Friday, October 7, 2022

Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman, "Price Increases? Prohibited!"

“Price increases? Prohibited!” 
Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko
"Price Increases? Prohibited!"
Old school rules, fatal conceits 
and the folly of "command economies..."
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Baltimore, Maryland - "Yesterday came an amusing news item over the Reuters wire: "Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday he was imposing a ban on consumer price rises in response to "exorbitant" inflation across the economy, state media reported. "From today, any price increase is prohibited. Prohibited!," the state-run Belta news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying in a meeting of government ministers. "It starts today - not from tomorrow, but from today, so that prices cannot be inflated during the course of today," Lukashenko said."

“Well, that ought to fix that,” joked our colleagues Dan Denning and Joel Bowman. ‘How dumb can these people be’ is a frequent question here at the Bonner Private Research headquarters. We plumb the depths of it; but our cord is never quite long enough. Everybody knows that price controls don’t work. Always and everywhere, they are followed by shortages… and ultimately higher prices. But heck, it’s a New Era, right?

Old School Rules: In the 1990s, we were invited to Belarus to advise the government, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We sat around an immense meeting table with some immense Belarusians, whom we took for the leaders of the new country. But after a few rounds of vodka, it was obvious to both sides of the table that we were ill-suited to the job. On our side, we had no clue what to tell them. And on theirs, they wouldn’t have been able to implement our advice, even if it had been good.

The old rules and patterns still applied. You still couldn’t get something for nothing… regression to the mean (going back to normal) was still a good bet… and the more government did to make things better, the worse they would get. “Why don’t you guys just protect private property… back your money with gold… lock up murderers and thieves… and otherwise leave people alone…” we suggested. But the context – a crumbling communist empire – was so different… surely, there was no precedent. Our advice went nowhere. And the inflation rate now in Belarus – 19%.

A lot of things in life – though not novel to history – are certainly new to us. You only die once, for example. You don’t get a chance to practice. Or learn from your mistakes. Many people have done it before, but for you… this is your first time. You just have to do your best… And in today’s markets, we have a whole new context. Completely new to anyone under the age of 60. You had to be an adult in 1980 to have seen anything like it. Now, the Fed can no longer support the economy or the stock market; any attempt to stimulate them will only cause more inflation. Let’s review.

Fatal Conceits: We’ve all spent most of our lives in an age of plenty. After WWII, it seemed like it would be onwards and upwards forever. Growth, prosperity and progress seemed like they were in the bag. It was a period of great conceit too. Americans came to feel that they were a special people. “We see further,” is how the now deceased and very dispensable Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, put it. We are the “indispensable nation.”

The conceit grew out of power… and along with them both came fantasy thinking, corruption and debt. There was no war we thought we couldn’t win, though we won none. Overseas, we claimed the right, for us and for us alone, to invade, to assassinate, and to execute – no judge or jury necessary. And at home, we aimed to abolish poverty and to forbid the use of drugs that lacked FDA approval.

The elite professed to be working for ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ even as they grew further and further removed from the common people, whom they regarded as deplorable. They aimed to turn Iraq into an American-model democracy, complete with ATMs on every corner and Sunday night football. And though all their previous crusades ended in woeful failure, they still believed that they do the most remarkable things – turning women into men, and men into women… and adjusting the thermostat for the entire planet.

But it was money that undid them. Their boondoggles, illusions, and jackass programs were expensive. By 1971, the Nixon administration shifted to a pure-paper money system (with nothing to limit the quantity of money or protect its value) and the trap was set.

The New Old Era: The Fed and its member banks funded the federal government by expanding the money supply, lending out newly created dollars – especially to the US government. GDP growth slowed. But debt growth sped up. In 1980, US debt was still under $1 trillion. Now, it is $31 trillion… and growing fast. By the 21st century, the whole economy was so tricked-up on debt and delusion that productivity declined. Real wages went down. The Fed pumped up financial assets… while ‘globalization’ brought China into the world economy to help keep down consumer prices.

Come 2021, and the gods seemed to turn against the USA. Consumer prices were rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Fed had to put its money-printing on pause. And later, when inflation didn’t disappear, it had to ‘tighten’ – reversing the policies and profligacy that created the Bubble Epoch. No more bailouts. No more stimmies. No more zero interest rate lending. And no more bull market.

And here we are, in a ‘new era.’ It is new to most Americans. But it is actually a very old era. Every fake boom is followed by a bust. And every attempt to ‘print your way out of it,’ is followed by worse inflation. The best way out is to follow the advice we gave the Belarusians. They didn’t take it. Neither will the USA."
Joel’s Note: As you might have seen the US National Debt officially surpassed $31 trillion earlier this week. There’s a lot of hang wringing and finger pointing among both Republicans and Democrats, but they needn’t waste their energy… there’s more than enough blame to share between both parties.

It took the republic roughly two hundred years to amass its first $1 trillion in debt, a bar it cleared back in October, 1981. Since then, it’s been off to the races, with each successive president adding more and more to the total debt. Reagan piled on $1.8 trillion… George H.W. Bush another $1.5 trillion… and Bill Clinton $1.4 trillion. Then came the heavy hitters…

Between 2001 and 2009, George W. Bush added $6.1 trillion to the national burden, before Barack Obama said “hold my beer,” and dropped another $8.3 trillion on top. Then came Donald Trump, the man who was going to march on down to Washington DC and “drain the swamp.” During his four years at the helm, the national debt grew by a whopping $8.2 trillion… almost as much as it did under his predecessor, only in half the time.

Then, when the moment came for Mr. Trump to leave office, sky high, multi-trillion dollar deficits were essentially par for the course…So high had the national debt piled that it was almost impossible to see the peak with the naked eye. Earlier this year, in his State of the Union speech, Mr. Biden even crowed that he would be “the only president ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.” It was a bit like saying, “I’ll be the first ever smoker to reduce my daily intake by 100 cigarettes!” One had to be a serious addict in the first place in order to cut so much from the fix. And it’s not as though our aging smoker is a paragon of health…

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates: “The Biden Administration has enacted policies through legislation and executive actions that will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031 [...] This is on top of the trillions of dollars we were projected to borrow before President Biden took office.” $31 trillion is a big number, to be sure… but one gets the feeling we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…"

"In These Downbeat Times..."

"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each other s throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation - and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."
- Cornel West

Jim Kunstler, "November Surprise?"

"November Surprise?"
by Jim Kunstler

"Can you picture what will be? So limitless and free… 
Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand… 
In a desperate land…" 
- The Doors, "The End"

"Welcome to the season of chaos, sponsored by the Party of Chaos, America’s Democratic Party, owner and operator of the shadowy “Joe Biden” regime, dedicated to wrecking what’s left of the country - and the rest of Western Civ with it. Do you think I exaggerate? Consider for a moment that your personal ruin - the loss of your freedoms, your livelihoods, and your posterity - is at stake behind the more general demolition of our society.

We are barreling into an election that will determine the composition of Congress. There is much chatter about whether this election will be allowed to happen. Signs and portents point to a grievous loss of power for the Party of Chaos. Power is all they care about - certainly not the public interest or the common good - and a particular sort of power: the power to coerce, persecute, and punish.

It is obvious in everything they do, from the FBI swat-team home invasions of select opponents and the gross mistreatment of the January 6 defendants, to the craven censoring of public speech, to the imposition of medical tyranny and the deadly fraud of Covid shots, to the degenerate insults of their race-and-gender hustles, to their assault on the value of our money, to their sabotage of the oil-and-gas industries, to their treasonous abandonment of border control, to the deliberate perversion of policing and public order, to their promulgation of a faithless and unnecessary war, sharply against our national interests, in faraway Ukraine.

Adults understand that politics is a crooked business, but through the whole of US history until now filters existed in the public arena that allowed for enough sorting out of truth from untruth to enable the formation of a reality-based consensus - which, in turn, allowed daily life to operate coherently. The Party of Chaos has thrown the kill-switch on that crucial function by corrupting the news business and subverting the new social media. The result is a public culture of pervasive and immersive lying, and a stupendous institutional failure of the courts to correct any of that behavior.

Case-in-point: the John Durham Special Counsel Investigation on the origin of the RussiaGate fraud. It now apparently terminates in the prosecution of the tiniest minnow (Igor Danchenko) in that vast inland sea of corruption. Some of the figures who carried out the perfidious seditions of RussiaGate are still employed in the Department of Justice and the FBI, and to this day are active in the continued cover-up of the crimes committed to overthrow President Trump, notably: Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and others.

Mr. Durham is supposedly among the highest officers of the federal courts charged with enforcing a very particular region of criminality. His staff must be marinated in evidence of the RussiaGate misdeeds - reams of which have been independently documented in the public record, ranging from (just for example) the nefarious activities of figures like Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ higher-up Bruce Ohr, working as go-between with Christopher Steele and the FBI, to the spectacular failures of Judge James Boasberg and his FISA court, not to mention the well-known machinations of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Rob Rosenstein, Dana Boente, James Baker, Andrew Weissmann, Jeannie Rhee, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Robert Mueller, and other top officials who worked sedulously against the public interest. All these remain apparently off-the-hook for their sketchy activities.

How did that happen? If the Party of Chaos loses control of its Congressional majority, Mr. Durham may have to answer that question. And until he does, American justice will remain a deeply broken institution that citizens can’t trust. In that light, how is our country any better than the most overt petty despotisms around the world? How does it deserve the citizens’ respect or even compliance?

The stakes in the midterm elections are huge for the Party of Chaos, and its worker bees may be capable of any duplicity to throw it off the rails. In my soon-to-drop next podcast, blogger Tom Luongo (of Gold, Goats, and Guns) introduces a surprising twist: the election takes place, he says, but the Party of Chaos finds a way to delay the announcement of the results via procedural shenanigans that go on for weeks after November 8, leaving the country in a state of anxious limbo. What an idea! Such a strategy would wreck the last shred of public trust in elections without having to cancel, postpone, or overtly overthrow the process. It would also invite just the sort of public protest that the Party of Chaos can spin into another insurrection narrative.

I’m strangely confident that there is a hidden column of people that love this country who will not allow this final insulting scam to succeed. Its appearance among us will shock and amaze the multitudes. The rule of the Woke Jacobin maniacs will end. And even though we’ll have to live through the wreckage they brought about, we’ll move about this strange new landscape of hardship in the light of reality-made-visible, seeing clearly what has happened and knowing what we must do to revive our country."
The Doors, "The End"

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Getting Ridiculous! Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 10/7/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! 
This Is Getting Ridiculous! Not Good!"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing massive price increases! 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:

Gregory Mannarino, "Be Afraid: Biden Warns Of 'Nuclear Armageddon' As Debt Market Instability Returns"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/7/22:
"Be Afraid: Biden Warns Of 'Nuclear Armageddon' 
As Debt Market Instability Returns"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

And when this senile old fool drops dead we get 
President Kamala "Kneepads" Harris... hmmm.
As the Mogambo Guru would say, "We're so freakin' doomed!"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up, 10/7/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up, 10/7/22"
OPEC Cuts, UN Demands, CDC Hides Dangerous Vax Data
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"It looks like consumers are going to have to pay more at the pump after Saudi Arabia announced a 2-million barrel per day cut in oil production. The Russians asked the Saudi Royal Family for the cuts to stabilize prices and even make them go back up. Why are the Saudis doing what Russia asks in oil production? You might remember, in August of 2021, the Russians signed a military cooperation deal with the Kingdom, and that means they are allies. The White House is furious because oil is going right back up just as the 2022 midterms have Democrats worried about losing the House and the Senate because of high inflation. Oil prices backing off in the last few months was a bright spot, but not any longer because of the new supply cuts.

Meanwhile, the dollar keeps soaring while the Fed keeps raising interest rates. For the first time ever, the UN is telling the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rates to fight inflation. The rest of the world is buckling under the strong dollar. The UN wants price controls instead, and every economist out there knows price controls do not work. On top of that, it will only make the supply lines worse, which will in turn make inflation worse. It’s a catch 22 with no good answers. Get ready for sparse supplies in many things and higher prices too.

The CDC was caught hiding negative data on CV19 injections for nearly two years. The CDC signed up 10 million people for a CV19 vax tracking app called “V-safe.” The data showed lots of vax problems, and the CDC hid it from the public. Two lawsuits finally pried the data loose, and it showed the vaccine was not safe and caused injuries right from the beginning that required medical attention. It also caused 24% of people to not be able to work or go to school. It’s yet another back eye for the CDC for covering up how deadly and debilitating the CV19 vax was from the very beginning. The shots should have been stopped more than a year ago–but they keep on injecting." There is much more in the 35-minute newscast.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these stories 
and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 10/07/22:

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "Urgent! Major Development: They're Getting Ready! Insane Times"

Canadian Prepper, 10/6/22:
"Urgent! Major Development:
 They're Getting Ready! Insane Times"
"The Government just admitted what they're stockpiling, 
to say it's terrifying is an understatement."
Comments here:

"The Coming Retirement Crisis Will Wipe Out Millions Of American Families"

Full screen recommended.
"The Coming Retirement Crisis Will Wipe
 Out Millions Of American Families"
by Epic Economist

"The worsening retirement crisis plaguing the U.S. means that over half of the population will never be able to hang their work hats up, relax and enjoy their senior years. And many of those who do retire face the risk of falling into poverty in old age as they run out of funds and Social Security benefits fail to provide an adequate safety net for everyone. On top of that, given that the price of pretty much everything we buy and consume on a daily basis continues to reach one record high after the other, and the fact that 61% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, it’s never been harder for U.S. workers to start saving for retirement. In other words, today’s cost of living crisis will be tomorrow’s retirement crisis, and all of us are going to be dramatically affected by it.

For years, we have been warned that our country was marching toward a retirement crisis of epic proportions. But still, nothing has been done to effectively prevent things from getting worse, and conditions have become increasingly more difficult for U.S. workers to have the chance to put a percentage of their incomes aside for the future. The truth is that our retirement system is broken, and at this point, everyone agrees that it is heading for a major disaster.

Data released by the National Institute on Retirement Security reveals that over the past 35 years, 401(k) participants are not contributing regularly, asking for withdrawals, and not repaying their loans. On top of that, “we have a lot of individuals who have nothing saved for retirement, about 40 percent of the workforce,” said Diane Oakley, the executive director of the NIRS, adding that when her organization used census data to assess whether households were saving enough to retire with eight times their projected income, a very conservative estimate of retirement preparedness, “we found that 60 percent of households weren’t on track.”

Adding to this dire picture is the fact that for the first time since 1973, unemployment among workers over the age of 55 has remained higher than that of mid-career professionals for more than six months. Around 30% of workers now plan to postpone retirement and work longer. Others, facing poor working conditions, may instead choose to retire sooner and with less saved. For many, entering retirement early will mean balancing the rising costs of healthcare — estimated at nearly $300,000 for an average 65-year-old couple — with food, housing, and expenses related to long-term care.

Bills never seem to stop piling up, even as we get older. Simply put, many older workers who urgently need to contribute additional savings for retirement may never be able to do so. The consequences of this worsening crisis are going to be severe for both American families and the national economy, as a large share of households are forced to significantly reduce consumption in retirement and will have to rely heavily on their families, charities, and the government for help to make ends meet. Instead of having control of their economic lives, millions of Americans will have to muddle through their final years dependent on others for financial support and seeing their standard of living collapsing right before their eyes while the American dream slowly dies."

Gerald Celente, "Keep Staying Stupid, Follow Your Leaders"

Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, 10/6/22:
"Keep Staying Stupid, Follow Your Leaders"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:

"Looking At A Super Bubble Today - Greatest Crash Ever; Avoid Housing And Debt"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/6/22:
"Looking At A Super Bubble Today - 
Greatest Crash Ever; Avoid Housing And Debt"
Comments here:

“When Pigs Fly”

“When Pigs Fly”
(...or The Archaic Nature of the Jones Act)
by Addison Wiggin

“You can’t fatten the pig on market day.”
- John Howard

“Pigging” is the method used to clean sediment build-up in pipelines. You may have known that before the Nordstream Pipeline was sabotaged. Or maybe not. Allow us to indulge in the mechanics: Devices known as “pigs” are inserted into a “pig launcher” (or “launching station”). The launching station is then closed and the pressure-driven flow of the product in the pipeline is used to push the “pig” down the pipe until it reaches the receiving trap — the “pig catcher” (or “receiving station”).

As the pig travels through the pipeline, it pushes out sediment and cleans the pipe walls, leaving the pipeline ready for the next transfer of gas or oil. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in this case. The pig is frequently propelled with nitrogen. The original pig designs were made from straw wrapped in barbed wire – they made a squealing noise while traveling through the pipe, like a pig, which gave the method its name.
The starting phase of an otherwise benign pig launch.
“This is where you could have easily put explosives on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” suspects Mark Rossano of C6 Capital Holdings. Mr. Rossano continues: "You would know in which direction it exploded based on which way the metal is bent. Is it bent outwards, facing in which direction…? And then if it’s something where it was done from external, obviously everything would be bent inward. We could get a decent amount of information just from pictures. So we have to wait for it to empty out completely, just for fear of getting too close."

Conjecture aside, Mr. Rossano’s running joke is that “the US diver and the Russian diver bonked heads going down, and they just decided to divide and conquer… who would blow up what.” You can listen to his whole description of pigging and the Nord Stream 2 sabotage by clicking here.

The explosion off the coast of Denmark and Sweden last week – just outside NATO territorial waters, mind you – exacerbates global LNG supply concerns. If gas is not coming through that pipeline then more LNG has to come from the United States, or some other place in the global market, to heat the homes of Danes, Swedes, Germans, the Dutch... and all those other little monarchies this winter. And that’s just the problem. Winter is coming. The clock is ticking. The cold months are a pig’s snort away.

We’re currently in what Rossano calls “the shoulder season.” Prices remain stable for the most part until demand picks up for real. LNG is mainly frozen. Without the pipeline, other methods of transportation will have to be used. Europe is bracing for less product in exchange, plus a drastic slow down in the time it takes for the gas to be delivered. “We have a ton of natural gas in the US,” Rossano says. “We have a ton of natural gas liquids. We really need to focus on tapping that and moving it through the system in the most efficient way.”

The way it works today, however, is fraught with inconsistency… He refers to an archaic policy on the books known as The Jones Act. The Jones Act of 1920 has been a fixture of U.S. law and an imposition on the U.S. economy for almost 100 years.
Keeping up with The Jones Act.
The law was presented as a plan to ensure adequate domestic shipbuilding capacity and a ready supply of merchant mariners to be available in times of war or other national emergencies. A century of evidence supports the conclusion that the Jones Act has failed in its main objectives while imposing substantial economic costs. Rossano continues: "You’re looking at a very inefficient system in the United States purely because of an archaic policy standing in the way of… let’s call it safety. Just an example, there’s no way to get LNG cargo from Houston to Boston because there isn’t a Jones Act vessel.

A Jones Act vessel is a vessel that was built, manned, and flagged in the U.S. So that means if Boston wants U.S. cargo, it has to go from the U.S. to the UK, get put into a tank, get put back on the boat, and then it can come over to Boston. And then it’s not even enough to maintain the pressure of the system. Then they have to take compressed gas in trucks all throughout Pennsylvania, drive them over to injection points along the system, stack them eight to 12 deep, so that if you have a cold spell and people start pulling that gas out quickly, they start lining those trucks up and injecting the gas in order to maintain flow."

All the rules get weird when gas must get shipped across the gargantuan puddle known as the Atlantic. The Cato Institute expands on the Jones Act, calling it “archaic” and “perfunctory”: As a result of these restrictions, the U.S. economy endures artificially inflated shipping costs because the transport of cargo between U.S. ports and within the country’s vast inland waterways is off-limits to foreign competition and domestic shipping firms must pay vastly higher prices for the ships they use.

Basic supply and demand dictates a hellish future for consumers in the coming months. We’ve been anticipating a “Nightmare Winter.” And thus far, we don’t see any reason the trend will change.

So it goes,"

"No Cash at the ATMs"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 10/6/22:
"No Cash at the ATMs"
"If it was just one bank it wouldn’t be a concern. I am hearing from multiple banks and credit unions that they are limiting cash withdrawals out of the ATM. Do you know if your ATM limit has been reduced lately?"
Comments here:
Personal experience:
A week ago my credit union website had a large notice warning of "wide spread debit card fraud." On Tuesday was a notice that "All ATMs in all branches are unavailable." Today a new warning that "Online services for inquiries and transactions are unavailable." "Something" is very definitely happening... and it's not good. - CP

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Full screen recommended.
Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.
Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

"What Really Matters"

"What Really Matters"
A reality-check on what's truly important in life.
by Adam Taggart

"Here at PeakProsperity.com, we devote a lot of focus to building wealth and other forms of "capital". This website has hosted thousands of discussions over the years on how to preserve and increase wealth. But what's it all for?

Every so often, it's useful to pull waay back to look at the big picture. To re-examine the Why? underlying our plans and aspirations. Most of us don't do this very often. We usually only do so after life throws us a curve ball - often some form of tragedy or crisis - that suddenly forces us to re-evaluate everything we may have taken for granted beforehand.

I've certainly been guilty of some of this complacency. I think Chris would admit to a little, as well. But sadly, we've both recently experienced traumatic events that have forced a renewed appreciation of what truly matters in life. For me, my (very personal and highly subjective) conclusion is that "what matters" pretty much boils down to just two things:

1. living with meaning, and
2. valued relationships.

Everything else - money, knowledge, possessions, skills, experiences...even our beliefs and actions - are means to achieve those two goals.

Living with meaning is a huge topic. One we've addressed in parts occasionally here which I expect we'll tackle more ambitiously in the future. But for now, I just want to point out that it's rooted within the individual. Each of us has to identify what "meaning" is for ourselves, and then determine how best to pursue it in our lives. (Much easier said than done, of course).

Valued relationships, on the other hand, are by definition interpersonal. As our podcast with Pulitzer prize-winning author Sebastian Junger explored, humans are evolutionarily hard-wired to co-exist in community with others. Deriving self-worth from our relationships is simply a fundamental feature of the human species. And the theme of the remainder of this article.

Some Learnings From The Big Picture View: A sad reality is that we often don't actively appreciate the value of our relationships until they're in jeopardy or lost for good. As mentioned earlier, Chris and I have both had recent reminders of this.

Chris lost a nephew a few weeks ago. 18 years old and died in his sleep of an undiagnosed congenital heart condition. A promising, accomplished, athletic young man who simply went to bed and never woke up. Pretty much any parent's worst nightmare.

In my case, my older daughter was at the beach a few days ago with some friends. One of them ran into the surf, dove into an incoming wave...and didn't resurface. His friends managed to drag him out of the water alive, but his neck was broken. He's currently in the hospital without use of his hands or legs.

Morbid stuff, I realize. But I'm not trying to depress you; there are a few worthwhile points to make here.

Don't Wait Until It's Too Late: Hearing from Chris about his nephew's death, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a few folks at our annual seminar back in April. In it, I was reflecting on a memorial service I had recently attended. The gentleman who died was older and not in good health, so his death wasn't a complete shock. He was also a little socially odd - a well-meaning guy, but with an overbearing approach that could be a little too much to handle for very long.

However, the memorial service was amazing. The sentiments shared about him by his friends and family were so wonderful, so loving, and so successful at capturing the best parts of his character to remember and honor. It wasn't false praise - it was all accurate material. Just the good stuff.

I left feeling lucky to have known him and sadder than I'd realized at losing him in my life. I mean this in all sincerity: if folks talk only half as nicely about me when I'm gone, I'd call that a big win. But the tragedy here is that I'm fairly confident the deceased gentleman heard little to none of this praise while he was alive. He very likely died ignorant of the positive influence he had made in the lives of many, instead thinking of himself as the guy others tried to avoid at parties. How sad is that?

That thought got me wondering: Why do we wait until after someone dies to honor them? To express the appreciation we leave unspoken during daily life due to familiarity, cultural norms, busy routine, distance, etc. Wouldn't it be more enjoyable and effective for everyone involved if our culture had a custom in which we celebrate the full measure of someone's life - and they actually get to participate in that celebration, and reflect their gratitude back?

When I raised this at the seminar, there was pretty much universal agreement that such a custom would be welcomed. And interestingly, there were a few folks who had actually experienced something like it. One had enjoyed a surprise 50th birthday party where his family and best friends from each stage of life had been flown in, each of whom spoke from the heart about how they valued him. He said it was a top life moment for him - every bit as meaningful as I was imagining it would be.

I love this idea of an "appreciation ceremony" and I *definitely* plan to do it for the most important folks in my life (wife, family members, close friends). And I'll hope, perhaps, some of them may do the same for me one day. But more generally, I take from all this - underscored by the stinging loss of Chris' nephew - a motivation to be more vocal, more frequently, with my appreciation for others.

Being honest, this won't come easily to me. Having grown up in an emotionally-restricted New England WASP household, the muscle history just isn't there for direct expression of high-intensity sentiment. But it will be healthy to work on. Those I care about will know that I care, why I care, and to the degree that I care. And I'll have the peace of mind of knowing that should a runaway bus take them - or me - tomorrow, the important stuff will not have been left unsaid.

Tragedy Can Bring Out Our Best Selves: I've spent much of the past 72-hours going back and forth from the hospital where my daughter's paralyzed friend is recovering. It's been very tough emotionally - especially watching his parents sit vigil. The situation is exactly like something out of a TV movie. This young man is a star scholar-athlete at the local high school and co-captain of the varsity football team. He's good-looking, charismatic and universally liked around town. His family has lived here for generations and are heavily involved in the community (his father was a local firefighter for 45 years). This tragedy could literally not happen to a nicer family.

As you can imagine, the outpouring of support from the community has been immense. Folks offering hugs, food, rides, child care, laundry services, fund raising, medical connections - you name it, it's being extended.

While sometimes overwhelming for the family, it is clear to see that the community support has been a crucial factor in keeping them from crumpling under the fear and stress resulting from the accident. I feel like I've had a front-row seat to witness the communal bonding process that Sebastian Junger describes in the podcast mentioned above.

Junger points out that humans evolved while living in tribes that needed to band together for survival against a hostile world (e.g., predators, other tribes, weather, famine). Humans have lived like this until very, very recently - historically speaking. Thus, his conclusion is that we are wired to live in connection with our community (our tribe), especially in ways that protect that community from adversity. So you can make the argument that community + adversity = authentic living. In other words, when we pull together with those around us in times of crisis, we are truly living as nature intended us to.

I am certainly seeing this in my present experience. The grace, the generosity, the selflessness, the love, the sense that we are all part of something larger than ourselves - it's astonishing to witness. Especially when compared to the radically more superficial way we all interacted beforehand. This crisis is giving people the permission and inspiration to "be" more real, more authentic, with each other. To be a tribe.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few days reflecting on Junger's tribal theory, and have decided to add the following addendum to it: While never desirable, adversity/tragedy gives us the opportunity to step into our best selves. Not everyone will. But we all have the chance to. And it's how we're designed to be.

I share all this partly as a little writing therapy to help me cope with the stress of the past few days, but more importantly, to give you some perspective that I hope will be useful in the years to come.

Understand what I mean when I say there are some very sizable disasters headed our way. They are mathematically unavoidable at this point. But while we can't control *what* will happen, we each can control *how* we will meet and react to it. Advance preparation is essential. But no plan is foolproof. Having the ability to deal with unexpected setbacks is also key - which a tribe helps immensely with."

"Find your tribe. Celebrate it in the moment. 
And bring out your best self in support of it.”
"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
 but of respect and joy in each other's life. 
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
- Richard Bach, "Illusions: The Adventures of A Reluctant Messiah"

"A Message from the Hopi Elders"

"A Message from the Hopi Elders"

"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.
Here are the things that must be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift, that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personal. Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word "struggle" from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we have been waiting for!"

- Oraibi, Arizona, Hopi Nation

Chet Raymo, “Singing Beside Me In The Wilderness”

“Singing Beside Me In The Wilderness”
by Chet Raymo

“In one of those infuriating lapses that go with being a certain age, we could not remember the other evening the name of the poet who wrote "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou..." After scraping the tip of my tongue for a few minutes, I turned to the computer (Google is my browser's home page) and by typing "jug thou" brought Omar Khayyam back into consciousness. (Another click and I could have had the entire Rubaiyat.) (Freely download the entire "Rubaiyat" at that link. - CP)

And so it is that the Googlized internet arrives just in time to compensate for our withering brain cells. Everything I ever remembered is there to be Googled, plus everything I never remembered. Ten billions pages. The searchable memory of the human race. With more yet to come.

My great-great-grandchildren will no doubt have tiny video cameras implanted in the middle of their foreheads, like Hindu beauty marks, recording everything that passes before their eyes 24-7, with a sound track too. All of which will be stored digitally, ready for instant playback, and searchable by date, time, GPS coordinates, or keywords- the whole of a life, not only available to the subjects themselves in their memory-lapsed dotage, but to future generations. "Here's great-great-grandpa on his ninety-first birthday, back in 2027. Look how he dribbles soup on his shirt. Ha, ha."

I think nature knew what it was doing when it allows our memory to fade with age. It is particularly notable that the more unpleasant memories go first, so that every summer past was golden with sunshine, and every child was a model of respectful propriety. And no one, not even grandpa himself, remembers the time he... “

"Because..."

"There is much asked and only so much I think I can or should answer, and so, in this post I would like to give a few thoughts on what seemed to be the overwhelming question: "WHY?" And here is the best answer I can give: Because. Because sometimes, life is damned unfair. Because sometimes, we lose people we love and it hurts deeply. Because sometimes there aren't really answers to our questions except for what we discover, the meaning we assign them over time. Because acceptance is yet another of life's "here's a side of hurt" lessons and it is never truly acceptance unless it has cost us something to arrive there. Why, you ask? Because, I answer. Inadequate yet true."
- Libba Bray

"That's All There Is..."

"Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it.
Kate Lockley: And now you do?
Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because, I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.
Kate Lockley: Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany.
Angel: I keep saying that, but nobody's listening."

Free Download: "The Essential Rumi"

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there. Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home."
- Rumi, "The Tavern," Ch. 1:, p. 2, from "The Essential Rumi"

Freely download "The Essential Rumi" here:
https://littlethingsaboutmeeh.files.wordpress.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Halfweg, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. Thanks for stopping by!

"Bubble, Bubble Toil and Trouble"

"Bubble, Bubble Toil and Trouble"
Like a hell broth boil... the Fed's potion brought 
forth all manner of wicked distortions.
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Baltimore, Maryland - "YODO… you only die once. Print it out. Put it on your refrigerator. The great Bubble distorted markets. It distorted the economy. It distorted politics and government. It distorted everything. It bent spoons. It curdled milk. And it left people with eternal truths that weren’t true for one minute.

Almost everything was weirded through the bubble prism. Money appeared to be almost unlimited… stocks always went up… the feds could spend billions… or even trillions… on any goofy project they wanted… and America – financed by its fake money – ruled the world. YOLO, you only live once, was the prevailing zeitgeist. You had to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime fantasy world: get it while the gittin’ was good.

The young, restless and reckless bought cryptos or ‘the next Apple’ or ‘the next Google’ or the next something. Older, more cautious investors followed Buffett. They thought they could buy-and-hold their way to wealth. They were in ‘stocks for the long run,’ expecting to make money simply because they were wise enough to stay ‘in the market.’

All for Naught: Both young and old, aggressive and cautious, were wrong. Over time, stocks do not become more valuable. What really happens is that money becomes less valuable, making higher stock prices look better. In terms of real money, gold, prices are about where they were in the boom of the 1920s – a century ago. You could have bought the 30 Dow stocks in 1929 for 18 ounces of gold. And what are the Dow stocks worth today? About 18 ounces of gold. Ninety years later… no gain. All of that hullabaloo – the Crash of ’29… the Great Depression… WWII… the Nifty Fifty… the Oil Shock… Inflation… LTCM… Ben Bernanke… the Covid Panic – for nothing. But in the dreamtime of the Bubble Epoch, the Fed was pumping in money… and the yachts were rising.

Our message today: the gittin’ ain’t good no more. Ante-2022, every pullback in the stock market was an opportunity to ‘buy the dip’ and make money. Losses were temporary; they lasted only for a few months, the time it took for the Fed to get more money into the system. The Fed was backstopping investors for many years. Now it is backstabbing them. And now, when the knife goes in your back, it stays there. Because the Fed can’t bring up the ambulance, not without also bringing more inflation.

Yesterday, we looked at why the Fed can no longer be counted on to raise stock prices. First, because the momentum of a recession is likely to drag stocks down anyway. A ‘pause’ by the Fed is likely to make little difference.

Second, because the Fed is famously trapped. It can continue inflating… or it can let the Bubble die. It can’t do both at the same time. A U-turn now will mark the beginning of the next phase of inflation. Howevermuch asset prices may go up, inflation is likely to cut them down even more.

Don’t Think Once, It’s All Right: The lurid history of inflation should cause policymakers to think twice before pivoting away from inflation fighting. In France, high rates of inflation in 1787 -1788 it led to the bloody French Revolution and the Terror. In Russia, 1917, inflation set the stage for the Bolshevik Revolution. Germany, 1921-23, it led to the rise of Adolph Hitler. In Argentina, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Venezuela – there are no inflation stories with happy endings. All end in misery, poverty, war and/or revolution. But the elite don’t even think once. And they’re already egging the Fed on… to go back to inflating.

Here’s a typical ‘think piece’ on Substack: "Raising interest rates is a blunt means to fight inflation. It worsens living costs and job losses, while tax cuts mainly benefit the rich. Instead, the rich should be taxed more to enhance revenue to increase public provisioning of essential services, such as transport, health and education."

And here’s Markets Insider dusting off a Nobel winner: "Nobel laureate Paul Krugman warns the Fed risks going too far in fighting inflation - and predicts a return to rock-bottom interest rates.The Nobel Prize-winning economist has also predicted an eventual return to near-zero interest rates once price increases are brought under control."

And here’s the UN with its own high-minded thoughts. CommonDreams: "A United Nations organization on Monday joined critics of the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks across the globe hiking interest rates with the goal of reining in inflation. "Not only is there a real danger that the policy remedy could prove worse than the economic disease, in terms of declining wages, employment, and government revenues, but the road taken would reverse the pandemic pledges to build a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive world," the document warns."

Closer to home, analysts think the recent falloff in job offerings will harm the poor and put pressure on the Fed to do its U-Turn sooner rather than later. They say inflation is temporary, or that it is caused by “supply chain bottlenecks” that can be solved by “policy changes.”

Of course, the concern for the poor is as fraudulent as the dollar itself. The poor don’t care if Amazon shares go down; what they care about is the price of milk and gasoline. And as for the policy changes, the only ones that would reduce inflation – cutting spending and regulation – are the ones the policymakers are least likely to make. But the elite rule the world. And it is just a matter of time until they get their way.

YODO.

Stay tuned..."
Joel’s Note: "Left to its own devices, the market metes out reward and punishment to those who deserve it. Whether over-leveraged financial institution or under-performing developer… over-priced lemonade stand or under-stocked iGadget warehouse… the market, through honest price information, like profit and loss signals, allocates capital to those who treat it best.

But during the Fed’s “bubble, bubble, toil and trouble” years, cheap money distorted prices to such an extent that investors had no idea which companies were, in fact, financially sound… and which were merely riding the rising tide of EZ credit.

As the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises observed, “The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce resources of production and reduces stock available through overconsumption; its alleged blessings are paid for through impoverishment.”

We do well to remember that the “crack up boom,” as Mises describes it elsewhere, is largely a man-made phenomenon. From artificially cheap credit at the one end… through to government “bailouts” and “too big to fail” shenanigans at the other, where profits are privatized and losses socialized, the natural processes of the market are subverted and distorted.

“I’ve described the coming financial crisis as a big storm coming off the ocean and getting ready to make landfall,” Bonner Private Research’s Tom Dyson wrote to members in a note yesterday. “But it’s not the right metaphor. Storms are a natural occurrence. Financial crises are man made.”

How so, you wonder? Tom, again…"A collapsing dam is a much better metaphor for what’s coming. The system managers built a dam to suppress volatility and prop up the stock market. I’ve called it the greatest financial experiment in history. The problem is, their intervention created a gigantic gap between quoted financial prices and actual real-world values. And now that dam is collapsing, which means we’re about to witness a violent equalization in the water level, what we might call a “financial panic” or even a “bear market.”

Unless policy makers change their minds, it feels like the dam could burst at any moment. The fact pattern shows that the global economy is becoming more and more “crashy” by the day.

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - is another one of those acronyms that floated to the surface during the “bubble bubble” days… and it can be difficult to resist the temptation to be suckered back into equities during bear market “relief” rallies. But Tom and Dan remain adamant. Engage Maximum Safety Mode. When the levees break, you’ll be glad you did."

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Liquidity Crisis Is Getting Worse Faster! Along With A Currency Crisis- It's Coming Apart"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/6/22:
"Alert! Liquidity Crisis Is Getting Worse Faster! 
Along With A Currency Crisis - It's Coming Apart"
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