Monday, March 8, 2021

"A Different Kind of Order"

"A Different Kind of Order"
By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Over the weekend, the Senate passed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 boondoggle. And the U.S. 10-year Treasury note – the bedrock of the entire American capital structure – now trades at more than three times the yield it had last August. There are two overlapping narratives to explain the rise in bond yields. The one favored by Wall Street and Washington is that the economy is entering a fantastic growth phase… with businesses borrowing heavily to keep up with expanding demand (thus pushing up yields). As long as “growth” is so robust, say the bulls, consumer price inflation won’t be a problem. The other hypothesis is that bond yields are rising because the feds are increasing the money supply about 15 times faster than GDP growth. Investors are looking ahead and seeking protection against inflation.

Friday’s jobs report allegedly showed a healthy up-tick in hiring. But while jobs in the service sector increased, those in mining and construction actually went down. And considering that mining and construction jobs pay about three times as much as waiting on tables or handling baggage at an airport, what this really shows is further deterioration of the economy – from one that creates wealth to one that consumes it, by giving people fake money.

Turning Point: We also believe August 2020 marked the beginning of the end for the fake-money system, with the bottom of a 40-year bond cycle. If we’re right, inflation and interest rates are headed up and up… until they are completely out of control.

So far, all we’ve seen are a few nuts and bolts dropping out of the engine. SPACs (special-purpose acquisition companies) fell some 20% last week… Bitcoin is about 15% off its high. And the headlines are beginning to talk about a “tech sell-off.” But as American households, businesses, and the government struggle to refinance $80 trillion in debt… it’s going to get harder and harder to keep the jalopy on the road.

World Improvers: In the meantime, let us tell you about our trip back to Ireland. A week Friday, we sat in a hotel bar in Managua, Nicaragua. Eight TV screens hung over the bar. Those with loud latino music made sure no conversation was possible. Which was okay with us. We had no one to talk to anyway.

We reflected on the differences… the things that make one group different from another – culture… race… nationality… religion. The “Third World” always seems disorderly. Traffic goes every which way. Trash gets tossed into the trees and gullies. People don’t form up into neat lines. There is an order; it is just a different one.

This kind of thinking – about what separates one group from another – was very popular in the early 20th century. People thought race explained why some groups were so much more advanced than others. Africans were far behind, they thought, because they were Africans! And the world-improvers of the time thought they could improve the world by improving the people in it. “Eugenics” it was called, supported by the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and rich families such as the Kelloggs and Harrimans… and backed by smart people such as Alexander Graham Bell.

They were motivated to improve the human race by reducing birth rates for “inferior” groups. Efforts were also made to sterilize mental defectives (“Three generations of idiots is enough,” famously ruled the Supreme Court.) Also, less “fit” mothers – Black, Hispanic, Native American – were the targets of forced sterilization efforts, that didn’t go very far.

By the way… the “Native American” tag is a bit of subterfuge. No peoples are native to the Americas. All are immigrants. At least Christopher Columbus made an honest mistake; he thought he was in the East Indies and called them “indians.” But the whole field of race relations and cultural politics was – and still is – crowded and muddled. And naturally, the feds made it worse… with the Immigration Act of 1924, in which “nordic” races were favored.

Giving Racism a Bad Name: It was (mostly) harmless crackpottery until the Nazis got in on the act. They gave eugenics a really bad name… pretending to be better than everyone else… and murdering those they considered inferior – the Untermenschen.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a scientist… a scholar… a learned man, who had traveled around Europe with a Prussian tutor. Very unlike the louts who invaded the U.S. capital, he learned to speak German, French, and Italian and studied anatomy, botany, geology, and physiology. And yet, for all his learning, he came to conclusions that today, we would regard as not only scientifically incorrect… but morally wrong, too. That is, he worshipped the Aryan gods… and feared that Jews – like a virus – were infecting the Teutonic race. In 1935, Germany passed a law making marriage between Christians and Jews illegal.

Still, his ideas, scholarship, and a good marriage with the composer Richard Wagner’s daughter, brought him fame. And when he died in 1927, a young Adolf Hitler attended his funeral. Hitler lost World War II, of course. And eugenics and racism were discredited.

Comeback: But now, racism is making a comeback… Once again, people think it explains why some groups are more successful than others. To put this in perspective, “Hispanics” are generally not as rich as “Nordics.” Even in their own Latin American countries, those with more “European blood” tend to be better off than those with less. The whiter the skin, the higher the income. That is just our observation. Whether it is supported by academic study or not, we don’t know. But we’d be surprised if it weren’t true.

Nor is it meant to point the finger of blame in either direction. Wealth requires work, self-discipline, forbearance, and saving. Not everyone thinks it’s worth the effort. And, who knows? Maybe it isn’t. Still, if we were to take away grudges and enemies, many people’s brains would suddenly deflate like a popped balloon. The “Europeans” blame the “shiftless Hispanics” for their lower incomes. The “Hispanics” blame the “European oppressors.”

Alternative Hypothesis: To these two hypotheses, we offer an alternative: It’s the fault of neither. The races – like individuals – are neither always good nor always bad, but always subject to influence. And there’s nothing particularly wrong with the way either chooses to live. We studied the subject over the weekend of our departure.

In order to get out of Nicaragua, we first had to get deeper into it. That is, we had to leave our pleasant bubble on the Pacific Coast and experience the country the way the locals do. The point of the exercise was to get a COVID-19 test at the government’s “Ministry of Citizen Power for Health.” Without the test, we couldn’t leave. You get to the federales’ medical compound by weaving through a maze of slums.

In America, builders throw old tin away. In Managua, it is recycled… and recycled. Bent, broken, pierced by holes, it nevertheless is put to work as a wall or a roof. Rusty tin is probably the most ubiquitous building material in Nicaragua. Is that the way it should be? Is that the way we would do it? Do we think buildings made of rusty tin are attractive? Charming? Elegant? Nobody cares what we think.

Attitudes and Actions: The do-gooders and world-improvers always want to change other people. Themselves, they regard as the crown of creation, with no need for improvement. Others, however, need to get with the program. The “poor,” for example, should build with cinder blocks and concrete… neat little houses that look more like our own. Of course, if the locals acted like us, they’d already have houses like ours. But why should they?

Let us imagine that the residents of Managua began acting like the residents of Zurich, Switzerland. They clean the canals and streets. No more maƱana… they do it today! They learn to make expensive watches, run banks, and yodel. And they insist that everything be done well – with an attention to detail that bordered on obsession. Being even a minute late would be considered shameful.

Now, can you imagine these Swiss-like people living in rusty-tin houses, with chickens scratching around in the trash for something to eat? No? Well, neither can we. Attitudes produce actions. Actions have consequences. But if people want to throw their trash in the streets, it’s none of our business.

Bedlam: After negotiating the narrow streets, weaving between chickens, busty grandmothers, desperately thin dogs, and prim school children dressed in their crisp blue and white uniforms…we arrived at our destination, only to find what we feared – bedlam. People clustered in front of the entrance. The Swiss would have a well-organized system. Here, it was hard to know if there was any “system” at all.

We explained to a man in a brown uniform that we were there to get the coronavirus test… and that we had already paid for it. We had paid online in the mistaken belief that it might speed up the process. What it did was get us directed to another line… where our payment details could be verified and our document rubber stamped. Then, another man in a brown uniform directed us towards somewhere… we weren’t sure where… People were going in every direction. “You’re taking the COVID test,” said a friendly voice in English. “Follow me.”

The helpful young man led us out a door, across a courtyard… and then, improbably, through a narrow corridor. Then, he wished us well… We continued… and were directed, by yet another man in a brown outfit, to sit down and show our documents. “Where’s your passport?” he wanted to know. “We didn’t realize we needed it. It’s out in the car.” “Yes… you need it. But I’ll keep your place for you.”

Pleasant and Helpful: One of the surprising things in a country run by a man many consider a ruthless dictator is that the civil servants are pleasant and generally helpful. And the apparent chaos can add flexibility. In a federal building in Baltimore, a guard might tell you to follow the signs to the exit… and start the process all over again. Any objection, and he’d have you down on the floor with his knee on your neck.

We simply backtracked, going against the traffic and exiting through the entrance door. And then, explaining to the three brownshirts what had happened, we were allowed to break ranks and accomplish our mission. Back in our seats, the helpful man in the brown uniform inspected our documents. Finding them in order, he bid us take a seat, along with about 30 other people.

The man next to us had a U.S. passport. But he spoke English poorly. Another man in the group appeared to be about our age. He was with his wife, or perhaps it was his daughter, who carried a very young baby. The rest of the group looked like a cross-section of Nicaragua. Most were getting the test so they could go to Miami.

Odd Method: Rather than call out numbers… or let us into the screening room one by one, the method was an odd one. Each time someone moved in to have his nose rotor-rooted, everybody got up and moved one seat closer to the front. Finally, it was our turn. Again, our papers were inspected. Our passport was taken. When the work was completed, a sticker was attached to our passport. “Come back at 3 p.m… Show them this number.” And so we did. The vital paper was delivered and we were free to leave. The “system” worked."

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Kaboom"

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Kaboom"
by Jim Kunstler

"The Senate bill also includes a provision intended to avert surprise tax bills for people who lost jobs, waiving federal income taxes for the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits received in 2020 for households earning under $150,000.”
- The New York Times

"Isn’t that a curious concept from the front page of Re-set Central? How does a couple with no jobs and no income earn $150,000 in a year that they were not working? And if they somehow brought in $150,000 anyway, why do they need the support of the US government? Such are the many mysteries of the Coronavirus 2021 stimulus bill.

What’s actually going on with this monster of legislation? Kind of looks like an attempt to replace what used to be a national economy with something that pretends to be money conjured from a system pretending to tax itself on wealth that was never generated in the first place. In other words: politicians have achieved the final divorce of wealth from production, and thus economy from reality. The USA has become the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Whatever else the Soviet experiment was, it was at least predicated on producing stuff, however defective the incentives turned out to be, or how shoddy the stuff was that got produced - and the system finally crashed anyway, because it was based on fantasies of human social behavior that just didn’t comport with reality. Now, the USA, in its own existential climax phase, seeks to re-do the Soviet experiment, only minus that feature of industrial production. Instead, our “wealth” gets generated from the banking system alone, and its subsidiary activities, such as hedge funds, arbitrages, dividends from companies with no earnings, and the fees for swapping digitized bundles of this-and-that. You understand that it’s all an illusion, right?

Bitcoin is the exemplar of that divorce of wealth from production. Its value appears to be derived from two features: the mathematically elegant blockchain code, which is a distributed accounting system supposedly impervious to government meddling. And “mining” Bitcoin using colossal amounts of electricity to churn the blockchain code, a simple dissipation of energy. What is actually produced by these operations? A promise that a set of digits residing on countless flash drives around the world equal X-amount denominated in national currencies, which are themselves spun out of nothing by a process far less complex than the exertions that produce Bitcoin.

It may be true that Bitcoin’s distributed “ledger” is difficult for governments to crack, but governments can just abolish Bitcoin in a few keystrokes by criminalizing the trade of it and confiscating any theoretical profits from it. They have probably refrained so far because the traffic in Bitcoin is still relatively tiny compared to the trade in stocks, bonds, and their derivatives, and because they prefer to keep the Bitcoin model running as a demonstration project in preparation for their own entry into national cryptocurrencies, with all its advantages for tracking individual transactions and targeting tax liabilities.

Let’s spell out the more blatant shortcomings of Bitcoin: The blockchain may be theoretically bomb-proof, but the exchanges that Bitcoin trades on can be fiddled, hijacked, and erased from the universe, and Bitcoins with them. Remember Mt. Gox? When it went tits-up in 2014, 850,000 Bitcoins vanished (out of the 21 million that can ever be “mined” under the system as designed). Bitcoins were worth under $1000 when that happened. Also, keep in mind is that Bitcoin is meaningless without reliable electric service and the Internet that runs on it. How many Bitcoins were bought-and-sold in Texas those dark days a couple of weeks ago when a blue norther rolled in and the lights went out. Of course, trading Bitcoin might be the least of your problems when the pipes freeze and all the sheetrock in your house gets prepped for a black mold experiment. But just sayin’…

The Schumer-Pelosi gang looks exorbitantly proud of their legislative coup in the stim bill (and Mitch McConnell’s gang, too, which had to play along, or get tagged and cancelled as Dr. Seuss-like creatures of Grinchified parsimony). Obtuse, desperate, and stupid as these grandstanding politicians are, they all overlook the workings of entropy in these foolish expedients to keep the plates spinning in this performance-art economy. Namely: disorder. Everything is groaning and cracking out there.

One-time $1,400 handouts and even regular $300 unemployment subsidies won’t pay the mortgages or feed families very long, and every day there are fewer families bringing in anything close to that mythical $150,000. For many, it’s more like… nothing. The one-time bailouts of recklessly insolvent city and state governments and pension funds will only postpone their collapse. The varying guaranteed basic income schemes, enhanced child credits, advances on tax refunds, and other gimmicks would turn the former working class into sub-lumpenproles with nothing to occupy them but crime and vice. In fact, we already have a sizable underclass demonstrating exactly what you’ll get from enlarging the social group dependent on government support.

The only other question for now is when do the different population groups in this land explode in violence? The group loosely bundled as “Red” is angry enough with the ongoing insults of Wokery, failed rule-of-law, and abridgments of basic constitutional rights. The states where they dominate are likely to resist any more fiats by the federal government, like the imminent attempt to confiscate firearms. The “Blue” auxiliary armies are beyond their creators’ control. Antifa will be ready to rock-and-roll in the streets with good weather because so many young people have absolutely no prospects to thrive in the collapsing economy, and the streets have become their social space, with so little money for lattes and beers. And BLM need look no further than the Derrick Chauvin trial in Minnesota, starting today, for an excuse to resume its characteristic activities.

Does anyone seriously believe that the husk of Joe Biden will remain in office more than another few weeks? It’s obvious that he doesn’t have the mental mojo to work an authentic press conference, and surely not the customary address to a joint session of Congress. Even the news media may seek to know who is actually in charge of the executive branch before much longer. Pay close attention to events unspooling. Get ready for trouble. It’s coming every which way, from money to public order to rollicking spring weather."

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/8/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/8/21"
"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 3/8/21

"IMPORTANT UPDATES: Saudi Oil Facility Hit, 

Crude Higher. Gold, Silver, Crypto, MORE

"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
March 7th to March 10th, 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

"Tell Yourself..."

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdrich

Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"

"The Mysterious Stranger"
by Mark Twain

"An unfinished novella that Mark Twain worked on periodically from roughly 1890 until his death in 1910. The body of the work is a serious social commentary addressing Twain's ideas of the Moral Sense and the ''damned human race.'' Published posthumously in 1916 by Twain's biographer Albert Bigelow Paine.

“…I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more." “In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?” Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, “There is no other.” A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true - even must be true. “Have you never suspected this, Theodor?” “No. How could I? But if it can only be true.” “It is true.”

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, “But - but - we have seen that future life - seen it in its actuality, and so –” “It was a vision - it had no existence.” I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. “A vision? - a vi –”

“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.” It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings! “Nothing exists; all is a dream. God - man - the world - the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars - a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space - and you!”

“I!”

“And you are not you - you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream - your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me... I am perishing already - I am failing - I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever - for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!"

“Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! 

You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.”

Read online a wonderfully illustrated version  of 
Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3186/3186-h/3186-h.htm

“This I Believe..."

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual
 human is the most valuable thing in the world. 
And this I would fight for:  
the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. 
And this I must fight against:
any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”
- John Steinbeck

Paulo Coelho, “Afraid To Change”

“Afraid To Change”
by Paulo Coelho

"We are afraid to change because we think that, after much effort and sacrifice, we know our present world. And even though that world might not be the best of all worlds and even though we may not be entirely satisfied with it, at least it won’t give us any nasty surprises.
 
We won’t go wrong. When necessary, we will make a few minor adjustments so that everything continues the same. We see that the mountains always stay in the same place. We see that fully-grown trees, when transplanted, usually die. And we say: ‘We want to be like the mountains and the trees. Solid and respectable.’

Even though, during the night, we wake up thinking: ‘I wish I was like the birds, who can visit Damascus and Baghdad and come back whenever they want to.’ Or: ‘I wish I was like the wind, for no one knows where it comes from nor where it goes, and it can change direction without ever having to explain why.’ The next day, however, we remember that the birds are always fleeing from hunters and other larger birds, and that the wind sometimes gets caught up in a whirlwind and destroys everything around it.

It’s nice to dream that we will have plenty of time in the future to do our travelling and that, one day, we will. It cheers us up because we know that we are capable of doing more than we do. Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying to transform your dreams into reality."
 "Wrong!"

"Don't Fret..."

"It is what it is, and it was what it was.
Don’t fret the could-haves because if it should-have, it would-have."
- Unknown

Sunday, March 7, 2021

"Rising Mortgage Rates Trigger A Housing Market Crash: Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"

Full screen recommended.
"Rising Mortgage Rates Trigger A Housing Market Crash: 
Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"
by Epic Economist

"Housing prices all across the country have surged at the fastest pace since 2014, but wages haven't keep up with that growth, and all of these determinants are affecting people's ability to buy new homes. The housing bubble has become so unsustainable that demand is already significantly collapsing and further increases in interest rates could push the entire market to the brink of housing market collapse just as well. That's what we're going to analyze in this video.

Last week, mortgage interest rates have unexpectedly soared, throwing cold water on already cooling demand. Consequently, the total mortgage application rate has flat-lined, increasing by just 0,5%, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. The median contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances registered a significant hike, having increased to 3.23% from 3.08%.

The latest housing rally has been fueled by several different factors, in addition to historically low mortgage rates, there was an unprecedented demand for suburban homes as city-dwellers fled urban centers to escape the harsh effects of the health crisis and mounting social turbulence. But low inventory has sent prices to sky-highs and formed a splendid price bubble that never ceased to grow.

However, rising borrowing costs could not only jeopardize the rally but also burst the housing price bubble and push the entire housing market to a secular correction. Higher rates are also bad news for lenders who have managed to collect huge gains ever since we entered a low rate environment at the beginning of the recession last year.

These developments outline that the Fed's attempt to offset the devastating impact the health crisis caused to the economy by lowering rates and pumping trillions of dollars into the markets in order to create an artificial "wealth effect", has not only enabled the formation of a massive housing bubble, as it could suddenly pop it due to the unsustainability of its policies. That's why investors and bondholders are already running for the exits not to see their gains irreversibly wiped out in face of an imminent crash. Moreover, in the process of artificially fueling the bubble, policymakers have ended up worsening wealth inequality and housing affordability issues.

The spring housing market is on track to become the leanest, most expensive, and most competitive ever. As the supply gets tighter and tighter, home prices soar even higher, and increasingly fewer Americans can afford to have a home of their own. In January alone, prices increased more than 10% year over year, according to CoreLogic. But wages are not keeping up with the rising costs of housing.

According to a 2020 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, workers need to make $21.10 an hour just to afford a market-rate 2-bedroom rental. The massive gap between wages and housing prices is the reason why millions of families are evicted every year, ending up in shelters or on the streets and oftentimes being pushed to a poverty spiral that is incredibly hard to recover from.

People in middle and lower-income segments being are increasingly priced out of the market for homeownership. And the situation will likely get worse, as legislators are considering a number of bills this session that will significantly increase the cost of new homes. With the passing of a new fiscal relief package, although payments may help to ease the economic struggles of renters and landlords in the short-term, it also means our money supply will increase by $1.9 trillion dollars.

As soon as the economy reopens and consumer spending resumes to pre-lockdown levels, we will see a major spike in inflation, which is the most frequently mentioned trigger to the burst of the current asset bubbles. In that way, a dramatic housing market crash is now more imminent than ever, and that will cause enormous financial pain to homeowners as they see the value of their properties sharply collapsing. As our leaders and policymakers seem to remain unbothered in face of so many warnings, eventually, we will all be witnessing an astronomical explosion occur across financial markets. Needless to say, we will be the ones paying the price for this tragic housing crisis made by design."

Must Watch! “Your Stimulus Check Won’t Buy Much; A Real Disaster Is Forming; Soaring Prices Are Coming; Get Ready”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Your Stimulus Check Won’t Buy Much; 
A Real Disaster Is Forming; Soaring Prices Are Coming; Get Ready”

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" (Ben-E.dit)

Moby, 
"Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" (Ben-E.dit)

"A Look to the Heavens"

 “Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy.
NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Unlike other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is not presently known to have a massive central black hole.”

Chet Raymo, "Six Memos "

"Six Memos"
by Chet Raymo

"Italo Calvino, the famed Italian storyteller, died in 1985, just before he was to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. He had writen five of the six lectures he proposed to give. The title of the series: "Six Memos for the Next Millennium." Each lecture was devoted to one of the qualities Calvino believed literature should aspire to. Lightness. Quickness. Exactitude. Visibility. Multiplicity. Consistency. Qualities, perhaps, we could all aspire to.

Lightness. The opposite of the heaviness that tries to drag us all down. Wit. A spring in one's step. Playfulness. Not taking oneself too seriously.

Quickness. A certain deftness in combining thought and action. Nimbleness. Agility. Mercury with winged feet who outpaces gloomy Saturn.

Exactitude. A concern for precise, apt expression. Clarity. Simplicity. Respect for facts.

Visibility. The visible imagination as an instrument for knowing the world and oneself. By extension, honoring the senses as a way of discovering the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Description as revelation.

Multiplicity. The infinite possibilities of language. But also the infinite contingencies of the universe itself. The way every little thing contains the whole. The way everything is related to everything else. The artist seeks to contain the infinite in the finite -- an impossibility, of course, but to the extent that the artist succeeds, we are lifted by the art.

Consistency. We can only guess what Calvino had in mind.

He concludes with an observation about literature and science: "Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function. Since science has begun to distrust general explanations and solutions that are not sectorial and specialized, the grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various 'codes,' into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world."

The Daily "Near You?"

Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation.
 Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Paul Fisher, "The Boat"

"The Boat"

"Maybe the eyes of a dragon or goddess
glare from its prow.
More likely it leaks, loses an oar,
and reeks of rainbows awash on a sheen
of gutted salmon and gasoline.
If it's a liner, we lash ourselves
to whatever will float or sell.
No matter which. We choose. We're aboard,
icebergs or no, as we plow
through the songs of the siren stars-
one boat, black water, dark whispering below."

- Paul Fisher

"We Often Discover..."

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do;
and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”
- Samuel Smiles

"Too Busy Frontrunning Inflation, Nobody Sees the Deflationary Tsunami"

"Too Busy Frontrunning Inflation,
Nobody Sees the Deflationary Tsunami"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"It's an amazing sight to see the water recede from the bay, and watch the crowd frolic in the shallows, scooping up the flopping fish. In this case, the crowd doing the "so easy to catch, why not grab as much as we can?" scooping is frontrunning inflation, the universally expected result of the Great Reflation Trade.

You know the Great Reflation Trade: the world has saved up trillions, governments are spending trillions, it's going to be the greatest boom since the stone masons partied at the Great Pyramid in Giza. It's so obvious that everyone has jumped in the water to scoop up all the free fish (i.e. stock market gains). Only an idiot would hesitate to frontrun the Great Reflation's guaranteed inflation.

Unless, of course, what we really have is a tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Everyone frolicking in the shallows scooping up the obvious, easy, guaranteed gains is so busy frontrunning inflation that nobody sees the tsunami rushing in to extinguish the short-sighted frolickers. ("When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode?" 3/3/21)

Gordon Long and I discuss The Deflationary Tsunami racing toward the frolickers in a new video program. It's not that there aren't inflationary dynamics in play; there are. The issue is that not all the dynamics in play are inflationary, and the deflationary dynamics have been building for the past two decades.

Funny things happen when we substitute debt for earnings and speculation for productive investment. That's what America has done for the past two decades: as wages stagnated for the bottom 95%, we've inflated speculative bubbles in everything to generate the illusion that we have "wealth" that we can borrow against, and then use all that "free money" (free fish!) to consume and speculate in all the shallow safe waters created by interest rates falling decade after decade, making it ever cheaper to borrow, buy and blow speculative bubbles.

Here's an example of the dynamics near-zero yields and interest rates have unleashed: in the frenzy of ever-lower rates, one crazed frolicker buys a $200,000 house for $500,000. Suddenly every homeowner in the neighborhood has $300,000 in "free money" to borrow and blow-- free fish! It would be crazy not to scoop some of that "free money," so homeowners refinance at low rates and extract the "free money" created by the speculative bubble powered by declining rates.

So what if your earnings buy less every year - there's "free money" galore - you just have to borrow it. And never mind value - what's value other than what some frolicker will pay? What new utility or productivity was created when the $200,000 house was revalued at $500,000? None. How about the commercial building that went from $2 million to $5 million? None. Or the stock with phantom fantasies instead of actual profits that went from $2 to $20?

A few problems arise from all this frolicking with the "free money" created by declining rates and speculative manias. One is that rates/yields have hit zero and are starting to rise. It's fun to imagine rates sliding into negative territory, but banks can't really afford to pay us $1,000 a month to borrow money from them. I know it's hard to imagine, but the banks need us to pay them interest and principal.

That interest and principal piles up, even at near-zero rates. Combine stagnating wages that buy fewer goods and services every year with ever-higher debt loads and monthly payments, and then add in higher taxes, and presto, we end up with insolvent households and enterprises that must borrow more to stay afloat. If they can't borrow more, they default.

Those that can't borrow more can't spend, and that's a problem because the entire economy depends on everyone borrowing and spending more every year. i.e. "growth." Just as new loans create money, defaults send money to money heaven. When loans are paid off or written off due to default, the money supply shrinks. That is deflationary. When discretionary spending dries up, that's deflationary. When the free fish of speculative phantom wealth created by bubbles run out, that's deflationary.

It was fun to frolic in the fantasy that we could borrow our way to prosperity on the phantom collateral of speculative bubbles, but that's not sustainable. The wealth conjured by zero rates inflating speculative bubbles is illusory. Real wealth requires sustained increases in productivity that are widely distributed to wage earners. Anything other than that is illusion destined for a messy, shattering destruction.

Speculative bubbles pop. All phantom wealth vanishes back into the air it emerged from. Insolvent borrowers counting on ever lower rates of interest and ever higher valuations default. Lenders who leveraged up to loan gobs of "free money" to uncreditworthy borrowers will be destroyed by the monumental write-offs of uncollectible debts based on phantom valuations.

Those looking up from their "free fish!" frolicking will see the tsunami too late to save themselves. None of the frolickers will be able to outrun the tsunami or avoid being crushed as it sweeps all the debris of a speculative mania into the flooded ruins beyond the shoreline."
There's much more in our 53-minute presentation, 
"The Coming Deflationary Tsunami:"
Related:

Gregory Mannarino, “Markets, A Look Ahead: This Is a ‘Lex Luthor’ Market”

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/7/21:

“Markets, A Look Ahead: 

This Is a ‘Lex Luthor’ Market”

"How It Really Is - The Left Has Lost It's Mind"

 
And then appears this gem of mind boggling idiocy...
Pardon the language, but WTF Coca-Cola?
Buddy Brown, "We Gotta Be LESS WHITE"

"And It Is Still True..."

"And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you
go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together."
- Robert Fulghum

"Our Answer..."

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
- Viktor Frankl

The Poet: William Stafford, "The Gift"

 "The Gift"

"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.

It's a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you've been and how people
and weather treated you. It's a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."

- William Stafford