"The Year When Everything Started To Fall Apart"

"The Year When Everything Started To Fall Apart"

by Michael Snyder

"It amazes me that so many people still cannot understand what is happening. 2022 was supposedly going to be a year when America entered a new golden age of prosperity, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it was a complete and utter disaster. Stock prices fell by the most that we have seen since 2008, the cryptocurrency industry came apart at the seams, inflation soared to absurd heights, and home sales just kept declining all throughout the year. Without a doubt, 2022 represented a major turning point. Americans have already collectively lost trillions of dollars, and many experts are telling us that 2023 will be even worse.

We warned over and over again that the party on Wall Street would eventually come to a very bitter end, but most people didn’t want to listen. Well, the party has now ended, and the stock market losses that we have witnessed over the past 12 months have been absolutely staggering…"As of closing time on Friday evening, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 3,500 points since the start of the year, a 9.4 percent drop.

The S&P 500 was also down by 957 points this year, with the tech-heavy index falling by almost 20 percent, capping off a brutal year for the tech industry. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq sunk by more than 5,600 points, a nearly 34 percent decline in 2022. More than a third of the entire value of the Nasdaq is already gone. Just think about that.

Of course some stocks were hit much harder than others. Tesla is down about 70 percent from the peak, and Elon Musk “has become the first person ever to lose $200 billion from his net worth”…"Tesla CEO and Chief Twit Elon Musk has become the first person ever to lose $200 billion from his net worth, according to a Bloomberg report.

Musk, 51, previously became the second person ever to amass a fortune of more than $200 billion in January 2021, after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk has now seen his wealth drop to $137 billion following a recent drop in Tesla shares. Musk saw his fortune peak in November 2021, hitting $340 billion, and held the title of the world’s richest person up until last month. Musk was ultimately toppled off the throne by Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French luxury giant LVMH."

You have to give him credit for holding up so well under the circumstances. 200 billion dollars is an amount of money that is so large that it is almost unimaginable.

Facebook also got monkey-hammered over the course of 2022. At this point, Facebook stock has fallen over 64 percent from where it was last January…"On the last day of trading this year, Meta’s stock was down more than 64 percent compared to January, with prices sinking from over $338-per-share to now $120-per-share. The company has lost more than $600 billion in valuation as it spend billions to make its controversial leap to virtual reality with its Metaverse, with the efforts continuing to come up short."

Perhaps Facebook shouldn’t have put so much effort into banning and censoring millions of their best users. What an incredibly stupid thing to do. When I go on Facebook these days, it just feels so incredibly dead. There are still a few diehard users hanging around, but overall it is just a pathetic hollow shell of a social media platform at this point.

Speaking of implosions, 2022 was an absolute disaster for the cryptocurrency industry. The following summary of what we witnessed over the past 12 months comes from Zero Hedge…"Among all the chaos and downfall of many crypto exchanges and leading venture capital firms, the biggest losers are crypto investors. If the burn of the bear market was not enough, millions of crypto investors who had their funds on FTX lost their life savings overnight.

Terra was once a $40 billion ecosystem. Its native token, LUNA — now known as Terra Classic (LUNC) — was one of the top five biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. With millions of customers invested in the ecosystem, the collapse brought their investment to zero within hours. After the Terra collapse, crypto investors lost their funds on a series of centralized exchanges and staking platforms like Celsius, BlockFi and Hodlnaut. Crypto investors also lost significantly in the nonfungible token market, with the price of many popular collections down by 70%. Overall, crypto investors are among the biggest losers of the year."

The total value of all cryptocurrencies exceeded 3 trillion dollars at the peak of the market. Now the total value of all cryptocurrencies has fallen to less than 1 trillion dollars. Hopefully you got out before the crash happened.

2022 was also a year when we experienced very painful inflation. Food prices, energy prices and vehicle prices all went completely nuts, and many compared what we were going through to the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s. But this shouldn’t have been a surprise to any of us. Starting in 2020, our leaders absolutely flooded the system with new cash and the size of the money supply absolutely exploded.

Increasing the size of the money supply so dramatically was inevitably going to cause prices to go haywire, and anyone that thought otherwise was just not being rational. In a desperate attempt to fight the inflation monster that they helped to create, officials at the Federal Reserve aggressively raised interest rates throughout much of 2022.

As a result, we now find ourselves in the midst of another horrifying housing crash. Home values are now steadily receding all over the nation, and home sales have been falling month after month. Home sales have already fallen by more than a third.

How much lower can they possibly go? I don’t know, but we are being warned to brace ourselves for more hard times ahead. In fact, even the IMF is publicly admitting that “the worst is yet to come”… “The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” the IMF said in October, noting the slowdown “will be broad-based” and may “reopen economic wounds that were only partially healed post-pandemic.”

If only they knew. We aren’t just heading into a temporary economic downturn. Ultimately, the entire system is starting to fall apart all around us, and the years ahead are going to be incredibly challenging. Our leaders have been making mistake after mistake for decades, and now we get to pay the price. So buckle up and hold on tight, because 2023 is not going to be pleasant at all."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: New 'Effective' Variant; More Fear! More Control And Propaganda!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/2/23:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: New 'Effective' Variant; 

More Fear! More Control And Propaganda!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/2/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/2/23"

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

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

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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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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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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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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...

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/2/23"

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart!

 This Is Crazy! What's Next!?

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

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

o

"American’s Are Financially Hurting 

And Will Be Tipped Over The Cliff"

Jim Kunstler, "Questions and Answers"

"Questions and Answers"

by Jim Kunstler

“Reality must take precedence over public relations,

 for nature cannot be fooled.” - Richard Feynman

"The exhausting toils of the holidays are behind us; the mischief that could be done by the lame ducks in Congress has been done ($1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill); and the time has come for the citizens of this land to get some answers about the escalating trips laid on them by their own government. The House of Representatives is in new hands. You’ll know in pretty short order whether they are capable, trustworthy hands, or just a blur of fast fingers running another three-card-monte table.

The most pressing questions abide around justice, and the gavel of the Judiciary Committee passes from the barely-alive Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) to the very animated Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). He needs to ask FBI Director Chris Wray how it came to be that the Bureau sat in possession of the Hunter Biden laptop during the impeachment of January 2020 and did not offer up to the defense the exculpatory evidence it abundantly contained in the way of business deal memos between the Biden family and officials in several foreign lands, Ukraine in particular. After all, the impeachment hinged on a telephone inquiry Mr. Trump made about just those matters. Was there anything to it all, or not? Obviously, there was, and Mr. Wray’s conduct looks like obstruction of justice in the highest degree.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) comes in as chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He announced months ago that he would hold hearings on interesting issues such Hunter Biden’s taxes and exactly who paid to support his new career as an “artist.”

We’ve got national security concerns with respect to Hunter Biden. We want to know if you remember who bought that expensive artwork when he was an artist for about three days and sold the artwork for half a million dollars. We want to know why the Russian oligarchs who paid Hunter Biden money were mysteriously left off the sanctions list when Joe Biden started putting sanctions on Russians and Russian oligarchs. We’ve got a lot of questions about shady business dealings that Hunter had and whether or not they impacted the Biden administration.

Next Mr. Wray has to answer for the FBI’s infiltration of social media. How did the top lawyer at the FBI, Jim Baker, come to be employed as the right-hand to Twitter’s chief censor, Vijaya Gadde? How did all those former FBI agents land at the company along with Jim Baker, and what did Mr. Wray have to do with the FBI demands to censor news and persons on matters of critical national importance such as vaccine safety and election fraud? How did more than a hundred former federal agents land on Facebook, Google, and other platforms? How did Mr. Wray decide to shut down the avenues of the First Amendment to the Constitution?

Next up: Attorney General Merrick Garland. On what grounds are pre-trial January 8 Riot suspects being held in the decrepit DC federal lockup without bail on rinky-dink charges two years after the event? How does that square with American due process of law? What did he know about the existence of the Hunter Biden laptop and the evidence it contained? What is he doing about it? How did Mr. Garland happen to target for prosecution parents protesting school board policies on race and sexual matters? Of course, Mr. Garland is going to evade answering by using the ploy that all this “pertains to ongoing investigations.” Mr. Jordan had better hire a chief counsel with some brains to penetrate that bodyguard of lies.

If the Special Subcommittee on the January 6 Riot is disbanded, turn the matter over to the Andy Biggs’ Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. Let’s hear from Nancy Pelosi’s staff as to how come her office (of the Speaker) turned down offers from the Trump White House for national guard protection that day. Let’s also hear from the then-chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, who resigned from that job two days later - in consternation or disgrace? Bring back Mr. Wray and Mr. Garland. How many federal agents were circulating in the crowd the night before and day of the January 6 riot? Why was one Ray Epps never indicted for his much-recorded incitements to enter the Capitol? Who opened the magnetically-locked doors from the inside of the building? Stuff like that. What was the decision process for not charging officer Michael Byrd in the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt?

I hope its not too impertinent to suppose that the January 6 Riot was engineered by our government to embarrass and punish its political opponents - taking advantage of the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” which was what that crowd had come to do in Washington DC that day. Interesting how a little tweaking here and there turned that into a convenient fiasco. And how government control and interference over social media and corporate news was used to reinforce the narrative that the event was “an insurrection” - one of many actual “big lies” of our time nurtured by our government against its citizens.

A few other inquiries in this new Congress to commence ASAP: Can we hear from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as to how come the US-Mexican Border is absolutely wide open; why his employees are transporting illegal aliens all around the USA; why he is running a program in Mexico to give Venezuelans and other select alien nationals “advanced authorization” and “two years parole,” then sneaking them into the USA through regular ports-of-entry?

Then there is the enormous looming storm-cloud of questions over Covid-19: the origin of it; the botched trials of the mRNA “vaccines;” the conduct of the emergency in 2020 by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and many others, including the two principals hiding in the shadows for three years, epidemiologist Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth alliance; the demonization of early treatment protocols with safe and FDA-approved Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine; the relation of all that to the Emergency Use Authorization that protects the pharma companies from liability; the fudging of numbers and scrapping of web pages containing incriminating data at the CDC under Rochelle Walensky; the rising cases of disability and death now presenting via insurance company statistics in the absence of agency reporting; and, again, the coercion of social media platforms to conform to official narratives about the so-called pandemic. (Was it really?)

Then there’s all the darkness surrounding Ukraine, our 51st state, as measured by the amount of taxpayer money funneled into it…. A lot of someones got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do about a lot of things in the weeks and months ahead. We’ll be a better country when we start getting some answers."

- https://kunstler.com/

"I, Santos"

"I, Santos"

Introducing the perfect man for Congress...

by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "As every sentient biped now knows, Mr. George Santos lied to get himself elected to Congress. The poor man is now the butt of jokes for standup comics all over the country. He provides the Democrats with evidence – if any more were needed – that Republicans can’t be trusted….while distracting the public from their own agenda, which is ruining the country.

But here at Bonner Private Research, we judge not. We just keep our eyes and ears open. We don’t really care about George Santos, but we’re very curious about the system of government that selects a low-life hustler like him as a decider. In the interest of understanding better how our democracy really works, we let him explain himself:

Trust Me, I’m Lying: “Alright. So, I lied. Big whoop. I said I graduated from Baruch College. I never actually set foot in the school. I said I went to the prestigious Horace Mann prep school. Nope. I said my grandparents were holocaust survivors. They were not. I said I worked for Goldman Sachs. I never did. I said I was Jewish. Then, I clarified. I was ‘Jew-ish,’ but not a Jew. I said I was ‘half-Black’, Ukrainian…and lost employees in the Pulse nightclub mass shooting. None of those things are true. I said my mother died on 9/11. (She was shocked to hear it! She didn’t die until 15 years later.)

Somehow, I went from being penniless in 2020….to having millions of dollars to spend on my campaign in 2022. I claimed to own apartment buildings….and made money by selling used yachts. I was the key man in a hedge fund. Of course, there is more to that story….and I’m sure it will come out in due time.

After a 7-year marriage to a woman I realized I was gay…and now have a ‘husband’…which you can take any way you want.

And so now the press – which asked almost no questions when I was running for office – is having fun catching me up in what must seem like an almost never-ending series of falsehoods. The public is appalled. The voters say they were “deceived.” And the media is feeling proud of itself…for “unmasking” a Republican fraudster.

But there is more to the story. And I’m grateful to Bonner Private Research for giving me a chance to tell it. After all, to accuse a politician of lying is like accusing a prostitute of being unchaste. Of course, he lies. That is just the nature of his work. Imagine the candidate who didn’t lie. The voters would want nothing to do with him:

I have to tell you that if I’m elected I won’t make any of you richer. You have to do that yourself. And if I, as a member of Congress, slip a little earmark into the budget so someone gets public money, it just means we’ll have to take it from someone else. Or, if I vote for a program where the feds ‘do something’ for you, it will have to be done at your own expense. The federal government has no money…and no power…that doesn’t come from you.

I’m not going to build a house for you. I’m not going to plant cabbages or raise cattle to lower your food costs. I’m not going to teach your children. Or lower the price of gasoline. And I can’t make you any healthier either. You know how to do that. Just don’t eat so much, exercise…and so forth.

And the Ukraine? Are you serious? As near as I can tell it’s just an excuse to send more of your money to Pentagon contractors and neocon think tanks. So, if you want your government to give you something, or to do something for you, vote for the other guy.

Big F**king Deal: That candidate would be quickly consigned to the graveyard of political careers. Because he wouldn’t give the voters what they want. Then, what good could he do?

I, on the other hand, was practically born for Congress. I got elected. That proves it. Yes, I embellished my resume. Big F**king Deal. The important thing is that I’m a good liar…practiced…and confident. I can make connections with the voters, by telling them what they want to hear. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

So what if I didn’t have grandparents who were Holocaust survivors; that’s not my fault. And what if I didn’t really go to Horace Mann; my parents couldn’t afford the $60,000/yr tuition; so what? So what if I wasn’t always gay; what business is it of anyone else?

Compare those lies to the trillion-dollar fibs embedded in the New Deal, the Great Society, the War to Make the World Safe for Democracy, Make America Great Again, the War on Terror. My lies are harmless…and more important, free. They cost the voters nothing. I only lie about myself.

But wait. They show that George Santos is untrustworthy…that he is a rascal. Yes, of course they do. But those are just the threshold qualifications for a Member of Congress; I passed the entry test with flying colors. And now…throw him out because he lies? If you were to apply that test, how many politicians would survive?”

(Santos is right. The lies that matter are those that involve spending other people’s money…squandering the nation’s wealth…and turning its people into dependent numbskulls. Since press reports have exclusively focused on the lies that don’t matter, we know nothing about his lies that do matter. He is said to be a disciple of Donald Trump, so we assume he is a cretin. But giving him the benefit of the doubt…. his policy predilections may be no worse than the other 534 benighted scoundrels on Capitol Hill.)

Decent Dishonesty: “Am I really worse than the others,” Santos asks. “Yes, in a sense…my lies are more obvious and more disprovable. But they are the kind of lies that reveal the truth…they help ‘The People’ see the real nature of their political system. And it might inoculate them against the real liars.

Suppose I, rather than Colin Powell, had stood before the world and made the fraudulent ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ accusation. Who would have believed me? The US might have been spared the Iraq War. And suppose I had been on watch last week, when Congress voted on the $1.7 trillion, 4,000+ page budget bill. Maybe my endorsement would have been enough to make New York Times reporters wonder what was in it.

And who better than I to rise to my feet and applaud that showman Zelenskyy, in his preposterous military get-up? It takes one to know one. And if I had made the case for military aid to the Ukraine, the war might have ended 6 months ago. Last year, the Ukraine got $120 billion – twice as much as the whole Russian defense budget. Anyone who looked into the affair for more than a minute knows that the whole thing – like WWI, Vietnam, or the War on Terror – is a deadly scam.

That’s why having recognized liars in Congress is so important. It helps remind the press and the voters to ask questions. And the questions bring out the truth. And I, Santos, can make it happen. I am the liar who lets the truth out of the bag. I am also what the voters want. I am gay. I am straight. I am a Jew. And a Catholic. I am a Trump man…and an LGBTQ+ representative. I am a conservative; I’m a liberal. I am Black. I am Ukrainian. I am a Republican…and ready to support any fool cause the voters want. Do they want Green Energy? They got it! Do they want to bomb the Russkies back to the stone age? I’m their man. Do they want more stimmies? More unemployment toppers? More fake money at more fake interest rates?

I’m the guy they want. The perfect Member of Congress. With something for everyone…and nothing for everybody.”

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

Bank Panic and Bank Runs"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 1/1/23:

"Bank Panic and Bank Runs"

"People in Russia starting to freak out. They are lining up at the bank to get money out. The ATMs are closing and they are worried about getting cash and their pensions being funded."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"China Entering WW3: In 30 Days Everything Changes"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 1/1/23:

"China Entering WW3: In 30 Days Everything Changes"

"I make an error in this video in mentioning the election as triggering Nov 2021 economic downturn, of course this was not the election year. The cause of the downturn was likely the conflict that would start in early 2022 and the feds interest rate hikes."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Housing Crash Begins As US Housing Market Enters 2023 In A Massive Bubble"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist 1/1/23:

"Housing Crash Begins As US Housing Market 

Enters 2023 In A Massive Bubble"

"If you’re waiting for a housing market crash so that home prices become affordable again, analysts say you won’t have to wait that long. The market is expected to spiral downward this year as a series of indicators suggest that more trouble is ahead. Experts warn that the free-fall has already begun, and we’re now witnessing eerily similar circumstances to the 2008 disaster.

From December 2021 to December 2022, housing affordability has plunged by almost a third. That explains why single-family home sales fell for the 11th straight month. Even Warren Buffett’s favorite metric suggests that a major reversal is underway. The Berkshire Hathaway Inc CEO once explained that one of the key metrics he watches for a downturn in the housing market is a reduction of housing starts. With more and more Americans being turned off by high mortgage rates and builders being forced to cut back, construction on new homes declined by almost 6.5% from October levels, and 4.1% from November levels, and this trend will likely continue through 2023. Compared to the same time last year, housing starts actually dropped by 9%.

But still, the boom in construction seen in 2021 and in the first two quarters of 2022 is about to inundate the market with new supply, and that’s the perfect recipe for crashing prices, says David I. Kranzler from investing.com. Another breathtaking contraction in housing prices is just a matter of time, Krenzler stresses. Although the lending abuses that occurred in the run-up to the last bubble haven’t been repeated, the economic reality for millions of Americans remains undeniably stark, the expert notes. We don’t have mortgage-backed securities anymore, but the housing market is rapidly freezing right now. Fewer buyers are willing to commit to new purchases due to the higher monthly payments while fewer sellers are willing to list their homes in a weakening market, particularly considering that declining prices could mean taking a loss.

Put it together, affordability is plunging, mortgage costs are going through the roof, and a flood of newly built homes is about to enter the market, vastly increasing supply. It goes without saying that this is a very dangerous combination. The risks of a real estate collapse continue to mount, and a series of stocks will also suffer, just as we saw during the last crash. “That’s because consumers have so much of their wealth tied to their homes,” Kranzler explains. “The bottom line is that the housing market is in serious trouble. So it’s imperative to protect your portfolio from another “Lehman moment.”

The fact that many real estate companies are already in deep financial trouble further proves that the housing market meltdown is already upon us. At the same time, in the past quarter, investor home purchases also plummeted by 30%. Homebuilders are also being impacted by this tighter environment. Cancellation rates have accelerated during the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, jumping to over 20% from 13% in the previous quarter.

The housing market crash is just starting to build momentum. If we observe the sizable decline in existing home sales in November – 7.7% from October on a seasonally adjusted basis and the 35.4% plunge year-over-year, we can clearly see that conditions are deteriorating alarmingly fast. That actually marked the biggest yearly decline since autumn 2008. Officials say that conditions are different this time around. And that may be partially true. But unfortunately, the result is going to be the same."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Disturbed "The Sound Of Silence"

Full screen recommended.

Disturbed, "The Sound Of Silence", Live version.

Singer David Draiman

134 million views.

Full screen recommended.

Disturbed, "The Sound Of Silence", Release version.

Singer David Draiman

867 million views.

"A Look to the Heavens"

“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly. 

The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160728.html

"Once Upon a Time, The End"

"Once Upon a Time, The End"

by Martin Zamyatin

 "Those that can make you believe absurdities 

can make you commit atrocities."

- Voltaire

"The small group of devoted followers gathered around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin sat in stunned silence as the clock on her suburban living room wall struck midnight on the twentieth of December, 1954…and nothing happened. Many had left jobs and spouses and given away all their money and possessions in order to await the arrival of alien beings from the planet Clarion, who Martin had assured them would descend at that appointed hour, carrying the faithful few off in their flying saucers just before huge floods engulfed the planet Earth. Finally, four hours after their scheduled departure time, Martin broke her silence. 

As the group readjusted their bras, belts, and zippers - having been instructed to discard any metal objects which might interfere with the aliens’ telepathic radio transmissions - their tearful host revealed the reason why their intergalactic rescuers had failed to appear: Apparently it had all been only an elaborate test of faith, and the group’s advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet from a watery destruction!

Surprisingly, only one or two of Martin’s followers were unconvinced by this perfectly rational explanation. Among them, however, was social psychologist Leon Festinger, who had secretly infiltrated the group. Festinger would later write about Martin - using the pseudonym of Marian Keech - in his groundbreaking 1958 book, "When Prophecy Fails." (Not surprisingly, Festinger is credited with coining the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance.’) 

Following publication of Festinger’s book, the group predictably collapsed under the weight of public ridicule. Martin fled to Peru to warn the clueless natives about the imminent re-emergence of Atlantis, before later resurfacing in Arizona, where she joined crackpot L. Ron Hubbard’s nascent pseudoscientific movement, Scientology.

It seems that for as long as people have inhabited the world, they have anticipated its imminent demise. (In fact, the oldest known apocalyptic prediction is depicted on Assyrian tablets from 2800 BC.) In what may be the earliest example in European folklore, a Frankish villager wandered off into the forest in 591, only to be accosted by a swarm of ravenous flies. Overwhelmed, the poor fellow completely lost his mind and returned to his village clothed in animal pelts, claiming he was Jesus Christ, sent to gather his flock before the coming Rapture. (Perhaps resenting the competition, a local bishop hired a gang of thugs to capture the Lord of the Flies, who they rapturously hacked into little bits.)

The failure of one apocalyptic prophecy not only failed to deter its devoted followers but in fact spawned several entirely new religions. When the world failed to end as predicted in the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1843-44, Massachusetts preacher William Miller’s tens of thousands of followers splintered off to found the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the obnoxious doorknockers known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the next fateful year of 1874 passed without the desired fireworks, the latter’s charismatic founder, Charles Taze Russell, explained that Jesus had indeed returned, but was invisible to all except the truly devout. (Predictably, few dared admit to being lacking in the requisite level of faith.) 

The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had declared way back in 1832 that 1890 would be the year of Jesus’s long awaited return engagement. (Later jailed for fraud, Smith somehow failed to predict his own deliverance by an angry mob at age 39.) Russell revised the fateful year to 1881…then 1914…and finally, 1918. (The latter dates spanned World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, events that while apocalyptic for many, fell short of being world ending.)

Our own time has seen the horrors of the Peoples Temple - in which 914 adults and children committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978; the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists - 75 of whom died in the FBI standoff at Waco in 1993; Aum Shinri Kyo -whose poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994-95 left 19 innocent people dead; and -neither least nor unfortunately, last - Heaven’s Gate, 39 of whose members committed suicide in 1996, fully expecting (like Dorothy Martin) their spirits to be carried away by aliens hiding in the wake of an approaching comet.

It was probably no coincidence that all of these cults were acting in anticipation of an impending Bible-inspired Day of Judgement. One is tempted to blame these kinds of incidents on the delusions of a small minority of misguided religious fanatics, except that millions of people alive today are expecting an imminent Biblical apocalypse. In a 2012 global poll, fully one out of 7 people said they thought the world would end during their lifetime - and rather ominously, Americans topped the list of doomsayers at 22%. Since their government has the means to fulfil their death wish many times over, one can only hope their gloomy prediction won’t one day become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just call it a bedtime story for humanity."

- http://www.321gold.com/editorials/

"We Often Discover..."

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.

We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; 

and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” 

- Samuel Smiles

"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"

"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading. Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.

Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?

So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).

Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:

1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now - and if that doesn't work, then...

2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen. This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.

3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.

4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?

5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.

6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.

7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves--which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.

8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.

Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest.

The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.

By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum - they should be spectacular - but not in the way you expect."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"It's a New Era"

"It's a New Era"

By Charles Hugh Smith

"This dynamic - making problems much worse by forcing more of whatever worked in the previous era into a saturated, increasing unstable new era - receives little attention or understanding. Eras may last decades, and only those who've lived long enough to recall previous eras have experienced the transition from one era to the next. The era of financialization, globalization and low-cost, abundant oil/natural gas began over 40 years ago in 1981.

The era of digital/Internet technologies took off about 30 years ago. All of these dynamics accelerated in the early 2000s, roughly 20 years ago. Only those 60 and older experienced working in a previous era (pre-1981).

All of these dynamics are entering a phase of nonlinear turbulence as the changes are outpacing these highly streamlined/optimized systems' ability to self-correct. This nonlinear instability is being accelerated by doing more of what worked in the previous era, in the mistaken belief that the 2020s are simply an extension of the eras that began 40 and 30 years ago.

The fixes that worked in the past won't resolve the nonlinear instability because all these dynamics have reached saturation: adding more debt no longer generates organic expansion of productivity, all it does is inflate an even larger and more unstable credit-asset bubble.

Globalization has been optimized to the point of saturation: the potential downsides to national security outweigh any remaining marginal gains in corporate profitability. Financialization has so distorted the economy that gambling on useless speculations is now viewed as the best (or only) way to get ahead. When a system has absorbed all it can absorb, adding more is just a waste of resources.

We've entered a new era, and so the fixes and incentives that worked in the past 40 years no longer work. The idea that the past 30 years were not a permanent era but an anomaly that's come to an end doesn't compute for everyone who has only experienced the "glorious 30" years of cheap energy, soaring assets and falling prices due to hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization.

The idea that this new era may evolve unpredictably is also anathema to a technocratic culture and economy that prides itself on forecasting and controlling everything with credit and money. The previous 40 years of material abundance has nurtured a belief that the solution to any scarcity is to create more money, as some of this new money will inevitably flow into eliminating the scarcity. The idea that some scarcities cannot be fixed by creating more money doesn't compute. It may turn out that all the lessons we learned in the past 40 years will not only be useless in this new era, they will be disastrously counter-productive.

Their unparalleled success for decades may blind us to the power of previous solutions to make our problems worse than they would have been had we recognized the new era for what it is rather than seeing the future as a seamless extension of the previous era. This dynamic - making problems much worse by forcing more of whatever worked in the previous era into a saturated, increasing unstable new era - receives little attention or understanding.

This dynamic helps us understand why systems that seemed permanent and forever can destabilize and fall apart with astonishing speed. We thought we were fixing it by doing more of what worked in the past, but we were actually accelerating the turbulence and destabilization. We have a hard time letting go of the idea that the recent past is an accurate guide to the future. In stable eras, it generally is, but not when an era ends and a new one begins."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

The Daily "Near You?"

Cheadle, Stockport, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

Khalil Gibran, "A Tear and A Smile"

Full screen recommended.

Read by Shane Morris

Khalil Gibran, "A Tear and A Smile"

"A Tear and A Smile"

"I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart

For the joys of the multitude.

And I would not have the tears that sadness makes

To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding

Of life's secrets and hidden things.

A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and

To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;

A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing

than that I live Weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the

Depths of my spirit, for I have seen those who are

Satisfied the most wretched of people.

I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing,

and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals

And sleeps, embracing her longing.

At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet

The sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.

A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come

Together and are a cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys

Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping

To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers

to Return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.

A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from

The greater spirit to move in the world of matter

And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow

And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death

And return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty - to God."

"Most People Will Lose The Economic War In 2023; Households Are Broke"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/1/23:

"Most People Will Lose The Economic War In 2023;

 Households Are Broke"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"May Sarton on How to Live with Tenderness in a Harsh World"

"May Sarton on How to Live with Tenderness in a Harsh World"

By Maria Popova

"This world is radiant with beauty. This world is also capable of bone-chilling brutality and the small, corrosive daily cruelties that salt our days with sorrow. For a sensitive person to live with the duality, to keep the light aflame without turning away from the darkness that needs illumination, may be the most difficult thing in life - and the most rewarding.

What it takes, and how it rewards us, is what the great poet and diarist May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) explores in a journal entry from her altogether dazzling 1977 book "The House by the Sea" (public library). With an eye to the daily reality of teenagers killing with firearms - a reality that, in the decades since, has been magnified from interpersonal violence to mass shootings - she considers the long roots of desensitization, fanged into the body of the world with every war: "What have we done to our children that such indifference is possible? A total disconnection between the act and the human terror and despair involved?"

In a passage of stunning prescience and relevance to our own epoch, she answers: "We are in a period where torture is taken for granted almost everywhere, and where the so-called civilized peoples must go on eating candy and drinking whiskey while millions die of hunger. So one has to extrapolate the morally indifferent boys to the whole ethos in which they live. And at the root of it all is the lack of imagination. If we had imagined what we were doing in Vietnam it would have had to be stopped. But the images of old women holding shattered babies or of babies screaming ended by passing before our eyes but never penetrating to consciousness where they could be experienced. Are we paying for Vietnam now by seeing our children become monsters?"

Sarton offers a cure for this deadly indifference - a cure that honeys this twenty-first-century soul with its poignancy and its potency: "I am more and more convinced that in the life of civilizations as in the lives of individuals too much matter that cannot be digested, too much experience that has not been imagined and probed and understood, ends in total rejection of everything - ends in anomie. The structures break down and there is nothing to “hold onto.” It is understandable that at such times religious fanatics arise and the fundamentalists rise up in fury. Hatred rather than love dominates. How does one handle it? The greatest danger, as I see it in myself, is the danger of withdrawal into private worlds. We have to keep the channels in ourselves open to pain. At the same time it is essential that true joys be experienced, that the sunrise not leave us unmoved, for civilization depends on the true joys, all those that have nothing to do with money or affluence - nature, the arts, human love. Maybe that is why the pandas in the London Zoo brought me back to poetry for the first time in two years."

Complement this fragment of the wholly ravishing "The House by the Sea" with Sarton on the cure for despair, then revisit Walt Whitman, writing shortly after his paralytic stroke, on what makes life worth living and Mary Oliver on the measure of a life well lived."

- https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/