Saturday, October 15, 2022

"The Bottom of the Barrel"

"The Bottom of the Barrel"
Draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
 chasing runaway inflation and preparing for the worst...
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Inflation, goes the old joke, is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you still had hair. Here in Argentina’s capital, we remember paying 100 pesos for a haircut, which included a straight razor shave and a whisky. Old school-style. At the time, 100 pesos was worth about $5. But that was back in... what was it, 2013, 2014? Today (yesterday, actually), that same cut, shave and tipple, cost us $7... which is currently equal to ~2,000 pesos. A 40% increase in dollar terms, in other words... but a 2,000% increase in pesos. Once again, when it comes to the race to the fin del mundo, Argentina leads the way!

Back in the northern hemisphere, meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us this week what every American who pays rent, buys gas, eats food, etc. probably already knows... which is to say, inflation is anything but “transitory.” Wednesday’s BLS report showed the Consumer Price Index running at an 8.2% year-over-year increase, while the Core Index (for those of you who do not eat or use energy), came in at 6.6%, the largest year-on-year increase in forty years (going back to August, 1982). Moreover, at 0.4%, the monthly CPI increase was double what “experts” had forecast. The Core Index, sans food and fuel, was up 0.6%. The difference between CPI and Core reading represents the drop in energy prices over the month (fuel oil was down -2.7%; gasoline -4.9%).

Killer Crossover: Essentially, it’s a nice break, while you get it... but with the energy crunch only worsening over in Europe (even as winter is still more than two months away), and OPEC+ yanking 2 million bpd from the global supply, one wonders how much longer falling energy prices will exert downward pressure on inflation in the US.

Recall that the Biden administration has been draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in a conspicuous attempt to bring relief at the pump (this national asset will have to be refilled sometime in the future, mind you, presumably at much higher prices), but as the chart below shows, this is hardly a long term solution… (colleague Dan Denning sent this one over earlier in the week with the title “Killer Crossover.” Indeed!)
The Biden administration pledged to draw another 10 million barrels from the SPR back in early October... just enough to tide voters over until after the mid-term elections... but there’s only so many left barrels in the “oil for votes” reserve. Already at a 40yr low, the nation’s “oil piggy bank” is fast running dry.

What happens if (or when) energy tilts in a positive direction again? If, even as the Fed is hiking rates (further) into a recession, inflation proves too fleet to overtake? What then? "The bottom line,” Dan broke it down for members in his Friday market note, “is that the financial world cannot take a much stronger dollar and higher US interest rates while the real world cannot take sustained inflation of near 10%. Something has to give. But what?”

Earlier in the week we showed you this graph, plotting the return of both US stock and bond markets going back almost a century, to the Jazz Age.
As you can see, 2022 is keeping some pretty miserable company down there in the lower left-hand quadrant (1931 and 1967). When things get this extreme, it’s worth looking at the other side of the prevailing trend…

In other words, could the worst be behind us? It’s a question Dan took up in yesterday’s note. Here, a key snippet..."What if bonds are telling us the worst is already over? Won’t stocks rally from here? That’s not our investment position. But the point of keeping an eye on the price action and poking around in the beaten down corners of the market is to see if something has changed that requires a change on our part.

Consider the chart below, from Bank of America. The Bank released that chart and concluded the most contrarian trade of 2023 is to be ‘long’ a 60/40 portfolio and short the US dollar. As we discussed in the original The Strategy Report, a 60/40 portfolio has a 60% allocation to stocks and 40% to bonds. Bonds, which are typically less volatile, ‘smooth out’ your total returns by balancing more volatile (but higher returning) stocks. That’s the idea anyway.
But when bonds are just as volatile as stocks, and no less risky, you get the chart below: a 34.4% year-to-date decline in a traditional 60/40 portfolio. It may get better by the end of the year, if stocks finish strong and bonds have fully priced in Fed rate hikes (and the rate hikes are exactly what the market is expecting).

As a contrarian, you’d have to be a little intrigued with a 60/40 portfolio doing the worst it has in 100 years. You’d also have to be a little intrigued with the dollar at 23 year highs against the Yen, with the Euro below parity, and the Pound fast approaching parity. All those moves are historically extreme.

The simplest explanation, as I showed in The Dollar Report, is that in a deflationary bust, liquidity flees from less-liquid derivative assets to more liquid cash, bonds, high quality stocks, and government bonds. Ultimately, in a catastrophic bust, liquidity disappears altogether and the holders of hard assets (gold real, collectibles, real estate) are the only ones who can start over in a new currency regime.

What does that mean for investors looking for a place to hide? Dear readers will recall Bill’s advice from Friday’s missive..."In this, the asset sell-off stage, the best place to be is dollar cash. Stick with dollars… until… until that magic moment when investors give up, panic takes hold, and the Fed reverses course. Then, you will want your money in gold, land, antifragile businesses, timber, real estate – anything that might hold its value in an inflationary crisis. “The general rule,” he concluded, “Cash now; Real assets later.” Here’s lookin’ at you, gold!"

“Al Swearengen's Take On Life"

Strong language alert!
"In life you have to do a lot of things you don't ****ing want to do.
Many times, that's what the **** life is... one vile ****ing task after another."
Strong language alert!
"Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair or f***ing beatings. 
The world ends when you’re dead. Until then you got more punishment
 in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.”
- “Al Swearengen”, Ian McShane’s character on “Deadwood”

“Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues To Build Character”

“Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues To Build Character”
by Scotty Hendricks

“At the ripe old age of twenty, Benjamin Franklin set out to make himself morally perfect. Having studied the ancient philosophers and their ideas of the virtues required to be an ideal man, he created his own list of thirteen virtues. Like the virtue ethicists of the ancient past and more modern times, Franklin sought to develop his entire character rather than focus on the question of how to act in a certain situation. His hope being that with the perfection of his character, he would never again have to ask how to act, as he would simply act as a virtuous person would by habit. Never again would he commit a fault at any time, he thought. His selections were ordered by importance, and he saw the earliest ones as being needed to achieve the latter ones. They were also chosen for simplicity, as each covers a small and defined area of character.

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 
2Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 
3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 
5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 
6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 
8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 
9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. 
11. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 
12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. 
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus, Caesar, and Socrates.

His method of enacting these virtues was simple, on a weekly basis he focused on one virtue and one alone, leaving the others to chance and the strength of his character. At the end of each day, he reflected on rather or not he had lived up to that virtue, and recorded the answer. His goal was to make each virtue a habit, and thus achieve moral perfection. By his own admission his failures in reaching moral perfection were many and often of great magnitude. His acknowledged illegitimate son William, his often indomitable pride, and his love for wine which occasionally went to excess are both admitted and well known. 

He also noted that his career choices often prevented him from reaching the ideal of "Order", often by no real fault of his own. As he noted: "My scheme of Order gave me the most trouble; and I found that, tho' it might be practicable where a man's business was such as to leave him the disposition of his time, that of a journeyman printer, for instance, it was not possible to be exactly observed by a master, who must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their own hours." 

However, despite never reaching moral perfection and having the major failures that he acknowledged in his own character. He still continued the project for most of his life. It was the attempt at reaching an ideal that made him better, even if he was remarkably far from reaching it. 

In his own words: "In truth, I myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now I am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it. But, on the whole, tho' I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, tho' they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor, and tolerable, while it continues fair and legible." 

Even when he was unable to reach the ideals of personal growth, by either his own vices or by circumstance, he was constantly able to improve by means of practice. And, in the end, isn't that what matters?”

The Poet: Czeslaw Milosz, "Hope

"Hope"

"Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves."

- Czeslaw Milosz,
"Hope", from "The World"

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Time Lapse"; "The Royal Albert Hall Concert"

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Time Lapse"
Reimagined by Mercan Dede, Visualizer
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "The Royal Albert Hall Concert" (2010)
Reader comment:
Kerry Anneka: "Does anyone else find themselves tearing up or crying when listening to Ludovico's music, purely because of how beautiful it is? I swear it touches me so deeply."
Yes...some others do...

"How It Really Is"

 

"Stocking Up At Kroger! Making A One Minute Instant Pot Meal!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 10/15/22:
"Stocking Up At Kroger! 
Making A One Minute Instant Pot Meal!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! We also buy all the products we need to make a 1 minute instant pot pasta meal from Kroger which ended up being very expensive! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

Friday, October 14, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "What The... This Is Insane! They're Getting Ready"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/14/22:
"What The... This Is Insane! They're Getting Ready"
"I cant believe how real this is getting."
Comments here:

"You Are A Hypocrite And Have No Idea What's Coming; Car Dealers Won't Survive"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/14/22:
"You Are A Hypocrite And Have No Idea What's Coming;
 Car Dealers Won't Survive"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Underwater"; Flora"

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Underwater"
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Flora"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. 
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”

Paulo Coelho, "Killing Our Dreams"

"Killing Our Dreams"
by Paulo Coelho

"The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."

"The Day Has Been So Full Of Fret And Care..."

“The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God.”
- Jerome K. Jerome
Liquid Mind, "Lullaby for Grown Ups"

The Poet: Shel Silverstein, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

“Where the Sidewalk Ends”

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”

- Shel Silverstein

The Daily "Near You?"

Orland Park, Illinois, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Era Of Cheap Food And Cheap Gasoline Is Over"

"The Era Of Cheap Food And Cheap Gasoline Is Over"
by Michael Snyder

"All of our lifestyles are about to change in a major way, but the vast majority of the population still does not understand what is coming. Throughout our entire lives, we have always been able to depend on a couple of things. There would always be cheap gasoline to fuel our vehicles and there would always be mountains of cheap food at the grocery store. No matter who was in the White House and no matter what else was going on in the world, those two things always remained the same. Unfortunately, those days are now over and they aren’t coming back.

We have entered the greatest energy crisis that any of us have ever experienced, and it isn’t going to go away any time soon. So you might as well get used to high gas prices. Earlier this month, brand new all-time record highs were set all over southern California

• Los Angeles-Long Beach – $6.46 (Record high)
• Orange County – $6.42 (Record high Saturday)
• Ventura County – $6.40
• Riverside County – $6.33 (Record high)
• San Bernardino County $6.32

But that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is with natural gas. Thanks to the war in Ukraine, supplies of natural gas in Europe have become extremely tight, and this has pushed prices into the stratosphere.

Needless to say, this is going to greatly affect food productions in the months ahead. According to Bloomberg, over two-thirds of all fertilizer production capacity in Europe has already been shut down due to soaring natural gas costs…"Europe’s fertilizer crunch is deepening with more than two-thirds of production capacity halted by soaring gas costs, threatening farmers and consumers far beyond the region’s borders."

This is an absolutely massive story, but hardly anyone in the United States is covering it. Global fertilizer production is going to be greatly reduced, and that is going to have very serious implications for agricultural production all over the world… “Nitrogen plant shutdowns in Europe are not simply a problem in Europe,” she said. “Reduced supply on the scale seen this week not only raises the marginal cost of production of nitrogen fertilizers, but will also tighten the global market, putting pressure on plant nutrients’ availability in Europe and beyond.”

We’re already seeing prices elsewhere rise again. The price of the common nitrogen fertilizer urea in New Orleans rose over 20% in weekly prices Friday, the most since March, a few weeks after the war began, according to Green Markets. I know that fertilizer may not be the most exciting topic for a lot of people, but the truth is that approximately half the global population would starve if we didn’t have any…"In fact, it’s estimated that nitrogen fertilizer now supports approximately half of the global population. In other words, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch - the pioneers of this technological breakthrough - are estimated to have enabled the lives of several billion people, who otherwise would have died prematurely, or never been born at all."

Let that paragraph sink in for a moment. The only way we can even come close to feeding everyone on the planet is by using vast quantities of fertilizer, but now fertilizer plants all over Europe are being forced to shut down because of the price of natural gas. As long as this global energy crisis persists, the global food crisis will also persist.

Russia is normally the largest exporter of natural gas in the entire world, and an end to the war in Ukraine would go a long way toward solving our current problems. But there isn’t going to be an end to the war in Ukraine. Once again, western leaders are assuring us that the war will not end until Russia is forced out of every inch of Ukrainian territory. That includes Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. Of course the Russians would use tactical nukes long before we ever get to that point. And once the Russians use tactical nukes, the west will do the same.

As it currently stands, there is no “off ramp” for this war. Instead, we are simply counting down the days until it goes nuclear. I am sorry to tell you that, but it is the truth. If the American people truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive peace protests all over the nation right now.

Meanwhile, the worst multi-year megadrought in 1,200 years continues to absolutely ravage agricultural production in the western half of the United States. A reporter from FOX recently visited the cornfields of Wayne County, Nebraska and what he discovered is extremely chilling…“I’m standing in the middle of a cornfield that, if this was a normal year or in other words, if the corn was growing the way it was supposed to be, you wouldn’t even really be able to see me right now,” FOX Business’ Connell McShane reported from Wakefield, Nebraska. “It would be way up above my head. But now I look at this, maybe knee-high at best.” McShane visited field after field in Wayne County and found the same short stalks with very sparse ears. Over 99% of that county is in exceptional drought. This drought has been going on for years and years. And it just keeps getting worse.

On the west coast, we are being warned that production of tomatoes, garlic and onions will be very disappointing this year due to the drought. As a result, prices are going to go much higher in 2023…"In addition to tomatoes, other crops like garlic and onion are also expected to be impacted. “What you’re seeing harvested this summer that really hasn’t even hit the grocery shelf is a 25% increase in the cost of the product to the processors — the canners, the buyers downstream,” California State Board of Food and Agriculture President Don Cameron told Reuters. “The onions and garlic have already been negotiated for 2023 with another 25% increase in price.”

This is really happening. Food prices may seem high to you right now, but the truth is that this is the lowest that they are going to get. The cost of living is becoming extremely oppressive, and countless people out there are really struggling to make it from month to month.

Earlier today, I came across a tweet from a 47-year-old lawyer that really hammered this point home…"20 years ago, working as a server, I lived in a corner 1 bdrm apt downtown with amazing water views for $700/month. A similar apt now $3,600/month, more than 5x as much. As a lawyer at age 47 I am unable to afford living in the apartment I did at age 27 while waiting tables."

Sadly, what we have been through so far is just the beginning. The cost of gasoline is going to continue to go up. The cost of natural gas is going to continue to go up. The cost of food is going to continue to go up. In fact, the cost of just about everything is going to continue to go up. The artificially-inflated lifestyles that we were able to enjoy for decades are now disappearing, and there is a tremendous amount of pain on the horizon. We were warned that this would happen, and now a day of reckoning is here. I would encourage you to prepare accordingly."

"Banks Keeping Your Cash!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 10/14/22:
"Banks Keeping Your Cash!"
"This is almost unbelievable. Banks are holding your Cash and will not release it. I was contacted by over a dozen people around the world that are having the same problems with the financial institution that they deal with. We all need to get ready for the new banking. Beware of what they call biometric banking."
Comments here:

"Do Not Let Your Fire Go Out..."

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the
hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all.”
- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

Free Download: Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
"Francisco’s Money Speech” from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:

"How It Really Is"

 
Good luck!

Must View! Gerald Celente, "Scott Ritter: Ignorance And Fear Causing Nuclear Armageddon"

Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, 10/14/22:
"Scott Ritter: Ignorance And Fear Causing Nuclear Armageddon"
"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."
Related:

Jim Kunstler, "We’re Coming For You"

"We’re Coming For You"
by Jim Kunstler

"Slip slidin’ away… Slip slidin’ away… 
You know the nearer your destination… 
The more you’re slip slidin’ away…" 
- Paul Simon

"Have you noticed, as the election looms, the Party of Chaos trips deeper into its own self-created chaos? Turns out that the effort to make Ukraine the fifty-first state is not going over so well with the voters. Nor is the campaign to convince children to switch sexes. Or the crusade to sell ever more mRNA “vaccines” that the CDC knows good-and-goshdarn-well is killing and maiming credulous citizens by the millions. Or the program for importing limitless alien “vibrance” across the open border with Mexico. As the venerable Rolling Stones sang more than a half century ago: “Rape… murder… it’s just a shot away!” This is the kind of country that the Party of Chaos has been grooming you up for.

It’s not working. We are coming for you: leaders, mesmerized minions, and obliging tools of this Satanic faction that seized the levers of power in America and turned them into wrecking bars. After the nervous hiatus from November to January, we’re coming for you in 2023. You are going to answer for the decisions you took and the rules you made that drove our country to its knees and half out of it mind. We are storming you in your Kafka’s Castle of lies and malice, and we are going to drag you out of there kicking and screaming. Preserving your decorum will not be our first consideration, Rochelle Walensky, Tony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray, and the people who work for you.

There’s a lot of loose talk about some as-yet-unknown Party of Chaos’s ploy to stave off the November 8th reckoning - say, drag out the vote count for weeks and confabulate the results… declare some emergency to shut down in-person voting… or somehow postpone the vote altogether. Nothing like that will go over successfully this time around. The lamp-posts in the WalMart parking lots could be decorated with dangling local election officials who get caught churning phony ballots, tweaking Dominion machines, and taping-up the polling places’ windows with cardboard.

You’re getting no help, meantime, from the folks who run the maundering flunkey you installed as president. They just flipped-off Sergey Lavrov’s invitation to negotiate some reasonable end to your $60-plus billion orchestrated fiasco in Ukraine. These are the people that party apostate Tulsi Gabbard identified lately as “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.” She got that exactly right, and at exactly the right moment in history, too.

Did you actually propose, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, that the purpose of our misadventure in Ukraine was “to weaken Russia?” How’s that working out? I’ll tell you: Russia is fixing to wipe up the floor with its Nazi antagonists in Kiev (and their NATO helpers). Russia is proceeding with prudence and determination to neutralize our country’s foolish provocations, even despite “Joe Biden’s” admission that “Armageddon” is an option. Here’s some news for you, Party of Chaos: Russia is not insane, but you surely are. You, Lloyd Austin, are busy destroying the American military with your deranged sexual boundary bamboozle. Your sinister “vaccine” policies that have led, among other disasters, to a tripling of cancer rates in the ranks. What, exactly, have you succeeded in weakening?

Do you think the American people have failed to notice this? How are those financial sanctions working against Russia, Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, and Susan Rice? Here’s how: they energized trade relations and financial settlements between Russia and the 70-percent of the economic world that is outside the orbit of Western Civ. Meanwhile, they drove the birthplace of Western Civ (Europe) to its knees, upon which it is sliding headlong back to the Twelfth Century. Who told you to do that? George Soros? Klaus Schwab? (Oh, by the way, we’re coming for the two of them also, if they’re still alive in 2023.)

We’ve also had enough, Party of Chaos, of your “Green New Deal” and climate change bullshit. The former is a sheer shuck-and-jive. You propose to mandate the end of gasoline-powered cars in favor of electric cars that charge off of fossil fuel fired power plants? That’s rich. Ironically, though, the whole mass-motoring matrix is failing not on the basis of whatever powers a car but on the simple fact that a sinking middle-class, whose destruction you engineered, can’t afford to buy any kind of car anymore, whatever way it’s powered.

As for your climate change hysteria, consider that human culture has gone through scores of climate swings since the Age of the Pharaohs; the main ones being the Bronze Age warming, the Hellenic cooling, the Roman warming, the Dark Age cooling, the medieval warming, the “Little Ice Age” cooling, and now the present-day warming - with evidence that we are slipping back into another cooling.

The truth is that it has always been difficult for civilizations to adapt to these events, but it’s especially difficult for us with our super-complex, mutually-dependent, hyper-tech systems of daily life, not to mention the giant scale of it all, which pretty much guarantees a hard landing for us. We’re not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World, and the suburbs on any combination of wind, solar, and recycled fry-max oil, so stop pretending, and quit making everything worse than it has to be. We’ve got to make other arrangements for sure, and that will be hard enough - but no thank you on that transhumanist robot utopia you’re trying to sell.

Well, of course, you’d never quit trying. You just have to be defeated. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen. And after you’re defeated, we’re going to come for you, and stuff your asses into those witness chairs, and compel you to come clean on why you worked so hard to destroy the USA. Maybe you’ll apologize. You should be the first to know, though, that it won’t matter. When did anyone’s apology ever induce in you something besides the demonic lust to inflict more pain on your victims?"

"Life's Funny..."

"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."
- Andrew Klavan

"Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 10/14/22:
"Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing some strange 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!"
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Gerald Celente, "They Keep Lying Us Into War, The Bigs Keep Getting Bigger While The People Are Screwed"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 10/13/22:
"They Keep Lying Us Into War, The Bigs Keep
Getting Bigger While The People Are Screwed"
"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."

A must-view classic rant!

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "We Got Some Very Disturbing Messages"

Canadian Prepper, 10/13/22:
"We Got Some Very Disturbing Messages"
"I got some concerning emails. Today we talk resource scarcity,
 food prices, nuclear escalation, climate insanity and everything else SHTF."
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Canadian Prepper, "2023: China and Russia Vs USA"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/13/22:
"2023: China and Russia Vs USA"
This is major. Watch part 1 here:
Related:
Ritter begins at 35:15

Free Download: Charles Mackay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"

"Extraordinary Popular Delusions
 and the Madness of Crowds"

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." - Carl Sagan

"Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions". MacKay was an accomplished teller of stories, though he wrote in a journalistic and somewhat sensational style.

The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetizers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics. Present-day writers on economics, such as Michael Lewis and Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles. Scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan mentioned the book in his own discussion about pseudoscience, popular delusions, and hoaxes.

In later editions, Mackay added a footnote referencing the Railway Mania of the 1840s as another "popular delusion" which was at least as important as the South Sea Bubble. Mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has pointed out, in a published lecture, that Mackay himself played a role in this economic bubble; as leader writer in the Glasgow Argus, Mackay wrote on 2 October 1845: "There is no reason whatever to fear a crash."

Freely download "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"

"Vegas, America, and the Madness of Crowds"

"Vegas, America, and the Madness of Crowds"
by Brian Maher

"Las Vegas, Nevada has been our resort for these past several days. Here we have witnessed several madnesses - madnesses large, madnesses small. Madnesses public, madnesses private. Yet the public madness, the mass madness, the extended madness is our concern today. That is, the market madness.

And so we publish once again our reflections on the madness of crowds. As we have written before: When a man enters a crowd he exits civilization. He goes in, his blood goes up… and his reason goes out. As Herr Nietzsche long ago observed, madness is a rarity in individuals - but the rule in crowds. Or as argued Mr. Charles Mackay, author of the 1841 classic "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds": "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

“A Crowd Runs Not on Thought but on Hormones”: A man in a crowd ceases to be a man. He is instead a face. He is but a cog in a lunatic machine. And a man in a crowd does not think for himself. The crowd thinks for him. That is, the man ceases to think whatsoever. For a crowd runs not on thought but on hormones. The crowd’s lusts become the man’s lusts. The crowd’s will becomes the man’s will. The crowd’s devils become the man’s devils. It is these devils - in fact - that cement together a crowd.

A Crowd Needs a Devil: These devils may appear in the form of policemen, of whites, of blacks, of Muslims, of Christians, of Chinamen, of Russians, of conservatives, of progressives, of capitalists, of anti-capitalists, of greenhouse gas-geysers, of meat-munchers. One crowd has its devil. A second crowd, another. A third, a devil of its own. Above all: Any crowd’s hate for devils vastly exceeds its love for angels.

Angels do not excite the blood. Angels do not bubble the hormones. Angels do not furl the fingers into fists. Devils do excite the blood, get the blood up. Devils do bubble the hormones. Devils do furl the fingers into fists. Once you understand this you understand politics - politics yesterday, politics today, politics tomorrow.

A Crowd Is Not Necessarily a Street Mob: Let us now extend our analysis, beyond crowd, beyond mob… to nation…A crowd is not merely a mass on a street or a mob. A nation is a sort of crowd and a sort of mob. For our purposes we will label it a supercrowd. And no greater menace exists than a supercrowd after a devil… This supercrowd is given to the same madnesses as the street crowd… only its madnesses are amplified by the tens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions, by the hundreds of millions. It often leaves “rivers of blood” and a “harvest of groans and tears” trailing behind them.

From the aforesaid "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds": "In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity."

The Madness of Market Crowds: A market too is a crowd, a mob… and equally susceptible to lunacy. Do you doubt it? Mr. Mackay consecrates page upon page to the Tulip delirium (1636–37), the Mississippi Bubble (1718–20) and the related South Sea Bubble (1720). And let us say it now: It is a pity the fellow no longer writes.

The stock market bubble of 1929, the technology bubble of 2000 and the housing bubble of 2008 added entire chapters to the literature of mass delusion. Additional chapters - no doubt - await writing. We hazard the 2020-2021 market deliriums will rank high among them. Here is the common element that unites them all: The man in a crowd. Only the man under crowd influence heaves his reason into a ditch. Why do men do it?

Man Must Choose Between Freedom and Happiness: Mankind confronts a choice, argued George Orwell in "1984." He must choose between freedom and happiness. And the mass of men prefer happiness to freedom: "The choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better."

The great bulk of men seek the peace and contentment of herd living - of life in a crowd. The man truly divorced from the social influence is a man truly exceptional. Freedom is too hot for most hands, as Mencken described it - or too cold for most spines, as Nietzsche described it. Either way… freedom runs to temperatures too extreme for most constitutions.

Here we do not judge. Nor do we evaluate or condemn. We merely describe, describe a phenomenon. The crowd offers safety. Numerical strength. Solidarity. Companionship. Reassurance.

“Freedom Includes the Freedom to Starve”:
 As we have written before: The free man must go upon his own hook. He must push along under his own steam, weave his own safety net, face cruel fate alone. Do not forget: Freedom includes the freedom to starve. We therefore have no heat against the man who chooses security over freedom, the full belly over the empty belly.

We enjoy happiness ourself. Safety. Security. And a belly stretched to capacity. Extremes of heat and cold, meantime, immiserate us. And - despite all evidence - we enjoy human companionship. We nonetheless confess a vast respect for the man who never wanders into a crowd, for the man who does not flock. For we prefer humanity in batches of one. The free man’s example is the eagle, the free and noble eagle.

The Eagle: We would emulate the solitary eagle over the flocking birds - over the birds that crowd. For the eagle does not flock. You find him one by one. That is, the eagle takes the individual view. In our experience, that view is often the higher view, the superior view. The free man is the eagle high aloft, wheeling and wheeling on motionless wings, on steady wings, on confident wings…On free wings. He is free to starve, it is true. But he is also free to soar. And the man in a crowd? As the bird in a flock… he is free only to follow…

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 10/13/22:
"Trends In The News"
"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."

"You Need a Better Plan!"

Dan, I Allegedly, 10/13/22:
"You Need a Better Plan!"
"The Bond market is affecting everything. The stock market and the real estate market are crashing. Get ready. Today I’m lucky enough to bring back Bob Kudla. He runs Trade Genius."
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Musical Interlude: The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.

Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”

Chet Raymo, “Angling For Happiness”

“Angling For Happiness”
by Chet Raymo

“There is a concept in physics called angle of repose. Set an object, a book say, on a plank. Now slowly tip up one end of the plank until the moment when the book just starts to slide. The angle between the plank and the horizontal is the angle of repose, where the component of the gravitational force down the plank becomes greater than the maximum friction force holding the book at rest. Or, in more evocative terms - as I write I am lying on the couch with the laptop in my lap, in perfect repose. If you started tipping up the couch, at some point I'd go sliding into a heap at the bottom. That's the angle of repose, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the angle of the end of repose.

This comes to mind because I just spent fifteen minutes on my knees in the yard watching ants excavate a nest in the ground. One by one they scurry out of the hole carrying a tiny grain of sand, which they dump in a ring around the hole. A circular pile. Now if the ants just dumped their burdens at the mouth of the hole, pretty soon the pile would get so steep that the sand grains would slide back into the hole. Instead, the circular ring gets higher and wider, with a slope that never exceeds the angle at which the grains will slip - the angle of repose. Now here's the thing: the ants almost invariably carry their grain to just beyond the top of the pile. If the grain slips, it will slide away from the hole. These tiny ants, hardly bigger than sand grains themselves, understand a little physics in their mysterious instinctive way.

Wallace Stegner has a novel titled "Angle of Repose." It is indeed an evocative phrase. In a job, in a relationship, in life itself, many of us instinctively seek that maximum degree of individual gratification that will satisfy emotional needs without doing violence to our essential repose, and that of those around us - the art of walking close to the edge, the thrill without the spill. Every day in the news we hear of folks - politicians or celebrities - who tipped the plank too far, whose lives went sliding into self-destruction, who failed to grasp, metaphorically speaking, something that a tiny ant instinctively understands.”

"Never, Ever Forget..."

  
"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "

Gregory Mannarino," Alert! Stock Market Set To Crater, Sell Off Worsens, It's Really Coming Apart"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/13/22:
"Alert! Stock Market Set To Crater, 
Sell Off Worsens, It's Really Coming Apart"
Comments here: