Tuesday, May 18, 2021

“This Was A Test, And We Failed”

“This Was A Test, And We Failed”
by Jim Quinn

“The Truth, when you finally chase it down, 
is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears.” 
~ Hunter S. Thompson

"I think Hunter S. Thompson is being proven right by revelations becoming obvious daily. I’m a natural skeptic, so I rarely believe anything I’m told without verifying facts, analyzing data and understanding the motivation of those making declarations and assertions. For most of my life I thought I generally understood how the world worked.

Doubts about my understanding began to creep into my mind between 2000 and 2008, as I watched my government cover-up the truth about 9-11, use it to institute an Orwellian surveillance state through the Patriot Act, invade Iraq based upon a false narrative of WMD and links to 9/11, and watching those controlling the Federal Reserve create the dot.com bubble and follow it up with a housing bubble – all done to benefit Wall Street banks, billionaires, connected politicians, and Deep State apparatchiks.

The national debt was $5.6 trillion in 2000, the budget was as close to balanced as it had been in decades, the defense budget ($300 billion) was at decades low as there was no major conflicts in the world, and term limits were still a legitimately discussed election issue. If someone was told on January 1, 2000 that in 2021 the national debt was going to hit $30 trillion, with annual deficits of $3 to $4 trillion, a defense budget of $750 billion as war looms on the near-term horizon, and all semblance of governing through legislation to benefit the citizenry had dissipated, they would have laughed, accused you of being a conspiracy nutjob, and said the nation would be a hyperinflationary banana republic with 50% interest rates if any of that came to pass. The truth is always far worse than your darkest visions and fears.

What has occurred in the last year has befuddled me, as the level of treachery, deception, disinformation, and false narratives has reached excessive elevations, indicating a sense of urgency and desperation by those wielding power over society. It has been depressing and frustrating to witness the level of obedient compliance by the majority of frightened sheep in this country, with complete subservience to authoritarian dictates of their overlords.

The extremeness of the response to a bad annual flu virus leads me to believe the truth behind what has happened and is happening is far worse than most can conceive or comprehend. The level of pure malevolence and disregard for humanity exhibited by the despots wielding power over our political, economic, medical, and social structures has pushed the country to the edge of civil chaos, calculated political pandemonium, global conflict, and unavoidable debt manufactured financial collapse.

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether I’m the crazy one for not believing a piece of cloth will protect me from catching a flu virus with a 99.8% survival rate, or not voluntarily allowing a Big Pharma corporation, with no liability for the consequences of its experimental gene therapy, to treat me as their animal test subject to increase my survival chances to 99.85%, or questioning why I need to wear a face diaper because I can catch the virus while walking to my restaurant table but not once I sit down, or why six foot distancing is safe but 5 foot distancing is dangerous. Why are the predictions of doom by “experts”, which never come true, overlooked and disregarded by the corporate fake news media?
Why did Dementia Joe call the governors of Texas, Florida, and Mississippi Neanderthals six weeks ago for ending mask mandates and this week he ended the mask mandate for the entire country? I thought he followed the science. But it appears raging inflation, a terrible jobs report due to his policy of paying people not to work, a hemorrhaging border crisis, gas pipelines proving to be somewhat important, the Middle East exploding, and his woke executive order agenda being ridiculed on a daily basis, convinced Joe’s handlers to distract from his 100 days of disaster by reversing the ridiculous Covid restrictions and sending the Covid cult into convulsions of fury.

Their pathetic lives of mask virtue signaling, twitter haranguing, and vaccination shaming are about to be invalidated, as a return to normalcy will relegate the Biden brigade to their previous status of inconsequential drones on Facebook posting pictures of their nine cats.
What little faith I had in humanity after this past year of cowardly compliant obedience to totalitarian governmental dictates and proclamations, was fully extinguished this weekend while making an early morning stop at Wal-Mart. The Biden administration’s sudden reversal on masks, after fear mongering and preaching doom for months, immediately led to Trader Joe’s, Costco and Wal-Mart announcing no more masks required to enter their stores, with an unenforceable caveat about being vaccinated. After a year of mask mandates, I pondered whether I should enter the Wal-Mart like this fine gentleman.
But I just sauntered in like everyone else, expecting to see dozens of other unmasked Americans breathing fresh air, thankful to be free of those disgusting face diapers which have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to reduce the spread of this over-hyped annual flu with a scary name and largest marketing campaign in history. Instead, I witnessed dozens of masked sheep still following orders even after those orders had been rescinded by their self-appointed science shepherds.

An overwhelming feeling of disgust swept over me, as I only witnessed two other sensible human beings out of the hundred or so roaming the aisles. My disappointment with the vast majority of citizens in this country has now reached all-time lows. I am chalking it up to a new version of PTSD, in the era of covid hysteria, PMSD (Post-Mask Stress Disorder). A large portion of the populace have developed a mental illness, purposely provoked by their own lying government and authoritarian politicians. This entire scam has been a lesson in abuse, fear propaganda, lies, false appeals to science, and censorship of the truth.
There are now millions of sheep who do not know how to readjust to reality and lose the masks, which convinced them they were brave, noble and “in this together”. Trying to use facts and reason to convince these people masks never worked and their chances of dying from this flu were no higher than the annual flu is a useless endeavor. The Covid Cult cannot let go of their mask virtue signaling because they will lose that feeling of superiority and arrogance towards the unmasked masses.
The loss of this covid cudgel is being rapidly substituted with these Big Pharma multi-billion-dollar profit generating experimental gene therapies, disguised as vaccines. They desperately want to condescendingly force the jab upon everyone and force vaccine passports upon the masses as their new virtue signaling badge of compliant obedience. After spending tens of billions of your tax dollars on a vaccine marketing campaign, employing famous athletes, Hollywood influencers, medical “experts”, and non-stop TV commercials, only 37% of the American population is fully vaccinated. It has been a gigantic FAIL.

Everyone who wanted to be vaccinated, is vaccinated. They have resorted to cash payments, million-dollar lottery prizes, free donuts, free burgers & fries, and a multitude of other bribes to get the jab. Now they are falling back on the totalitarian methods used during the lockdown. Get the jab or wear a mask forever threatens Dementia Joe. Colluding with corporations and schools to force employees and children to get the jab. Threatening to impose vaccine passports to travel, enter sports and concert arenas, and to generally cancel the non-vaccinated. It is failing.
With only 37% of the public sheeplike enough to get the jab, any “woke” business that continues to invoke mask mandates or require proof of vaccination will find their profits dissipate faster than Trump’s lead in swing states at 3:00 am. If you were to believe the fake news media and government drones, you would believe the majority have been vaccinated and the “anti-vaxxers” were a crazy conspiracy theorist minority. As with most things being fed to you daily, this is a big fat lie. The rational, resistant (not hesitant), critical thinking MAJORITY are done with this scamdemic. Biden and his handlers are being forced to throw in the towel, for now.

The propaganda press polluters of the truth are still selling a completely false narrative about the vaccines being the reason cases, hospitalizations and deaths have plummeted since January 1 of this year. The excess mortality rate in the country is now back below the averages from 2015 – 2019. The crash in death rates occurred while less than 15% of the population had been vaccinated. The bloviating about needing 70% of the population vaccinated to stop the pandemic is complete and utter bullshit.

Masks never protected anyone from infection and the vaccine is unnecessary to resume normal life. This flu follows the same infection pattern as the annual flu (which mysteriously disappeared from the globe in 2020-21) and has run its course. Vaccine rates per state are showing ZERO impact on the downward trend of cases and deaths. They are falling and have been falling with or without the vaccine.
The India variant and “surge” fear mongering has fallen on deaf ears as their death rate per 100,000 is only a fraction of the U.S. and U.K. These propaganda tactics have worn out their welcome. Very few are believing the feckless mainstream media miscreants. Their ratings are lower than whale shit.
No matter how hard they try to reinstall the fear, enough people are tired of this farce to derail further attempts at lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passport requirements. Every day with declining cases, vaccination rates, and deaths makes it harder for the Covidian cult medical tyrants to pretend there is a national emergency. Their sense of desperation is palpable. This sense of desperation is seen in their attempt to force this experimental therapy on children and their complete lack of concern or acknowledgement of the hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions and thousands of deaths attributed to their gene therapy experiments on human guinea pigs.

These medical experts and doctors seem to have forgotten the first rule of their Hippocratic Oath – DO NO HARM. More likely, they sold their souls to Big Pharma for big bucks. The science says 1 in 300,000 of children under 18 will die from Covid but based on actual data 3 in 300,000 will die from the vaccine. They are pushing these vaccines on children for profits, not for health reasons. Always follow the money.
I believe Solzhenitsyn’s famous quote about “how we burned in the camps later” regarding what would have happened if they resisted and killed their oppressors when they had the chance will be restated years from now when the long-term consequences of these experimental gene concoctions are felt by the children forced to participate in this evil experiment. If we had only resisted.

This is communism in a new repackaged marketing campaign, where Bernays’ propaganda techniques have been perfected through technological mind manipulation by Big Government conspiring with Big Tech and Big Business. The tripe of political correctness, wokeism, anti-racism, cancel culture, and fear of the annual flu has been taken to a level never seen before. Theodore Dalrymple captures the essence of this new communism.

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ― Theodore Dalrymple

Dalrymple is correct in pointing out how these modern communists use humiliation and shaming to ram their false narratives and authoritarian agendas down our throats through the power of fake news media and the Silicon Valley social media censorship tyrants. They blatantly flog provably false narratives through their media mouthpieces, disguised as impartial journalists, medical experts, university professors, and anyone the masses might look up to. Those who knowingly assent to these obvious lies have become just as evil as those telling the lies.

The lies have been piled high in the last year as the annual flu was weaponized to cover-up the disintegration of our financial system and as a means to fraudulently conduct a coup against a president; the deaths of two black law breakers were utilized to usher in the colossal lie of systematic racism bought into by woke corporations and college campuses across the world; a clearly stolen election was declared honest by those controlling the narrative; lockdowns and masks were pronounced to be the only way to slow the spread even though all data refutes those assertions; an armed insurrection (with no arms) lie on January 6 has been used to wall off Washington DC and sell the big lie of white supremacy being a threat to the republic; the Federal Reserve creating trillions out of thin air and pumping it into the pockets of billionaires and Wall Street fat cats has not created raging inflation and an all-time high in wealth inequality according to the talking heads on CNBC and the rest of the fake news media complex; emergency use authorized vaccines were the only solution to a flu that doesn’t kill 99.8% of those infected, even though ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have proven to be effective and safe in combating covid; and lastly these vaccines have been declared safe even though they are killing and maiming thousands and no one knows the long term effects on those who have chosen to be their lab rats.
We have become a society of emasculated liars, purposely deceiving ourselves because we are too cowardly to admit we have been had by those ruling over us with an iron fist. As a society we have decided resistance is futile and if we go along to get along, we will still be allowed to subsist, play with our techno-gadgets, and be sent stimmy checks, welfare payments, and be granted the ability to pay for stuff we cannot afford on credit. The willfully ignorant have chosen to become debt slaves and obey their masters, rather than resist tyranny and demand their independence from this dystopian nightmare we are currently living under.

We continue to elect corrupt politicians and willingly follow the orders of traitors, crooks, and despots, so we have become collaborators, rather than casualties. As a society we do not want the responsibility of freedom and have gladly exchanged our liberties for the illusory chimera of security. Those controlling the levers of power have taken advantage of this cowardly trait to abscond with the nation’s wealth and keep the masses in constant fear of new bogeymen (terrorists, white supremacists, flu viruses, and now aliens).

As I observe what is happening over the last week or so, I fall back on the words of the patron saint of sanity in a world gone mad.
Everything our government tells us every day is a lie. Biden’s sudden reversal on masks, supposedly based on science, is a lie. The story about the DarkSide Russian hackers shutting down the Colonial pipeline is a lie. It is just as likely it was done by the CIA. If a pipeline can be hacked then voting machines can be hacked, but they continue to lie about that. Anyone with critical thinking skills knows this virus came from a Wuhan bio-lab, which was funded by Fauci to develop these gain of function viruses. Fauci lied to Congress and has lied to the American public since February 2020 about masks, lockdowns, risks, and vaccines. They are lying about vaccine effectiveness and risks.

Every time Jerome Powell or one of his Fed cronies opens their mouth, they are lying. Anyone with any financial acumen knows stock, bond, crypto, housing, and virtually all markets are experiencing the biggest bubble in world history, but the financial “experts” tell you to buy before it is too late. They are lying because they are paid handsomely to do so. Lies about the selfie insurrection in the Capitol continue unabated. Biden and his handlers have been lying about their man made purposeful border crisis. Lies about Dominion voting machines and rigged election results are perpetrated by the paid hacks on CNN, MSNBC and even Fox, every day. The lies will continue until morale improves, or the ruling class can abscond with another trillion or so.

This pandemic is over. It has served its purpose to those in power. Biden is now playing the part of President Snow in Hunger Games by giving the plebs a little hope. Dangling the return to relative normalcy in exchange for being jabbed with their DNA altering cocktail is the latest narrative being peddled to the sheep. Many have or will make that trade. But, as of now, the majority are not falling for it. My hope is the spark is not contained and that good men and women do not stand idly by while evil continues to flourish. It is time for decent human beings to stand up and be counted and not allow a darkness to settle upon this nation, ushered in by the likes of Gates, Schwab, Soros, Obama, Biden, Bloomberg and their ilk.

The ruling class would prefer a Hunger Games plot where they continue to pit groups against each other: blacks versus whites, masked versus un-masked, vaxxed versus unvaxxed, liberal versus conservative, men versus women, modestly rich versus poor, taxed versus untaxed, and neighbor against neighbor. They want us fighting each other so we do not realize they are the true enemy.

This entire plandemic was a test to see how far they could push us before we pushed back. As a nation, we failed the test miserably. They are loosening the reins for now, but they now know they can force the masses to cower and beg for safety and security. They are supremely confident they can easily manipulate the masses, based once again on using the Big Lie method.

Recent developments make me suspicious something big is happening and the narrative is going to take a dramatic turn. First the take down of Cuomo by a previously fawning press and now the man who bankrolled the pandemic, creepy Bill Gates, is in the process of being taken down over his relationship with the king of pedophilia – Jeffrey Epstein (who didn’t kill himself). Fauci is about to be thrown to the wolves over his funding of the Wuhan bio-weapon lab. All the pandemic superstars are being cast aside.

Why now? Crucial infrastructure is supposedly being hacked. War is breaking out in the Middle East. Saber rattling between China – Taiwan and Russia – Ukraine is provoking worries of global conflict. Raging commodity inflation, labor shortages, and financial markets giving signs of an imminent crash could be the trigger for the next leg down in this shitshow portion of the Fourth Turning. Something big is coming and I expect it will happen before the 2022 elections. If you thought the last year was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But don’t worry, the planet will be fine.
“We’re so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven’t learned how to care for one another. We’re gonna save the f***in’ planet? And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are f***ed! Compared with the people, the planet is doin’ great. It’s been here over four billion years. The planet isn’t goin’ anywhere, folks. We are! We’re goin’ away. Pack your shit, we’re goin’ away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.” - George Carlin
Related:

Monday, May 17, 2021

Musical Interlude: "Beautiful Piano Music 24/7 Live Stream"

Full screen recommended.
Beautiful piano music 24/7 live stream featuring 
music to relax, study, sleep by me, Peder B. Helland.

"The False God"

"The False God"
by Jim Kunstler

"Beneath all the psychotic babble that sore besets the collective national hive-mind over a pandemic that comes and goes in waves, and phantoms of contrived identity animus, looms an economy that would collapse without gigantic IV infusions of “money” from the false god that our government has become. The collapse is working its way out in strange ways as we create ever stranger work-arounds for avoiding it - such as the unanswered “help wanted” signs while legions of unemployed adults cash government support checks.

Of course, a lot of those unanswered signs are for what used to be called shit-jobs, flipping burgers, bagging groceries, and such. For a lot of Americans, those are the only jobs. We can argue about whether the government ushered better-paying low-skill factory jobs offshore or whether other nations would have developed industries in the natural course of things (or a combo of both). But the end result is a country full of people who can barely support themselves, let alone a family, and the consequent loss of all the psychological infrastructure for a society that can respect itself.

With the spring zephyrs blowing, the great expectation rises for a return to “normal,” which seems to mainly consist of bustling restaurants, brisk car sales, and the construction of suburban houses. It’s not that these are the only things we can do in life, but they’re what the dynamics of the moment allow. Those dynamics include incentives, laws, regulations, habits, and customs.

The zoning laws and building codes allow only certain types of habitations, generally ones too expensive for people seeking to establish households, not to mention the social costs of building even more unsustainable suburbia based on the selling of ever more unaffordable cars. The work-around for that is official manipulation of the debt markets, artificially-low interest rates, and discarding the framework of creditworthiness. The unintended consequences include the inflation of house prices and exposure of house-buyers to greater fragility (risk) in foreclosure. Ultimately, backstopping the banks that hold the mortgages and their derivative securities keeps the whole dishonest shootin’ match going… until it stops.

One thing that will stop all of that will be the slow death of money, inflation, which is just now transforming from a distant specter on the horizon to a condition in the here-and-now. You will have plenty of money and that money will become increasingly worthless. The authorities probably think that’s better politically than the people having no money at all, but it’s really the same thing dragged out over time to fool everybody. Governments like it because it reduces the nominal cost of debt — except now the government debt-load is so supernaturally gigantic, really nothing will avail to fix that, and meanwhile they’re very busy making the debt situation worse by giving away as much newly borrowed money as the situation requires to maintain the illusion of a functioning economy.

Anyway, as the time-frame for inflation compresses, the people notice that their money won’t buy what they need, and they get restless, perhaps dangerously so. In the process, the government begins to look incompetent, on top of the usual perception that it is corrupt, and before you know it, legitimacy slips through the widening cracks of the floor. Until now, the authorities have been successful in pitting citizens against each other, and the ill-will unleashed has been spectacular. But the memes of “white supremacy” are so obviously dishonest that they’ve only succeeded in hugely pissing off the substantial demographic of white people who struggle desperately to remain employed, housed, mobile, and capable of raising children who are not being driven crazy.

The coronavirus situation is not so reassuring. We are one more serious up-wave of illness from tanking whatever remains of this vaporific economy. An emerging pattern suggests that higher vaccination rates might generate new-and-improved iterations of the disease more efficiently - just as the government tries more aggressively to sell vaccination to the public. The public is also noticing the alarming statistics, and many remain unconvinced that the vaccines are even vaccines in the usual sense, but rather insufficiently tested exotic experiments desperately employed against something that looks more and more like a bio-weapon that the government itself was complicit in creating.

My state of New York is supposedly “reopening” today. Who’s not longing to get back to “normal?” But who’s not a little anxious that mixing normally with other people won’t start the whole cycle all over again? And, anyway, who doesn’t wonder whether normal is really a thing of the past now, disappearing in the rear-view mirror. Just as the hopeful meme floats over the Internet that the storm is over, we fail to see that there’s a larger storm of history whirling around us that we’re only in the eye of."

"Worthy..."

Holocaust survivor and psychologist Victor Frankl writes that the sort of person we become is not just a result of our external circumstances, but of our “inner decision.” He remembers the most unimaginable suffering in the concentration camps, and yet shares about men and women who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread: “Proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

As he goes on to write: "The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life… Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings." Few can say they are...

“Credit Cards Are A Debt Trap; Housing Market Buyer Beware; Middle Class Debt Slaves”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Credit Cards Are A Debt Trap; 
Housing Market Buyer Beware; Middle Class Debt Slaves”

"Megadrought Nightmare Is Here: No Water For Crops, Horrific Wildfires And Colossal Dust Storms"

Full screen recommended.
"Megadrought Nightmare Is Here: 
No Water For Crops, Horrific Wildfires And Colossal Dust Storms"
by Epic Economist

"The entire western half of the United States is facing an extremely painful megadrought that has been putting millions of acres of crops in a death grip, as irrigation water is being completely cut off for a multitude of farmers, resulting in a lost year for many of them. Extremely dry weather conditions are a total nightmare for millions of western producers and farm workers because, without water, there are simply no crops and without crops, their jobs are at risk. The timing of this crisis couldn't be worse. After a ravaging wildfire season, scientists are warning that the next one could be even worse than last year due to the bone dry conditions. This megadrought has been gradually aggravating throughout several years, and if there were any hopes that things would get better in the future, at this point, they have been entirely crushed.

In a recent CBS News report, experts explained that this exceptionally dry weather started in 2000, hitting some parts of the Western U.S., and as years passed by, it has expanded across several states, becoming the second-worst drought in 1,200 years - catalyzed by a combination of a natural dry cycle and human-caused climate change. Over the past 20 years, the two worst periods of drought came in 2003 and 2013 - but what is unfolding right now seems to be the beginning stages of something even more dangerous, with scientists warning that the region is on the precipice of permanent drought.

And as we approach the summer dry season - with a very little chance of seeing conditions getting any better - the stage is set for another period of extremely dry weather, with yet another brutal fire season, and, on top of all that, several states are at risk of experiencing widespread water restrictions. Already, the California-Oregon border is seeing things going from horrible to catastrophic as irrigation water stopped flowing into the region. Producers were anticipating that they would be getting much less water this year, but now federal regulators have decided to completely shut off the water from a critical reservoir, affecting most local farmers. Officials also said they would not send any extra water to dying salmon downstream or to dozens of wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year, because "there simply is not enough water for everyone".

In California, the nation's biggest vegetable producer, the water crisis is causing a critical impact on Central Valley farms, forcing many farmers to make some heartbreaking decisions, such as choosing which crops they will have to destroy in order to save others. With asparagus crops completely gone, at least 50 to 60 farmworkers are out of a job next year. And the more crops are lost, the more jobs will be cut. In a year of continual shortages and explosive prices, the fact that this nightmarish megadrought is going to further contribute to our food supply chain woes signals that we're getting closer to another steep national crisis.

Dust storms are becoming a regular event in those areas and, according to NASA, "Valley fever is a dangerous threat to human health - and cases are on the rise in the arid southwestern United States, as the wind from increasing dust storms can transport the fungal spores that cause the disease. Valley fever is caused by the Coccidioides fungus, which grows in dirt and fields and can cause fever, rash, and coughing".

Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that such extraordinarily dry conditions create an ideal environment for wildfires. In 2020, we had one of the most ravaging wildfire seasons in U.S. history. Only in California, almost 10,000 blazes and 4.25 million acres have burned, corresponding to more than 4% of the state’s territory, and damaging or destroying nearly 10,500 structures - and now similar scenes started to be witnessed in Los Angeles County. Local news are reporting that a massive fire is burning out of control in the exclusive Pacific Palisades area near Topanga Canyon. Los Angeles County authorities are investigating who or what might have set off a brush fire that forced the mandatory evacuation of roughly 1,000 people.

With so many things happening right now, it feels like the United States is under some sort of curse. Wherever we look we see emergencies and disasters erupting and every time it appears things couldn’t get any worse, somehow they do. Now, scientists are telling us that Dust Bowl conditions have returned and we're about to face another very dry summer, whose devastating effects will likely trigger more chaos on our broken food supply chains while sparking a dangerous water crisis and ravaging our soil. So much pain seems to be coming for us and it will likely linger for longer than one could have ever expected."

Musical Interlude: Chuck Wild, Liquid Mind, “Dream Ten”

Chuck Wild, Liquid Mind, “Dream Ten”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.  


Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/17/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/17/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/17/21:
"UPDATES: Silver Takes Off! The Fed. 
Is AGAIN Playing A Dangerous Game"
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
May 16th to May 18th, Updated Daily
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts
Commentary, highly recommended:
And now, the End Game...
Oh yeah...

The Daily "Near You?"

Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I'd Still Swim..."

“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was
a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.”
- Abraham Maslow

The Poet: Rod McKuen, “A Cat Named Sloopy”

 
“A Cat Named Sloopy”

“For awhile
the only earth that Sloopy knew
was in her sandbox.
Two rooms were her domain.
Every night she’d sit in the window
among the avocado plants
waiting for me to come home,
my arms full of canned liver and love.
We’d talk into the night then,
contented,
but missing something.
She the earth she never knew,
me the hills I ran
while growing bent.
Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat,
with prairies to run,
not linoleum,
and real-live catnip mice,
no one to depend on but herself.
I never told her,
but in my mind
I was a midnight cowboy even then.
Riding my imaginary horse
down Forty-second street,
going off with strangers
to live an hour-long cowboy’s life.
But always coming home to Sloopy,
who loved me best.
For a dozen summers
we lived against the world.
An island on an island.
She’d comfort me with purring,
I’d fatten her with smiles.
We grew rich on trust,
needing not the beach or butterflies.
I had a friend named Ben
Who painted buildings like Roualt men.
He went away.
My laughter tired Lillian
after a time,
she found a man who only smiled.
But Sloopy stayed and stayed.
Winter,
Nineteen fifty-nine,
Old men walk their dogs.
Some are walked so often
that their feet leave
little pink tracks
in the soft snow.
Women, fur on fur,
elegant and easy,
only slightly pure,
hailing cabs to take them
round the block and back.
Who is not a love seeker
when December comes?
Even children pray to Santa Claus.
I had my own love safe at home,
and yet I stayed out all one night,
the next day too.
They must have thought me crazy
screaming SLOOPY!
SLOOPY!
as the snow came falling
down around me.
I was a madman
to have stayed away
one minute more
than the appointed hour.
I’d like to think a golden cowboy
snatched her from the window sill,
and safely saddlebagged
she rode to Arizona.
She’s stalking lizards
in the cactus now perhaps,
bitter, but free.
I’m bitter too,
and not a free man anymore.
But once upon a time,
In New York’s jungle in a tree,
before I went into the world
in search of other kinds of love,
nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy.
Looking back,
perhaps she’s been
the only human thing
that ever gave back love to me.”

- Rod McKuen 

"If You Will Not Fight..."

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” 
– Attributed to Sir Winston Churchill

"How It Really Is"


"Too OId to 'Get It'”?

"Too OId to 'Get It'”?
by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Wow… Last week was exciting! But first, a more personal report. Last weekend, we went up to Dublin to see, for the first time, our new grandson You’re not supposed to be doing “non essential” travel in Ireland right now. But we also had a doctor’s appointment in the city, so the trip was A-OK with everyone.

When we first came to Ireland, more than 20 years ago, it took three or four hours to drive from Waterford to Dublin. Tiny roads snaked along the coast and through the many towns and villages. But then, the “Celtic Tiger” – a period of rapid real economic growth – roared in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Almost the entire housing stock was upgraded. And sleek new highways were added. Now, the drive takes only two hours, over a pleasant auto-route with very little traffic.

Sleek and Modern: Dublin itself has retained much of its grittiness. But many parts of the city have been tarted up… Some – the Dublin Docklands, for example, nicknamed “Silicon Docks,” due to the arrival of so many leading technology companies, such as Google and Facebook – are as cool and modern as any in the world.

Our son and his wife live in an attractive residential area. The houses are modest, but charming… red brick, with small yards in front… and many nearby parks – all of them ebullient with flowers in this spring season. Ireland seems especially propitious for flowers of all sorts. It rains. Then, the sun comes out. And then, it rains again. And never does it get so hot – as it does in Maryland in the summertime – that all living things seek shelter and mercy.

“It reminds me of Nova Scotia,” says Elizabeth, our wife, whose grandparents lived there. We would go to visit every summer… packing the whole family in our Chevy van… and later (after the family had grown), using two vehicles. Baltimore is almost unbearable in July. Whole weeks go by with the temperature over 90 degrees. Plants go into shock. Some dry up. People hide away in their air-conditioned houses. The sun beats down like a Biblical curse.

We would try to choose the hottest months to make our annual getaway… driving up the I-95 to New Brunswick, where we’d take the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Nova Scotia. Arriving in Annapolis Royal, we’d enter a gas station. There would usually be a pair of locals leaning over the counter, discussing the weather.

“When do you think this heat wave will end?” “I don’t know… But I hope it is soon. I can barely stand it.” “Yep… S’posed to get up into the upper 70s again today. But it will pass.” And so it always did. And we were soon in our cabin, gloriously huddled around an open fire.

New Grandson: But enough reminiscing… Our new grandson is only two weeks old. And as you can imagine, he is already in the 90th percentile, along with all grandchildren. “He looks like your father,” said one of the parents. “No… He looks more like my mother,” said the other. “I think he looks like somebody… but I can’t place him…” To us, he looked like every baby we’ve ever seen… mushy and adorable, of course.

Remarkable Week: But let’s look back at the remarkable week just past. It was last week when the long-expected inflation bus finally rolled into town. The Bureau of Labor Statistics – acting like a traffic cop with a faulty speed gun – reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was way over the limit… traveling at the fastest rate in 40 years… That news triggered a brief stock market sell-off… with investors afraid that the Federal Reserve would have to hike interest rates in order to prevent runaway inflation.

Upon closer inspection, housing and some producer prices were found to be hitting double-digit speeds. But by then, the Fed, the media, and the usual sell-side economists were out in force, explaining why the inflation numbers were nothing to worry about. There was no inflation. “We are coming off an extremely low base… from the bottom of the COVID-19 panic,” they said. “Besides, a little inflation is a good thing,” they continued. It “signals a robust recovery”… and it “helps to make up for years of sub-optimal inflation readings.” Together, the two defense arguments were a little like the lawyer who claimed his client never met the girl… “Besides, how was he to know she was underage?”

The second argument undermined the first. But it hardly matters. Birds gotta fly. Fish gotta swim. And the feds gotta inflate. It’s inflate or die. And sooner or later, the inflation’s gotta show up in consumer prices.

Nuttiest of All: And Elon Musk… God bless him… God help him… Dogecoin went down 30% after Musk – the erstwhile self-proclaimed “Dogefather” – called the crypto coin a “hustle” on nationwide TV. Then, bitcoin fell after Elon said Tesla would no longer take it in payment… until it figured out a way to mine new coins without using so much electricity.

Customers turning away from The Doge and bitcoin had to go somewhere… Some must have gone to SHIB… another dodgy doggy coin – a spoof on a spoof. It went up 1,700% in a week… prompting Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin to “burn” 410 trillion of the coins. All of this proves, at least to our satisfaction, that trying to invest in cryptos is like relying on the “greater fool theory” when you are playing poker in an insane asylum. They’re all nuts. And you might be the nuttiest of all.

More Musk Mischief: But wait… the week wasn’t over. And Elon wasn’t finished working his mischief. He later tweeted the Doge back to life – “Do you want Tesla to accept doge?” Musk asked his fans – and then hinted that Tesla might sell its pile of 38,300 bitcoin. The Doge went up almost 50%… and bitcoin went down even further… for a loss of about 30%. Musk added that if The Doge can’t “scale,” he might start his own cryptocurrency.

There are already some 7,800 of these crypto coins. Of course, there were plenty of cars, too, before Elon developed the Tesla. And Mr. Musk was probably encouraged by a recent launch. Earlier this month, the “Internet Computer” – a new crypto, with perhaps the snazziest name in the whole cryptosphere – came out. Within 24 hours, it had a market value of $45 billion (currently about $25 billion).

Out of It: And so… whether we look at the private sector or the public sector… at cryptos or at federal deficits (already headed for an 8-month record over $2 trillion)… at Elon, or at Janet, Joe, or Jerome…well, everyone is nuts. Or else we’re just too “out of it” to appreciate what is going on.

Maybe this is just one of those times in history when you have to be young… or brain damaged… to understand it. No one over 50 can be trusted to “get it.” But we’re not sure if that “50” refers to age or I.Q."

"A Primer For The Propagandized: Fear Is The Mind-Killer"

"A Primer For The Propagandized: 
Fear Is The Mind-Killer"
by Margaret Anna Alice 

“Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”
- George Orwell

"The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late. Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.

Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’s "Defying Hitler" memoir to see how this can happen anywhere - including here.

Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under "Article 58", the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented "The Gulag Archipelago" to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.

Everyone wonders how Hutus could have suddenly started axing their Tutsi neighbors to death after being inundated with waves of anti-Tutsi propaganda from "Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines." Read Philip Gourevitch’s "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda."

The list goes on. And on. And on. From Machiavelli’s "The Prince" to Étienne de la Boetie’s "The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude" to Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s "Manufacturing Consent" (and accompanying documentary) to BBC’s "The Century of the Self," mechanisms of mass control have been chronicled for millennia.

George Orwell wrote, "As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”

Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now - with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?

The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in "1984", Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451", Huxley in "Brave New World," and Burgess in "A Clockwork Orange."

A textbook example of "Problem Reaction Solution", the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.

The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining - despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.

Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.

Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.

Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases - especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias - against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.

This ideological mass psychosis is religion - not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.

Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” He also said: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

The next time you’re watching the news, reading a social media post, listening to a friend repeat a scripted talking point, pay attention. Learn to identify the earmarks of propaganda, the clickbait used to trigger your emotions, the mechanisms employed to engineer your cognitive biases.

Don’t let your pride prevent you from seeing - and admitting - the Emperor is naked. We are losing our last sliver of opportunity to resist authoritarianism. This is not a partisan issue. Those who wish to control us have made it such because disunited lemmings are easier to steer than independent, critical thinkers.

This is a human issue. This is about crushing the middle class - the backbone of a democratic republic - and transferring trillions from the middle and lower classes to the ruling plutocracy. This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back - not better, but better-controlled.

I will close by recommending a series of illuminating videos on menticide (“the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs … to induce radically different ideas”) throughout history by "Academy of Ideas." This analysis of mass psychosis is nonpartisan and of value to every thinking human being.

"Dare to question. Dare to disbelieve. 
Dare to defy ideology in favor of science while you still can."

Sunday, May 16, 2021

“The FED Is Playing With Fire - Don’t Get Burned; Sell Your Home Now; Market Reckoning"

Jeremiah Babe,
“The FED Is Playing With Fire - Don’t Get Burned; 
Sell Your Home Now; Market Reckoning"

Gregory Mannarino, “Markets, A Look Ahead, 5/16/21”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts3LvrEizTk
Gregory Mannarino,
“Markets, A Look Ahead, 5/16/21”

Musical Interlude: Elton John, "Your Starter For"; "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding"

Elton John,
"Your Starter For";
"Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.

Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”

"Regret..."

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
~ Sydney J. Harris

"It's What It Is..."

"Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is.
The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."
- Virginia Satir

The Daily "Near You?"

High Springs, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Life Of Man..."

"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair."
- Bertrand Russell

"Crabs in a Bucket"

"Crabs in a Bucket"
by Sarah Robinson

"When I was a little girl, I lived very close (an hour and fifteen minutes) to the Florida panhandle beaches. Which meant we spent a TON of time there. Early evening was one of my favorite times to walk the beach with my mom and my older brothers. We were all clean and fed and slightly sun weary but still desperate to be outside. So, we would grab flashlights, dip nets and a bucket and search the ocean’s edge for crabs. We would catch a bucket full in an evening and drag them back home where my mom or my grandmother would cook them up into something delicious. (Yes, I was traumatized by the crabs being put into boiling water, but that story is for another day.)

The problem was that as we made that long walk home carrying crabs, there were always one or two who figured out how to climb up to the edge of the bucket in an attempt to escape. Every now and then we would have to tap the edge of the bucket to knock them back down. Because I was too little to carry the bucket very far, I got the job of watching for potential escapees. And I noticed something... well… odd. More often than not, as a crab would begin to inch its way higher to the edge of the bucket, the other crabs would latch on to him and pull him back down. I watched this scenario play out again and again, year after year.

Fast forward to this morning. As I was drinking my coffee and perusing my twitter stream, and up pops this gem from @paulocoelho (He wrote "The Alchemist", one of my all time favorite books): “Only mediocrity is safe. Get ready to be attacked, and be the best.” Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was my post-event mushy brain. I don’t know. But the minute I read Paulo’s tweet, I thought of those crabs in a bucket. So I sent him this tweet: “I’m thinking of crabs in a bucket. They always try to pull down the one who’s figured out how to escape.”

Paulo liked my analogy so much that he retweeted it and I’ve spent my morning connecting with people all over the world who liked it, too. It resonated deeply for a lot of people. I did a quick Google search and discovered that “Crab Mentality” is actually an official phrase that roughly means “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” And it is talked about. A lot.

There will always be people who will subtly or not so subtly try to keep us from escaping. Why? Because our escape threatens their mediocre existence. Pulling us down, sabotaging our efforts, picking apart our brilliant ideas – all of that keeps them feeling safe. And living undisturbed mediocre lives.

So what if we added a new piece to the crab mentality picture? Imagine a crab, or a group of crabs on the other side of the bucket building a ladder to aid your escape. They managed to crawl out of the bucket in spite of all the energetic attempts to pull them backwards. Because they’ve tasted freedom and they know your struggle, they are putting energy into aiding and abetting your escape.

I believe that for those of us determined to get out of the bucket, such a group exists. It may take some time to find them, but they are there, ready to throw a safety rope over the edge and pull us out. Start listening for them. Start looking for them. They are there. Reach just a little further and they’ll meet you at the edge of the bucket."

'I Am Always Tempted..."

"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' 
I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
- Sydney J. Harris

Musical Interlude: The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"

Full screen!
The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Rising Inflation and Bill’s Doom Index"

"Rising Inflation and Bill’s Doom Index"
by Bill Bonner

OUGHAL, IRELAND – "Oh my… look up. There it is. Our old, tattered Black & Blue… Our trusty “Crash Alert” flag, proudly signaling the alarm. Yesterday, we saw consumer prices moving up. And we saw how the supply of “money” is far outstripping the supply of goods and services you buy with it. So far this century, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet (a rough way of keeping track of the supply of dollars) rose 15 times. U.S. GDP (an equally approximate measure of output) only doubled. That is the classic definition of inflation.

Today, we’re going to look at what kind of inflation it is… and how long it will be with us. Is it “transitory,” caused by a booming recovery and trillions in stimmy money. Or has it come with big suitcases and its favorite pillow… as if it intends to stay? We’ll come back to those questions. But first… the big news…

Crash Alert! Our Doom Index is registering an 8 – which is Crash Alert territory. We created the Doom Index a number of years ago to improve on our (often faulty) intuition. It tracks 12 key indicators to try to detect when there are dangerous excesses in the economy and markets are out of whack. Yes, you can see the full report on the latest Doom Index Reading here. But here’s the short version from our ace research team:

The chart below shows our Doom Index levels by quarter. The red bars indicate a reading of 8 or higher. That’s when we raise our “crash alert” flag and tell investors it’s time to prepare for a market crash. The last time we raised our “crash alert” flag was at the end of Q2 2019, when the Doom Index hit 8. We stayed in the “Danger Zone” for the next four quarters.
Economic conditions improved slightly in the second half of 2020, as evidenced by our Doom Index reading dropping to 7 for Q3 2020 and Q4 2020… Our recent Doom Index reading – based on the Q1 2021 data – is 8… which means we’re raising our tattered “crash alert” flag.

[…]it appears that the stock market is getting way ahead of the economy… Nearly all stock market valuations are at all-time highs, investors are using more leverage, junk bonds are looking riskier, and of course… the feds keep printing.

More Inflation Sightings: Meanwhile, we looked at some of the inflation sightings yesterday. Here’s The Wall Street Journal with more: "Americans accustomed to years of low inflation are beginning to pay sharply higher prices for goods and services as the economy strains to rev back up and the pandemic wanes. Price tags on consumer goods from processed meat to dishwashing products have risen by double-digit percentages from a year ago, according to NielsenIQ. Whirlpool Corp. freezers and dishwashers and Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. lawn and garden products are also getting costlier, the companies say. Some consumers are feeling stretched."

No Big Deal: But don’t worry. Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve and Janet Yellen at the U.S. Treasury both assure us that inflation is no big deal. The Fed is still “printing” $120 billion per month… trying to overcome the “low inflation” threat. According to Powell, the nation’s economic health is threatened not by inflation, but by the lack of it… that is, by persistent Consumer Price Index (CPI) readings below 2%. He thinks stable prices somehow inhibit growth.

As for Yellen, she believes the feds can hit whatever pitch comes their way. Here’s what she confidently told a Wall Street Journal CEO Council event last week: "I don’t think there’s going to be an inflationary problem. But if there is, the Fed will be counted on to address them." That settles it for us. Nothing to be concerned about. There is no inflation. And if there were any, just as a hypothetical, the Fed would smash it out of the ballpark. And Ms. Yellen should know. She used to run the Fed.

Intellectual Exercise: But… just in case – not that we’re doubting Ms. Yellen… or second-guessing the Fed – but just as an intellectual exercise, for our amusement… what if they’re all not really up to playing in the Major Leagues? What if they are better suited to the Special Olympics?

Before last Friday’s jobs report came out, Ms. Yellen suggested that interest rates might have to go up to contain rising price inflation, caused by a robust recovery. That is, she said she was concerned about “overheating,” whatever that is. Then, after stocks began to fall, she backtracked, letting the speculators know that she didn’t really mean it. In the space of less than 24 hours, she determined that the economy’s temperature was just right after all. She must have breathed a sigh of relief on Friday. The employment numbers made it clear that the economy is not heating up; it’s cooling off.

Phew! This takes the pressure off Yellen and Powell to “address” the inflation issue. But only by misunderstanding the nature of the inflation – which both Ms. Yellen and Mr. Powell are eager to do. More like “Marvelous” Marv Throneberry than “Boog” Powell, both want to win the game… but neither has any idea how to play it. They believe that inflation is purely cyclical, caused by rising demand in an expanding economy. (They also believe they can cause the economy to expand by pretending, that is, by inflating the money supply to look like real demand is increasing.)

Double Act: But this is no natural cyclical inflation. It is systemic. It is not driven (or, at least, not entirely) by the business cycle. Instead, it is man-made… caused by the two illustrious strike-outs themselves – Yellen weighing down heavily on the White House’s fiscal bench… and Powell heading up the Fed’s monetary team. The fiscal team spends. The monetary team prints. And they’ll both keep at it until the final inning… when the game is lost."

"Americans Are Panic Buying Homes! Prices Are Soaring: Prepare Your Self For A Housing Market Crash!"

Full screen recommended.
"Americans Are Panic Buying Homes! 
Prices Are Soaring: Prepare Your Self For A Housing Market Crash!"
by Epic Economist

"Americans are in a wild panic buying frenzy for homes despite skyrocketing prices, which has been worrying experts that the fast growth of the housing price bubble and historically low inventory levels might lead the market to a sharp correction way sooner than expected. Panicked buyers are taking part in bidding wars and offering hundreds of thousands of dollars above the asking price, but on the flip side, a large chunk of the population is getting priced out of the market and affordable housing is nowhere to be found. House prices are soaring like never before even as the economy is still facing the worst slump since the Great Depression.

As we previously discussed, the frantic rally is being fueled by low-interest rates, which is keeping mortgage payments more affordable, cushioning the housing market from the current recession. But it wasn't that long ago that real estate experts were expecting the worst. At the beginning of the health crisis, everyone was predicting home prices would collapse given that this is what typically happens when economic downturns occur. But due to the extraordinary monetary response to the sanitary outbreak, markets have been artificially sustained and asset valuations were turbocharged. However, the current pace of home price appreciation is getting increasingly unsustainable, and mortgage rates are moving upward as inflation fears have started to mount, meaning that the current housing boom is headed to a bust.

Real estate analysts have been reporting this to be the most competitive market they have ever seen. According to the National Association of Realtors, the number of sales of existing homes reached the highest level since 2006 - with the US housing inventory dwindling by over 50 percent, while prices rose 9% from pre-outbreak levels, and the median price of an existing home hitting a record high of $329,100 in March. In one alarming example of how crazy the market has become, in a CNN article, realtor Ellen Coleman reported having received "76 all-cash offers on a $275,000 fixer-upper in suburban Washington D.C. within three days of listing the property. The four-bedroom, 1,800 square-foot home sold for $460,000, a 70% increase on the asking price".

Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather, "we are in a record-breaking housing market with asking prices at an all-time high, median sale prices at an all-time high, the share of homes selling over list price at an all-time high, and homes selling faster than ever before: 58% under contract within two weeks of listing and 46% within one week of listing". "Ask just about any real estate agent, and they'll tell you they've never seen a market this hot," he said. Another example of how the panic buying trend has been pushing prices through the roof can be seen in Southern California, where extreme prices are being reported in all corners of the region. For instance, in Orange County, with the highest spike on record, having registered a 38.5% increase in sales leading the median price of a home up by 10.6% to shocking $835,000.

Vanessa Stone, an Enfield real estate broker said that in the 32 years she’s been selling real estate "the current frenzy surpasses even the hot home-selling market of the early 2000s before the crash of 2007". How much longer such extravagant gains will continue is a question worrying both buyers and sellers. Americans are already sensing something is wrong in the market and recent date shows how home-buying sentiment has collapsed to its weakest since 1983. Although bubble deniers have been multiplying lately, realtors are frequently comparing the current market rally to what they have witnessed during the peak of the 2006 historic real-estate bubble.

But just because the market looks different on a macro level, doesn't mean this time will be different, as many want to believe. As we well know, blind believers frequently end up very, very frustrated when they choose to ignore the warning signs that are flashing right into their faces. And if you don't want to get caught off guard, don't take the opinion of those who make their living by selling the idea of a rose-colored reality as the gospel. The next housing market crash is fast approaching and all evidence is there for you to see. So beware of those weirdly upbeat forecasts or you might end up bitterly disappointed."

"We Are Watching A Giant Illusion; IRS Coming For You; Where Are The Good Times? Economy Worsens”

Jeremiah Babe,
We Are Watching A Giant Illusion; IRS Coming For You; 
Where Are The Good Times? Economy Worsens”