"Economic Market Snapshot 1/24/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/24/22"

Updated as available.

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"The more I see of the moneyed classes,

the more I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

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CNN Market Data:

- http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- http://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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Latest market analysis 1/24/22

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

Jan 24th to 25th 2022

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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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

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

Gregory Mannarino, "Pre-Markets Under Pressure; Fear/Safety Trade Under Way"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/24/22:

"Pre-Markets Under Pressure; 

Fear/Safety Trade Under Way"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Massive Food Shortages At Target! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 1/24/22:

"Massive Food Shortages At Target!

 Empty Shelves Everywhere!"

"In today's vlog we are at Target with empty shelves everywhere! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a massive food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

"How It Really Is"

"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"

"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"

by Charles Hugh-Smith

"Long-term cycles escape our notice because they play out over many years or even decades; few noticed the decreasing rainfall in the Mediterranean region in 150 A.D. but this gradual decline in rainfall slowly but surely reduced the grain harvests of the Roman Empire, which coupled with rising populations resulted in a reduced caloric intake for many people. This weakened their immune systems in subtle ways, leaving them more vulnerable to the Antonine Plague of 165 AD.

The decline of temperatures in Northern Europe in the early 1300s led to “years without summer” and failed grain harvests which reduced the caloric intake of most people, leaving them weakened and more vulnerable to the Black Plague which swept Europe in 1347.

I’ve mentioned the book "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire" a number of times as a source for understanding the impact of natural cycles on human civilization. It’s important to note that the natural cycles and pandemics of 200 AD didn’t just cripple the Roman Empire; this same era saw the collapse of the mighty Parthian Empire of Persia, the kingdoms of India and the Han Dynasty in China.

In addition to natural cycles, there are human socio-economic cycles of debt and decay of civic values and the social contract: a proliferation of parasitic elites, a weakening of state finances and a decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor. The rising dependence on debt and its eventual collapse is a cycle noted by Kondratieff and others, and Peter Turchin listed these three dynamics as the key drivers of decisive discord of the kind that brings down empires and nations. All three are playing out globally in the present.

In this context, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a political expression of long-brewing discontent with precisely these issues: the rise of self-serving parasitic elites, the decay/corruption of the social contract and state finances and the decades-long decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor.

Which brings us to karma, a topic of some confusion in Western cultures more familiar with Divine Retribution than with actions having consequences even without Divine Intervention, which is the essence of karma. Broadly speaking, the U.S. squandered the opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War 30 years ago on hubristic Exceptionalism, wars of choice, parasitic elites and an unprecedented waste of resources on unproductive consumption.

Now the plan–for lack of any real plan–is to borrow trillions of dollars to fund an even more spectacular orgy of unproductive consumption, on the bizarre belief that “money” can be conjured out of thin air in essentially infinite quantities and squandered, and there will magically be no consequences of this trickery in the real world.

Actions have consequences, and after 30 years of waste, fraud and corruption being normalized by the parasitic elites while the purchasing power of labor decayed, the karmic consequences can no longer be delayed by doing more of what’s hollowed out the economy and society.

Which brings us to luck. As a general rule, historians seek explanations which leave luck out of the equation. This gives us a false confidence in the predictability and power of human will and action and cycles. Yes, cycles and human action influence outcomes, but we do a great disservice by shunting luck into the shadows as a non-factor.

If Emperor Pius had chosen someone other than Marcus Aurelius as his successor, someone weak, vain and self-absorbed like so many of Rome’s late-stage emperors, then Rome would have fallen by 170 AD as the Antonine Plague crippled finances and the army, and the invading hordes would have swept the empire into the dustbin of history. It can be argued that only Marcus Aurelius had the experience and character to sell off the Imperial treasure to raise the money needed to pay the soldiers and spend virtually his entire term in power in the front lines of battle, preserving Rome from complete collapse. That was good judgement by Pius but also good luck.

As we ponder luck, consider the estimate that had the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago struck the Earth 30 minutes earlier or later, it would not have generated the Nuclear Winter that destroyed the dinosaurs. (A direct hit in deep water would have spawned a monstrous tsunami, but no dust cloud. A direct hit on land would have raised a dust cloud but without the water vapor/steam generated by the vaporization of millions of gallons of sea water, the cloud wouldn’t have risen high enough to encircle the planet.) That was bad luck for the dinosaurs, and good luck for the mammals who replaced them.

The global economy has been extraordinarily lucky for 75 years. Food and energy have been cheap and abundant. (If you think food and energy are expensive now, think about prices doubling or tripling, and then doubling again.)

In our complacency and hubris, we attribute this to our wonderful technologies, which we assume guarantee us permanent surpluses of energy and food. The idea that technology has reached hard limits or that it could fail doesn’t occur to us. We’ve taken good luck to be our birthright because it’s all we’ve known. We attribute this good fortune to things within our control – technology, wise investments and policies, etc. The possibility that all these powers that we consider so godlike are insignificant doesn’t occur to us because we’ve enjoyed the favorable winds of luck without even being aware of it.

We are woefully unprepared for a long run of bad luck. My sense is the cycles have turned and the good luck has drained from the hour-glass. Energy and food will no longer be cheap and abundant, our luck in leadership will vanish, and our vaunted technologies will fail to maintain an abundance so vast that we can squander the finite wealth of soil, water, resources and energy on mindless consumption.

I’m reminded of a line from an Albert King song, "Born Under a Bad Sign" (composed by Booker T. Jones and William Bell): “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” The next five years might have us singing this line with feeling."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com

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Albert King, "Born Under A Bad Sign"

"It Is Our Fate..."

"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person, one cannot exist in full consciousness, without having to have a showdown with ones self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in ones mind what matters and what does not matter."

- Dorothy Thompson

"Consider The Possibility That This Is Already The Dystopia You Fear"

"Consider The Possibility That This 

Is Already The Dystopia You Fear"

by Caitlin Johnstone

"Consider the possibility that the Orwellian dystopia you fear is already here and has been in place for many years, you just haven’t noticed because you’re still allowed to watch Netflix or buy a gun or say whatever you want to say within a small impotent online echo chamber.

Consider the possibility that the powerful are already getting everything they want from you, right now, exactly as things are, and that any suspicious action you see them taking isn’t them constructing a cage for you but them tightening the bolts on a cage that was quietly built around you some time ago.

Consider the possibility that while they’ve been training you to watch out for communism and microchips and overt totalitarianism, they’ve been covertly transforming us all into mindless gears in a machine constructed to serve their interests which challenges them in no way, shape or form.

Consider the possibility that tyrants have evolved an understanding that you can exert a lot more control over a population with mass-scale psychological manipulation than you can with overt force, and that they have been developing the science of that mass-scale psychological manipulation for over a century.

Consider the possibility that we’re like a woman who always feared winding up in a physically abusive relationship like the kind depicted on television, and then wound up in a psychologically abusive relationship where her very mind is bent to the will of her abuser in every way.

Consider the possibility that just like in a psychologically abusive relationship, we’re manipulated into believing things are fine and that we give our abuser everything he wants of our own free will and that any problems that arise come from us and not our abuser, and that we are so well-trained at this that we’ve even learned to gaslight ourselves.

Consider the possibility that governments forcefully seizing control of all media and transforming them into official state propaganda outlets would actually be far less efficient at mass brainwashing than our current system in which people believe they are getting accurate information from a free and honest press.

Consider the possibility that if the powerful were able to surgically implant microchips in our brains and control everything we think and do, what they’d make us think and do would not be significantly different from what the overwhelming majority of us already think and do.

Consider the possibility that the dystopia we’ve been worried about has already been ushered in, not from any of the directions we’ve been conditioned to anticipate, but through the simple fact that the human mind is far more hackable than we’ve been conditioned to believe.

Consider the possibility that while we’ve been trained to fear communist authoritarians taking over and forcing us to obey their will, capitalist authoritarians have had us marching to the exact drumbeat they desire for generations. And we only think this is freedom because we’ve been trained to think that.

Consider the possibility that you’ve been trained to believe freedom looks like being able to buy a gun which we all know you’ll never use against the powerful, or choose from 197 kinds of potato chip at the grocery store, when really that mindless consumption is just you turning the gears of your own prison.

Consider the possibility that real freedom isn’t being able to consume whatever advertisers have convinced you to consume, it’s being able to think with a mind that has not been molded by the powerful, to educate yourself in an information ecosystem that is not locked down by those who rule over you, and to speak the truth without having your speech stifled by oppressive dominators.

Consider the possibility that the only thing keeping us from creating heaven on earth is our inability to clearly see what’s going on in our world and thus strategize a truth-based path out of this mess, and that the powerful know this, and that that’s why they work so hard to keep us from seeing clearly.

Consider the possibility that the real obstacle to terrestrial harmony is not so much opposing ideologies as the fact that all attempts to see clearly what’s really going on in our world are being actively obstructed by propaganda, by Silicon Valley manipulation, and by government secrecy.

Consider the possibility that the bastards succeed not by overtly quashing dissent but by covertly quashing all will towards dissent, and that we succeed not by trying to ward off a dystopia that’s already here but by working to awaken the giant within our brothers and sisters from its propaganda-induced coma.

Consider the possibility that real freedom means all of humanity awakening from our dehumanizing role as brainwashed gear-turners for the capitalist machine and uncorking the wild unpredictable brilliance within us that our oppressors have worked so hard to keep bottled up.

Consider the possibility that there is so much more to us than we’ve been permitted to know, and that the only thing keeping us from achieving our true potential as a species at this point in history is a propaganda-induced misunderstanding of what is freedom and what is slavery."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"This Sucker's Going Down..."

"This Sucker's Going Down..."

by MN Gordon

"By now, anyone with half an inkling of curiosity about why prices and values don’t add up has traced the divide back to the money itself. It’s not hard to see. Asset prices, like houses and the major stock market indexes, have lost all visible connection with the underlying economy. However, wage growth has stagnated; over the last 40 years low level wages have only increased by $0.32 per hour in real inflation adjusted terms. Stocks and residential real estate, at the same time, have gone to the moon.

Even with the NASDAQ’s 11.2 percent decline from its all-time closing high set on November 19, the index is still up over 110 percent from its March 2020 low. What will it take for the NASDAQ to crash back to earth?

Something else that has gone to the moon is government debt. In 1980, the national debt was $908 billion. Today it’s over $29.8 trillion. That’s an increase of over 3,181 percent. Over this time, however, gross domestic product (GDP) has only increased 632 percent – from $2.86 trillion to $20.94 trillion.

Of course, these are merely the facts and figures. The effects to countless Americans are hard to measure. But, by and large, the last 40 years have been a great disappointment for the American worker – and an absolute boon for the political elites.

In addition to asset prices and government debt, social discontent has also gone to the moon. Here in the LA Basin, for example, some of America’s most resourceful fellows have taken to emulating the corruption found in Washington and on Wall Street. They’re looting stores and plundering freight trains as a matter of business. Daring professions like these flourish when hard work and playing by the rules no longer pays. What’s really going on…

Spineless Money: To begin, the nation, in nearly every aspect, is failing. Such is the fate of nations who adopt spineless money. More specifically, as 20th century currency analyst Franz Pick observed: “The fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same.” We’ve seen that spineless money is synonymous with spineless nations. Nero’s Rome. Revolutionary France. Weimar Germany. 1980s Argentina. Zimbabwe. You name it…

Once a country’s economy and finances have been corrupted by fiat the fate of the nation is doom and disaster. Yet it didn’t have to be this way. A balanced budget. Stable currency. Limited government. Industrious populace. Personal responsibility. Rule of law. Commonsense. These, and similar sensibilities, would have prevented all the wild moonshots. Instead, we got lies, corruption, teachers unions, arbitrary rules, monster debt, Anthony Fauci, fake money, woke, and a dependent populace.

Abhorrence like these, again, go back to the money… Management of a spineless currency by central planners always falls to frequent debauchery…followed by short episodic periods of crushing austerity. The central planners never seem to get it right. Their extreme intervention lurches the economy from boom to bust. Now they’ve done it again…

In advance of the Federal Reserve’s forthcoming rate hikes, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note eclipsed 1.8 percent. This is the highest its been since January 2020 – two months before the federal government declared a national emergency on coronavirus. At the same time, the 2020 and 2021 fiscal year deficits, which covered much of the coronavirus period, were a combined $5.9 trillion. Much of this was financed via printing press money from the Federal Reserve.

The Greatest Crackup the World’s Ever Known: Should it be any surprise that consumer prices, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), are increasing at an annualized rate of 7.0 percent – or over 15 percent when using 1980s calculation methods? More importantly, do you really think hiking the federal funds rate 50 basis points is going to cut it? This may cause a tantrum on Wall Street, but it won’t do much to control raging consumer price inflation…

Let’s be clear, consumer price inflation has nothing to do with rising prices or greedy corporations. But it has everything to do with declining money. This can’t be said enough. When the quantity of money goes up, the value of each money unit goes down. The systematic destruction of the dollar has been compounding for over 107 years; since the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. And it has been going on in earnest since President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. But that’s not all that has been going on…

The plundering, corruption, and lies of public officials are criminal. Federal Reserve Presidents have been buying and selling stocks to front run their market swinging policy decisions for years. Members of Congress have long been trading off insider information related to their legislative wheeling and dealing. Indeed, the fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same. We’re headed for complete financial, moral, and political collapse. But it’s not all bad…

You can count your blessings. You have front row seats for the greatest crackup the world’s ever known. The dollar’s doomed. The nation is too."

- https://economicprism.com/

"This Is A Choice..."

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world,

to aim at doing something which shall really increase the

happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind -

this is a choice which is possible for all of us;

and surely it is a good haven to sail for.”

- Henry Van Dyke

"You Can Avoid Reality..."

 

"Markets Full Of Desperation; Speculative Frenzies Will Implode; Prepare For Doom; Wage Slavery"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/23/22:

"Markets Full Of Desperation; Speculative Frenzies Will Implode;

 Prepare For Doom; Wage Slavery"

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"Desperation"? As of 4 years ago these psychopaths had bought, on margin, $2.4 QUADRILLION of derivatives. God knows what it is today. Any drop in price will trigger an incomprehensible tsunami of margin calls which they cannot possibly meet, resulting in universal global bankruptcy.

- https://steemit.com/money/

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With no exaggeration, this video is a perfect metaphor for what's

 coming, as the Good Ship World Economy encounters the Derivatives Wave..

Full screen recommended.

God help us...

"Jeremy Grantham Turns Apocalyptic: Stocks To Crater 50% In Largest Wealth Destruction In US History"

Full screen recommended.

"Jeremy Grantham Turns Apocalyptic: 

Stocks To Crater 50% In Largest Wealth Destruction In US History"

by Epic Economist

"Investing legend Jeremy Grantham is once again sharing an apocalyptic forecast for U.S. stocks. In a recent note, he warned that the market is headed to a brutal crash and that we’re all about to witness the largest wealth destruction event in modern history. Over the past few years, the GMO founder has quietly turned from bullish to bearish on the U.S. stock market. He has been sounding the alarm about a potential financial disaster since June 2020. And after correctly calling the last three financial bubbles, he said this one is the ‘Real McCoy,’ and that the current rally is absolutely ‘crazy’.

However, in 2021, Grantham’s warnings of an imminent crash didn’t come true. In August, he said that a spectacular crash was coming within a few months. Right after that, he cautioned investors that the bursting of this epic bubble was going to be the most important investing event of our lives. This time around, he might have underestimated how determined the Fed is to avoid another financial meltdown amid a bumpy economic recession. But even though he’s got the timing wrong, that doesn’t mean he’s not right.

In the last days of December, U.S. stocks have started to plunge, especially in the tech sector, where the bubble has actually burst. Now that the Fed support is finally fading away, a reversal in this downward trend seems nearly impossible. That’s why, a couple of days ago, 83-year-old Grantham publish his gloomiest note yet, titled "Let The Wild Rumpus Begin,”* in which he exposes that we are currently living in a superbubble - the fourth of the past century - and just as during the crash of 1929, the dot-com bust of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008, Grantham is "certain" the bursting of this bubble has begun. The iconic value manager sees the S&P plunging by at least 50% to 2,500 from its all-time high of 4,800 reached just a few weeks ago. The Nasdaq Composite, on the other hand, which has closed in correction territory last Wednesday, is about to face an even bigger and far more painful correction.

The expert has been seeing signs that something was terminally broken in the market since last February, but it wasn’t until recently that indicators started to show the same. The bursting of this superbubble has become crystal clear after dozens of the most speculative stocks began falling. For example, Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF, has already crashed by 52%, and so did the shares of the electric car maker, Rivian. And then, the Russell 2000, an index of mid-cap equities that normally outperforms in a bull market, fell behind the S&P 500 in 2021. In fact, most bubbly assets that are sensitive to central bank liquidity have been significantly lower over the past month.

While Grantham is one of the last remaining legendary investors and value managers that have been on Wall Street for over 50 years, calling boom and bust cycles for almost as long, according to Bloomberg's Erik Shatzker, the veteran's predictions are largely dismissed by today's investors. They often ask, "how could the S&P 500 advance 26.9% in 2021 if stocks were set to go down, especially when Grantham was warning of an epic crash early last year?"

But instead of disproving his case, Grantham argued that the strength in blue-chip stocks at a time of weakness in speculative assets only reinforces it: “This has been exactly how the great bubbles have broken,” he stressed. “In 1929, the flakes were down for the year before the market broke, they were down 30%. The year before they’d been up 85%, they had crushed the market". Simply put, the market veteran is alerting about the same kind of market leverage that led Goldman Sachs to ring the alarm last month, when the bank observed that 51% of all market gains since April are from just 5 overvalued tech stocks.

Having seen the same trends playing out in every past superbubble is what gives him so much confidence in predicting this one will crash in a similar manner. This is the "most dangerous breadth of asset overpricing in financial history,” he writes. And as it always happens, the stock market bubble has begun to deflate from the riskiest end of the market first – as it has been doing since December, Grantham wishes us all good luck because that's what we're all going to need in the dark times that are fast approaching."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

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*Freely download “Let The Wild Rumpus Begin,” 

by Jeremy Gantham, here:

- https://www.gmo.com/globalassets/

Don't worry about a 50% drop, long before that something 

inescapably terrifying will happen. See above post...

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

Full screen mode recommended.

Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“M13 is one of the most prominent and best known globular clusters. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hercules, M13 is frequently one of the first objects found by curious sky gazers seeking celestials wonders beyond normal human vision.

M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years distant, and is over 12 billion years old. At the 1974 dedication of Arecibo Observatory, a radio message about Earth was sent in the direction of M13. The featured image in HDR, taken through a small telescope, spans an angular size just larger than a full Moon, whereas the inset image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope, zooms in on the central 0.04 degrees.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160727.html

“On The Meridian Of Time...

“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.”

- Henry Miller

"Write Your Worries On The Sand..."

“I walked slowly out on the beach.

A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again:

WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.

I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell.

Kneeling there under the vault of the sky,

I wrote several words, one above the other.

Then I walked away, and I did not look back.

I had written my troubles on the sand.

The tide was coming in.”

- Arthur Gordon

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

"I Am An Enemy..."

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”

- George Bernard Shaw

The Daily "Near You?"

Waxhaw, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Emergency Food; Food Shortage; Empty Shelves"

Full screen recommended.

Tommy Bites Homestead - Prepping, PM 1/23/22:

"Emergency Food; Food Shortage; Empty Shelves"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: This Week Will Make Or Break The Market"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/23/22:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: 

This Week Will Make Or Break The Market"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Once You Eliminate The Impossible..."

"Most Do Not Fully See..."

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”

- M. Scott Peck

"$1 Billion a Day - That’s How Much Top 10 

U.S. Billionaires Added to Their Fortunes During Pandemic"

by Jake Johnson

"The 10 wealthiest billionaires in the U.S. have added roughly $1 billion to their collective fortune every day - or around $12,600 per second - since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed millions of people across the globe and thrown countless lives into chaos.

The billionaire wealth update comes courtesy of the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), which released an analysis Wednesday estimating that the combined net worth of the 10 richest people in the U.S. has more than doubled since March 2020, reaching $1.35 trillion this week. “The pandemic has been very good to American billionaires, especially the top 10,” said ATF executive director Frank Clemente, who noted that billionaires’ pandemic profits will likely not be taxed because they consist largely of unrealized capital gains.

Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposal to subject the unrealized capital gains of the mega-wealthy to taxation has gone nowhere in Congress. “Their obscene rise in wealth - all of it potentially untaxed - stands in stark contrast to the lot of America’s working families, who’ve struggled through almost two years of a health crisis and economic uncertainty including most recently, rising prices,” Clemente said. “Chairman Wyden’s Billionaires Income Tax would better align the fortunes of America’s richest of the rich with the needs of average Americans.”

That breaks down to $1 billion every day. Each made about the same in a single minute as the average American household earns in an entire year.

This can't continue. pic.twitter.com/gcaxL7ZN7M

- Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) January 19, 2022

ATF’s analysis is the latest in a series of new studies highlighting the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the decades-long trend of soaring wealth inequality in the U.S. and worldwide. Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, Oxfam International released an analysis showing that the 10 richest men in the world have doubled their combined wealth since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, the anti-poverty group noted, “the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of Covid-19.”

On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive organizations including the Fight Inequality Alliance and the Institute for Policy Studies estimated that a modest annual wealth tax on global millionaires and billionaires would raise $2.52 trillion dollars a year, enough money to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty.

In an open letter published Wednesday morning, a group of more than 100 rich individuals voiced support for such a tax, warning that “history paints a pretty bleak picture of what the endgame of extremely unequal societies looks like.” “For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it’s time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich,” reads the letter, which was addressed to political and economic elites. “If you don’t, then all the private talks won’t change what’s coming - it’s taxes or pitchforks. Let’s listen to history and choose wisely.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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Madame DeFarge, where are you now that we need you?

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Vax Die-Off for Next Three Years"

"Vax Die-Off for Next Three Years"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Clif High is an Internet data mining expert who uses “Predictive Linguistics” and computer programs to sort through billions of bits of information on the Internet to predict future trends and events. Some of his most disturbing trends he has spotted in his data analysis surround the CV19 vax. High is seeing the vax narrative breaking down. It may only be a matter of weeks before the restrictions and coerced injections are over, but that does not mean it’s clear sailing. According to High, the worst by far is yet to come. High explains, “So, it’s breaking down. The real horror is yet awaiting us, and that’s when all of the people who have been harmed by these injections wake up and realize they have been harmed and will have the natural emotions that accompany that.

The CDC is now reporting a 40% increase in death totals for 2021. The reports are saying the huge increase is “unexplained.” High and many others say the CV19 injections explain it all, and it’s only going to get much harder to explain. High’s analysis says, “I think we are looking at three years here before it peaks: 2022, 2023 and 2024. There is a lot of stuff in the data that says 2024 will be the tail-off of it. So, we have a number of very rough years ahead of us. Each year in succession will have more people dying than the year before. There is also going to be more infirmities, more illness and more of a drain on the system. 

In this three years, we will take the globalists to task and hold them accountable for their crimes. We are going to have a ‘red pill’ moment that’s coming soon. It’s not going to take months. It’s not going to take weeks. It’s going to take a short period of time, and many of them are going to go ballistic. So, I expect frequent, irregular, episodic, periods of chaos. They won’t be lashing out at society at large. They will be lashing out at their abusers... You will need to stand back. People will need to understand that there will be a section of the social order that is going to go crazy in anger, grief and all of this. These will be very violent reactions to having been poisoned, and some of them will be spectacularly so in terms of the violence of it. It’s not going to be wise to hang out around these elite guys.”

High’s analysis now says at least “30 million people will die from the CV19 injections” one way or another in the next few years, and that could be a very low estimate.

Clif High talks about many subjects including the so-called “financial reset,” China, Bitcoin, gold, silver (which High predicts will be more expensive that gold one day), the 2022 Election and why 28 Democrat Congressmen are not running for re-election, the crash of the financial system as we know it in 2022, the Petro dollar, inflation, why you need cash, and the Fed that High says is dying and the Fed knows it. That and a lot more in this one hour and ten-minute in-depth interview."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes 

One-on-One with data mining expert Clif High:

- https://rumble.com/

"Beware of Bank Bail-Ins - A Bail Out Using Your Money"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly PM 1/22/22:

"Beware of Bank Bail-Ins - A Bail Out Using Your Money"

"Banks are in a precarious spot right now. Banks are complaining that they cannot get employees and they are in serious need of help. The last time our economy took a dive the banks for bailed out by the government. That will not happen this time because the banks will be bailed out by the depositors. This is called a bail in."

"Empty Shelves At Kroger Marketplace, And Prices Are Skyrocketing"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 1/22/22:

"Empty Shelves At Kroger Marketplace, 

And Prices Are Skyrocketing"

"In today's vlog we visit Kroger Marketplace, and witness a lot of soaring prices. With stores struggling to get in products we are also dealing with another issue of skyrocketing prices. We will also check out the shelves as stores all across the country are having trouble."

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "1001"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, "1001"

"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.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130116.

"You Think..."

“You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.”

~ Wendell Berry

"Fools And Knaves..."

“In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of

fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain

degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.”

- Philip Stanhope

“There are more fools than knaves in the world,

else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”

- Samuel Butler

"We Know..."

“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

- Albert Camus

The Daily "Near You?"

St. James, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!