"Dispatches from the New Cold War"

"Dispatches from the New Cold War"

by Fred Reed

"Today’s characteristically luminous insights will be disordered and structurally horrifying, the sort of essay that would have sent my high-school English teacher into anaphylactic shock. In exculpation I plead laziness.

Recently I wrote a column on China’s digital yuan, now in late-stage testing. Bare-bones explanation: You download a digital-wallet app with which you can then send payments to anybody in the world who also has the app, no forms, bureaucracy, or bank account needed. OK, that’s cute, you say. Then, with my phenomenally perceptive, pincer-like grasp of the inescapable, I thought, it sounds scalable. If you can do it with thirty bucks (in yuan) for a hat from some store, why not with fifty million dollars (in yuan) for a shipment of oil from Iran? Sure, with more security and so on, but same mechanism. Interestingly, such payments would be completely independent of, and opaque to, Washington. And independent of…SWIFT, eeeeeeek! Do you suppose China has thought of this?

Well, I thought, this is mere speculative maundering by some guy in Mexico who is admittedly pig ignorant of international finance. And of course China itself was saying that the dijjywan had nothing to do with the dollar, oh no, was solely for domestic use, and for retail sales. Not important. Move on. Nothing to see here.

But then, this: China is consulting, whatever that means, with Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE over using the dijjywan for international payments. Uh…say what? Thailand and the UAE are not particularly domestic to China. And I doubt that Beijing is intensely interested in the retail market of the UAE, which has the aggregate population of a large city bus. Methinks China has Something In mind. And it don’t bode good for sanctions, the petrodollar, and the like.

Nuther subject: Being fascinated by what looks like a shift of the world’s technological and economic center of gravity from the West to Asia, I poke about the web in the manner of an Ernest truffle hound, to see what the wily Orientals are doing. My results are not too systematic. My distinct impression is that things are happening over there, ideas popping up on Wednesday and in volume production by Friday afternoon, of energy and movement. By contrast, America looks asleep at the wheel. Except that it doesn’t have a wheel. A few almost random examples:

China ahead of America in patent applications for second year.

Business Insider:“ “China is moving ahead with a huge robot farming project…powered by 5G cellular technology, the agricultural tractor with self-driving mode can also be remotely controlled to carry out multiple intelligent functions” says Chinese governmental site Global Times

Beijing has successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, China’s People’s Daily reported on Friday. It’s designed to be a clean energy source, similar to the real Sun.” The foregoing is overexcited as neither China nor anyone else has demonstrated controlled fusion, but it shows that the country is in the race.

Global Times (Again, mouthpiece of Beijing): China needs to increase its nuclear warheads to 1,000.” Because of American hostility.

Education. China finds its brightest students with a grueling entrance exam. America dumbs down elite high schools because they don’t have enough unqualified minorities. Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia has already been enstupidated, and the NYC schools are on the block. The purpose of schools is to admit students who can’t do the work. New York Post: “With this year’s state math and English exams canceled, a watered-down grading policy enacted, and the tossing of attendance, the key factors for admission to selective schools have been dropped or diminished…. “

America Ties with China in 2019 Math Olympiad: Well, not exactly. The 2019 U.S. team is: Vincent Huang, Luke Robitaille, Colin Tang, Edward Wan, Brandon Wang, and Daniel Zhu. China, it seems, tied with itself.

BBC: China’s Chang-e Five lunar-sample return mission safely parachutes into Mongolia. Very sophisticated engineering, and it worked. The US is ahead in space exploration, its Perseverance mission now on Mars being a marvel, but the gap ain’t what it used to be.

From NIO, a Chinese Electric Vehicle Start-up. 

If a car looks like this, I want one. Nio is working on a system in which “gas” stations remove a depleted battery and replace it with a charged one, thus eliminating the problem of long charging time. Will it fly? I don’t know, but those folks over there are scurrying. China, Japan, and South Korea, for example, are rapidly advancing hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars.

China’s Quantum Computer Beats Google’s Sycamore in ‘Computational Supremacy’, Claims New Study. Also a bit overdone. My grasp of quantum computing equals that of a hardboiled egg, but this seems to indicate that China is holding its own in a field that is a Very Big Deal.

Below: “China Finishes Building World’s Largest Radio Telescope”

China has finished building the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the world’s largest single-aperture telescope. This photo was taken on July 3, 2016, the day the huge dish’s last panel was installed” Great big sucker. Four years ago. China has the money to spend on pure science. Wow.

MagLev.net: 

“The next-generation Chinese medium-low speed maglev doubles the top speed of the first generation and it becomes driverless…Most of the R&D work is done in Hunan Province…” Miles of high-speed rail in the US: 0. Miles of maglev rail in US: 0. Likelihood of either any time soon: 0. Cost of new B21 intercontinental nuclear bomber: $550 million. Each.

China Will Begin Constructing Its Space Station in 2021

China to build 30 ‘fully connected’ 5G factories by 2023. Many think of Five G as being able to download movies in three seconds. Actually, with high throughput and low latency, combined with artificial intelligence and edge computing, it will be hugely important in managing smart factories, transportation networks, smart cities, and so on. This is why Washington wants to block it. Meanwhile China is catching up in AI, it seems.

China-developed hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid locomotive rolls off assembly line.

“Huawei’s Harmony OS Extends to All Devices in 2021 in Bid for Tech Self-Sufficiency Amid US Trade War.” This is interesting. Tech commentators have pointed out, correctly but without too much insight, that Huawei will have a hard time selling phones with Harmony outside of China because Trump cut the company off from using the Android operating system’s app store. Google.” Huawei is now preloading Harmony on all of its product, making it independent of Google.

Now we have Huawei May Allow Chinese Smartphone Firms to Use Harmony OS to Counter Trump Trade Bans, This means that all of China’s phone companies are independent of Android, at least in China, as, if threatened by the US, they just switch to Harmony. It also means that China, should it choose, could ban Android in Chinas as Trump banned Huawei in the US, and perhaps ban iOS also, thus losing the entire Chinese market for Google and Apple. Forcing a large, resourceful country to build competing products might charitably be called preternaturally stupid.

Which brings us to the new Cold War, which is exactly what Trump II is engaged in. The Beltway China hawks want to cripple China’s tech industry by denying it advanced semiconductor technology, chiefly from America’s vassal states of Holland, Taiwan, and South Korea. Will this work? I dunno. But there is a clear pattern in China’s response. A sort of techy example, that sensible readers can skip.

There is a company in Wuhan, YMTC, Yangtze Memory Technology Company, that has developed an advanced 192-layer dual-wafer NAND (“flash”) chip using Chinese technology. Flash memory is used in huge quantities in everything from smartphones to French fries (well, maybe not French fries.) There is some doubt as to whether the company will be able to produce in volume, but it is building a second fab line, so it must think it can. If it does, American companies, notably Micron, will lose the (very large) Chinese market for flash. Then the Chinese, nothing if not commercial, will probably flood the world market with discount flash.

This tech-wide lunge for self-sufficiency, if Washington does not succeed in crushing it, will close the Chinese market progressively for American firms. Well, who needs 1.4 billion customers? The China hawks may be poking the wrong bear.

RCRWireless News: “Chinese operators to build over 1 million 5G base stations in 2021: “According to estimates from Wu Hequan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the total number of 5G base stations in China could reach more than 1.7 million by the end of next year.”

US fumbles, fiddles, sucks thumb. Years behind. It is now forcing UK to uninstall Huawei gear. Great diplomatic triumph. Brilliant future. Nuff said.

NikkeiAsia: “China Out Front in Race to Reduce CO2 Emissions” 

A total of 40% of the world’s new solar power generation capacity is constructed there. And the country’s share of global electricity generated by the sun has jumped from 2% in 2010 to 32% in 2018. Nuff said."

- https://www.unz.com/

"The Duty..."

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you 

damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, 

the duty to take the consequences."

- P. J. O'Rourke

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/5/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/5/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Another week and more election fraud is uncovered. Now, 400,000 absentee ballots are “missing” in Georgia. Joe Biden won the state by a little less than 12,000 votes. The ballots are required by law to be kept, but now they are gone and no way to check them. There was more election fraud discovered in New Jersey and Mississippi as well, but the public is being told election fraud in the 2020 Election is a “myth.” That’s a huge lie, and everybody knows it, including the Republicans that worked so hard to put Joe Biden in office. Now, the Republican leaders are talking about “voter integrity.” Hey, I thought voter fraud was a “myth”????

Dr. Simone Gold was arrested by nearly two dozen heavily armed FBI agents. Dr. Gold was at the U.S. Capital January 6th with a bullhorn warning anybody that would listen about the dangers of taking “experimental” Covid 19 (CV19) vaccines. Yes, you heard correctly, the vaccines are only approved for “emergency use.” This means the CV19 vaccines are experimental. Vaccine companies have no idea what will happen long term, but short term, Dr. Gold says they can cause miscarriages and also cause young women to be sterile. Dr. Gold did walk through the Capitol building on Jan 6th but caused zero damage and did nothing violent. Dr. Gold thinks the FBI raided her home and broke down her front door to intimidate her and anyone else that would tell the truth about CV19 vaccines and non-vaccine treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Ivermectin that have proven very good results for fighting CV19. Medical tyranny is here and alive and well in America.

This week, it was reported that another nearly 750,000 people filed for first time unemployment benefits. How can the economy be getting better? It’s not. Yet, the Senate is debating a $1.9 trillion so-called stimulus package. Will it help the economy? It might if 91% of the $1.9 trillion was not going to political payoffs and non-CV19 related spending. All of the money printing out of thin air might be the reason Fed Head Jay Powell is warning about inflation. Don’t worry, he says, it will be “temporary.” Hope so because things like grain, lumber, oil and many other commodities are spiking in price."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com on Rumble as 

he talks about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

- https://rumble.com/

"How It Really Was, And Will Be Again, Too"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/5/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/5/21"

○

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

○

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/5/21:

"This Market Is A Financial NIGHTMARE"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

March 4th to March 5th, Updated Daily 

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

FRI MAR 5, AT 6:06 AM: "Central Banks & The Chernobyl Quandary" "Central Banks face an critical ask: how to raise rates to avert fuelling the financial asset bubble without triggering market meltdown."

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○
Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

○

Oh yeah...

Must Watch! "The FED Cannot Stop The Coming Crash; Cities Get Billions, You Get Crumbs; US Debt $28 Trillion"

Jeremiah Babe,

"The FED Cannot Stop The Coming Crash; 

Cities Get Billions, You Get Crumbs; US Debt $28 Trillion"

"Does Anyone Even Care That The U.S. Government Debt Will Soon Cross The 30 Trillion Dollar Mark?"

Full screen recommended.

"Does Anyone Even Care That The U.S. Government 

Debt Will Soon Cross The 30 Trillion Dollar Mark?"

by Epic Economist

"America is now officially on the path of financial ruin. We are nearing $28 trillion in national debt, and by the end of 2021, we will likely have exceeded the $30 trillion mark. Congress is about to finally pass a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package. In the short-term, that will help to ease the pain of millions of American households, and also provide assistance to some businesses across the country. However, a significant part of that spending isn't tied to priorities that are directly related to the current crisis, and considering we will have to borrow every single dollar spent in this bill - on top of all of the "standard" borrowing that we are already doing - it seems that we're doomed to fall into a tragic debt spiral - one that it will take decades to recover from. In other words, with almost $30 trillion in national debt, there's no question we are headed to The Next Great Depression. That's what we're going to expose in this video.

We're right on the verge of a major financial disaster, but as numerous devastating events are unfolding at the same time all around us, many can't afford to take a break and try to look at the bigger picture. Can we even blame them? For a year now, most Americans have been in a living nightmare. People's lives are still being turned upside down and dramatically falling apart. But, of course, the mainstream media is still doing a great job in distracting us from the real roots of our real problems. In that way, it has been quite easy to shift our focus away from national budget issues in a time millions are wondering if they will have enough to eat. However, this is a matter of importance to all of us, because, in the long-run, there will be serious consequences that could collectively impact our living standards. So we're about to report some concerning numbers that are failing to be delivered by mass media outlets.

Let's start with GDP. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, current-dollar GDP declined 2.3 percent, or $500.6 billion, in 2020 to a level of $20.93 trillion, compared with an increase of 4.0 percent, or $821.3 billion, in 2019. What does that mean? It means that once our national debt crosses the 30 trillion dollar mark, our debt to GDP ratio will be soaring toward 150 percent. That is completely absurd. Some may argue that the coming stimulus package is crucial to assist households, workers, and businesses, and no one can really argue with that.

However, according to a recent analysis, only about 35 percent of all money allocated by the next spending bill is going to be redirected to the American people. From those 35 percent, just 22 percent will be set aside for $1,400-per-person stimulus checks, while 13 percent will go for extending additional unemployment funding of $400 a week. Additionally, the coming fiscal package won't compass the same number of Americans as the previous ones. After a prolonged dispute, the Senate agreed to dramatically reduce the number of Americans that will qualify for the new payments.

A sizable chunk of that spending is going to projects completely unrelated to our current recession, including "a $1.5 million bridge connecting New York and Canada; a $100 million underground rail project in Silicon Valley; $480 million for Native American language preservation and maintenance; and $50 million in environmental justice grants," as reported by PolitiFact. In a time when over half of our population is financially suffering, we simply cannot afford to let millions upon millions of dollars go to wasteful spending.

It's important to keep in mind that the 1.9 trillion bill will come from borrowed money. “The United States government borrows money by selling what we call treasury bonds or treasury bills to private investors or to foreign governments or to banks or to state pension plans,” Bolen explains. That is to say, the money that is going to be distributed doesn't come from the economy itself, but through selling the idea that the economy will recover and generate gains for investors, which is why this spending is seen as unsustainable.

What all of this tells us is that we're trapped in a never-ending debt spiral that is about to spin out of control. As we have already fallen into this trap, the only way to survive is to keep creating, borrowing and spending more money. As economic collapse writer, Michael Snyder has recently stressed: "in our insatiable greed, we are systematically destroying the United States of America, and we should be utterly ashamed of ourselves."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.

Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121211.html

"You Know..."

“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”

- Maria Popova

"Why?"

"Why does truth carry such a dreadful face? Why does subjugation carry

such a happy mask? It becomes sad when people understand that they

can lead a better life as long as they bow their heads, ignoring the truth."

- Lionel Suggs

Must Watch! Gerald Celente, “Trends in The News”, 3/4/21

Gerald Celente, “Trends in The News”, 3/4/21

"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/

The Daily "Near You?"

Ragley, Louisiana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, “Must Watch/Must Know! FED. Chairman Powell Rocks The Debt Market”

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/4/21:

“Must Watch/Must Know! 

FED. Chairman Powell Rocks The Debt Market”

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

Related:

"Does Anyone Even Care That The U.S. National 

Debt Will Soon Cross The 30 Trillion Dollar Mark?"

"How It Really Is"

"The Delightful Poetry of Inflation"

"The Delightful Poetry of Inflation"

by Bill Bonner

And now I’m lost, too late to pray,

Lord I take a cost, oh the lost highway..."

– "Lost Highway" by Hank Williams

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "The subject this week is inflation. And what a marvelous subject it is. One day, a share in Tesla costs $50. Flash forward to today, and it has risen to $653. Or take bitcoin… Five years ago, you could buy it for $500. Now, it’s nearly $50,000. Or a daily newspaper. In 1918, you could buy a daily newspaper in Berlin for less than 1 deutsche mark. Five years later, you’d have needed 42 billion of them. We’re a long way from 100,000% consumer price inflation. But even the longest journey, down that lost highway, begins by stepping on the gas.

Hit the Gas: And look at this: We’re rollin’ now… Oil is now at $60 a barrel, up from near zero in April 2020. The U.S. gasoline index increased 7.4% in January. The United Nations says food prices are at a six-year high. And consumable goods are getting smaller, as manufacturers squeeze output to avoid raising prices. Nutella reduced its 400-gram jar of chocolate spread to 350 grams. A package of Nathan’s Pretzel Dogs was cut from five to four. And Charmin’s Mega Roll toilet paper was reduced by 200 sheets.

And here’s one of the heroes of "The Big Short", warning us to prepare for higher prices. From Business Insider: “Prepare for #inflation,” the investor [Michael Burry] said in a now-deleted tweet. “Re-opening & stimulus on the way. Pre-COVID it took $3 debt to create $1 GDP, and it is worse now. In an inflationary crisis, governments will move to squash competitors in the currency arena. $BTC #gold.”

[…]

The investor compared Germany’s path to hyperinflation in the 1920s to America’s current trajectory. “Germany [the US] started by not paying adequately for its war [on COVID and the GFC fallout] out of the sacrifices of its people – taxes – but covered its deficits with war loans [Treasuries] and issues of new paper Reichsmarks [dollars]. #doomedtorepeat,” Burry tweeted."

Speculative Frenzy: In the early stages, inflation seems benign… even agreeable. An investor, with no particular effort or insight on his part, suddenly becomes rich. What is going on? Is it a real miracle? Or just tomfoolery? You can make people rich in material treasure by adding no treasure at all… You can make one master of the other – for now, he can pay the other to do his bidding with nothing more than, well, nothing at all… pieces of paper… or mere electronic notations, so light, so fleeting, you can’t see them… touch them… or even ask them to dinner.

And yet, these notations change everything. One man retires in comfort. Most are impoverished. And the economy, once so fulsome with progress and industry, turns to rank speculation… gambling…every man hoping that he will be the one with the winning hand… the first in line to get the new money.

It’s a “speculative frenzy,” says Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger, who was born at the peak of Germany’s hyperinflation. “Wretched excess,” is how he describes trading in the likes of Tesla and bitcoin. Adds his business partner, Warren Buffett, born during the Great Depression, “Fixed-income investors [who suffer when the dollar is inflated] face a bleak future.”

Replay: There are few advantages to getting old. But one of them, if you can keep your wits about you, is that you’ve seen a lot of wretched excesses; you know what they look like. The whole phenomenon of inflation is deeply entertaining and wonderfully instructive. But it doesn’t come along every day… So we must savor it… like an antique whiskey. Rolling it over his tongue, the old man says to himself (no one else will listen), “Oh yeah… I’ve tasted this before.”

But today’s crazes… the SPACs… cryptos… space stocks – perhaps they are different? Who knows? Youthful optimism tells us that this is a New Era. Old age and grumpiness tell us that it’s a replay of the Old Era, starring that long-time favorite – inflation. The trouble with inflation is that the useful learning comes not at the beginning, but at the end.

For, by then, the nation’s fields and factories have fallen fallow… the economy is in desuetude… and fortunes have declined, too, if not disappeared altogether. By then, the common man would kick his own derrière if he could reach it. How could he have failed to appreciate the delightful poetry of inflation… and how it made something out of nothing and then nothing out of something…leaving almost everyone – save those few who really understood what was happening – destitute?

Too Late: Yes, that is the problem. It is a story whose moral only becomes clear at the end… like a Marcel Pagnol novel… where (spoiler alert!) the mean old man finally learns that the young man… a humpback he has helped to kill… was actually his own son. By then, it is too late to make amends. Too late to say “I’m sorry.” Too late to change course. Too late to avoid the awful catastrophe.

Yes, that is the problem with inflation. Like life itself, it waits too long to speak. It’s only when you approach the end that you hear it whisper: “You damned fool… How could you believe that printing-press money would make you rich?” And then, in your moment of reckoning… racked by doubt and pain… a light turns on and you finally see the scene… your whole life laid out before you – your mistakes… your sins… your lost opportunities and wrong turns… And you finally see what it all meant…and nobody cares. It’s too late.

Tomorrow… why inflation is probably coming, no matter what the Federal Reserve does."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

○

Related:

"The Global Inflation Nightmare That You 

Have Been Warned About Is Here"

"Briefly..."

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet ‘for sale’, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence – briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing – cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity.”

- Erich Fromm

Gregory Mannarino, "The Economy Is Cratering; Important Updates"

Gregory Mannarino,

"The Economy Is Cratering; Important Updates"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode?"

"When Does This Travesty of a

Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode?"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"How many more times do we have to watch Jay Powell claim his speculative bubble isn't a bubble, and that his massive expansion of billionaires' fortunes will magically create jobs for all those living in the real world he's created of stagnation, social depression and inequality? In other words, when will this travesty of a mockery of a sham finally implode? When will the Universe tire of the lies, fraud, embezzlement and corruption and bring the whole rotten charade down? When will we tire of the stale tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

We all know the Status Quo's response to the global financial meltdown of 2008 has been a travesty of a mockery of a sham--smoke and mirrors, phony facades of "recovery", simulacrum "reforms," serial bubble-blowing and politically expedient can-kicking, all based on borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, yen, euros and yuan, quatloos, etc. and funneling them to financiers, corporations, monopolies, cronies and billionaires.

When will the travesty of a mockery of a sham finally come to an end? How many more "saves" does the Ponzi Scheme of central banking possess? Wall Street and its vast army of apologists, lackeys, toadies, schemers, scammers, con-artists and profiteers will have us believe that the Everything Bubble is permanent and its continued expansion will hide all the systemic rot hollowing out America.

On the other hand, maybe manipulation, lies and artifice can no longer keep the Everything Bubble from popping. The chart I prepared back in 2008 (below) give us a flavor of the confluence of crises that are no longer in the future - they're here now.

Cycles are not laws of Nature, of course; they are only records of previous periods of growth/excess/depletion/collapse, not predictions per se. Nonetheless their repetition reflects the systemic dynamic of growth, crisis and collapse, and so the study of cycles is instructive even though we stipulate they are not predictive.

What is predictable is the way systems tend to follow an S-curve of rapid growth with then tops out in excess, stagnates in depletion and then devolves or implodes. We can see all sorts of things topping out and entering depletion/collapse: financialization, the Savior State, Chinese credit expansion, oil production, student loan debt and so on.

Since each mechanism that burns out or implodes tends to be replaced with some other mechanism, this creates the recurring cycle of expansion/excess/depletion/collapse.

Four long-wave cycles are plotted in the chart:

1. The credit expansion/renunciation cycle. a.k.a. the Kondratieff cycle. Credit expands when credit is costly and invested in productive assets. Credit reaches excess when it is cheap and it's malinvested in speculation and stock buybacks, and as collateral vanishes then credit is renunciated/written off. This is inexact, but obviously the organic postwar cycle of expansion has been extended by the central bank money-printing/credit orgy.

2. The generational cycle of four generations/80 years described in the seminal book "The Fourth Turning." American history uncannily tracks an 80-year cycle of crises and profound transformation: 1860 (Civil War), 1940 (world war and global Empire) and next up to bat, 2020, the implosion of the debt-based Savior State and the financialized economy.

3. The 100-year cycle of inflation-deflation described in the masterful book "The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History." The price of bread remained almost constant in Britain throughout the 19th century. In contrast, the 20th century has been characterized by inflation - the U.S. dollar has lost approximately 96% of its value since the early 20th century.

Another characteristic of this cycle is wage stagnation: people earn less even as costs of essentials rise, a dynamic that inevitably leads to political crisis and upheaval. The federal agencies have been tasked with masking the decline of the purchasing power of wages with heavily gamed statistics, but here's how to detect wage stagnation in the real world: calculate how many hours the average wage-earner had to work in 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2005 to pay for essentials and common non-essentials.

If you kept records of your expenses, you'd probably find, as I have, that my wages bought far more goods and services in 1975, 1985 and 1995 than they do now, even though the nominal wage was much lower. Ask yourself how it is that jobs that paid $12 in 1985 still pay $12 an hour. How much does that $12 buy now compared to what it could buy in 1985? Precious little.

Jay Powell, you and the rest of your Wall Street lapdogs have failed the American wage earner. You've enriched the top 0.1% and impoverished the bottom 90%. As this RAND Corporation report documents, ("Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018") $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.

4. There's a problem with oil, and it isn't the price or how much is left in the ground. Actually, there's a number of problems with oil: I explain one here: "Oil and Debt: Why Our Financial System Is Unsustainable" (2/25/21). The price isn't the issue, or the supply: it's how much energy wage-earners can buy out of their dwindling discretionary income, i.e. what's left after they pay higher prices for essentials. 

If this is new to you, please read Gail Tverberg's work: "Why Collapse Occurs; Why It May Not Be Far Away." And Tim Watkin's work: "A Failure of Complexity" and "Texas Trip". And Tim Morgan's work on his SEEDS model of how the economy actually works (it's energy that matters, not finance) Mapping the economy, part one and The map unrolled. Or if you prefer video, watch Nate Hagens: "Nate Hagens: The Collision" (1 hour).

The mutually reinforcing crises aren't in the future, they're here now, and Jay Powell's shuck-and-jive has lost its magical powers to cloak the rot with speculative bubbles. The billionaires thank you, Jay, as they've been selling for months, leaving all the fools you conned holding the bag when your con-artist powers fade and your bubble pops."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Chaos Looming In Texas As The Power Crisis Triggered Food And Water Shortages And Business Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

"Chaos Looming In Texas As The Power Crisis Triggered

 Food And Water Shortages And Business Collapse"

by Epic Economist

"Texas remains the epicenter of chaos and disaster in America, as a prolonged arctic blast recently caused storms and unusual freezing temperatures that overwhelmed the state's power grid, leaving millions without electricity, heating, and several other essential services for days. The disruption also triggered alarming food and water crises all across the state, and now, the Lone Star is having to confront the harsh reality that the conveniences of modern life are not as guaranteed as we've previously imagined. Texas power crisis was a reminder to the rest of our country that our modern society relies upon systems that are too overly complicated and incredibly easy to disrupt. Even though the outages are over, the damages have only started to arise.

Since residents sought protection from the chillwave, demand for power skyrocketed, and prices soared from 12 cents per kilowatt-hour to $9 per kilowatt-hour. Some Texans reported electricity bills of over $9,000, as energy providers were seemingly taking advantage of "variable-rate power plans" to overcharge consumers that were already deeply distressed. Moreover, economists are arguing that once the situation is finally under control, a massive wave of bankruptcies is likely to be witnessed, as local businesses are still calculating the extent of the damages and losses suffered so far. And that's what we are going to expose in this video.

The ravaging crisis Texas is facing at the moment is evidencing how America's aging infrastructure is crumbling. Temperatures hit record-lows, and without heating, some locals were left with no alternative other than running their cars to try to stay warm. However, more than 500 cases of residents who were fatally poisoned by their car's carbon monoxide release were registered up until this point.

For weeks, stores have been reporting shortages of basic food staples, and several cities are under a boil water advisory, as the local water reservoirs were contaminated. But with no power or gas, many are having to make the hard choice of either going potentially sick or going thirsty. On top of the troubles residents are having to face at home, many of them have reported having problems at work too, and consequently, in their monthly wages. According to a recent report published by the Texas Tribune, "many hourly wage employees across the state lost working hours last week during the storm and power outage disaster. Now, they’re left with a choice between paying for rent or groceries". 

Some of the most affected by the crisis have seen their electricity bill hit sky-highs as wholesale prices were set at $9/kWh - almost 300 times higher than the normal wholesale price. The state's utility company Griddy Energy charges $10 a month to allow residents to pay wholesale prices for electricity instead of a fixed rate. The prices surged as temperatures dropped well below freezing, leaving customers with extremely high power bills. Lisa Khoury, a Texas resident, disclosed to have received a $9,300 electricity bill. Khoury alongside multiple other customers, filed a class action lawsuit against the company. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the company of "misleading and deceptive advertising and marketing practices". "Griddy misled Texans and signed them up for services which, in a time of crisis, resulted in individual Texans each losing thousands of dollars," Paxton stated. "As Texans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy made the suffering even worse as it debited outrageous amounts each day". 

On Sunday, Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, the largest and oldest electric power cooperative in Texas, filed for bankruptcy after accumulating an estimated $2.1 billion in charges. The company owes Ercot a disputed $1.8 billion in collateral. Ercot, which is the state's grid operator, said that overall, there is at least $2.46 billion in unpaid bills, exposing the financial setbacks faced by many other utilities, power retailers, and generators. Brazos and several others whose contract agreed to provide power to the grid, but failed to do so, were forced to buy replacement power at high rates and make up for other firms’ unpaid fees. 

As the staggering amount of debt is still piling up, many experts have been arguing that more bankruptcies will follow over the coming weeks. However, the main concern surrounds local businesses that have been struggling throughout the recession, many of which have compromised their insurance payments to keep doors open, and now are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damages. A massive spike in lay-offs is also being predicted to echo in next week's unemployment report. But as the extent of the losses is yet to be assessed, the following weeks will be decisive for the state's economy. There's no doubt we will have enormous challenges ahead"

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

"Things Are Getting Worse Not Better; Gambling On Wall St"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Things Are Getting Worse Not Better; Gambling On Wall St"

○

Related:

"The Quality Of Life In The United States Is Going Down The Toilet"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Wings II, Return To Freedom"

2002, "Wings II, Return To Freedom"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“M13 is one of the most prominent and best known globular clusters. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hercules, M13 is frequently one of the first objects found by curious sky gazers seeking celestials wonders beyond normal human vision.

M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years distant, and is over 12 billion years old. At the 1974 dedication of Arecibo Observatory, a radio message about Earth was sent in the direction of M13. The featured image in HDR, taken through a small telescope, spans an angular size just larger than a full Moon, whereas the inset image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope, zooms in on the central 0.04 degrees.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160727.html

"When I Hear..."

"When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard,"

I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"

- Sydney Harris

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "A Walk"

"A Walk"

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill.

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are; a gesture waves us on

answering our own wave...

but what we feel is the wind in our faces."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"

~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

"To Others And To Ourselves: Obligations"

"To Others And To Ourselves: Obligations"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"When we schedule too much in our lives trying to meet our obligations, we only end up draining our energy. We all encounter obligations in life, from spending time with family and friends to being present at important functions in the lives of the people who form our community. Many times, the obligations are actually fun and fulfilling, and we want to be there. At the same time, we all sometimes experience resistance to meeting these obligations, especially when they pile up all at once and we begin to feel exhausted, longing for nothing so much as a quiet evening at home. At times like these, we may want to say no but feel too guilty at the idea of not being there. Still, our primary obligation is to take care of ourselves, and if saying no to someone else is what we have to do, then we do not need to feel bad about it.

There is a skill to balancing our obligations, and it starts with simply becoming aware of our schedule. We may notice that three invitations have arisen in one weekend, and we know that we will pay energetically if we attempt to fulfill all three. At this point, we can take the time to weigh the repercussions of not going to each event, considering how we will feel if we miss it and how our absence might affect other people. Most of the time, it will be clear which obligation we can most easily let go and which one we simply can’t miss. Sometimes we have to miss something really important to us, and that can be painful for everyone concerned. At times like this, reaching out with a phone call, a thoughtful card, or a gift lets people know that you are there in spirit and that your absence is by no means a result of you not caring.

Meeting our obligations to others is an important part of being human and not one to take lightly. At the same time, we cannot meet every obligation without neglecting our primary duty to take care of ourselves. We can navigate this quandary by being conscious of what we choose to do and not do and by finding concrete ways to extend our caring when we are not able to be there in person."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Bayonne, New Jersey, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/3/21: "Its A SET UP! The Fed. Is Laying Out The Groundwork For Its Next Moves"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/3/21:

"Its A SET UP! The Fed. Is Laying 

Out The Groundwork For Its Next Moves"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Bingo Game for Dyslexic Lunatics"

"Bingo Game for Dyslexic Lunatics"

By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "The gambling goes on. The stakes get higher. You’ll recall that “inflation” refers to additions to the money supply. When you have a gold-backed system, you can’t really inflate the money supply, because you can’t easily get your hands on more gold. Typically, the amount of gold above ground increases at about the same rate as the goods and services it is meant to represent. That’s why prices today – in gold terms – are not so different from those 1,000 years ago (with a generous and elastic allowance for technological improvements). Paper money offers more flexibility – which is to say, it makes it easier to get into trouble.

This was the trouble Thomas Jefferson foresaw, warning that a central bank would emit more and more paper money, and thus bend the nation’s economy away from useful industry towards various “species of gambling.” That has now happened. Since the beginning of the last financial crisis, in 2008, the Federal Reserve’s paper money creation has exceeded GDP growth by some 15 times. And today, on the floor of the Nasdaq stock exchange, the jokers have never had it better.

Classic Monetary Inflation: We are still in the early stages of “inflation.” The Fed creates new money by buying Treasury bonds. Most regular Americans do not own bonds. They are owned by Wall Street… and the rich, in general. That is, after all, how the rich got so rich. The feds made them rich by jacking up their asset prices. It has nothing to do with them being especially greedy… or with a failure of capitalism.

Instead, it’s classic monetary inflation… as understood by Richard Cantillon, about a hundred years before Jefferson. Cantillon, an Irishman, was an early investor in Scottish economist John Law’s Mississippi scheme. Law’s Mississippi company was granted a concession to develop France’s colony in North America. This he used as backing for new, paper money emitted by the Banque de France, which he also controlled. Cantillon, and later Jefferson, saw through the fraud. The first in line to get the new money are always the rich and powerful. By the time the common man gets it, it is already losing value – fast.

Ahead of the Crowd: But for the moment, in America, the new money is still mostly in the financial markets, where it is making investors dizzy. Here at the Diary, we tend to be early. We began warning about the dot-com bubble as soon as we began writing our daily blog – in 1998, two years before it burst. As for the blow-up in the mortgage finance industry, we were writing about that as early as 2005 – three years before Lehman Brothers went broke.

Are we now years ahead of ourselves sounding the alarm over the danger of runaway consumer price inflation? “You’re way too early to be worried about [consumer price] inflation,” comments a dear reader. But we’re not worried about it. We’re just anticipating it. And even looking forward to it, in a cynical kinda way. Because when the inflation comes, we’ll rest easy. “The world still works the way it should,” we’ll say to ourselves. “God is in His heaven. The Queen is on her throne. People still get what they deserve. And all is right with the world.”

Huge Gamble: Right now, much of the stimmy-check money is going into the Wall Street economy, not the Main Street economy. Robinhood and other online trading platforms opened new accounts at a feverish pace last year. This is easy-come, easy-go money… Might as well exchange it for gambling chips. More fun than a casino – where gamblers at least understand the odds, more or less – the stock market has turned into a sort of bingo game for dyslexic lunatics. Neither words nor numbers need to make any sense.

Here’s Matt Levine, commenting in Bloomberg on one of the lunatics’ favorite stocks: "Now Nikola has released the results of the internal investigation and they are… oh, you know. Did Nikola’s founder lie about whether Nikola had produced a zero-emissions truck? Yes, say Nikola’s own lawyers in Nikola’s own annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Did he lie about whether the truck worked? Yes. Did he lie when he said that all the major components for the truck were made in-house? Yes. Did he lie when he said that trucks were coming off the assembly line? Of course. Did Nikola produce a video to make it seem like the truck could be driven, when in fact it was only moving because it was rolling down a hill? Yes, that is also a real thing that this company really did."

Used to be, Levine notes, that investors bought companies based on their past performance. Not anymore. The game has changed. Words are dreams… or lies. And the numbers don’t add up. Investors buy stocks in companies that they think might have a product someday that people might buy and that they might make a profit on… if all goes well. It’s all a huge gamble, in other words, betting that no matter how big a fool you are, there is always a bigger fool out there somewhere.

Big Winner:And thanks to the public school system and the Federal Reserve – it’s a good bet! Get this – Even though Nikola, the electric truck company, has no electric trucks… and even though it lied about its ability to produce one…and even though it faces nine lawsuits, six of which have been wrapped into a single class-action suit…it is nevertheless deemed to be worth $7.5 billion.

Bniog! You win. Of course, the big winner of our time is the company run by the world’s second-richest man… which does have a product. And sales. What it doesn’t have, though, is enough profits to plausibly justify its price – presently just under $660 billion… Let’s do the math. At its current profit-per-car, TSLA would have to sell more than 25 million of them to make enough profit to meet a modest 12 times price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. (We’ll ignore the fact that the company lost $775 million in 2019.) If the total world auto market were about 80 million vehicles, that means one out of every 3 or 4 cars sold would have to be a Tesla. Not going to happen. All the majors are getting in on the electric vehicle (EV) game. Some are bound to score successes and eat some of Tesla’s lunch.

Big Gamble: And then, there’s Lucid Motors. It’s the company that made the batteries for all the competitors in the 2014 EV Formula E race in Beijing. Batteries, it believes, are the key to success in the EV world. And it knows batteries. Last week, Lucid filed for a $24 billion public listing – peanuts compared to Tesla. But now, it’s decided to go into making electric cars, not just the batteries for them. So it will be running around the same track as TSLA. Typical of the casino stage, Lucid has no cars to sell. Not yet. It’s all hope and estimations.

In an earlier age, when investors had their feet on the ground, that would have gotten Lucid nowhere. Investors wanted to see actual results – products, sales, profits – before turning over their hard-earned money. Before they reached that stage, the start-ups had to rely on tougher sources of finance – family money, venture capital, and loans. But Lucid couldn’t wait. And the markets welcomed them with a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company… a slick way of going public without an IPO) deal that brought them $4.4 billion to get going. And – unless it is lying – its not-quite-ready-for-prime-time automobile gets more than 500 miles out of a single battery charge, compared to only about 400 for Tesla’s 2020 Long Range model.

New Game: TSLA was a groundbreaker. It realized early on not only that you could make a good electric vehicle – everybody knew that – but that investors are no shrewder now than they were in the Mississippi Bubble 300 years ago. But eventually, they wise up.

When inflation moves from the rich to the common man… from Wall Street to Main Street… and from delightful to obnoxious…it will be a whole new game. Suddenly, investors will learn to spell. And count.

- www.rogueeconomics.com