"The Hole Is Already Too Deep"

"The Hole Is Already Too Deep"

by Brian Maher

"A man shovels himself deep into a hole. He then wishes to climb out. What must he do first? He must stop the digging. Yet the United States government has shoveled itself into a $28 trillion hole. How does it plan to rise out of it? By digging deeper… and deeper… and deeper. Within one year… the United States government has shoveled up nearly $6 trillion of “pandemic relief.”

$6 trillion is plenty fantastic - nearly one-third 2019 GDP. And consider: The inflation-adjusted cost of America’s overseas jousts - 1917 through 2021 - runs to $7.9 trillion… combined. Thus we find: The latest year of butter-buying approximates one entire century of gun-buying. Bloomberg: "In inflation-adjusted dollars, the U.S. spent about $4.1 trillion waging World War II. It also spent more than $300 billion each on World War I and the Korean War, and $738 billion on the Vietnam War. The bill for the wars the U.S. has waged in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is $2.3 trillion and counting. All told, the U.S. has spent about $7.9 trillion on warfare since World War I."

At Least War Costs Crushed the Axis: But last year’s spending did not put boots on feet. It did not put rifles in hands. It did not put workers in factories. It did not scotch Hitler… Mussolini… Tojo. The prior year’s spending instead put feet up on furniture and channel changers in hands. It put workers not in factories but on couches. That is, the last year’s spending paid men not to produce - but to lounge - and loaf.

Does a nation grow in wealth by producing less? We are unaware of any historical example. Professional men insisted the idleness was necessary to “stop the spread.” Men of action may have been required to knock off a Hitler, they allowed. But men of inaction are required to rout the virus. Government needed to support these heroic couch-loungers in their idleness. Hence the multiple issuances of “stimulus” cheques. But how much stimulation was necessary? Our former colleague David Stockman had a run at the numbers...

$6 Trillion to Fill a $274 Billion Hole: Mr. Stockman found that: "Through December 2020... incomes dropped merely 3.4% from their pre-pandemic (February 2020) heights - $276 billion in all." Yet the steam shovels swung into fevered action... The federal government has undertaken a mighty $6 trillion excavation project to fill a $274 billion hole. Mr. Stockman: "The Washington politicians are [throwing] nigh onto $6 trillion at a $274 billion hole in the nation’s wage bucket. That’s a solution 22X bigger than the putative problem!" 22 times!

Meantime, our agents report worrying whispers… Small businesses cannot attract labor. That is because prospective candidates are hauling in more from loafing than from the hard toil of work. Who can fault them? Who would plunge himself into drudgery for $8 the hour when his government will hand him $12 to loaf?

Nearly 8 Times the Size of the Hole: GDP, meantime, absorbed a 3.6% blow across the same 10-month space (February-December 2020). But Q4 2020 GDP jumped 4.1%. Q4 2019 GDP exceeded it by only $270 billion. Add lost wages to lost GDP. Mr. Stockman finds the $6 trillion dig fills all the holes - several times over: "Even if you want to count everything, including losses from the $2.5 trillion of imputed activity in the GDP, the pending $6 trillion of Everything Bailouts is 7.7X the size of the problem!"

And so the fellow asks - as we ask: "Why does Washington have the right to burden future taxpayers with permanent debt service payments in order to make whole a $276 billion loss of income and 3.4% inconvenience among taxpayers today?"

Mr. Stockman knows the answer, of course. In two words, it is special interests. In one word, it is politics.

Gimme, Gimme! Teachers, corporations, unions, Amtrak, governments state and local… the list runs yet... All are angling to get a bucket in the stream, to get a snout in the trough, to catch a penny… to pick a taxpayer’s pocket or two. And the party presently directing the show is eager to grant them access. There is the next election to consider - after all - and the election after that.

We believe Politico hooks onto something when it claims: "A radical change in the social fabric of the United States has become a reality - and with it, an opportunity for the Democratic Party no one could have imagined 50 days ago."

And so the shoveling continues at a rate truly astonishing. In reminder: The federal government shoveled out more money this past year than to wage the entire Second World War. Will the digging lift the gross domestic product… as the diggers claim? That is, will a deeper hole bring the nation up higher? You know the answer, of course...

Nonproductive Debt: The economy may take an initial step up. But we hazard it will prove transient and fleeting. Each borrowed dollar packs less and less wallop than the last. That is especially true when that debt funds consumption. That is, debt digs holes when it is nonproductive - which much of today’s debt is.

Nonproductive debt impoverishes the future to gratify the present. Mr. Michael Lebowitz of Real Investment Advice: "When debt is used productively, the interest and principal are covered with higher profits and sustained economic activity. Even better, income beyond the cost of the debt makes the nation more prosperous.

Conversely, unproductive debt may provide a one-time spark of economic activity, but it yields little to no residual income to service it going forward. Ultimately it creates an economic headwind as servicing the debt in the future replaces productive investment and or consumption… The U.S. economy is overly dependent on unproductive debt. Not surprisingly, secular growth rates have been trending lower for three decades. The massive amount of unproductive debt added in the last year will only further reduce future growth rates."

But aren’t the crackerjacks of the Federal Reserve aware of the central dilemma? The Fed is keenly aware of this weakness but refuses to acknowledge the problem or incentivize productive debt. Instead, they tout the temporary economic benefits of more debt with exceedingly low interest rates. In doing so, they egg on speculation and consumption, not productive debt.

Each economic “recovery” since 2000 has grown progressively weaker… as progressively more debt has gone heaping on. We discern no reason why the present recovery will break the evil trend - and every reason why the evils will continue. Meantime, the authorities continue digging us deeper and deeper into the impossible depths… with no end in prospect… Until they dig clear through to China..."

- dailyreckoning.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Marysville, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“A Nation Without Faces”

“A Nation Without Faces”

by George Gilder

“While flying home, I received a serious warning from an attractive Alaska Airlines Flight Attendant. I smiled but she did not have a sense of humor to go with the buxom body I ogled in the absence of any way to see her face. I was told that I was seriously jeopardizing the safety of guests and employees by my failure to fully cover my nose with my face mask. The human brain is geared to respond to faces, but in the absence of faces, less refined mental responses arise.

I tried to explain that as an 80-year-old man, I use my nose to breathe. I guess I was feeling facially feisty, as an after-effect of my recent trip to Moscow, Idaho, where I was interviewed by Pastor Douglas Wilson on his Man Rampant interview show. His healthy congregation of 1,400 gathers unmasked, with Wilson maintaining that its worship services are a protest demonstration protected by the First Amendment. But “Man Rampant” or not, in these dark days, I do not recommend talking back to the healthcare nomenklatura.

Masks Don’t Stop the Virus: Alaska Airlines upholds the prevailing fiction that “wearing face coverings significantly reduces transmission of the COVID-19 virus.” To a virus thousands of times smaller than the mesh of a mask, a cloth appears like an immense lattice of large and completely open windows and doors. The cloth confines larger bacteria, aerosols, and sputum near receptive surfaces, such as your eyes, nose, and mouth and thus cultivates both mental and physical disease.

Its chief effect is to make politicians and bureaucrats feel important. A thorough study by Swiss researchers pored through dozens of peer-reviewed analyses on the impact of masks and found no significant benefits and several downsides. Oh well. Such evidence is no longer relevant in America. Almost utterly suppressed are the key facts in the central debate in our politics.

Comply or Else! Handing me an alarming yellow card, Alaska informed me: “This is your final notice to comply with our policy.” Reading on anxiously to determine whether I would be arrested on arrival at O’Hare or whether I might instead be cast out of the plane before landing, I learned my fate. “If you do not [comply], you will not be permitted to fly with us again, for as long as our policy remains in effect. This suspension will occur immediately on landing, and will include cancellation of any remaining portion of your itinerary (connecting and return flights).”

This may result in my confinement for 14 days in a quarantine near O’Hare, under the wanton violation of the interstate commerce clause by posturing governors playing their silly tit-for-tat games.

“Put Your Mask Back On!” The Alaska Airlines flight was rather full and several people wanted to shift seats in order to sit with their friends. But because of the masks these ordinarily routine negotiations were unsuccessful. Amid the noise of the plane, and missing the usual context of facial signals, people from different cultures could not understand what each other were saying or feeling.

One young Asian woman in an aisle seat took off her mask to make herself clearer to the young man in the window seat who was seeking to move. Under normal circumstances being addressed by a beautiful face would be a pleasant experience. But he recoiled, barking, “Put your mask back on!” The woman in front of her who was seeking to move next to the man at the window then turned around to join the fray. “Please put on your mask before you speak to me!” she exclaimed. By the time the plane took off no one was in their wanted seat and everyone was seething.

Call the Police! Later during the flight, the man in the window seat needed to get up to use the bathroom. The young woman on the aisle was plunged into a paralyzed state and seemed unable to move or speak. She just sat in a trance looking straight ahead through glazed eyes. He eventually called the flight attendants and they clumbsily, facelessly, forced her to move.

Greeting the Asian woman on arrival was a cluster of Chicago police, who, surrounded by faceless people speaking in a blur, could not understand what had happened. The woman had disrupted the plane by removing her mask and later refusing to move. She was in the wrong, but it was an utterly unnecessary fiasco.

Put it down as another incident of mental illness, miscommunication, conflict, and resentment caused by the egregious overreach of politicians reducing their constituents to a faceless mass of fearful and fractious non-entities. But I don’t really blame Alaska Airlines, or the poor faceless flight attendants. It’s an effect of runaway media and power mad politicians gratuitously attacking a crucial dimension of the personal identity of fully healthy American citizens.

But hey, I could be wrong. The U.S. population could be entirely demented and actually imagine that a mask with meshes a thousand times larger than a virus could fend off disease. But I think Americans are smarter than that. But it’s not just politicians that are mask crazy. Many of the smartest people in the world are falling for the COVID scam.

Cautionary – or Stupid? Nassim Nicholas Taleb is surely brilliant about nonlinearities, black swans, anti-fragility, compounding effects, and other mathematical phenomena. He has many arguments about the compounding and nonlinear gains of mask usage. But he is an upholder of the cautionary principle, which expounds the idea that any possibly existential threat (meteors, or plagues, or climate changes that might destroy human life) justifies any remedy.

Taleb previously regarded climate change, for example, as a possibly planetary threat that readily justifies a complete, vast and costly transformation of the energy economy. In other words, he recommends a succession of costly remedies for various theoretical threats. He does not grasp that a series of such remedies will reliably inflict a compounding paralysis on the world economy.

As smart as Taleb is, he is stupid about the cautionary principle. On the basis of the possible lethality of COVID, he justifies lockdowns and masks that collectively are causing a global depression. The likely result will be a vast spread of starvation, taking a likely 280 million lives according to the U.N.

Taleb may understand more than he confesses in his case for masks. He’s sealing off his own face in goggles. Taleb apparently knows that ordinary masks offer no assured benefits. He just hopes that they have enough effect so that with everyone wearing them, the benefits will compound into non-linear gains. I doubt it.

A Nation Without Faces: The human race has thrived, not through vast efforts to stop every notional catastrophe, on which few scientists agree, but through the systematic taking of entrepreneurial risks. It is freedom and creativity, not draconian mandates that ultimately protect humans from disaster.

A nation without faces cannot be free or civilized. A nation without faces cannot even talk to one another. We cannot rise to seek a common truth epitomized by the face of a unitary God. We are consigned to C.S. Lewis’s mythical nation of “Glome” in his novel “‘Till We Have Faces.” Glome is a barbaric, pre-Christian world, where the heroine learns that we cannot grasp the will of the gods or the nature of the universe, “till we have faces.” I’m just looking to the day when we can all have faces again.”

- dailyreckoning.com

"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

by Dr. Seuss

"Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You're off to Great Places!

You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose.

You're on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,

you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any

you'll want to go down.

In that case, of course,

you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there

in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen

and frequently do

to people as brainy

and footsy as you.

And then things start to happen,

don't worry. Don't stew.

Just go right along.

You'll start happening too.

OH!

THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on y our way up!

You'll be seeing great sights!

You'll join the high fliers

who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.

You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.

Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.

Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.

Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so

but, sadly, it's true

that Bang-ups

and Hang-ups

can happen to you.

You can get all hung up

in a prickle-ly perch.

And your gang will fly on.

You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch

with an unpleasant bump.

And the chances are, then,

that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,

you're not in for much fun.

Un-slumping yourself

is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.

Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.

A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!

Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?

How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...

or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?

Or go around back and sneak in from behind?

Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,

for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused

that you'll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or the waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for the wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

NO!

That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape

all that waiting and staying

You'll find the bright places

where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,

once more you'll ride high!

Ready for anything under the sky.

Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!

There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.

And the magical things you can do with that ball

will make you the winning-est winner of all.

Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,

with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't

Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times

you'll play lonely games too.

Games you can't win

'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!

Whether you like it or not,

Alone will be something

you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance

you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.

There are some, down the road between hither and yon,

that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go

though the weather be foul.

On you will go

though your enemies prowl.

On you will go

though the Hakken-Kraks howl.

Onward up many

a frightening creek,

though your arms may get sore

and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike,

And I know you'll hike far

and face up to your problems

whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,

as you already know.

You'll get mixed up

with many strange birds as you go.

So be sure when you step.

Step with care and great tact

and remember that Life's

a Great Balancing Act.

Just never foget to be dexterous and deft.

And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...

be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray

or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,

You're off to the Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So...get on your way!"

"Get The Facts!"

“What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” -  what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”

- Robert A. Heinlein

And always remember...

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,

however improbable, must be the truth."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/24/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/24/21"

○

"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 3/24/21:

"Capital Goods Orders CRATER. 

Crude Oil POPS. The Creature Feature Continues"

- 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 24th to 25th, 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/

○

- 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...

"Katastrophenhausse"

"Katastrophenhausse"

by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND– "The Germans have marvelous words for things. Katastrophenhausse, for example. Even without knowing the language, you know you’re not going to like it. Yesterday, colleague Tom Dyson reported seeing a glimpse of it coming: "The bond market expects the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to increase by 2.5% per year for the next five years, judging by the difference in yields between the 5-year Treasury and the 5-year inflation-protected Treasury (TIPS). That’s a 12-year high."

Tom quotes The Wall Street Journal for further detail: "Prices are surging for the raw materials used to build American homes. Lumber, one of the biggest costs in home-building after land and labor, has never been more expensive and is more than twice the typical price for this time of year. Crude oil, a starting point for paint, drain pipe, roof shingles and flooring, has shot up more than 80% since October. Copper, which carries water and electricity throughout houses, costs about a third more than it did in the autumn. Prices for granite, insulation, concrete blocks and common brick have all pushed to records in 2021… Drywall and ceramic tiles are short of records but have also climbed."

Crack-Up Boom: You can inflate a tire. You can inflate a balloon. Or you can inflate the money supply… and an economy. It’s this last form of inflation that leads to Katastrophenhausse. It loosens the moorings of a society… so that it is soon floating high above the ground… in a kind of miracle fog, where everything seems possible – even replacing real jobs and real earnings with fake money…And then it crashes.

It was Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises who called it a “Katastrophenhausse,” usually translated as a “crack-up boom.” As you can see, there are two parts to it – the boom… and then the crack-up. Lottery winners often go through a similar phenomenon. First, they get a lot of money. Then, they lose their wives, their jobs, their friends… and finally, their money, too.

So did the Japanese enjoy a catastrophic triumph when they bombed Pearl Harbor. They celebrated for six months. Then, the Battle of Midway marked the beginning of the “Katastrophen” phase. Four years later, Yokohama, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and dozens of other cities were smoking ruins… with 3 million dead, including about 600,000 civilians.

Catastrophic Decision: And now, with the printing presses running night and day, Americans feel like young boys whose school has just burned down. They are enjoying a truant’s delight, a vacation from real life… a brief interlude leavened by counterfeiting.

Last year, the American government – federal and state – made one of the most catastrophic decisions in history, causing mass panic and destroying millions of jobs and small businesses. Then, by printing trillions of new money, it gave the impression that no real harm had been done by the lockdowns… and that the economy can be rescued by printing even more money. According to a recent Bloomberg report – mentioned yesterday – the Biden Bunch is planning to go “Full Katastrophenhausse,” spending another $3 trillion it doesn’t have, in addition to the $1.9 trillion it didn’t have.

Two Sides: Investors are watching… either warily or greedily. On the one hand, older investors are fearful that rising bond yields (up more than 200% since last August) and “inflation” sightings (currently at their highest level in 12 years) will force the Federal Reserve to react with more normal, tighter money policies.

On the other hand, younger players think there is nothing to worry about. Most of them weren’t even born when the last serious bout of inflation occurred in the 1970s. They believe either that inflation is never a problem… or that it is a good thing; it drives up stock prices. (More about that tomorrow…)

Catastrophic Prediction: Here at the Diary, however, we think they are both wrong. In our view, inflation is a problem, and the Fed will not be able to control it. We’ve already gone too far, stayed too long… And now, we can’t get back. Like the Japanese fleet, we wait to be sunk. And here is our prediction. Please cut this out… and put it on your refrigerator. Refer back to it… if it proves prescient. If not, kindly toss it in the waste can…

The first stage of the coming Katastrophenhausse is most likely the “inflation scare.” Scottish economist Russell Napier says that inflation has become not just cyclical but structural. It no longer rises with a growing economy (more demand), but as a matter of government policy. He sees a U.S. inflation rate of 4% by some time next year. That will be enough to set off alarms.

The Fed will make a limp gesture toward “normalizing” interest rates and slowing its asset purchases. Then, stocks and bonds will crash, as investors’ fear puts an end to the Bubble Epoch. This will all happen very quickly. Investors will anticipate Fed action… the Fed will react timidly, hesitantly… Market prices will fall… There will be weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. People will fear deflation/depression/defunding and deleveraging…

And then, all Hell will break loose.

Whatever It Takes: It will then become obvious that either the nation endures the Katastrophe it has coming… or the feds make it worse by once again printing up more fake money to try to stall it. We know how that will turn out…

The politicians will be out in force, promising to “protect hardworking families.” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen will tell Congress it needs to act immediately, “or we may not have an economy on Monday.” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will pledge to do “whatever it takes” to keep the jig up. But none of it – neither the BS words nor the BS money – will stop the crack-up.

More to come…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Greg Hunter, "They Are Hiding the Losses"

"They Are Hiding the Losses"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter has been predicting the financial system is going to go down sooner than later. He says the signs are the lies being told to the public to try to hold the system together. Holter explains, “If you look at everything, nothing is natural. Everything is contrived. We are lied to about pretty much everything 24/7. They lied about everything regarding Covid. They have lied about the election. They are lying about the unemployment rate. They are lying about inflation. They are lying about the true amount of total debt outstanding. They are lying about everything. And one other tidbit, 36% of all dollars outstanding have been created now, were created in the last 12 months. Oh, and the Fed is no longer going to publish M2. How can you make a business decision if you don’t know how much money is outstanding?”

This leads us to all the digital dollars sloshing around and Crypto currencies. Holter says, “Crypto currencies are a perceived exit from the system. They are perceived as a safe haven. If Bitcoin, which is nothing but digital air, can become $65,000 per unit, what can something real become worth? What these crypto currencies are doing is illustrating a debasement of all the fiat currencies.”

Bill Holter says big loses in the financial world are being hidden from the public. Take real estate, for example. Holter points out, “The average mall in the United States is appraised 60% lower than it was a year ago. That’s a 60% drop. It’s now worth 40%. There is debt on these things they owe. These malls were not bought, built and created out of cash. They were created with credit. So, now, the underlying collateral has crumbled, but because the bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions have a moratorium on them, from single family homes all the way up to the malls, you are not actually getting to see the real pricing. The devastation has happened, but it’s not become public - yet. 11 million houses across the country are behind on their mortgage payments - 11 million houses. Putting that moratorium on means all that does is hide what really happened. The central banks have become the buyers of last resort. If it were not for the central banks (printing massive amounts of money), it would be game over. It’s not natural for the central banks to do what they are doing, but they have to because the system cannot survive without life support. This economy is a patient that has been on life support for more than 12 years.”

In closing, Holter says, “I have no idea on the timing. Could it be in April? Yes, and it could be tomorrow. It is mathematical that the system will implode because there is more debt outstanding than can ever be repaid. That tells you there has to be a default. Either a default of non-payment or, the more likely and more politically acceptable, just smoke the currencies. Make the debt payable by devaluing them by 40% or 90%. Currencies are going to get smoked.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with financial

 writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter of JSMineset.com.

- https://rumble.com/

"Welcome to the Winter of Our Discontent"

"Welcome to the Winter of Our Discontent"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Wall Street's euphoria knows no bounds, so how can this be the Winter of Our Discontent? We all know the source of Wall Street's euphoria: $1.9 trillion in stimulus, followed by another $3 trillion for corporate welfare, oops, I mean infrastructure, and a Federal Reserve whose solution to destabilizing wealth and income inequality is to make the rich even richer because, well, that's what we do here at the Federal Reserve.

An old adage holds that what everybody else already knows has little value. So everybody knows about the Fed's endless spew of monetary giveaways to Wall Street and the federal government's endless trillions in borrow-and-blow stimulus, but does everyone already know that the stimulus-based economy and all the Fed-inflated asset bubbles are completely phony?

Yes, phony. Does everyone already know that none of the promises that have been made to you can possibly be kept?

• "Free" (to you) healthcare: no.

• Future Social Security payments with an equivalent purchasing power to the checks issued today: no.

• A national currency that holds its value into the future: no.

• High-functioning public infrastructure: no.

• A working democracy in which citizens can affect change even if the power structure defends a dysfunctional, corrupt status quo: no.

• An affordable higher education system that prepares its graduates for entrepreneurial jobs in the real-world economy: no.

• Cheap, abundant fossil fuels and reliable surpluses of electricity: no.

• High returns on low-risk savings: no.

• A government that can borrow endless trillions of dollars with no impact on interest rates or the real economy: no.

• Pay raises that keep up with real-world inflation: no.

• Ever-rising corporate profits: no.

• A status quo that actually ends privilege instead of cloaking it with PC PR: no. (Recall I wrote an entire book about institutionalized privilege and inequality: "Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege.")

• A system that encourages the launching of new real-world businesses: no, no, no, a thousand times no.

• A status quo that has some realistic plan to impose Cold Turkey withdrawal on all of Wall Street's junkies addicted to Fed smack: you must be joking. The junkies are running the entire financial system.

The faint glimmerings of reality leaking through the public-relations blitz is the first light of The Winter of Our Discontent. The Federal Reserve's apologists and lackeys are speaking 21 times this week, all to reassure the Wall Street junkies and dealers that the Fed's supply of smack is infinite. Why don't we just rename the Fed The Ministry of Propaganda? Wouldn't a dash of calling it what it really is be refreshing?

If you think this scale of stimulus is sustainable and consequence-free, you must be mainlining Delusionol. According to the Fed's apologists and the political class, Spring is here and will last forever. This chart says The Winter of Our Discontent has yet to start, but the first signs are visible to those willing to look past the PR."

- //www.oftwominds.com/

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"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

- Charles Darwin, "A Tale Of Two Cities"

Freely download "A Tale Of Two Cities", by Charles Darwin, here:

- https://www.planetebook.com/

"A Housing Crash Is Ahead: Construction Shortages And High Interest Rates Will Bust Housing Bubble"

Full screen recommended.

"A Housing Crash Is Ahead: Construction Shortages 

And High Interest Rates Will Bust Housing Bubble"

by Epic Economist

"An extreme housing crash is ahead! In face of highly inflated home prices, rising mortgage rates, shortages of construction materials, an anemic inventory, and the coming expiration of the mortgage forbearance period, consumer confidence hit record lows. Even though the housing market boomed in 2020, while several sectors of the economy collapsed, it has significantly cooled this year, and experts are warning that its reckoning day may be at the corner. Industry specialists have reported that, at this point, the housing market has exceeded bubble levels, and they worry the remarkable slowdown registered since the beginning of 2021 will inevitably set the stage for a major price correction in the coming months. And that's what we're going to analyze in this video.

According to the assessment of the former Chief Economist at Alliance Bernstein and financial analyst, Joe Carson, there is an underestimation of how serious the housing inflation problem actually is. The gap between the actual change in house prices and owners' rent largely exceeds the "bubble" levels. Last month, owner's rent went up 2% over the past 12 months. Conversely, house price inflation soared 11.4%.

That gap over 900 basis points outstrips the 800 basis point gap registered during the last housing bubble peak of 2007-08. On one hand, surging home prices led to an affordability crisis that is keeping first-time home buyers outside of the market, while, on the other hand, it has contributed to a massive increase in household net worth, hitting an astonishing $12 trillion in 2020, with nearly half of this figure generated by an unprecedented gain in equities' market valuation.

Although high wealth-to-income ratios alone aren't predictive of a crash, they have proven to be signs of vulnerability and tipping points. In short, just as we've seen during the months that preceded the previous housing crash, household portfolios are oversized and unbalanced, fueled by a massive gain in a single asset, and such conditions make the market vulnerable to abrupt and sharp corrections.

The most critical vulnerability for household portfolios is an acute rise in market interest rates. Carson stressed that market interest rates will have to readjust upward, calibrating the liquidity needs of the economy and finance. But keeping in mind that several market watchers are predicting a 2% 10-year yield - which is only 40 basis points higher than from current levels - would trigger a stock market crash of at least 20%, can you even imagine how sharp the next housing market crash would be if 10-year yields rose to 3%?

Yields are already rising, bond prices are collapsing, and mortgage rates have started to soar. The Mortgage News Daily reported that last Friday, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate hit 3.45%, an increase of 70 basis points from the low at the end of December, which was at 2.75%.

In February, sales of existing homes fell by 6.6% from January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.22 million homes, according to a report released by the National Association of Realtors yesterday. Additionally, several new home contracts were canceled due to an uptick in the cost of lumber and other construction materials. Lumber prices skyrocketed more than 170% over the past year, adding over $24,000 to the cost of a new home. Metal products, concrete, appliances, and other expenses are also surging due to the latest supply chain breakdown.

Jerry Howard, the CEO of the National Association of Home Builders explained that “first-time homebuyers are the ones that really drive the housing market,” and since affordability has weakened substantially, particularly for first-time homebuyers home price growth is fast exceeding income growth, which means the current home valuations are becoming increasingly more unsustainable.

It's important to remember that weaker affordability will be the key driver for a slowdown in housing this year. If buyers can't afford to pay the price, prices will have to adjust. In view of all of these unbalances, all signs are indicating that a price correction is not a mere "possibility", but just a matter of time.

The market is losing its ability to sustain itself because it has gone way too far, especially because this extraordinary rally is happening right in the middle of one of the worst recessions we've ever had. And circumstances are not working in favor of any sort of improvement. Instead, everything around us is collapsing.

Supply chains are breaking, constructions are being halted, unemployment is still growing, wages are decaying and higher mortgage rates will likely be the pin that will pop the housing price bubble. All things considered, we can expect the next housing market crash to be the most extreme in all US history. All evidence is here. But there are none so blind as those who will not see."

-  https://www.epiceconomist.com

"Clear Focus Isochronic Tones Ambient Space Music for Focus and Concentration"

Jason Lewis - Mind Amend,

"Clear Focus Isochronic Tones Ambient 

Space Music for Focus and Concentration"

"What is this? This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session which produces deep focus for complex tasks. This upbeat study music mix uses isochronic tones, with beta wave tones to help you reach and maintain a high focus mental state. Use when working on complicated topics or any complex mental activity. Isochronic tones produce a stronger and more powerful brainwave entrainment effect, compared to binaural beats study music tracks or standard music.

How is this session constructed? The session starts off beating at 10Hz (which can help with memorization and learning), and ramps up to 14Hz (which will help with increasing focus and concentration).  It stays at 14Hz until the final 5 minutes where it ramps back down again.

How to use it? Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on.

Headphones are NOT required: Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds. 

A Comment: I've used this all day yesterday and today while blogging, and am extremely pleased with the effect it's had. Turn it on, go about your business. It works, as simple as that. We're in the fight of our lives, and for our lives, folks, whether you can face that fact or not. I for one will take any advantage, any edge, I can get to improve survival chances. You should, too. Use this, with my highest recommendation. 

- CP 

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Critical! Crude Craters, Stocks Fall. Calls for Many Trillions Of More Debt"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Situation Critical! Crude Craters, Stocks Fall.

Calls for Many Trillions Of More Debt"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Housing Crash Will Be Catastrophic; Flaunting Wealth; The Church Has Failed You"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Housing Crash Will Be Catastrophic; 

Flaunting Wealth; The Church Has Failed You"

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: Vaccine Money, Drug Dealers & Money Junkies Save the World"

Gerald Celente,

"Trends Journal: Vaccine Money, 

Drug Dealers & Money Junkies Save the World"

"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/

As only Gerald can, lol

Musical Interlude: The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"; "Eye In The Sky"

The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

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Full screen!

The Alan Parsons Project, "Eye In The Sky"

"A Look to the Heavens, With Chet Raymo"

“Reaching For The Stars”

by Chet Raymo

“Here is a spectacular detail of the Eagle Nebula, a gassy star-forming region of the Milky Way Galaxy, about 7,000 light-years away. This particular spire of gas and dust was recently featured on APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). The Eagle lies in the equatorial constellation Serpens. If you went out tonight and looked at this part of the sky - more or less midway between Arcturus and Antares - you might see nothing at all. The brightest star in Serpens is of the third magnitude, perhaps invisible in an urban environment. No part of the Eagle Nebula is available to unaided human vision. How big is the nebula in the sky? Hold a pinhead at arm's length and it would just about cover the spire. I like to think about things not mentioned in the APOD descriptions.

If the Sun were at the bottom of the spire, Alpha centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, would be about halfway up the column. Sirius, the brightest star in Earth's sky, would be near the top. Let's say you sent out a spacecraft from the bottom of the spire that travelled at the speed of the two Voyager craft that are now traversing the outer reaches of the Solar System. It would take more than 200,000 years to reach the top of the spire.

The Hubble Space Telescope cost a lot of money to build, deploy, and operate. It has done a lot of good science. But perhaps the biggest return on the investment is to turn on ordinary folks like you and me to the scale and complexity of the universe. The human brain evolved, biologically and culturally, in a universe conceived on the human scale. We resided at its center. The stars were just up there on the dome of night. The Sun and Moon attended our desires. "All the world's a stage," wrote Shakespeare, and he meant it literally; the cosmos was designed by a benevolent creator as a stage for the human drama. All of that has gone by the board. Now we can travel in our imagination for 200,000 years along a spire of glowing, star-birthing gas that is only the tiniest fragment of a nebula that is only the tiniest fragment of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions of galaxies we can potentially see with our telescopes.

Most of us still live psychologically in the universe of Dante and Shakespeare. The biggest intellectual challenge of our times is how to bring our brains up to speed. How to shake our imaginations out of the slumber of centuries. How to learn to live purposefully in a universe that is apparently indifferent to the human drama. How to stretch the human story to match the light-years.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Barbara Crooker, "In the Middle..."

"In the Middle..."

"In the middle

of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,

struggling for balance, juggling time.

The mantle clock that was my grandfather's

has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time

to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,

the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,

green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,

and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,

our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn

again how to love, between morning's quick coffee

and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,

mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies

twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;

his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,

Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging

us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,

sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh

of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up

in love, running out of time."

~ Barbara Crooker