuits called neural networks that mimic the activity of the brain as it creates constantly changing webs of neurons. So far, no electronic network begins to approach the complexity of the human brain, but the time is not far off when silicon brains will rival brains of flesh and blood. Just trying to make it happen teaches us a lot about how human brains work.
Perhaps the most exciting research is that of the scientists who study the biochemistry of neurons: How do the cells regulate synaptic connections to build new neural webs? One big surprise is just how much of the "thinking" of neurons is done by the dendrites, those hundreds of spidery arms that connect neurons to one another. DNA in a neuron's nucleus sends messenger RNA down along the dendrites to active synapses, where they are translated into proteins that regulate the strength of synaptic connections. Tiny protein factories in the dendrites are apparently key to learning and memory. Once the regulation of these protein factories is understood, drugs that ameliorate some kinds of hereditary mental retardation might be possible. As will drugs that help all of us to learn and remember. Are we ready for "smart" pills? Memory pills?
What all this amounts to is awareness of awareness. For the first time in the history of consciousness, the machinery of awareness has been turned upon itself. As neuroscientists have discovered, thinking about thinking is not easy. Thank goodness we don't have to think about thinking to think.”
"Remember..."
"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort – to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires – and expires, too soon, too soon – before life itself."
- Joseph Conrad,
1857-1924, English writer, "Youth"
Gregory Mannarino, 6/14/21: "Alert! We Are In An Inflationary Crisis Which Is About To Get Much Worse"
Gregory Mannarino, 6/14/21:
"Alert! We Are In An Inflationary Crisis
Which Is About To Get Much Worse"
"The Three-way Squeeze"
"The Three-way Squeeze"
by Jim Kunstler
"Here is why the “Joe Biden” regime only has a few months to live: it is caught in a squeeze between some of the greatest lies in world history, and they’re all unraveling now. Anyway, “Joe Biden” is not really functioning as president of the US; he’s just the doddering, photo-op front-man for a kind of politburo centered around Barack Obama, and that group lives in terror of being found-out, which it will be, despite its capture of the traditional news and social media.
Big Lie No. 1 is actually a whole bundle of lies surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. The chief national health official, Dr. Anthony Fauci (a.k.a. “The Science”) can’t get his story straight about whether or not he funneled US taxpayer money to a lab associated with China’s People’s Liberation Army, to engineer a virus that was turned loose on the rest of the world. An email train of evidence shows that he did.
That was bad enough. Then Dr. Fauci (and most of the nation’s medical bureaucracy) worked hard to suppress cheap and effective treatments that defeated the virus and cured patients if used in the early stages of infection, namely, Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, and Fluoxetine. (Fluoxetine, or Prozac, used “off-label,” modulates brain inflammation.) The suppression actively continues to this day. Dr. Fauci & Company promoted the use of a PCR viral testing system run at excessive cycle thresholds that flooded the medical system with false positive tests. The test’s inventor, (Nobel Prize winner) the late Dr. Kerry Mullis said the test was never meant to be used as a diagnostic tool.
Dr. Fauci and the medical bureaucracy are promoting an experimental “gene therapy” as “vaccines,” or so says the man who invented the mRNA vaccine procedure, Dr. Robert Malone — and you can hear him say that in this three-hour-plus roundtable discussion on Bret Weinstein’s Dark Horse YouTube podcast (if it hasn’t been taken down by the time you read this, because to-date YouTube suppresses all mention of Ivermectin, etc.). You will learn in this detailed discussion that the three vaccines being used have produced more deaths and “adverse events” in aggregate than all the other vaccines medicine has developed over the past thirty years. Let that sink in. You will also hear Dr. Malone describe the spike protein, which is the chief mechanism activated by the vaccines, as a “toxic” agent.
This cannot be good news for the millions who gave their consent to be vaccinated. We have no idea what the long-term effects will be, but it’s apparently the case that the toxic spike protein does not behave the way it was supposed to. That is, it does not remain in the intramuscular vaccination site, but rather migrates all through the body, with a special affinity for causing cardiovascular mischief, neuromuscular disorders, and damage to reproductive organs. Stand by on how all this works out. And beware of fresh attempts by your government to coerce you into a vaccination, or a series of them.
This is a fast-developing story, obviously with many sub-plots, but the net effect for “Joe Biden” will be to badly erode whatever shreds of legitimacy still hang on him. News about vaccine deaths and “adverse events” has also been suppressed, but that effort appears to be falling apart now, even as the government ratchets-up pressure to jab the substantial number of the “vaccine hesitant.” (Count me as “vaccine fuggeddabowdit” on this one.) Okay, that’s Big Lie No. 1.
Big Lie No. 2 is that “Joe Biden” won the Nov 3, 2020 presidential election. That colossal scam, which the Democratic party advertised well in advance, and accomplished via blatant mail-in ballot fraud and computer voting machine tweaking, was never properly adjudicated — despite media claims that court cases were dismissed on the basis of evidence, which was not so. The Arizona vote audit underway is the first of probably many efforts among the so-called swing states to interrogate that operation. The “Joe Biden” government tried and failed to shut down the AZ audit early in the game. Then, late last Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland upped the ante, saying that he was about to send a gang of federal attorneys down AZ-way to scotch the darn thing.
Recall that, constitutionally, elections are conducted entirely under the prerogatives of each state, not the national government. The AZ audit was ordered by the Arizona State Senate. State Senator (and former fighter pilot) Wendy Rogers, replied to AG Garland, “You will not touch Arizona ballots or machines unless you want to spend time in an Arizona prison. Maybe you should focus on stopping terrorism.” The next move is Mr. Garland’s. Will he send in federal marshals to seize the ballots and Dominion machines? Or will “Joe Biden” tell AZ Governor Doug Doucy to sic the national guard on his own state senate? If you want to start a real civil war, that would be a good way to kick it off.
Other state legislatures have sent delegations down to Arizona to observe and familiarize themselves with the audit procedure, with the prospect of doing the same thing in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other places where janky outcomes were seen in key counties last November. The Democrats know this is possibly lethal to their control of national affairs. Any way they move now, the result will lead to a desperate loss of legitimacy, especially at the top, where “Joe Biden” dwells.
The third “Big Lie” is that the US economy is “recovering” from the Covid-19 disruptions. The US economy has been a Potemkin village since 2008, held together with the baling wire and duct tape of Federal Reserve money games and, more so lately, US government fiscal recklessness — i.e., spending vast amounts of borrowed money on direct payments to broke citizens, broke businesses, and, apparently an equal number of outright crooks who just gamed the various bailout categories.
For now, many places are supposedly caught up in the exuberant reopening of daily life activities: restaurants, travel-and-leisure businesses, big league sports. Sounds good, maybe, but the frothy feeling is belied by the still-boarded-up shopfronts and the expanding homeless campgrounds of the big cities and by the noises made by big corporations laying off thousands of employees. One narrative says that many service jobs go begging because too many people still receive government handouts that add up to more than such jobs pay. And some businesses, such as restaurants, say they are offering much higher wages than they used to in a desperate effort to keep operating.
Okay… but consider how long you can run a restaurant paying dishwashers $25-an-hour, for example, especially considering how much of the population is too broke now to eat in restaurants that charge a third-again as much for dinner as they did before Covid-19. What you’re actually looking at is a broken business model for much of the service industry. Sometime this summer, that pretty big problem will be acknowledged, and the nation will see that we are not in a recovery at all, but rather a permanent contraction that will be labeled “a depression.”
Actually, it will not be a “depression,” either, exactly, which implies a cyclical dip, even a big one, because the cycle itself is broken — and to understand that, you must delve into the nature of the long emergency: the energy resource and capital scarcity quandary facing techno-industrial societies. The direct implication of this broken cycle will be even more social distress, which is being aggravated by the racial provocations ginned up by the Woke “Joe Biden” regime, and which will blow up in its face if there is another summer of riots, burning, and looting.
So, to conclude this unusually long edition of the CFN blog, you can see the horizon on the “Joe Biden” administration, with sunset probably due this fall. How it will play-out is anybody’s guess. Mine is that, one way or another, some military caretaker administration may have to interrupt the 232-year-long cavalcade of governance led by legitimately-elected presidents. Perhaps we’ll run a re-do of the last election. Or maybe we’re in for a new phase of the American project, a more uncertain and less appetizing one, featuring dictators and despots. Or maybe we’ll get through this very dangerous defile of history and land in a much lower-key but more coherent disposition of things recognizably American. Stay tuned for developments."
"Bad Faith Fauci"
"Bad Faith Fauci"
by Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity
'SubFauci has destroyed faith in science. The FDA and NIH have diminished faith in medicines and treatments, respectively. This is a terrible direction in which to head - once a society loses its ability to trust its main institutions and authorities bad things follow. We cannot consider this to be accidental any longer. So, now what?"
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- Upton Sinclair
"Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc Treatments Increased Coronavirus Survival Rate by Almost Three Times"
"Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc Treatments
Increased Coronavirus Survival Rate by Almost Three Times"
by Andrew Mark Miller
"A new study shows that the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine touted by former President Donald Trump increased the survival rate of severely ill coronavirus patients. The observational study, published by medRxiv, found that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, along with zinc, could increase the coronavirus survival rate by as much as nearly 200% if distributed at higher doses to ventilated patients with a severe version of the illness. “We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” the study’s conclusion states.
The study adds, “By using causal analysis and considering of weight-adjusted cumulative dose, we prove the combined therapy, >3 g HCQ and > 1g AZM greatly increases survival in Covid patients on IMV and that HCQ cumulative dose > 80 mg/kg works substantially better. These data do not yet apply to hospitalized patients not on IMV. Since those with higher doses of HCQ had higher doses of AZM, we cannot solely attribute the causal effect to HCQ/AZM combination therapy. However, it is likely AZM does contribute significantly to this increase in survival rate. Since higher dose HCQ/AZM therapy improves survival by nearly 200% in this population, the safety data are moot.” The study was conducted by Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey on 255 patients.
Dating back to last spring, then-president Trump openly touted the effectiveness of the drug and even took it himself. It earned him pushback from medical experts, including his own White House coronavirus team member Dr. Anthony Fauci, and political pundits who dismissed his claims and maintained the drug was ineffective.
Last summer, Twitter restricted the account of Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., after he posted a video of doctors touting the effectiveness of the drug. The social media platform accused him of "spreading misleading and potentially harmful misinformation" related to the coronavirus. In March of this year, the World Health Organization warned against using the drug to prevent the coronavirus, citing data suggesting it was ineffective.
Some conservatives have taken to social media and used the study to defend Trump, including Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called out Fauci for his previous comments about the drug.
“How many people died because Dr. Fauci said trust the science and Hydroxychloroquine isn’t effective?” Greene tweeted. “New study shows: Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin therapy at a higher dose improved survival by nearly 200% in ventilated COVID patients. Trump was right.”
Several other studies released since last year have come to the same conclusion that hydroxychloroquine can be effective in certain situations against the coronavirus, including a December study from the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents showing 84% fewer hospitalizations among patients treated with the drug. Another study, conducted by Hackensack Meridian Health, found encouraging results in patients with mild symptoms who were treated with the drug."
Original Location: "Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc Treatments
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