Tuesday, July 20, 2021

"Unwelcome Guests"

"Unwelcome Guests"
by Bill Bonner

ON BOARD THE WB YEATS – "Something odd happened on Saturday. It’s not every day that we see naked young women frolicking in our field. But let’s back up and explain how this began. In the late afternoon, we heard a loud and unfamiliar sound – music. Awful music. Dreadful music, with the boom… boom… boom beat that makes you think there must be something wrong in the engine room. “What in the world…?” we asked each other.

Back in the Hood: We have become accustomed to the absolute calm and tranquility of rural Ireland. We hear the birds sing in the morning and the pheasants cluck in the afternoon. We hear the rustling of the leaves as the wind passes and tractors in the fields. But suddenly, we were back in the “hood” of Baltimore… with the kind of noise delinquents listen to when they are trying to imitate a good time.

At first, we assumed it must be coming from a neighboring farm. Maybe the young folks were having a party, and blasting their music so loud, it crossed the river. “Hope the parents get back soon,” we thought. Later, we realized that the party was taking place in our own field. This became apparent when we saw three women… in the distance… barely visible through the trees. We saw the flesh… and from such a distance… only the flesh. One, with her back to us, appeared to be completely sans clothes.

Illicit Shindig: But what were they doing on our property? We needed to investigate! Maybe it was a nudist gathering… or just some kids having an illicit shindig. Ireland is still under COVID-19 restrictions. Then, we heard shouting – joyful… drunken… dumb shouting.

We set out across the field to where we had seen the young women. There was a group of nearly 20 young people… the men stripped down to the waist in the 75-degree heat… the women in tiny bikinis. Some were sitting around a campfire. Others were putting up a huge tent… situated on the side of a hill. Still others stood in a circle… drinking, talking, and laughing. The partiers had come in unnoticed from an old boreen and through a gap in the stone wall.

We approached, wearing our work clothes. When they saw us, they stopped talking. We were an unwelcome guest. “What do you think you’re doing here?” we asked… not smiling at the trespassers. “Oh… Is this private property? We didn’t know,” said a young man with an earnest look.

One of the others approached menacingly, lurching, as if drunk. “Settle down, Adam,” the first interceded. “Honestly,” said a blond girl with a blue tattoo and a nose ring, “we didn’t know. We thought it was okay to camp here.” A dark-haired woman stared. “Well, it is private land. You have to go,” we said firmly.

Bad Deal: What followed was a spell of explaining, negotiating, and pleading, in which your editor – never very good at that sort of thing – ended up agreeing to let them keep their camp… on two conditions. “You turn down that music… If I hear the music from the house, I will call the GardaĆ­ (the Irish police),” he warned them. “And make sure you clean up when you leave in the morning.” The rules in place, we went back to the house… and were quickly informed about the bad deal we had made.

We’ll come back to our little story later… First, let us check in with Wall Street…

Bad Day on Wall Street: Yesterday started badly. Stocks dropped, with the Dow down more than 900 points, before rising to end the day down 725. Commentators were quick to blame the “Delta” variant of the coronavirus, anticipating more lockdowns and face masks. It’s hard to imagine that people will put up with more COVID-19 restrictions. Those who are afraid of the virus are already vaccinated. Others have had the disease already… or don’t care about getting it. And all can see that there is little apparent connection between these public health measures and their risk of dying.

A better explanation for the price drop is that investors are beginning to realize that the economic recovery may not be as strong as they had hoped. Stocks are priced for a very prosperous world. But that world may not be what’s coming.

Smarter Than Stocks: For weeks now, while inflation has surprised to the upside, the bond market has surprised to the downside. That is, while inflation rose, bond yields fell. Yesterday, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note dipped below 1.2%… its lowest yield in five months. “Bonds are smarter than stocks,” say the old-timers. And it looks like they are right. Bonds are telling us that a period of slow growth… or a recession… is headed our way – even as consumer prices continue to rise. Stagflation is what they called it in the 1970s. Get ready for it.

Decent People: Back at home on Saturday… “You’re letting 20 young people you don’t know… some of whom are already drunk… camp on your land, in violation of the COVID-19 restrictions? Don’t you think something might go wrong?” “What could go wrong?” “One of the neighbors could complain… or call the GardaĆ­. They’d want to know why you allowed this illegal party. “Or who knows what they might get up to… half-naked women… drunk men? A fight? An accident?” This was the “bond” side of the household speaking, if you know what we mean.

“They seemed like decent people,” we replied lamely. “I didn’t want to ruin their party.” “Decent people do not trespass on other people’s property.” As it turned out, they were decent enough. They turned down the music. And by 11 a.m. on Sunday… they were gone. The campfire was still smoking, but otherwise, they left little trace."

"How It Really Is"


"Are We On The Verge Of A Massive Stock Market Crash?"

"Are We On The Verge Of A Massive Stock Market Crash?"
by Michael Snyder

"Is time finally running out for “the bubble to end all bubbles”? Over the past year, we have seen stock prices rise to levels that are completely and utterly absurd, and many have pointed out that we are currently in the largest stock market bubble in the entire history of our nation. Of course this bubble will end the way that all of our other stock market bubbles eventually ended, and recent market activity has a lot of people wondering if the time for that is drawing near. Signs of trouble have been percolating on Wall Street for weeks, and on Monday we finally witnessed an eruption of full-blown fear. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 725 points, and that represented the worst day for the index since last October. But one really bad day is not a crisis, and even though many individual stocks have already plunged into bear market territory, we have a long, long way to go before people start using the word “crash”. In fact, I don’t think that anyone should even think of using the word “crash” until the Dow drops below 30,000.

But without a doubt, a crash is inevitably coming. Whether it happens this month, next month or next year, stock prices will plummet from these ridiculously inflated levels. As for the plunge that happened on Monday, many are blaming it on fears about the “Delta variant”… “It’s a bit of an overreaction, but when you have a market that’s at record highs, that’s had the kind of run we’ve had, with virtually no pullback, it becomes extremely vulnerable to any sort of bad news,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading & derivatives at Charles Schwab. “It was just a matter of what that tipping point was, and it seems we finally reached that this morning” with worries about the delta variant."

To me, there are other issues that are of much greater concern, but apparently this is what is spooking investors this week. According to CNBC, the number of newly confirmed COVID cases per week has more than doubled over the past month… "Covid cases have rebounded in the U.S. this month, with the delta variant spreading among the unvaccinated. The U.S. is averaging nearly 26,000 new cases a day in the last seven days through Sunday, up from a seven-day average of around 11,000 cases a day a month ago, according to CDC data. Cases were already flaring up around the world because of the delta variant."

Now that the market has started to fall, some experts are warning that the drop could be quite substantial. For example, one Morgan Stanley strategist believes that we could eventually see a “correction” of 10 to 20 percent… “The market appears ready to take on a more defensive character as we experience a meaningful deceleration in earnings and economic growth,” Morgan Stanley chief U.S. equity strategist Mike Wilson said in a note Monday. “Market breadth has been deteriorating for months and is just another confirmation of the mid-cycle transition, in our view. It usually ends with a material (10-20%) index level correction.”

Actually, if that is the worst that happens we will be quite fortunate. In recent days, the mood on Wall Street has shifted dramatically. In fact, the CNN Fear & Greed Index is now sitting at 16 which is considered to be in the “extreme fear” range, and the VIX has been soaring.

As our friends at Zero Hedge have pointed out, the last time we witnessed this much fear on Wall Street the S&P 500 was absolutely plummeting… "With the S&P 500 around 3.5% off its record highs, we note that fear has exploded. The last time fear was this high, the S&P was down 40%!"

We shall watch and see what happens this time around. Zero Hedge has also pointed out that Goldman Sachs has been aggressively selling off billions of dollars worth of stocks recently… "What is even more remarkable is just how much Goldman has harvested so far in 2021: as shown below, having started with a $20BN equity portfolio which has enjoyed a $5BN increase in market prices, Goldman dumped a whopping $5.5 billion of its equity assets so far (excluding a modest $1.5BN in purchases) or more than a quarter of its entire portfolio as of Dec 31."

This is not normal for Goldman Sachs. In fact, you have to go all the way back to just before the financial crisis of 2008 to find another time when they did such a thing… "The last time Goldman was “aggressively” selling into a “supportive” market? Well, we have to go back all the way to 2007 and 2008 when Goldman was busy creating the very CDOs which its prop desk would then “aggressively” short."

We all remember how prophetic that particular move turned out to be… That is “interesting” to say the least. But as big financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs are dumping stocks, talking heads on television continue to assure all of us that a wonderful new era of great prosperity is just ahead. Just check out what Bill Ackman told CNBC on Monday… "Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said Monday that the spread of the delta variant doesn’t pose a significant threat to the economic reopening, and he sees interest rates rising on the back of the big comeback. “I hope what it does is that it motivates anyone who doesn’t get the vaccine to get the vaccine. I don’t think it’s going to change behavior to a great extent,” Ackman said in a interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “You are going to see a massive, my view, economic boom. … We are going to have an extremely strong economy coming in the fall.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if he was right? I would love to see a “massive” economic boom. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that is going to happen. In fact, I believe that we are rapidly approaching some of the most difficult economic times that we have ever seen. The laws of economics cannot be ignored forever. The federal government is now 28 trillion dollars in debt, we are in the midst of the greatest corporate debt binge of all time, and U.S. consumers continue to go into debt as if tomorrow will never arrive. But tomorrow always arrives eventually, and our “tomorrow” is going to be a day of reckoning that is going to be far more painful than most people would dare to imagine."

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/20/21: "Important Updates: Stocks, Gold, Silver, Dollar, Crude, Crypto, Debt"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/20/21:
"Important Updates: 
Stocks, Gold, Silver, Dollar, Crude, Crypto, Debt"

"How Breakdown Cascades Into Collapse"

"How Breakdown Cascades Into Collapse"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"Maintaining the illusion of confidence, permanence and stability serves the interests of those benefiting from the bubbles and those who prefer the safety of the herd, even as the herd thunders toward the precipice.

The misconception that collapse is an all or nothing phenomenon is common: Either the system rights itself with a bit of money-printing and rah-rah or it collapses into post-industrial ruin and gangs are battling over the last stash of canned beans.

Neither scenario considers the fragility and resilience of the socio-economic system as a whole. It is both far more fragile than the believers in the permanence of the waste is growth model grasp and more resilient than the complete collapse prognosticators grasp.

The recent relatively mild logjams in global supply chains of essentials are mere glimpses of precariously fragile delivery-supply systems. These can be understood as bottlenecks that only insiders see, or as unstable nodes through which all the economy's connections run. Put another way, the economy's as a network appears decentralized and robust, but this illusion vanishes when we consider how the entire economy rests on a few unstable nodes.

One such node is the delivery of gasoline and fuels. It's such an efficient and reliable system that 99.9% of us take it for granted: there will always be plenty of gasoline at every station, the tanks of jet fuel will always be topped off, and so on.

The 0.1% know that this system, once disrupted, would knock over dominoes all through the economy.

Hyper-efficiency and hyper-globalization has reduced the number of producers of essentials to the point that disruptions cannot be overcome with redundant sources. We see this everywhere in the global economy: a handful of plants and companies (sometimes a single source of essential components) process or manufacture essential components in much larger systems. This is how you end up with thousands of newly manufactured vehicles parked in lots awaiting one critical part that is in short supply.

Another key weakness is the entire system's reliance on debt, leverage and speculation. Few seem to understand that physical production and delivery systems can grind to a halt for financial reasons - for example, lines of credit being pulled, a counterparty to some arcane commodity swap goes under, taking the presumably solvent corporation down with it, and so on.

The more debt that's been piled up, the greater the instability of the entire system. Risk always appears low until the system destabilizes, and then all the hedges fail and risk breaks out, flooding through the entire financial system.

Leverage is great fun on the way up, as it magnifies gains. Since the Federal Reserve implicitly guarantees that "buy the dip" will generate massive gains, why not ramp up leverage ten-fold to maximize those Fed-guaranteed gains? Leverage is less fun on the way down. When the underlying collateral has shrunk to 20% of the leveraged bets being made, a 21% decline in the asset wipes out all the collateral holding up the palace of leveraged debt. The Fed can print money but it can't create collateral, nor can it make insolvent entities solvent. All the Fed can do is increase the debt and leverage, which is not the solution, it's the problem.

Speculation is also inherently unstable, as the euphoric herd, once startled, turns in panic and stampeded in fear. Markets which appeared liquid - i.e., sellers could count on someone buying as many millions of shares as they desired to sell - become illiquid, as buyers vanish like mist in Death Valley. With buyers gone, prices plummet to levels the herd reckoned "impossible" just days before.

The Fed's entire strategy in the 21st century has been to inflate asset bubbles that generate the illusion of wealth - the so-called wealth effect which is presumed to inspire voracious borrowing and spending.

Unfortunately for the Fed, most of the gains flowed to the top 0.1%, and an economy based on a handful of billionaires buying super-yachts and spaceships is a line of dominoes awaiting the inevitable "accident." So there are two systemic problems with relying on asset bubbles to generate "wealth": 1) since 90% of the assets are owned by a thin slice of the populace, bubbles increase destabilizing inequality, and 2) bubbles are intrinsically unstable. So the U.S. economy, dependent on the Fed for the "juice" of monetary stimulus, is now dependent on incredibly unstable bubbles in assets, debt and leverage, bubbles which have generated extremes of wealth/income inequality that are destabilizing the social and political orders.

As the three charts below illustrate, the fragility and instability are well hidden until it's too late: bubbles, debt, leverage, budgets and revenues can only click higher because the system breaks down if there is any sustained decline (the rising wedge model of breakdown). Once the subsystems fail, there's no putting the eggshell back together.
The second chart depicts how buffers thin beneath the surface, masking the systemic fragility. The loss of redundancy, the decay of maintenance, the loss of experienced workers -  all of these are hidden from public view until the system breaks down.
The third chart tracks the S-curve of expansion, confidence, complacency, delusion and collapse followed by human systems, from nations to empires to corporations: as the buffers thin and the rising wedge reaches an apex of vulnerability, the leadership evinces a delusional confidence in the permanence and stability of increasingly fragile, unstable systems.
Maintaining the illusion of confidence, permanence and stability serves the interests of those benefiting from the bubbles and those who prefer the safety of the herd, even as the herd thunders toward the precipice. This is how breakdowns in apparently stable subsystems triggers the fall of dominoes throughout the larger system, leading to a collapse that was widely viewed as "impossible." Such is the power of complacency and delusion."

Monday, July 19, 2021

"More Banks Closing Credit Lines - Economy in Chaos"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly, PM 7/19/21:
"More Banks Closing Credit Lines - Economy in Chaos"
"First it was Wells Fargo bank, now there are more banks added to the list that are closing credit lines. Our Economy is in complete chaos as the stock market teeters on complete collapse."

"Bank Meltdown Is Coming As Latest Data Reveals Something Is Terminally Broken In The US Bank System"

Full screen recommended.
"Bank Meltdown Is Coming As Latest Data Reveals 
Something Is Terminally Broken In The US Bank System"
by Epic Economist

"A remarkable and yet concerning development in the banking sector is signaling the financial system is in big trouble. Severe imbalances between the volume of loans and deposits in all four of the U.S. biggest banks are indicating that the overflow of liquidity issued and pumped into the system by the Federal Reserve over the past 12 months is triggering operational problems for banks and setting the economy up for failure. The loan-to-deposit ratio is a measure of how much money printed by the central bank enters the bank system and how much money is created by private entities, the first being responsible for bad inflation - higher prices for assets and goods, lower growth - and the second by good inflation - boosting economic growth with real money.

The largest US bank, JPMorgan, just released its latest earnings report in which it exposed that in the second quarter its total deposits went up by a staggering 23% year-over-year, to $2.3 trillion. On the other hand, the total amount of loans issued by the bank remained flat, at $1.04 trillion. This means that more printed money is making into the financial system than real money is getting out and going into circulation across the economy. Moreover, the report highlighted that this is the second time in history that in the first quarter, JPMorgan recorded 100% more deposits than loans. In other words, the ratio of loans to deposits is now 50%. The last time such sharp imbalances between the volume of loans and deposits occurred was just before the Lehman crisis, so this is a very alarming situation financial analysts have been closely watching.

However, for Bank of America, this epic divergence is even worse: Deposits hit a new all-time high of $1.91 trillion, despite the fact that the bank's loans have continuously shrunk at a very alarming, deleveraging pace and are sitting now at $927 billion, roughly $100 billion below their level just before the Lehman crisis. That is to say, Bank of America recorded zero loan growth for the past 12 years, while the bank's deposits have doubled. The same has happened to Citigroup and even Wells Fargo. Simply put, for the past 12 years, only unbacked money was put into circulation.

There are two major implications resultant from the collapsing loan-to-deposit ratio. The first is that this ratio is a closely watched metric that measures how much lending a bank is doing when compared to its capacity to lend. The second is actually the most fundamental question in modern fractional reserve banking: "what comes first, loans or deposits"? Put it another way, do private, commercial banks create the money in circulation by first lending it out, or is the central bank the only one responsible for money creation? Deposits are coming first because the money supply has exponentially grown in the past year, and everyone knew that eventually, this money would flood financial markets while also pushing the price of assets, goods, and services to sky-highs. For evidence, just note the recent explosion in consumer prices that readjusted inflation expectations to the highest in 13 years. In essence, the recent loan and deposit data mean that the conventional process of deposit creation via loans is terminally broken.

In sum, banks won't have another alternative rather than issuing a massive amount of loans to offset the massive amount of liquidity injected by the Fed into the financial system. Most importantly, once banks release this huge lending effort the inflation provoked by the Fed's policies will show its worse effects. Another critical reason why this data is so relevant is that the continued loan destruction is a sign of looming deflation, meaning that prices will stay up while growth will remain flat, so the inflation fueled by the Fed won't serve its purpose of actually stimulating the economy. But even though everyone has been warning the Fed about the flaws of the current policies, it is very likely that once a deflationary period starts to occur, the government will launch another major reflationary mega stimulus, which will also fail to stimulate benign inflation and keep fueling asset and price bubbles across the financial markets and the economy for another 3 to 6 months, in case they haven't already burst.

Needless to say, this helicopter money will and once again fail to create benign economic inflation, and every additional liquidity injection will only push us one step closer to uncontrolled asset price hyperinflation as soon as those trillions in newly created printed dollars start flowing right back into the financial market again. We're on the verge of a new era of painful price hikes and a stagnant economy, and we will be incredibly lucky if a catastrophic financial crisis doesn't burst in that process."

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Resonance Blue"

Deuter, "Resonance Blue"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Two stars within our own Milky Way galaxy anchor the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Beyond them lie the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are over 100 million light-years away.
Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow ellipticals (NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312), are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter. An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as NGC 3314 is just above and left of NGC 3312. Also known as Abell 1060, the Hydra galaxy cluster is one of three large galaxy clusters within 200 million light-years of the Milky Way. In the nearby universe, galaxies are gravitationally bound into clusters which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters that in turn are seen to align over even larger scales. At a distance of 100 million light-years this picture would be about 1.3 million light-years across."

"No Special Hurry..."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry."
- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell To Arms"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/19/21: "Morgan Stanley Warns On The Market. Cost Of Living SURGING On Runaway Inflation"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/19/21:
"Morgan Stanley Warns On The Market. 
Cost Of Living SURGING On Runaway Inflation"

"Dow sinks 726 points for worst day in over 3 months 
amid escalating worries about COVID's delta variant."

"A Question of Timing"

"A Question of Timing"
by Jeff Thomas

"France, 1788. Russia, 1916. Germany, 1937."

"These dates have something in common. In France in 1788, political conditions had been getting questionable, but there was no apparent need to panic. That came the following year, with the sudden outbreak of the French Revolution. From that point on, it was dangerous even to go out in the streets of Paris. So many people had become enraged, that even if you were not a member of the aristocracy, you could easily become collateral damage. And so, it would have been wise if, in 1788, you had decided to pack your bags and remove yourself from the epicentre of what was developing.

Similarly, in 1916, Russia was at war with the Germans, and the populace was becoming increasingly vocal about the state of the economy. Yet, even the czar believed that the people simply had to accept the situation and muddle through. A year later, soldiers were deserting, a host of political wannabes were vying for power and anyone who simply wanted to be left alone to run his own life was now afraid to go out on the streets.

And of course, in Germany, prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, all the warnings were there that the country was beginning to unravel, but virtually everyone assumed that, somehow, things would be all right. A year later, Germany was at war with five nations and had invaded three others. People were being rounded up, imprisoned and/or shot. Those who sought to get out of Germany found that they were no longer allowed to do so.

And history is full of similar cases. In hindsight, the warning signs have always been there: an increasingly autocratic government, increasingly volatile and irrational political struggles, mounting debt, increased taxation, a declining economy and the removal of basic freedoms "for the greater good."

In 1929, if you lived in the US, you might have just paid $2,735 for a new Packard Custom 8 Roadster – a means of showing off your recent gains in the stock market. A year later, you might well have offered it for sale for only $100, as, for all your previous price offers, there were no takers. And you, like they, had been wiped out in the crash, and $100 meant the difference between eating and not eating.

In 1958, you might have been enjoying a daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana and joking to friends about ‘las barbudas’ – the tiny rebel force hiding in the Sierra Madre. A year later, the joking had ended and private businesses like El Floridita had been nationalized by the new government.

For millennia, the playbook has been the same. Countries that had been wonderful to live in, began to deteriorate from within, and the great majority of residents had failed to read the tea leaves – the warning signs that, in the future, conditions were not going to get better; they were going to get worse. But why should this be so?

Well, in 1787, in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment that gave rise to Adam Smith, economist and historian Alexander Tytler is credited as having said: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

He further noted that the latter stages of any such decline are marked, first, by complacency, then by apathy. The final stage is invariably one of bondage.

In some cases of collapse, the country is taken over by an outside force, but invariably, as stated above, the rot always starts from within. It’s simply human nature for the majority of any population, when passing through challenging times, to fall prey to promises that, somehow, a change in the form of government can and will result in the elimination of problematic conditions.

But how do those who make such claims sell their ideas? Do they suggest that everyone should work harder and practice a greater level of abnegation? Well, no. Although such people may exist and may even become outspoken, they are, historically, never the individuals whom the majority of the population follow. Invariably, the majority (having become complacent and pathetic), choose those who promise to take from one group and share the spoils amongst those who are less productive.

As illogical as this promise is, most people, even if they doubt the reality of the claim, tend to think, "Well, it couldn’t be any worse. I might get something, so let’s give it a try." A very simple case in point is the Bahamas election of 1967, in which Bahamians elected their first ‘man of the people’ as their premier. Under his rhetoric of ‘Bahamas for Bahamians,’ he promised the large underclass of Bahamians that he would take the top jobs away from the British bankers and other business leaders and that the spoils would go to the average Bahamian.

Of particular interest were the luxury vehicles driven by successful businessmen. Bahamians in their thousands imagined that the senior staff in banks would be fired, that they themselves would be given the jobs… and the fancy Jaguar Saloons. And that did happen to some extent. Those who were loyal to Prime Minister Lynden Pindling did move up to management positions overnight – positions for which they were not qualified. Not surprisingly, they were unable to learn decades of knowledge overnight. They subsequently either lost their new jobs, or the banks lost business on a massive scale.

And the Jaguars? Well, it turned out that there were thousands of Bahamians for every Jaguar that existed, and for 99.9%, there would be no previously imagined spoils. Instead, their lives soon headed south in the coming months and years, as wealth flowed away from the Bahamas, most of it never to return.

In other countries the details have often been quite a bit more complex, but the scenario and the outcome have been the same. Once the warning signs begin to appear, it’s important to remember that, historically, the process never reverses itself. An apathetic population is not one that will suddenly decide to roll up its sleeves and get the country, once again, on a productive footing. Invariably, the population jumps on the toboggan of empty promises and rides it downhill until it reaches the economic bottom.

And so, circumventing such a situation becomes a question of timing. When it becomes clear that the telltale signs are reappearing once again, those who are wise will acknowledge that the sands are running out and it’s time to move on. The signs tend to be the same in any locale, in any era. They’re quite easy to see. The difficult part is choosing to make an exit whilst it’s still easy to do so."

The Daily "Near You?"

Overland Park, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Human Life..."

"Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart."
- Blaise Pascal

The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"

"Courage"

"It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out."

~ Anne Sexton

"Freedom Day"

"Freedom Day"
By Bill Bonner

DUBLIN, IRELAND – "A heatwave has arrived in Ireland. “Another hot one,” said our neighbor on Sunday, wiping his brow. It was the hottest day of the summer, with the temperature reaching 78 degrees. “I hope it ends soon,” he continued.

Disaster Day: Meanwhile… today is “Freedom Day” in England. COVID-19 cases are soaring. Nevertheless, the country has decided to throw off its winter masks of fear and repentance… and return to full summer normality. “If we don’t do it now, we have to ask ourselves, when will we ever do it?” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the move. Naturally, the usual killjoys are out in force, warning that “it’s not going to be freedom day; it’s going to be disaster day.”

Disaster day, we reckon, will come in its own good time… but not as a result of freedom… or the COVID-19 bug. After all, dying is no disaster; we all have to do it, sooner or later. Whether lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and shelter-in-place orders make it sooner or later is unclear. Some studies suggest that by lowering GDP, the lockdowns et al. may actually have shortened more lives than they prolonged. We don’t know. We only know that we don’t like other people telling us what to do.

On the Move: And today, we’re on the move… enjoying our freedom, while we can. We’re setting sail for the continent. In a few minutes, we’ll drive aboard the ferry for the trip to France… where we will visit a son, who lives in Paris… see old friends… and take care of business, as necessary. The crossing – an overnight cruise – is usually agreeable… unless the seas are rough. Then, it is miserable.

We recall an early crossing when the children were young. The ship had left port and headed out into the English Channel… this time sailing from Cherbourg in France to Dublin. It was our first trip to Ireland. Smooth sailing at first, we all sat down in the restaurant for an evening meal Then, as we got out into the Atlantic, the waves got bigger. We all began to feel a little uneasy. Still, we decided to act “normal”… and go on with our dinner as usual. We were halfway through the main course… trying to keep up a pleasant conversation… when one of the boys suddenly threw up on the table. No problem. The restaurant staff were used to this kind of thing. The table was quickly put in order… and our son went to lie down in the cabin.

Crisis “Contained”: Minutes later, another geyser exploded… Again, the mess was cleaned up… and another child went off to the cabin with his mother. Dad stayed at the table with the remaining two children. It looked for a while as though the crisis was “contained.” But the further out in the Atlantic we went, the rougher the seas became. “A storm coming in,” was the waiter’s nonchalant analysis.

But the stalwarts remaining at the table continued eating, pretending that nature had endowed them with sea legs. We ordered another glass of wine, hoping that would make us more relaxed. And then… another vomit. It was time to give up on dinner. Now, all were sick, except our youngest… then, about 8 years old. He continued to eat heartily… and then settled into the ship’s theatre to watch a movie. The rest of us, however, lay in our bunks… feeling nauseous, but trying not to be violently ill. And so the evening passed.

And when the morning came, like seaborne travelers throughout the ages, we looked out and rejoiced. Land! Terra firma. Ireland. We arrived safely and quickly recovered our good humor.

U-Turn: This time, however, we are going the other way, from Dublin to Cherbourg, passing by the south coast of England. And while England opens up, France recently announced that it would require a “sanitary pass” – including data on your vaccination status and COVID-19 test result(s) – for access to restaurants, bars, movie theaters, and almost every sort of collective entertainment, as well as hospitals and shopping centers. This set off a wave of protests over the weekend.

“We’re Free French!” proclaimed the banners. “I packed my bag already,” said a handwritten sign in the window of a bistro. “I’m ready to go to prison. No Sanitary Pass.” So loud was the ruckus that the French government seems to have backed off. A rumor… or news?... A report this morning told us that the pass will only be required for public buildings.

Even More Abnormal: Emmanuel Macron (French president) and Christine Lagarde (head of the European Central Bank) have said that they intend to react to the present crisis – such as it is – not just by trying to bring things back to normal, but to make them even more abnormal. That is, they say they aim to use the crisis to change the way people live. They will “transform” the economy, so as to make people behave the way they want them to.

Citizens will get the vaccine, whether they need it or not. They will drive electric cars and eat only vegetable protein. They will get their money directly from the central bank, so the authorities can control it. They will address each other as “Comrade” and wear face masks for life… even at home. Most importantly, they will do as they are told… whether it makes any sense or not."

"The Counter-truths Unspin"

"The Counter-truths Unspin"
by Jim Kunstler

"Back in the day, LSD trips were mostly a matter of personal choice. Today, though, all you have to do is wake up somewhere between Montauk and the Farallon Islands and your senses are overwhelmed with hallucinations. The public used to depend on newspapers and TV networks to suss out reality, but that filter is long gone, replaced by a relentless “narrative” machine, and all it does is spin out one technicolor whopper after another.

The trouble is: narrative is not the truth. Generally, it’s the opposite of the truth. It’s manufactured counter-truth. The more narrative you spin, the faster you must spin off new supporting narrative to conceal the untruth of your previous narrative - until the national hive mind is lit up in unreality where nothing makes sense and the very language that separates humanity from the rough beasts becomes a social poison. And is “Joe Biden” not the perfect gibbering epitome of this mess, a ghost in the narrative machine, beckoning us into chaos?

America is on a bad trip. The country has lost its way psychologically. Two things will be required to bring it out of the fugue state it tripped into five years ago: some significant shocks to the system and the passage of time. Those shocks are in the offing and the “Joe Biden” regime - meaning Barack Obama and his wing-people who run things - are looking more and more desperate as auguries manifest.

Their current tactical hustle is to amp up paranoia over the receding Covid-19 episode. It looks like an attempt to smokescreen the emerging evidence of massive and widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and the growing eagerness of a few other states besides Arizona to mount audits of what went on last November 3rd. The supposed surge in new Covid cases is really just a tiny blip, considering it comes off a baseline of close to zero cases in many places. 11,140 so far have died from Covid vaccinations, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Last week 2,092 deaths from vaccinations were added versus 1,918 deaths from the virus. Countries with the highest vaccination rates are showing the most new Covid cases.

Yet, it’s looking like the idea is to set up the unvaxed for blame as “Joe Biden’s” legitimacy dissolves and the country finds itself in a political crisis because there’s nothing in the constitution that provides for removing a president elected fraudulently, even if the nation is crumbling around him. Vaccine disinformation is killing people, Mr. “B” warned last week. CBS 60-Minutes led its Sunday night show with more Covid scare stories. The message is everywhere that you must get vaxed-up, and, if you don’t, there may be severe penalties. Those likely to opt out of a vax are exactly those people who distrust what the government tells them, meaning probably people who did not vote for the current occupant of the White House. As it happens, though, the number of people who distrust government is expanding even beyond that demographic.

The regime must know that evidence of massive voting fraud and the loss of political legitimacy will coincide with a financial train wreck that looks to be chugging out of the station this very morning with all asset indexes tanking as I write. There are even fresh reports of an asteroid heading directly towards Washington DC this week. (So said Devin Nunez, ranking member on the Senate Intel Committee, over the weekend.) The asteroid is the long-rumored return from deep space of Special Prosecutor John Durham with some interesting announcements concerning the most poisonous narrative of this era: the RussiaGate collusion hoax finally revealed as a seditious conspiracy by high government officials in the Department of Justice and the Intel agencies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Obama and his wing-people turned up in that mix. Won’t that be a nice accessory to “Joe Biden’s” presidential flame-out? And won’t that be just the ripe moment for China to move against Taiwan? Lawkes a’mighty… feets don’t desert me now!

The turmoil could get pretty hairy by summer’s end. Money will be flooding the system with the predictable loss of money’s legitimacy, at the same time that a massive debt repudiation gets under way. Hyperinflation and debt default at the same time? Sounds improbable, I know, since the former means too much money and the latter means money is disappearing like crazy. What it really means is that everything gets repriced rapidly and violently, and not necessarily in US dollars. Banks will not like this one teensy weensy bit.

All this will certainly lead to a lot of people suddenly going hungry, because that’s how going hungry works - it only takes a couple of days of not eating. Goodness knows what will be happening the streets then. These are the sort of shocks we’re facing. Things get very real, elbowing out the hallucinations. The long, strange trip sputters out. And then begins the long hard job of finding a way to live that actually makes sense. Hint: it’s smaller, slower, closer to home, and in many ways better."

"How It Really Is"

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 7/19/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 7/19/21"
"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 7/19/21:
"TAKE ACTION NOW! The 10 Year Yield CRATERS 
And Stocks Poised To Dive At The Open"
"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.
July 17th 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...

Must Watch! Greg Hunter, "Vax Wars are Global – Gerald Celente"

Must Watch!
"Vax Wars are Global – Gerald Celente"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Renowned trends researcher and publisher of “The Trends Journal,” Gerald Celente, boldly predicted back in April, “We are going to start seeing a big anti-vax movement.” He was spot on, and now says the “Vax War” is about to get more intense, and there is nowhere to hide from it. Celente explains, “What people have to understand is this is global. We made this forecast almost a year ago. We said, as we were watching the Covid war, that they were going to try to end it with the vaccines. We have had a number of covers on ‘The Trends Journal’ showing the vax wars and the vaccines right next to Biden’s head. There are three groups that run and own the United States. The Military Industrial Complex, The Banksters, and The ‘Drug Lords’ also called Big Pharma. We gave billions of dollars of our money to invent this ‘warped’ speed drug that has not been approved by the FDA, and it’s a gene therapy drug. We have been writing about this constantly and how they have been saying since April that you are going to have to get a booster shoot, and by the way, you will probably need one every year. The big issue here that most Americans are missing is this is global. The drug dealers, the Banksters and the Military Industrial Complex are in charge of the world.”

Celente says the pressure will continue to be pushed and coerced upon the so-called “unvaccinated” even though it is, in fact, an experimental human drug trial. No one will mention the fact that half the country already has natural immunity, according to Dr. Marty Makary at Johns Hopkins University. With death and injuries from fully vaccinated people going higher by the thousands every week, there are no facts that will sway the pro-vax crowd. Celente says, “The facts don’t count. If you show the facts, it’s misinformation if you put out facts. It’s a conspiracy theory when you put out facts, and in the United Soviet States of America, you are not allowed to put facts on any social media because they will ban you. You are not allowed to say anything to disagree with the government or the (so-called) ‘health experts.’”

Celente sees a huge trend in politics emerging and explains, “There are going to be new parties: anti-vax, anti-establishment, anti-tax and anti-immigration. The parties that unite under that will be the winning parties. They have to unite under that.”

Celente says, “The whole damn system is corrupt.” Celente does not have high hopes for the election fraud being uncovered to actually do anything because the system is so corrupt.

Celente also talks about the U.S. economy and that it should have tanked long ago, and the powers keep propping it up. He also comments on gold, silver, Bitcoin and why New York City and many other cities are not coming back.

Celente says people will have to “unite to protect liberty and freedom,” and predicts it’s going to be a long fight."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One
 with Gerald Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal.