Sunday, June 20, 2021

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/20/21"

 
"Economic Market Snapshot 6/20/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/20/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead; Important Updates"
"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.
June 19th to 20th, 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...

"How It Really Is"

"A Realistic Attitude..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip José Farmer

"Real Glory..."

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact,
it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are,
what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
- Maya Angelou

“How Buster Douglas Beat Mike Tyson”
by johnnysmack7

“Going into the fight, Mike Tyson was the undefeated and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He held the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles. Despite the several controversies that marked Tyson’s profile at the time, such as his notorious, abusive relationship with Robin Givens; the contractual battles between longtime manager Bill Cayton and promoter Don King; and Tyson’s departure from longtime trainer Kevin Rooney, Mike Tyson was still lethal in the ring, scoring a 93-second knockout against Carl “The Truth” Williams in his previous fight. Most considered this fight to be a warm-up bout for Tyson before meeting up with then-undefeated number 1 heavyweight contender Evander Holyfield (who was ringside for the fight). Tyson was viewed as such a dominant heavyweight that he was not only viewed as the world’s top heavyweight, but often as the number one fighter in the world pound-for-pound (including by “Ring Magazine”), a rarity for heavyweights.

Buster Douglas was ranked as just the #7 heavyweight by Ring Magazine, and had met with mixed success in his professional boxing career up to that point. His previous title fight was against Tony Tucker in 1987, in which he was TKO’d in the 10th round. However, a string of six consecutive wins gave him the opportunity to fight Tyson. In the time leading up to the fight, Douglas faced a number of setbacks, including the death of his mother, Lula Pearl, 23 days before the fight. Additionally, the mother of his son was facing a severe kidney ailment, and he had contracted the flu on the day before the fight.”

“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back.
That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.”
- Vince Lombardi
Full screen recommended.
At 6:28 of this video Douglas takes a tremendous uppercut and goes down, kneeling to clear his head; you can see him wondering to himself if he should get up. No one at all expected him to, but he reached for something deep inside himself, found an inner strength perhaps even he was unaware of, and got back up to continue the fight. The rest, as they say, is history… and real glory. – CP

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Must Watch! “It’s Game Over For Millions; Rental Homes Destroyed; Avoid Debt At All Cost; Landlords In Crisis"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 6/19/21:
“It’s Game Over For Millions; Rental Homes Destroyed; 
Avoid Debt At All Cost; Landlords In Crisis"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation of Cepheus. From the core outward, the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms.
NGC 6946 is also bright in infrared light and rich in gas and dust, exhibiting a high star birth and death rate. In fact, since the early 20th century at least nine supernovae, the death explosions of massive stars, were discovered in NGC 6946. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, NGC 6946 is also known as the Fireworks Galaxy. This remarkable portrait of NGC 6946 is a composite that includes image data from the 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Video: "Our Son Died 12 Hours After Vaccine Jab. 'Murdered by J and J'”

Video: "Our Son Died 12 Hours After Vaccine Jab. 
'Murdered by J and J'”
by Matthew Grace

"Medical researcher and health consultant Matthew Grace interviews grieving parents Pam and Jeff Goodman to discuss and dissect the coverup and criminal promotion of the Covid 19 “vaccination,” many shocking revelations and irrefutable facts are presented here to help keep you and your family safe.

“Mass Deception in the History of Humankind”. Below is an interview with the parents of their son who died shortly after the vaccine. He was murdered by J and J.

“Where are the unbiased reports? It’s gone.” “The media has created a fear culture” “You have to dig to find the truth”. The information pertaining to the dangers of the Covid vaccine are being deliberately withheld. Both the government and the media are responsible for crimes against humanity.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are involved in suppressing both the data and scientific analysis pertaining to the mRNA vaccine. Google is involved in blocking access to independent online reports on the vaccine. Sustaining Covid lies constitutes a criminal act."
Video here:
Related, must read!

Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, “Evergreen Extended”

Two Steps From Hell, “Evergreen Extended” 

“Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.”
- Dave Eggers

"What Keeps You Going..."

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'"
- Barbara Kingsolver

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”
- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

The Poet: David Wagoner, "Getting There"

"Getting There"

"You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You're there. You've arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.

What did you want to be?
You'll remember soon.
You feel like tinder under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change.
The sky is pulsing against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression
On the self you were,
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.

What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,
Telling it haltingly like a dream,
That lost traveler's dream under the last hill
Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.

You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings."

~ David Wagoner

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths
We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”
by Angel Chernoff

“This is going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
We are going to get through this, I promise,
and we’re going to get through it together. “
- Dr. Jon LaPook

“You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category – timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all, especially as we collectively cope with the evolving reality of economic and life circumstances caused by COVID-19…

1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death – or the imminent dangers now becoming obvious – but don’t be afraid of life either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take positive action today. Death is not the greatest loss in life, neither is illness. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive and well. Even in these difficult times, be bold, be courageous, be a scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. Just change the way you do it.

Invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring passion into otherwise ordinary moments. You don’t have to be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t have to be going anyplace new. You can distance yourself and still passionately engage in each moment.

2. Everything will change again soon. Embrace change and realize in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now.

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening – as they are right now.

So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.

3. Changing your response is what puts you back in control. Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your head and heart. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard to stay true to your intuition and values. This is your life, and it is governed by your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your daily choices preach louder than your lips. May your inner sense of satisfaction be your noise in the end.

And if your present life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land – even when there are so many unknowns – be brave enough to stand up and listen to your heart. Remember that the most powerful moments in life happen when you find the courage to let go of what can’t be changed. Because when you are no longer able to change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself – to grow beyond the unchangeable. And that changes everything! (Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.“)

4. Life’s storms can be a great source of strength. Hard times are like strong storms that blow against you. And it’s not just that these storms hold you back from places you might otherwise go. They also tear away from you all but the essential parts of your ego that cannot be torn, so that afterward you see yourself as you really are, and not merely as you might like to be.

Ultimately, you realize you are here to endure these storms, to sacrifice your time and risk your heart. You are here to be bruised by life. And when it happens that you are hurt, or betrayed, or rejected, let yourself sit quietly with your eyes closed and remember all the good times you had, and all the sweetness you tasted, and everything you learned. Tell yourself how amazing it was to live, and then open your eyes and live some more.

Because to never struggle would be to never grow. You must let go of who you were so you can become who you are. Again, it is within the depths of the strongest and darkest storms that you discover within you an inextinguishable light, and it is this light that illuminates the path forward.

5. You don’t need all the answers right now. Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.

Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.

All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the hard times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself… “How in the world did I get through all of that?”

"How It Really Is"

 

"Thoughts, Unoriginal But Perhaps of Value, on Brains"

"Thoughts, Unoriginal But Perhaps of Value, on Brains"
by Fred Reed


"The systematic study of intelligence is fraught, dangerous, since everyone instantly thinks, “Race. Blacks. I will lose my job and live in a tent on the sidewalk if I think about this.” The concern is that study might reveal differences between groups. Oh God. So: Should we study it or not?

The panic arises only regarding blacks. Suggesting that Jews are smarter than other whites, which perhaps most believe, or that East Asians are smarter than whites, as seems to be the case, does not greatly roil the waters. Hispanics don’t seem to matter. Blacks do.

Now, if blacks are less bright than whites, as many quietly believe, we have one situation. If they are not less bright, we have another. If blacks seldom become software engineers because they can’t, what then? White European society seems to accept the apparent superiority of Jews and East Asian, and the consequent differences in prosperity, without dangerous levels of resentment. The resentment of , and by, blacks is intense and explosive.

Here, politics enter. Liberals insist that no racial differences exist. But they do not seem to believe it. If they did, they would favor a massive and careful regime of testing to prove their point. Instead, they strenuously resist investigation Why, other than fear of likely results?

Some facts, unwoke but demonstrable: Both intelligence and behavior are largely determined by genetics. Any dog breeder will tell you that Border Collies are smarter than beagles. They learn faster and learn things of greater complexity. He will further tell you that dogs can be bred for higher intelligence by mating unusually smart dogs with other unusually smart dogs. And he will tell you that traits such as protectiveness and aggressiveness are in the breeds and that these traits can be changed up or down by selective breeding. This mutability appears all through the mammals. Any determined teenager can breed mice to be better or worse at running mazes. Ly elevated offspring.

Now, subspecies. Collies and pit bulls are subspecies of dog, in simple terms meaning that they are both dogs but, a bit more biologically, that they can breed with each other. Similarly, Africans, Chinese, and Norwegians are members of subspecies of Homo sapiens, for exactly the same reasons.

The woke are usually ardent of Darwinian evolution, probably because it is a doctrine useful against evangelical Christianity, though typically they know next to nothing about either Darwin or Christianity. We will here grant them this. A foundational idea of orthodox Darwinity is that if a species is divided into separated populations so that they cannot interbreed (if, for example, an isthmus joining two continents sinks beneath the waves), they will over time evolve into distinct subspecies with distinct characteristics. The woke happily accept this principle when useful against Creationism. If it is pointed out that it works identically with separated populations of people, such as Africans, the Chinese, and Norwegians among others, a silence falls.

This is what is called an “oops! moment.” The woke sense where things are going. Their usual response is to insist that race doesn’t exist (in which case racism presumably doesn’t either, but we will not complicate things), that it is a “social construct” with no scientific meaning. Most of the woke are graduates in the liberal arts with almost no familiarity with the sciences or mathematics which makes scientifically silly beliefs palatable.

Does race in fact have no scientific meaning? I propose an experiment. Go to the website of one of those commercial genetic-analysis services, such as Twenty-three and Me. Order ten test kits. When they come, spit in one of the sample tubes yourself, add the preservative, and put the tube in a drawer. Then go forth with the remaining nine tubes and find a series of approximately the following: a Chinese, a Mexican, a pure African black (perhaps at an embassy to avoid contamination by white American blood), a mixed black-white, an Amerind, an Ashkenazi Jew, perhaps a north and a south Indian. If you can scrape up an Australian aborigine, do.

On all the bottles put English names: Reed, Jones, Smith, Fletcher and so on. When the reports arrive, you will find that the races have been correctly and scientifically identified, with such findings as thirty-five percent Middle Eastern, forty percent north European, and so on.

Another and desperate attempt to deny the existence of race is to point out that the DNA of humans and chimpanzees is 98.5 percent identical (or some such number). I suspect that the figure may be higher in the woke, but this is speculation. This is then used to urge that minor genetic differences don’t amount to anything. Actually of course it shows that minor differences have profound consequences. I don’t know your dating habits, but the difference between Bongo the Chimp and Marylyn Monroe seem at least noticeable.

Now, intelligence. Is there any reason why races might differ? At this point the woke try to eliminate the question rather than answer it. They will assert that intelligence doesn’t exist, that it is a social construct. They do not believe this except when talking about race. They will say in casual conversation, “Fred, I want to get you together with Mary, she’s a biochemist at NIH, and really smart.” They do not say, “Wow! Is Mary ever socially constructed.” At least, not in reference to mental qualities.

But put five people of IQ 170 and five of IQ70 in a room and see how long it takes you to tell one from the other. About three seconds. The difference will be stark. And people autodetect intelligence. People of IQ 90 tend to associate with others of that IQ. Those of 150 do the same. A woman once said, “In Washington, you assume that everyone is in the 99th percentile.” No, but she was, so people she knew were. The is called “cognitive stratification.”

Why would one race evolve higher intelligence than another? In terms of strict evolutionary piety, a group under more environmental stress than another will be selected for its ability to figure out solutions—i.e., for intelligence. Proponents of IQ argue that life in cold regions requires more planning, thought, and ingenuity than life in tropical regions where fruit hangs low. To what extent this is true is not clear to anyone who thinks about it, but the woke don’t. This puts the woke in a position requiring squirming. If they accept Darwinism, then races can differ in intelligence. If they deny Darwin, they find themselves agreeing with Creationists.

Here we come to the vexed matter of IQ. It is one that can lead to bar fights. A reasonable question about IQ is whether it measures what it is supposed to measure: intelligence. This mystery attracts much sophistry from people who seem to illustrate the principle that intelligence doesn’t exist. Still, put people with IQ 70 and 130 in a freshman calculus class and your question will be answered.

Who studies IQ? At the top of the analytical hill we have psychometrists, usually highly intelligent (pardon the word) and well trained statisticians. They are careful, well aware of pitfalls in psychological measurement, and doing their best, which is usually quite good, to determine the truth. They are accused of course of racism for getting the wrong answer. Interestingly, though overwhelmingly white, they rank intelligence from high to low as Ashkenazi Jews, East Asians, whites, Latinos, blacks. The findings of psychometrists track observable outcomes over statistically significant groups.

Next you have a loose group, sometimes rising to the status of a movement, who call themselves “race realists.” Here objectivity, always claimed, is not always practiced. Without exception known to me they are conservatives, with their clan’s characteristic tendency to see outgroups as hostile. Their clear desire is to prove that blacks, Hispanics, and non-whites in general are intellectually inferior to whites. This desire does not prove them right or wrong, but suggests a need to read them closely.

For example, you can find them asserting that the Nepalese have a mean IQ of 60, which would make them unable to dress themselves, and that Mexicans and American blacks have mean IQs respectively of 87 and 85, essentially identical, yet the former operate telecommunications networks and other appurtenances of modernity while the latter show no capacity. The population of India is said to have a mean IQ of 81, which decreasingly seems to match reality on the ground.

It is worth noting that there is nothing mathematically wrong with IQ calculations, as mathematics. You give a million people an IQ test, plot the tests on paper, and you get the famous “bell” or “normal” curve. This does not create data, distort data, or hide data. It just displays them, as does a pie chart or bar graph. It is used in thousands of calculations from physical chemistry to failure rates of engine parts. In a sentence, the interpretation may be debatable, but the distribution is not.

Do IQ tests “work”? Statistically, yes. In the case of individuals, not always. If you take the test with a hangover, you may do poorly. If the test is in English, which you read poorly, likewise. The designers of tests are quite aware of these problems and avoid them.

The woke objection to tests is precisely that they do work: that the numbers correlate closely with observed outcomes. All manner of studies have shown that IQ is a good predictor of success in fields requiring thought. Along with semi-IQ tests, such as the SATs and the military’s AFQT, IQ tests have been used successfully for many decades as predictors of success in university and in selection of candidates for military jobs such as truck driving or electronics tech. They all give closely similar results for racial groups.

The truth, unpalatable though it be, very much appears to be that we differ, both as individuals, and races, in intelligence. This has and will have grave consequences. Is it wiser to ignore this, and thus have no influence over events? To pretend? Or to concede reality, grapple with the problem and try to find the least unpleasant road forward?

Postscript: 2020 U.S. International Math Olympiad team, world champion. America is about six percent Asian, if memory serves. The Chinese absolutely dominate America’s hard-science universities and high schools.

Quanlin Chen, gold medal.
Gopal Goel, silver medal.
Tianze Jiang, silver medal.
Jeffrey Kwan, silver medal.
Luke Robitaille, gold medal.
William Wang, gold medal.

QED"

"We Must Not Forget..."




 

"We Should Be Shocked By What Inflation Is Doing To Home Prices, Because We've Never Seen This Before"

Full screen recommended.
"We Should Be Shocked By What Inflation Is Doing
 To Home Prices, Because We've Never Seen This Before"
by Epic Economist

"If you're planning to buy a home right now, it's safe to say that you will find one of the craziest markets ever. Home prices are crossing the line into "absurd" territory and they just keep getting higher and higher. There's no end in sight for this frenzy, and as inflationary pressures are mounting in pretty much every sector of the economy, the housing market bubble is set to spiral out of control. All that thanks to the federal government's wild spending and the easy money policies introduced by the Federal Reserve. Now, there are just too many dollars chasing too few goods and services, and price bubbles are emerging everywhere. But in the U.S. housing market, the effects of inflation are just shocking. We are seeing one of the most competitive markets in history, with bidding wars happening on a regular basis, and oftentimes, buyers are paying staggering sums that go way over listing price.

People have become so desperate to snatch up a home in this cutthroat real estate market that they have been offering Caribbean vacations to the seller, or bidding $1 million over the asking price, and even paying a competing bidder hundreds of thousands of dollars for them to walk away. Now that many buyers are making all-cash offers and going way above the asking price, to enter some hyper-competitive markets, people have been finding jaw-dropping ways to stand out. According to a Zillow report, only in March, 310 homes were sold for more than a million dollars above the list price in the U.S., an increase of 74% from last year. The report highlighted that paying half a million dollars over the asking price is even more common. In March, there were 940 of these sales across the country, twice as many as last year.

In that environment, it has been impossible for first-time buyers and other qualified homebuyers that need a mortgage to find an affordable home. That just proves how the current monetary policies effectively served to widen the wealth gap in America, making millions of lower income buyers unable to invest in a home. That's what happens when trillions of printed money are pumped into the markets. At this point, the U.S. dollar has essentially become “wheelbarrow money”. As long as this euphoria continues, millions of Americans will be left with no other alternative but to rent a home.

Sadly, rents are surging very rapidly too. According to data released by CoreLogic, single-family rents jumped 5.3% year over year in April, rising from a 2.4% increase in April 2020, marking the largest gain in almost 15 years. Rents for single-family detached homes, increased by an even stronger rate of 7.9% compared with a year ago, as millennials in particular look for more outdoor space. Approximately half of millennials surveyed by Corelogic, and 64% of baby boomers, said they, “strongly prefer” to live in a single, stand-alone home.

So as home prices keep soaring a double-digit pace, and increasingly more potential buyers continue to be priced out, demand for single-family rentals is unlikely to cool anytime soon. And yet, we haven't seen the worst of inflation this year. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve readjusted inflation expectations and very small steps in the direction of admitting the proportions of the inflationary crisis that we are facing. During the conference, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee unanimously left its benchmark short-term borrowing rate anchored near zero, but officials suggested that two interest rate hikes would occur sooner than expected, after saying in March that no increases would happen until at least 2024.

Even though policymakers insist that inflation pressures are "transitory" amid the biggest rise in consumer prices in nearly 13 years, the Fed had to readjust its headline inflation expectation to 3.4%, a full percentage point higher than the March projection, and well above the 1.8% projection from a year ago. Needless to say, the word "transitory" is just another euphemism not to spark widespread panic amongst American consumers. But the truth is that they are doing very little to prevent a financial and economic disaster.

And as long as our politicians continue to engage in this reckless spending binge, and as long as the Federal Reserve comes along to finance this spending while pumping more money into the financial system, the threat of a devastating inflationary collapse is only becoming more real. Economists and financial analysts have been warning that we're about to face the greatest paradigm shift in the story of the United States, one that will turn the world's wealthiest superpower into the bankrupt Weimar Republic -- And if you think home prices are expensive right now, just imagine how expensive they will get after the value of our currency collapses even further."

Friday, June 18, 2021

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 6/18/21: "The Economy is Booming - Just Don’t Tell Santa Monica"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 6/18/21:
"The Economy is Booming - Just Don’t Tell Santa Monica"
"We are being told the economy is entering a Boom Town period. Things are unstoppable. Welcome to Santa Monica, CA where they are unaware of the growing economy. Check out the 3rd Street Promenade and the retail endgame."

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Dolmen Ridge"

Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Dolmen Ridge"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?
Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”

Kahlil Gibran, “The Farewell”

“The Farewell”

“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
 and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”

- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”

Chet Raymo, “Why Cranes Fly”

“Why Cranes Fly”
by Chet Raymo

"There were a few Comments here about herons, from right around the world. What is the power of this bird to touch our minds and hearts? The naturalist Aldo Leopold was intimately familiar with the cranes of Wisconsin, cousins of our New England great blue heron, the Irish gray heron, and Adam2's aosagi from Japan, and wondered about their ability to move us so deeply. In A Sand County Almanac he watches as a crane "springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun with mighty wings." Our ability to perceive beauty in nature, as in art, begins with the pretty, he says, then moves into qualities of the beautiful yet uncaptured by language. The beauty of the crane lies in this higher realm, he proposes, "beyond the reach of words."

Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.

John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."

Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."

In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."

"The Fed’s Done It Again"

"The Fed’s Done It Again"
by Brian Maher

"Five consecutive losing sessions. The stock market’s despairingest week since January. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened the week at 34,381. It closed the week at 33,290 - a 1,091-point falling away. The index plummeted 533 points today alone. The S&P and Nasdaq underwent similar harrows, on a percentage basis. The S&P surrendered 55 points today; the Nasdaq, 131.

The very angels weep. What is the going explanation? The Federal Reserve has once again frightened the horses, fluttered the dovecotes and flustered the fish. CNBC: "U.S. stocks fell on Friday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average on pace to post its worst week since January, after St. Louis Federal Reserve President Jim Bullard told CNBC the first rate hike could come as soon as next year. Economic comeback plays led the market sell-off."

The Federal Reserve’s latest consensus - this week reached - projected two rate hikes in 2023. That alone was sufficient to quiver the markets. But today, this monetary grandee mumbled about a rate increase in late 2022. Here are Mr. Bullard’s specific comments: "This is a bigger year than we were expecting, more inflation than we were expecting. I think it’s natural that we’ve tilted a little bit more hawkish here to contain inflationary pressures."

He expects inflation will go at 3% this year - and 2.5% next year. Both estimates exceed the Federal Reserve’s just perfect 2% inflation rate. And so: If that’s what you think is going to happen, then by the time you get to the end of 2022, you’d already have two years of two-and-a-half to 3% inflation. To me, that would meet our new framework where we said we’re going to allow inflation to run above target for some time, and from there we could bring inflation down to 2% over the subsequent horizon.

And so you have today’s stock market plummet - at least in part. Our men inform us of a complementary explanation… It is technical in nature and beyond our slender understanding of market piping and wiring. But it involves the expiration of options - a “quad witch” in particular. This day represented the second-largest single stock options expiration in market history. $818 billion of stock options expired. And the business evidently amplified the rout. “Evidently,” because its operations are mysterious to us.

Can you penetrate Goldman’s gobbledygook? Then you earn our highest hosannas: "At major expirations, options traders track situations where a large amount of open interest is set to expire. In situations where there is a significant amount of expiring open interest in at-the-money strikes (strike prices at or very near the current stock price), delta-hedging activity can impact the underlying stock’s trading that day. If market makers or other options traders who delta-hedge their positions are net long ATM options, expiration-related flow could have the effect of dampening stock price movements, causing the stock price to settle near the strike with large open interest. This situation is often referred to as a “pin” and can be an ideal situation for a large investor trying to enter/exit a stock position. Alternatively, if delta-hedgers are net short ATM options (have a “negative gamma” position), their hedging activity could exacerbate stock price moves."

Just so. We can only conclude the delta-hedgers had negative gamma positions. We are willing to take correction... if mistaken. Regardless, we are informed it is a passing fright. It should not carry into next week. But put aside the arcane market sciences and take up this fundamental question: What kind of stock market is this that shrieks at the prospect of a minor rate increase late next year? Or two minor rate increases in two years? We must conclude it is not a sturdy one if a slight wind can knock it down.

Yet the Federal Reserve cannot quiet the winds for all time. Soon or late, a good gust will blow on through. Perhaps - even - a mighty gale. How will the stock market withstand the inevitable blast? Again, we must conclude it cannot. “You can build a throne of bayonets,” said former Russian president Boris Yeltsin - “but you can't sit on it for long.” Alternately… you can build a stock market upon foundations of sand... as the Federal Reserve has. But how long can you sit upon it?"

The Daily "Near You?"

Grand Blanc, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Free At Last"

"Free At Last"
by Jim Kunstler

"For now, the public seems to want nothing more than to breathe a little easier - that is without masks on our faces after a year of Covid-19 paranoia - and attempt to return to something like normal life. It’s like an “all-clear” siren went off the past week and a consensus swept the land that can be summed up as we’re done with that. There were zero cases of Covid-19 in my upstate New York county the past week and now the few people going around still-masked begin to look a little like whack-jobs acting out a stupid morality play.

The official Covid-19 narrative took quite a beating last month, but the bottom line of it all is hardly reassuring. The main theme of the narrative was the insistence by public health authorities at the highest level, staunchly supported by the compliant news media, that the disease did not originate in the Wuhan, China, virology lab. They kept the story going all year. Then, just days ago, the narrative flipped and is suddenly accepted as self-evident: of course, the virus came out of the Wuhan lab! (Jon Stewart shouted this out right in Stephen Colbert’s contorted face on TV.) Dr. Fauci’s email trail says as much, along with videos of his colleague Peter Daszek bragging on it as far back as 2012, with plenty of supporting evidence from various Chinese scientists.

But the flip-flop on Wuhan leaves some extremely uncomfortable questions that the nation is too distracted (or dishonest) to debate in the public forum, the public forum these days being mostly social media: Twitter and Facebook. And it’s not altogether clear whether they will continue to suppress discussion about the origin of the virus, and issues arising out of that - though they risk looking tyrannically obtuse if they keep up the gaslighting. And in these sorry years of anything goes and nothing matters, Zuck and Jack may never have to answer for their craven deeds.

The biggest question that the authorities want to evade is: if the virus did originate from the Wuhan lab, was it released by accident… or on purpose? The “Joe Biden” government is now forced to, at least, pretend that it will investigate. My guess is: they don’t want to know. It would raise enough subsidiary questions to leave a normal person panting with nausea. For instance: was China trying to soften-up the USA by disabling our economy? And soften us up… for what? Some observers who are hardly dumb or crazy think that China wants to reduce the USA to a vassal nation that can only supply China with food, oil, and other resources.

Sound far-fetched? Maybe. After all, we still have that fleet of submarines armed with multiple-warhead nuclear missiles circulating around the oceans as a kind of insurance policy. But Americans have to do something to make a living, and it sure isn’t going to be mass production of consumer goods, like in the old days. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the service economy got gutted during the lockdowns - millions of businesses bankrupted, restaurants, yoga studios, concert venues, dog groomers, shops of all kinds, you name it - gone, and a lot of the people who took livelihoods from all that are financially ruined for good.

What’s left? Health care and pharma, two odious rackets preying on the psychological weakness of people so beaten down by adversity that they can only console themselves with junk food, liquor, sexual debauchery, and drugs, and then must beg the health care system to fix them - after which it squashes them to death with outlandish charges for services rendered? Or government, another reprehensible racket, seeking desperately now to control its citizens’ every move while everything it does is not only running wildly out of control, but via the most idiotic, suicidal policies - such as throwing the border with Mexico wide open to all comers, while it pays Americans to not work.

The leading government policy just now is to hector, browbeat, and coerce Americans to get vaxed-up with vaccines that appear to be pretty hazardous. The Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines so far (which is not very far) have produced more deaths and adverse events than all the other vaccines for all other diseases developed in the past thirty years, and we have no idea what the long-term effects will be of a spike protein that likes to damage blood vessels, brains, and reproductive organs. That’s another thing the news and social media don’t want the public to inform themselves about, not to mention the scientifically-based opinion that vaccinating a populace in the middle of an epidemic is pretty certain to provoke the evolution of new and more dangerous variants of the disease agent.

For now, all these mighty issues stand aside while Americans enjoy some early summer days of liberation from a long nightmare. Coincidentally, the Democratic Party has just now engineered two separate-but-equal Independence Days for America: Juneteenth, for People of Color, and the familiar old Fourth of July for everybody else. Isn’t that a fine way to reinforce the idea that we are irreconcilably so far apart?"

"Maybe..."

“Maybe we’re not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be a human. Maybe, we’re thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe, we’re thankful for the things we’ll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.”
- “Grey’s Anatomy”

"Stock Market Melt-Up Followed By 80% Crash THIS YEAR"

Adam Taggart, Peak Prosperity,  AM 6/18/21:
"Stock Market Melt-Up Followed By 80% Crash THIS YEAR"