"Ka-Boom Time!"

"Ka-Boom Time!"

by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "What a jolly time. A boo… boo… ka-boom! JPMorgan Chase CEO and chairman Jamie Dimon sees it coming: "I have little doubt that with excess savings, new stimulus savings, huge deficit spending, more QE, a new potential infrastructure bill, a successful vaccine, and euphoria around the end of the pandemic, the U.S. economy will likely boom. This boom could easily run into 2023 because all the spending could extend well into 2023."

Yes… all that stimmy money… all that fake, new cash and credit… so many boondoggles… so many Madoffs… so little time. So many new “investments”… and with no sure money, no way to know what they are worth.

Here’s The Intelligencer with the boomy news: "Last week, fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits than at any time since March 2020. Last month, retail sales in the U.S. rose by 9.8 percent, the largest increase in nearly a year. Factory activity in the state of New York just hit its highest level since 2017; in Philadelphia, manufacturers are now more confident about business conditions than they have been since 1973. As of this writing, U.S. stock values have hit an all-time high. All of this news is better than expected. And yet the yield on U.S. Treasury bonds declined Thursday morning - a sign that global investors believe America can have its post-COVID economic boom and its low inflation, too."

Two Kinds of Boom: Yes, but wait. The trouble with booms is that there is more than one kind. There’s the kind of boom that makes people richer. And there’s the kind of boom that makes them poorer. A further complication is that, in the early stages, it’s hard to tell the two apart. A real boom – based on working, saving, investing, and innovating – makes you richer and better off. The other kind… the fake boom… is another thing altogether. You just print up some money and pass it out all over town.

Pretty soon, things start to happen. Even “better than expected” things. People spend. Cash registers make a joyful sound – ka-ching! – especially the ones in China, Vietnam, and Mexico, where Americans tend to spend most of their stimmy money. The last 12 months were unique in that respect. Shutting down the local service economy – restaurants, bars, hotels, and theaters – left Americans with money on their hands. What did they do with it? They bought new refrigerators. Spending on “consumer durables” rose 17% over the last 12 months, partly explaining last month’s almost 7% rise in import prices.

A fake boom doesn’t add to prosperity; it reduces it, by squandering real wealth – time and resources – on projects that don’t pay off. Giveaways, for example. Political payoffs. And bad investments. More money for the unemployed. More for Amtrak. More for “socially disadvantaged farmers.” And more money for cryptos, SPACs , NFTs, and Elon Musk.

Parade of Lunacy: But at least a fake boom is more entertaining than a real boom. The latter is all sobriety and hard work, while the former sets in motion a glorious parade of lunacy. Here at the Diary, we watch them go by – the madmen… the imposters… the shysters… and the world improvers. We gawk. We salute. We toss confetti. We would shake up a bottle of champagne and spray it over them… if we were that sort of fellow.

If only you could get rich by spending money you don’t have on things you can’t afford and don’t really need anyway! But you can’t. And over time, every detail of the fake boom is destined to be exposed as counterfeit. Especially the “low inflation.”

The feds are now proposing a 50-year Treasury bond to let investors take advantage of the next half-century of stable prices. So you see, even they haven’t completely lost their sense of humor. Or else they are insane, too.

What Inflation Looks Like: When you increase the supply of money – with no offsetting increase in goods and services – you should expect rising prices. But not always where or when you expect them. The monetary foundation of the U.S. used to be in Fort Knox. But now, since there is no longer any connection between U.S. gold and U.S. money, the closest thing to a monetary base is the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. That tells us how much new money the Fed has “printed.”

When the 21st century began, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at about $600 billion. Today, it is almost $8 trillion, with nearly half of that added in the last 12 months alone.

It Also Looks Like This: The Fed’s balance sheet is what enables so much federal borrowing… and U.S. debt.

The U.S. borrows by selling bonds. Grosso modo, the Fed buys them with money it specially creates for the occasion. The total U.S. debt at the beginning of the 21st century stood at $5.7 trillion. Twenty-one years later, the total is over $28 trillion.

That’s inflation too, right there – in the federales’ accounts. It has already disrupted the financial system and corrupted capitalism. Companies no longer invest their capital to earn more capital; now, they buy their own shares… or, like MicroStrategy (MSTR), they buy bitcoin (more below). After all, the central bank has been lending money to its member banks at below zero (below the real rate of inflation) for most of the last 11 years. That alone is bound to cause distortions.

Freak Show: We’ve enjoyed laughing at some of these grotesqueries over the last few days and weeks – Dogecoin, MicroStrategy (a company whose business strategy is simply to turn itself into a bag of bitcoin), a single-pixel NFT, Tesla (TSLA)… the list is long, and includes the nearly 40% of small-cap companies on the Russell 2000 index that are not profitable.

Bitcoin rose eight times in the last 12 months. Dogecoin is up almost 8,000% since the beginning of the year. And household financial assets, which include stocks and bonds as well as savings accounts, have gone up nearly twice as fast as GDP for the last 30 years.

Last week, the press added another freak to the show – reporting that a single deli in New Jersey, serving some $14,000 worth of sandwiches in 2020, sported a market cap of more than $100 million.

Over at Bloomberg, Matt Levine pointed out that after the news came out, the deli became the “laughingstock” of the financial world. There is no way the deli is really worth $100 million. And everybody knows it. But such are the marvels of the late Bubble Epoch that we no longer know what anything is really worth.

Big Joke: After chuckling at the deli story all weekend, Matt Levine checked trading yesterday. Trading volume on the tiny flimflam had soared. But the company was still worth more than $100,000,000. Traders didn’t seem to care that it was an absurd price. It’s all part of the joke. “You bought the deli? Ha… ha… ha…” That’s inflation. Yuck it up while you can."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Economic Market Snapshot 4/20/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot 4/20/21"

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"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

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/20/21:

"Important FReaKSh0w Updates. 

Inflation, The Central Planners" 

- https://traderschoice.net/

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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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/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

April 19th to 21st, Updated Daily 

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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."

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

April 20, 2021, "Tsunami Warning"

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

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Oh yeah...

"Retail Apocalypse Continues: 1 Of 3 US Stores Are Closed And 80,000 More Bankruptcies Are Expected"

Full screen recommended.

"Retail Apocalypse Continues: 1 Of 3 US Stores 

Are Closed And 80,000 More Bankruptcies Are Expected"

by Epic Economist

"If you're seeing increasingly more darkening storefronts and empty stores at shopping centers and malls, you're not the only one. The retail apocalypse continues to ravage the U.S. economic landscape and the staggering number of closed stores illustrates the severity of the hurricane blowing through the sector over the past few years. However, since the burst of the sanitary outbreak, the industry's downfall seems to have been greatly accelerated, and now major US retail chains and shopping malls are on the edge of extinction as new consumer preferences might have changed the market for good.

In 2020, roughly 200 department store chains have completely disappeared, and rock bottom is not even here yet. Another 800 - which represent nearly half the country’s remaining mall-based locations - are expected to close by the end of 2025. That, in turn, will have a massive impact on malls, since department stores account for approximately one out of every three square feet in such properties. The alarming number of store closures registered so far and the consequent cascading effect caused on shopping malls across the country - which are already suffering from record-high vacancy rates and precipitous declines in foot traffic - are also on weighting upon the commercial real estate market and the broader economy.

In essence, department stores used to be the American middle-class preferred shopping alternative, but the sector had been slowly decaying long before the health crisis turbocharged online shopping and drove multiple iconic US retailers to bankruptcy. Now, their collapse is directly affecting local labor markets and local communities. Unfortunately, those lost jobs are likely to never come back and the vast majority of closed doors will never be reopened.

Last May, Neiman Marcus, Stage Stores, and J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcy, followed by Lord & Taylor and, most recently, Belk in February. Even companies in relatively stable conditions have shuttered dozens of physical stores due to significant revenue drops. Big names like Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Kohl’s have reported steep sales declines since the health crisis started and slashed demand for shoes, clothes, and formalwear, which disproportionately fill their stores. According to industry experts, apparel stores are "in the eye of the storm," as they registered the highest rates of default in 2020 and still are facing other long-term pressures, such as lower foot traffic.

A recent Washington Post analysis of corporate earnings releases and annual reports pointed out that the country’s largest department store chains have permanently closed almost 40% of their locations since 2016. And UBS is estimating that about 80,000 more stores will be shut down by 2026. The industry's challenges extend way beyond short-term sales figures. They also must deal with questions about the viability of shopping malls, particularly because vacancy rates reached 11.4% in the first quarter.

“The department store genre has been taking the great American shopping mall down with it, slowly but inevitably,” said Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University who was previously the CEO of multiple department store chains in the US and Canada. In face of that bleak outlook, Coresight Research estimated that 25% of America's nearly 1,000 malls will close by 2025. Oftentimes, department store closures in malls trigger a wave of closures by other businesses within the mall, leaving the owner no other alternative rather than repurposing the property or getting rid of it entirely.

A recent Vox article outlined that the U.S. shrinking middle-class is also contributing to the demise of department stores and shopping centers, and the problems mount back to the aftermath of the Great Recession, when "the vast majority of income growth in the US has gone to high-income households, squeezing middle-class households and altering where they spend money. As a result, chains that sell brands at sharp discounts like TJ Maxx, Ross, and Dollar General have become more popular, siphoning away shoppers from full-price department stores like Macy’s and J.C. Penney that were designed to cater to a stronger middle class."

Today, even if we could snap our fingers and come back to the era of retail glory, it wouldn’t solve the industry's key societal and macroeconomic problems connected to its decline. All determinants were already piling up on the sidelines to drive the sector to a reckoning, and the health crisis triggered an existential crisis that will lead to the extinction of many of our previously beloved brands and shopping locations, further jeopardizing our prospects for a recovery while compromising income growth of several groups for years to come."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

“Bitcoin To Be Outlawed? Currency Crisis; Survival Of Financial Fittest”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Bitcoin To Be Outlawed? Currency Crisis;

 Survival Of Financial Fittest”

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/19/21: "The Central Planners: Prices Are About To Rise Even Higher, Faster!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/19/21:

"The Central Planners: 

Prices Are About To Rise Even Higher, Faster!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Falling Through Time"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Falling Through Time"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 light-years.

Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, all the stars of M34 are about 200 million years young. But like any open star cluster orbiting in the plane of our galaxy, M34 will eventually disperse as it experiences gravitational tides and encounters with the Milky Way’s interstellar clouds and other stars. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open star cluster.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html

Chet Raymo, “The Ring of Truth”

“The Ring of Truth”

by Chet Raymo

“In Salley Vickers’ novel, “Where Three Roads Meet,” the shade of Tiresias, the blind seer of the Oedipus myth, visits Sigmund Freud in London during the psychoanalyst’s final terrible illness. In a series of conversations, Tiresias retells the story of Oedipus - he who was fated to kill his father and sleep with his mother – a story at the heart of Freud’s own theory of the human psyche. At one point in the conversations, as Tiresias and Freud discuss the extent to which our lives are fated, the question of immortality arises. Freud says of Oedipus that “he made his story into an immortal one, so far as any story is.” And Tiresias replies, “But, Dr. Freud, stories are all we humans have to make us immortal.”

Oedipus lives on, whether he lived or not in actuality. Sophocles lives in our consciousness as vigorously as ever he did in life. They live because their stories touch something resonant and unchanging in human nature. Vickers suggests that what makes the Oedipal story immortal is not any necessary tendency of humans to act out the Oedipal myth, a la Freud, but rather Oedipus’s rage to know the truth - or become conscious of a truth he has known all along and suppressed – even though the truth will be his undoing. 

The poet Muriel Rukesyser got it exactly right when she said: “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Even atoms are stories we tell about the world, having first paid close attention to how the world works. The plays of Sophocles and the other Greek dramatists live on not because their authors were immortal, but because nature endures and their stories tell us something that rings true about enduring nature. And, like Oedipus, we have a rage to know, even if knowledge will unseat some of our more comfortable illusions.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"It's Human Nature..."

“We’ve all heard the warnings and we’ve ignored them. We push our luck. We roll the dice. It’s human nature. When we’re told not to touch something we usually do even if we know better. Maybe because deep down, we’re just asking for trouble.”

- “Meredith Grey”, “Gray’s Anatomy”

Well, it seems we've gotten what we asked for...and then some.

"The Bamboozle..."

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

- Carl Sagan

"How Empires End"

"How Empires End"

by Jeff Thomas

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." – Thomas Jefferson

Histories are generally written by academics. They, quite naturally, tend to focus on the main events: the wars and the struggles between leaders and their opponents (both external and internal). Whilst these are interesting stories to read, academics, by their very nature, often overlook the underlying causes for an empire’s decline.

Today, as in any era, most people are primarily interested in the "news" - the daily information regarding the world’s political leaders and their struggles with one another to obtain, retain, and expand their power. When the history is written about the era we are passing through, it will reflect, in large measure, a rehash of the news. As the media of the day tend to overlook the fact that present events are merely symptoms of an overall decline, so historians tend to focus on major events, rather than the "slow operations" that have been the underlying causes.

The Persian Empire: When, as a boy, I was "educated" about the decline and fall of the Persian Empire, I learned of the final takeover by Alexander the Great but was never told that, in its decline, Persian taxes became heavier and more oppressive, leading to economic depression and revolts, which, in turn led to even heavier taxes and increased repression. Increasingly, kings hoarded gold and silver, keeping it out of circulation from the community. This hamstrung the market, as monetary circulation was insufficient to conduct business. By the time Alexander came along, Persia, weakened by warfare and internal economic strife, was a shell of an empire and was relatively easy to defeat.

The Tang Dynasty: Back then, I also learned that the Tang Dynasty ended as a result of the increased power amongst the eunuchs, battles with fanzhen separatists, and finally, peasants’ revolts. True enough, but I was not taught that the dynasty’s expansion-based warfare demanded increases in taxation, which led to the revolts. Continued warfare necessitated increasing monetary and land extortion by the eunuchs, resulting in an abrupt decrease in food output and further taxes. Finally, as economic deterioration and oppression of the citizenry worsened, citizens left the area entirely for more promise elsewhere.

Is there a pattern here? Let’s have a more detailed look - at another empire.

The Spanish Empire: In 1556, Philip II of Spain inherited what was regarded as Europe’s most wealthy nation, with no apparent economic problems. Yet, by 1598, Spain was bankrupt. How was this possible? Spain was doing well but sought to become a major power. To achieve this, Philip needed more tax dollars. Beginning in 1561, the existing servicio tax was regularized, and the crusada tax, the excusado tax, and the millones tax were all added by 1590.

Over a period of 39 years (between 1559 and 1598) taxes increased by 430%. Although the elite of the day were exempt from taxation (the elite of today are not officially exempt), the average citizen was taxed to the point that both business expansion and public purchasing diminished dramatically. Wages did not keep pace with the resultant inflation. The price of goods rose 400%, causing a price revolution and a tax revolution.

Although Spain enjoyed a flood of gold and silver from the Americas at this time, the increased wealth went straight into Philip’s war efforts. However, the 100,000 troops were soon failing to return sufficient spoils to Philip to pay for their forays abroad. In a final effort to float the doomed empire, Philip issued government bonds, which provided immediate cash but created tremendous debt that, presumably, would need to be repaid one day. (The debt grew to 8.8 times GDP.) Spain declared bankruptcy. Trade slipped to other countries. The military, fighting on three fronts, went unpaid, and military aspirations collapsed.

It is important to note that, even as the empire was collapsing, Philip did not suspend warfare. He did not back off on taxation. Like leaders before and since, he instead stubbornly increased his autocracy as the empire slid into collapse.

Present-Day Empires: Again, the events above are not taught to schoolchildren as being of key importance in the decline of empires, even though they are remarkably consistent with the decline of other empires and what we are seeing today. The very same events occur, falling like dominoes, more or less in order, in any empire, in any age:

• The reach of government leaders habitually exceeds their grasp.

• Dramatic expansion (generally through warfare) is undertaken without a clear plan as to how that expansion is to be financed.

• The population is overtaxed as the bills for expansion become due, without consideration as to whether the population can afford increased taxation.

• Heavy taxation causes investment by the private sector to diminish, and the economy begins to decline.

• Costs of goods rise, without wages keeping pace.

• Tax revenue declines as the economy declines (due to excessive taxation). Taxes are increased again, in order to top up government revenues.

• In spite of all the above, government leaders personally hoard as much as they can, further limiting the circulation of wealth in the business community.

• Governments issue bonds and otherwise borrow to continue expansion, with no plan as to repayment.

• Dramatic authoritarian control is instituted to assure that the public continues to comply with demands, even if those demands cannot be met by the public.

• Economic and social collapse occurs, often marked by unrest and riots, the collapse of the economy, and the exit of those who are productive.

• In this final period, the empire turns on itself, treating its people as the enemy.

The above review suggests that if our schoolbooks stressed the underlying causes of empire collapse, rather than the names of famous generals and the dates of famous battles, we might be better educated and be less likely to repeat the same mistakes. Unfortunately, this is unlikely. Chances are, future leaders will be just as uninterested in learning from history as past leaders. They will create empires, then destroy them.

Even the most informative histories of empire decline, such as "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon, will not be of interest to the leaders of empires. They will believe that they are above history and that they, uniquely, will succeed. If there is any value in learning from the above, it is the understanding that leaders will not be dissuaded from their aspirations. They will continue to charge ahead, both literally and figuratively, regardless of objections and revolts from the citizenry.

Once an empire has reached stage eight above, it never reverses. It is a "dead empire walking" and only awaits the painful playing-out of the final three stages. At that point, it is foolhardy in the extreme to remain and "wait it out" in the hope that the decline will somehow reverse. At that point, the wiser choice might be to follow the cue of the Chinese, the Romans, and others, who instead chose to quietly exit for greener pastures elsewhere."

- internationalman.com

The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "Love That, Not Man Apart From That"

"Love That, Not Man Apart From That"

"Then what is the answer? Not to be deluded by dreams.

To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness.
These dreams will not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly.
Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things,
the divine beauty of the universe.
Love that, not man apart from that,
or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken."

- Robinson Jeffers

The Daily "Near You?"

Moscow, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Fools and Their Money Get Together"

"Fools and Their Money Get Together"

by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "When the money goes, everything goes. Today, we look at what went last week. Yes, Dear Reader, at this late, degenerate stage of the Bubble Epoch, nothing is so crazy… so absurd… or so appalling that it isn’t front-page news. And from Capitol Hill last week came the usual pernicious headlines.

First, the Democrats say they want to pack the Supreme Court, to make it easier for them to do any fool thing they want. Second, they want to pave the way for giving reparations to people whose families suffer – allegedly – from a wrong done to their ancestors 170 years ago. And that doesn’t include all the other nonsense on the agenda – forgiving student debt, providing regular stimmy checks, another $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” boondoggle, etc., etc.

Arbitrary Rearrangement of Wealth: When money is no object, no object is too asinine to spend it on. Economist John Maynard Keynes described it in 1919: "By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

[…]. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery."

Some get rich from the government’s “arbitrary rearrangement” of wealth. Those on the receiving end – contractors, connivers, and cronies – do well. But the disorder soon spreads to the rest of the economy, where money itself… and the process of getting and spending it… becomes a joke.

Great Visionaries: In this respect, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer must be viewed as great visionaries. On December 6, 2013, they launched Dogecoin – a cryptocurrency that was apparently half serious and half spoof. From the very beginning, the one-liners kept coming. Two weeks after the launch, the crypto money went up 300% in 72 hours – to be worth $0.00095 each! Six days later, the system was hacked. Millions of coins were stolen. By 2017, the Dogecoin market was worth $2 billion.

January, 2020 – a price spike sent the coin up 800% in 24 hours, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk began posting mysterious tweets. “No highs, no Lows, only Doge,” quoth the oracle. Last week, a big runup put Dogecoin up almost 8,000% for the year. Whoopee! “Hey guys. I just became a Dogecoin millionaire,” announced one Reddit user. Another anonymous enthusiast (perhaps with the initials, EM?) apparently now has a $15 billion fortune – based on his Dogecoin holdings alone (assuming he has not lost the key to his wallet.)

Missing the Point: What do you do when you have that kind of money? It is strange “wealth,” neither clearly the fruit of win-win nor of win-lose. It is more like win – huh? What can you do with that kind of “win-huh?” money? How about buying a Non-Fungible Token (NFT)? Last week, too, set new records in the NFT market. Here’s ABC News: "An NFT called The Pixel — an image of a single pixel — was also up for auction, fetching $US1,355,555 million after a 90-minute bidding battle. The artist is known only as Pak, with the Twitter handle @muratpak.

NFTs are an almost perfect match for cryptocurrencies. They provide what we like to call a safe space for the digital fantasists (SSDF).Normally, things (and people, too) are judged on two basic criteria. They are either useful or decorative. If they are neither, they have no value. But in this new SSDF, weird money meets weird consumer items – neither of which has any physical form – and they live happily ever after. NFTs have no utility. Nor are they much fun to look at. The Pixel piece is just a square of gray.

And if you’re looking for value in an NFT like The Pixel… or in Dogecoin… or in the hundreds – maybe thousands – of publicly traded, money-losing U.S. companies… or in the U.S. dollar… or in federal financial policies – you are missing the point. They are valuable precisely because they have no value. They have neither utility nor aesthetic value. They destroy real wealth; they don’t create it. But the more wealth they destroy, the more important they become. Does that make sense? We didn’t think so.

Who Gets It? But we’re trying to connect some pretty slippery dots – like beads of mercury in a hot skillet – so stick with us. When the money is fake, people change their attitudes towards it. If you are a politician… whether Donald Trump or Elizabeth Warren… you want to “go big” with some monumental program – like the Great Pyramid of Giza – that will signal your greatness for years. If you are an artist, you create an NFT. Even cooler, you sell it, letting it be known that you think the buyer is a moron. Cooler still, you buy it… And coolest of all if you pay far too much money for it. You say to your friends, “I paid a million dollars for this.” And your friends think you are an idiot. But you’re a very cool idiot… one who “gets it” and can afford to throw away a million dollars to prove it.

Big Fraud: Gets what? That “money” no longer represents real worth. And that by spending it recklessly, he is throwing swill before swine. A man can buy a box at the Super Bowl without honest toil, without saving, without starting a business, nor by increasing the world’s wealth with useful or decorative output. He might have simply bought Dogecoin… or got a stimmy check… or put his money in the stock market and let the Federal Reserve make him rich. The meaning of “wealth” itself has evolved towards what the Fed has made it – a gamble and a lottery. But also a fraud. And it is such a big fraud that – one way or another, winner or loser – we are all in on it."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Knaves And Fools..."

"There are more fools than knaves in the world,

 else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."

- Samuel Butler

"Vast Stretches Of America Have Now Descended 

Into A State Of Deep Economic Hopelessness"

by Michael Snyder

"Even though the stock market has been booming and the corporate media is full of talk about “recovery”, there are many communities in the United States where a permanent atmosphere of despair seems to hang in the air. The federal government gives us doctored numbers that show that the national unemployment rate is low, but in small towns all across the country it seems like almost everyone is either unemployed or working extremely low paying jobs. Earlier this month, one such town was profiled by USA Today. Even before the COVID pandemic came along, the little town of Ogdensburg, New York was deeply struggling, but now economic conditions have become extremely dire…

"Ogdensburg is tiny and desperately poor, so it experiences these national trends in concentrated form. The median house in this city of 10,000 people sells for $68,000, according to the U.S. Census. The average family earns $42,000 a year, and 2,300 residents live below the federal poverty line, giving Ogdensburg a poverty rate 75% higher than the rest of New York State.

Then the economy closed. The governments of Canada and the United States tried to limit the spread of COVID-19 by shutting the international border, including the curvy suspension bridge between Ogdensburg and Prescott, Ontario. In the small industrial park east of town, the few remaining warehouses and Canadian-owned factories shut down. The hospital in Ogdensburg furloughed 174 people. Most restaurants and grocery stores stayed open, primarily by firing every person they could. Like millions of other Americans, most people living in Ogdensburg are just trying to find some way to survive month after month."

The fact that stock market investors are rolling in giant mountains of cash doesn’t matter to the citizens of Ogdensburg. At this point the city government is “nearly bankrupt”, and the latest economic downturn has fueled “a spike in narcotics overdoses and deaths”… "The economic collapse fueled further crises. Ogdensburg’s city government is nearly bankrupt, says City Manager Stephen Jellie. Stores that depend on customers crossing the border from Canada are nearly empty. The pandemic closed 12-step groups across the St. Lawrence Valley, causing a spike in narcotics overdoses and deaths."

Ogdensburg’s struggles started 62 years before the pandemic, when the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway destroyed the city’s port. Now the city faces so many problems simultaneously, it’s difficult for people here to imagine what “recovery” even means.

Of course Ogdensburg is far from alone. Similar articles could have been written about thousands of other towns and cities from coast to coast. There is so much economic pain out there right now, and it is getting worse with each passing month.

As he drives to work each day, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gets a firsthand view of the economic suffering that he has helped to cause. Just two blocks away from his office, a tent city has sprung up that just keeps growing and growing… "As he drove past the intersection of 21st and E streets in Northwest Washington, a 68-year-old man peered through the window,struck by an encampment of homeless people here that grew from 10 tents to 20 in the past year. Then 30. Now 40.

The people living in those tents had no idea that their burgeoning village kept this man, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, up at night, or that he kept thinking about them as he drove two blocks south to his office. Powell doesn’t know their names or backstories, either. But what he saw was clear. A visceral reminder of the uneven economic recovery. Right there in the Fed’s shadow."

Powell sure seems to know how to shower stock market investors with cash, but he appears to be powerless to do anything about the tent cities that are mushrooming all over the nation. Unfortunately, the housing crisis in this country is only going to get worse. As foreign governments, real estate investment companies and wealthy individuals gobble up properties at a feverish pace, millions upon millions of ordinary Americans are being priced out of the market.

This is particularly true for young adults. At this point more of them have moved back home with their parents than ever before… "The number of adults aged 18-34 living at home with their parents continues to accelerate to levels not seen in decades, according to Goldman Sachs, citing US Census Bureau data which found that just over 33% have returned to the nest."

And while real estate in major markets is booming, the percentage of young adults in the ‘boomerang generation’ – who leave the nest only to return years later – has taken a dive, as unemployment and punishing (self-inflicted) student debt has forced many younger Americans out of the housing market.

But at least the financial markets have been doing well, right? If you believe that this financial bubble is real, you are just deceiving yourself. It isn’t going to last, but the social decay that is rapidly growing all over America will.

Earlier today, I came across an article that claimed that the “knockout game” has now returned to New York City… "Areas of the city which were generally thought to be safe, such as Midtown Manhattan, Chelsea and the leafy Upper West Side, have all been locations on random assaults in recent months.Some are describing the assaults as proof of the return of the so-called ‘knockout game.’"

And civil unrest continues to rage in many of our major cities on an almost nightly basis. In fact, rioters in Portland set an Apple Store on fire on Friday night… "Despite advance warnings, Portland Police Bureau officers were powerless to stop another night of rioting, arson, and gunfire carried out by Antifa. Rioters set multiple fires and engaged in drive-by gunfire. Antifa rioters set an Apple Store on fire Friday night during the third declared riot in five days. The fire was one of the multiple fires Portland police officers were powerless to prevent."

Didn’t those rioters know that Apple is a “woke” company? Sadly, those involved in the rioting, looting and violence are not going to check whether you are “woke” or not when they come to your neighborhood either. As I have warned for a very long time, civil unrest in the United States is going to rise to absolutely horrific levels.

A lot of people out there expected the civil unrest to go away once Joe Biden got into the White House, but that obviously hasn’t happened. As economic conditions deteriorate, people are only going to get even angrier, and the rest of the world will watch with great interest as American cities burn."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Going For The Guidestones"

"Going For The Guidestones"

by Ray Jason

"The realization hit me like a bolt of mental lightning. The bastards are GOING FOR THE GUIDESTONES! They are betting that their long campaign to dumb down the global population combined with their evil-eye surveillance grid, will now allow them to stomp Humanity into total submission.

These soulless predators, who I scornfully and gleefully, describe as our Malignant Overlords, are not particularly motivated by greed. They all have more than enough money. What they truly desire is POWER – the sickest variety – the type that allows them to utterly control the lives of ordinary people.

Yet, even that is not enough to satisfy the desires of the most wicked of them. They find the common people so loathsome, that they would prefer to eliminate the vast majority of them. Their scheme is to transform the planet into a 21st century Techno-Feudalism – but with an enormously reduced population.

A tiny core of self-proclaimed Elites would rule. Beneath them, the Technicians would run the computers, the robots and the Artificial Intelligence. The next level down would be the Enforcers. The Police and the Military who would provide security for The Despised at the top. At the very bottom would be the Neo-slaves of the global Cyber-plantation. They would struggle to exist at even a subsistence level. They would be forced to do the undesirable work that even the robots would refuse to perform. Their income would barely support them; and their pastimes and pleasures would be dictated by the World Government via their mandatory, personal screens.

These devices would also monitor everything about them – their movements, bank accounts, vaccine compliance, health status, etc. These “miracle devices” could even discover any dangerous anti-government proclivities.

With this control grid in place, the oppressors could convert the entire planet into one gigantic Club Med – or should that be Club Mad – for themselves. They would no longer have to share the ski slopes at Aspen with the little people. The French Riviera would be cleansed of the riff-raff. Only the powerful would travel by air or enjoy sea cruises. That is the true intention of the U.N.’s Agenda 21/2030. It would convert Earth into a resort for the rich – and a gulag for the rest.

When that flash of recognition jolted me, I suddenly realized that after many decades of careful preparation, the Malignant Overlord’s had finished setting the trap. Now, they were about to spring it. Their Georgia Guidestones moment had arrived.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this strange monument that stands 16 feet tall, sneering down at the lesser people, that is to be expected. After all, every single day you are being simmered in a toxic sludge of industrial grade propaganda. Your controllers want you misinformed, confused, terrified and incapable of resistance.

BTW, these so-called Guidestones are the perfect rebuttal to the claim that “there are no secret cabals of powerful men conspiring for world domination.” These gigantic granite slabs were designed and financed by an “anonymous person, who represented a clandestine group that never revealed itself.” And it has now been over 40 years since those mysterious modern Ten Commandments were placed in a north Georgia pasture.

The very first edict, which is carved into the granite – in EIGHT different languages – states “Maintain Humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with Nature.” The “in perpetual balance with Nature” phrase seems admirable. However, the 500 million number sickens me. I suspect that the other 7.5 billion humans, who would have to be eliminated, are also appalled by this directive.

A normal person might interject at this point that nobody is so evil that they wish to kill the vast majority of the people on Earth. But you believe that because you possess “decency bias.” You are blessed with compassion, empathy and the tendency to “live and let live.” You don’t wish to rule anyone’s life, and you certainly don’t wish to rule everyone’s life.

But tragically, there is a subset of homo sapiens that doesn’t just desire control over others, they crave it! And what makes this addiction even more horrific is their ability to delude themselves with the lie that their control freak sickness is actually for “the Greater Good.” They are so convinced of their personal superiority and the nobility of their cause, that they feel no guilt in subjecting people to gruesome, joy-trampling domination. Don’t forget, we are only a couple of decades removed from a century that witnessed the deaths of hundreds of millions of people at the hands of their cold-blooded leaders.

What initially triggered my Guidestones revelation, was my careful examination of the way that the political and medical establishment had responded to the Wuhan Virus. When you examine the actions that these “deciders” have imposed, they make no sense if they are actually fighting a battle for health. BUT, if their hidden agenda – their TRUE goal – is to fulfill the depopulation directive of the Georgia Guidestones, then their policies make complete sense.

Here are some examples that demonstrate this:

Lockdowns: For many centuries the best way of dealing with a virulent disease, was to isolate the sick people away from those who are healthy. This allowed the infected to receive specific treatment, while permitting the un-afflicted to develop antibodies and herd immunity. If this method has worked for centuries, why was the protocol reversed for the Wuhan Virus? It makes no sense – unless your true purpose is to sicken and not to heal.

Masks: The absurdity of these cheap blue masks as a disease inhibitor is mind-boggling. It actually states on the box that they come in, that they are not suitable for stopping the spread of viruses. The masks are so porous that a great descriptive meme was created back in early 2020 to describe the lunacy of their usage. It joked that these masks were about as reliable as “stopping a mosquito with a chain link fence.”

But even though there is no upside to these embarrassing face diapers, there is plenty of downside. And I am not referring to their symbolic value as badges of obedience to “the Science the State.” I am referencing the fact that they dramatically block the flow of oxygen to all of the vital organs in our bodies. AND they force us to repeatedly breathe in particles that our systems are trying to expel through our exhalations. So, masks make no medical sense, unless you are trying to weaken and destroy massive amounts of people.

The Non-Vaxx Vaxx: Why the unceasing demands that everyone be vaccinated? After all, the survival rate for this supposed pandemic is around 99%. And there are cheap alternative therapies such as HCQ and Ivermectin that are very effective. And the vaccine itself is not even a vaxx – it is some experimental gene altering concoction (I won’t grace it with the word “therapy.”). Furthermore, it only received “emergency approval” by by-passing the usual rigorous testing required of new vaccines. Maybe that was because in the few animal tests that they did on gerbils and rats, all of the animals DIED!!

A clear thinker would conclude that a disease that is no more severe than the common flu and that can be treated effectively with safe, inexpensive drugs, surely does not require a mandatory global campaign of mass vaccination. That same unbiased thinker would have to examine the DARK possibility that the vaxx is not a cure jab … but a KILL JAB.

As I conclude this essay, I am deeply saddened by how easily the vast majority of Humanity fell for this massive Covid scam. Even though several hundred of us have been on the World-Wide Watchtowers sounding the alarm, it feels like we have just been barking at the dark side of the moon. It appears that the dream of the Malignant Overlords for planetary control, that they carved onto those granite slabs, will soon be fulfilled.

But then I think of other gigantic monuments erected by prior megalomaniacs, who also had dreams of omnipotent control. I recall the Pharaohs and their pyramids and the Caesars and their Colosseum. Slowly, a smile brightens my un-masked face. For I suddenly realize that those enormous structures are now only … RUINS. They are windswept monuments to the failure of those who seek to dominate! And one day … the Guidestones will also crumble."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"An American Stonehenge: The Mysterious Georgia Guidestones"

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"Georgia Guidestones"

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Hat tip to The Burning Platform for the original material.

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/19/21: "Dollar Slammed; Updates"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/19/21:

"Dollar Slammed; Updates"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"How It Really Is"