Thursday, January 20, 2022

"This Is Your Last Chance", Part 1

"This Is Your Last Chance", Part 1
by Robert Gore
This is Part One, Part Two will be posted 1/21.

"The indictment is long and strong. A cabal of politicians, governments, courts, medical authorities, pharmaceutical companies, multinational agencies, the mainstream media, academics, and foundations, particularly the World Economic Forum, have concocted responses to a virus and its variants that have robbed the people of rightful liberties, are a mechanism for the imposition of global totalitarianism, and have amplified rather than reduced the virus’s dangers, inflicting severe injury and death that will last years, perhaps decades, and afflict millions, if not billions, of victims (See “The Means Are The End,” Robert Gore, SLL, November 13, 2021).

This is their last chance. They can reverse course and pray to whatever demonic deity they pray to that it’s enough to prevent the retribution they deserve, or they can perish in the destruction they’ve created. They will reap what they have sown, their time is up.

This is it, the last gasp of the psychopaths who express their contempt and hatred for humanity by trying to rule it. Compulsion, not voluntary and natural cooperation. Power, pull, and politics, not incentives, competition, honest production, and value-for-value trade. From each according to his virtue to each according to his depravity.

The Last Gasp,” Robert Gore, SLL, March 24, 2020

Their time is up. This assertion may appear as recklessly foolish as Luke Skywalker’s ultimatum—“Jabba, this is your last chance, free us or die!”—did to Jabba the Hut at the Sarlacc Pit. It’s not, but to understand why requires an understanding of slow moving (on human time scale) but enormously powerful forces. Most history studies the wrong things and most predictions are straight line projections of the present and recent past.

The linchpin of history is innovation, not governments and rulers. We don’t know who ruled whom when humanity lived in caves, but we do know that someone tamed fire, someone planted seeds and cultivated them for food, and someone invented the wheel. With such steps humanity emerged from the caves and began building civilization. Even at this early stage one thing was clear: innovation creates new capabilities and opportunities and serves as the basis for further innovation.

Government is the acquisition of resources that enables those who govern to exercise control over those whom they govern. This presupposes resources, which presupposes production. Government is always subsidiary to production, yet most history focuses on the former and treats the latter as a secondary matter. This is looking down the telescope from the wrong end. Before a government can take someone must make.

History as studied is a dreary succession of violent takers: their kingdoms and empires, their exactions from the populace, their wars, their depredations, their monuments, and so on. Most of this is trivial compared to the innovation that gets short shrift.

Who ruled which nations in 1440 and what effect does whatever they did have on us today? There’s not one person in ten million who can knowledgeably answer those questions. Ask instead if the moveable-type printing press that Johannes Gutenberg invented that year has had an effect on their lives and most will acknowledge its inescapable importance.

The few rulers who have ruled wisely are largely forgotten. Wise rule is maintaining the conditions that allow the people themselves to create, innovate, and produce, what’s been called the night watchman state. Protecting them and their property from invasion, violence, theft, and fraud are the important but minimalist assignments for such governments. Crucially, such protection of the people extends to protection from the government itself. This type of government offers would-be rulers no opportunity for the larceny, self-aggrandizement, and power they crave, which is why they’ve been so rare.

The perfect night watchman state has never been achieved. There have only been a few that have come close. Conditions of relatively greater freedom, however, have coincided with the explosions of innovation and productivity that have bequeathed to humanity most of its progress.

The United States’ explosion was the Industrial Revolution, which launched virtually every important industry we have today and took the nation from its agrarian roots to industrial preeminence. With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, an outlier in many unfortunate ways, the presidents who presided during the Industrial Revolution (1865-1913) have passed into obscurity, always a desirable fate for presidents. (See “The Magnificent Eleven,” Robert Gore, SLL, May 3, 2017. For a fictional treatment of the period, see "The Golden Pinnacle", Robert Gore, 2013.)

Nineteenth-century fecundity set the table for twentieth-century insanity, giving psychopathic rulers the resources for two world wars and innumerable smaller ones, history’s most totalitarian governments, genocides, and the perpetration of myriad other miseries and horrors. The twentieth century is easily history’s most tyrannical and bloody... so far. Emblematic of the century is its “greatest” invention, nuclear weaponry, which can destroy all life on earth.

In the United States, establishment of the central bank and imposition of income taxes in 1913 allowed the government to expropriate a far higher share of the nation’s incomes and wealth than it had. Shortly thereafter, ignoring George Washington’s sage advice to avoid foreign entanglements, the U.S. entered World War I. The Industrial Revolution and its comparative freedom were over, the accretion of state power that continues to this day was underway.

Government resurfaced as the dominant institution, as it has been for most of history, not just in the U.S. but around the globe. Intellectual fashion followed the political trend. Money and power—heady prospects for many intellectuals—were to be had promoting the growth of the state and toadying to its functionaries. A few brave souls spoke out against the trend and championed freedom, but they were ignored and shunned. Today, champions of freedom are consigned to obscure corners of the Internet.

You would think that living off the Industrial Revolution’s productive legacy, with first call on incomes and accumulated wealth, rulers would command more than ample resources to do whatever they desired. Such is not the case. Their schemes and rapacity are unlimited while even in the most productive and wealthy societies, resources are not. Governments and their central banks have created a debt explosion that leaves the world in the deepest financial hole it’s ever been.

The explosion has accelerated the past few years, leaving rulers at the outer limits of what they can expropriate or borrow. Whatever growth in GDPs they now hail, the unmentioned growth in debt is greater—the hole gets deeper. This state of affairs illustrates history’s central truism: governments can’t produce. Their stock in trade, coercion and violence, only destroys. Making producers tax and debt slaves to those who produce nothing destroys both production and integrity.

The death knell sounded in 1971 when the United States government repudiated the last vestige of its promise to redeem its dollars for gold. Debt would be the coin of the realm. The bland term “financialization” hides the moral obscenity. Each year the nation’s debt has grown. Production, when netted against that debt, has shrunk, and an increasingly large portion of what remains is diverted to those who don’t produce. Washington decides who gets what, but it can’t command the what. That shrinks as productive virtue is penalized and theft, fraud, and violence are rewarded.

This increasingly precarious state of affairs has lasted for fifty years. It won’t last much longer. Only moral and intellectual bankruptcy greater than current financial bankruptcy could call this abject failure a failure of capitalism.

Capitalism is the economics of political freedom. The strangulation of both in the U.S. officially commenced in 1913. They are the antithesis of what we now have, state-directed collectivism. Capitalism and freedom didn’t fail the people, the people failed capitalism and freedom. If people can’t handle individual freedom—as collectivists like to argue—they certainly can’t handle collectivist power, as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have amply demonstrated. It’s like the one brat in a room full of self-directed, happily interacting children seizing control of the room."
Part Two will be posted 1/21.

"Stock Market And Housing Will Be Crippled; End Of The Bubble; Americans Go Broke"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/20/22:
"Stock Market And Housing Will Be Crippled; 
End Of The Bubble; Americans Go Broke"
Related:

Musical Interlude: Hilary Stagg, "Pleasant Dreams"

Hilary Stagg, "Pleasant Dreams"
Full screen highly recommended.

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1
"The woman named Tomorrow 
sits with a hairpin in her teeth 
and takes her time 
and does her hair the way she wants it 
and fastens at last the last braid and coil 
and puts the hairpin where it belongs 
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? 
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. 
What of it? Let the dead be dead. 

2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold 
and the girls were golden girls 
and the panels read and the girls chanted: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation: 
nothing like us ever was. 

The doors are twisted on broken hinges. 
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind 
where the golden girls ran and the panels read: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation, 
nothing like us ever was. 

3
It has happened before. 
Strong men put up a city and got 
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women 
to warble: We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation, 
nothing like us ever was. 

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened 
and paid the singers well 
and felt good about it all, 
there were rats and lizards who listened... 
and the only listeners left now... 
are…the rats…and the lizards. 

And there are black crows 
crying, “Caw, caw,” 
bringing mud and sticks 
building a nest 
over the words carved 
on the doors where the panels were cedar 
and the strips on the panels were gold 
and the golden girls came singing: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation: 
nothing like us ever was. 

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,” 
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. 
And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards. 

4
The feet of the rats 
scribble on the door sills; 
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints 
chatter the pedigrees of the rats 
and babble of the blood 
and gabble of the breed 
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers 
of the rats. 

And the wind shifts 
and the dust on a door sill shifts 
and even the writing of the rat footprints 
tells us nothing, nothing at all 
about the greatest city, the greatest nation 
where the strong men listened 
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg

"A Market Veteran Is Warning About A January Stock Market Crash"

Full screen recommended.
"A Market Veteran Is Warning 
About A January Stock Market Crash"
by Epic Economist

"The U.S. stock market is down this month, with investors bracing for a lot of volatility as the Federal Reserve starts tightening its monetary policy to fight against rampant inflation. The tech sector has immensely benefited from the liquidity injections issued over the past two years, which helped to leverage stock prices to record highs. But as policies are rolled back, several high-flying tech stocks have been sent straight to correction territory. As Deutsche Bank’s head of thematic research, Jim Reid, highlighted in a note published yesterday, this year has been “a perfect negative storm for tech,” with higher nominal and real yields as well as “a Fed that seems strongly committed to starting quantitative tightening”. Tech stocks are extremely sensitive to lower liquidity and rising rates, for that reason, many investor favorites have sharply declined over the past two weeks. On Wednesday, the Nasdaq fell almost 2%, with the FANG Index, which includes Big Tech names such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Nvidia, and Tesla, dropping roughly 5% in the afternoon trading. During the same time last year, the FANG Index jumped about 20%.

As the burst of the tech bubble becomes evident, more and more investors are acknowledging the growing risks and admitting that there is a broader stock market bubble. In a global market poll conducted by Deutsche Bank, 49% of the respondents affirmed that U.S. stocks are in a bubble. As investors move away from risky tech stocks, the Nasdaq officially entered correction territory, defined as a minimum 10% decline from its high. The latest peak in the index was recorded on November 19. After that point, things started to go downhill and never fully recovered. And yesterday, the tech-heavy index recorded a crash of nearly 11% below the record. But experts are saying that the downturn is about to get worse in the coming weeks as companies release their quarterly earnings data and investors are forced to confront the current economic reality. Even Nasdaq strategists are warning that a broad stock market crash is fast approaching. On Nasdaq’s official website, financial analyst Sean Williams cited several reasons why a stock market crash is likely to occur in January.

Everywhere we look, all signs point to an imminent financial disaster. Now, it seems that investors’ top priority is to get out of the tech bubble before they suffer from more painful losses. According to RBAdvisors' Dan Suzuki, the risks of investing in tech stocks today are the highest they have ever been. Suzuki compared the frothiness in the sector to the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, saying: "It's never too early to sell." He believes that “any protracted sell-off in tech will reverberate across the broader equity market, given the weight tech stocks have in the major indices now compared to a decade ago”. "There's massive downside risk. I'm talking about a bubble that reaches out at least 50% of the market," he emphasized. "The only way to protect from a bubble is to get away from it," Suzuki cautioned. "We've seen this movie before. These things don't move in straight lines. I wouldn't be surprised to see a major reversal here."

"We haven't really scratched the surface of what they're really going to do to people's portfolios," he continued. Keeping in mind that millions of household portfolios are extremely exposed to these risky stocks, we’re about to witness some acute financial losses. And with soaring inflation and a looming stock market crash, it seems that Americans are already preparing for years of financial uncertainty. A recent Quicken survey shows that roughly 71% of the population inflation is among the top three issues they're most worried about at the moment, followed by the new virus variant, supply chain disruptions, and a stock market crash.

"Americans are feeling the impact of inflation across their daily expenses, which is why it's on everyone's mind," outlined Quicken CEO, Eric Dunn. "It's important to understand exactly how economic changes, such as inflation and an unsteady stock market, impact our daily lives, and to have a handle on your personal finances so that you are prepared for the uncertainties ahead," he alerted. Nearly 52% of Americans agree that a stock market crash seems near, amongst them, 58% think it will impact their finances negatively. In short, people can tell when dark times are approaching. And when the stock market finally implodes, we will find ourselves in the middle of the most devastating financial and economic crisis in modern history."

Gregory Mannarino, "What A Full-On Debt Market Implosion Will Look Like"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/20/22:
"What A Full-On Debt Market Implosion Will Look Like"

Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News"
"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."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.

About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”

"A Strange Honey..."

"Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don't try and press it down. Don't hide from it. Don't escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That's the way life goes."
- Ben Okri

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of- indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

The Daily "Near You?"

Oakes, N. Dakota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Above All..."

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. "
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov"

"Doug Casey on the Rise of China... And What it Means for the World"

"Doug Casey on the Rise of China... 
And What it Means for the World"
by International Man

"International Man: Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore, once said: "The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world." What is your take?

Doug Casey: China has united 1.4 billion people into a single political entity, so of course they have a lot of weight. But simply having masses of people under your political control doesn't mean as much as it used to. China would still be a poverty-stricken non-entity if it hadn't been for the reforms that Deng Xiaoping made starting in 1980. Masses of uneducated, desperately poor peasants are more of a liability than an asset in the modern world. Deng transformed China’s economy into something that functions pretty much like those in the West. But now, Xi Jinping seems to be returning to the philosophy of Chairman Mao, with much more centralized control. That’s very negative for the country.

Secondly, China’s demographics are horrible. The average woman today only has 1.4 children. Low reproduction rates are to be expected when a society urbanizes. But China also had a draconian one-child policy starting in 1980 that only ended in 2015. That, and the fact the Chinese prefer males for cultural reasons, compounded the phenomenon.

Few people in the West realize that as a result of these things, the Chinese population is in steep decline. UN projections - which aren’t worth much but are still interesting - find that by the end of this century, their population could collapse to 600 or 700 million. And they’ll mostly be old people, so it’s not going to bounce back quickly.

I have real questions about whether China’s economic miracle of the last 40 years will continue. Perhaps it will even go into reverse. That’s because China’s huge transformation is the result of its adoption of some aspects of Western Civilization, which made the United States and Western Europe different from, and better than, any other countries in world history.

I think there are at least 12 characteristics that are underpinned the West. They are free thought, free speech, free markets, property rights, limited government, individualism, rationality, personal liberty, the concept of progress, privacy, the rule of law, and entrepreneurialism. Humans everywhere understand their value and adhere to them sporadically, of course; without them civilization is impossible. But only the West made them integral to itself, as principles. They’re what made us unique.

There’s a great deal more I’d like to say about this. I’ve given several speeches on it, and how Western Civilization itself is being washed away, but I have never written an article about it. I’ll do so soon.

International Man: Since 2013, China has been working on its Belt and Road Initiative, which stretches from East Asia to Europe. It’s primarily a trade network of seaports and railroads controlled by Beijing, reminiscent of the ancient Silk Road. So far, over 100 countries have signed on to the massive trade and infrastructure initiative. What are its geopolitical and economic implications?

Doug Casey: In the short run, it's resulted in a lot of profits for Chinese corporations and employment for the Chinese workers who are building these things. Locals are hired mostly for coolie labor - which I find amusing and ironic.

Everyone in the West seems to think the Chinese are going to take over the world. While I acknowledge China’s hyperbolic rise over the last 40 years, I question whether the Belt and Road won’t be a huge overreach. It could backfire for several reasons.

Number one, the benefits of the Belt and Road initiative are primarily political. It’s planned and run on the basis of politics, much more than economics. It’s basically a government boondoggle - about the biggest in history. Building infrastructure in unstable third-world countries is generally a sucker bet for lots of reasons; it’s likely to be shockingly unprofitable. It may lead to the bankruptcy of a lot of Chinese banks and corporations that are involved with it.

Number two, a lot of countries are starting to see it as Chinese neocolonialism. I think the natives are going to find the Chinese much more unpleasant colonial masters than the Europeans. Among other things, massive numbers of Chinese people are immigrating to Africa. It’s a guaranteed formula for conflict.

I suspect it's going to end badly for the Chinese politically and economically, especially in Africa, which produces nothing but raw materials and poor people. When Europeans and Americans stop shipping billions in capital, technology, and food to the Dark Continent, the progress it’s made will go into reverse because its political and cultural mores are hopeless. That’s why the infrastructure in most places south of the Sahara - railroads, roads, waterways, utilities, you name it - have collapsed in the years since the Europeans left despite trillions in aid and investment. You can see it happening now in South Africa, which is by far the most advanced country on the continent. The Chinese will be even less successful than the Europeans.

The local political nomenklatura profited mightily from bribes and corruption in the early stages of Belt and Road projects. Once they’re thrown out of office one way or another, retiring to mansions in France or Switzerland, the new governments will be unhappy with table scraps and one-sided Chinese ownership. They’ll try to teach the Chinese a lesson, and the Chinese will have to teach them a counter-lesson.

The Chinese could end up getting involved in lots of brushfire wars as a result. I expect you’ll see the Red Army acting the way the US Marines did in Central America and the Caribbean. Of course, the US will pointlessly stick its nose into the mix, increasing the odds of a global conflagration.

International Man: Since the end of World War II, the US has been the dominant power in the world. Will the US hegemony in the world continue?

Doug Casey: The answer is no. Perhaps the biggest reason is that there’s been a radical change, a degradation, of American culture. The US is not the country it once was. It’s become a multicultural domestic empire, which is intrinsically unstable and dysfunctional. The US has been transformed from a beacon of freedom into a highly taxed and regulated political dumpster fire. I hesitate to say it’s a police state - yet. But it’s moving in that direction.

In other words, the things that made the US different and great are vanishing. The twelve things I listed earlier are vanishing. At this point, it's little better than any of the 200 other nation-states that cover the face of the globe like a skin disease.

About the only thing that the US government has that still more or less works is its military. But the US military is in steep decline. And nobody likes or even respects a country that bases much of its power on the military.

We're generating hate all over the world. It used to be that everybody loved America. With troops and active "intelligence" operations in perhaps 100 countries around the world, that’s changed. The world has come to dislike and disrespect the US government. Americans seem to think it’s still Paris after D-Day. Far from it.

Meanwhile, the US government itself is facing bankruptcy, as are many of its citizens. The situation has been papered over, so to speak, by printing trillions of dollars - especially in the last couple of decades. The international acceptance of the US dollar has been critically important for US economic domination. Exporting over a trillion of them a year in exchange for real wealth has artificially raised the national standard of living a huge amount.

But the dollar has become just another irredeemable fiat currency. When it collapses, it’s going to create a whirlwind of hate and chaos everywhere. So, all the dominoes are aligned in the wrong way.

I'm afraid the US is going to continue on its present path - certainly for the next three years, while actual Jacobins are in power in Washington DC, trying to accelerate these trends, not turn them around.

International Man: What is the US going to do about China’s rise?

Doug Casey: Let’s also ask: What should the US do about the fact the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning? A couple of years ago, a concept called the Thucydides trap became a meme based on a book written by Graham Allison. His basic historical premise was that declining powers usually attack rising powers while they still can, while they're still strong, and can still win.

The US is definitely declining. The Chinese are still rising. Although, as I said before, I think it’s very questionable how long that trend will persist. In addition to Belt and Road problems, their banking system is on the ragged edge of collapse, along with their bubble economy built on exports and real estate speculation. It could all come unglued, even as Xi becomes the world hegemon. Twenty years from now, we could see China devolve into a half-dozen satrapies run by warlords, the way it was only 100 years ago.

My guess is that the big danger is US/Chinese confrontation in the South China Sea. It doesn’t matter that it’s none of our business; Washington feels it has to show Beijing who’s boss. A second danger is China trying to capture Taiwan, although I discount that since they have a lot to lose and relatively little to gain. Again, it’s none of our business. In the long run, Africa will be a battleground.

Even if there’s not a hot war, the US will likely use trade barriers to punish the Chinese. If the Chinese are unable to export to the US and countries it controls, they're going to have a real economic crisis on their hands. They'll feel forced to react.

Trade wars are very dangerous. Look at World War II. The Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor because they wanted a war with the US, but because the US, which was its major supplier of petroleum and other raw materials, cut them off. They felt they had no alternative but to attack while they still could. A version of that could happen with the Chinese.

Add the fact that when things get tough within a country, governments always like to find a foreigner to blame in order to unite the people and distract from internal problems. Either or both countries could do that.

It looks grim for both countries. But probably worse for the US. A hot war would be fought near China, and they’d have a huge home-field advantage - read a bunch of sunken US aircraft carriers. All the while, China is winning overwhelmingly in cyberspace, with both surreptitious cyber attacks and the use of social media for psychological war. Platforms like TikTok are directed via artificial intelligence to subtlety inculcate destructive values in the US but constructive values in the Chinese at home. The Chinese are famous for playing the long game. They understand that good times make for soft men, and hard times make for hard men.

International Man: China has made huge advances in technology, trade, and more. Much of this has happened on the back of easy money and sky-high debt. How much better off is China than the declining US empire?

Doug Casey: A lot of the answer may come down to timing. As I said before, China under Xi is moving away from the policies that gave it so much prosperity over the last 40 years. I hasten to point out that "Communist" China is not, in fact, communist. And it hasn’t been for 40 years. Its economic system is state corporatism, or fascism, very much on Mussolini’s model. It’s surprisingly similar to our own system, although with much more authoritarian, top-down control. Unfortunately, we’re moving in their direction, further from real capitalism - even as Xi is trying to make himself into a new Mao.

To sum up, financing the Belt and Road initiative, building cities in the middle of nowhere could destroy the Chinese banking system. The Chinese banking system has been built by a billion Mr. and Mrs. Wus, saving 50% of their incomes. If China gets massive unemployment, which it certainly will if there’s a trade war, Mrs. Wu is not going to save, she's going to withdraw. And she’ll be most unhappy if she either doesn’t get her yuan or if they’re worthless due to inflation.

I’m betting the medium-term future for China is grim. In fact, maybe even more grim than that of the US, which is saying something. We just don't realize it yet, partly because reporting out of China is sketchy and very politically controlled and partly because we’re so preoccupied with our own very serious problems."

"Choose One, But Only One: Defend the Billionaire's Bubble or the U.S. Dollar and Empire"

"Choose One, But Only One: Defend the 
Billionaire's Bubble or the U.S. Dollar and Empire"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"One of the most enduring conceits of the modern era is that the Federal Reserve acts to goose growth and therefore employment while keeping inflation moderate (whatever that means - the definition is adjustable). This conceit is extremely handy as PR cover: the Fed really, really cares about little old us and expanding our ballooning wealth. Nice, except it doesn't. The Fed's one real job is defending the U.S. dollar, which is the foundation of America's global hegemony a.k.a. The Empire.

One thing and one thing alone enables global dominance: being able to create "money" out of thin air and use that "money" to buy real stuff in the real world. The nations that can create "money" out of thin air and trade it for magnesium, oil, semiconductors, etc. have an unbeatable advantage over nations that must actually mine gold or make something of equal value to trade for essentials. The trick is to maintain global confidence in one's currency. There is no one way to manage this, as confidence in a herd animal such as human beings is always contingent. Once the herd gets skittish, all bets are off.

The herd is exquisitely sensitive to movements on the edge of the herd, where threats arise. There are various tricks one can deploy to maintain confidence: pay a higher rate of interest on bonds denominated in one's currency, so global capital flows into your currency; treat this capital well with a transparent set of tax laws and judiciary / regulatory oversight, maintain a deep pool of liquidity so capital can enter and exit without stampeding the herd, and having at least a semi-productive, diverse economy that generates goods, services and income streams to support the currency.

There is a mechanism for calming the herd, and it's called the market. Narrative control (i.e. propaganda) may work on the weak-minded in the herd, who are subsequently picked off by hungry predators, but natural selection favors those who look for cues from what cannot be manipulated or glossed over - an unfettered market.

Markets are only trustworthy to the degree they are unfettered. Currency pegs and other contraptions can be changed overnight, so they are intrinsically untrustworthy. What makes markets trustworthy are: transparency, liquidity (i.e. being able to buy and sell instruments in virtually unlimited quantities without stampeding the herd) and the price discovery of risk, as risk is the key determinant of the herd's movement.

Turning to global dominance - let's ask one question and one only: which nation pegs its currency to another's currency, and who owns that currency? Does the U.S. peg its dollar to the mighty RMB? No, it's the other way around: China pegs its RMB to the the USD. China's ability to create "money" out of thin air is based on its peg to the U.S. dollar, not because the value of its bonds and currency have been discovered by unfettered global markets.

To unpeg its currency, China would have to relinquish control of its sovereign bonds and currency and let the market discover its price and risk structure. This is the tradeoff: if you want to earn the confidence of the herd, you must relinquish control to the unfettered global market. Otherwise, the herd will always be skittish because risk is opaque and therefore safety is elusive.

The consensus seems to be that the Fed's only real job is maintaining the Billionaire's Bubble in stocks. But from the point of view of maintaining global hegemony, the Billionaire's Bubble was a sideshow of hucksters and carnies. The real policy goal was funding the empire's vast spending and not allowing the USD to rise too much or too quickly, as this tends to demolish weaker currencies, stampeding the herd.

But now it's time to suck in global capital by raising rates, and let nature cull the herd. The number of pundits announcing that the Fed will never raise rates, that the Fed can't raise rates because the precious Billionaire's Bubble would burst and the Fed would never, ever, ever let its precious Billionaire's Bubble burst, is legion. But they're wrong, alas, for the Fed's job isn't to enrich billionaires, it's to maintain the confidence of the herd in the USD.

The precious Billionaire's Bubble is already bursting, and all those profiting from the bubble expanding are pawing the ground nervously, afraid of being picked off by lurking predators.

Choose one, but only one: you can't defend the Billionaire Bubble and the USD / Empire. Come on, it's not that difficult a decision, is it? What matters more, maintaining global hegemony or phantom wealth? The Empire is striking back, protecting what really counts, and the Billionaire Bubble sideshow is folding its tents. Best to take your prizes home before it rains."

"In Praise of Plan B"

"In Praise of Plan B"
by Bill Bonner

Normandy, France - "We were on our way back to Ireland. But we have been delayed. It’s wintertime in the North Atlantic. The sea is rough and the crossing – 18 hours on the ferry – would probably make us very sick. A change of plan was necessary; we’ll wait until tomorrow, when the waves are expected to calm down. For now, we are comfortably lodged in an old farmhouse. Built in the 18th century, it has been renovated, but it retains much of its charm. Here, for example, is the fireplace.
Note also that the mantle on our fireplace here is oak beam. It is far enough above the flames that it doesn’t catch fire itself. But this construction probably wouldn’t be allowed in most places in the US.

The open fire is delightful. We are sitting in front of it now… working on our laptop computer. But it is not very practical. If you sit close enough, you can warm yourself; most of the heat goes up the chimney.

Your editor is a connoisseur of fireplaces. Wherever he goes, he takes note of how they are constructed… whether they are handsome or ugly… and how much heat they provide. Most fireplaces in America are too small… and typically, too deep. The fire is tucked away… and then masked by screens to keep the occasional ember from landing on the carpet. For heating purposes, a wood stove is much better. It’s more efficient. The stove can be brought out into the room, and if it has a large glass door in front, you can still get much of the feeling of an open fire.

The Great Transition: “What’s your Plan B?” we asked a friend yesterday. He had permanently sealed off his fireplace to keep the cold air from coming down the chimney. “When the electricity fails, how are you going to heat?” we followed up.

In the Great Transition ahead, from traditional, market-based fossil fuels… to new, ‘green’ energy, heavily subsidized by the government… we take it for granted that the power is going to go out. Probably at the worst possible time, when people most need it. Plan B may be useful. A wood stove is a simple, inexpensive precaution… especially in the kitchen. There, you can keep at least one room warm. And don’t forget to keep on hand a good stack of dry firewood.

Enough gratuitous comment on fireplace design! Let’s return to connecting the dots… by looking more closely at where we are likely headed – Argentina. Yes, we study the pampas…and hope to learn something. And what we’ve learned so far: you need a Plan B.

Argentina may be the most ‘European’ country in the world – in the sense that it has gotten very few immigrants from Africa or Asia. But the European Family Tree has many branches. “If you want a high interest rate, lend to people who drink wine. If you want to get paid back, lend to the beer drinkers.” This was the advice of bankers in the Old World. Their experience told them that the beer drinkers – in Britain, Germany, Denmark, for example – were better credits than those in the wine regions. The Germans paid their bills. The Italians… well… sometimes. The Argentines drink wine. And in this, as in many other things, they resemble their Sicilian cousins.

Typically, Plan B, for foreign creditors means lending in dollars, not pesos. This makes it impossible for the wine drinkers to inflate away their foreign debt. They don’t control the dollar. They can’t print more of them. But the Argentines have a Plan B too. They just don’t pay. Nine times since independence from Spain, Argentina refused (or has been unable) to pay its government loans.

As for local transactions, Argentine households and businesses need a Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D, too. Welfare payments, salaries, unemployment benefits and pensions – even though they are ‘adjusted for inflation’ their real values go down. And consumer prices go up so fast clerks have a hard time keeping up with them.

Beyond Plan Z: During the 1980s, inflation averaged about 300% per year. It was clocked at a record of 5,000% in 1989. By then, the gauchos were running out of alphabet. ‘When the money goes, everything goes’ is a Diary Dictum. And when the money went in Argentina, it led to a military takeover, a domestic ‘dirty war’ that left some 30,000 ‘disappeared’ people, and a war with the UK over the Malvinas (aka the Falkland) islands. It was a war that neither country needed, but that served politicians on both shores well enough. Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina’s most famous writer, said it was like “two bald men fighting over a comb.”

It was then that a new president, Carlos Menem decided it was time to break the cycle of debt, deficit, chaos, money-printing and inflation. The nation was fed up. Exhausted. It was time for a new plan. That’s when the “peg” appeared. No more cheating. No more nonsense. Henceforth and for all eternity, an Argentine peso would be redeemable for a US dollar. One to one. No questions asked.

But when we met Mr. Menem, in the late ‘90s, we had a question. In the few years in which the ‘peg’ was in place, the Argentines had already done what they did best – borrow and spend. And now, it had spent too much. And with more and more money to pay back, Argentina needed more and more dollars. Lenders wanted higher and higher interest rates to protect themselves from the risk of default.

Argentina was caught in a very familiar “inflate or die” trap. Either it broke the peg, stiffed its creditors, and printed more currency to keep the party going. Or it kept the peso-dollar peg, reckoned with its debts in an honest way… and swallowed the resulting investment losses, defaults, and period of recession and austerity. Oh, and the ruling party would almost certainly lose the next election, too.

Inflate or die? Which way would it go? We asked the energetic man, with lifts in his shoes and dye in his hair, in front of us. “Sooo… Will you be able to maintain the ‘peg?” we wanted to know. “Of course,” came the ready answer. “We realize that the peg is critical… crucial… to our economic success. We will never abandon it.”

The next time we visited, in the early 2000s, the peso was trading at 3 to 1. The peg had been discarded. And today, the black market exchange rate is 210 pesos to one US dollar. But wait. Comes a message from a friend in Salta, Argentina: “Bill, our #1 Plan B was always to keep our money in dollars. But now that you Americans are acting like Argentines and inflating the dollar, how are we going to protect ourselves?”

Tomorrow… what do Americans drink? Beer or wine?"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Food Prices Are Soaring At Krogers! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 1/20/22:
"Food Prices Are Soaring At Krogers! 
Empty Shelves Everywhere!"
"In today's vlog we visit Kroger and witness a lot of soaring prices, and an obvious food shortage. With stores struggling to get in products we are also dealing with another issue of empty shelves everywhere."

"This Economy is Not the Happiest Place on Earth"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 1/20/22:
"This Economy is Not the Happiest Place on Earth"
"Things are getting worse by the day. The Economy will not be able to run away from inflation. It will eventually be swallowed up by this. I am at Downtown Disney Today."

Gregory Mannarino, "The Economic Nosedive Worsens"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/20/22:
"The Economic Nosedive Worsens"

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

"Banks Keep Shutting Down - Is Your Cash Safe? Stock Market Begins To Panic"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 1/19/22:
"Banks Keep Shutting Down - Is Your Cash Safe? 
Stock Market Begins To Panic"

"Big Pharma’s Siege of America"

"Big Pharma’s Siege of America"
by Jim Rickards

"Remember this time last year when the vax bandwagon really got rolling? The vax had been announced in November 2020 and was fast-tracked through the approval process (on an experimental basis at the time). But it took a while to get to doses shipped and distributed and for people to become aware of where they could get it. That played out over December 2020, but by January 2021, the effort was in full swing.

The first thing those getting jabbed learned was they would have to return in a few weeks for the “second dose.” That was understood and widely accepted, although the Janssen vaccine is different and only requires one shot. Janssen is not nearly as available as the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. The bandwagon continued through 2021 to the point that about 70% of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated.

So Much for the “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated”: But by September 2021, doubts arose about the efficacy of the vaccines. They never did stop infections and don’t stop the spread of the virus, but the public was led to believe otherwise. As the Delta variant raged in August and September, followed by the Omicron variant in November, the entire vax story started to fall apart. The elites who have blamed earlier outbreaks on the “unvaxxed” and those who are fully vaxxed themselves began to get COVID by the millions. They belatedly realized that this was not a pandemic of the unvaxxed but was a pandemic where everyone is vulnerable. As I’ve said all along, the virus goes where it wants.

Big Pharma Doubles Down: Still, Moderna and Pfizer came forward with a “booster” shot, which is really just another dose of the same vaccine as a solution. Tens of millions lined up for their boosters in the fall of 2021, only to get the Omicron variant of COVID when it ran out of control in December. So the booster didn’t work either. In fact, there was some evidence that the vaxxed and boosted are more vulnerable to Omicron than the unvaxxed because we have “taught” the virus to evade the vaccines by giving people so many injections.

There’s also some evidence suggesting that repeated vaccination weakens the immune system overall, making people more vulnerable to other diseases. Since these vaccines are experimental, it’ll take years to fully understand their effects. But rather than admit failure or at least offer a note of caution, Big Pharma is at it again.

Big Pharma Triples Down: The CEO of Moderna says a fourth dose of his vaccine will be needed by this fall. He doesn’t call it a fourth dose; he calls it a second “booster.” But it’s the same thing. What this really means is that the effects of the vaccine wear off after three–six months and you’ll have to get “boosters” the rest of your life and take your chances with serious side effects, including heart failure and even death.

I can understand why the drug companies favor that. I don’t understand why everyday Americans would. Maybe we should all look to Israel…"96.2% Vaccinated Israel Swamped With COVID." When it comes to vaxxing the entire population, no country is more aggressive than Israel. They acquired large quantities of imported vaccines and recently began an effort to manufacture their own vaccines in order not to rely on imports.

Beginning in December 2020, Israel vaccinated 14% of their population in a mere three weeks. Today, the rate of fully vaccinated Israelis is 96.2%, the highest in the world. Israel was also aggressive when it came to boosters and is already working on plans for a fourth shot (or second booster). But this vax campaign has not really helped Israel. They had huge outbreaks last summer and another wave from Delta and are now swamped with new cases from the Omicron variant.

All of this is consistent with the best research that shows the vaccines do not prevent infection and do not stop the spread of the disease. However, they do reduce severe cases and fatalities, at least until they lose their potency after a period of months.

Scientists Want Government to Admit Vaccine Failure: Now serious scientists and clinicians in Israel are calling upon the government to admit that the vaccines don’t work as expected and to work on other ways to control the virus, including effective treatments instead of ineffective vaccines. The letter is addressed to the Israeli government, but it’s equally accurate as applied to vaccine mandates anywhere in the world, including the U.S.

As I stated earlier, it looks like we’re at the point where the vaccines may be doing more harm than good by, in effect, training the virus to mutate in ways that defeat the vaccines. The irony of this is that the unvaccinated may have better natural immunity than the vaccinated against Omicron since the virus has mutated in order specifically to defeat the spike proteins produced by the vaccines.

Mounting Evidence of Serious Side Effects: More evidence is emerging about the side effects of the vaccines, including heart failure among otherwise healthy men under 40 and reproductive damage to women of childbearing age. In addition, the number of young, otherwise healthy professional athletes who have died or suffered serious cardiac events is alarming. The number of incidents greatly exceeds what can be expected by chance, based on previous years’ data.

It’s unlikely the Israeli government will admit to any of these failures; they have taken an all-or-nothing approach to the vaccines, much like U.S. public health authorities like Dr. Fauci. Unfortunately, this means the vax mandates and endless boosters will continue for now. Still, the rest of the world is wresting with the same issues. Lockdowns, quarantines and mandatory vaccines are not free. They destroy economies. Let’s hope the vaccine madness ends before the economy is run into the ground.

Reason for Hope: And today, there’s new reason for hope. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just announced that England will be lifting requirements for COVID passes, ending mask mandates and canceling work-from-home requirements. “As COVID becomes endemic, we will need to replace legal requirements with advice and guidance, urging people with the virus to be careful and considerate of others,” Johnson said.

In other words, the virus is here to stay and we’re just going to have to learn to deal with it, like we deal with annual flu outbreaks. We should protect the most vulnerable (the elderly and those with serious comorbidities), but the rest of society needs to function as normally as possible. Were you listening, President Biden?"

"China's Property Sector Is Crashing Again And It Has Reached The Country's Biggest Developer"

Full screen recommended.
"China's Property Sector Is Crashing Again And 
It Has Reached The Country's Biggest Developer"
by Epic Economist

"China’s crashing housing and commercial real estate markets are making the headlines once again as the country’s biggest property developer has been hit by a liquidity crunch and is now at risk of collapsing. Since last year, the slow collapse of the nation’s second-biggest developer, Evergrande, is keeping investors worldwide on edge as they fear the company’s bankruptcy is going to have a knock-on impact on China’s entire real estate sector and send the world into a financial crisis. And now that Country Garden Holdings – the largest investment-grade developer in the country – is in major trouble with international bondholders, it seems that we’re one step closer to a global financial meltdown.

The company was one of the few remaining large, better-quality private developers that had been unscathed by the liquidity crunch, even while other big groups, such as Shimao, faced dramatic reversals in their credit ratings. In December, Shimao’s implosion was viewed as “more devastating than debt crisis at Evergrande and Kaisa”. And now it seems like Country Garden is the final and most visible property giant for contagion risk, as extraordinary levels of stress in the offshore bond market threaten to drag credit ratings down.

Just as Evergrande and every other developer peer that relied on debt to fuel growth, Country Garden needs access to funding in the offshore credit market to pay for its projects. But given that the Chinese government has recently shut that door, the company is now coping with a debt load to the tune of US$11.7 billion, representing its total outstanding US dollar bonds, as Bloomberg reported.

According to Bloomberg, the main risk plaguing the developer right now is its limited access to funding. “Any sign of doubt in the firm's capacity to weather liquidity stress risks may prompt a widespread repricing of other higher-quality developers,” analysts wrote. In other words, if the company doesn’t prove that it’s capable to obtain financial support to finish its projects, it may end up downgrading the credit ratings of its peers and triggering a sizable crash in the nation’s housing prices.

With over 3,000 housing projects spread across every single Chinese province, Country Garden's financial health has enormous economic and social consequences, far greater than Evergrande. Even more worrying, if the group starts showing signs of weakness, it will dramatically damage the already fragile investor and homebuyer confidence, compromising China's economy and even social stability. Experts argue that’s when China's Lehman moment will finally emerge.

Now, investors are paying close attention to Country Garden's capacity to raise funding from a variety of channels, especially considering that the offshore credit market remains effectively closed to most developers. The company must repay or refinance about US$1.3 billion on bonds this year, the majority of which are dollar notes. Its next bond maturity is a US$425 million bond due on January 27. Any indication of default can make the situation far more complicated.

Keeping in mind that investor confidence is at historic lows, and the dollar bond market is essentially shut for developers, the sector currently has very limited refinancing options, which increases the risk of companies failing to pay the debt on time. “Risks across the Chinese property sector are rising, evident from difficult refinancing conditions for even the most well-regarded firms,” said Wei Liang Chang, a macro strategist at DBS Bank. “Greater clarity on the disclosure of liabilities as well as asset sales are crucial to shore up confidence,” he added. Bloomberg estimates also point out that at least seven Chinese developers have defaulted on dollar bonds since October. And this crisis is about to hit a whole new level as the very foundation of the property market loses financial support.

If you’re wondering why does all of this matters, the truth is that as investor and consumer confidence evaporates in China, the inevitable collapse of these massive companies will hamper at least 25 percent of the Chinese GDP and set off a tsunami of bankruptcies this year, leaving a dent on global financial markets and slowing down the global economy.

In the best-case scenario, Beijing will have a recession on its hands. In the worst-case scenario, a depression may follow, which will leave the world’s central banks scrambling to bail out the second biggest economic superpower on the planet. Regardless of the outcome, the impacts are going to be very painful. In short, this means that we’re heading to an era of credit tightening while inflation continues to soar and eats up a larger share of our purchasing power with each passing month."

Celente and the Judge, "Perilous Times, Disagree with “Authorities”, Go To Jail"

Full screen recommended.
Celente and the Judge, 
"Perilous Times, Disagree with “Authorities”, Go To Jail"

Tucker Carlson, "We’re Watching Civilization Collapse In Real Time"

Full screen recommended.
Tucker Carlson, 
"We’re Watching Civilization Collapse In Real Time"

We have indeed lost our collective sanity...

Gregory Mannarino, "Zero Chance Of Inflation Slowing Down, Going From Very Bad To Much Worse"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/19/22:
"Zero Chance Of Inflation Slowing Down,
 Going From Very Bad To Much Worse"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Courting the Moon"

Full screen recommended. Beautiful!
2002, "Courting the Moon"
"This song is from our latest album, 'Hummingbird.' A Mayan legend says that the hummingbird is actually the sun in disguise, and he is trying to court a beautiful woman, who is the moon."

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

"It Was Ironic..."

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