"The Fed Faces Two Choices"

"The Fed Faces Two Choices"

by Brian Maher

"A man shipwrecked bobs along in his lifeboat…The cruel sun cooks him. His thirst tortures him. His sufferings are doubled, tripled and quadrupled by this impossible irony: Water, water is everywhere - yet there is scarcely a drop to drink. Salt water in any quantity would murder him. Thus he dangles from the hooks of a lethal dilemma. He dies if he does not drink… and he dies if he does drink. The Federal Reserve offers a parallel example. It is the agonized wretch in the lifeboat. It is mad for inflation. Yet inflation is lethal...

The Cry for Inflation: Jerome Powell and his crewmates cry aloud for inflation. Inflation is the spark of growth, they believe...Inflation takes a match to the dollar. The consumer wishes to unload his dollar before the flame burns through it. Thus inflation spurs the consumer to spend. He will purchase his goods today because his dollar is a wasting asset. It will fetch him more goods today than it will fetch him tomorrow. Today’s purchases, in turn, add a figure to the gross domestic product. A benign inflation therefore keeps an economy on the jump… and business in funds.

Under deflation - conversely - tomorrow's dollar packs more wallop than today's dollar. Consumers expect lower prices tomorrow. They will therefore postpone today's purchases until the price falls to them.

The “Evils” of Deflation: What is the evil result of postponed purchasing? Goods wallow upon shelves, stockrooms overflow with surplus. Commerce loses its steam. Under extreme deflation, it may stall almost entirely. Thus is deflation the ultimate bugaboo, the ultimate fee-fi-fo-fum of most economists.

You may relish the formidable dollar gaining strength in your wallet. This buck will give you a greater bang tomorrow. Yet you are not an economist. You do not hear the music of the spheres. You do not realize deflation is your foe.

Deflation, Inflation and Debt: Deflation is certainly the ultimate bugaboo, the ultimate fee-fi-fo-fum of all debtors…Deflation raises the real value of debt. A man borrows $1 today. Under deflation, he must repay perhaps $1.07 when his creditor thunders at his door. Under inflation, the opposite dynamic obtains. The man borrows his dollar. Yet he owes merely 93 cents when his creditor knocks. The borrower escapes with a whole skin - and a bit of blubber. Yet the creditor comes away a man reduced. He lent a dollar and received cents in return. He is the victim of a swindle.

As Jim Rickards reminded us yesterday: "Inflation decreases the real value of debt. It’s easier to pay down debt because you’re paying back debt with dollars that are less valuable than when you originally borrowed them."

Deadbeat Nation: The United States is the world’s largest debtor nation. Its shoulders stoop, its back aches under a $27.8 trillion burden of debt. Total United States debt - public and private - runs to $72 trillion. It cannot endure deflation. Deflation stacks additional weight upon the shoulders… further encumbers the back… and buckles the knees. Recall, debt’s real value increases under deflation.

Inflation, meantime, eases a man’s load. Debt’s chains weigh lighter upon him. He can get on… and move ahead. Hence the Federal Reserve’s mania for inflation. It quickens the pace of commerce. It eases debt’s burden, public and private. Understand this, and you understand 12 years of monetary policy. Has it failed, largely? Yes, it has. But let it go for the moment. Let us instead return the Federal Reserve in its lifeboat… and its lethal dilemma.

Inflation Corrodes the Value of Bonds: Assume - by some miracle of God - it gets its inflation. The fiscal authorities, as you know, are busy. One day they may break through. What then follows when inflation bubbles? Longer-term bond holders begin to grumble. They grumble because inflation corrodes the value of their bonds as rust corrodes the value of a yacht. Years of inflation will reduce their bonds to rust. Thus they demand a sort of boater’s insurance. That is, they demand higher bond yields to compensate them for the rusting. The longer-dated the bond, the more compensation they demand. Who would hold a 10-year or 30-year Treasury to term if inflation would corrode through it? Only the man with adequate insurance to guard his investment.

We now come to the fatal element. We now come to the salt in the water…

“Inflation Is the Water. Interest Rates Are the Salt Within It.” The Federal Reserve is after inflation as the man in the lifeboat is after water. The thirsting and dehydrated man cannot drink in much salt water. And the Federal Reserve cannot allow in much inflation. Why not precisely? Inflation is the water. Interest rates are the salt within it.

As an overdose of water yields an overdose of salt… an overdose of inflation yields an overdose of interest. That is because rising inflation translates to higher bond yields. Higher bond yields translate to higher interest rates. Higher interest rates increase the cost of borrowing… and increase the debt burden. Higher interest rates are therefore lethal for an economy - and a stock market - held up by cheap money.

Thus the impossible conundrum for the man in the lifeboat is the impossible conundrum of the Federal Reserve. Matthew Piepenburg of Matterhorn Asset Management: "Rising yields… lead to rising rates, and rising rates are what kills debt-driven asset bubbles… it is essential for these debt-addicted (and failed) policy makers to keep the price (i.e. interest rates) of their debt down - which means they need to keep the yields on their bonds under “control” by keeping bond demand, and hence bond prices up."

Monetizing the Debt: What if the federal government cannot attract buyers of Treasury bonds? The Federal Reserve fabricates the money to purchase the bonds itself. That is, it monetizes the debt. This bond purchasing holds prices up… and holds bond yields… and interest rates… down. It creates a false impression of demand. What is the result, Mr. Piepenburg?

"The artificial control (repression) of yields and rates means cheaper debt, and hence more binge borrowing (and hence price inflation) on everything from over-priced homes to over-pumped stocks driven by easy and cheap debt…" The “everything bubble” expands and expands - in stocks, in bonds, in real estate, in cryptocurrencies - in everything.

How can the Federal Reserve halt the lunatic cycle? Piepenburg: "The only options central bankers have left are bad ones. They can further [suppress yields] by printing trillions more fiat currencies - which means a dramatic (and further) debasement of the same; or… They can… naturally [allow] bonds to sink and yields (and hence rates) to skyrocket, thereby ushering a total blood bath in stock and bond bubbles reliant on low yields and cheap debt. We believe we have the answer. It is not option #2.

Time Reveals Truth: The show will continue until it cannot. The date is of course a mystery to us. It is on the knees of the inscrutable gods. But the Federal Reserve has engineered a false prosperity by issuing false signals - false interest rates. It conducts a massive and ceaseless warfare upon truth. But time reveals truth… as noted the Roman stoic Seneca. We fear Seneca is correct. Time in its fullness exposes truth. Here is our greater fear: This truth will hurt... and good..."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Working Class Buried In Debt; Debt Serfdom; Money For Nothing; War On Middle Class"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Working Class Buried In Debt; Debt Serfdom;

 Money For Nothing; War On Middle Class"

Musical Interlude: Ocarina, "Song Of Ocarina"

Ocarina, "Song Of Ocarina"

"Song of Ocarina is the name of a 1991 song recorded by the musicians Jean-Philippe Audin and Diego Modena. It is entirely instrumental and is played on ocarina by Modena and cello by Audin. Released as first single from the album Ocarina, it achieved a huge success in France, topping the chart, and becoming in this country the first instrumental number-one hit."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.

NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

Chet Raymo, “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”

“Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”

by Chet Raymo

“Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.” You may recall these words from Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” There is nothing intrinsically cheerful about the world, she says. To live is to die; it’s all part of the bargain. Stars destroy themselves to make the atoms of our bodies. Every creature lives to eat and be eaten. And into this incomprehensible, unfathomable, apparently stochastic melee stumbles… You and I. With qualities that we have - so far - seen nowhere else. Hope. Humor. A sense of justice. A sense of beauty. Gratitude. But also: Anger. Hurt. Despair. Strangers in a strange land. 

Galaxies by the billions turn like St. Catherine Wheels, throwing off sparks of exploding stars. Atoms eddy and flow, blowing hot and cold, groping and promiscuous. A wind of neutrinos gusts through our bodies, Energy billows and swells. A myriad of microorganisms nibble at our flesh.

We have a sense that something purposeful is going on, something that involves us. Something secret, holy and fleet. But we haven’t a clue what it is. We make up stories. Stories in which we are the point of it all. We tell the stories over and over. To our children. To ourselves. And the stories fill up the space of our ignorance. Until they don’t. And then the great yawning spaces open again. And time clangs down on our heads like a pummeling rain, like the collapsing ceiling of the sky. Dazed, stunned, we stagger like giddy topers towards our own swift dissolution. Inexplicably praising. Admiring. Wondering. Giving thanks.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

◆

“The Tyger”

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art.

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

- William Blake

“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

by Peter McKenzie-Brown

“The Immutable Laws of Nature”

• Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to pee.

• Law of Gravity: Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place.

• Law of Probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

• Law of Random Numbers: If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers.

• Law of Variable Motion: If you change traffic lanes or checkout queues, the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.

• Law of the Bath: When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone will ring.

• Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases exponentially when you are alongside someone you don’t want to be seen with.

• Law of the Damned Thing: When you try to prove to someone that a machine or device won’t work, it will.

• Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

• Law of the Spectator: At any theatrical, musical or sporting event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, for beer, or to the toilet and who leave before the end of the performance or game. Those who occupy the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay seated beyond the end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

• Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your partner will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

• Murphy’s Law of Lockers: When only 2 people are in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

• Law of Plane Surfaces: The chance that a slice of marmalade toast will land face down on a floor is directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

• Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible when you don’t know what you are talking about.

• Law of Physical Appearance: If clothes fit, they’re ugly.

• Law of Public Speaking: A closed mouth gathers no feet

• Law of Commercial Marketing: As soon as you find a product that you really like, it will cease production or the store will stop selling it.

• Law of Psychosomatic Medicine: If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to see to the doctor and by  the time you get there, you’ll feel better. If you don’t make an appointment you’ll stay sick.

“Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

3. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

4. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

5. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

6. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

7. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

8. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

9. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them.

10. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

11. The things that come to those who wait, may be the things left by those who got there first.

12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

13. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

14. God gave you toes as a device for finding furniture in the dark.

15. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.”

- http://www.24hgold.com/

The Poet: Robert Frost, “Acceptance”

“Acceptance”

“When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud

And goes down burning into the gulf below,

No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud

At what has happened.

Birds, at least must know

It is the change to darkness in the sky.

Murmuring something quiet in her breast,

One bird begins to close a faded eye;

Or overtaken too far from his nest,

Hurrying low above the grove, some waif

Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.

At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘safe!’

Now let the night be dark for all of me.

Let the night be too dark for me to see

Into the future. Let what will be, be.”

- Robert Frost 

The Daily "Near You?"

Ferreiras, Faro, Portugal. Thanks for stopping by.

Gregory Mannarino, "Market Updates Plus! NWO: Covid Concentration Camps, Jail Time, Fines"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Market Updates Plus! 

NWO: Covid Concentration Camps, Jail Time, Fines"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"A 40-Year Trend Comes to an End"

"A 40-Year Trend Comes to an End"

By Bill Bonner

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – "Early August, 2020. Was that some kind of hinge point? The end of an era? If so, it’s time to dump anything that depends on a stable U.S. dollar – bank accounts… insurance policies… annuities… bonds. But it’s early days… and this kind of rollover is often not confirmed for years.

No Need to Worry: Besides, there’s nothing to worry about. At least, that was the line coming from the White House at a recent press briefing, via Jared Bernstein, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. “Janet Yellen is our Treasury secretary. She knows a little something about inflationary risks,” he reassured us. But relying on Janet Yellen to protect us from inflation is like asking Stevie Wonder to drive a school bus; it’s asking for trouble.

And it’s why August 2020 could turn out to be such an important date. Since then, bond yields – an important early warning of incoming consumer price inflation – have been going up. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, for example, has more than doubled from its August 2020 rate of 0.52%. After 40 years of lowering inflation and bond yields, the tide may have turned, in other words. If so, in the years ahead, we will see a huge wave of job losses and bankruptcies, as businesses, government, and consumers are forced to refinance debt at higher rates. We’ll see retirement savings – often resting on a bed of U.S. Treasury bonds – collapse. And we’ll see consumer prices rise… as real incomes go down.

“Don’t worry about it,” say the experts. The thinking, if you can call it that, is that the economy is performing “under capacity.” That means there is plenty of slack that must be taken up before prices can rise. People are not fully employed… factories are quiet, etc. They expect no upward price pressure until everything is going full bore, pedal to the metal. Only then, goes the logic, do business or labor have any “pricing power.” Things need to get better, they believe, before inflation takes hold.

Two Routes to Inflation: Inflation happens, grosso modo, (according to the classic Quantity Theory of Money) when the supply of goods and services goes down compared to the supply of “money” that bids for it. That can happen in one of two ways.

Either the economy heats up (cyclical inflation)… and businesses need more labor and raw materials to keep up with the demand. Shortages then arise. Everyone tries to keep up with the whirlwind of getting and spending, leading to higher prices… Or… the other possibility (systemic inflation) is that the economy cools down. Fake money, false price signals, regulation, bubbles, giveaways, and COVID-19 shutdowns could simply cause a cutback in buyable output… while the supply of available money continues to rise.

Closer Look: So let’s look more closely… Last year, the output of money – as measured by the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet – rose by $3.25 trillion. The output of goods and services, on the other hand – as measured by GDP (even somewhat faked by a huge increase in government spending) – fell by $300 billion. This looks like “systemic” inflation to us.

Another way to look at it… Goods and services are produced by people who work. The number of hours they work (setting aside productivity increases, which are very slow) is a good measure of output. Well, since the crisis of 2008-2009, the total number of hours worked in America is practically unchanged. But the Nasdaq – a rough measure of how much hot money is coming into the stock market – is up 500%.

Wacky and Weird: And then, there’s the unbridled wackiness of it all. Two weeks ago, the GameStop saga played itself out… in all its tinseled mania. And now, The Wall Street Journal reports that since Elon Musk said Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, and that the company would soon begin accepting bitcoin in payment for its autos… the market value of the two of them together – bitcoin and TSLA – rose $110 billion on the news.

Go figure. What we figure is that there’s so much loose change under the seat cushions, it’s becoming uncomfortable to sit down. Look for prices for just about everything to rise as the real economy – the part that actually produces goods and services – cools down…

Regards,"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Musical Interlude: The Who, "Overture" from "Tommy"

The Who, "Overture" from "Tommy"

"Realize Who You Are..."

"How It Really Is"

"The Whole Problem..."

 

"What Collapsed the Middle Class?"

"What Collapsed the Middle Class?"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"What collapsed the middle class? In many ways the answer echoes an Agatha Christie mystery: rather than there being one guilty party, a number of suspects participated in the collapse of the middle class. Can we consolidate these dynamics into a few core causal factors? I've made the case in the past few posts that yes, we can: many of these causes are part of a single dynamic, the decapitalization of the middle class and the decay of the ladder of social mobility which enabled tens of millions of workers to transform their wages into productive capital via saving and investment in their own human capital, their own enterprises and assets that earn income. "The Top 10% Is Doing Just Fine, The Middle Class Is Dying on the Vine" (2/4/21)

The second primary dynamic is the substitution of debt and speculation for earned income and productive capital. As the purchasing power of the bottom 90%'s wages declines, the status quo has substituted debt for income and speculation for investing in productive capital. "Debt and the Demise of the Middle Class" (2/9/21)

This dynamic incentivizes debt, speculation and consumption rather than producing, savings and investments in human and productive capital. The source of this incentive structure is the maximization of corporate profits earned by banks loaning money to the middle class and by selling the middle class on superfluous consumption being the signifier of "success" rather than production being the signifier of "success".

In reality, what counts is agency (control of one's life, having a voice in governance) and ownership of productive capital. Becoming a debt-serf to buy more stuff and grab a few chips in the speculative casino sacrifices both agency and the acquisition of productive capital. But this sacrifice is oh-so profitable to the financier purveyors of debt and speculative gambles in the casino.

The third dynamic is globalization, and specifically the tyranny of global markets. Global banks and corporations are ideally placed to profit from the arbitrage of labor, environmental regulations, currencies, corruption (dear in some places, cheap in others) and the price of debt and risk. Wage earners have no such leverage. In effect, all the risks of competition are eliminated for corporate monopolies and cartels while the risks are transferred to workers who face a global race to the bottom in wages, opportunity and income security.

The fourth dynamic is speculative bubbles put many assets out of reach of the bottom 90% who have only their wages and savings. The winners in speculative bubbles are those fortunate enough to have bought homes, bonds, rental properties, land, etc. decades ago when a house could be had for three times median income and bonds paid solid, above-inflation returns.

The bottom 90% attempting to find productive assets at affordable prices now are out of luck. Consider a 900 square foot home built in 1916 in the desirable San Francisco Bay Area community of Albany, CA. The house sold for $135,000 in 1996, 3.8 times the national median household income. Then Housing Bubble #1 boosted the value to $542,000 in 2004, 12.2 times the national median household income. Housing Bubble #2 has pushed the value to slightly over $1 million, 14.5 times the national median household income. Only those inheriting wealth (or who chose wealthy parents), those earning over $250,000 annually or speculators who just scored big gains in bitcoin or GameStop could afford this very small, modest house.

That's what speculative bubbles do to the middle class: they leave them behind forever. Those who bought 25 years ago entered the top 10% in wealth due to the bubblicious increase in the value of their home. A few winners in the casino who sold at the top might have edged into the top 10%, but the vast majority of gamblers in the casino cannot compete with the insiders, manipulators and pros, so they lose ground. This is why the bottom 90% collect an insignificant 3% of all income from capital. "Jay Taylor and I discuss The Upcoming Revolt of the Middle Class" (22 min)

These four primary dynamics manifest in the following ways. Each one helps generate a two-tier Neofeudal Economy of a Financial Aristocracy and its top 9.9% technocrat class who own virtually all the productive capital and the bottom 90%, a disenfranchized ALICE (assets limited, income constrained, employed) workforce.

1. The shifting of pension and healthcare costs and risks from the state and employers to employees. (see chart below)

2. The decline of safe, secure high-yielding investments as central banks have driven savers into risky, crash-prone speculative assets such as stocks and junk bonds.

3. The decline of scarcity value in college diplomas that were once the ticket to middle class security. "How Many Slots Are Open in the Upper Middle Class? Not As Many As You Might Think" (March 30, 2015).

4. The inexorable rise in big-ticket costs: higher education, healthcare and housing. Even as wages stagnate, these costs continue rising, claiming an ever-larger share of household incomes, leaving less to save/invest.

5. The transition from a stable economy with predictable returns to a financialized boom-and-bust economy that wipes out middle class wealth in the inevitable busts but does not rebuild it in the booms.

6. The regulatory and administrative barriers to self-employment, forcing most of the workforce into wage-slavery and/or dependence on the state. "Endangered Species: The Self-Employed Middle Class" (May 2015).

7. The rising exposure of the U.S. workforce to highly educated, lower-cost competing workforces in a globalized economy.

8. The decline of labor's share of the U.S. economy: the slice of the pie distributed to earned income has been declining for decades.

9. The share of the earned-income slice going to the top 5% is rising.

10. The wealth of the middle class is tied up in the family home, a non-income producing asset prone to the wild swings of housing bubbles and busts. "Stagnation Nation: Middle Class Wealth Is Locked Up in Housing and Retirement Funds" (October 25, 2017).

The middle class has already collapsed, but thanks to debt and bubbles, this reality has been temporarily cloaked. All bubbles pop and all excessive debt ends in default. When these inevitably occur, the reality can no longer be hidden."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: The New Normal Valentine, Masked, Tested, Vaccinated, Sanitized, Afraid"

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: 

The New Normal Valentine, Masked, Tested, Vaccinated, Sanitized, Afraid"

"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."

- https://trendsresearch.com/ 

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/10/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/10/21"

○

"When you have eliminated the impossible, 

whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

- "Sherlock Holmes", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• "Doctor Admits Masks Don’t Work: “All Viruses Can Get Through”

• "Redefining Death"

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Feb 10, 2021 12:19 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 106,904,000 

people, according to official counts, including 27,233,532 Americans.

Globally at least 2,340,100 have died.

  Feb. 10, 2021 12:19 AM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

- www.nytimes.com

○

"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
○

- https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/

○

Coronavirus World Map: Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak

Feb. 9, 2021, 9:02 AM ET

○

Where I Live:

- CP

"How It Really Is"

A little late in the game for this, don't you think?

Highest recommendation, an essential Must Read:

"Is This The Biggest Financial Bubble Ever? 

Rubino: 'Hell Yes It Is!'"

"8 Million More Living In Poverty, 9 Million Small Businesses In Danger Of Closing, 10 Million Behind On Rent"

"8 Million More Living In Poverty, 9 Million Small Businesses 

In Danger Of Closing, 10 Million Behind On Rent"

by Michael Snyder

"The economic downturn that we are currently experiencing is making the last recession look like a Sunday picnic. Yes, 2008 and 2009 were bad, but they weren’t anything like this. Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve has allowed the rich to get even richer during this crisis, but meanwhile millions upon millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Unfortunately, what we have gone through so far is just the beginning.

As a child, I was a big fan of "Sesame Street", and one of the characters that really stood out to me was Count von Count. I loved the fact that he was always counting things, and that is what I am going to do in this article in order to illustrate how bad economic conditions have now become.

Let’s start with the number 7. According to the Congressional Budget Office, approximately 7 million more Americans would have jobs right now if the COVID pandemic had never happened… But in fact, what the CBO is projecting is dire: around 7 million people out of work in 2021 whom CBO thought before the pandemic would be working. That’s dire – and a call to immediate action, not calm, not wait-and-see.

Personally, I think that estimate is way too low. In fact, the Federal Reserve says that 152 million Americans were working before the pandemic started, and only 142 million Americans are working now. So the CBO estimate appears to be off by about 3 million. Count von Count would not be happy.

Let’s try another number. According to Bloomberg, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 8 million during this crisis… "Support is rising among policy makers to address America’s child-poverty crisis, which is getting worse as the pandemic drags on. More than 8 million Americans - including many children - fell into poverty during the second half of last year, exacerbating the racial and income inequalities that are holding back the U.S. economy." In this case, I think that this is a reasonable estimate, but that number will inevitably keep growing in the months ahead. One of the big reasons why it will continue to rise is because hordes of small businesses will be collapsing, and that brings us to our next number.

According to a study that was recently released by the Fed, 9 million small businesses in the U.S. say that they “won’t survive” in 2021 without more government assistance: "Three in ten small businesses - or 9 million out of the estimated 30 million in the United States - fear they won’t survive in the coming year without additional government assistance, according to a survey recently published by the Federal Reserve. The Small Business Credit Survey, which was conducted last September and October and released last week, showcased the incredible burden the coronavirus pandemic has placed on America’s small businesses, as 88% of the businesses surveyed reported that sales had not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels."

Can you imagine what our country would look like if almost a third of all small businesses permanently disappeared? If you watched the Super Bowl, you were bombarded with messaging about the plight of our small businesses. We have never seen anything like this before, and that is because our small businesses have never had to face a crisis of this magnitude. With each passing day, more small businesses are folding, and nothing that the federal government is going to do will completely stop this trend.

Our next number is 10. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10 million renters were behind on their rent payments in January, and many more people anticipated not paying rent in February: "An estimated 10 million renters were behind on their rent and at risk of eviction in the middle of January, according to a Census Bureau survey. And an estimated 16 million renters had little to no confidence they could pay rent in February." Overall, U.S. renters now owe at least 30 billion dollars in back rent. This has created extreme financial pain for America’s landlords, and when the rent moratoriums are finally lifted we are going to see the largest tsunami of evictions in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin.

Before I wrap up this article, let me leave you with just one more number. So far in 2021, the number of passengers at U.S. airports is down by more than 60 percent compared to 2019: "Over the past seven days, not quite 707,000 passengers per day on average passed TSA checkpoints at US airports, a measure of how many passengers in the US are flying somewhere. This was down by 61.6% from the same period in 2019, the last full year of the Good Times. At the end of January, the drop from 2019 was over 65%."

I honestly do not know how the airline industry is going to survive this without government help. Speaking of not surviving, Democrats have introduced a bill in Congress that would essentially deal a death blow to the gig economy: "The legislation at the core of their agenda is the PRO Act, which Democrats just re-introduced with sponsors including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer. Among many other things, the bill would severely restrict the legal definition of independent contractors in a way that would largely end the gig economy as we know it.

The legislators’ stated intention is to protect workers and bolster their rights under law. Through the reclassification of independent contractors, Democrats hope to force gig economy companies to hire workers as full employees and thus provide them the accompanying salaries and benefits."

If this bill passes, it would absolutely devastate Uber, Lyft and countless other companies that rely on gig workers. Basically, millions of jobs would go “poof” with one stroke of Joe Biden’s pen. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 50 million Americans are currently employed by the gig economy. It is great to want those workers to have higher pay and more benefits, but if those companies go out of existence there won’t be any jobs at all.

These are very dark times for the U.S. economy, and the outlook for the future is exceedingly bleak. However, in the short-term economic conditions should stabilize somewhat thanks to the huge stimulus payments that the government will be sending out. But that bubble of hope will be very brief, and everyone should be able to see that much more pain is on the horizon."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Stock Market Crash Approaches: "This Is The Wildest Market I've Ever Seen"

"Stock Market Crash Approaches:

 "This Is The Wildest Market I've Ever Seen"

by Epic Economist

"In an epic interview with Tony Pasquariello, the global head of Goldman Hedge Fund Coverage, investing legend Stanley Druckenmiller, the head of the Duquesne Family Office, has affirmed that this is the wildest market he has ever seen. In the face of the most recent developments, Druckenmiller shared his views on the current market frenzy, the U.S. economy, Asian markets' prospects, the dollar collapse, and the end of the American Dream. In this video, we decided to report the highlights of this fascinating conversation which involved several topics we often discuss here on the channel. 

In an excellent interview with Goldman's Tony Pasquariello, Stanley Druckenmiller revealed that the investor euphoria taking over the stock markets right now is the wildest cocktail he has ever seen in trying to figure out a roadmap. The expert outlined that the current rally has been largely fuelled by the Federal Reserve's money-printing policies and the multiple rounds of federal fiscal stimulus, which not only failed to assist jobless workers but also increased the inequality gap and the size of the already massive national debt. More concerningly, in a year when 11 million remain unemployed, the U.S. has registered the largest increase in personal income in 20 years, right in the middle of a dramatic economic collapse, and, of course, all of that happened due to the enormous policy support. 

"The juxtaposition of the various policy responses is somewhat breathtaking," the economist argues. Since 2018, the money supply represented by M2 has grown 25% more than nominal GDP. In other words, there was a 25% increase in liquidity. In contrast, Druckenmiller points out that in China, M2 to nominal GDP is still where it was 3 years ago. That is to say, while we've had a massive liquidity input primarily because of transfer payments and Fed stimulus while also registering very little investment rates, China hasn't borrowed anything from its futures and did the very opposite the U.S. has done when it comes to government policies.

The expert says that taking into account that China, Japan, and Korea have started the year on a very good note, and considering how much the U.S. borrowed from the future, he thinks Asia is the big winner coming out of the virus-induced recession. In short, Asia owns foundry, memory, they are also ahead in robotics. For that reason, he says that he thinks the next 5 years for Asia will look a lot better than for the U.S., because at some point we have to pay back in terms of productivity, in terms of higher wages, and in terms of a lower dollar due to all these transfer payments the federal government has made over the last nine months and will likely continue to do it. "Long-term Asia is going to be an outperformer vs. the U.S., and especially in the currency market. Net investment into China just passed the U.S. ever this year, and it's the beginning rather than the end of a trend," he highlighted. 

In conclusion, moving towards more philosophical topics, Pasquariello asked how Druckenmiller would characterize "the state of American capitalism", and the economist disclosed to be worried, because even in the best days of capitalism, there's always been a "stain" marking the US, which was the widespread belief that the system was actually meritocratic, but as he elucidates, in some sectors of our society it feels much more like we are in a caste system. We have a lot of neighborhoods in our country where millions of Americans just don't have the opportunity to pull up their bootstraps and work hard, he said. "That's always been there and is something we need to address. Which is why I am not sure the events of last summer were a bad thing. It's my own view that they were a good thing because people need to be woken up to the fact that the American Dream is a great thing but there are a significant amount of kids without access to the American dream the way I had."

In sum, as the U.S. continues to engage in money printing policies, we will continue to inflate the stock market bubble, and set the dollar to a major collapse. When all of this money finds its way back into the economy, we will be trapped into hyperinflation while the wealth gap between the rich and the poor will keep expanding. It's no wonder why the American dream is now so distant from most part of our population. Our system is structured in a way that will always benefit the elites while jeopardizing the living standards of our citizens. As we plunge deeper into recession, the American dream becomes nothing but a dream. "

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Must Watch! "Kool-Aid Drinkers; Take The Money; Housing Crash Epic; Zombie Companies; Debt Forgiveness"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Kool-Aid Drinkers; Take The Money;

 Housing Crash Epic; Zombie Companies; Debt Forgiveness"

Musical Interlude: Afshin, "Prayer of Change"

Afshin, "Prayer of Change"

Full screen recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Stars can be like artists. With interstellar gas as a canvas, a massive and tumultuous Wolf-Rayet star has created the picturesque ruffled half-circular filaments called WR23, on the image left. Additionally, the winds and radiation from a small cluster of stars, NGC 3324, have sculpted a 35 light year cavity on the upper right, with its right side appearing as a recognizable face in profile. 

This region's popular name is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula for the famous Chilean poet. Together, these interstellar clouds lie about 8,000 light-years away in the Great Carina Nebula, a complex stellar neighborhood harboring numerous clouds of gas and dust rich with imagination inspiring shapes. The featured telescopic view captures these nebulae's characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms mapped to the red, green, and blue hues of the popular Hubble Palette."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210208.html

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "The Journey "

"The Journey"

"One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice -

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

 Mend my life! 

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do -

determined to save

the only life you could save." 

- Mary Oliver

"As Humans..."

“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short just wants to be.”

- Bill Bryson