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So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, April 23, 2021
Kahlil Gibran, “The Seven Selves”
“The Seven Selves”
by Kahlil Gibran
“In the silent hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whispers:
First Self: "Here, in this madman, I have dwelt all these years, with naught to do but renew his pain by day and recreate his sorrow by night. I can bear my fate no longer, and now I must rebel."
Second Self: "Yours is a better lot than mine, brother, for it is given me to be this madman’s joyous self. I laugh his laughter and sing his happy hours, and with thrice winged feet I dance his brighter thoughts. It is I that would rebel against my weary existence."
Third Self: "And what of me, the love-ridden self, the flaming brand of wild passion and fantastic desires? It is I the love-sick self who would rebel against this madman."
Fourth Self: "I, amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but the odious hatred and destructive loathing. It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would protest against serving this madman."
Fifth Self: "Nay, it is I, the thinking self, the fanciful self, the self of hunger and thirst, the one doomed to wander without rest in search of unknown things and things not yet created; it is I, not you, who would rebel."
Sixth Self: "And I, the working self, the pitiful laborer, who, with patient hands, and longing eyes, fashion the days into images and give the formless elements new and eternal forms – it is I, the solitary one, who would rebel against this restless madman."
Seventh Self: "How strange that you all would rebel against this man, because each and every one of you has a preordained fate to fulfill. Ah! could I but be like one of you, a self with a determined lot! But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and no-when, when you are busy re-creating life. Is it you or I, neighbors, who should rebel?"
When the seventh self thus spake the other six selves looked with pity upon him but said nothing more; and as the night grew deeper one after the other went to sleep enfolded with a new and happy submission. But the seventh self remained watching and gazing at nothingness, which is behind all things.”
The Poet: Robert Frost, “Acceptance”
“Acceptance”
“When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened.
Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘safe!’
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.”
- Robert Frost
"No Room For Cowards..."
“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”
- C. Joybell C.
"The Road to Oklahoma"
"The Road to Oklahoma"By Bill Bonner"Slip sliding away,Slip sliding away,You know the nearer your destinationThe more you’re slip sliding away..."– "Slip Sliding Away", by Simon & Garfunkel
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Colleague Dan Denning says inflation is already very pronounced in financial assets… and coming on strong in the commodities market. In his latest update, which paid-up Bonner-Denning Letter subscribers will receive later this evening, he provides the evidence from the last 12 months:
• Lumber: +265%
• West Texas Intermediate Crude: +210%
• Gasoline: +182%
• Brent Crude: +163%
• Heating oil: +107%
• Corn: +84%
• Copper: +83%
• Soybeans: +72%
• Silver: +65%
• Sugar: +59%
• Cotton: +54%
• Natural gas: +43%
• Platinum +52%
• Palladium: +32%
• Wheat: +19%
• Coffee: +13%
Slip Sliding Away: But let’s not get distracted… We’re merrily tripping along… on the road to ruin, admiring the attractive intentions with which it is paved.
As you’ll recall, the U.S. made a disastrous mistake in 1971. Egged on by economist Milton Friedman and many others, the Nixon administration changed from a more or less “natural” currency – dollars backed by gold – to a purely manmade one, today’s paper dollar. Paul Volcker, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve at the time, saved the new monetary system in 1980. Thereafter, it flourished, reaching a peak around 1999. Since then, the U.S. empire has been slip-sliding downhill… on the way to some sort of ruin. Now, we’re just wondering how we get there and what it will be like when we do.
Weird Stage: When the money goes, everything goes. Money regulates and calibrates the relationships between people. One is owed; the other owes. One must use his time to earn money – placing himself at the beck and call of the other… while the other can use his money to get what he wants.
As the money apple goes sour, the whole social and political barrel is spoiled. First, things get weird. Then, they get ugly. We are in the weird stage – with strange new forms of “money” (cryptos)… strange new ways to get rid of it (NFTs… overpriced stocks… 50-year U.S. bonds proposed…)… and novel programs and policies – stimmy checks, lockdowns – along with a whole new level of the old-fashioned boondoggles and payoffs.
Yesterday, we looked at how business leaders are being pressured into taking their eyes off the ball… to focus on good intentions. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, says “the purpose of a corporation” is no longer just to provide goods and services in exchange for money… It’s to take into account “all stakeholders.” Presumably, the outcome will improve if management considers the wishes of non-customers as well as those who buy the company’s products.
ExxonMobil, for example? Shouldn’t it cease pumping oil, out of consideration for those who think the planet is dying? Surely, cattle ranchers are not thinking about vegetarians; shame on them! And here at the Diary, shouldn’t we consider the non-readers… and the feelings of those we describe as “morons”? Shouldn’t we stop saying what we really think and say what they want us to say?
New Era: Silly, huh? Oh, dear… dear… reader. You are as behind the times as we are. In this New Era, we all must pretend to go along with whatever great cause is fashionable. Diversity. Equality. Face masks. Save the planet. Yes, the road is laid out and well-paved already.
The corporate leader… the columnist… the TV interviewer… the politician… the neighbor – all must step along gingerly. One candid misstep, and he will be labeled a denier… and deleted.
In this regard, here at the Diary, we have some advantages. We don’t need the work or the money. We have no reputation to lose. We’re not running for office or trying to attract a large audience. We don’t mind being wrong from time to time, and we don’t embarrass easily. So let’s push on…
Costly Goal: Here’s CBS News: "President Biden pledged that the U.S. will cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least half from 2005 levels by 2030, making the announcement Thursday at the virtual Leaders Climate Summit, a two-day global meeting of more than 40 world leaders hosted by the White House. In his opening remarks, Mr. Biden said the U.S. can reach the emissions target through his jobs plan – a $3 trillion infrastructure package meant to revitalize the nation’s energy grid and create a net-zero economy."
This is an “end.” A goal. It’s advertised as a “good intention,” something Sleepy Joe thinks is so important that he’s willing to sacrifice a substantial part of your wealth to make it happen. Yes, those “sweeping changes” will cost money. And there is only one place for the feds to get it – from you and other taxpayers.
You might say, “No… no… They’ll just ‘print’ the money.” But ultimately, every fake dollar is a claim on real time and resources, both of which are limited. The people who will be setting up windmills will not be flipping burgers. The steel used in the wind tower will not be used to build an automobile. And the savings put to work on the project will not be used to create profitable new industries, new jobs, and new wealth.
Higher Purpose: A real increase in wealth – that is to say, real progress – doesn’t need the feds’ money. It gets its financing honestly. There are, for example, 115,000 gas stations in the U.S. As far as we know, not a single one of them was set up with “public” money. All were win-win deals, built to make money, not to take it away. People bought gasoline to improve their lives. Likewise, electric vehicle (EV) charging stations could be built in the normal course of business; they might even be profitable, too.
But so urgent is the intention, that the normal rules that allow us to make our way forward – that is, the win-win deals that are the foundation of civilized society – will be pushed aside. Civilization is a process. It is not an end. It is a discovery… an adventure. It is the journey, not the destination. We move ahead, but we never know exactly where we are going until we get there. But the world improvers always think they know where they are going. They lay out their good intentions like milestones on the Trail of Tears – and force everyone to march along.
Yes, that was viewed as a worthy goal, too – in the 1830s – driving the Cherokee and Chickasaw tribes out of the Southeast, all the way to “Indian Territory” (present-day Oklahoma). And now… “The signs are unmistakable, the science is undeniable and the cost of inaction keeps mounting,” Mr. Biden said. Zero net carbon emissions! Two percent inflation!
In 1693, they knew Salem would be better if they hung the witches. Germany’s rulers in 1939 knew they would be better off if they had more Lebensraum. And wouldn’t the working classes be better off, asked the Bolsheviks, if we abolished private property and created a workers’ paradise? Of course, they would. There’s always some con… some crime and some flimflam involved. But it is always justified by the High-Minded Purpose… the goal… the end.
From Dream to Nightmare: The Biden Green Team wants to install 500,000 of these EV charging stations. Who will pay for them? Most likely, you will… one way or another. The feds already give a $30,000 tax credit to places that install the commercial EV chargers… That tax loss, naturally, must be made up, mostly by people who don’t “get it”… people who also don’t drive EVs.
Tax… print… borrow… spend. Every penny put to work on Biden’s Green Dream must be taken from someone else’s dream. And every good intention – when backed by the trigger-happy power of the government – becomes a nightmare."
Musical Interlude: "Clear Focus Isochronic Tones Space Voyager Study Music"
Full screen if preferred.
"Clear Focus Isochronic Tones Space Voyager Study Music"
by Jason Lewis - Mind Amend
"Clear focus space voyager mix study music with a space style theme. Headphones are NOT required for this video. Play during long study sessions, especially if you're feeling stressed or under pressure. Helps to clear your mind of distractions, and keep you in a relaxed, focused mental state. Includes low-intensity beta and alpha wave isochronic tones plus amplitude entrainment effects embedded into the music.
How does it work? This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. If brainwave entrainment is a new concept for you, there is some information about it here: https://www.mindamend.com/
This brainwave entrainment session cycles through a frequency range of between 10Hz in Alpha, (which can help with memorization and learning), and up to 14Hz in the Beta range, (which will help with increasing focus and concentration)."
Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/23/21: "A Massive Currency Crisis Is Coming, by Design. Be Ready!"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/23/21:
"A Massive Currency Crisis Is Coming, by Design. Be Ready!"
"Peak National Dysfunction"
"Peak National Dysfunction"
by Jim Kunstler
"No need to argue anymore about defunding the police. The police across America have been successfully disarmed and castrated. Why would any cop with a sense of self-preservation interfere in the commission of a crime now? Just assume that the social contract is cancelled. You’re on your own.
Interesting factoids, by the way: rape reports are up 322 percent in New York City over the past year, shootings were up 97 percent and murders up 44 percent - a good start to the new era of all-against-all, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But don’t worry, Benjamin Crump and the legion of super-hero personal injury lawyers stand ready to enforce the suspension of law, seeking multi-million-dollar payouts in civil suits, such as the $27-million recently settled on the family of George Floyd, which is $27-million more than Jesus of Nazareth got for somewhat harsher treatment years back, though, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, George Floyd has by far outpaced the old lord-and-savior in sheer saintliness mojo. Looks like George and Jesus will soon be vying for Speaker of Kingdom Come in the new, revised cosmos of American Wokery.
Anyway, New York’s City Council voted last month to end qualified immunity for police officers, which formerly shielded them from personal lawsuits in the performance of their duties. Predictable result: they will no longer perform their duties. This is on top of Mayor Bill de Blasio ending the age-old practice of posting bail for charged felons pending disposition of a criminal case. Meanwhile, the city’s main jail, Rikers Island, is scheduled to be closed down in 2026. Abolish incarceration! Well done, Big Apple!
For the moment, Derek Chauvin is on ice, having served his purpose as sacrificial goat in a trial that had all the fateful velocity of the Chattanooga Choo-choo. No need to rehearse the prejudicial actions of Rep Maxine Waters (D-Calif), oval office occupant Joe Biden, sidekick Kamala Harris, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper, Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, and other workers on the railroad of justice. The case will surely go into appeal and by the time it is finally adjudicated the old USA will be on ice, too - in the mortuary of lost civilizations.
Minneapolis police officer Kim Potter is teed-up next in the death of multiple felony suspect Daunte Wright, who was turning his life around when he made the split-second decision to evade arrest on an outstanding warrant for gun possession. And on deck: Columbus, Ohio, police officer Nicholas Reardon, who (it’s said all over Twitter and cable TV) unfairly interfered in a knife attack between a couple of girls just going about normal teenage girl stuff in their normal, playful way.
Critical Race Theory, and its enforcement arm, Systemic Racism, have got America in a full nelson, having put over the idea that any regulation of behavior among 13 percent of the US population is a crime against humanity - effectively rendering lawlessness a new social entitlement. Waiting to see how that works out as 2021 rolls forward. The weather didn’t cooperate much this week of the aforesaid events, so there was little action in the streets after the Chauvin verdict and all - except in Portland, Oregon, city of masochists, where the nightly riots continued as usual.
Is there a problem with all this? Only that the remaining 87 percent of the folks who live in the USA have so far failed to identify these operations for what they are, an epic hustle - by which I mean the seeking and acquiring of advantage, including large sums of money, by underhanded means. Sorry to tell you: the responsibility for this is on the 87 percent who are craven and feckless enough to allow themselves to be hustled. What’s the payoff for them in this game? A sense of radiant, self-informed moral purity for consenting to be coerced by the hustlers. The endorphin rush must really be something, a little like a snootful of fentanyl-and-meth.
Notice, too, how all this racial psychodrama is an effective smokescreen for other nefarious actions afoot by the Democratic Party. I refer to the various bills moving through Congress now to pack the Supreme Court, turn the District of Columbia into the 51st state (to gain two more senate seats), and to institutionalize voting fraud across all the states (HR-1). Not paying any attention to that? It’s just a gang of power-hungry maniacs trying to destroy your country. That is, unless Joe Biden & Co, manage to start World War Three in Ukraine or Taiwan before that bidness comes to vote. Oh, and here’s the moral of the story: life is tragic. Sometimes things don’t turn out… they just turn."
"Relax..."
"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to
TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing. "
- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 4/23/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 4/23/21"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"It looks like Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin will get an appeal on the murder conviction of George Floyd. You can thank VP Biden and Maxine Waters for that. They made negative and violent public statements that affected the jury voting to convict Chauvin even though the evidence showed no crime was committed. It’s textbook jury tampering on a huge scale. Famed Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said, “They didn’t put a thumb on the scale against Chauvin, they put an elbow on it.” It’s not over.
Looks like the 2020 Election is finally going to be hand audited in Arizona after a very long and difficult legal battle. Georgia is not far behind, and there is another audit coming soon in New Hampshire. What happens if the Arizona audit uncovers massive fraudulent ballots for Democrats? Biden may still be in the White House, but does freshman Senator Mike Kelly get to keep his seat if election and voter fraud got him in? The audit will take 30 days or less, and then we will know. It’s already been shown that fraud was rampant across the country, especially in key states like Arizona.
Face masks to fight CV19 don’t work. Don’t take my word for it. This is according to a new study by Stanford University and released by the National Institute for Health (NIH). Not only do face masks not work to stop the spread of the virus, but wearing face masks can also cause health problems, and in some cases, even death according to the Stanford study. This is yet another Covid lie perpetrated on the public for more than a year. You can add it to the list of Covid lies to scare and control the public."
"Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 4.23.2021"
Thursday, April 22, 2021
"Americans Keep Buying But Produce Nothing; Fake Money Drives The Economy"
Jeremiah Babe,
"Americans Keep Buying But Produce Nothing;
Fake Money Drives The Economy"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy’s stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy’s core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted last year to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that “If enough color data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies.”
Chet Raymo, “The Sea Grows Old In It”
“The Sea Grows Old In It”
by Chet Raymo
“The poet, like the electric [lightning] rod, must reach from a point nearer to the sky than all surrounding objects down to the earth, and down to the dark wet soil, or neither is of use. The poet must not only converse with pure thought, but he must demonstrate it almost to the senses. His words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and cubes, to be seen, and smelled and handled.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ah, Mr. Emerson. This seems about as good a description of poetry as one is likely to find. I love the image. Not a hand reaching up to grasp the hand of Zeus, the hurler of bolts, but merely a pointed rod that reaches higher than any surrounding objects. A pen-point, scratching the firmament. Not a conductor reaching down to the earth, but deeper, into the wet inkpot of the soul.
Not lofty thoughts, airy philosophies, gnostic arcana. Rather, ideas that come wrapped in the stuff of the senses. Ideas that must be unwrapped the way you’d peel an orange, or pry open an oyster, or stir up from the bottom of a bowl of soup. The electric fire of the heavens captured and stored in the Leyden jar of physical self.
Take, for example, Marianne Moore’s “The Fish”, a poem that has been endlessly analyzed without ever giving up its secrets. Anyone who stands on that rocky shore with the poet, looking into the wave-washed chasm- the sea as fluid as breath, as hard as a chisel- takes away a lesson as profound as any one might learn in school, perhaps without being able to articulate exactly what the lesson is. The experience is simply there, to be seen, smelled, handled, in the weave and wave of animal bodies, in the intricate rhyme and syllabication of the poem. Truth- crow-blue, ink-bespattered, hatcheted, defiant.
I’d go further. I’d say that Emerson’s description of poetry can be equally applied to science, or to any human attempt to attract the spark of Zeus. One must lift one’s rod beyond the scratch and tumble of the everyday, while keeping its foot buried in the dark wet soil of lived experience.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
•
“The Fish”
“Wade through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave,
cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the sun,
split like spun glass,
move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices -
in and out, illuminating
The turquoise sea of bodies.
The water drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff;
whereupon the stars, pink rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green lilies,
and submarine toadstools, slide each on the other.
All external marks of abuse are present on this defiant edifice -
all the physical features of accident -
lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes,
these things stand out on it;
the chasm-side is dead.
Repeated evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive its youth.
The sea grows old in it.”
- Marianne Moore
Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/22/21""Stock Market CRASH Or Normal Correction? Economy Cratering- Stocks Dive"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/22/21:
"Stock Market CRASH Or Normal Correction?
Economy Cratering - Stocks Dive"
"Time to Separate Money and State"
"Time to Separate Money and State"
by Brian Maher
"Would a man trust a fox to mind his hens? Would he trust a dog to mind his dinner? Would he trust a thief to mind his store? Then why would he trust the government to mind his money? “Man needs more to be reminded than to be instructed,” argued Samuel Johnson. A man knows his nose squats in the middle of his face. He looks right past it just the same. Today we remind men of the reason they initially chose gold and silver money - that is, why they initially selected sound money.
Long-suffering readers are familiar with our… diminished regard for paper money. Paper money - or digital money nowadays - is the great bogeyman of the boom/bust cycle. It inflates bubbles of every model and make. But men did not choose sound money to block bubbles…
Sound Money Belongs In the Same Class With Political Constitutions and Bills of Rights: Men chose sound money to fortress themselves against government mischiefs and criminalities. Governments cannot print gold. They cannot print silver. Thus their hands are bound. The titan Austrian school economist, Ludwig von Mises: "It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."
Church and state are famously separate in these United States. We would separate money and state with equal ruthlessness. For a state minding money is a fox minding the henhouse. Deny it the privilege, and you deny it its natural rascality. Consider one example…
Get Lost, King: In 1392, England’s King Henry III was in arrears to the Pope in Rome… and required 1,000 pounds towards satisfaction of his debt. He did not have it. So old Henry was forced to appear before the citizens of London with an open hat. Moreover, they refused him.
Can you imagine a president of the United States upon his knees before the citizens of Washington… begging? And these same citizens instructing him to move along? When citizens control the purse strings, they control their destiny. When government controls the purse strings, the government controls the citizens’ destiny.
Did the United States president come before the American people in 2008 and plead for money to rescue the banks? We do not recall the request. Yet the government got its money from its central bank - trillions and trillions. The Founders knew…
What Happened to the Constitution? They knew the excesses of paper money so well… they welded sound money into the Constitution of the United States. Article I, Section 10, Clause 1: “No State shall … make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…” But no “parchment barrier” could forever constrain men determined not to be constrained.
In 1900, total government spending came in under 3% of the gross domestic product. Government’s bite was so weak… it failed to break the skin. But then the 20th century barreled in with its wars… its social movements… and its cranks… In 1917, Mr. Wilson ordered the doughboys across the ocean… and into the trenches.
Government spending - again, as a percentage of GDP - vaulted near 20%. The following Great Depression set the government loose, a child amok in a candy factory. By the end of the Second World War, government spending scaled 45% of GDP - the arsenal of democracy was not cheap.
Government Spending Is Still at WWI Levels: Government spending as a percentage of GDP has averaged roughly 20% since 1980. That is, it has averaged WWI levels. The figure has run higher at times. It has run lower at times. But 20% is about par. Now mix in state and local government spending. You will find that total government spending presently nears 40% of GDP.
Now Mr. Biden and mates plan to expand government spending to extravagant - to obscene - dimensions. It goes without mentioning… we will mention it regardless… that a government constrained by gold cannot spend extravagantly or obscenely. Not unless it is in possession of extravagant or obscene quantities of gold. The United States government is not.
No Thanks, Says Gold: As we have written before: Gold is a famously uncooperative agent of change. It resists social uplift. It has the public spirit of an alley cat. Gold is timid… and turns away from the sound of trumpets. “You go over there,” gold says. “I’ll stay here.”
“The trouble with gold is that it turns its back on world improvers, empire builders and do-gooders,” as wrote Bill Bonner and our leader Addison Wiggin in Empire of Debt. “The nice thing about gold is that it is so unresponsive,” they continued. “It neither laughs nor applauds.” Instead it shrugs its shoulders… folds its arms… and drags its feet. That is precisely why it could not last…
Public-Minded Money: As we have also explained before... Only a debt-backed system of paper money could finance the great wars, the social improvements and the fevered passions of the 20th century. This money is ideal for public service. Unlike gold, it is civic-minded. It has a heart. It follows orders. Whatever war, whatever boondoggle, whatever swindle it is told to get behind… it will get behind.
Fiat money willingly sacrifices its value for the greater good. In short: Paper money fuels government as oxygen fuels fire. This United States dollar has sacrificed some 97% of its value since the Federal Reserve’s 1913 demon birth. The greatest plummets came after 1971 - when Old Nixon severed the dollar’s last chain link to gold. One 2021 dollar purchases only 15% of the 1971 dollar. That is, the 1971 dollar did the duty of six-plus 2020 dollars. Is this the stability the Federal Reserve assumes as its mandate? It is a very strange stability if so.
Which Gold Standard? Do we propose a return to the gold standard? The answer is yes. And the answer is no. We propose a private gold standard, established and governed by the free market. Let the market sort the details. We would deny the government all say, all influence. We would block every route in.
Economist Gary North: "A government-guaranteed gold standard is a rotten idea. It is just a little better than a fiat-money standard. But advocates of "the gold standard" almost always mean "a government-guaranteed gold standard." Therein lies the problem. Governments lie. They cheat. They steal…
A government-guaranteed gold standard is a fool's gold standard... There are two kinds of gold standards: government-guaranteed and privately administered. The first is a counterfeit of the second. The politicians set up the rubes to be skinned.
The private gold standard places the monetary authority in the hands of the citizen. He claps golden handcuffs upon his government. He guards the Treasury.
Take Back Control: But WWI struck the handcuffs from government wrists... and changed the Treasury guard: "When the public had access to gold coins prior to 1914, individuals controlled banking policy. They also controlled government fiscal policy. They could take their coins out of commercial banks if they did not approve of government policy. This is why national governments annul or restrict gold-coin redeemability whenever a major war breaks out. They do not want to face the citizens' veto.
With the repudiation of any gold-coin standard since 1914, citizens no longer understand the case for a gold-coin currency. They do not understand that widespread gold ownership was the number one restraining factor on the expansion of state power in the economy. The uncoordinated individual decisions of millions of people could overturn any government policy that required central bank inflation to fund it. The politicians resented this. So did the central bankers.
They denied citizens their gold coins and veto power over government policy. They never restored it: They refused to return to the prewar gold-coin standard in 1918. Politicians and bankers did not want to transfer this power back to the masses. Once the central banks in every nation stole the gold from commercial banks, who had stolen the gold coins of the depositors by breaking the contracts of full gold-coin redemption on demand, the political elite never again let the masses have their coins. It is high time the American people reclaim our gold coins - and our grip upon the nation’s purse strings. That is, it is high time to remind the government who bosses whom…"
Good luck...
"This Very Moment..."
“Hope is always about the future. And it isn’t always good news. Sometimes, hope can imprison us with belief or expectation that something will happen in the future to change our lives. Similarly hopelessness isn’t always about despair. Hopelessness can bring us right into this very moment and answer all of life’s most difficult questions. Who am I? Where am I? What does this mean? And what now?”
- Daniel Gottlieb
"On The Road… to Ruin"
"On The Road… to Ruin"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” said Scottish economist Adam Smith in 1777. Today, we begin a long ramble down the road to ruin to look at how much ruin there is.
The trial of Derek Chauvin, a white former police officer in Minneapolis, for the murder of George Floyd, a black man, brought out hints of the ruin to come. On the Trumpified right, a man in a police uniform can do no wrong. He is the avatar of law and order… of stability… the Praetorian Guard protecting the status quo and exalting the power and glory of the people who control it. But since the Trumpistas are no longer running the show, the more immediate danger has shifted to the other side – the zealots on the Biden bandwagon.
Process Before Outcome: On the left, it was proclaimed high and low that Mr. Floyd died because of systemic racism. Joe Biden said he prayed for a guilty verdict. This was a remarkable admission… as if he had no faith in his government’s criminal justice process. But in a civilized society, the process is more important than the outcome. The justice system is based on the idea that you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. No one knows in advance. If they did, why bother with a trial at all?
Instead, a trial – like a market or an election – is designed to discover something – the truth. Until discovered, it is unknown. Biden didn’t think he had to wait. He hadn’t attended a single day of testimony, but he was sure he knew the correct verdict. Nancy Pelosi – perhaps drawing on her early years at Notre Dame (a Catholic girls’ high school in Baltimore) – saw Floyd’s death in Biblical terms. He had “sacrificed” himself, she said, so that others might have life and have it more abundantly… Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice. Huh? Was it worth dying just to convict Derek Chauvin? Why not just not die and leave Chauvin a free man?
Collective Responsibility: The “sacrifice” idea only makes sense if the goal goes far beyond putting Chauvin behind bars. Contrary to the Christian faith, and to thousands of years of jurisprudential, moral, and philosophical enlightenment, today’s activists want to put a whole race of people – whites – on trial. They are responsible, say the prosecutors, not only for Floyd’s death, but for a long list of crimes, from slavery to Nagasaki.
Communism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Nazism, Brutalism in art and architecture, sugary cereal, plastic in the ocean – the white race is where the buck stops for them all. The typical white man is flummoxed. He doesn’t hate Black people. He didn’t kill George Floyd or throw a plastic water bottle in the Pacific. Why should he take the rap?
Individual Responsibility: But collective guilt has a long and sordid history. At the time of the Great Sacrifice – the crucifixion – Pontius Pilate asked the Jews if they wanted him to release Jesus. No, they replied. They preferred to have Barabbas – a thief – spared. As for Jesus: “Crucify him. Crucify him. His blood is on us and on our children!”
Jesus had made it clear – especially in his story of the “good Samaritan” – that all people would be judged by God individually. It didn’t matter that he was a Samaritan; he who had come to the aid of the man in need, while others passed him by. The law, too, has long recognized that people should be held accountable for their own crimes, not for those of others.
Collective Guilt: But civilization walks backward from time to time. Centuries after the crucifixion of Christ, pogroms against Jews were excused as “justice” for the collective guilt they bore. Taking it a step further, in Poland during World War II, the Nazis made it a collective crime to give aid or comfort to Jews. Not only would the person who committed the infraction be punished, but so would his whole family. Likewise, when a German soldier was killed by Polish partisans, a whole town might be massacred in reprisal.
And now, collective guilt is back. “White privilege” is to blame for everything from higher COVID-19 death rates in Black neighborhoods to higher incomes in white ones. (Dear, long-suffering readers must be wondering what this has to do with the economy… But hold on… we’re getting there.)
Any Means Necessary: When civilization goes into reverse, the means get upstaged by the ends. People lose confidence in the integrity of the process; they want results. If what is most important to you is ending systemic racism, for example, or saving the planet… or winning a war against terrorists… or preventing a bear market on Wall Street, for that matter… you might very well conclude that any means necessary is okay. Murder? Theft? Counterfeiting? Price fixing? Redistributing income? Sure, why not?
In the news yesterday was this report from Business Insider: "Warren Buffett caught the attention of the World Economic Forum’s Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, who said he’d like to “have a discussion” with the billionaire investor." Uh oh. Schwab wants to give Buffett a good “talking to.” Why? Berkshire Hathaway CEO Buffett is not on board with using shareholder money to signal management’s virtue: "Last year, Buffett said companies should focus on creating shareholder value, and not invest in social causes like climate change. “This is the shareholders’ money,” he said."
Schwab said the “art of good management today is to create a balance” between shareholders, and stakeholders, as in society as a whole. He said for companies not buying into the stakeholder concept, they’re going to be “on the wrong side of history.
Why Hold Back? Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen lit up like a lighthouse. Reuters reports: "U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday pledged to aggressively tackle climate change using all the tools at her disposal, warning that a failure to do so effectively and promptly could undermine economic growth. “We are committed to directing public investment to areas that can facilitate our transition to net-zero and strengthen the functioning of our financial system so that workers, investors, and businesses can seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents,” Yellen said."
When you think you know what is most important, you’re not going to let a few ancient rules stand in the way, are you? And when you think you know how to improve the world – for you have the TRUTH – why hold yourself back? Why not insist that everyone and everything get in line? More to come… on the road to ruin…"
"Economic Market Snapshot 4/22/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot 4/22/21"
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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 4/22/21:
"UPDATES: The Economic FREE-FALL
Continues And Central Banks Are Buying It All"
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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
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
April 21st to 23rd, 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
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
"Farmers Warn That The Megadrought In The Western U.S. Threatens To Cause Devastating Crop Failures"
Full screen recommended.
"Farmers Warn That The Megadrought In The
Western U.S. Threatens To Cause Devastating Crop Failures"
by Epic Economist
"Droughts are not uncommon in the history of the U.S., however, what the western half of the country has been experiencing right now is extremely worrying. Recent reports have been warning that a “megadrought” is fast spreading in the southwestern region and is it leading to the worst crop failures in decades. States like North Dakota are seeing the most devastating drought disaster in over 126 years. Farmers are having to abandon their entire pastures since the soil is lacking sufficient moisture to sustain normal crop development growth. Summer-like temperatures, turbulent winds, and low humidity across the state accelerated drying conditions, and at least half the state is now experiencing “severe drought”.
Most people from other regions may not realize how this would affect them, but the truth is that what is going on in the Upper Midwest, the Northern Plains states, and the Prairie provinces of Canada will have a great impact on everyone's lives as much of the food we eat comes from that region. According to "MordernFarmer," it is the most important agricultural area for spring wheat, the higher-gluten variety that’s used for pasta or mixed with other wheat for all-purpose flour. Consequently, food prices - which have already exploded in recent weeks - are likely to climb even higher due to widespread shortages.
In California, one of the most important agricultural states, traders are saying that due to the extreme dry temperatures, the futures prices of both spring wheat and canola are at their highest in years. And if it doesn’t rain soon, things are bound to get much worse over the next few months. A Texan farmer named Blake Fennell said in an interview that “if we don't get any significant rainfall within the next two, three, or four weeks, it's going to have a very significant impact on the cotton crop in West Texas. Abandonment looks like it's going to be pretty high this year, just for the simple fact that there is no ground moisture to get this crop emerged,” he added.
At this point, the entire state of Texas is experiencing some level of drought, and on the border of Oregon and California, water levels are so low farmers won’t get enough to meet their needs. Many of them will have to shut down their operations and lay-offs their employees, as there will be no way to save their crops. In many locations, water allocation was reduced up to 95 percent. According to the Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO, Ryan Jacobsen, the lack of wet weather means the garlic, tomatoes, onions, melons, and rice crops will have to be reduced.
As a result, food production in 2021 will sharply fall due to such epic crop failures. Meanwhile, water shortages are also a possibility, considering that some key reservoirs are registering the lowest water levels ever, which could trigger widespread water cutbacks. To call this a disaster is a huge understatement. This crisis will aggravate a serious of other problems in the U.S. food supply chain. Farmers, ranchers, and local authorities are already starting to panic. And as this megadrought continues to get worse, life is about to dramatically change all over the nation, and that is going to deeply affect all of us."
Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/21/21: "Updates Plus! JPM Warns On Bitcoin Collapse. Silver Takes Off"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/21/21:
"Updates Plus! JPM Warns On Bitcoin Collapse. Silver Takes Off"
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