"Chaos And Shock As Electricity Prices Across America Explode!"

Full screen recommended.

"Chaos And Shock As Electricity 

Prices Across America Explode!"

by Epic Economist

"A brutal polar vortex blast is sending power and gas bills to the moon, triggering chaos and panic as electricity prices across the U.S. are exploding amid one of the toughest winters ever registered. That's what we're going to expose today. So stay with us, and don't forget to leave a thumbs up and share this video, and, of course, subscribe to our channel to keep updated with the next chapters of the U.S. economic collapse, the stock market frenzy, the housing market bubble, and much more. Without further ado let's jump into this video!

Numerous news reporting the blast of a huge polar vortex started to pop last week, as temperatures plummeted all across the nation in a phenomenon that is being called the Big Chill. Consequently, natural gas prices soared to never before seen levels as the cold wind has literally frozen natural gas supplies and forced several plants to cut down receipts at the same time customers' demand for heating continued to climb. Since then, experts have been alerting that the longer the cold wave lasts the higher prices could hit. Some even compared the unprecedented price surge to what was seen inside the stock markets during the peak of the GameStop frenzy. 

In fact, as frigid temperatures caused equipment failures, temporary shutdowns, and flaring in at least four processing plants, the hysteria to purchase natural gas has sent prices up 32,000% in a few days. The market's proverbial truth of low offer and high demand has dramatically hit prices. In several locations on the midcontinent, such as the Oneok OGT natural gas spot, demand was so incredibly high that any available natural gas started to be purchased at virtually any price companies asked, which is why it exploded from $3.46 one week ago, to $9 on Wednesday, $60.28 on Thursday and a shocking $377.13 on Friday, which explains the 32,000% increase - something completely unprecedented in all U.S. history. 

This is one of those situations where having a limit-up circuit breaker could actually be a life-saver, although there simply is nowhere near enough supply to meet the demand at any price, for that reason, this explosive upsurge in prices isn't expected to disappear so soon. Just a couple of days ago, weather forecasts predicted the coldest temperatures in over a decade would hit the midcontinent region over this holiday weekend, which led prices to surge again at several locations across Kansas, Oklahoma, and Eastern Arkansas, where hub prices traded at single-day record highs in the range of $200 to $300/MMBtu, according to a Platts report. 

At one Enable Gas Transmission spot, the cash market traded up to $500, with weighted-average prices staying steady by mid-session at around $359/MMBtu. On the other hand, as the offer for natural gas got increasingly limited, the immediate downstream commodity, electricity, followed the same surge in both prices and demand in a matter of hours across all US markets on Friday. Platts reported that "as arctic air mass continues to blanket much of the central US, daily temperatures across some of the locations will range between 30 to 40 degrees below average, according to the NWS. Eastern PJM, Northwest, and much of Texas are also under winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories."

It goes without saying that this is catastrophic news not only for the continued halt in natural gas distribution but also for tens of thousands of Americans who are about to see the effects of this explosion in electricity prices in this month's electricity bill. Just yesterday, the peak price in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas reached an extreme all-time high of $5,500, up from $302 the day before.

The latest weather forecasts are indicating that the polar vortex will continue pouring Arctic air into most of the central US through the coming week, which means natural gas prices are likely to rise even further and electricity demand will continue to surge as Americans face one of the toughest winters ever recorded. And the results of this brutal chillwave will be translated numerically in our electricity bills this month, as it seems we have entered a new era where natural disasters and financial strains have become the new normal."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

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Related:

FEB 14, 2021 - 17:22: "Energy Trader: We've Officially Hit 'Holy S*it Levels'"  "As the day has progressed, amid deteriorating weather forecasts and no let up in demand (despite ERCOT's urgings), our trader contact at a Houston energy firm sums the situation up as eloquently and succinctly as ever: "We've officially hit the 'Holy F**king Shit Levels' here..."

Full article:

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

FEB 14, 2021 - 21:00: "Oil Surges To Jan 2020 Highs Amid Permian Freeze, Supercycle Chatter"

The Daily "Near You?"

Bay Shore, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Currently At Odds...

 

"For The Most Part..."

"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told- and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."

- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"

"The Sociopath Next Door"

"The Sociopath Next Door"

by Martha Stout

"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 6 percent of the population.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 6 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person. Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions."

- http://www.cix.co.uk/~klockstone/spath.htm

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Related: 

"The Birth of a Psychopath"

Musical Interlude: Michael Jackson, "Earth Song"

Michael Jackson, "Earth Song"

Full screen recommended.

"Alas! regardless of their doom,

The little victims play;

No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond to-day."  

- Thomas Gray,

"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"

"How It Really Is"

 

Greg Hunter, "Currencies Will Be Worthless, Buy Precious Metals"

"Currencies Will Be Worthless, Buy Precious Metals"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Gerald Celente, publisher of 'The Trends Journal' and a renowned trends researcher, is back to talk about the recent Bitcoin boom and many other trends coming in 2021. On Bitcoin and its recent price explosion, Celente says, “Why is Bitcoin going back up? It’s going back up because everybody with a brain bigger than a pea knows that the central banks are doing nothing but pumping all this fake money into the economies to artificially prop them up. This is young people’s gold, and they are the ones that began it. One of our top trends for 2021, and we come out with them in December, is the youth revolution. This isn’t going away. Another one of our trends from a year ago is they are going from dirty cash to digital trash. You don’t want to trust that dirty money forever. You can get the virus from that (sarcasm). So, we are going digital. Now, they can know every penny that you spent, where you spent it and how you spent it so they can get their cut. It’s called taxes, but it’s not really taxes. It’s stealing our money so these low-life scum pieces of crap called politicians who have never worked a day in their lives can keep sucking off the public teat. It is also to give all their buddies, imbeciles and morons called bureaucrats jobs.”

Celente goes on to say, “The currencies are worthless. They are going to come out with a new currency and say again, we don’t want the dirty money, we are going to come out digital so they can now readjust the entire system. They will make up a new coin, get rid of our debt and people will buy it. They will do what they are told just like they marched off to the Covid war. They will do anything they are told.”

On the economy, Celente says the trend is decidedly down. He cites New York as an example and explains, “We got his jerk (Governor Cuomo) that has destroyed New York State with executive orders. The place is dead. The economy is dead. We are in the ‘Greatest Depression.’ The Congressional Budget Office says it. The jobs that have been lost are not going to come back until 2024. That’s the jobs that were lost. How about creating new ones? No, we don’t need to create new ones because the rich are getting everything. The ‘Greatest Depression’ is not just America, it’s global.”

Celente warns, “The banksters and the criminal groups are in control, and I am angry. I am angry that they are stealing my rights away from me. I was not put on this earth to take orders. I don’t give them, and I don’t take them. I am born to be free.”

What should the common person do? Celente says, “Number one, get yourself in the best shape possible physically, emotionally and spiritually. The fight is on. You better be in good shape. You don’t win the fight without being in good shape. Number two, I believe in safe haven assets like physical gold and silver, both will be decidedly up, especially silver. Number three, create your own future. Think for yourself. Do what you can to bring back freedom, peace and justice to America and the real American way, and do it peacefully.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com in Rumble as he goes 

One-on-One with Gerald Celente, publisher of 'The Trends Journal'.

- https://rumble.com/

"Some Oddities...

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

- Douglas Adams

"Alert! Catastrophic Stock Market Crash Is Very Likely In The Months Ahead"

Full screen recommended.

"Alert! Catastrophic Stock Market Crash

 Is Very Likely In The Months Ahead"

by Epic Economist

"Experts are warning for a dramatic stock market crash: For the first time in history, the ratio of U.S. stock prices to U.S. Gross Domestic Product has reached a staggering 200 percent. This means that the total value of U.S. stocks is currently twice as high as the value of all U.S. economic output for an entire year. Historically, the ratio of U.S. stock prices to U.S. GDP is usually under 100 percent. That highlights how extreme this bubble has become. In the face of a bleak economic outlook, what this tells us is how stock valuations are completely disconnected from the real economy. That is to say, the stock price bubble isn't backed by real prospects, but mainly by speculation. The bubble has grown so much, experts do not doubt that it's just a matter of time until it bursts. The only debate now is how fast and how far the eventual collapse will be. The unsustainable stock prices won't stay this high for much longer, and everyone can see that the end of that bubble is approaching. That's what we're going to investigate in this video. 

The figure investors should all be paying attention to is the Shiller price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500. As of February 3, the Shiller price-to-earnings for the S&P 500 has reached unprecedented highs. The ratio was around 35, which is more than double the long-term average. To give you some perspective regarding this figure, there have only been five periods in history where the Shiller price-to-earnings ratio went above 30 and stayed there amid a bull market run. Amongst them, two events happened within the past three years, and led to declines of 20% and 34%, respectively, in the S&P 500. Simply put, anytime the Shiller price-to-earnings ratio surpasses and sustains 30 in a bull market rally, it has eventually suffered in a minimum correction of 20%.

The truth is that even if stock prices fell by half, the Shiller price-to-earnings for the S&P 500 would still be above the long-term average. Therefore, if the market only drops by 20 percent this year, that would be the best-case scenario and we should consider ourselves to be extremely lucky. Especially because stretched valuations are just one of the concerns at the moment. Nosebleed premiums baked into the stock market assume that the health crisis will soon disappear, but according to a recent survey that reported that roughly half of the population is unwilling to get in line for a vaccine, and this outlines that the outbreak might be far from over.

Additionally, our economy is still hurting. Millions upon millions of workers have been laid off or furloughed, and many of those who are still working have seen their hours cut. A significant number of Americans and their families are still counting on continued assistance from the federal government to make it through the recession. But if the partisan dispute continues to delay the issuance of additional fiscal stimulus, that could seriously impact consumer spending, which is the main driver of U.S. gross domestic product, and potentially lead to a remarkable increase in loan and credit delinquencies. Consequently, that would put financial stocks in huge trouble, and those are considered to be the backbone of the U.S. equity markets. 

As the stock mania is still spreading across the nation, the brand new group of investors that just entered the markets is affirming to be getting increasingly rich. However, you only truly make money when you leave the markets, and most of these earnings are still on paper. Considering that every other stock market bubble in U.S. history has ended in a dramatic crash, John Hussman recently noted that this is our generation’s moment of peak financial insanity: "nothing so animates a speculative herd as a parabolic price advance in an asset detached from any standard of value. I am convinced that future generations will use the present moment to define the concept of a reckless speculative extreme, in the same way our generation uses “1929” and “2000”.

At this point, it's just a matter of time until a stock price correction occurs, and a decline of anything over 50 percent is likely to be too much for our system to handle. In other words, it would essentially end our financial system as we know it, sparking a catastrophic collapse that would drag numerous stocks straight into rock bottom, while also causing much more economic pain than we have experienced so far. As we wait to discover what will be the next trigger event, you should start getting prepared to watch the most epic stock market crash of all time." 

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com​​

"Without Rule Of Law"

"Without Rule Of Law"

by Ted

"'This is going to come to a head. I will tell you what’s coming in this country. When there’s no law and order and the politicians are all corrupted, and they’re all on the take, and the judges are totally worthless… I’ll tell you what happens. It’s called vigilantism.

It has happened throughout history. The people had to defend themselves because society could not do it. People took the law into their own hands. They had to, in order to survive. And that’s what’s going to happen. I’m not recommending that, and it would be illegal for you to do so. But I’m telling you, for society at large that is what is coming. More and more people will take the law into their own hands when the government refuses to do so. It’s that simple.'

The words typed above are a close transcript of what a popular radio talk show host said the other day. His geographical reference was his own region, San Francisco, the streets of which have apparently turned into a hell-hole, so to speak. His words got me to thinking… Let me explain: There are cities in the United States, right now, that are essentially without the rule of law in many aspects. That would include cities like Portland, San Francisco, and others where far leftist mayors and apparent corrupt leadership at law enforcement, are, in a word, corrupted and politicized. Those who have watched or read about the goings-on in those cities and others, know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a real problem.

Here’s the thing though: There’s a very thin line between civility and civil breakdown.

Vigilantism: What is vigilantism? Taking the law into one’s own hands and attempting to effect justice according to one’s own understanding of right and wrong; action taken by a voluntary association of persons who organize themselves for the purpose of protecting a common interest, such as liberty, property, or personal security.

The history of vigilantism in the United States is as old as the country itself. In many ways, the history of the United States began with vigilantism. On December 16, 1773, American colonists, tired of British direct taxation, took part in what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. As part of the resistance, they threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

Since then, we have become a nation of laws. State and federal governments are given what amounts to a Monopoly over the use of force and violence to implement the law. Private citizens may use force and violence to defend their lives and their property, and in some instances the lives and property of others, but they must do so under the specific circumstances allowed by the law if they wish to avoid being prosecuted for a crime themselves.

Taking law into their own hands: By taking law into their own hands, vigilantes flout the rule of law, effectively becoming lawmaker, police officer, judge, jury, and appellate court for the cause they are pursuing. We all know the system is corrupt, right? (there’s corruption in nearly all institutions). It is the way of man. The issue however is this: We are going to see vigilantism when a tipping point are fed up with what they see as injustice, and when the entire system itself is perceived as totally corrupt. I’m not saying that I recommend it. I’m just saying what will be a logical outcome as the system decays into total corruption and injustice.

ANTIFA lawlessness/Social Injustice Warriors: We are already seeing this with Antifa (the anti first amendment group). They are violently acting out and getting away with their violence under the willingness of city mayors and police leadership which have been allowing it. It’s going to get worse. “Social Injustice Warriors” have evident “open season” on conservatives, whites, males. It’s getting ugly. If you wear a MAGA hat in these cities, you will likely end up with a cracked skull. And if you defend yourself in this instance, YOU will likely be the one in jail. This is present reality folks…

It gets worse. I’m NOT disrespecting the police. They are actually under attack by the Antifa types, anarchists, social injustice warriors, and even the public at large in some cities. What’s worse, the mayors are NOT standing up in defense of their police even as they are being attacked. The more without rule of law is allowed to happen, the worse it’s going to get!

Without Rule Of Law: As all this escalates and these far leftist vigilante groups push further and further into the faces of conservative Americans who just want to live a peaceful good life… If the rule of law does not stop these radical groups, there WILL be a tipping point. And when that happens, it’s going to be nuts. Why? Because once you flip that switch to the “ON” position, it’s going to be ON. It’s going to get really, really ugly in those regions where this is being allowed to happen.

I’m not advocating this. But I’m expressing my opinion based on what I’m seeing, reading, hearing, and observing. We don’t seem to have consistent law enforcement across this nation. In fact there is quite a lot of egregious inconsistencies and much of it is POLITICALLY MOTIVATED. It’s happening in so many places, SELECTIVE enforcement of the law based on POLITICAL IDEALS of the city/region itself. That is not good. We’re splintering."

- https://beforeitsnews.com/

“Auto Sales Collapse; Mental Illness Crisis; Shopping Malls Closing; Severe Economic Suffering”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Auto Sales Collapse; Mental Illness Crisis; 

Shopping Malls Closing; Severe Economic Suffering”

Deuter, "Music of the Night: East of The Full Moon"

Deuter, 

"Music of the Night: East of The Full Moon"

Full screen recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas. 

Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080512.html

Chet Raymo, “A Few Words Inspired By The Tomato Plant”

“A Few Words Inspired By The Tomato Plant”
by Chet Raymo

"Mostly we think of life in terms of individuals - this person, this tomato plant, this frog, this oak tree, this gnat. And we talk about birth and death as the beginning and ending of life. But there is another sense in which life is just one thing, whose beginning is lost in the depths of time and whose end is not in sight. Life in this sense embodies itself in matter, temporarily, as a tomato or a frog, puts on matter and puts off matter as we might don or doff clothes. By this account, I am an ephemeral conglomeration of atoms that life is using to perpetuate itself.

But what is this thing called life? It cannot exist except as embodied form, but it maintains a continuity independent of any particular embodiment. It is a strange enduring wave that stirs the material world into purposeful and directed avenues. With Johannes Kepler we might call it the facultas formatrix of nature, the formative faculty, but giving something a name doesn't explain it. Whatever life is - in the unitary, enduring sense - it would be surprising if it only existed here on Earth. If I were a betting man I would bet that life is as pervasive as matter itself, or energy. Matter, energy and complexification. We have lots left to learn.

But let's be cautious. There are lots of folks out there with half-baked biocentric theories of the universe. Someone once chided the philosopher W. V. O. Quine with a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” To which Quine is said to have responded: “Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Anything Can Happen..."

 

"The Summit"; "Benedicto"

"The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object - the joy of living - is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road."

- Eiji Yoshikawa

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"Benedicto"

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”

- Edward Abbey

The Daily "Near You?"

Elma, Washington, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Free Download: T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

“Little Gidding”, Excerpt

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time. 

When the last of earth left to discover 

Is that which was the beginning; 

At the source of the longest river 

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree.

Not known, because not looked for 

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always - 

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flames are in-folded 

Into the crowned knot of fire 

And the fire and the rose are one.”

- T.S. Eliot

The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," 

which you may freely download here:

- http://www.paikassociates.com/pdf/fourquartets.pdf

"The Monstrous Thing..."

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."

- Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/13/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/13/21"

○

"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/

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Feb 13, 2021 2:08 PM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 108,300,000 

people, according to official counts, including 27,756,100Americans.

Globally at least 2,836,500 have died.

  Feb. 13, 2021 2:08 PM 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. 13, 2021,10:47 AM ET

○

Where I Live:

"Tracking Coronavirus in Pinal County, Ariz."

2/12/2021: "Based on the extraordinarily severe outbreak in Pinal County right now, Pinal County is at an extremely high risk level. The risk of getting Covid-19 is based on cases per capita and test positivity. Cases are very high but have decreased over the past two weeks. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Pinal County area have also fallen. The test positivity rate in Pinal County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted. We’ve recommended additional precautions below."

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- CP

So far so good...

"How It Really Is"

 

"Zachary"

"Zachary" 

by Tim Knight

"A handwritten letter arrived in my mailbox from a reader. In it was a note from whom I would guess is an elderly gentleman, thanking me for my work both on Slope and on Tastytrade, but politely asking me to use the phrase "God damn it" less frequently, since he found it upsetting. The handwriting on the paper trembled like leaves in an autumn breeze, and it was obvious it took time and effort to send me this two-page missive. It meant something to him.

It never occurred to me that I ever used this phrase in a video, let alone often enough to cause concern. All the same, the letter, as with the many other letters I have received over the years, made an impression. For one thing, it made me wonder how angry I must be in order for this kind of sentiment to seep through, since I wasn't even aware I was saying it.

Which leads me to the topic at hand. Specifically, a man. A terribly deformed man whom I think about almost daily. For now, I'll call him Sup.

One summer evening, a few months ago, I was walking with my family down University Avenue, the central boulevard in our town, and the location of dozens of high-end retail stores that cater to the insatiable appetite of the affluent consumers in my fair city. "Sup?" came from the voice from below. (As is: "What's up?") I glanced around and didn't see the speaker. That is, until I looked lower. There, standing on the brick sidewalk on the corner of Bryant and University Avenues was a person unlike any I had ever seen before.

His head, torso, and arms were normal. There were two things obviously terribly wrong with 1117-suphim: first, his back was completely malformed, with a huge hump, and second, his legs - or what passed for legs - were just a few inches long. He appeared to be mixed race (the politically incorrect term, I think, is "mulatto") and he had a big afro.

"How you guys doin' this evening?", he asked. I stammered that we were pretty good, although I confess being a little surprised. That brief exchange ended the conversation, and my family and I continued on to Umami Burgers for dinner. In the receding distance, I heard this fellow chatting up other people as they passed, asking for a dollar from anyone who would listen.

From that day forward, I paid attention to that corner whenever I passed it in my car or walked by it during my downtown errands. Sup, as I called him, was on that corner more often than not. On occasion, I'd see a special wheelchair near him, which I suppose he could hoist himself onto and roll to wherever it was he lived (if such a place existed). But he was never in it. He was also on the sidewalk at knee level.

What struck me about Sup the most was his attitude. This guy was seriously and, dare I say, grotesquely deformed. When he moved from one place to another, he typically did so by pressing his hands against the ground and swinging his torso and tiny legs forward, much like an ape at the zoo. Although his short stature made him easy to miss, once people saw him, they couldn't help but take note. I can only imagine the range of reactions he's ever received.

But back to his attitude: this guy was relentlessly positive. And I don't mean grinning, giggling, and thumbs-up positive. I'm talking about a self-evident confidence, determination, and cachet. He gave salutations to everyone who passed; he casually smoked on a cigarette while chatting up people who would talk to him; and he made verbal passes at good-looking women as they strolled by (enjoying, incidentally, a supremely good view of their legs from his two-foot high vantage point). In spite of all this, most people tried their best to ignore him. They just felt too awkward (as if they were the ones who were entitled to feel uneasy).

Since I'm an unrelentingly self-referential twit, I pondered these observations in the context of my own behavior. Here was this guy who had every reason to feel sorry for himself. His tremendous physical deformities were going to dominate whatever impression he might possibly give to someone. He was begging on a street corner for dollar bills. He was being passed every day by countless numbers of people, many of them affluent, some of them stinking rich, while he begged for a little money to eat. And yet he was totally unfazed (in spite of, I wager, some cruel reactions or mean utterances offered by heartless strangers).

I, on the other hand, have a PhD in self-pity. I'm a white American male - by definition, a privileged class - who has a perfectly good body, good health, a zillion dollar house, and enough money to live the rest of my life without working another day. I've got a beautiful wife, magnificent children, and a good income that doesn't rob me of any personal freedom. And yet I am seized on a virtually daily basis with how miserable and rotten my life is, and how I don't deserve any of the bad things that have ever happened to me. I dare feel sorry for myself due to solvable personal problems or the fact the stupid stock market refuses to fall.

Sure, if I cornered you and shared a couple of drinks, I could probably conjure up enough tales-of-woe to get you to agree that, yeah, poor Tim is a pathetic sumbitch, and it's no wonder he's often tempted to jump in front of the next CalTrain that passes by. Indeed, most people on this planet would be able to surgically extract some sliver of their lives and make it seem sad. Hell, Elon Musk could surely give grisly tales from his multiple failed marriages, although I imagine it would be a Herculean feat for anyone to actually conjure up sympathy for the guy.

Sup, in sharp contrast to this morose malaise, was just plain cool. On more than one occasion, I'd see that he had managed to coax a couple of women - attractive young women - over to talk to him, and he was just smoking his cig, chatting them up, casual as could be. I don't know what he said to get their attention, but whatever it was, it worked. God knows the guy has chatted up more good-looking women than I ever have in my own life. That's me in the corner.

I've long been tempted to interview the guy, because there's so much I want to know about him. Where is he from? What's his background? What's his physical malady all about? What are the most interesting, kind, and nasty things people have said to him? What are some interesting stories from the many months he's been hanging out at this particular corner? What does he hope the future brings to him? How does he manage to stay so upbeat?

I haven't done the interview yet, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I mean, it takes a certain amount of gumption to start quizzing a guy up and down; he might react poorly to the whole thing. But I've got a suspicion he would be all too glad to tell his story. I'm more worried about my ability to do the interview than his interest in answering my questions.

However, I took one baby step in that direction a few days ago. I was walking by, and as usual, he tosses out - "Sup, man? Got a dollar for me?" I was on my way to my mailbox, so I replied, "In a minute." I suppose he gets this kind of brush-off all the time, but I was sincere. I was going to come back with a dollar in a minute, because there was something I wanted to buy with it.

"Yo, yo!" he said as I returned to the corner. I handed him a dollar and asked, "What's your name?" In my mind, the question was "What's your real name?", since I had known him as "Sup" all these months. "Zachary." "OK, have a good night." And I left.

So now at least I had a real name for this person. That was a more dignified, after all, since I had heretofore attached a goofy moniker to him. But I really need to interview this guy one of these days. In a way, I admire him, even though his disposition and attitude just make me loathe myself even worse than before. I mean, seriously, what right do I have? So be it. Zachary is one tough hombre. Respect."

- http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-17/zachary

- http://slopeofhope.com/

"Discovering Your Self-Worth"

"Discovering Your Self-Worth"

by Dan Millman

"The first step is to realize that you are not alone. We have all made mistakes as part of our life and growth. We have all said, thought, felt, and done things we regret. Our worth is not dependent upon being perfect. Many of us have fallen into self-defeating cycles-behaving badly, leading to a lowered sense of self-worth, leading to more negative behaviors. If we can stop judging our mistakes so harshly, we can also stop ourselves from reactively engaging in the negative behaviors.

The second realization is that no matter what your behavior, you have done the best you could every day of your life. You may not agree with this. So before we tackle that question, consider this principle in relation to your parents or other caregivers: whether they were kind or abusive, they were doing the best they knew how in light of their own limitations, wounds, beliefs, fears, values, and anxieties. Their best may have been wonderful, or terrible, or somewhere in between. In the same way, even though you have certainly fallen short of your ideal many times and made mistakes, you have also done the very best you were capable of at the time.

Most of us have replayed in our minds an incident we wish we could do over. Maybe we could have done better on a job interview, a speech, an exam, or a performance. Or we may wish we could take back hurtful actions-moments of disrespect or dishonesty. You cannot change past mistakes, but you can avoid repeating them. The past no longer exists except as a set of memories and impressions you keep alive in the present. By focusing on doing what you can do now-by reviewing your mistakes with eyes of compassion and asking forgiveness- you do much to heal your fragmented sense of worth.

If you are sorry for never sending your mother a birthday card, send her a special one now. Even if she has passed away, write the card. And ask her forgiveness. If you hurt a brother, sister, parent, or other person, review that memory; then contact them, apologize, and ask for forgiveness. If they will not forgive you, then forgive them for not forgiving you. Then send them flowers or another gift, perhaps with a letter. Going inside and visualizing those you have hurt, and asking their forgiveness, provides a healing that begins to lift your sense of worth as it heals relationships.

The next time you feel that something good can't last, remind yourself that evolution moves in an upward spiral and that life can, and usually does, get better over time. You live and learn, stumble and evolve, rise and fall, fail and grow, expand, progress. If you pay attention and strive to improve, you become stronger, clearer, wiser, and more capable. Life is a process of rediscovering your worth and the worth of all beings.

Finally, it comes to this: To discover your worth, you have to reach within yourself and find it there. You have to create it through worthy actions. The key is to remember that even though we don't feel very kind, or brave, or even deserving, the roof over our head continues to shelter us from storms, the sun shines upon us, our chairs keep supporting us, and so do our lives. Life itself is an unearned gift- and that is the hidden meaning of grace.

Grace reveals that only this moment is real. That past and future exist only in our minds. Your scorecard is wiped clean in any moment of awareness, humility, or repentance. If you have a debt to pay, then pay it in the currency of kindness to the person it is owed, not by punishing yourself, not ever again. It is not necessary. It never has been."

- http://www.enotalone.com/article/3886.html

The Poet: James Broughton, "Quit Your Addiction"

"Quit Your Addiction"

 "Quit your addiction

to sneer and complaint.

Try a little flaunt,

Call for comrades

who bolster your vim

and offer you risk.

Corral the crones,

Goose the nice nellies,

Hunt the bear that hugs

and the raven that quoths.

Stay up all night

to devise a new dawn..." 

- James Broughton,

 "Little Sermons of the Big Joy"

"That's Where It All Begins..."

"That's where it all begins. That's where we all get screwed big time as we grow up. They tell us to think, but they don't really mean it. They only want us to think within the boundaries they define. The moment you start thinking for yourself- really thinking- so many things stop making any sense. And if you keep thinking, the whole world just falls apart. Nothing makes sense anymore. All rules, traditions, expectations- they all start looking so fake, so made up. You want to just get rid of all this stuff and make things right. But the moment you say it, they tell you to shut up and be respectful. And eventually you understand that nobody wants you to really think for yourself." 

- Ray N. Kuili, "Awakening"

"Who Killed the Middle Class?"

"Who Killed the Middle Class?"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"What exactly is the Middle Class, and what unique role does it serve in the economy? Given that the Middle Class is constantly invoked by politicos and economists, you'd think the status quo has a solid understanding of the Middle Class. Alas, it isn't that simple. The conventional view defines the middle class by income, education, or type of labor being performed. These are all superficial attributes and ignore what actually differentiates the working class from the middle class.

Yes, the middle class tends to earn more, has higher educational credentials and performs white-collar labor rather than blue-collar labor. But getting a higher education credential and increased pay doesn't automatically provide a middle class role in the economy, nor does performing white-collar work. None of these automatically move the individual up the social mobility ladder from near-zero ownership of capital (working class) to meaningful ownership of productive capital (middle class).

The middle class is fundamentally a means of transforming labor into capital via savings and investment. The traditional ladder of social mobility from the working class to the middle class has to do with capitalizing work: time and savings are invested in higher education thus, capitalizing future labor by increasing productivity. In other words, what separates the working class from the middle class is the middle class’s ability to transform their labor into capital while the labor of the working class only funds consumption.

What Marxism Misses: The working class is defined not by credentials or type of labor but by limited access to the means to transform their labor into capital. In the classical Marxist view, there is a bright line between labor and capital: the proletariat labor in the factories owned by the capitalist industrialists who depend on monopoly capital controlled by the commercial/investment banks. The class of small business - tradecrafts, commerce, professionals, etc. - is merely a wedge between the dominant classes of labor and capital.

In this view, the exploitation of labor is the dominant force of capitalism. While labor is indeed exploited in many cases, the dynamic that this schema misses is the essential role of middle class credit/debt and consumption, which generates profits for the big owners of capital. Low-wage workers benefit their employers but not the banks or those who profit from selling goods and services to higher-wage workers - the middle class.

Debt is immensely profitable, so low-income workers have a limited pool of profitability. The financial services are expert at ripping off the working class with payday loans, check-cashing services, sky-high used auto loans, rapacious late fees and overdraft charges. But again, there is only so much blood that can be extracted from low-wage workers.

The higher, more secure wages of the middle class offer a bonanza of longer-term profits from debt taken on by the middle class. These include student loans to gain the credentials deemed necessary for middle class membership, auto loans, mortgages to buy homes, and consumer debt for all the consumption the middle class can afford: ski trips, cruises, fine dining, etc. In other words, modern capitalism stagnates without a vibrant, creditworthy middle class that borrows and spends freely. Remember, profits flow from the high levels of debt and aspirational consumption that low-wage, insecure precariats cannot afford.

Debt Serfdom: But here's the rub: most middle class debt stems from the aspiration to transform labor into capital via higher education (student debt) and home ownership (mortgages). As middle class wages lose purchasing power and incomes become more precarious (as employers offload healthcare and pension costs onto employees and shift workers from employees to gig-contract workers), the ability of the middle class to borrow and consume more falters.

Even worse, these time-honored avenues to ownership of productive capital are no longer reliable. Higher education credentials no longer guarantee stable, ample wages. Further, home ownership in a housing-bubble-addicted economy is less a means of saving and more a chip in the bubble-economy casino.

Debt serfdom awaits the aspirants to middle class ownership of productive capital. While debt payments are guaranteed, the rewards for taking on the debt are prone to sudden collapses in demand for credentials and assets purchased with debt. Debt only works for the middle class if incomes and income security rise due to improving productivity and access to productive capital. Both productivity and access to productive capital are eroding, so what made sense in past generations - borrowing for university education and a home - is now, increasingly, a pathway to debt-serfdom.

The status quo "solution" to the decline of middle class ownership of income-producing capital is an economy that is now totally dependent on speculative bubbles. The idea here is an asset bubble ever higher, and those in the middle class who own these assets will reap capital gains that will offset their declining purchasing power and income security. Unfortunately, this "solution" has only enriched the top 10%, as the bottom 90% collect a meager 3% of all income from capital.

Liabilities Instead of Assets: That disparity indicates that…

1) The bottom 90%, which includes the middle class, owns near-zero income-producing capital and...

2) What capital they do own is either rapidly depreciating "stuff" (vehicles, appliances, etc.) that generates zero income or dead-money assets such as family homes that cost a fortune but produce no income and are no longer reliable investments. The next bubble burst might evaporate the phantom homeowners’ equity generated by the serial housing bubbles.

As the middle class stagnates, so do the banks, the producers of goods and services, and the lower-wage working class who labors in services and low-productivity producers. And as the middle class awakens to the fact that the rungs of social mobility are broken, it's easy to predict a systemic breakdown.

Unfortunately, for those at the top who've benefited immensely from speculative bubbles, speculative bubbles don't create a vibrant middle class - they push what's left of the middle class off a cliff.

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% collects an insignificant 3% of all income from capital.

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."

- dailyreckoning.com