Full screen mode recommended.
Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, October 8, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
"I Remember..."
"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort – to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires – and expires, too soon, too soon – before life itself."
- Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, English writer, "Youth"
"The Grinch Who’d Steal Christmas"
"The Grinch Who’d Steal Christmas"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"Sunday was once my favorite day. Church, then mimosas, then falling asleep on a hammock while reading The New York Times. Those were the days. Then church was canceled and replaced by public health messaging. Now Sunday is the day that the insufferable Anthony Fauci holds court on TV. Whatever he says dominates the headlines for the rest of the week. Reporters let him talk and talk and are either unable or unwilling to ask any hard questions.
This time he pushed more vaccine mandates, threatened people who refuse with job loss and economic hardship and refused to say whether people should gather for Christmas this year. With that, he tips his hand: He is going for a COVID-zero strategy. It’s impossible. The attempt alone will finally shatter the economic and social order that we once knew.
I found his comments alarming, as I always do. My friends in Florida and Texas have been pushing back on this, pointing out that life seems perfectly normal in these states, and that’s been true for the better part of a year. They tell me just to settle down, but here’s the thing. Two-thirds of this country and the world are still in the grip of an insane idea that is wrecking the liberty we once knew. And it’s about to get much worse thanks to these vaccine mandates.
Lawlessness: People mostly do not know this, but the Biden administration has yet to release any sort of printed directive about these mandates that pertain to all companies with more than 100 employees. Why is this? Probably because the administration knows for certain that what it is doing won’t pass a legal test. OSHA was not set up as a vaccine-compliance outfit. Tagging this agency for this purpose would surely be shot down by courts at all levels.
How, then, can they get away with this? By reducing the edict to no more than a press conference and a few public statements, the government is inspiring human resources departments in every company to retool and act. They are counting on the private sector to do the dirty work for them. This way the deed is done and it faces no legal challenge. And this is precisely what has happened.
It’s affecting the public sector of course. Police departments around the country are being gutted. Hospitals are firing workers. The universities are being purged. All local and state governments are dealing with a genuine crisis. And over the coming weeks, every business will have to decide to comply or land on the wrong side of the wrath of the Biden administration and openly declare themselves to be Enemies of the State. It feels like war because it has many features of war.
I’ve noticed a subtle change in the framing of all public statements related to this. The lockdowners and pushers of mandates have been steely and cold, impervious to logic and disregarding of public opinion. They seem to be adopting a sadistic pose, not unlike what you would always find among the leadership of totalitarian countries. It’s a chilling thing to behold an entire ruling class lose all empathy.
The Revenue Grab: This tendency to outsource tyranny to the private sector is really catching on with the ruling class. I was in a store the other day when the owner put on his mask when I walked in. I was the only customer in the store. I said that he could take off his mask. He said that if he did that he would get fined thousands of dollars just like the merchant next door.
He said that the same would be true if he failed to enforce the mask mandate against me. I wouldn’t get in trouble with the police. He would. I asked how in the world anyone would know. He said there are two ways. Another person could walk by the shop and see me without the mask and call public health, which would then call the police. They could take a picture and the merchant would be fined.
He said that a second way would be for the cops to directly enforce this. They would come and sit in the parking lots, sometimes wearing plainclothes, watching for employees who failed to enforce the mandates. If they spotted them, they would walk in a few minutes later and issue all kinds of citations.
They can do this any time, any day. What they are after is not public health. They want money. The average local government lost 6% of its revenue in 2020 after many years of anticipating 3–5% increases in revenue year after year. They are now desperate to make it up.
Local and state governments don't have little Federal Reserves to print money for them. They can only spend what they can tax or raise through bond sales. So COVID compliance enforcement has become a form of taxation done in the name of public health. At this point, hardly anyone really pretends that this is somehow slowing or stopping the spread. It doesn’t do anything, but it provides great opportunities for government to further pillage private enterprise.
What matters here is that the merchants don’t actually have to believe in these mandates. They really don’t care either way. They would mostly rather see the faces of the customers, and they would probably like to enjoy the freedom to breathe. But they would rather mask up and make others do the same to avoid the tax. The Land of the Free!
Deck the Halls: Let’s return to this Christmas issue. I have some instinct that Fauci might have gone too far this time. Of course I’ve said that before. But it’s kind of like the old rule: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fauci tricked people last year. Actually most houses of worship were closed for the better part of 2020, much to their eternal shame. But now we know that it was all a ruse. This time it likely will not work.
That New Zealand has given up its zero-COVID policy is encouraging. Actually, it’s inevitable that every state in the world will have to relent, simply because the virus cares nothing about government policies. But even after that date, we’ll be left with a rapacious ruling class that has taken from this fiasco that the public will put up with a lot more despotism than we ever believed possible, provided people are fearful enough.
Lose the fear and we find our freedom again. Unfortunately, too many people have a vested interest in maintaining that fear."
"When People Tell You..."
"When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou famously advised, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you."
- Maria Popova
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 10/8/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 10/8/21"
"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
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
October 8th to 11th, Updated Daily
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Daily Job Cuts
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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And now, the End Game...
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"80% Market Crash Ahead, But Meltup Still Has 20% To Go Beforehand"
"80% Market Crash Ahead,
But Meltup Still Has 20% To Go Beforehand"
"If David Hunter is correct, get ready for a wild ride folks. Hunter, whose bold predictions this year have so far proved surprisingly accurate, expects the market to zoom 20% higher from here in a spectacular blow-off top…to be then swiftly followed by a historically epic crash, falling somewhere between 65-80%. He thinks this approaching bust will be the largest global financial crisis in history. In this brand-new video interview, David gets specific about his forecast timing, as well as his projected price targets for how he expects key assets to perform both during the meltup and in the following crash. This one's a must-watch, folks."
"San Francisco Is A Ghost Town"
Full screen recommended.
"San Francisco is a ghost town… There’s just nobody here, it’s like the apocalypse’. San Francisco’s office occupancy is the lowest of any U.S. metro area. Buildings are empty. Workers are gone. Mayor London Breed to lift mask requirements in desperate bid to revitalize city. Offices are empty. Workers are gone. And hundreds of downtown merchants are hanging on by a thread. Here are two of their stories."
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Full screen recommended.
"Chaos by the Bay:
The Truth About Homelessness in San Francisco":
"San Francisco has become plagued by homelessness, addiction, and property crime. In this short documentary, I investigate what went wrong - how one of the world's most prosperous cities has become a haven of public disorder."
"America Running Out Of Everything"
"America Running Out Of Everything… Appliance Delays
Cause Havoc… The Great Diaper Shortage…
Even Toys Tough To Come By… Food Prices New Peak"
by Derek Thompson
"Is it just me, or does it feel like America is running out of everything? I visited CVS last week to pick up some at-home COVID-19 tests. They’d been sold out for a week, an employee told me. So I asked about paper towels. “We’re out of those too,” he said. “Try Walgreens.” I drove to a Walgreens that had paper towels. But when I asked a pharmacist to fill some very common prescriptions, he told me the store had run out. “Try the Target up the road,” he suggested. Target’s pharmacy had the meds, but its front area was alarmingly barren, like the canned-food section of a grocery store one hour before a hurricane makes landfall.
This is the economy now. One-hour errands are now multi-hour odysseys. Next-day deliveries are becoming day-after-next deliveries. That car part you need? It’ll take an extra week, sorry. The book you were looking for? Come back in November. The baby crib you bought? Make it December. Eyeing a new home-improvement job that requires several construction workers? Haha, pray for 2022.
Just 180 More Days Until Your Oven Arrives: Appliance Delays Cause Havoc: When Deric Bradford’s delivery of a new clothes washer was delayed for several weeks this September, the 43-year-old banker started hauling his baskets of dirty clothes to John Calderon’s place - “like I was a college student,” he said.
The two are friends, but the laundry runs are all business. Mr. Calderon is the owner of Los Angeles-based Advanced Building and Remodeling Inc., which helped Mr. Bradford buy appliances for the Hollywood Hills home he moved into over the summer.
Mr. Calderon and other remodelers and appliance sellers are trying to keep consumers like Mr. Bradford happy in the midst of delays on many appliances. Manufacturing and supply-chain problems have turned household amenities into hard-to-find trophies, leaving consumers and salespeople alike scrambling for workarounds. Appliance sellers are doing double duty as therapists to frustrated consumers, who may find themselves eating cereal for dinner and doing dishes in the bathtub for months.
Diaper shortage hits US amid COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues: Many American families are having a hard time finding diapers for their infants and toddlers as the National Diaper Bank Network said 1 in 3 American families are in need of the baby item. The network suggested to the New York Times the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the global supply chain is likely the reason the country is seeing a diaper shortage. Companies are facing a labor shortage and difficulty getting imports from countries that have been placed on a temporary lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – The sawdust is flying inside the headquarters of KidKraft, a Farmers Branch-based company best known for children’s play sets, kitchens, and dollhouses. CEO Geoff Walker says employees design and build prototypes here in North Texas, but the final products are made in China and Vietnam before being shipped to the U.S. by sea.
PARIS, Oct 7 (Reuters) – "World food prices rose for a second consecutive month in September to reach a 10-year peak, driven by gains for cereals and vegetable oils, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday. The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also projected record global cereal production in 2021, but said this would be outpaced by forecast consumption. FAO’s food price index, which tracks international prices of the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 130.0 points last month, the highest reading since September 2011, according to the agency’s data."
"Where Are All the Sad Faces?"
"Where Are All the Sad Faces?"
by Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "We end the week as we began it… with our gast flabbered by the news. The week was dominated by the debt ceiling hoax… in which one party earnestly tried to save the nation… while the other was determined to send it into a dark spiral of default and catastrophe. At least, that’s the way the elite press described it.
Actually, there was never any danger of default. The feds get plenty of money from taxes to cover debt payments. And there was never any real danger that they would fail to raise the debt ceiling. After all, debt – selling U.S. bonds to the Federal Reserve (aka “printing money”) – is mother’s milk to both Republicans and Democrats… and the whole ruling elite. None of them want to be weaned.
And this week, we looked more closely at how this affects its big beneficiary – Wall Street. As intended, low interest rates forced investors to take their money out of real investments and move them to options, tech fantasies, memes, and razzmatazz speculation.
Last year, for the first time ever, option trading exceeded stock transactions. Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) has doubled over the last 12 months. Tesla (TSLA) has almost completed the double, too. Of course, Elon Musk, of Tesla fame, has famously disrupted everything. We’re not sure what Dick has disrupted… but we’re sure he’s got a good racket going, too.
No Sad Faces: In yesterday’s report, we looked at how profitable investing in the stock market has been – with the S&P 500 up nearly 30% over the last 12 months… and some university endowments up over 50%. But since the economy is growing at… maybe… 5% – using our estimate of GDP growth as the measuring stick – these gains cannot possibly be coming from real increases in profits or win-win wealth. Instead, they must be casino-style winnings… from a win-lose, zero-sum game… where one player wins and the other goes home with a sad face and an empty pocket.
It caused us to wonder. With so many happy faces in view… where are all the sad ones? Oh, Dear Reader, you know… don’t you? They’re in tomorrow’s news, aren’t they? When stocks crash… and consumer prices soar. The Fed added about $4 trillion to its balance sheet (new money!) since March 2020. Someone will have to pay for it.
Pied Piper of Tesl: Returning to Elon… Of course, he is a great showman… and has become a kind of pied piper for the frenzied players. When he puts the pipe to his lips… the casino goes quiet… And then, all dance to his tune. All he’d have to do would be to mention that he likes tacos… and there’d be a run on salsa verde.
Think we’re joking? Here’s Joanna Ossinger at Bloomberg: "The Shiba Inu cryptocurrency is now the world’s 20th-biggest by market value and has more than tripled in the past week, partly fueled by Elon Musk’s latest tweet about his own puppy. The SHIB token, centered around a breed of Japanese hunting dogs, is up another 69% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko pricing, putting its market value above $10 billion. […]
A tweet by Tesla Inc.’s boss late Sunday night U.S. time with a picture of a dog and the comment, “Floki Frunkpuppy”, may have also contributed to the frenzy. That followed a tweet in June that said, “My Shiba Inu will be named Floki” and one last month that read “Floki has arrived.”
Artful Dodger: Meanwhile over in the art market… something amazing happened. Logical… almost inevitable… but still insane. CNN reports: "A museum lent an artist $84K – so he kept the money and called it “art” When an exhibition about the future of labor opened at a Danish art museum on Friday, visitors should have seen two large picture frames filled with banknotes worth a combined $84,000. The pieces were meant to be reproductions of two works by artist Jens Haaning, who previously used framed cash to represent the average annual salaries of an Austrian and a Dane – in euros and Danish krone respectively.
But when the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg took delivery of the recreated artworks ahead of the show, gallery staff made a surprising discovery: the frames were empty. Rather than being the handiwork of thieves, the loaned cash was missing thanks to Haaning himself, who says he is keeping the money – in the name of art."
He’s got a point. Art is whatever they say it is. If you will pay thousands of dollars for a blank canvas… why not pay as much for no canvas at all?
Fantasy Investing: Meanwhile, the non-fungible token (NFT) market imitates neither art nor life. Neither fish nor fowl. Neither animal, mineral, nor vegetable. Neither stock, nor bond. When you buy an NFT, you get nothing other than the record, entombed somewhere on the blockchain, confirming that you were the dope who bought it. And thanks to a new NFT platform called Visionrare, you can pretend to invest in start-up stocks… but as a pure game.
You do not actually own the stocks. You just bet on whether they will go up or down in a complicated, fantasy league kind of approach. TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney explains that the idea is to...take the gamification of investing to its furthest end, mimicking the appeal of fantasy sports leagues and giving users a way to compete with friends by betting on startups they think will be successful. Users can bid on NFT shares of hundreds of different startups at auction and compete to build the best performing fake portfolio.
Does that sound like fun? No, not to us anyway. The gamblers didn’t seem to like it either. The concept – fantasy football meets start-up investing – looked like a loser from the get-go. And for its sponsors, tomorrow came quickly…Less than 24 hours after it began, Visionrare was pronounced dead. Today, the long faces are expected to gather at the grave."
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 10/8/21"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/8/21:
"Alert! The US Economic MELTDOWN
Is Getting Worse Faster! Important Updates"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 10/8/21:
"'Unusual' Economic Activity? Really?
Well, You Haven't Seen ANYTHING Yet. Count On It"
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/8/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/8/21"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"If you want to see that the Deep State globalists are losing the narrative and control, look no further than the news of the DOJ under AG Merrick Garland. He is sending the FBI to go after parents as domestic terrorists for the crime of protesting Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught to their children. Who cares it CRT is hateful and racism that is labeled with some academic sounding name. It’s not academic, but pure junk science and leftie propaganda infecting our schools and children. Clif High says it’s “absurd and a desperate attempt to regain the narrative, but it’s not going to work.”
Mitch McConnell has given the Democrats an out and bought them a window of time to figure out a way to explode the Federal debt by trillions of dollars. McConnell and 10 other Republicans joined with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling $480 billion. That will get keep the federal lights on and bills paid until early December. Is the debt ceiling game more dangerous than ever? You bet it is, and the U.S. dollar and Treasury debt credit rating may suffer from the gaming of our huge debt.
Been to the grocery store lately? Then you know everything is costing more. So much for the Federal Reserve saying inflation is transitory. Market experts are saying it’s permanent or at least sticking around for many years to come. Why is inflation back with a vengeance? There are many reasons, and I’ll name a few. It might be a good idea to stock up –on everything!!"
"Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up."
Blogger video embedding fails, please view at link.
"The Global Energy Crisis Is Going To Take 'The Everything Shortage' To An Entirely New Level"
"The Global Energy Crisis Is Going To Take
'The Everything Shortage' To An Entirely New Level"
by Michael Snyder
"This is going to be one tough winter. On top of everything else we are facing, a very alarming energy crisis is rapidly growing all over the world. Supplies of natural gas and coal are getting tighter by the day, and this is dramatically affecting manufacturing in major exporters such as China. So that means that less stuff is going to be coming across the ocean in the months ahead, and that means that the shortages in our stores are going to be getting even worse. This is really happening, and we are going to have to deal with it.
Of course store shelves are already getting pretty bare all around the country. They are calling it “the everything shortage”, and it has been intensifying with each passing week. I have so much to talk about that I am not even sure where to begin, and so I am just going to start with the the Bigley Piggly Wiggly in Charleston, West Virginia. Store owner Jeff Joseph says that a shortage of Gatorade is one of the biggest issues that he is currently wrestling with…
"If you’ve been to the grocery store lately, you may have noticed some of your favorite products aren’t available. At the Bigley Piggly Wiggly in Charleston, WV the section where they keep Gatorade is close to empty. “Who would think that Gatorade would be a problem to get in the store? But apparently, it is and it is something that we have been wrestling with for quite some time now,” said Jeff Joseph, store owner."
Day after day, I see more local news reports like this. I just picked this one out because I really like the name of the store. And my readers continue to send me emails about what conditions are like where they live. One reader that is located in Pennsylvania was deeply alarmed by a lack of milk and dog food during her last visit to the supermarket…
"Yesterday, I was at our Giant supermarket on Linglestown Road a few miles from Harrisburg, PA. It is the largest Giant in the area. I was at the milk section, there were maybe more than 10 empty rows with no milk in them. My husband wanted chocolate milk, they had only one brand. I was looking for dog treats, and found out they moved the aisle, there was not as many brands. They are taking the dog food bags and moving them out to the front of the shelf to make them look full, but there are no bags behind them. We like Arizona canned tea, but I had to settle for a big bottle instead. Canned tea is hard to get. The aisle with the toilet paper and towels was half empty. I wanted some Nutter Butter cookies (like I need them), but they had none."
In southwestern Arkansas, it sounds like things are even worse. We had been warned that there would be a shortage of toys during this holiday season, and one of my readers says that she is already noticing a huge change… "It is horrifying to walk through a Dollar General Store down here in Southwestern Arkansas. There are bare shelves, the toy aisle, normally flooded this time of year in anticipation of Christmas…there is nothing there, like what should normally be there. Brookshire’s is the premium market down here…they do not have frozen turkeys, and the frozen chicken that we purchased–Tyson chicken—I bought a five-pound flat of drumsticks…there were still feathers on some of the pieces of chicken. I had to wash, pluck, and wow…just wow….what the factories must be like these days is all I’m saying."
We have never seen anything like this before, and the experts are telling us that the months in front of us are going to be even worse. These days, even big corporate news outlets are constantly running stories about the shortages. The following is an excerpt from one report that was entitled “America Is Running Out of Everything”…
"I visited CVS last week to pick up some at-home COVID-19 tests. They’d been sold out for a week, an employee told me. So I asked about paper towels. “We’re out of those too,” he said. “Try Walgreens.” I drove to a Walgreens that had paper towels. But when I asked a pharmacist to fill some very common prescriptions, he told me the store had run out. “Try the Target up the road,” he suggested. Target’s pharmacy had the meds, but its front area was alarmingly barren, like the canned-food section of a grocery store one hour before a hurricane makes landfall."
In the past, any shortages were always very temporary. But these shortages aren’t going to go away any time soon. In fact, that same article that I just quoted openly admitted that “this is the economy now”…
"This is the economy now. One-hour errands are now multi-hour odysseys. Next-day deliveries are becoming day-after-next deliveries. That car part you need? It’ll take an extra week, sorry. The book you were looking for? Come back in November. The baby crib you bought? Make it December. Eyeing a new home-improvement job that requires several construction workers? Haha, pray for 2022."
Even the usually optimistic talking heads on television are warning us that the colossal problems that have caused this epic global supply chain crisis are not going to resolved for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, as I noted above, a very frightening global energy crisis threatens to take “the everything shortage” to an entirely new level.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Natural-Gas Shortage Sets Off Scramble Ahead of Winter” that really freaked a lot of people out. All over the planet, nations are feverishly trying to secure sufficient supplies of natural gas for the months ahead. Normally there is a spike of demand in the middle of winter, but at this moment we are nowhere close to that point. In fact, summer just officially ended a couple of weeks ago.
So if things are this bad already, what are we going to be facing in a few months? At the same time, a very serious shortage of coal is pushing prices up to absolutely absurd levels… "Australia’s Newcastle thermal coal, a global benchmark, is trading at $202 a metric ton, three times higher than at the end of 2019. Global production of coal, which generates around 40% of the world’s electricity, is about 5% below pre-pandemic levels.
In Europe, the rising prices for coal and other energy resources have hit factory output and driven household energy bills higher. Major coal importers in Asia, including Japan and South Korea, are jostling to secure supplies."
We have never seen an energy crisis this severe in modern times, and it is already having a dramatic impact on manufacturing in China… "In recent weeks, however, officials have begun a much more aggressive rationing program (Figure 1), with factories in much of Guangdong now seeing only 1-2 days per week of power use allowed. Similar situations are reportedly occurring in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Fujian provinces, all major manufacturing regions. As just one example, one of my US-based import customers has reported that a key supplier in Jiangsu is down to a single day per week of power availability. Limited-but-expanded power rationing is also occurring in Zhejiang, Shandong, Liaoning, and other important heavy industrial, chemical, and energy-product hubs."
So what does this mean? It means that China is going to be exporting a lot less stuff to us, and so our store shelves will continue to get barer and barer. For more than a decade I have been warning that we should have never allowed ourselves to become so dependent on Chinese manufacturing. But of course most people didn’t want to listen to “alarmists” like me. Unfortunately, the truth is now evident to everyone.
The “new normal” is here, and it is going to be exceedingly painful. Whatever you think that you are going to need for the winter months, go out and get it now. The shortages are just beginning, and the global economy will never be the same after this."
Thursday, October 7, 2021
“Markets Fueled By Free Money; Collapse Of Everything; Tesla Leaves California; Used Car Insanity”
Jeremiah Babe, PM 10/7/21:
“Markets Fueled By Free Money; Collapse Of Everything;
Tesla Leaves California; Used Car Insanity”
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Slide your telescope just east of the Lagoon Nebula to find this alluring field of view in the rich starfields of the constellation Sagittarius toward the central Milky Way. Of course the Lagoon nebula is also known as M8, the eighth object listed in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright nebulae and star clusters.
Click image for larger size.
Close on the sky but slightly fainter than M8, this complex of nebulae was left out of Messier's list though. It contains obscuring dust, striking red emission and blue reflection nebulae of star-forming region NGC 6559 at right. Like M8, NGC 6559 is located about 5,000 light-years away along the edge of a large molecular cloud. At that distance, this telescopic frame nearly 3 full moons wide would span about 130 light-years."
"America has a Shortage of Everything - Get Used To It"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 10/7/21:
"America has a Shortage of Everything - Get Used To It"
"It does not matter what industry you are in. There are shortages of everything. From food, fuel to daily supplies it affects all of us. America is just like so many other countries where we have a shortage of everything."
Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News Live"
Gerald Celente, 10/7/21:
"Dragflaltion: Inflation Is Up, Interest Rates Up, Economy Goes Down"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"Free Download: Jiddu Krishnamurti, 'The Book of Life'”
"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing and dance,
and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
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Freely download “The Book of Life”, by Jiddu Krishnamurti, here:
"Is It Any Wonder..."
"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking" - if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think - and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts - the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five- or maybe five hundred!"
- Dale Carnegie
"Foot Finds Can"
"Foot Finds Can"
by Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "The press is reporting this morning that the foot is finally making contact with the can. Here’s Bloomberg: "Senate Closes in on Deal to Pull US Back From Brink of Default." Is that great news, or what? The spending, borrowing, printing, bribing, squandering, corrupting, twisting, distorting, cheating, fouling, and destroying can go on. Hallelujah.
And this week, we’ve been looking at the effect this program has on investors – university endowments, for example. America’s leading colleges are probably the least curious institutions in the country. They are convinced that they have The Truth – diversity, anti-racism, climate control, equality… and ESG (environmental, social, corporate governance) investing. No need to look any further. And so, when their own endowments earn preposterous returns, no one asks any questions.
Or, if… in a fit of admiration… Duke alumni dare to wonder: “Uh… how did you make 10 times more than GDP growth?”… they get the anodyne answers: “Super-smart managers… and alternative investments.” Not quite.
No Genius: As we reported yesterday, Duke was an outlier in 2021, with a 56% return… while the economy is growing at about 5%. On average, university endowments didn’t earn 10 times more than GDP growth… only about half that much. And not with “alternative” investments or genius managers. Here’s the lowdown from InsideHigherED: "College and university endowments posted their strongest annual performance in 35 years, according to new data from Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service reported by Bloomberg.
The median return before fees was 27 percent in the 2021 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. By comparison, U.S. college and university endowments saw a 2.6 percent median return in fiscal year 2020 and a 6 percent median return in fiscal year 2019. College endowments of at least $500 million – of which there are about 200 – reported a median return of 34 percent in fiscal 2021, higher than the overall average."
There’s no reason to think college endowments will be any better than anyone else at choosing the year’s hot sector or hot stock. And they are so large, they are very unlikely to outperform… as a group.
The Nasdaq rose from 9,875 at the end of June 2020 to 14,500 at the end of June 2021 (a fiscal year for the endowments). That’s a 47% increase, considerably more than the median endowment fund return of 27%. The Dow, meanwhile, went from 25,600 to 34,300. That’s a 34% increase. And the S&P 500 went from 3,050 to 4,300 – a 40% increase. In other words, with a median gain of 27%, the endowment managers underperformed. No “alternatives” or geniuses were needed.
Rigged Game: But wait… This is where it gets interesting. How could the entire capital market grow so much faster than the economy that supports it? In a healthy economy, one company may do better… another may do worse. But one’s sales are another’s profits. One’s costs are another’s revenues. One month may be strong. Another may be weak. Profits may accumulate in a boom year… but dissipate in the next bust. Overall, they can’t do much better than the economy itself – because they are the economy.
Let’s say we have a banana stand. And let’s say we make a profit of $1,000 a year. We could sell our banana stand to someone for… say… $10,000. The buyer would be getting it at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 10. Very reasonable. And he could expect to get a 10% annual return on his investment. The next year, he might see his returns go up to $1,050 – a 5% increase. Then, he could expect to sell the enterprise to someone else for, maybe, $10,500 – a 5% increase. Not a 30% increase.
So, if these endowment funds were investing in America’s capital structure… in the banana stands that produce goods and provide services… they should expect growth equal to GDP… and no more. And yet, last year, they and other investors did at least five times better.
The question won’t be raised at meetings of university endowment boards… nor in the U.S. Treasury Department… nor at the Federal Reserve… nor in the financial press. So we’ll raise it here: How come? And here we propose an answer: They are not really “investing” at all. They are just gambling… “taking” not “making,” in a zero-sum game… and counting on the Fed to rig it for them.
Who’s the Loser? But this hypothesis only introduces more puzzlement. If they are winning so much… who is losing? Who’s on the other side of the trade? Obviously, they can’t be taking their winnings from each other, because we’re talking about the median return for the whole group. And the economy itself didn’t produce the extra wealth; it grew only by about 5%, while the funds added 27%.
So who’s the pigeon? And wait a cotton-pickin’ minute. Aren’t these the same universities that are committed to ESG – environmental, social, corporate governance – and are willing to sacrifice some investment returns in order to promote their political agenda? And now, they’re gaining wealth five times faster than the common working man’s wage increases.
Oh dear, Dear Reader… have you jumped ahead of us again? Is it possible that they are taking the money from the downtrodden masses, making fools of the very people they pretend to care so much about? Let’s look at it tomorrow and try to figure out what is going on."
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Related, 10/7/21:
"Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense"
"Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply
Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience - they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity. Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy/multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition.
Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits. Wide open competition and structural abundance are the least conducive setting for generating reliably ample profits, while quasi-monopolies and cartels that control scarce supplies are the ideal profit-generating machines.
The incentives to expand the number of suppliers, i.e. increase competition, are effectively zero. America's corporations spent $11 trillion buying back their own stocks over the past decade; that's equal to the combined GDP of Japan, Germany and Italy. If adding new suppliers to the global supply chain were profitable, some of that $11 trillion would have exploited those vast profits.
The financial reality is attempting to compete with an established cartel that has captured regulatory and political mechanisms is a foolhardy waste of capital. If firing up a new supplier of essential solvents, etc. was so captivatingly profitable, the why wouldn't Google and Apple take a slice of their billions in cash and go make some easy money?
The barriers to entry are high and the markets are limited. A great many specialty lubricants, solvents, alloys, wires, etc. are essential to the manufacture of all the consumer and industrial products that are sourced globally, but the markets are narrow: manufacturers need X amount of a specialty solvent, not 10X.
Back in the good old days before globalization and financialization conquered the world, corporations lined up three reliable suppliers for every critical component, as this redundancy alleviated supply chain chokeholds. But to keep those three suppliers in business, you need to spread the order book among all three. Nobody will keep a facility open if it's only used occasionally when the primary supplier runs into a spot of bother.
And so now we're all seated at the banquet of consequences flowing from stripping out redundancy and competition, and ceding control of supply chains to quasi-monopolies and cartels. Scarcities are their source of profits, and since it makes zero financial sense to spend a fortune building a plant to make solvents, lubricants, alloys, etc. in limited quantities in markets dominated by quasi-monopolies and cartels, shortages are a permanent feature of the 21st century global economy.
The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization; now that the consolidation is complete, shortages make fantastic financial sense.
By all means thank Corporate America for squandering $11 trillion to further enrich the top 0.1% and insiders. Alas, there was no better use for all those trillions than further enriching the already-super-rich."
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 10/7/21"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/7/21:
"This Stock Market Will Crash On A Massive Scale - But Not Yet"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 10/7/21:
"All Eyes On The MMRI: Important Updates"
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Economy Related:
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
"Prepare For Food Shortages, Get Food Now; Grocery Store Chaos Coming; Economy Shattered"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/6/21:
"Prepare For Food Shortages, Get Food Now;
Grocery Store Chaos Coming; Economy Shattered"
"It’s Better To Be Ready Than to Get Ready - Follow the Economic Warning Signs"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 10/6/21:
"It’s Better To Be Ready Than to Get Ready -
Follow the Economic Warning Signs"
"There are constant challenges in business and our economy. Are you ready for what is coming? Now is the time to be prepared TARIg it’s better to be ready than to have to get ready."
Musical Interlude: Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"
Full screen recommended.
Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"
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