So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, December 17, 2022
"Strange Prices At Kroger! Stock Up Now! Get It Before It's Gone!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 12/17/22:
"Strange Prices At Kroger!
Stock Up Now! Get It Before It's Gone!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing major price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"Communism for the Rich"
"Communism for the Rich"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"My critics sometimes accuse me of being a communist, of all things. I must say, the irony of being accused of being a communist by many of these people is incredibly rich. That’s because the policies I advocate in my writings are far, far more “free market” than any of theirs. I find my critics hide behind the slogan of free market capitalism, while practicing something entirely different - crony capitalism.
What does it mean to be a crony capitalist? It means you don’t rely upon the free and competitive market to earn your profits. You depend instead upon government support in one form or another. Big Pharma and Big Defense are probably the most prominent examples of crony capitalism most people are familiar with. And just look at their profits over the past couple of years. How would they make out on the free and fair market without working hand-in-glove with government?
Meanwhile, the policies I advocate depend upon free people making free decisions. Mankind’s history shows that this is the way to a better tomorrow.
My Critics Doth Protest Too Much: But when I point out that "free market capitalism" in America is neither a real market nor real capitalism, those who equate any criticism of "capitalism" as proof of communist leanings are triggered. The irony is that I've spent 17 years tirelessly critiquing centralized wealth and power - the acme of communism - as the source of our moral, social and economic decay.
Another irony is that communism is absolutely thriving in America in broad daylight: The monopolies, quasi-monopolies and cartels that dominate the American economy and governance are Communism for the Rich.
The core goals and functions of communism and monopolies/cartels are identical: Snuff out unfettered markets (competition, transparent price information for all participants, etc.) and take control of all market functions…Restricting supply and controlling all regulation with the sole goals of further concentrating centralized power and maximizing steady profits (i.e. maximum greed) to benefit those who own/control the concentrated wealth and power. And of course both pump out an endless spew of propaganda about the wonderfulness of the system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
A Private-Public Politburo: This centralized power to benefit the few at the expense of the many characterizes both communism and monopolies/cartels. There is no difference between the two other than the structures of control that eliminate competitors, regulate supply and keep prices high enough to further enrich the already-rich.
Those operating monopolies and cartels in America are in effect a private-public Politburo, a concentration of wealth that buys whatever political power is needed to increase profits and protect the monopoly from threats. What's unfettered in America is Communism for the Rich and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels. "Markets" and "capitalism" only exist on the fringes of the economy.
But the myth that America is the home of "unfettered capitalism" is extremely useful cover for the actual system, which is Communism for the Rich. And you can’t really talk about Communism for the Rich without addressing the key role central banks like the Fed play. They help make it possible, but they’d like you to think it’s “just the normal way things work.”
The Central Bank Cult: The ideal cult convinces its followers that it isn't a cult, it's simply the natural order of things. In current terms, this normalizes insane behaviors and beliefs. Sacrificing youth to appease the gods isn't a cult; it's simply the natural order of things. If we don't sacrifice youth, bad things will happen, so we have to follow the natural order of things.
Despite the lofty claims made by our rational mind, we want to hear and obey the voices of the gods. This nonrational desire is the root of cults and episodes of mass hysteria, i.e., the madness of crowds.
Humanity is in the grip of the secular cult of central banking. The cult's seers and prophets periodically emerge with arcane signs and readings, offering divinations to guide the followers. The motivation to believe the cult is the natural order of things is powerful: greed. Those who heed the oracles of the cult enrich themselves, unbelievers impoverish themselves.
Rationalists outside the cult discern the structure of the cult and its core beliefs. The cult creates credit and "money" out of thin air and distributes it to the few extremely wealthy to further expand their wealth. These few do not improve productivity or the well-being of the many; they use the cult's gifts to exploit the cult's rigged casino of speculation to maximize their private gains.
The Cult’s Core Beliefs: In other words, the cult benefits the few at the expense of the many - Communism for the Rich - while proclaiming it benefits everyone. This is of course insane. The cult's core beliefs are:
1) enriching the already-rich magically trickles down benefits to the masses, and
2) this vast enrichment of the already-wealthy is cost-free. The economy prospers with no downside or consequences other than the glorious expansion of wealth at the top and the trickle-down of sweet goodness to the masses.
This is of course insane. The costs are borne by the masses and by the socioeconomic system, which is now in thrall to a cult that has made the economy dependent on an ever-expanding credit bubble that feeds an ever-expanding asset bubble, which then enables a further expansion of credit, which then fuels ever-higher assets prices. And so on, forever, because the cult and its ever-expanding bubble are the natural order of things. If we don't sacrifice the many to benefit the few, the sun will stop rising and the Earth will be cast into endless shadow.
This is of course insane, but greed is a powerful motivation to be an ardent believer in the central banking cult. Expanding credit based on the expanding collateral of asset bubbles, each feeding the other, is held up not as insane but as a financial perpetual-motion machine, overseen and managed by the seers and prophets of the central bank cult.
Followers heeding the cult's oracles become rich, nonbelievers and skeptics become impoverished. Alas, cults and bubbles both come to an inglorious end. What seemed self-evidently true for the ages is revealed as a brief moment of self-serving delusion, supported by the immense powers of greed and the madness of crowds.
Do you hear the voices of the gods? Yes, yes, oh yes."
o
Very strong language alert!
"It's a Big Club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the Big Club." "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
- George Carlin
"Carthage Must Be Destroyed!" (Excerpt)
"Carthage Must Be Destroyed!"
by David Sant
Excerpt: "During its rise to world domination, the City of Rome had one major competitor, which was its equal in every way. That city was Carthage, located 370 miles away, on the South side of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage had been planting colonies around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for over a century before Rome was even founded. As Rome rose to power, these two Mediterranean cities fought two wars for control over the Island of Sicily, called the Punic Wars. Despite an admirable performance by Hannibal who managed to invade Italy twice and inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans at Cannae, Carthage still ended up losing both wars.
At the close of the second Punic War in 201 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome and placed under a special administrative status that disallowed it from fielding a navy or overseas military without permission from the Roman Senate.
Carthage was one of only three powers that ever managed to directly threaten Rome during the days of the Republic, the others being the Gauls who sacked Rome in 390 BC, and the Macedonian Greeks, who were defeated in 197 BC. The Roman attitude and behavior toward Carthage then was very similar to the Anglo-American attitude toward Russia, today. The main “sin” of Carthage in the eyes of the Romans was that it was equal in power and influence to Rome. And for that sin, it had to be destroyed.
Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, who later became a Senator and famous orator who gave many speeches in the Senate even after his retirement. Over a period of forty years, he routinely ended his speeches on any subject with the statement, “And furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed!” Cato repeatedly made this demand, despite the fact that Carthage was now a Roman client state bound by a peace treaty.
For fifty years after losing the Second Punic War, Carthage submitted to the terms of the treaty. However, after the death of Cato the Elder in 149 BC, a certain faction in Rome deliberately allowed the King of Numidia to pillage and conquer Carthagenian territories, in violation of the treaty. This placed Carthage in a position where they had to defend themselves from predations by a neighboring Roman client state. Their appeals to the Roman Senate were ignored. So, they took action to defend their interests against Numidia without permission.
When they did so, the Roman Senate immediately interpreted this as a violation of the 201 BC peace treaty, and authorized the invasion and destruction of Carthage. This was not unlike the “rules based international order” of Washington, DC, where we make the rules (for you) but we don’t have to follow them ourselves.
Despite having surrendered their weapons at the outset of the Roman campaign, the walls of Carthage were so well made that it took the Romans nearly three years of siege to break through. Finally in 146 BC, Carthage fell for the last time to the Roman Army, and was deliberately razed to the ground and burned. The Romans slew all of its population, men, women, and children, except for 50,000 who were taken back to Italy as slaves. According to Polybius, the wife of the last general of Carthage threw herself and her own children into the burning temple of the city rather than surrender to Rome.
Moscow as the New Carthage: The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution.
For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War. Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome. Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire.
Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!” If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire.
However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire."
Full article is here:
o
Related:
Friday, December 16, 2022
"Survival Of The Economic Fittest; Layoff Apocalypse Coming"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/16/22:
"Survival Of The Economic Fittest;
Layoff Apocalypse Coming"
Comments here:
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/16/22"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/16/22"
Fights Censorship, Vax Lies Collapsing, Inflation Going Higher
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchsdog.com
"President Trump had a big announcement on his Truth Social platform, but the Lying Legacy Media (LLM) will never show you this because it about the LLM colluding with the government to censor “We the People.” In short, they suppress the truth about all sorts of things. From the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop to the dangers of the CV19 injections, these are some of the truths they censored. Trump says, “If we don’t have free speech, we don’t have a free country.” He’s right. This is a big part of Trump’s 2024 campaign platform.
The CV19 vax lies keep getting exposed with each new “Died Suddenly” report and new data showing the vax was a deadly and dangerous fraud from the very beginning. There is no stopping what is coming. The rage from the millions who are injured and families whose loved ones have died are not going to stop stacking up. Now, more and more, there are calls for prosecutions of all the people who pushed these clot shots. The truth about the CV19 shots was also censored by the government and Big Tech. The so-called “Twitter Files” are exposing the criminals who hid the truth. Much more is coming out. Count on it.
The Fed is still fighting inflation by raising a key interest rate by another .5%. Is raising rates going to stop inflation? Not according to economist John Williams of ShadowStats.com. Williams says surging inflation is caused by extreme money printing, and with a fresh $1.65 trillion just passed in Congress, don’t expect inflation to retreat. It’s just the opposite, according to Williams. Brace yourself."
Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these stories
and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 12/16/22:
Jim Kunstler, "Truth And Consequences"
"Truth And Consequences"
by Jim Kunstler
“I would advise the more-sciencey-than-thou to not pivot from Covid directly into climate change bullying just yet. 2023 is going to be replete with excess death, and you are gonna have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. Lots of apologetic to push, in support of the Narrative.” — The Ethical Skeptic on Substack
"Even if NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The WashPo, and the rest of the Big News Media mafia ignore the Twitter Files story, the revolution at Twitter is going to shake their windows and rattle their walls. There will be free debate in 2023 on this social media platform. News and ideas will be set loose across the landscape, and, for the first time in years, reality will have a chance to compete with the bad faith narratives of a regime at war against its own people.
We’ll have to see how long this window remains open before the Intel Community tries to shut Twitter down, ramp up a campaign to defame it, or blow it up as a viable business. Or make a move to, shall we say, neutralize the person behind the revolution there. The more that free speech is actually permitted on Twitter, the more every other platform will look like a lame organ of propaganda, especially when it comes to issues that really matter such as the deadly consequences of the mRNA “vaccines,” the shady doings around recent US elections, the actual condition of the US economy, the perilous folly of “Joe Biden’s” war in Ukraine (and the family grifting operation that prompted it), and the evil machinations of the Intel Community itself.
In about three weeks, the Party of Chaos will be swept out of power in the US House of Representatives. Their opponents will take control of all the House committee chairs, with subpoena power to compel the testimony of public figures who have managed to avoid answering questions for years. The Big News Media may not be able to avoid reporting on it, especially with Twitter loosened up, and their lying attempts to spin events are going to look pathetic when instantly contrasted with free analysis and informed debate in the public arena.
You can’t overstate what an advantage the insidious takeover of social media gave to forces seeking to wreck the country, though the effects have barely been explored yet. The people remain bamboozled over the Covid-19 operation especially. The pandemic certainly wasn’t some random act by Mother Nature, not with US public health agencies supporting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses from Ukraine to North Carolina to Wuhan, China. And the subsequent damage caused by the government’s response to the outbreak was either an epic fiasco of inept officialdom, or something that smells like mass murder.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s little trick so far to avoid answering questions about these matters was simply to not use the term “gain-of-function” in his correspondence arranging grants for it — especially after President Barack Obama banned that type of research by its name in 2014. So when asked about gain-of-function, he could just lie with abandon. After that simple ruse is exposed, the patent and royalty benefits enjoyed by Dr. Fauci — who doubled his net worth after 2019 — will be dragged into the light of day.
It’s doubtful that Merrick Garland’s uber-corrupt DOJ would follow-up on any referral for criminal prosecution issued by a House committee. But guess what? There are fifty states attorneys general who have standing to prosecute Dr. Fauci over injuries to their state’s citizens. It appears that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for one, has identified that legal avenue and this week asked Florida’s top court to convene a special grand jury to consider exactly that.
The other players in Team Covid have plenty to answer for, too. Rochelle Walensky’s CDC has deliberately concealed, misled, obfuscated, or opted to not even collect information about injuries and deaths from the Covid “vaccines.” Her agency did nothing to update the inadequate, difficult-to-use VAERS reporting system, or even communicate the very bad news that managed to land on it. The CDC is still aggressively pushing vaccines on children, knowing full well that it damages young hearts, brains, immune systems, and probably the kids’ very DNA.
Probably few would recognize the name Dr. Robert Califf in his second go-round as Commissioner of the FDA (served one year 2016-17 under Obama; confirmed again in Feb. 2022). Dr. Califf has been a tool of the pharma companies for decades. Earlier in his career as a professor at Duke University, he specialized in organizing drug trials. His operation there was supported by over $150-million in grants from pharma. Even despite Deep State control of social media prior to Elon Musk’s cleanup of Twitter, a lot was already known about the botched and faked drug trials that led to the FDA’s conditional emergency approval of Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA Covid-19 products — along with the official suppression of existing anti-viral drugs that could have saved a million lives, which was done strictly to preserve the liability shields of the “vaccines.” A finding of fraud in all this would vitiate the Pharma companies’ protection against lawsuits, and there was fraud galore in the whole wicked business.
Others have to be called to face the new music in Congress: self-styled “humanitarian” Bill Gates, whose fingerprints are all over the Covid-19 story, from the “pandemic war game” (Event 201) he sponsored, held in the fall of 2019, to his vested interests in pharma, to his connections with the shadowy operations of the World Economic Forum and its stated population-reduction initiative. Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, indisputably the preeminent expert on Coronavirus gain-of-function research, and knee-deep in the Covid-19 episode — who has magically been able to hide under a rock the past three years — could shed a lot of light in public testimony on what happened. And Peter Daszak, head of the CIA cut-out org, EcoHealth Alliance, which helped enable the move of gain-of-function research to the Wuhan lab, explicitly explained years ago — in a notorious recording from a symposium — how to create profit opportunities from a pandemic response.
There are countless high officials of the deputy director and commissioner rank, unknown to the public, who could be called to testify about their agency’s contribution to the catastrophe that the Covid-19 response turned out to be. Almost all of them have been laying low since the whole thing started.
Meantime, Mr. Musk has announced that Twitter is preparing the release of all its archives containing communication with federal agencies that sought to control and suppress truthful discussion of the pandemic 2020 to 2022. He added snarkily that his personal pronouns are “prosecute/Fauci” — in case there’s any misunderstanding about what he’s learned from the files.
What’s liable to come out of this uncorking of evil spirits in 2023 is a grotesque spewage of info about official corruption and misconduct that will make the projectile vomiting from The Exorcist look like a mere Satanic loogie in comparison. You have to wonder how the nation will handle it, especially along with the extremely uncomfortable fact that “Joe Biden” still occupies the White House."
Canadian Prepper, "Get Ready...This Will Be Bad"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/16/22:
"Get Ready...This Will Be Bad"
"After the grid goes down this will be something almost no one is expecting, better prepare for it because it have catastrophic outcomes."
Comments here:
"15 Food Products That Will Be Priceless In The Months Ahead"
Full screen recommended.
"15 Food Products That Will Be Priceless In The Months Ahead"
by Epic Economist
"Grocery prices have become a huge source of anxiety for many American families these days. We're clearly seeing that the current rate of price increases is reaching far higher levels than the official rate of food inflation suggests. While government officials tell us that we're paying around 15% more on groceries, some staple products have faced spikes of over 100% this year.
For instance, a report by Quartz exposes that the price of oats is actually rising faster than the price of oil on global markets. No wonder why store-brand oatmeal prices went from $1.99 to $3.99. Strained oat supplies will continue to push prices up in the year ahead, says one of the world’s largest oat milk producers Oatly. Similarly, due to the cost increase of primary supplies for carton boxes for transport, fertilizers, machinery, and labor shortages at farms, pineapples saw a huge jump in costs over the past two years, going up in price by a staggering 78% since 2020. Adding an aluminum shortage to the mix, the cost of canned pineapples skyrocketed from $0.79 per can to $2.22, marking a 120% surge in 24 months. Countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, which produce 75% of the world’s pineapples have faced a year of record drought, floodings, and pests, and lower supplies indicates that prices can only go in one direction.
Likewise, given that the cost of refined flour is going through the roof, a convenient and easy-to-make dish is doubling in price in many supermarkets. Unfortunately, there’s no relief in sight for skyrocketing flour prices, and customers are already noticing its impact ripple through the cost of many of their favorite foods. On a Facebook group, shopper Guinevere M said: “The other day I went to buy a pack of ramen that used to be 25 cents. Great meal saver on a night before a paycheck hits. Can always find a quarter. I hadn’t bought any in a while and almost passed out to see it was now 45 cents. Can I still find 45 cents? Sure, but it just captures the whole problem. Prices didn’t jump; they did an Olympic pole vault."
And farmers, food makers, and retailers are all warning us that a wide range of grocery products are about to get even more expensive in 2023. As it turns out, the surge in consumer prices wasn't "transitory" after all. And a series of events that continued to impact our food supply chains throughout the entire year are making the outlook for the next few months even more disturbing than it already is right now.
After two years of persistent price oscillations, American consumers really do deserve some good news to start the new year on a good note. But many may agree that honesty is worth more than false hope, and while our leaders continue to deny the seriousness of the problems U.S. families are facing, we have a commitment to our audience to always bring the news no one else seems to be talking about. We firmly believe that the best way of preparing to cope with these wild price swings is to get ahead of the hikes before they begin to ripple though the system, that's why today, we listed 15 grocery items that are set to face significant increases in the near future, according to food industry experts."
"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.
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html
"Memories And Feelings"
"Memories and feelings of nostalgia are nothing more than cruelties; they are the most beautiful lies we will ever convince ourselves to believe. We chase the false hope so fiercely that we nearly push ourselves past the edges of our sanity, longing for that which can never be in our possession again. These edges are blurred by our regrets and desperation all throughout the darkest hours of the night, until finally we are set free from the illusions and the ghosts of our past with the rising of the sun... and we are changed in some small, yet permanent way."
- Margaret E. Rise
"I Know..."
“I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs. Never let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.”
- Cat Winters
"Most People Are Simply Not Ready For The Economic Chaos That Is Coming In 2023"
"Most People Are Simply Not Ready For
The Economic Chaos That Is Coming In 2023"
by Michael Snyder
"Have you noticed that a lot of big companies have been conducting mass layoffs recently? At this point, it has become exceedingly clear that a major economic slowdown has begun, and payrolls are being feverishly slashed at a rate that we haven’t seen in a long time. In fact, the number of job cuts in November 2022 was 417 percent higher than it was in November 2021. Unfortunately, what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning. We are being warned that a couple million more Americans could lose their jobs in 2023, and the vast majority of the population is simply not prepared for such a scenario. In fact, a new survey that was just released found that 63 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck…
As of November, 63% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a monthly LendingClub report - up from 60% the previous month and near the 64% historic high hit in March. Even high-income earners are under pressure, LendingClub found. Of those earning more than six figures, 47% reported living paycheck to paycheck, a jump from the previous month’s 43%.
When you are just barely scraping by from month to month, a job loss can be absolutely debilitating. Sadly, this year many large corporations aren’t even waiting until after the holidays to give the axe to thousands of highly dedicated employees…"There is arguably no good time for companies to lay off employees, of course, but as farewell-to-my-job posts continue to populate LinkedIn, many are wondering, why did they have to do this the week before Thanksgiving or right before Christmas?
Despite the job market’s overall strength, big names in tech including Meta Platforms Inc., Salesforce Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have all laid off workers or announced plans to do so in recent months. Thousands of job cuts have also hit other industries, with Ford Motor Co., Walmart Inc. and PepsiCo Inc. all reducing their head counts, leaving many employees to wonder: Could I be next?"
Are things really so bad that these giant firms couldn’t have waited a few weeks? “Happy Thanksgiving! By the way, you’re fired.” When I was growing up, big companies at least pretended to be compassionate. But now corporate giants seem to feel free to let workers go the instant that their usefulness is over…
"Layoffs around the holidays are a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1970s and 1980s, companies were more cognizant of the optics of putting people out of work during the most wonderful time of the year, says Andy Challenger, a senior vice president with Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a career services and executive-coaching firm. That sentiment has passed, he says. “Today we tend to see companies making the cuts when they feel like they need to.”
Apparently the Washington Post will also be laying off quite a few workers in the days ahead. When staff members learned that job cuts would soon be coming, they were not happy.
Needless to say, the Washington Post is far from alone. In fact, several other very large media companies have also recently announced cutbacks…"Of course, the news of the layoffs comes amid a horrible backdrop for the media industry at large. In recent weeks, CNN has laid off hundreds of staffers, Gannett has cut 200 staffers, NPR has said it needs to find $10 million in savings, and other organizations have implemented moves to slash costs
Even though so many big names have been slashing workers, the government has continued to insist that everything is just fine. And each month they have told us that the U.S. economy has continued to gain jobs. But now the truth of what has really been going on is starting to become quite obvious. In fact, even the Philly Fed is now publicly admitting that the number of jobs in this country has been overstated by the government by at least a million…
"Remember what we said in July when we first looked at the March-June divergence between the Household and Establishment survey: we said that “since March, the Establishment Survey shows a gain of 1.124 million jobs while the Household Survey shows an employment loss of 347K!” Said otherwise, we found that payrolls “calculated” by the Establishment Survey were overestimated by 1.5 million. Shockingly, the Philly Fed seems to agree, and reports that instead of the roughly 1.1 million jobs reported by the BLS, only 10,500 new jobs were added!"
As the tsunami of layoffs continues to accelerate, it is probably just a matter of time before the U.S. economy starts losing large numbers of jobs every month. That is exactly what several of the largest financial institutions on Wall Street are now projecting, and we continue to get more evidence that economic conditions are really starting to slow down. On Thursday, we learned that U.S. retail sales actually declined during the month of November…"U.S. retail spending and manufacturing weakened in November, signs of a slowing economy as the Federal Reserve continues its battle against high inflation.
November retail sales fell 0.6% from the prior month for the biggest decline this year, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Budget-conscious shoppers pulled back sharply on holiday-related purchases, home projects and autos. Manufacturing output declined 0.6%, the first drop since June, the Fed said in a separate report."
But apparently economic conditions are not yet bad enough for the officials at the Federal Reserve, because they just decided to raise interest rates even higher…"The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest level in 15 years, indicating the fight against inflation is not over despite some promising signs lately.
Keeping with expectations, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to boost the overnight borrowing rate half a percentage point, taking it to a targeted range between 4.25% and 4.5%. The increase broke a string of four straight three-quarter point hikes, the most aggressive policy moves since the early 1980s."
What the Federal Reserve is doing is absolutely suicidal. They have just ensured that unemployment will go even higher, that our new housing crash will get even worse and that a very painful economic downturn is coming in 2023. In the aftermath of the Fed’s decision, the Dow was down 764 points on Thursday…I"nvestors dumped stocks on Thursday as more headwinds emerge for the U.S. economy as the Federal Reserve stays the course in raising interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 764 points, or 2.2%, as the broader markets faced the worst session since November."
The mood on Wall Street is quite glum right now. The outlook for 2023 is not good, and the outlook for the years beyond 2023 is even worse. Our leaders have been making incredibly bad decisions for decades, and now we are starting to pay the price. There is going to be so much pain during the year ahead, and the vast majority of the population is not prepared for what is coming at all."
The Poet: James Baldwin, "Amen"
"Amen"
"No, I don't feel death coming.
I feel death going:
having thrown up his hands,
for the moment.
I feel like I know him
better than I did.
Those arms held me,
for a while,
and, when we meet again,
there will be that secret knowledge
between us. "
- James Baldwin
"Humanity Today..."
"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson
Bill Bonner, "The Freedom Files"
"The Freedom Files"
How Twitter colluded with your government
to abridge your first amendment rights
By Bill Bonner
"Won’t someone rid me of this turbulent priest?"
~ Attributed to Henry II,
before the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury
Youghal, Ireland - "The first thing we noticed when we got back to Ireland was the cold. There is frost on the cars. And the canal in Ranelagh is iced over. “This is a record cold we’re having,” said the taxi driver. “The temperature went down to 27 degrees last night. That’s Fahrenheit. We don’t see that very often in Ireland.” Ireland has a mild climate. Rarely very hot. Rarely very cold. “It happens only about once every 10 years,” continued the taxi driver.
Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Ireland does not depend on the Russians or the Americans for its gas. It seems to have enough of its own. People here don’t need to chop down forests or steal firewood from each other’s front porch.
Meanwhile, here in Dublin, the shops are adorned with the usual Christmas bling…the restaurants are full…the bars are noisy…and at 4pm you will have a hard time getting a table for tea at the Westbury Hotel.
Market Blues: Today, we’re going to leave our usual beat. But before we do, we check in on Wall Street and note that in this hinge season…the stock market is turning back towards deflation. CNN: "The Dow plummeted nearly 765 points, or 2.3%, Thursday, and it is down 4% in December following solid gains the previous two months. Verizon (VZ) was the only one of the 30 Dow stocks in positive territory. The S&P 500 fell 2.5% and the Nasdaq was 3.2% lower Thursday. The S&P 500 is now off 4.5% for the month while the Nasdaq has sunk nearly 6%." Asset prices are going down. If we’re right, they’ve got a lot further to go.
But let’s switch topics. The remarkable upshot of Elon Musk’s takeover at Twitter is that he decided to release the records that show what the feds are up to. In effect, they outsourced the suppression of the First Amendment. Twitter executives colluded with federal authorities to censor what writers could write and readers could read. “Private companies can do what they want,” is our view here at the headquarters of Bonner Private Research. But there’s a lot more going on here…and it’s worth exploring.
We, The Elite: The idea of America, its Constitution and its Bill of Rights, is that government should be limited. There are things it can do. And things it shouldn’t be allowed to do. Most importantly, it can’t take anything away from ‘The People’ without ‘due process of law.’ It can’t take away their property, or their liberty, or their right to go about their business.
In the case of ‘free speech,’ the prohibition is very clear: “Congress shall make no law” that keeps people from saying what they want. In other words, the American system is meant to protect people from their government. And we know, too, that “the government” is just an abstraction. What the restrictions really do is protect the common man from the elite who control the government.
This worked reasonably well. But gradually, laws and regulations ate away at the restrictions and took a big bite out of the rights reserved ‘to the people.’ The elite wanted not only to control ‘the people,’ they wanted to enlist them in their pet projects.
It was not enough to let people pursue happiness in their own way, they also had to change the way they interacted with one another. There’s a whole body of ‘labor law,’ for example, that tells employers and employees how they need to treat each other. And there are laws and regulations up the gazoo, telling restaurants, banks and hotels how to deal with customers. Those laws grew into today’s disputes over whether a pastry shop has to put two gay guys on a wedding cake…or whether website designers may be required to work for people of whom they disapprove.
But now, the Twitter files reveal a whole new dimension to the elite’s efforts to control ‘The People;’ now, in full contempt for the First Amendment, they want to regulate what ideas and news people may read. How does this work?
You’ll recall that until fairly recently, the US took a dim view of torturing prisoners. So, in the War on Terror, prisoners were sent to ‘Black sites,’ where they were tortured by allies and friendly nations. In effect, the Pentagon outsourced what it didn’t want to do itself. Now, let’s imagine that the feds notice that some people don’t vote the way the elite would like. ‘For the good of the country’ they might get together with a private printer to make sure that some people got illegible mail-in ballots. That would clearly be wrong.
Or imagine that the elite – acting through the government they control – contact Visa and say: ‘it would be a lot better if some people were denied credit cards; they just send their money to the wrong things. Some drive too much and harm the environment. Some eat too much and overburden the hospitals. Some give money to wingnut causes.’ And then, couldn’t Visa, a private company, advised by the federales, decide for itself who should get a credit card?
Or, take the actual case at hand. Apparently, some government officials – those from the FBI and Homeland Security have been mentioned – said to Twitter executives: “Won’t someone rid us of this troublesome information? Look, some people have the wrong ideas. We can’t censor the news. But you can. How about making sure ‘The People’ don’t get any misinformation?”
Twitter honchos were eager to help. They met with the feds regularly, deciding what should be published and what shouldn’t. The government effectively outsourced what it couldn’t do directly – ignoring the Constitution and censoring speech. Doing so, it took away from citizens their First Amendment rights…the right to hear both sides of the story…and decide the truth of it for themselves.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. But we will take a guess. The media will find the story not worth reporting. And the public – always easy to gull or bamboozle – won’t care."
"Your Bank Will Never Be the Same"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 12/16/22:
"Your Bank Will Never Be the Same"
"Have you ever read your banks, terms and conditions? They are insane. They are only getting worse. You will not believe this. Retail sales also fell off a cliff."
Comments here:
"Major Price Increases On Groceries At Target; This Is Crazy! Not Good!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 12/15/22:
"Major Price Increases On Groceries At Target;
This Is Crazy! Not Good!"
"In today's vlog we are at Target, and are noticing major price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products."
Comments here:
"Economic Market Snapshot 12/16/22"
"Economic Market Snapshot 12/16/22"
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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
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And now... The End Game...
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