"Let Them Eat Bugs"

"Let Them Eat Bugs"

One step before cannibalism…

by Jeffrey Tucker

"A study earlier this year from four prestigious institutions proclaimed that you should eat bugs and spiders. And not only that. The study - conducted by BI Norwegian Business School (BI), Chuo University, Miyagi University and Oxford University - also said that the way to convince people to do this is to have celebrities do it on YouTube videos. Like clockwork, they are suddenly everywhere. You are welcome to look them up. I personally find them revolting. As in they make me want to revolt. These are the same folks who pushed for lockdowns, masking, jabs and a war with Russia. Now they say we have to get used to eating bugs because all the other policies they pushed have dramatically increased world hunger. Indeed, it is reaching a crisis point. For many people, bug eating will soon be the only answer.

One Step Before Cannibalism: I’m going to take it as a given that the evolution of society selected against bug eating. It is not something people prefer over, for example, eating chicken, fish, beef and vegetables. I would further postulate that most people, in general, would not eat bugs unless they had to. I’m sure there are many venerable bureaucrats at the UN who would dispute the above, but I don’t care.

There is a name for bug eating: entomophagy. Sounds fancy, but ultimately it means living as if there is a famine going on. It is one step before cannibalism and finally eating tree bark. Sometimes it happens. We call those periods of history deeply tragic. It’s not what we want. The difference this time is that entomophagy is being pushed by top Hollywood influencers. When it arrives, the famine will be celebrated on social media.

Food Is Already Scarce: Already you have probably observed the changes that are happening. Restaurants are worried about their profit margins and figuring out ways to work around the squeeze. They are serving mounds of bread and pasta and ever less meat. Even vegetable portions are getting skimpy. They can’t raise prices the way gas stations can. This is because they have a regular clientele that watches menu prices very carefully. Even a 50-cent increase can prompt consumer protest. Then customers end up tipping less, which is a huge disaster for the server staff that make far less than the minimum wage. Then the server staff quits at a time of huge shortage. As a result, many are trying to find other ways.

In addition, we are hip-deep into the substitution phase of the great inflation. The pricier items at the store are selling much less while the cheaper stuff is selling well. Out with steaks and in with ground beef. Chicken is the going thing and not the best cuts but the cheap ones.

Another trend: home gardening. People very naively imagine that they will beat inflation by growing their own food. What they discover is that this takes more time than one might expect, and it costs too: the tools, fertilizer, water, nets to keep the bugs off and so on. It all adds up. And yes, there are moments of great delight but it hardly makes a dent in the grocery bill.

A Hungry World: Meanwhile, people in the First World forget how lucky they really are. Many parts of the world today are facing true food and health crises combined. The world’s largest and most established humanitarian organization to deliver food has sounded the alarm: The world faces a global hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions.

In just two years, the number of people facing, or at risk of, acute food insecurity increased from 135 million in 53 countries pre-pandemic to 345 million in 82 countries today… We are at a critical crossroads. We need to rise to the challenge of meeting people's immediate food needs at scale, while at the same time supporting programs that build long-term resilience at scale. The alternative is hunger on a catastrophic scale.

We’ll Be Paying the Price for Years: Of course, the elites want to blame climate change and war but the real culprit traces to lockdowns and the supply chains that were shattered as a result of government actions. What a disaster. We’ll be paying for many years to come for this mess. And while it is easy to dismiss problems around the world as their issues and not ours, I wouldn’t be so confident. The food supply in the U.S. has been profoundly affected by the labor shortage, regulatory overreach, inflation and massive problems in the transportation sector.

Federal crop insurance makes its own contribution to lessening supply. This is a program that pays farmers whether they produce or not. It was designed to mitigate against weather risk but it can also create a situation in which it is more profitable to take fields out of production rather than deal with the soaring costs of fertilizer, gas and labor.

There are zero attempts right now in legislation to do anything about this. In addition, there are massive restrictions written in legislation that prevent private farmers and ranchers from selling their products commercially unless they use a federal government-approved meat processor. This is simply incredible. Thomas Massie of Kentucky (one of the few really brilliant statesmen in the U.S. today) has tried to introduce legislation to fix this but it is getting no traction.

Get a Cow: You don’t need this advice because you already know it: It’s a good time to get a large freezer and stock up. Many of my own friends have done this. They are also finding ways around the crazy regulations. This is how people get when they start to fear the future. No regulation will stand between us and the desire to eat.

Let’s deal with the elephant in the room: whether and to what extent all of this is deliberate. I resist conspiracy theories but it is undeniable that many of the elite members of the World Economic Forum believe that the world is overpopulated. And not by just a little but by billions.

Is it possible that this food crisis is all being engineered to reduce global population? Maybe. We know that Bill Gates has long championed population reduction. He has had his way on everything else, so why not this? One does get the feeling these days of a civilization being wrecked by force. Our longevity has been falling for some 10 years, with life spans shrinking for the first time in centuries. This is a terrifying reality. Combine that with an overall health crisis and a food crisis that seems certain to get worse.

Two nights ago, I watched the movie "Mr. Jones" that covers the Stalin-created famine in Ukraine. Utterly terrifying. It can happen. Famines are nearly always created by governments. When they come, there is no way out. Not even the bug population is large enough to meet our food needs.

It’s an unjust smear of Marie Antoinette that she ever said, “Let them eat cake.” But there is no question that many elites and Hollywood celebs are now telling a world dealing with a serious food crisis: “Let them eat bugs.”

- dailyreckoning.com

Canadian Prepper, "Look Out: The Next Phase Is Going Be Much Worse"

Canadian Prepper, 7/22/22:

"Look Out: The Next Phase Is Going Be Much Worse"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Slave Planet: People Are Continuing To Take On More Debt As Inflation Surges"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/22/22:

"Slave Planet: People Are Continuing 

To Take On More Debt As Inflation Surges"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Are You Prepared For The Next Avalanche?"

"Are You Prepared For The Next Avalanche?"

by Jim Rickards

"I began studying complexity theory as a consequence of my involvement with Long Term Capital Management, LTCM, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998 after derivatives trading strategies went catastrophically wrong. After the collapse and subsequent rescue, I chatted with one of the LTCM partners who ran the firm about what went wrong. I was familiar with markets and trading strategies, but I was not expert in the highly technical applied mathematics that the management committee used to devise its strategies.

The partner I was chatting with was a true quant with advanced degrees in mathematics. I asked him how all of our trading strategies could have lost money at the same time, despite the fact that they had been uncorrelated in the past. He shook his head and said, “What happened was just incredible. It was a seven-standard deviation event.”

In statistics, a standard deviation is symbolized by the Greek letter sigma. Even non-statisticians would understand that a seven-sigma event sounds rare. But I wanted to know how rare. I consulted some technical sources and discovered that for a daily occurrence, a seven-sigma event would happen less than once every billion years, or less than five times in the history of the planet Earth!

I knew that my quant partner had the math right. But it was obvious to me his model must be wrong. Extreme events had occurred in markets in 1987, 1994 and then 1998. They happened every four years or so. Any model that tried to explain an event as something that happened every billion years could not possibly be the right model for understanding the dynamics of something that occurred every four years.

From this encounter, I set out on a 10-year odyssey to discover the proper analytic method for understanding risk in capital markets. I studied physics, network theory, graph theory, complexity theory, applied mathematics and many other fields that connected in various ways to the actual workings of capital markets.

In time, I saw that capital markets were complex systems and that complexity theory, a branch of physics, was the best way to understand and manage risk and to foresee market collapses. I began to lecture and write on the topic including several papers that were published in technical journals. I built systems with partners that used complexity theory and related disciplines to identify geopolitical events in capital markets before those events were known to the public.

Finally I received invitations to teach and consult at some of the leading universities and laboratories involved in complexity theory including Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Applied Physics Laboratory. In these venues, I continually promoted the idea of interdisciplinary efforts to solve the deepest mysteries of capital markets. I knew that no one field had all the answers, but a combination of expertise from various fields might produce insights and methods that could advance the art of financial risk management.

I proposed that a team consisting of physicists, computer modelers, applied mathematicians, lawyers, economists, sociologists and others could refine the theoretical models that I and others had developed and could suggest a program of empirical research and experimentation to validate the theory. These proposals were greeted warmly by the scientists with whom I worked, but were rejected and ignored by the economists. Invariably top economists took the view that they had nothing to learn from physics and that the standard economic and finance models were a good explanation of securities prices and capital markets dynamics.

Whenever prominent economists were confronted with a “seven-sigma” market event they dismissed it as an “outlier” and tweaked their models slightly without ever recognizing the fact that their models didn’t work at all.

Physicists had a different problem. They wanted to collaborate on economic problems, but were not financial markets experts themselves. They had spent their careers learning theoretical physics and did not necessarily know more about capital markets than the everyday investor worried about her 401(k) plan.

I was an unusual participant in the field. Most of my collaborators were physicists trying to learn capital markets. I was a capital markets expert who had taken the time to learn physics. One of the team leaders at Los Alamos, an MIT-educated computer science engineer named David Izraelevitz, told me in 2009 that I was the only person he knew of with a deep working knowledge of finance and physics combined in a way that might unlock the mysteries of what caused financial markets to collapse.

I took this as a great compliment. I knew that a fully developed and tested theory of financial complexity would take decades to create with contributions from many researchers, but I was gratified to know that I was making a contribution to the field with one foot in the physics lab and one foot planted firmly on Wall Street. My work on this project, and that of others, continues to this day. This approach stands in stark contrast to the standard equilibrium models the Fed and other mainstream analysts use.

An equilibrium model like the Fed uses in its economic forecasting basically says that the world runs like a clock. Every now and then, according to the model, there’s some perturbation, and the system gets knocked out of equilibrium. Then all you do is you apply policy and push it back into equilibrium. It’s like winding up the clock again. That’s a shorthand way of describing what an equilibrium model is. Unfortunately, that is not the way the world works. Complexity theory and complex dynamics explain it much better.

Distress in one area of financial markets spread to other seemingly unrelated areas of financial markets. In fact, the mathematics of  are exactly like the mathematics of disease or virus contagion. That’s why they call it contagion. One resembles the other in terms of how it’s spread.

What are examples of the complexity? One of my favorites is what I call the avalanche and the snowflake. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works but I should be clear, they’re not just metaphors. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.

Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lay there. Then the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.

Some people refer to these snowflakes as “black swans,” because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.

Question: Whom do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before or the one after or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was a problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the “snowflake” that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes; it’s about the initial critical-state conditions that allow the possibility of a chain reaction or avalanche. Are you prepared for the next avalanche?"

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"Your Neighbor… the Sex Offender"

"The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) is an unprecedented public safety resource that provides the public with access to sex offender data nationwide. NSOPW is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Justice and state, territorial and tribal governments, working together for the safety of adults and children."

"Your Neighbor… the Sex Offender"

"This is the national sex offender registry. All you have to do is enter your address and search radius. There are 23 registered perverts within 2 miles of my home! Bastards! The site shows pictures of these monsters and their address. Sure, some of them look like creepy thugs. But, some look like normal people, like your neighbor, or this perv below - a teacher! America just may be the most perverse country in human history. How many are in your neighborhood?"

- https://www.nsopw.gov

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"Update: 181 American K-12 educators have now been 

charged with child sex crimes in 2022, keeping pace at one arrest per day."

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"Middle School Teacher Comes to Meet I4 Y/O at 2 AM,

Meets Military Dad Instead"

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Hat tip to Stucky at The Burning Platform for this material.

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.

Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150926.html

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"Everything passes away- suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"

- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"

"Try?"

- Steve Jobs

"Try? What is try? Do or do not do."

- Yoda

The Poet: Neil Gaiman, "What You Need To Be Warm "

"What You Need To Be Warm"

by Neil Gaiman

 "A baked potato of a winters night to wrap

your hands around or burn your mouth.

A blanket knitted by your mother's cunning fingers.

Or your grandmother's.

A smile, a touch, trust, as you walk in from the snow

or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.

The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.

To surface from dreams in a bed,

burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,

the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, and you think

just one more minute snuggled here before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: they warm us in the memory.

We travel to an inside from the outside.

To the orange flames of the fireplace

or the wood burning in the stove.

Breath-ice on the inside of windows,

to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.

Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.

Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater.

Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.

An infant as she sleeps between us. 

A tumble of dogs, a kindle of cats and kittens.

Come inside. You're safe now.

A kettle boiling at the stove. 

Your family or friends are there.

They smile.

Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee,

soup or toddy, what you know you need.

A heat exchange, they give it to you, 

you take the mug and start to thaw.

While outside, for some of us, the journey began

as we walked away from our grandparentshouses

away from the places we knew as children:

changes of state and state and state,

to stumble across a stony desert, or to brave the deep waters,

while food and friends, home, a bed, 

even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,

to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, 

to say we have the right to be here,

to make us warm in the coldest season.

You have the right to be here. "

- Neil Gaiman

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"Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion... is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception."

- Sharon Salzberg

"There Was A Tale He Had Read Once..."

“There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.”

- Neil Gaiman

"We Appear To Be Very Close To Peak Global Oil Production, And That Has Enormous Implications For The Entire Global Economy"

"We Appear To Be Very Close To Peak Global Oil Production,

And That Has Enormous Implications For The Entire Global Economy"

by Michael Snyder

"What do you think is going to happen when we get to a point where the world simply cannot produce any more oil than it is already producing? It is often said that “energy is the economy”, and to a large degree that is true. Very wealthy nations with large GDPs tend to use a great deal of energy, while very poor nations with small GDPs tend to use a lot less energy. Just about every form of economic activity requires energy, and so those countries that have a high level of economic activity require more of it. Of course we live at a time when the total population of the world has been steadily increasing and global demand for energy has soared to unprecedented heights. Production has struggled to keep up with demand, and now it appears that we will soon reach a point where we are simply not able to produce enough for everyone.

The “green revolution” was supposed to rescue us from this fate, but the “green revolution” has failed miserably. Just look at Europe. They told us that they were shifting to “green energy”, but they just kept becoming more dependent on Russian natural gas instead. Thanks to the war in Ukraine, much of the population of Europe could get extremely cold this winter. Despite all of the efforts to push us toward “green energy”, our world is powered by traditional forms of energy and that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. And the most important form of traditional energy that we rely on is oil.

Today, there are just three countries that collectively produce close to half of the total global supply of oil…"Despite widespread talk about peak oil demand, the truth is that, for now at least, consumption keeps growing. The world relies heavily on three nations for crude: the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Together, they account for nearly 45% of global total oil supply."

Everyone has always assumed that Saudi Arabia could produce a lot more oil per day than it is currently producing, but it turns out that was not true at all…"During US President Joseph Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia, the world was so focused on how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would respond to his plea to pump more oil immediately that it missed a bombshell: the level at which Saudi oil production will peak. It’s a lot lower than many anticipated. It’s lower than the Saudis have ever intimated. And with the world still hungry for fossil fuels, it spells long-term trouble for the global economy."

Oh yeah, that definitely means big trouble for the global economy. The Saudis just admitted that “maximum capacity” is 13 million barrels a day, and that figure shocked just about everyone…"For years, Saudi oil ministers and royals have sidestepped one of the most important questions the energy market faces: What is the long-term upper limit of the kingdom’s oilfields? The guesstimate was that they could always pump more, and for longer; if the Saudis knew the answer, they kept it secret. And then, almost casually on Saturday, Prince Mohammed broke the news, revealing that the ultimate maximum capacity is 13 million barrels a day."

If the Saudis can’t do it, where will we turn for additional capacity? We could always try to do more drilling here in the United States, but the truth is that conventional oil production in the U.S. peaked long ago. In a desperate attempt to become less dependent on foreign oil we ramped up unconventional oil production, and that created a “mini-boom” for a time…"Many early peak oil analysts predicted that the maximum rate of oil production would be achieved in the 2005-to-2010 timeframe, after which supplies would decline minimally at first, then more rapidly, causing prices to skyrocket and the economy to crash.

Those forecasters were partly right and partly wrong. Conventional oil production did plateau starting in 2005, and oil prices soared in 2007, helping trigger the Great Recession. Afterward, however, there was strong growth in production of unconventional oil from deepwater wells and Canadian oil sands, and especially from tight oil (also referred to as shale oil) extracted by horizontal drilling and fracking. The US, whose petroleum production rate had been generally declining since the early 1970s, hit new all-time highs as tight oil gushed from North Dakota and Texas."

But now we are reaching the limits as far as what we can do with unconventional production. It is becoming increasingly difficult and increasingly expensive to get oil out of the ground, and that is a huge problem. Cheap oil fueled our economic boom times for many years, but now those days are over.

As for Russian oil production, there is so much that we don’t know. But I did find it alarming when I read that oil shipments to China and India are way down…"There are tentative signs that Russia’s diversion of crude oil to Asia from long-time European customers is faltering. Shipments to China and India are down by almost 30% from their post-invasion peak."

And the Russians have told us that they expect oil production to decline “by as much as 17% in 2022”…"Russia may see its oil production fall by as much as 17% in 2022, an economy ministry’s document seen by Reuters showed on Wednesday, as the country struggles with Western sanctions. The United States has banned Russian oil imports, while Western sanctions against Russian banks and vessels had crippled the oil trade, one of Moscow’s key sources of revenue. The European Union is also considering fully banning Russian oil."

Global supplies of oil have been getting tighter and tighter, and there have been stretches this year when daily global consumption of oil has exceeded daily global production of oil. If we are at or near peak global oil production right now, what will our world look like once we get past the peak and global oil production actually starts steadily declining? If you think that gasoline prices are bad now, just wait until we get to that stage.

Plus, there is the potential that a major war in the Middle East could erupt at any time. Once that happens, the price of oil will go completely nuts.

A lot of people out there seem to think that we will have some sort of an “economic collapse”, but afterwards we will rebuild and life will go back to normal. That is not what we are facing. What we are facing is literally the collapse of everything. We are running out of energy. We are running out of topsoil. We are running out of clean water. And we are already witnessing mass extinctions all over the planet.

There is something that I have been saying a lot lately, and I am going to say it again. The clock is ticking for humanity. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have brought us to the brink of a planetary nightmare, and there isn’t going to be any easy way out of this mess."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Keller, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I Asked For, I Was Given..."

“In my youth I respected the world and life,

I needed nothing but peace of heart;

And yet I changed despite myself and believed in Iktomi's lies.

He seemed to know all the truth, he promised to make me happy.

He made me ask Wakan Tanka for wealth, that I might have power;

I was given poverty, that I might find my inner strength.

I asked for fame, so others would know me;

I was given obscurity, that I might know myself.

I asked for a person to love that I might never be alone;

I was given a life of a hermit, that I might learn to accept myself.

I asked for power, that I might achieve;

I was given weakness, that I might learn to obey.

I asked for health, that I might lead a long life;

I was given infirmity, that I might appreciate each minute.

I asked Mother Earth for strength, that I might have my way;

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for Her.

I asked to live happily, that I might enjoy life;

I was given life, that I might live happily.

I received nothing I asked for, yet all my wishes came true.

Despite myself and Iktomi, my dreams were fulfilled,

I am richly blessed more than I ever hoped,

I thank you, Wakan Tanka, for what you've given me.”

- Billy Mills, Oglala Lakota (1938-)

○

“William Mervin Mills, also known as Tamakoce Te'Hila, is an Oglala Lakota former track and field athlete who won a gold medal in the 10,000 meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. His 1964 victory is considered one of the greatest Olympic upsets because he was a virtual unknown going into the event.”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mills

"A Wise Man Once Said..."

“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”

- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"

"Loan Defaults are Booming - People Cannot Afford to Pay Their Phone Bills"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 7/22/22:

"Loan Defaults are Booming - 

People Cannot Afford to Pay Their Phone Bills"

"We’re being told that there is no recession. People cannot afford to even pay their phone bills on time. So much is happening and loan defaults are going through the roof."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Epic! 10-Year Yield Is Cratering! This Is The Fall Of An Empire"

Full screen recommended.

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/22/22:

"Epic! 10-Year Yield Is Cratering! This Is The Fall Of An Empire"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "People, Get Ready"

"People, Get Ready"

by Jim Kunstler

“Worse is better,” V. Lenin used to explain to his Bolshevik cohorts in their vicious pursuit of power. And is there any question now that this is the same operational formula of the shadowy crew behind “Joe Biden” in its mission to turn the American Republic into a branch-office of the Schwabenklausian trans-human techno-tyranny?

“Joe B” is doing his part to personally make things worse by taking Paxlovid, the Pfizer wonder drug that wondrously amps up Covid-19 symptoms and extends the course of the illness - as recently admitted by that other eminent, double-boosted Covid-19 sufferer, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the sage of US public health. If White House doctors follow the CDC’s treatment protocol they’ll soon put “JB” on remdesivir. Naturally, it kills him. State funeral… boo hoo… “46” is entombed under the Wilmington Amtrak station….

My political fantasy du jour: Thus, Kamala accedes to greatness! She must then appoint a new vice-president. That would be… wait for it… California governor Gavin Newsom - who else? (He was recently captured on video skulking into a back door of the West Wing while “Joe Biden” was out-of-town schmoozing up the honchos of Saudi Arabia.) Gov. Newsom is easily confirmed in the House and narrowly in the Senate when Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski vote with the Party of Chaos. Kamala soon resigns, citing “anxiety problems.” Now president, Mr. Newsom proceeds to accelerate the wrecking of the old USA along the lines of his recent work in California. All D.C. gas stations are ordered shut to promote the transition to renewables. The D.C. Mall is declared the National Homeless Camp…

I called it a fantasy, but this may be their only move as the nation utterly loses its patience with the “Joe Biden” fiasco and the escalating disorders of Western Civ take us into August. The mid-term election must be revamped at all costs, they’ll say, “to save our democracy.” A new pandemic is declared in early October, complete with lockdowns, while Google partners with Facebook to roll out a new vote-by-phone app. By some miracle, then, the Democrats add thirty more seats to their house majority and five in the Senate. We enter the new frontier of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better. In other words, the USA completely collapses.

A dark scenario, I confess, but doesn’t that seem but exactly where things are going? An epic crackup is upon us. Every place in the world is primed for meltdown, and a few lands in the periphery are already sinking. Sri Lanka is broke and out of gas after being set up as a WEF / Schwabenklaus low-carbon eco-state experiment. Panama is in revolt over extreme government corruption, food scarcity, and the after-effects of an especially severe two-year-long Covid lockdown that the rest of the world hardly heard about - perhaps because China has operational control over the vital Panama Canal and the CCP has operational control over the World Health Organization, which set up Panama as a lockdown lab project.

Of course, Europe is suddenly a magnificent mess with governments falling like duck pins, industry shuttered from lack of fuel, and citizens rising up against insane WEF diktats to drastically reduce livestock and shut down farming - in effect declaring food production an unacceptable environmental hazard. This, of course, after the governments of Euroland cut their own throats by self-sanctioning themselves out of Russian oil and natgas. It’s especially bizarre in Germany, the largest economy of the region, which had just this year conclusively realized and admitted that its “green energy” policy was a complete bust, forcing them to shut down major wind turbine installations and resort to producing electricity with coal. The governments of Merkel, and then Olaf Scholz, reveal themselves as the sheerest hypocritical idiots.

And now, the ground is even shifting under the CCP as China’s extravagant matrix of city-building, mortgage debt, and banking fraud rattles its financial system. What a surprise! Potent as it has been in bribing politicians around the world, infiltrating governments and cultural institutions in every land, and getting the news media to do their bidding, the CCP is apparently losing its grip on the Chinese people, who are sick of being locked down, tracked, and swindled. The tanks are out. This is not the same movie as Tiananmen Square, 1989. This is the CCP bankruptcy, an epic event that will thunder through “the global south,” sending Africa into famine and chaos and South America into yet another rotation of elites.

Pretty soon, it’s going to be every country for itself in this main event of the fourth turning (a.k.a. the long emergency). Global unity is a mirage, along with all the preposterous narratives of a world government. And in every country for itself, it’s going to be every community, every family, every person for itself until, emergently and painfully, everyday life can be reorganized from the ground up. People, get Ready."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Strange Price Increases At Big Lots! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 7/22/22:

"Strange Price Increases At Big Lots! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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"Egg Prices Sky-High As Breakfast

 Inflation Pressures American Households"

"The United States Does Not Have an Economy"

"The United States Does Not Have an Economy"

by Paul Craig Roberts

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: 

there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it.

The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

  - Thomas Sowell

"The US financial sector has long looted other countries. A number of participants have described the process. First a country is enticed with bribes to the leaders to take out loans that cannot be serviced or repaid. Then in comes the IMF. Austerity is imposed on the population. Public services and employment are cut to free resources for debt service, and public assets are sold to repay the loan. Living standards fall, and US corporations take over the country’s economy.

As foreign governments, having experienced or witnessed the economic carnage and fearing accountability, are less willing to be bribed into indebting their countries, American finance is now applying this technique to Americans. Contrary to the narrative in the financial press, the Federal Reserve is not raising interest rates in order to fight inflation. It is ludicrous to think that a three-quarters of one percent rise in a very low interest rate is going to have any impact on a 9.1% rate of consumer inflation or that speculation that the Federal Reserve has in mind another three-quarters of one percent possibly followed by one half of one percent comprise an anti-inflation policy. If all these increases occur, it still leaves the interest rate below the inflation rate.

Moreover, as I have previously explained, the inflation is not monetary. The higher prices are the result of supply disruptions caused by Washington’s Covid lockdowns and Russian sanctions. Production was stopped and supply chains are broken.

The Federal Reserve’s rise in interest rates is just a continuation of its policy of concentrating income and wealth in the hands of the One Percent. Quantitative Easing was the cloak for the Federal Reserve to print $8.2 trillion in new money which was directed or found its way into the prices of stocks and bonds, thus enriching the small number who own most of these financial instruments. Having maxed out this avenue of wealth concentration, the Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates in order to drive up mortgage costs to aspiring home owners. The Federal Reserve is driving individuals out of the housing market in order to free up properties for “private equity” firms to purchase homes for their rental values. That private equity firms see rental income from the existing stock of houses as the best investment opportunity tells us that the US economy has played out. When investment goes into existing assets, not into producing new assets, the economy ceases to grow.

The Obama regimes policy of bailing out the financial fraudsters responsible for the 2008 crash while foreclosing on their victims, reduced American homeownership from 70% to 63 percent. The Urban Institute predicts further declines. Today homeowners’ equity has declined from 85% after World War II to one-third, leaving two-thirds of homeowner equity in the hands of creditors. This makes it completely clear that a financialized economy indebts the people for the sake of rentier income to the One Percent. Indeed, the financialized economy created by the Federal Reserve has reimposed a class system akin to the landed British aristocracy that was overthrown. Indeed, we have an economically far worst class system. The landed British aristocrats produced food that fed the nation. The American class system produces interest and fees for the financial system.

As Michael Hudson has shown us, a no-growth economy is the end result of a financialized economy. A financialized economy is one in which consumer income is diverted by debt expansion away from the purchase of new goods and services into debt service and fees–interest on mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, student loan debt. With such a large share of household income spent on debt service, little is left for driving the economy forward.

If American economists were capable of escaping from their neoliberal junk economics, they would realize that “the world’s largest economy” they attribute to the United States is total fiction. The fact is that the United States does not have an economy. Corporations driven by Wall Street located American manufacturing in Asia so that the One Percent could benefit from higher profits from lower labor costs, while the deserted city and states had to sell their income streams, such as Chicago’s parking meter revenues for 75 years, to foreigners for one lump sum payment to solve one year’s budget crisis.

The offshoring of American production, carried out under the cloak of “globalism,” destroyed the American economy and the tax bases of cities and states. While the real economy declines, the Democrat Party, seeking permanent power, has imposed a policy of open borders for immigrant-invaders. How are these millions of peoples to support themselves in an economy whose manufacturing has been moved abroad? How can a population, deserted by American corporations, that is experiencing debt deflation absorb the costs of support and social infrastructure for tens of millions of third world immigrant-invaders?

You will never hear it from the whores in the financial press, but the United States is on the precipice of economic and social collapse. And what are the fools in Washington doing? The idiots are ginning up wars with Russia, China, and Iran."

- https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

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Related:

"The State Of The US Consumer:

 AT&T Crashes As Americans Can't Afford To Pay Their Phone Bills"

"We Are All Born Mad..."

Seal, "Crazy"

"Dr. Birx Admits She And Fauci Made Up 'The Science' On Lockdowns, Social Distancing"

"Dr. Birx Admits She And Fauci Made Up 

'The Science' On Lockdowns, Social Distancing"

by Tyler Durden

"President Trump's former Covid-19 adviser Dr. Deborah Birx has made several stunning admissions of late - first telling the Daily Mail that Covid-19 "came out of the box ready to infect" when it hit Wuhan, China in 2019 - and that it may have been created by Chinese scientists who were "working on coronavirus vaccines." But it goes further than that.

As Fox News' Jesse Waters lays out, Birx admitted in her new book that she and Dr. Anthony Fauci were essentially shooting from the hip when it came to national directives such as "two weeks to stop the spread," and social distancing requirements. According to Waters, Birx "admitted to making things up," adding that she and Fauci "were lying to the president and to the American people about their COVID protocols."

With the first lie; '15 days to stop the spread' - Birx writes "No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of the two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it."

"So that 15 days to slow the spread was just a sneaky way to get their hooks into us, so they could lock us down for longer," Waters opines. "And if you dared to leave your house, Birx told us, the only way to stay safe was to social distance." To that end, Birx writes that she "I had settled on 10 (feet) knowing that even that was too many, but I figured that ten would at least be palatable for most Americans - high enough to allow for most gatherings of immediate family but not enough for large dinner parties and, critically, large weddings, birthday parties, and other mass social events..."

Must Watch: "Scarf Lady" committed scientific fraud and misled the president and the nation into unnecessary lock-downs and restrictions based on the false presumption that the virus spread among health people (asymptomatic spread) that was disproved by Cao et al Madewell et al." pic.twitter.com/Doeion4tu7

- Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) July 20, 2022

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

Related must reads:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

○

"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"

“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."

- https://coyoteprimeblog2.blogspot.com/

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"Close to 5 Billion Have Been Fully Vaccinated, 

62.2% Of The World’s Population"

○

"The Vaccine Death Report"

"Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."

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Research it yourself, as always draw your own informed conclusions...

"How It Really Is"

"We're so freakin' doomed!"

- The Mogambo Guru

"Bank Accounts Frozen, Doors Locked - Get Your Money Out! Can't Pay Phone Bill; Economy Of Fake Success"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/21/22:

"Bank Accounts Frozen, Doors Locked - Get Your Money Out!

 Can't Pay Phone Bill; Economy Of Fake Success"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Biden to Declare Climate Emergency!"

"Biden to Declare Climate Emergency!"

by Brian Maher

"It is proven beyond all doubt, it is a fact beyond all dispute: A climate emergency is upon us. Earth is down with a mighty fever. Even the polar ice has vanished. Reports The Washington Post: "The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard-of high temperatures in that part of the Earth’s surface… The eastern Arctic has steadily gotten warmer, and today the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same region of about 50 years ago. Many old landmarks have changed as to be unrecognizable. Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they have entirely disappeared."

Thus the Arctic sweats and sweats: "Formerly the waters around Spitzbergen [Norway] held an even summer temperature of about 3 degrees Celsius; this year recorded temperatures up to 15 degrees, and last winter the ocean did not freeze over even on the north coast of Spitzbergen."

Spitzbergen sits far within the Arctic Circle, incidentally. Imagine an ice-free winter deep within the Arctic Circle - if you can. As well imagine a fire-free hell. Yet the facts are the facts. To deny the climate emergency is to deny the very nose upon your face… the honesty of congressmen… or gravity itself. Wait… When?

But what is this? Could it be? The article here cited bears the date of Nov. 2… 1922. That is correct - Nov. 2, 1922. We have played a trick. Yes, the Arctic was iceless in 1922, should you accept the verdict of The Washington Post. We have published this information before. But at times we wish to razz the environmental calamity-howlers among us. They sob that today’s warning has no precedent. Yet it evidently does.

Climate Emergency! We reckon about climate today because we are informed the United States president, Biden, may soon declare a national “climate emergency.” A declaration of national emergency is no mere statement. It is the warrant for vastly expanded presidential dictating. Explains a certain Jean Su, senior attorney for a bunch labeling itself the Center for Biological Diversity: "If he declares a national emergency, it triggers the ability for him to deploy around 130 different powers… One of the most useful for climate is the reinstatement of the crude oil export ban. Shutting that off would actually reduce the incentive for companies from fracking in the Permian Basin."

We must conclude Saudi crude oil is a lesser environmental menace than American crude oil. Why else would the president choke off domestic production - while pleading with the Saudi king to expand output - which he did last week (unsuccessfully)? Thus the United States can take oil in. But it cannot dig it up or send it out… lest the heavens fall.

Carbon dioxide is of course the great bugaboo of this climactic tale. We are told it is cooking Earth. Yet is it? It is proven beyond all doubt, it is a fact beyond all dispute: A climate emergency is upon us. Earth is down with a mighty fever. Even the polar ice has vanished.

Garbage in, Garbage Out: Yet do these models give true readings? From a 2020 report by the American Geophysical Union: "The tendency of climate models to overstate warming in the tropical troposphere has long been noted… We focus on the 1979–2014 interval, the maximum span for which all observational products are available…. all 38 models overpredict warming in every target observational analog, in most cases significantly so, and the average differences between models and observations are statistically significant."

All 38 models! Can you believe it? Further razzing comes by way of geophysicist Mr. Allan MacRae: By the end of 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times. At 50-50 odds for each prediction, that is like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is one in 281 trillion!…

The global warming alarmists have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record - they have been 100% wrong about every scary climate prediction - so nobody should continue to believe them. Even the catastrophists themselves are beginning to cough behind their hands, disappointedly. They concede they were yelling wolf. Science magazine: "The climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist. Many of the world’s leading models are now projecting warming rates that most scientists, including the modelmakers themselves, believe are implausibly fast."

Cherry-Picking Evidence? That is, carbon dioxide is being falsely accused of climate crime - if the information here presented is truthful. The caveat is necessary because your editor lacks all credentials within the climate sciences. He is, however, skilled in the picking of cherries that confirm his prejudices.

But if not carbon dioxide, what accounts for the changing climate? We do not know. Yet there is the sun to consider - it gives off a varying glow. Might shifting ocean currents explain it… or wind patterns? We hazard they might. Again, we do not know. But we slant heavily towards the natural explanation. Yet largely due to these fantabulists the United States president is preparing to declare a national climate emergency - with the attending dictatorial powers authorized therein.

“But aren’t cleaner wind and solar energy desirable?” you ask. “Shouldn’t we pursue cleaner, more sustainable alternatives?” If the world prefers wind over oil, solar over coal, let it have wind and solar over oil and coal, we say - so long as they are adequate to needs. Yet the world must evidently come to terms with fundamental physics…

The Point of Diminishing Returns: Mr. Mark Mills co-directs Northwestern University’s Institute on Manufacturing Science and Innovation. From whom: "All sources of energy have limits that can’t be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun’s photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%. So we’re pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren’t any possible."

If this fellow is correct - our minions inform us he is - we begin to suspect we are being taken for a sleigh ride. Wind and solar energy would be vastly inadequate to global energy needs… and would remain inadequate to energy needs through the end of the chapter. They may have their place - and let them have their place. Yet that place is evidently limited. They would nonetheless cost trillions and trillions of dollars that could serve far worthier purposes… including the mitigation of whatever nuisances and irritations that may accompany climate change. Thus we conclude: Going green would sink us all impossibly and unfathomably into red…"

- dailyreckoning.com

"15 Mind-Blowing Facts Which Prove China Is Completely Crushing America"

Full screen recommended.

"15 Mind-Blowing Facts Which Prove China

 Is Completely Crushing America"

by Epic Economist

"As the Chinese economy continues to expand at an exponential rate, the era of American economic dominance is rapidly ending. According to the IMF's measure of purchasing power, the eastern superpower is already the world's largest economy. China also accounts for more total global trade than the U.S. does, and is the world's largest manufacturer. Experts estimate that the Chinese economy will surpass the U.S. economy before the end of this decade, and it will become three times bigger by 2040. Meanwhile, America is now headed to another recession, our standards of living are steadily falling and our major cities are crumbling at an alarming pace. If we continue down this path, the future of the next generation of Americans will be extremely bleak. Unfortunately, things are changing at a pace that is much faster than most people ever thought possible.

In one decade, the average household income in China has increased by over 400%. The Chinese economic boom has helped to raise living standards for the working class. From 2002 to 2012, China's average household income rose from $987 per year to $4,873, an increase of over 400%. By 2021, that figure was up to $10,200, more than double the 2012 average. Meanwhile, household income has flatlined in America, rising 41% from 2000 to 2020, according to Pew Research Data.

Even though China has a much bigger population than the U.S., it has fewer poor people than America. Globally, the World Bank poverty line is an income of $1.90 per day. By 2019, only 0.7% of the Chinese population were at or below the poverty level, meaning that about 9.9 million people lived in poverty out of a population of 1.35 billion. In comparison, in the U.S., 12.3% of the population falls below the national poverty line. That means over 39.7 million Americans are living in poverty.

In the last 15 years, America has lost more than a quarter of its high-tech manufacturing jobs to China as U.S.-based multinational companies placed a growing percentage of their research-and-development operations in the Eastern nation. Over that span alone, the number of high-tech manufacturing jobs in the United States has declined by 687,000, or 28 percent. Meanwhile, U.S. economic growth will slump this year and it will be even slower in 2023, according to a new study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD estimates that U.S. GDP growth will slow to 2.5 percent in 2022 and fall to just 1.2 percent in 2023. By contrast, the OECD report said China's GDP will grow 4.4 percent this year and 4.9 percent in 2023.

Everywhere you look, China is gaining dominance and America is in decline. The United States is going to have to put itself together if it wants to have any hope of competing with the Chinese in the future. At this point, we can only hope that our leaders start coming up with some solutions soon because we are running out of time. That's why today, we compiled some eye-popping stats that show just how rapidly the Chinese economy is overcoming ours."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 7/21/22: "Trends In The News"

"Say No To War, Or Die In War. Nukes Are Next"

- https://trendsresearch.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "'Banking Crisis 2.0' And You Will Pay For All Of It"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/21/22:

Must Watch! "'Banking Crisis 2.0' And You Will Pay For All Of It"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, “Primavera”

Ludovico Einaudi, “Primavera”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.

Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”

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

"One Summer Night..."

"One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will."

- Rachel Carson