"Economic Collapse Has Arrived In Germany. Will The U.S. Be Close Behind?"

"Economic Collapse Has Arrived In Germany. 

Will The U.S. Be Close Behind?"

by Michael Snyder

"Things are starting to get really crazy in Germany. The Germans are dealing with the worst inflation crisis that they have seen since the days of the Weimar Republic, and meanwhile economic activity is starting to shut down all over the nation. Of course other European countries are facing similar problems, but Germany was supposed to be the economic rock that the rest of Europe could always depend upon. Unfortunately, the decision by the Russians to cut off the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is hitting Germany extremely hard. If we could just get both sides to agree to end the war in Ukraine, that would greatly help matters, but that simply isn’t going to happen. In fact, it appears that Vladimir Putin has decided to greatly escalate matters, and the western powers will inevitably greatly escalate matters in response. What this means is that the economic turmoil that we are witnessing in Europe isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

This week, we got some inflation numbers out of Germany that are so high that it is difficult to believe that they are actually real…"German producer prices rose in August at the fastest rate since records began in 1949, data released by the Federal Statistical Office showed today, pointing to a further increase in consumer prices. Producer prices of industrial products rose by 45.8 percent compared to the same month of last year. Compared to July 2022, prices rose 7.9 percent."

Soaring energy prices on the back of Russia’s war against the Ukraine remain the main driver behind rising prices. If we continue to see monthly increases of around 8 percent, next year at this time we could be talking about a yearly jump of close to 100 percent. Wow. How bad do things have to get before we actually start using the term “hyperinflation”?

Energy prices are the biggest reason why inflation has gotten completely out of control, and the German government has been forced to nationalize a huge natural gas company in order to keep it from going under…"The German government is closing in on an agreement to nationalize gas giant Uniper SE, as Berlin moves to stave off a collapse of the country’s energy sector. A provisional agreement between the government, Uniper and its main shareholder, Finland’s Fortum Oyj, has been reached, according to people familiar with the situation. While contracts haven’t been signed, Berlin is aiming for an announcement later this week. According to the CEO of Uniper, the company has been losing about 100 million euros a day during this crisis."

Needless to say, the German government cannot save everyone, and so a lot of firms won’t survive this crisis at all. For example, a manufacturer that has been making toilet paper for Germans for nearly 100 years is now headed into insolvency…"Hakle has been a German household name since 1928, but the Duesseldorf-based toilet paper manufacturer said all it took was this summer’s gas price shock to drive it into insolvency."

Sadly, this is just the beginning. According to the German central bank, the nation is moving into a “broad-based and prolonged decline in economic output”…“Economic activity may pull back somewhat this quarter and shrink markedly in the autumn and winter months,” the central bank said, adding that it didn’t forecast this adverse scenario in a June report. Bundesbank continued: “There are mounting signs of a recession in the German economy in the sense of a clear, broad-based and prolonged decline in economic output.” It said a contraction is expected in the third quarter with deeper declines in economic activity in the fourth. “High inflation and uncertainty with regard to energy supply and its costs affect not only the gas and electricity-intensive industry and its export business and investments, but also private consumption and the service providers dependent on it,” the central bank said."

You can refer to such a scenario as a “recession” or a “depression” if it makes you feel better. I call it an economic collapse. The U.S. economy will soon be experiencing immense turmoil as well.According to billionaire Barry Sternlicht, the Fed’s exceedingly foolish policies are pushing us toward a “serious recession”…"In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday, Barry Sternlicht, the chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital, said he believes Americans are facing a major recession if the Federal Reserve proceeds with several more rate hikes as a means of curbing inflation, which is reportedly the central bank’s plan.

“The economy is braking hard,” Sternlicht told the financial news outlet, according to the Daily Caller. “If the Fed keeps this up, they are going to have a serious recession and people will lose their jobs.”

He is right on target, but instead of saying “people will lose their jobs” he should have noted that lots of people are already being laid off. This is something that I have been documenting on my website for quite some time, and this week we learned that Gap has decided to lay off hundreds of corporate workers…"Gap Inc. is cutting about 500 corporate jobs as the clothing retailer struggles with declining sales. The job cuts, which include open positions, will be primarily at Gap’s offices in San Francisco, New York and Asia and hit various departments, a representative for the retailer confirmed Tuesday. The moves were first reported by The Wall Street Journal."

Ouch. In this environment, very few workers are truly safe. At this point, even the entertainment industry is letting lots of people go…"The struggling TV and film industry continues to run face first into bad news. This week it was reported that Warner Bros. Discovery was firing 100 TV ad salespeople at the same time that Paramount has considered ending offering Showtime as a standalone service, Bloomberg reported. Netflix followed suit with their own layoffs, the report says. The company has reportedly let go hundreds of employees and abandoned some of its office space. At the same time, the firm’s stock price has collapsed and fallen more than 60% from its all time highs."

Back in 2008 and 2009, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Will we see something similar in the months ahead? And just like during “the Great Recession”, the housing market is really starting to slow down. In fact, we just learned that homebuilder confidence has now fallen for nine months in a row…"The confidence of builders of single-family houses fell again in September, the ninth month in a row of declines, “as the combination of elevated interest rates, persistent building material supply chain disruptions, and high home prices continue to take a toll on affordability,” the NAHB report said. With today’s index value of 46, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index is now below where it had been in May 2006, on the way down into the Housing Bust."

This time around, it won’t just be a few areas of the planet that suffer. At this moment we are literally witnessing economic implosions all over the planet, and the stage is being set for an immensely painful 2023. The one thing that could really turn things around would be peace.

Unfortunately, global leaders on both sides seem absolutely determined to drag us into the type of cataclysmic global conflict that I have been warning about for years. So there isn’t going to be peace, and that means that things are going to get really bad in 2023 and beyond.

But I also believe that you were put at this specific moment in history for a reason. It is when times are the darkest that the greatest good can be done, and that is something that we will all need to remember during the very dark times in front of us."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"It Would Indeed..."

 

"At the Precipice of World War 3"

"At the Precipice of World War 3"

by Akrainer

"Clash of the two systems of governance, as George Soros formulated it in his remarks to the World Economic Forum conference in May, seems to have reached a phase transition. Russian President Vladimir Putin has returned from last week’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in Samarkand with a palpable sense of confidence and determination, and it does appear that he has obtained reassurances of support from all the key leaders during the event, including China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, and even the new PM of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif.

Russia is ready to shift gears: Now, the leadership of Russia is prepared to shift gears in Ukraine. While annexation of the Donbas region wasn’t part of the objectives set out at the outset of the “Special Military Operation” in February, this could be about to change. Namely, public referendums have been announced and will be held between 23 and 27 September in all the key regions controlled by Russia. The people will be voting on whether they want to become absorbed in Russian federation. This move will have a massive impact and remove any legal strictures the Russian leadership observed by waging war in foreign territory. Soon, this could become Russian territory and any attacks on Kherson, Donetsk, Lugansk or Zaporozhye will be regarded as attacks on Russia proper.

Laws for thee, rules for me: This prospect has triggered quite a consternation in Washington, London and Bruxelles where political and military leaderships are sure to reject any such changes. American Secretary of State Antony Blinken wasted no time to declare that, “Any Russian sham ‘referenda’ in Ukraine would be illegitimate and an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity…”

Some might disagree, however. In July 2010, the International Court of Justice issued an “Advisory Opinion” on Kosovo (previously part of Serbia) in which it determined a few important points of international law. Namely:

• Unilateral declarations of independence are not illegal under international law.

• People’s right to self-determination supersedes territorial integrity.

But some restrictions do apply, so these principles don’t extend to the likes of the people of Catalunya. Or Crimea. Or for any people in Ukraine for that matter. You see, there’s international law and then there’s the rules. We use rules to determine which laws we observe and which ones we disregard. So rules must necessarily supersede the law. I think.

Rules based order or bust…: Jest aside, western empire is now overtly and explicitly committed to this “rules based global order,” and Russia is clearly the greatest threat to that order. At last weekend’s NATO’s Military Committee Conference held in Tallinn (16-18 Sep. 2022), Estonia’s Defense Forces Chief Martin Herem delivered a speech stating as follows: “Collectively we must deny Russia the possibility to change today’s rules-based international order.” On that same occasion, the Committee’s chairman Admiral Rob Bauer announced “the biggest overhaul of our military structures since 1949.”

This morning’s news from Russia are more ominous still. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made it explicit that, “The time has come when we are at war with NATO and the collective West.” Apparently, Russia is now preparing to mobilize another 300,000 reservists and we know that such a force is not required in Ukraine alone. Another rumor from Russia this morning is that the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia, Elvira Niabullina has tendered her resignation to President Putin.

It appears that we are at the precipice of a major escalation and the channels of de-escalation are falling silent. For reasons that are still unclear, a call between Vladimir Putin and French President Macron failed to even take place yesterday (according to some reports, it was Vladimir Putin who wanted to speak to Macron but Macron declined the call while other reports stated the opposite – Macron tried to get through but Putin declined).

Boris Johnson’s excellent adventure: We should recall that only a few months ago Henry Kissinger warned the collective west to stand down and avoid this conflict even at the price of ceding Ukraine’s territory, but his warnings fell on deaf ears. That was in late May. In fact in April and in July of this year negotiated settlement of the Ukraine crisis was being seriously discussed between Kiev and Moscow. But on both occasions, Boris Johnson intervened to torpedo the negotiations and abruptly flew to Kiev to persuade Ukraine’s President Zelensky to end the talks.

This was the same Boris Johnson who announced the imminent conflict in a speech to the dignitaries in – where else – the City of London last November. On that occasion, he issued a warning to the European governments: “We hope that our friends [in Europe] may recognize that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability.”

When the history of this conflict is being written in the future, it will have to answer how it was possible for one deeply unpopular leader to wield such disproportionate influence on events so far from his own nation’s borders, why he acted as he did and on whose behalf he did so. What is certain is that his actions benefited neither the British nor the Ukrainian people."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"No One Has Planned for This - Get Ready to Pay More"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 9/21/22:

"No One Has Planned for This -

 Get Ready to Pay More"

"There are so many things that are going to be affected as a result of the Feds decision with interest rates. It’s going to affect everyone. Get ready to pay more for everything in your life."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"Fed Hikes Rates Another 75bps,

Sends Hawkish 'Higher For Longer' Signal With DotPlot"

"This is the 'bad' Goldman scenario!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Today - Big Day For The Markets!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/22:

"Today - Big Day For The Markets!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Checkmate"

"Checkmate"

We’ve arrived at a watershed moment in history.

by Will Schryver

"It is a foregone conclusion that Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions of the former Novorossiya will be re-assimilated into the Russian motherland. Odessa will follow at some point in the not-so-distant future. And the empire’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of these developments will prove utterly irrelevant.

Western media and puppet politicians can scream “Russian aggression” and “sham election” all they want, but the unadorned fact is that these regions are overwhelmingly ethnic Russians whose collective desire is to be reunited with what they view as a powerful and ascendant Russia.

In conjunction with this shrewd maneuver, Vladimir Putin has announced in his September 21st address a major escalation of Russian military action in Ukraine – thereby making available a significant amount of Russia’s as yet untapped military strength and capabilities. This will result in a rapid acceleration in the ongoing process of annihilation of the Ukrainian military, its mountains of NATO weaponry, and its numerous “foreign volunteers”.

This, of course, presents the empire with an existential dilemma. The defeat of NATO’s proxy army, weapons, and leadership in Ukraine at the hands of the Russians will be viewed all around the world as an unprecedented defeat of American hegemony; a watershed moment that will carry with it profound geopolitical consequences.

As I have argued for months now, it will mean the end of NATO as a credible military alliance. It will mean the end of the European Union as presently constituted. In other words, a decisive defeat of the empire’s aspirations in Ukraine will be viewed in Washington, London, and Brussels as an existential threat – which it is. And, as such, it is difficult for me to envision them submissively acquiescing to the outcome.

Therefore we have, as I wrote a few weeks back, now well and truly arrived at 'The Moment of Greatest Danger.'"

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

Greg Hunter, "FDA Covered Up CV19 Vax Biological Catastrophe"

"FDA Covered Up CV19 Vax Biological Catastrophe"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Dr. Peter McCullough is a renowned cardiologist who fought the accepted government CV19 vax narrative from the beginning. Dr. McCullough said, “The injections should have been halted in February of 2021.” Instead, the government mandated the clot shots, and the CDC and FDA covered up the problems. The FDA is still covering up massive deaths and injuries from the mRNA shots. Dr. McCullough explains, “It’s the great gamble of the Covid19 vaccine program. It was the gamble of a lifetime, if not a gamble of all-time. The vaccines install the genetic code for the lethal Wuhan spike protein that was engineered in a bio-security lab in Wuhan, China. This is the worst idea ever to install a fatal protein and have it installed for an uncontrolled duration and an uncontrolled quantity in the human body. This is a biological catastrophe in unspeakable proportions. Nobody wants these shots now, and they are still mandating them and forcing them on people.”

According to Dr. McCullough, the FDA admits the shots cause fatal heart damage, Fatal blood clotting, strokes, neurological injuries and other problems. When the evidence mounted on how deadly and debilitating the CV19 injections were, the FDA covered it all up instead of pulling them off the market. Dr. McCullough says, “Now, we have the additional deaths from the CV19 vaccines. The CDC shows 14,000 died the next day, and that is a gross under-reporting. The World Council for Health points out four agencies, including VAERS with 40,000 certified deaths, and that may be an under-reporting of 100 to 1. It’s a vast number, and no governments are doing investigations. The United States should be doing a full stop on this. Pfizer knew about 1,223 deaths within 90 days of release of their product. Pfizer logged all these deaths, but they didn’t pull their product off the market, and the FDA’s lawyer wanted to block that information from Americans for 55 years. So, the FDA is involved in a cover-up with Pfizer, and almost certainly with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. It’s an ongoing biological catastrophe.”

McCullough contends that Covid is waning but warns, “What we are left with is just the vaccine injuries and damage itself. I can tell you we are going to have to be quite vigilant. The blood clots and heart damage, I have never ordered so many cardiac MRIs and ultrasound tests for blood clots. People need to be hyper-vigilant. They have put a foreign genetic code in their bodies. It’s produced the lethal Wuhan spike proteins. It’s in their brains, and it’s in their hearts. People can’t feel good that have taken this into their bodies. They have to know they have taken an extraordinary risk. There are over 1,000 papers in the peer-reviewed literature. Not a single paper shows a benefit of these vaccines. 100 percent of it is bad news." There is much more in the 47-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he interviews top 

cardiologist and CV19 expert Dr. Peter McCullough.

- https://rumble.com/

○

Related truth:

"The Vaccine Death Report"

"The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the

 greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."

- https://indepthnh.org/

• "Unthinkable Thoughts"

• The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right; 

It IS a 'Poison-Death Shot'” (Excerpt)

May God have mercy on you if you've taken this shot...

"I Know Not..."

 

Canadian Prepper, "Its Starting... The Next 24 Hrs. Are Crucial"

Canadian Prepper, 9/20/22:

"Its Starting... The Next 24 Hrs. Are Crucial"

"Everything just changed. In the next 24 hours 

tensions escalate to a whole new level. Get Ready."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Here comes World War III...

○

A must-read related article:

"Dugin: World War 3 Is Coming"

"God help us."

○

Update 9/21/22, 12:01 AM:

"Putin Announces Partial Mobilization In Ukraine War 

Escalation, Says West Wants To 'Destroy Russia'"

by Tyler Durden

"In a nationwide address that was delayed from its prime-time Tuesday delivery and ahead of votes in four Ukraine regions to join Russia, on Wednesday morning Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization, while vowing to use all means necessary to defend Russia and pledged to annex the territories already occupied by Russia, raising the stakes in the seven-month-old conflict.

Calling the moves “urgent, necessary steps to defend the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Russia,” Putin said that Russia is fighting the full might of NATO. The US and its allies, he said, are seeking to “destroy” Russia.

The partial mobilization means that reservists will be drafted into military service, Putin said, starting immediately. Calling up the reserves adds about 300,000 men to Russia's forces. The Armed Forces will draw on military reservists only, and those who have completed national service, the president said promising that they will be provided with additional training along with all the benefits due to people involved in active duty. The measure is "sensible and necessary" under the circumstances, Putin stated, adding that he has already signed an order for the call-up to start immediately.

In his speech, Putin accused Kiev of backing away from peace talks, acting on direct orders from its Western allies. Instead of negotiating, the Ukrainian government has beefed up its military with NATO-trained troops, many of whom are neo-Nazi extremists, he said. Putin also accused the west of using "nuclear blackmail" against Russia noting that "if its territorial integrity is threatened Russia will definitely use all the means at its disposal." to defend Russian territory. "This is not a bluff."

Russian forces sent to Ukraine in February have secured a large portion of territory claimed by the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as well as parts of Ukraine, and the resulting frontline stretches over 1,000km, according to the Russian president.

Putin also commented on the upcoming referendums in the two Donbass republics and two regions of Ukraine currently controlled to a large extent by Russian troops. The territories which include Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, have announced plebiscites on whether become part of Russia, with the ballots scheduled to start on Friday. Putin said his government will respect the outcome of the four referendums, and provide security for the voting process.

Following Putin's address, Russia's minister of defense Sergei Shoigu also delivered a nationwide TV address, in which he said that the battlefield conditions in Ukraine as "difficult." "We are not fighting with Ukraine, but with the collective west " he said, noting mobilization will be gradual, not one-time. He also added more nuclear threats: "All types of arms, including the nuclear triad, are fulfilling their tasks."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Walmart And Other Retailers Canceling Billions Of Dollars In Orders As Fears Of A Dark Winter Rising"

Full screen recommended.

"Walmart And Other Retailers Canceling Billions

 Of Dollars In Orders As Fears Of A Dark Winter Rising"

by Epic Economist

"Something really strange is happening in the U.S. retail sector. Walmart, Target, and other major retailers are literally canceling billions of dollars in orders right ahead of the busiest shopping season. Do they know something they aren’t telling us? We’ve never seen such a large-scale order cancellation happening before. Under normal conditions, this wouldn’t make any sense. The holiday season is typically the time when retailers record the highest sales volume in the entire year, and this time in 2021, everyone in the industry was extremely worried about whether there would be enough inventory to meet consumer demand due to global supply chain disruptions. But it seems that things have been turned upside down, and all of a sudden, big retail chains are cutting back and calling off a massive number of orders – and this would only make sense if they could tell that a severe economic downturn was imminent.

Earlier this month, Walmart’s EVP and CFO, John David Rainey, revealed that the company had cleared most of its summer inventory, and now it was reducing exposure in electronics, home, and sporting goods, and canceling billions of dollars in orders to realign inventories. That seems like an extremely odd decision for Walmart to take considering that, not long ago, shoppers were flooding social media with images of bare shelves and thousands of complaints about product shortages at several Walmart stores from all over the nation. Canceling billions of dollars in orders means that we will be seeing many more inventory holes in the coming months.

This week, Target also announced that it was chopping a massive amount of orders in preparation for the months ahead. In a note, Target said it had reduced its “inventory exposure in discretionary categories” by canceling more than $1.5 billion of orders in these categories and marking down products. The chain is much smaller than Walmart, which means that cutting so many orders all at once is a really big deal.

A few days ago, we just learned that Kohl’s and Under Armour have also followed the same move. In a nutshell, all of these retailers are getting really scared about the prospect of being stuck with massive amounts of inventory they cannot sell. They can already see that sales are dropping and economic conditions continue to worsen for consumers, which consequently indicates that economic activity is likely to get much lower than originally anticipated over the next few months.

One corporate executive that recently came forward and publicly admitted that he sees a deep economic downturn on the horizon is FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam. During an interview with CNBC, the CEO actually said he believes we’re “going into a worldwide recession,” and that every sector of the industry is already feeling the early effects of it. The chief executive also highlighted that weakening global shipment volumes drove FedEx’s disappointing results. “We’re seeing that volume decline in every segment around the world, he exposed. “The weekly numbers are not looking so good, so we just assume at this point that the economic conditions are not really good. We are a reflection of everybody else’s business, especially the high-value economy in the world,” he emphasized.

Sadly, that’s the reality many businesses are facing right now. But none of this should come as a surprise. For months, economic numbers have been telling us that big trouble was on the way, and now it’s here for everyone to see it. We must remember that we are already in the midst of a raging economic crisis, and every piece of evidence is telling us that this is just the beginning of something even bigger."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Broke Americans Buying Halloween Costumes With Credit Cards; Markets Could Be Shocked Tomorrow"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/20/22:

"Broke Americans Buying Halloween Costumes With 

Credit Cards; Markets Could Be Shocked Tomorrow"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"

Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 light-years. Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, all the stars of M34 are about 200 million years young.

 

But like any open star cluster orbiting in the plane of our galaxy, M34 will eventually disperse as it experiences gravitational tides and encounters with the Milky Way's interstellar clouds and other stars. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open star cluster.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html

"To Really Ask..."

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world – few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

- Anne Rice, “The Vampire Lestat”

The Poet: William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

"The Second Coming"

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

- William Butler Yeats, January 1919

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

by Thad Beversdorf

“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,

so I’ll leave it up to you…” 

“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.” I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.

When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.

We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.

But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.

But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.

But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.

Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”

- http://www.zerohedge.com/

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"It Ends as it Began: As a Political Ploy"

"It Ends as it Began: As a Political Ploy"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"The current US president finally said it during a 60 Minutes interview: “The pandemic is over.” Though obviously true by the classical definition, Biden’s comment seemed almost accidental, said as an echoed response to a direct question. Consider, however, that many times as many people die from Covid daily in the US (300-400) than when the US first announced the outrageous lockdowns of March 16, 2020. In those days, deaths were approaching 50 per day, mostly in New York. It will very likely get worse over the winter months.

Click image for larger size.

Instead of today’s calm and relaxed attitude – just chill because infection, disease, and death are just part of life – there were banshee screams from the whole of governments and media. People were running around with their hair on fire, dousing themselves with sanitizer, wiping down groceries, and hiding under their sofas from the “invisible enemy.”

Back then, if you raised any doubts about closures, masks, forced separation, domestic capacity restrictions, or suggested it might not be the worst thing to keep businesses open, or were caught getting a haircut, you were shamed, shouted down, and banned by social media. You could even get fired.

Ask yourself: why the panic then and the calm now? What precisely has changed?

In those days, every new death – even every new case! – was blamed on the Trump administration. People even today say that Trump had no choice but to lock down because otherwise the criticisms would have been globally deafening. So Trump and his closest advisors sat in their Oval Office hothouse and listened to the wise council of Fauci that the only way to deal with a virus is to stop all human activity.

So here we are today, all nonchalant and casual about the whole thing even as the CDC chart on community spread looks like this right now.

Click image for larger size.

Receiving less attention was Biden’s immediate follow-up. “If you notice, no one is wearing masks. Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape.”

JUST IN – Biden: "The pandemic is over." pic.twitter.com/iS1gq31MD1

- Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 19, 2022

Hold on there a minute. Is it really all about such casual perceptions of one guy touring a car show? If everyone was wearing a mask – the Biden administration is still appealing its right to impose a mandate – would it be evidence that the pandemic is still on? If so, might that help explain why the Biden administration was so intent on pushing for mass masking? It served the cosmetic purpose of whipping up public panic…for political and not medical reasons.

If that is true, we live in a dystopian world in which the government itself can create and uncreate a pandemic depending on the political priorities of the day. As for the eyeball test that everyone Biden sees is “in pretty good” shape, that was true throughout the entire period of panicked and egregious statism. The demographic subject to medically significant outcomes was always very small. The 99.8% of people were always going to be in pretty good shape, but for the astounding psychological, economic, and public-health disaster imposed by the lockdowns themselves.

Yes, the “new virus” is now endemic and wholly manageable, due to mass infection and recovery. It was never going to end any other way. We knew this from February 2020. It’s the way every pandemic of this type of virus ends, all extremely well-documented over the past 100 years or, really, thousands of years.

The policy response to the pandemic is what was the outlier. After spending two and a half years watching the unfolding of the great public-health disaster of our lifetimes, it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that this has always been about politics and the manipulation of public perceptions. The reality that we chose to see was heavily informed by media propaganda and political priorities.

That’s a terrifying reality. For example, it’s impossible to avoid the observation that the pandemic response was motivated at least in part by the desire to drive Trump out of office. What better way to crush a presidency than to panic the president himself into wrecking the economy that was his strongest selling point during a critical election year? It was a masterful plot and you don’t have to be a dreaded “conspiracy theorist” to see it.

Moreover, it was not just about Trump himself. It was about much larger agendas and directions that the administration was headed that threatened some very powerful interests, the investigations of which should consume years of work. Theories abound about the real reasons – Fauci and gain-of-function research, WEF and its agenda, an experiment in unleashing hipster techno-primitivism – and we are still a long way off from knowing the full truth.

Why Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and other presumed Trump partisans in the inner circle could not see it is the question. For that matter, why couldn’t FOX see it? Why couldn’t the Trump partisans in think tanks and magazines see it? It was perfectly obvious at the time that this was precisely what was going on. Why did observing the obvious become so completely unsayable?

In the same way, it is perfectly obvious that the new calm that Biden is hawking is all about creating an environment of normalcy leading to midterm elections just 6 weeks away. The Democrats obviously need every advantage. Declaring an end to the pandemic provides some help on the margin.

It should rattle any concerned citizen of the US – or just any rational person – that such a massive issue as a deadly pandemic could be turned on and off by perception management by powerful elites in government, tech, and media. And yet, the evidence is overwhelming that we have seen just such an operation at work over these pandemic years.

Even now, despite more sophisticated data collection and distribution than we’ve ever had, we are at a loss to state with precision just how severe this pandemic truly was. Between wild inaccuracies of PCR testing plus rampant death misclassification, not to mention the ongoing confusions over infections vs cases, there is no real consensus on the basic measurements one might need to make a scientific assessment.

To be sure, there are those who believe that the arrival of the Omicron variant is itself a good enough reason for the shift from panic to calm. The variant is said to be more prevalent but less severe. But this is a confusion: such variants do not arrive with a preset severity stamp on them, programmed to impact the population in a particular way. It always depends on preexisting immunities.

Whether and to what extent these viruses are nothing alarming or massively devastating is largely contingent on the immunological mappings of the population itself. It was exposure to previous Covid variants that resulted in less medically significant outcomes from the mutations that occurred later.

An isolated tribe in the Outback or Amazon rainforest that had never been exposed to any coronaviruses could face terrible disease and death from the variants that the developed world now regards as mild. For such people, Omicron could be just as devastating or more so than the original wild type. (I owe this point to the ever-brilliant Sunetra Gupta.)

In addition, one might suppose that the end of the panic would also mean the end of the restrictions and mandates. Not so. The state of emergency is still on. People are still being fired for refusing the vaccine. My unvaccinated friends from the UK, Australia, and Europe are still not even allowed into this country! The whole thing is outrageous and embarrassing.

And as Jonathan Turley has written: "Now the President is declaring that the pandemic is over as the Justice Department is defending pandemic policies in various courts. Even if one were to argue that the policy should be reviewed as supported at the time, the continued viability of the policy can now be questioned in light of the President’s own statements. The President’s comments also highlight the fluidity of pandemic policies. While we often look to the CDC on such status statements, it is the President who ultimately decides federal policies on pandemic measures."

Interesting phrase: the fluidity of pandemic policies. Keep in mind that most of the powers that allowed them to lock you in your home, quarantine the well, shut churches and schools, restrict travels, even prosecute people for holding parties, weddings, and funerals all still exist. There has been no rollback of any powers presumed by the CDC. Their website even now lays out their own quarantine plans for the next time.

There must absolutely be a serious challenge to all these government powers. They were abused for political reasons and ended up brutalizing the whole population here and around the world, in violation of all law and tradition. There have been no apologies from the top, only vague promises of reforms that end only in more centralization and funding. This must change before the whole disaster is repeated.

It is not enough for the president to declare an end. It does not end until we end the emergency powers and get an ironclad guarantee that nothing of this sort can ever happen again. One might suppose the Bill of Rights would have been enough but it was not. We need more. And it needs to be explicit and enforceable. That cannot happen until there is a full accounting of the outrages that have been visited upon the country. Only then can we say that everything and everyone “seems to be in pretty good shape.”

- https://brownstone.org/

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Related truth:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

"The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right; 

It IS a 'Poison-Death Shot'” (Excerpt)

"Veterans Committing Suicide At 37% Higher Rate Than VA Claims: Report"

"Veterans Committing Suicide At 37% 

Higher Rate Than VA Claims: Report"

by Tyler Durden

"A new report by a suicide prevention group has found that veterans are committing suicide at a 37% higher rate than the Department of Veterans Affairs claims. The 'exhaustive' study which was four years in the making examined suicides and "self-injury mortality" - or deaths classified as accidental or undetermined, in those aged 18-64, over the period between 2014 and 2018, Stripes reports. The VA, meanwhile, gets its suicide figures from county authorities where the deaths occur - which fails to identify veterans around 18% of the time.

America’s Warrior Partnership, a suicide prevention group, contracted with the University of Alabama and partnered with Duke University to gather state-provided death data and coordinate with the DOD to corroborate military affiliation. It was funded by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation. The study identified a 37% greater suicide rate than reported by the VA. That was because “Operation Deep Dive,” as the study is called, worked to get specificity of the decedent’s demographics, military experience and death details. "It’s not the VA’s fault. The issue is the counties," said Air Force veteran Jim Lorraine, president of America's Warrior Partnership.

The study looked at death data for Alabama, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana and Oregon. If death information these eight states is applied to the rest of the country, around 24 veterans die each day by suicide, as determined by a coroner or medical examiner, vs the VA's average of 17.7 veteran suicides per day. What's more, around 20 former service members die each day by self-injury mortality - which is defined as accidents or an undetermined cause of death, of which over 80% were overdoses, Lorraine told Stripes. Those most at risk of suicide are veterans who had served for under three years, had been demoted, and lived alone in a suburban or rural area.

According to Lorraine, the study will continue for anther four years in order to accumulate more data from states and drill down into the particulars of suicides, with the goal of preventing them. "We’ve got to get those numbers down," he said."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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"Walmart Finally Did It..."

Full screen recommended.

The Economic Ninja, 9/20/22:

"Walmart Finally Did It..."

"Something Just Changed At Walmart. Walmart is having a hard time dealing with a glut of inventory that is finally coming in from China. What Walmart deals this week will happen as you learn how to save money. Learn about Walmart couponing matchups. First there were supply chain shortages now there is too much inventory so stores like Walmart need to either store the goods or mark them down dramatically."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Closure Economy is Alive and Well"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 9/20/22:

"The Closure Economy is Alive and Well"

"If you are in the business of repossessions, evictions, foreclosures, moving people or bankruptcies you are doing incredibly wrong right now. Every other industry in general is suffering. From cars to home improvements every other industry is feeling a pinch."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, "Post Market Wrap-up 9/20/22"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/22:

"Post Market Wrap-up 9/20/22:

UN Warns Of Dire Financial Situation; 

Morgan Stanley Warns Of Global Stock Market Sell-Off"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Col. Doug Macgregor: Ukraine/Russia Latest"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom:

"Col. Doug Macgregor: Ukraine/Russia Latest"

"Ukraine brushes off Russian plan to annex occupied regions."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"World Trembles After Germany Issues

 “24 September 2022” Ominous Prediction"

Excerpt: "Though the under socialist siege American peoples “don’t understand what is going on” in this “great power conflict”, this report continues, the Biden Regime most certainly does, which is why Ambassador Anatoly Antonov just declared that the United States is openly a party to the conflict in Ukraine, and factually stated: “Washington’s statements that the United States is not a party to the conflict sound absolutely ridiculous and unfounded. Facts and interviews of former and current politicians and generals say otherwise. Videos currently shown on Western channels clearly demonstrate that soldiers and officers who speak fluent English, many with pronounced British and American accents, are fighting against us. The current situation of Washington inciting Kiev against us is an indisputable, obvious fact. If the Americans go along with Ukraine’s insane demands for long-range rockets, such a scenario would mean direct involvement of the United States in a military confrontation with Russia”.

○

So, Good Citizens, YOU, and all of us collectively, have sent at least $65 billion in military and other "assistance", but we're "not a party to the conflict"? THIS is what you're risking -  is it worth it? Why?

Bill Bonner, "Billy Clubs and Water Cannons"

"Billy Clubs and Water Cannons"

Markets are already black and blue...

 but the real pain is yet to come.

by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "The beatings will continue until morale improves. Understanding today’s market is very simple. For the last 40 years, the Fed has been rewarding stock holders. Now, it’s punishing them. Investors are beginning to understand. Barrons: "The Stock Market Finally Gets It. FedEx’s Bad News Helped Drive the Point Home." From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. The stock market reached that point this past week.

Oh, the market was hopeful, entering the week, that inflation had reached its peak, that the Federal Reserve would stop raising rates soon, that the bottom was in. But Tuesday’s release of August’s consumer-price-index data showed that inflation hadn’t been tamed and dashed all the goodwill, sending the major indexes to their worst day since 2020.

Fox News tacked into the same wind: "Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett…warned in an analyst note this week that the "inflation shock ain't over," and that a subsequent earnings recession will precipitate further declines in the market. Hartnett said that past bear markets show an average peak-to-trough decline of about 37% for the S&P 500, the benchmark index, over 289 days. That would suggest the current bear market – which began in early June – will end in October with the gauge around 3,020 points. That would mark a nearly 22% decline from current levels."

Good and Hard: All over the world, with the notable exception of Japan, almost all central banks have brought out their cudgels and tasers. Already, US markets are black and blue. But central banks have only just begun. Investors anticipate another 75-basis point (0.75%) increase this week. But some economists are urging the Fed to strike harder. Larry Summers, for example, the only Democrat to have any idea of what is going on, suggested a 100-basis point hike. And Komal Sri-Kumar, head of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies, told CNBC that the Fed should go for 125 basis points.

But Argentina, always a leader with crackpot financial trends, shows the way forward. Reuters: "Argentina Hikes Interest Rate 550 bps After Inflation Overshoots." "Argentina's central bank hiked the country's benchmark interest rate 550 basis points to 75% on Thursday, a day after inflation overshot forecasts to near 80% on an annual basis. The hike followed a 950 basis points-raise in August of the 28-day Leliq benchmark rate, as the government tries to bring down spiraling prices that are hurting Argentines' savings and salaries and denting the popularity of the Peronist government."

Rates are rising. The economy is slowing. Stocks are falling. The only question is: how long will the beatings go on? “It is clearer by the day that markets were overly lavishly supported by central banks for too long,” writes Katie Martin in the Financial Times. “Correcting this imbalance will keep on sparking the ugly declines and head-fake bear market rallies that characterized the crisis of 2008-2009.”

The Kübler-Ross Model: A real bear market proceeds like a death sentence. First, there is denial. Then, anger and depression… followed by bargaining, and finally, acceptance. Until last week, ‘denial’ was the name of the game. But then, investors began to realize – the Fed is serious. It intends to inflict a lot more pain.

Markets move faster than economies. First, the P gives way. Then the E. Stock Prices are supposed to ‘look ahead,’ anticipating future Earnings. So, in the initial stages, prices drop before the bad recession-era earnings become apparent. Then, the lower prices mislead investors. They think stocks look ‘fairly priced.’ Advisers urge them to ‘buy the dip.’ At current prices, for example, Alphabet almost looks like a value stock.

But then comes more bad news. The recession causes sales and earnings to fall. Soon, it doesn’t look like such a bargain anymore. As of last week, investors are no longer in denial. They’re just trying to understand how bad it will get. Analysts look to the recent past for clues. Will it be like the Nasdaq crash in 2000? Or the mortgage finance crisis after 2007? Or, maybe the Covid Panic selloff of 2020?

In our view, those riots are irrelevant. They’re from a different era, when the Fed was on hand… with warm blankets and hot coffee. Now, the Fed is back on the scene… but with billy clubs and water cannons. More to come…"

Joel’s Note: It’s hard to fathom what an Argentine-style, 550 basis point hike would look like in the U.S., much less the carnage it would unleash on the markets. And yet, with a nominal Fed target rate still below 2.5%… and inflation running at 8.3% (17.1 according to ShadowStats - CP)… such a mammoth hike would still leave real rates floundering in negative territory. (2.5 plus 5.5 still equals 8… even in modern economics classrooms.) And if inflation “hiccuped,” say because energy prices come roaring back after the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release ends next month, we could be off to the races again… with the Feds chasing down 9… 9.5… or even double-digit inflation.

What does all that mean? In a nutshell: more distortion of the most important price of all. Dan explained as much in last Friday’s note to Bonner Private Research members…"In a ‘normal’ financial world, time has a price. That price is the interest rate you earn by loaning or investing your savings. The benchmark interest rate – currently set by central banks – determines the returns for all other asset classes. When you leave it too low for too long, you get diminishing marginal returns. Worse, too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.

We’re reckoning with many ‘bad things’ and bubbles right now. When you distort that price (lower it to zero) you distort the values of all other assets (making it very difficult to figure out what to pay today for future cash flows). By mis-pricing the cost of capital, you distort capitalism itself.

Which brings us to 2022… and the beginning of the reckoning we’re witnessing across markets right now. “A lot of people made a lot of stupid money in the low interest rate era,” Dan reminded us Friday. “A lot of them are going to lose even more in a grinding, volatile, bear market.”

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

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Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

Gregory Mannarino, "The Worst Is Yet To Come: Debt Market Sell-off Continues, Inflation Rises Worldwide"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/20/22:

"The Worst Is Yet To Come: Debt Market 

Sell-off Continues, Inflation Rises Worldwide"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Strange Prices At Trader Joe's! This Is Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 9/20/22:

"Strange Prices At Trader Joe's! This Is Crazy!"

"In today's vlog we are at Trader Joe's, and are noticing some strange prices! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

You don't like things now? Well...

Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet, but you will...

"Gerald Celente Warning: They Don't Want You To Know How Bad It Is"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 9/20/22:

"Gerald Celente Warning: 

They Don't Want You To Know How Bad It Is"

"Economic crash, stock market crash, housing 

market crash, it's already here you just don't know it yet!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/