Wednesday, June 8, 2022

"Shocking New Home Construction Booming As Home Buyers Disappear; Worst Time To Buy A House"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 6/8/22:
"Shocking New Home Construction Booming As Home
 Buyers Disappear; Worst Time To Buy A House"
Related:

"It’s Going to be a Bleak Summer - More Banks Issue Warnings"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/8/22:
"It’s Going to be a Bleak Summer - 
More Banks Issue Warnings"
"We keep getting warnings from different banks about how bad the economy is. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and even the World Bank is telling us that global growth is shrinking. This will be a bleak summer."

"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Meijer! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/8/22:
"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Meijer! 
This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer, and are noticing Empty Shelves Everywhere! We are also noticing ridiculous price increases, and a major food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Related:

Gregory Mannarino, "Middle Class Extinction Accelerating; Homelessness Exploding"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/8/22:
"Middle Class Extinction Accelerating; 
Homelessness Exploding"

"Our Economy: At The Jagged Edge"

"Our Economy: At The Jagged Edge"
by John Wilder

"Systems work within certain limits. Let’s take...the Earth. The Earth is absolutely filled with life. It’s nearly everywhere, and in abundance, unless a particular bit of life has secrets about the Clintons. Let’s just look at a single variable of the system that supports life: temperature.

All things being equal, if the Earth was as hot as Venus is, the zone where life (if it was based on the need for water, of course) would be pretty small. Likewise, Mars would have a smaller envelope – it’s too cold – and water would be frozen most of the time. Sure, life is technically possible in both locations, but it will never thrive like it has for a huge chunk of the Earth’s history. And that’s just one variable impacting a complex system.

There are many ways to configure an economy. Most of the ones that work really well are decentralized for most things. No one tells a farmer in Nebraska what or when to plant. The farmer chooses, based on what he thinks he can sell. No one tells PEZ® to make a Yosemite Sam™ PEZ© dispenser. But why wouldn’t they make a Yosemite Sam® PEZ® dispenser? Duh.

Most of the time, this system is pretty closely coupled. The world doesn’t have years of surplus of, say, food just sitting around – with billions of people, I know someone would eat the Ding Dongs® and Pop Tarts™ first and then there wouldn’t be any for me. I mean, it certainly looks like Nic Cage could make an infinite amount of movies since the word, “no” isn’t in his vocabulary, but even he has limits to his Nic Cage-ness.

I think we’re close to the limits of the system that’s given us prosperity as we know it. Yup, that’s a sobering thought. Here are a few data points: This one hit me fairly hard (from Vox Day’s place – there’s more at the LINK):

"I own a small trucking company, and this is what the fuel crisis is doing to our country… Today I filled up my truck to deliver products that help keep our country fed. When I filled up my truck, it cost me $1,149.50. This is ONE truck, for ONE day of fuel. I own three. So for one day of operation, it’s costing me $3,448.50. (Yes, we use a full tank of fuel every single day, sometimes more than 1 tank per day).

My trucks generally run 5-6 days a week, so we’ll just estimate on the low side and say five. That’s $17,242.50. Last week was over $20k for ONE week, that I have to pay out of my pocket to try and keep not only my children fed, but those of my employees, and our country.

Mark my words, we are on a downhill slide to the worst recession our country has ever seen. Trucking companies are going under left and right. (Literally hundreds weekly.) If you’re not aware, what you’re wearing, what you’re eating, what you’re living in, what you’re driving, what you’re reading this on, was delivered by a truck."

That’s sobering. All the beer comes on trucks, so it could be literally sobering. What else have we seen?

• Baby Formula Shortages
• Rising Violence, Well, Everywhere
• Short Tempers
• Shortages of Basic Repair Parts For Vehicles

These have some consequences. Big ones. People are pulling back on frills, in a hurry. A very good restaurant in Modern Mayberry just shut down. Forever. The owners threw in the towel. Rising prices led to fewer customers...customers feeling pinched can always cook their own food at home as a quick way to save a few bucks. I opened my browser (which thinks I live hundreds of miles away from Modern Mayberry) and saw the same exact story a few hundred miles away on the same day our local hangout closed – another, distant, beloved local restaurant shutting down in a town I've never been to.

Why are dining customers feeling the pinch? Let’s just talk a single variable: fuel. By my calculations, the rising cost of fuel is draining $2.3 billion dollars a day, every day from the economy. That’s not quite a trillion dollars a year, but fuel is priced into everything. Divide the rough annual cost of just the increase and I came up with almost $2,800. Per person. Multiplied by a family of four, and that’s about $11,000 a year per family. If the average family makes $69,000 a year, just the increase in fuel prices is about 16% of their annual income. Sure, lots of that isn’t direct to the family, but it gets priced into every single thing they buy.

That’s stark, especially because it’s only a single variable. Increased interest rates will be hitting soon, along with all of the financial pressures that will bring. And, of course, there will be more things as this crisis cascades.

Here’s another data point. I pulled into McDonald’s® and asked for a McSausage McMuffin with McEgg®. Don’t judge me! They’re tasty! “Sorry, we’re all out. We do have sausage biscuits left.” “Okay. I’ll take one.” Not my favorite, but, whatever. “Okay, that’ll be $6.50.” It was just as they put up their lunch menu, so I hadn’t seen the price. Six fifty? For a sausage patty, some not great scrambled eggs, a slice of cheese, and a biscuit? And it wasn’t what I wanted in the first place? I noped out of that. First time I’ve canceled a drive-through order that I can recall, but I didn’t need the sandwich $6.50 worth. I drove out of the line and off on my way. Good thing it wasn’t an Amish McDonald’s® - I hear they don’t have outlets.

Our economic systems are certainly out of balance. Badly. We’re at the edge of a cliff, and I have the feeling that things will soon be changing, and quickly. Be prepared for a change in temperature."

Gerald Celente, "Top 5 Ways To Spread Monkeypox: CNN, BBC, NPR, NBC, NYT"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal" 6/7/22:
"Top 5 Ways To Spread Monkeypox: 
CNN, BBC, NPR, NBC, NYT"
"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."

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

"Energy Supply Chains Face Worst Crisis In Five Decades As Extensive Shortages Push Prices To Explode"

Full screen recommended.
"Energy Supply Chains Face Worst Crisis In Five 
Decades As Extensive Shortages Push Prices To Explode"
by Epic Economist

"What happens to a country that doesn’t have enough energy supplies? Well, it seems that we’re about to find that out the hard way. The U.S. energy supply shortage is sparking the worst shortfall of fuels in over 50 years. Most of our refineries are already running at almost full capacity and won’t be able to ramp up operations and the processing of key oil products to meet the rising demand this summer. Fuel prices have already jumped by 40% since the start of the year, and market strategists are alerting that consumers may see another 40% spike by August. A widespread shortage of fuels is threatening to throw this country into disorder, collapse domestic production, send the price of everything that requires transportation through the roof, and result in demand destruction and nationwide rationing of diesel and other oil products as the imbalance between supply and demand continues to grow.

In the U.S., drivers are already feeling the pain of skyrocketing prices at the pump. Since the beginning of 2022, gasoline prices have been soaring nationwide, and today, they broke another shocking record. American motorists are now paying a nationwide average of $4.91 per gallon, according to the latest data provided by AAA. Since January, the national average surged by 40%. It is also well above last year’s level of $3.04 per gallon. Analysts predict that the $5-per-gallon average will become the norm by the Fourth of July holiday as demand is expected to increase even further while supply remains tight.

In fact, according to analysts at JPMorgan, California’s $6-per-gallon average could ripple across the country by the end of the summer. “There is a real risk the price could reach $6+ a gallon by August,” said Natasha Kaneva, the head of global oil and commodities research at JPMorgan, adding that prices could go up by an additional of nearly 40% in the coming months. “With expectations of strong driving demand, US retail price could surge another 37% by August,” the expert forecasted. “The only way that gas doesn’t reach $6 per gallon is if demand drops due to the sky-high prices,” JPMorgan analysts wrote in a separate report.

The worst part is that even though most consumers are already struggling with the rising cost of filling up their car tanks, what they really should be worried about is the price of diesel. The entire U.S. economy runs on diesel. Diesel prices reach another record today of $5.68 per gallon, marking the highest level they’ve ever been in the U.S. since the government began tracking them, and prices will likely go even higher this summer not only because of the demand but also because forecasters are predicting that this year will see an above-average number of hurricanes, which can idle refineries for days.

This means that just about everything will become more expensive. Right now, refineries in the Northeast are already running at 95% capacity, and industry executives are warning that the only option to keep diesel supplies from completely running out this summer is a nationwide ration of the fuel. Apart from that, for prices to finally go down, the economy will likely have to go through what economists call demand destruction, which is when the price of something gets so high that people stop buying it because they can’t afford it anymore.

That consequently leads to less demand and more supply, and ultimately, lower prices. There are already signs that demand destruction is happening, and in some parts of the Northeast, diesel rationing has already begun. Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before these issues hit national proportions, and as drivers, truckers, and ocean carriers start to rush for more energy supplies, chaos will soon descend upon America – again."

Musical Interlude: Adiemus, “Adiemus”

Full screen recommended.
Adiemus, “Adiemus”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).
Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”

"Two Possibilities Exist..."

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the 
Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life.
It's just been too intelligent to come here."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"There Is Always The Hope..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio

The Daily "Near You?"

Vail, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Putin Should Send Biden 'Thank You' Note"

"Putin Should Send Biden 'Thank You' Note"
by Jim Rickards

"I’ve said from the start that Russia will win the kinetic war in Ukraine and the global financial war as well. That doesn’t mean I’m pro-Russian or condone Putin’s invasion. It’s just my objective analysis based on the facts.

Of course, winning is a subjective term in both contexts. As applied to the kinetic war, winning does not mean a complete conquest of Ukraine. That was never Putin’s goal. It means Russia will control the Donbas region in the south and east and the coastline of Ukraine, including the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Russia has already secured a land bridge from Russian territory to Crimea and likely plans to extend its coastwise control to Odessa.

Russia’s occupation of Snake Island gives it de facto control of Black Sea access to Ukraine already. Russia also occupies Kherson, which controls access to the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, which is the main access to the sea from the capital Kyiv.

What Good Are Weapons if There’s Nobody Left to Use Them? None of this has been easy. It has been slow, brutal and costly. But Russia is not losing militarily, no matter how many videos you may see of destroyed Russian tanks. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy is now admitting that he’s losing up to 100 men a day, with many more wounded. The actual figures are probably significantly higher. The U.S. and its allies can send all the advanced weapons they want to Ukraine, but given Ukrainian casualty rates there won't be anyone on the front lines left to use them.

Then there are the economic sanctions…

Biden Should Send Putin a “Thank You” Note: On the financial front, Russia is making $25 billion per month in oil and natural gas sales due in large part to higher world prices as a result of economic sanctions. Efforts to seize assets such as yachts and townhouses from Russian oligarchs also play into Putin’s hands because he had tried for over a decade to clip the oligarchs’ wings. The fact is Putin despises the oligarchs. Putin's base of power is the military, intelligence services and the Orthodox Church. The U.S. and its allies are actually doing Putin's dirty work for him by going after the oligarchs.

Russia has also captured 55 million tons of coal in the Donbass region of Ukraine, which gives Russia added leverage when it comes to sanctions related to oil and natural gas.

Europe Has Few Options: The G7 climate and environmental ministers recently met in Berlin and agreed to phase out the use of coal. That sounds like a worthy goal from the perspective of climate alarmists. The problem is that most of the EU (with the exception of France) has already phased out their use of nuclear power.

At the same time, steps are being taken to ban exports of oil and natural gas from Russia to Europe because of the war in Ukraine. If you eliminate nuclear and coal, and curtail oil and natural gas, what’s left to power the homes and factories of Europe? The ministers claim that they will arrange substitutes for the Russian oil and gas. But there aren’t any.

Qatari natural gas is mostly pre-sold to China. U.S. natural gas output has been knee-capped by Biden administration limitations on leasing and fracking. U.S. oil output is also declining for the same reasons. The U.S. has moved from being a net exporter to a net importer of oil and natural gas in the past two years, so it cannot practically be a source for Europe. None of this does any harm to Russia, which will simply sell its oil and gas output to China at world prices.

Green Fantasies: The G7 and EU have a fantasy that they can substitute wind and solar power for the oil, gas and coal that they are scaling back. The problem is that wind turbines and solar panels are expensive and not scalable. They depend on enormous battery farms to store power and those batteries make the entire plan even more expensive. It’s also impossible to run a modern power grid on wind and solar alone because those sources are intermittent. There’s no solar power at night or on cloudy days, and there’s no wind power when the wind’s not blowing. Wind and solar can supplement other energy sources on the grid, but they cannot power the grid on their own.

This leads back to oil and natural gas (or coal), which the G7 has just agreed to do without. None of this makes sense. There are no ready substitute supplies of oil and natural gas. Wind and solar cannot power the grid. Europe’s choices will be rationing and blackouts, not a green new deal. The worst case is that the EU and G7 actually move forward with these nonsensical and unnecessary plans, in which case Europe will freeze in the dark next winter.

The U.S. Tells Africa to Starve: Meanwhile, many major trading partners of Russia have remained neutral in the war including China, India and Brazil, which gives Russia many outlets for its exports of strategic materials and energy and imports of manufactured goods. It also looks like Russia nicked $150 billion of plutonium from Ukraine's nuclear power plants. Plutonium runs about $6,000 per gram and the Russians got 30 tons. That leaves Russia with a nice profit in the sanction war. With respect to grain exports, Russia has destroyed a major Ukrainian grain export terminal in Mykolaiv that plays a crucial role in global grain distribution. But after the West seized the assets of the Central Bank of Russia, what did you expect?

Putin doesn't play patty-cake. This is war and he plays to win.

The U.S. is warning African nations not to buy Russian grain seized from Ukraine. But if the Africans don't buy it, their people will starve. Talk is cheap, while starvation focuses the mind. They'll buy the grain. Why wouldn’t they? Mark this as another failure for mindless U.S. sanctions. In all, Russia will be OK.

Still, investors who believe the western and Ukrainian propaganda amplified by legacy media such as the New York Times and Washington Post are being badly misled. The war could be ended through a negotiated settlement that addresses Russia’s security concerns, while still maintaining Ukraine’s independence. But the U.S. and its allies want the fighting to drag along as much as possible in order to weaken Russia militarily. They’re willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to do so."
Related:

"Curious..."

Curious how often you humans manage to
obtain that which you do not want."
- Mr. Spock

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert: World Bank Warns. Goldman Sachs Warns. Bank Of America Warns"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/7/22:
"Alert: World Bank Warns. 
Goldman Sachs Warns. Bank Of America Warns"
Related:

Bill Bonner, "The Eye of the Storm"

"The Eye of the Storm"
That feeling you get when you know the worst is yet to come...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the future. Jamie Dimon says he thinks a ‘hurricane” is coming… We imagine it is all swirling around in his brain – the Fed’s ‘tightening cycle’… soaring gasoline and diesel fuel prices… federal deficits out the wazoo… war… sanctions… God knows what else.

Already, Americans – especially those who live in trailers – are putting up plywood and checking their toilet paper supply. The LA Times: "Americans at the low end of the income spectrum are once again struggling to make ends meet. A confluence of factors - the expiration of federal stimulus checks and surging inflation on staples such as gas and food - is driving an even bigger wedge between the haves and have-nots. Although wealthier shoppers continue to splurge, low-income shoppers have pulled back faster than expected in the last two months. They’re focusing on necessities while turning to cheaper items or less-expensive stores. And they’re buying only a little at a time."

And, of course… there’s “The Great Baby Formula Crisis”. Charlie Bilello: "Baby formula shortage continues to worsen, with 74% of stores across America out-of-stock (a year ago the rate was less than 5%). 10 US states now have out-of-stocks rates that are 90% or higher, including the most populous state (California). Hopefully, measures taken to increase supply will soon take effect, as 75% of babies use some formula by 6 months of age."

Don’t worry, Charlie. Babies grow up. Then, they’re able to eat hamburgers.

This Wicked World: As we explored yesterday, most problems are self-correcting – including inflation. The cure for high prices, in an honest world, is high prices. Price increases inhibit buying… which means less demand. They also motivate producers to bring more product to market, which means more supply. This is the opposite of what causes inflation. The result should be de-flation. But is that what “ought to happen?” Well, yes.

But it is not an honest world we live in. It is a wicked one. And one in which the deciders – the ruling caste – seem to have an almost miraculous stupidity. If they were weathermen, you wouldn’t want to rely on them for their forecasts. “Hey, Lael” says Jerome Powell to one of the other Fed governors, “Look at this. What’s that big mass of clouds out off the coast?” “I don’t know, Jerry. Looks like they’re wheeling around a calm spot in the center. And headed for Boca Raton.” “Probably nothing… let’s put it into the model; see what it says.” A few minutes later…“Just what I thought. It says… well… just another sunny day in South Florida.”

Mo’ Money: Even in an honest economy there are booms and busts, prices increase and decrease. But the storm on the horizon is not a normal weather event. Instead, it’s what you get when you print $8 trillion…. and then stifle output with regulations, sanctions, shut-downs, and phony interest rates. More money. Fewer goods and services. What ought to happen is inflation, a tempest of price increases and shortages.

The Fed, meanwhile, is packing its picnic basket. Its ‘baby step’ rate increases measure only a half a percentage point each. Even if they did this every quarter, it would take nearly 4 years before their key lending rate pulled even with inflation.

We predict that the storm will hit long before that happens. Even if the Fed really were in inflation-fighting mode, it would still take stiff measures – and time – for the storm to pass. MarketWatch: "Investors may be in for a rude surprise: History shows inflation can take years to return to normal even when the Fed hikes interest rates above 10% That risk was highlighted on Thursday by BofA Securities strategists Vadim Iaralov, Howard Du and others, who point to the period between 1974 and 1988 as the most comparable time in which the annual headline U.S. consumer-price index was rising at a pace similar to the U.S.’s pandemic era of 2019-2022.

In 1980, with the Fed’s main policy rate target already above 10% for most of that year, the annual headline CPI, also in double digits, still did not fall back below 3% after 36 months “even on the back of unprecedented rate hikes enacted by Fed Chairman Paul Volcker,” they said."

Out of Control: What really ‘ought’ to happen? It will only be clear after it has happened. In the meantime, we guess: The persistence of inflation… at perhaps even higher levels… is likely to stiffen the Fed’s backbone. Fed governors won’t want to let inflation get ‘out of control.’ They will express their determination to bring down inflation. And some people will take them seriously.

Investors will panic. Businesses will pull back. Households will hunker down. Prices will fall! Like Elon Musk, they will have a ‘super bad feeling’… which will lead to the hurricane Jamie Dimon fears. And then, hallelujah… the Fed governors will be spared. No need to hike rates, after all. No need to endure the wrath of a desperate nation. No need to try to undo what they have done. If they are lucky, they may even be able to retire in the eye of the storm… before the wind knocks them down."
Related:

"Will the Fed Still Raise Interest Rates? Target Issues Dire Retail Warning"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/7/22:
"Will the Fed Still Raise Interest Rates? 
Target Issues Dire Retail Warning"
"People are very depressed right now that they cannot live the lifestyle that they used to just a few years ago. Instead of taking financial responsibility people are trying to borrow themselves out of depression. Will Interest Rates continue to go up?"

"Survive The Food Apocalypse; We Are In the Biggest Bubble; Kiss The Housing Market Goodbye"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/7/22:
"Survive The Food Apocalypse; We Are In the Biggest Bubble; 
Kiss The Housing Market Goodbye"

"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Target! This Is Ridiculous! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/7/22:
"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Target!
 This Is Ridiculous! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Target, and are noticing Empty Shelves Everywhere! We are also noticing ridiculous price increases, and a major food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

'How It Really Is"

 

Monday, June 6, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "National Emergency Declared in USA!"

Canadian Prepper, 6/6/22:
"National Emergency Declared in USA!"
"Biden declares a national emergency, Putin makes aggressive threats towards west to date, I predict a major escalation within 3 months and the price of gas just hit another record today."

"We Are Witnessing A Last Minute Mass Exodus Before The Final Collapse Of Our Major Cities"

Full screen recommended.
"We Are Witnessing A Last Minute Mass Exodus 
Before The Final Collapse Of Our Major Cities"
by Epic Economist

"The United States is facing another mass exodus as social and economic conditions continue to deteriorate in our major cities. In recent weeks, we’ve also witnessed several tragedies taking place in America. At his point, the truth is that almost all of our major cities are coming apart at the seams, and this is motivating more people than ever to look for a fresh start somewhere else. Over the past two years, millions of people have relocated to smaller, safer, more affordable areas across the country, and as the summer begins, migration trends are accelerating once again. Recent surveys show that millions more Americans are planning to move this year. Families are seeking regions with more modest costs of living where they can run away from the chaos of large urban areas and raise their children peacefully. However, instead of finding the comfort that they were looking for, many are being shocked about just how expensive everything has become virtually everywhere in the U.S.

In modern American history, we have never seen such a persistent mass exodus away from our major cities. Government officials and the media try to reduce this phenomenon by saying that this is all temporary. They’ve been also blaming the health crisis for this surge in mass migration, but now that cases have been put under control, it is clear that the pandemic wasn’t the main nor the only catalyst for this change. Americans are still moving in large numbers.

The events of the past two years have only accelerated an already existing trend in which people smaller towns and suburbs with warmer climates, cheaper homes, less density of population, lower offense rates, and lower taxes. But with so many families looking to move, this trend is helping to push prices in desirable areas to insane heights.

That goes against the primary goal of many of these families, who have been financially strained by soaring living expenses for over 24 months. Right now, more and more Americans are desperately looking for more affordable places to live in. Americans are desperately seeking more affordable places to live in. But whenever they go, they end up sparking new inflation hotspots. Put it simply, inflation is still so high that nobody is able to away from rising prices in the U.S.

According to truck rental company Penske, amongst the top moving destinations are Phoenix, Houston, Charlotte, Denver, San Antonio, and Austin. “The relationship between migration and inflation has strengthened significantly as more people relocate from expensive cities to more affordable areas,” Redfin analysts wrote in a recent report.

In some parts of the country, it has become almost impossible to find a decent affordable home to either rent or buy. The United States doesn’t have enough homes families can afford, and we’re still in the middle of a historic housing shortage. If you currently live in an urban area and you are planning about relocating, you should probably make a decision rapidly. Summer is almost here, economic conditions are going to continue to worsen, and much more social turbulence is coming.

It is clear now that the U.S. economy is a complete and total disaster, and countless Americans are getting deeply alarmed about the near future of our country because they can see that our society is literally melting down all around us, and they want to get somewhere safe while they still can. Times are changing fast. Soon, life in the United States will never be the same again."

Gregory Mannarino, "Bond Yields Are Rising Globally; Food And Energy Inflation Is Surging"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/6/22:
"Bond Yields Are Rising Globally; 
Food And Energy Inflation Is Surging"

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images taken from the same location in south Brazil and with the same camera - but a few hours apart. The person in the image - also the astrophotographer - has much to see in the Milky Way Galaxy above.

Click image for larger size.

The central band of our home Galaxy stretches diagonally up from the lower left. This band is dotted with spectacular sights including dark nebular filaments, bright blue stars, and red nebulas. Millions of fainter and redder stars fill in the deep Galactic background. To the lower right of the Milky Way are the colorful gas and dust clouds of Rho Ophiuchi, featuring the bright orange star Antares. On this night, just above and to the right of Antares was the bright planet Jupiter. The sky is so old and so familiar that humanity has formulated many stories about it, some of which inspired this very picture."

"The Trick..."

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
- Carlos Castaneda

Gonzalo Lira, "Economics and Epistemic Viciousness"

Gonzalo Lira, 6/6/22:
"Economics and Epistemic Viciousness"
"Because I've lost access to all my accounts and channels to the SBU (Ukraine's secret police), I don't have any way to promote my content - so please be so kind as to share this video with anyone whom you think might learn something." - GL
My only other social media: - https://twitter.com/GonzaloLira1968

The Daily "Near You?"

Troy, Virginia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Truth..."

 
"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity.
Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities.
Outlawed by all governments everywhere.
Possession is normally punishable by death."
- John Gilmore

A comment: According to statistics compiled by the UN, by the time the sun rises tomorrow morning 30,000 children world wide will have died overnight from malnutrition, disease, lack of potable water, and lack of basic medical care. That's every night, all year long, 30,000 children dying because no one cared. Trillions of dollars wasted on insane wars, economies destroyed by psychopathic greed, the environment dying in front of our eyes, and no one cares. No wonder Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described humanity as, "Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." 

The "instincts of beasts" is evident for all to see... sometimes all this wears me down, and I look around, hoping to see the "aspirations of angels," hoping desperately that we can somehow awaken from the madness crushing us all, that together we can still rise above the despair and hopelessness and make a better world, where no child dies from hunger, where wars are a distant memory, where everyone can live full, dignified and honorable lives in peace. An impossible, hopeless struggle? Perhaps, but how dare we call ourselves "Human" if we don't try to make that vision real, in any way we can, no matter the price? A dream, you say? Yes, that's all it is... but without those dreams, those aspirations, all that's left is the "instincts of beasts", and we all see very clearly what those have brought this world to... - CP

"Walmart Shelves Are Stacked With Survival Supplies; Food Storage Worth More Than Gold; PPP Fraud"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 6/6/22:
"Walmart Shelves Are Stacked With Survival Supplies; 
Food Storage Worth More Than Gold; PPP Fraud"

"What is a Black Swan Event? Can You Prepare For It?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/6/22:
"What is a Black Swan Event? Can You Prepare For It?"
"What is a Black Swan Event? We keep hearing this term being thrown around and it’s very definable. We have had black swans happen in history and they have huge ramifications on the economy. Can you prepare for a Black Swan? I cover it all here."

"The 'Super Bad' Paradox"

When the tide goes out…
"The 'Super Bad' Paradox"
Elon Musk's "uneasy feeling" and why the "super bad"
 is part and parcel of the "super good...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland -  "We never know what will happen. All we know is what ought to happen. Elon Musk, bless his heart, has a “super bad feeling” about the months ahead. So do we. Something bad ought to happen. But bad things are sometimes good things. Musk explained the paradox two weeks ago. Referring to the unhappy part of the business cycle, he said: “Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long….”

“Some bankruptcies need to happen. Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard...“Companies that are inherently negative cash flow (ie value destroyers) need to die, so that they stop consuming resources.” It is annoying when no-account, money-losing companies stay in business, like a spoiled trust fund wastrel, squandering his family’s fortune. It’s painful to watch. And it’s a pleasure to see the kid run out of money. And it would be nice to see people get back to work in a ‘normal’ 9-to-6 kind of way, too.

The Turning Tide: But the world doesn’t put on its show for our entertainment. And it doesn’t make it easy to understand the plot. Yes, things happen that ought to happen. But not always what you want, or when you expect, or how you think it should go. We’ve spent years waiting for a major stock market correction, for example. By our reckoning, stock prices ought to get cut in half before we can be confident of a genuine new bull market. And we have our ‘I told you so’s at-the-ready.

Remember, beneath the chop of up and down stock price movement are deep tides. By our reckoning, stocks go up for decades. Then, the tide turns… and for decades the ‘primary trend’ is down. We wait for a low – when you can buy all 30 Dow stocks for the equivalent of 5 ounces of gold or less – then, we will be reasonably sure the tide is ready to flow again.

In the meantime, the years go by… and imagine our disappointment! It is like being a lifeguard in a wading pool. Eventually the water rushes in. And toes no longer touch the bottom. That is what ought to happen. But when?

Inflation is a political phenomenon. The feds spend money they don’t have… and can’t raise by honest taxation or borrowing. So, they call upon the Fed to ‘print’ more money. From 1999 to the present, for example, the Fed created more than $8 trillion new dollars. It used them to buy bonds, thereby driving up bond prices and pushing down bond yields.

Had they not done so, the credit market would have reacted to the feds’ borrowing in the traditional way. Interest rates would have gone up as the biggest pig at the trough gobbled up more and more of the world’s savings.

Filling in the Details: This is known as “crowding out,” when the government leaves little available credit for businesses and households. It is also, usually, the beginning of an economic downturn; interest rates rise and it becomes harder for people to borrow. Businesses cancel new projects. Households delay remodeling the kitchen or taking a vacation. Things slow down, taking the pressure off of the credit markets.

The government gets whacked by the feedback loop too. Tax receipts go down. And its interest costs go up. It, too, must cut back. Left alone, in other words, when the government spends too much money the system self-corrects. What ought to happen does happen. The boom gives way to a bust. But in the 21st Century, the Fed intervened repeatedly, and with a heavier hand each time. It ‘printed’ ten times as much money as it had from the day of its founding until the end of the 20th century. And it pushed down interest rates to levels never before seen.

What would happen next? Nobody knew for certain. But sensible people have had a ‘super bad feeling’ for years. ‘There must be some price to pay for counterfeiting money and rigging the credit markets,’ say the sages. ‘If not, everyone would do it… all the time.’ The two obvious consequences: more debt and more inflation. The details are being filled in now.

America’s debt burden grew by more than $50 trillion this century… to a total of more than $88 trillion, including households, businesses and the government. And inflation? Who could have seen that coming? And now, what ought to happen? Higher prices ought to bring more output. More output ought to lower prices. Inflation ought to go back whence it came. Those bad feelings ought to go away. Will they? Stay tuned..."

Jim Kunstler, "Your Show of Shows"

"Your Show of Shows"
by Jim Kunstler

"The unravelling of the USA gets its summer steroid booster shot this Thursday when the political twerk-fest known as the January 6th Select Committee commences prime-time televising of its inquiry into the so-called “insurrection” the day that Congress met to tally the 2020 electoral college vote when hundreds of protesters entered the US Capitol illegally, egged on and enabled by a squad of FBI plants larded through the crowd, and by shadowy figures inside the building who unlocked the doors for them.

The objectives of this extravaganza are A) to soften up the remaining “purple” voters before the midterm election, B) to paint former president Donald Trump as an instigator of the uproar and an enemy-of-the-people so he won’t be able to run for office again, and C) to punish former White House employees and Trump partisans with onerous legal fees so as to knock them off the political game board.

The Party of Chaos certainly doesn’t need to reinforce the mass formation psychosis of its base who maintain that the 2020 election was the fairest-and-squarest in US history. The committee members will chant the talismanic phrase “The Big Lie” ad nauseum to ward off reasonable suspicions that they are the ones doing the lying. Since a kind of maniacal stupidity attends all the party’s doings these days, it could easily backfire on them. Even two years later probes are still pending in several swing states, and only a few weeks ago, the documentary "2000 Mules" released time-stamped videocam footage of blatant wholesale drop-box ballot-stuffing around the country.

Lawsuits filed lately also claim the committee itself is illegally constituted, since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disallowed (against the rules) the minority Republicans from appointing their own chosen members. Instead, she did for them, planting the vehemently hostile rogues Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on it, meaning no witnesses will be called who might refute important details of the “insurrection” narrative already constructed. Much of the testimony presented will be videotaped interviews with Trump White House officials and there will be no accounting for what may be edited out. In other words, you have an obvious setup for a star chamber, a device for disregarding individual rights and fair procedure.

The context, of course, as I aver above, is a country that is imploding six ways to Sunday — to paraphrase Chuck Schumer, the Party of Chaos’s Senate leader. At least half the public is already onto the extravagant damage inflicted upon our national life by the beneficiaries of the 2020 election. Thanks to “Joe Biden,” the dollar is hemorrhaging value, we instigated a war in Ukraine that will lead to global famine and mass refugee events, oil and natgas are unaffordable thanks to our destabilizing global distribution networks, spare parts are unavailable for every imaginable machine in the land, the business model for farming is broken, real estate is groaning under rising mortgage interest rates, the CDC is still pushing Covid vaccines despite proof that they are ineffective and harmful, cities are overwhelmed with criminal violence and psychotic homeless drug fiends, and, as a final indignity — actually, an advertisement to the world of our depraved weakness — the US military is hosting drag queen shows at our European air bases.

Are these the circumstances that American voters are expected to endorse in the November election when all these conditions are liable to get a lot worse? Apparently, the Party of Chaos thinks so, since they’re delivering exactly what they stand for. And yet, they’re clearly nervous about it, as if they suffer fugitive doubts that we-the-people are avid for cultural and economic collapse.

My advice, then, is to take the televised January 6th hearings for the grand entertainment it’s intended to be. Enjoy the sob stories of the Capitol Police officers pretending to suffer from post-traumatic stress order. Behold the terrible “threat to our Democracy” of the bare-chested interloper in a horned helmet chatting-up security guards in the Senate chamber. Note the “insurrectionists” taking seditious selfies in statuary hall and trying to fob off with souvenir furnishings. See Rep. Liz Cheney fulminate with scorn and disgust against her orange nemesis. Sympathize with committee Chair Bennie G. Thompson as he bangs his gavel and cries for order when any live witness utters the name Ashli Babbitt. Watch Rep. Adam Kinzinger turn on the waterworks. Take it all in and ask yourself: who exactly seeks to subvert this republic of ours?"
Stealers Wheel, "Stuck In The Middle With You"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Massive Price Increases & Empty Shelves! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/6/22:
"Massive Price Increases & Empty Shelves! 
This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are noticing massive price increases, and empty shelves everywhere! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Be Ready! Inflation Is About To Surge Higher Faster"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/6/22:
"Be Ready! Inflation Is About To Surge Higher Faster"

"Sherlock Holmes' Crime Theories"

"The Sociopath Next Door"

"The Sociopath Next Door"
by Martha Stout

"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered.

How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and non-violent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites.

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all.

Or no - let us say you are not quite such a person. You are ambitious, yes, and in the name of success you are willing to do all manner of things that people with conscience would never consider, but you are not an intellectually gifted individual. Your intelligence is above average perhaps, and people think of you as smart, maybe even very smart. But you know in your heart of hearts that you do not have the cognitive wherewithal, or the creativity, to reach the careening heights of power you secretly dreams about, and this makes you resentful of the world at large, and envious of the people around you.

As this sort of person, you ensconce yourself in a niche, or maybe a series of niches, in which you can have some amount of control over small numbers of people. These situations satisfy a little of your desire for power, although you are chronically aggravated at not having more. It chafes to be so free of the ridiculous inner voices that inhibit others from achieving great power, without having enough talent to pursue the ultimate successes yourself. Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by a frustration that no one but you understands.

But you do enjoy jobs that afford you a certain undersupervised control over a few individuals or small groups, preferably people and groups who are relatively helpless or in some way vulnerable. You are a teacher or a psychotherapist, a divorce lawyer or a high school coach.  Or maybe you are a consultant of some kind, a broker or a gallery owner or a human services director. Or maybe you do not have a paid position and are instead the president of your condominium association, or a volunteer hospital worker, or a parent. Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power - or this is the way you see it - and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun.

Maybe you cannot be a CEO of a multinational corporation, but you can frighten a few people, or cause them to scurry around like chickens, or steal from them, or - maybe, best of all - create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun; it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss's boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker's project, or gaslight a patient (or child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you.

Or now let us say you are a person who has a proclivity for violence or for seeing violence done. You simply murder your coworker, or have her murdered - or your boss, or your ex-spouse, or your wealthy lover's spouse, or anyone else who bothers you. You have to be careful, because if you slip up, you may be caught and punished by the system. But you will never be confronted by your conscience, because you have no conscience. If you decide to kill, the only difficulties will be the external ones. Nothing inside you will ever protest.

Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. In fact, terrorism (done from a distance) is the ideal occupation for a person who is possessed of blood lust and no conscience, because if you do it just right, you may be able to make a whole nation jump. And if that is not power, what is?

Or let us imagine the opposite extreme: You have no interest in power. To the contrary, you are the sort of person who really does not want much of anything. Your only real ambition is not to have to exert yourself to get by. You do not want to work like everyone else does. Without a conscience, you can nap or pursue your hobbies or watch television or just hang out somewhere all day long. Living a bit on the fringes, and with some handouts from relatives and friends, you can do this indefinitely. People may whisper to one another that you are an underachiever, or that you are depressed, a sad case, or, in contrast, if they get angry, they may grumble that you are lazy.  When they get to know you better, and get really angry, they may scream at you and call you a loser, a bum. But it will never occur to them that you literally do not have a conscience, that in such a fundamental way, your very mind is not the same as theirs.

The panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes you in the night. Despite your lifestyle, you never feel irresponsible, neglectful or so much as embarrassed, although for the sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do. For example, if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk about how rotten you feel. This you do only because it is more convenient to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you all the time, or insisting that you get a job.

You notice that people who do have a conscience feel guilty when they harangue someone they believe to be "depressed" or "troubled." As a matter of fact, to your further advantage, they often feel obliged to take care of such a person. If, despite your relative poverty, you can manage to get yourself into a sexual relationship with someone, this person - who does not suspect what you are really like - may feel particularly obligated. And since all you want is not to have to work, your financier does not have to be especially rich, just relatively conscience-bound.

I trust that imagining yourself as any of these people feels insane to you, because such people are insane, dangerously so. Insane but real - they even have a label. Many mental health professionals refer to the condition of little or no conscience as "anti-social personality disorder," a non-correctable disfigurement of character that is now thought to be present in about 4 percent of the population - that is to say, one in twenty-five people. This condition of missing conscience is called by other names, too, most often "sociopathy," or the somewhat more familiar term psychopathy.  Guiltlessness was in fact the first personality disorder to be recognized by psychiatry, and terms that have been used at times over the past century include manie sans délire, psychopathic inferiority, moral insanity, and moral imbecility.

"Why Are People So Reluctant..."

"Why are people so reluctant to believe that sociopaths and narcissists can use the power of the pen to prey on people? Because they are well spoken and organized? We would contend that these are the most dangerous of the emotionally warped with a need to acquire, dominate and control, because they are smarter and more calculating than the impulse murderers, burglars, rapists, thieves, and pedophiles.

There is a need for economic law and enforcement as there is a need for the less cerebral, hairy knuckled criminal law and enforcement. The notion that people become naturally good, rational and well-adjusted because they are wearing a suit is ludicrous, especially to anyone who has worked with many of those who move in the upper echelons of money and power.

Some of the scariest people we have ever met were articulate and pathologically driven borderline psychopaths with a need to acquire political and economic power. It is the focus of their illness that makes them powerful. They are not distracted by the diffusion of emotional responses that color most people's actions. They have a need, and the will to satisfy it, no matter what it takes.

There will always be those at the extremes who need to 'take it to the limit,' with a well stocked foreign retreat in case things get ugly. But for most of us, restoring a sense of justice and order and putting the nation back into some kind of working balance will be high on the priority list, if not for ourselves, then for our families."
Jesse, "Predator Class," 26 December 2008

Pfizer CEO at WEF: “By 2023 we will reduce the world population by 50%”

Pfizer CEO at WEF: 
“By 2023 we will reduce the world population by 50%”
by Chris Black

"Sorry for the quality of the video, but it’s enough to see what’s going on. Schwab: “You are a purpose driven company." Who will arrest these two men and set up a citizen’s court to try them for charges of premeditated mass murder?

I’ll never get over the fact that hundreds of millions of healthy people if not more were conditioned or coerced into taking an experimental, liability-free, DNA-modifying injection, created and pushed by people who openly stated they wanted to reduce the world’s population through vaccines, for something with a ~99.9% survivability rate…"
Related:
"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"
"There is no chance of long-term survival for anyone who received a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injection, according to leading French virologist Luc Montagnier. Everyone who is getting jabbed for the Chinese Virus will die, he reportedly stated during a recent interview, which you can watch at Brighteon.com.

“There is no hope and no possible treatment for those who have already been vaccinated,” Montagnier stated plainly during the segment. “We must be prepared to cremate the bodies.” After studying at length the ingredients contained in the injections and what they do, Montagnier came to the conclusion that every single person who gets the shot will eventually die from antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE. “That is all that can be said,” he added."

Evidence continues to mount that Chinese Virus injections were designed to be a “slow” kill for many, meaning their detrimental impact takes a bit of time to manifest. For some, however, injury and death will come immediately, as we have seen in the headlines as of late. All of this would explain the mad rush to vaccinate people at “warp speed,” using any ploy or coercion tactic necessary to reach the desired target. Once enough vaccinated people start dropping dead, the remaining unvaccinated will more than likely resist, which is why the Biden regime is moving quickly to get as many people injected as possible."
"The current world population is 8.0 billion as of June 2022 according
 to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer."

So, they intend  to "reduce the number of people in the world by 50% by 2023."
4 BILLION people "reduced"? Tell me any other possible explanation for this...
- CP

"Hell Is Empty..."

 

Sunday, June 5, 2022

"75% Crash Is Imminent - Everyone Is Going To Be Wiped Out"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, Ray Dalio, 6/4/22:
"75% Crash Is Imminent - Everyone Is Going To Be Wiped Out"
"Ray Dalio talks about bubble bursts that happened in the past and what's coming worse than everyone thinks. Stock market to crash 75%, inflation causing less food on the table, prepare while you can!"