"10 Major Layoff Announcements That Have Already Happened So Far In 2023"

"10 Major Layoff Announcements That 

Have Already Happened So Far In 2023"

by Michael Snyder

"This is my rebuttal to those in the federal government and elsewhere that are attempting to claim that the job market is in good shape. No matter how many workers get laid off, the Bureau of Labor Statistics always seems to find a way to post a positive jobs number each month. We were told that the U.S. economy somehow added 256,000 jobs in November even though Challenger, Gray & Christmas determined that the number of layoffs in November 2022 was actually 417 percent higher than it was during the same month a year earlier. And even though the tsunami of layoffs continued in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling us that the U.S. economy somehow added 223,000 jobs last month. It is almost as if there is a certain number that the BLS refuses to go below. For each of the last five months, the number of jobs that the U.S. has “added” has miraculously come in between 200,000 and 300,000 each time. But meanwhile large companies all over America have been laying off workers at a staggering rate.

Unfortunately, the pace of layoffs seems to be picking up speed during the early days of 2023. The following are 10 major layoff announcements that have already happened so far this year…

#1 Salesforce has announced that approximately 10 percent of their workers will be canned…"Salesforce Inc. plans to cut about 10% of its staff as part of a restructuring plan, the software company said Wednesday. The company will also exit some real estate and cut back on office space, it disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The plan is aimed to reduce operating costs, boost operating margins, and drive “profitable growth.”

#2 Vimeo says that “11% of the company’s workforce” will be permanently canceled…"Vimeo has launched another round of layoffs, a company spokesperson confirmed to Insider on Wednesday. In an email to staff, Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud said the layoffs would impact 11% of the company’s workforce."

#3 StickFix is eliminating “about 20% of its salaried workforce” as the company starts to come apart at the seams…"StitchFix will cut about 20% of its salaried workforce, according to a statement published by the company on Thursday. Along with the cuts, the company’s CEO is stepping down, the company announced in a statement. The company will also close a Salt Lake City, Utah facility, they said.

#4 Their first round of layoffs was not deep enough, and so now Genesis is saying goodbye to “30% of its workforce in a second round of layoffs”…"Cryptocurrency firm Genesis has cut 30% of its workforce in a second round of layoffs in less than six months, according to a person familiar with the matter, as pressure builds on crypto industry executives to cut costs in the wake of a downturn."

#5 Not to be outdone, Silvergate Capital is laying the axe to 40 percent of their workers…"Amid a “crisis of confidence” across the cryptocurrency industry, crypto banking group Silvergate Capital will cut 40% of its workforce and abandon some projects - including a blockchain-based payment solution based on Meta’s abortive Diem project."

#6 SuperRare Labs has just announced that 30 percent of their workforce will need to look for new jobs…"SuperRare Labs, the company behind NFT marketplace SuperRare, became the latest crypto player to make job cuts on Friday, announcing it will reduce its staff by 30%. The news came from SuperRare CEO John Crain, who tweeted out a message he sent to employees in Slack."

#7 More than a third of Biocept’s workers will be shown the door as the company struggles to survive…"Liquid biopsy firm Biocept said Friday that it is exploring strategic alternatives to enhance shareholder value, and has engaged EF Hutton, a division of Benchmark Investments, as its financial adviser. As this process moves forward, the firm is implementing a restructuring plan that includes reducing staff by approximately 35 percent."

#8 The first two rounds of layoffs didn’t do the trick, and so now Compass has decided to conduct a third round of layoffs…"Compass is still coming back to earth - but this time possibly without its headquarters. On Thursday, The Real Deal reported that the real-estate company was looking to sublease its 89,000-square-foot office space at 90 Fifth Avenue near Union Square. The same day, Compass also announced it was conducting its third round of layoffs this year; in an SEC filing, the company wrote that layoffs would “allow for a path to achieve positive free cash flow in 2023.”

#9 It turns out that the layoffs at Amazon will be much larger than originally anticipated…"Amazon said it is slashing a total of 18,000 jobs, a larger number of positions than it previously announced and the largest set of layoffs in the e-commerce giant’s history. “We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a note to employees that the company made public on Wednesday. “However, because one of our teammates leaked this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news earlier so you can hear the details directly from me.”

#10 The Daily Mail is reporting that McDonald’s “will slash many of its 200,000 corporate staff in coming months” as it attempts to turn the business back in a positive direction…"McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski has revealed plans to slash corporate jobs later this year to help the business grow. "In a letter to staff on Friday, the fast-food giant boss said there would be ‘difficult discussions and decisions ahead’ and warned that the company had become unfocused.

But don’t worry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling us that everything is just fine. You believe them, don’t you?

Sadly, it appears that a lot more layoffs could be coming very soon. For example, Bed Bath & Beyond is in such bad shape that it may soon not have many employees left at all…"Now Bed Bath & Beyond “has concluded that there is substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the retailer said on Thursday. This means Bed Bath & Beyond has to consider all financial options, including restructuring, selling assets or going through bankruptcy. “These measures may not be successful,” the company added. Its stock price dropped more than 20% as soon as markets opened."

For years, our leaders have been desperately trying to prop up our “bubble economy”, and for a while their efforts were successful. But now they can no longer hold back the economic catastrophe that has been building for more than a decade. This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in world history, but those in power have wrecked it. Now we stand at the brink of an unprecedented economic crisis, and the months ahead are likely to be quite brutal.

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

And then... what?

"More People Than Ever Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck"

"More People Than Ever Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck"

By IWB

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

And what happens when you lose your job?

Bill Bonner, "Breaking the Spell"

"Breaking the Spell"

Magic Money and the Fed's Full Fantasy Flimflam

By Bill Bonner

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, 

and I care not who makes its laws!"

~ Amschel Rothschild

Normandy, France - "Everything depends on the Fed! It controls the money. Last week, when investors expected the Fed to continue raising rates, stocks fell. Then, on Friday, a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us two seemingly contradictory things: that the labor market was better than expected…but that wages were rising less than expected.

The first of these things implied a stern response from the Fed – higher rates. The second suggested it might go out for coffee. Investors, in their wisdom, focused on the second interpretation; the Dow shot up more than 700 points.

What a remarkable state of affairs. Reporters study every word from the Fed. Analysts anticipate its every move. And now, businesses hold back on billion-dollar investments…wondering if the economy will take off after the Fed ‘pivots.’ Employees wait for the Fed’s next move to decide whether to look for a new job. Investments postponed…careers cut short...vacations put off… marriages delayed…and yes, the Fed has become the most powerful unarmed organization in the world. By decree, it can wipe our trillions of dollars of wealth…destroy businesses…make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

An Implicit Guarantee: Last week, however, we saw that not even the Fed can make the sun stand still. Time waiteth for no man…certainly not for Jerome Powell. And eventually, the bubble pumped up by reckless printing press money implodes. Then, as the air whooshes out…those companies that benefited most…lose most.

We have some direct insight into this phenomenon. Our company, Agora, has offered investment advice since 1979 – more than 40 years. The advice was sometimes shockingly good, sometimes not-so-good. After all, Mr. Market does not give away his secrets readily. But the more the Fed favored the stock market – with artificially low interest rates and an implicit guarantee – the more people wanted stock market advice. And the more our subscription sales went up.

This was not altogether a good thing. The Fed gave investors the idea that making money was easy. All they had to do was to buy stocks and sit back. Then, in this century, the Fed went Full Fantasy, increasing the money supply (its own holdings) by 1,200%, with its key interest rate approaching zero…far below the inflation rate. Then, investors discovered that they could make the most money in the least valuable investments, those least tethered to the real world of time and stuff. Cryptos, for example, had no value. They earned no profits. They had no employees to speak of. Nor did they have any assets worth mentioning – no factories, no patents, no distribution networks.

Buying a crypto might get an investor a profit far higher and far faster than he could get from a real, old industry company. At first, our editors and analysts hesitated. This was not the kind of “investing” that made sense to them. But they gradually adjusted…giving readers what they wanted. Sales soared; but both our own editors and the investors they served were learning the wrong lesson.

The Bubble Epoch: The peak in the Bubble Epoch came in August 2020. This was in the middle of the feds’ Covid Hysteria, in which they added $5 trillion to the economy to offset the shutdowns they had caused. Early in the month, the 10-year treasury note hit a record low yield of barely more than one half of one percent. Then, on August 24th, the Dow replaced ‘old economy’ ExxonMobil with ‘new economy’ Salesforce. Salesforce grew by leaps and bounds – offering software from ‘the cloud’ to companies such as ours. Almost all investment-related companies were adding customers and making money.

But after August, 2020, the bond market took a new direction – down; the bubble was losing air. It wasn’t obvious at first. Salesforce did not peak out until more than a year later. But investors were already backing off. Our sales were going down. Investors sensed that the Bubble Epoch was over. The Dow peaked out at the end of 2021 at just over 36,000. This is good news. The spell is broken. Analysts can go back to doing what they should be doing – offering solid investment insights and advice.

The Fed’s Mettle: But wait. Instead of carefully studying the ledgers of public companies, investors and analysts are still enthralled to the same monster that created the Bubble in the first place. And now the question is: Will it ‘pivot’ this year?

The Fed says “no pivot”…un un…no way, Jose… Fed minutes: “No participants anticipated that it would be appropriate to begin reducing the federal funds rate target in 2023. Participants generally observed that a restrictive policy stance would need to be maintained until the incoming data provided confidence that inflation was on a sustained downward path to 2 percent, which was likely to take some time.”

Do you believe that, dear reader? We do. But we also believe that the participants can change their minds. And if we get a real crisis – a major bankruptcy…a run on a bank…a crash in the stock market…a hotter war…a new virus… any excuse at all…then Fed governors’ foreheads will grow damp…their knees will tremble…their backs will bend – and they will fold like lawn chairs. We’ll see."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

o

Related:

"$38 trillion in debt at 5% = $1.9 trillion in interest expense per year. 

That is ~50% of tax revenue… The Fed is not in control. 

The Bond Market is in control."

"Peak Focus for Complex Tasks, With Beta Isochronic Tones"

Full screen recommended.

"Peak Focus for Complex Tasks, 

 With Beta Isochronic Tones"

by Jason Lewis - Mind Amend

"This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Listen to this when you need a strong burst of intense focus to concentrate and study things like advanced mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any other complex mental activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Use this session in the morning, afternoon or early evening, to train your brain for better cognition, focus and thought processing. You can either sit somewhere quiet and comfortable with your eyes closed and give your brain a nice workout, or you can also listen to this while doing an activity that requires a boost in concentration.

Headphones are NOT REQUIRED for this video.

Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.

"Cognition Enhancer Extended Version"

o

Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel."

I strongly suggest you read Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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"Isochronic Tones –

How They Work, the Benefits and the Research"

This is a brainwave entrainment audio session using isochronic tones combined with music. The isochronic tones are the repetitive beats you can hear on top of the music throughout the track. If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here: 

- https://www.mindamend.com

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Listen folks, we're out of time! Whether you want to know it or not we're literally in the fight of our lives, for our lives, right now, and it's going to get much, much worse. Some of you reading this will not survive, and I may not either, so I'll take any edge I can get, and you should too... This works for me. Prepare yourself, brace for impact...

- CP

Jim Kunstler, "Insurrection Anybody?"

"Insurrection Anybody?"

By Jim Kunstler

“One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. 

Soon we’ll need a new definition.”

 - Alvin Toffler

"Insurrections galore spark off all of a sudden and 2023 was just born days ago! Want to know why? Because the business model of the global economy is broken and the supposed remedy for that is centralized control of populations and super-strict regulation of all their activities - that is, techno-tyranny (with Marxist characteristics, as the Chinese like to put it). Not everybody wants to ride that bus, and so an epic economic problem becomes an arduous political struggle, here and elsewhere in the world.

A large number of people went apeshit in Brazil over the weekend in that country’s weird, geographically isolated capital, Brasilia, a horror of 1960s-style Modernist city planning. They stormed the national congress and trashed the offices within to protest the fishy election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over the former incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. As in our own country, the quarrel was over the mysterious behavior of voting machines and the unwillingness of election officials or courts to verify the results. The New York Times offered a thumbnail of Mr. Bolsonaro, who is sitting out the current action in Florida: "The resulting picture showed an elected leader, first as a congressman and then as president, who has built a narrative of fraudulent elections based on inaccuracies, out-of-context reports, circumstantial evidence, conspiracy theories and downright falsehoods - much like former President Donald J. Trump.”

Get it? There’s no way fraud could have happened, just like in our country. And Bolsonaro is another Trump. It explains everything. All complaints are “baseless,” “false,” and “conspiracy theories.” End-of-story… Are these shopworn tropes maybe losing their mojo? And is The New York Times embarrassing itself, a little bit, to trot them out as if they are actually arguments against anything?

The truth is more that Mr. Lula is another Hugo Chavez, poised to wreck Brazil with a fresh attempt at nationalizing all enterprise, ramping up a Marxist police state, and inviting China in to partner-up in the action, including new Chinese military bases in the western hemisphere - an interesting challenge to the Monroe Doctrine (if anyone remembers what it says). And so, Mr. Lula has arrested hundreds of protesters and declared a national emergency.

Don’t expect it to stop there. The protesters are asking the army to intervene, as Brazil’s constitution actually obligates them to do in election disputes. Also, unlike the USA, Brazil has plenty of prior experience with the army removing elected leaders. Sometimes, electing yourself into tyranny is not the best way to solve economic problems. For the moment, Mr. Lula borrows a page from the American Left’s playbook for destroying a society. It will matter a lot if he doesn’t get away with it. That’s why the US political Swamp, and its errand boys in the news media, look on the action in Brazil with alarm. Unlike the January 6 protest in Washington, the Brasilia mob represents a genuine insurrection aimed at overthrowing a communist seizure of power.

Likewise, the US Swamp endured a rebellion in the House of Representatives last week. The 20-odd reps who revolted against Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker - Matt Gates, Lauren Boebert, and others - sought written guarantees to prevent such legislative insults as the passage of a 4000-page omnibus spending bill that nobody could possibly read prior to voting, along with many Swamp-draining changes in rules. One rule change makes it much easier to remove Speaker McCarthy from leadership if he reneges on any of his agreements. The House can now proceed to multiple inquiries into the vast matrix of rot, malice, and deceit that has set the federal government at war against its own citizens.

One angle of this, of course, is the open border with Mexico that has enabled millions of unvetted migrants to enter the USA illegally with the federal immigration apparatus recruited (also illegally) to disperse them all over the country. “Joe Biden” traveled down to the border last weekend in a pretend show of concern for the disorder the people behind him have instigated there. They stupidly took him for a photo op to one of the few places on the border where he wouldn’t have to actually witness mobs crossing the Rio Grande: a stretch of wall that his predecessor, Mr. Trump, built. Hey, no unsightly foreign riffraff cluttering up the picture there!

Before long, the House is going to impeach Mr. Biden over this and quite a few other matters. He may not be convicted in the Senate, with its slim Democratic Party majority, but they will be compelled to hold a trial, at least, where a lot of dirty laundry will get aired, and pressure will mount for the old grifter to resign. Ms. Harris is sworn in and five minutes later suffers a “nervous collapse” that the public is not informed about. It sets off a wild series of events around the selection of a new vice-president - Barack or Michele Obama? - that could burn the whole joint down. Stick around in ’23, unless the spike proteins have got your number. It’s going to be a humdinger of a year."

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Frustrating Trip To Costco! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/9/23:

"Frustrating Trip To Costco! This Is Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Costco, and are noticing some price increases! 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:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

"Russian Typical Supermarket After 10 Months of Sanctions"

Your thoughts, Good Citizen?

"Here Comes The Hard Landing"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 1/9/23:

"Here Comes The Hard Landing"

"Financial experts are stepping forward and saying we’re going to have a huge problem in the future. It looks like we’re going to have a hard land in the economy. It’s going to affect every single industry out there."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Here comes..."? It's a process, not a destination, 

and that process is very definitely here, now, and it won't slow down...

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/9/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/9/23"

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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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, 1/9/23:

"Alert! Currency Devaluation On A Grand Scale, 

Be Ready For It"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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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...

"This Is Getting Real, Prepare For Natural And Man Made Disasters Now; Las Vegas And Cali Power Out"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 1/8/23:

"This Is Getting Real, Prepare For Natural And Man 

Made Disasters Now; Las Vegas And Cali Power Out"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Food Shortages Will Be Worse in 2023 As Family Farms Shut Down Across America"

Full screen recommended.

"Food Shortages Will Be Worse in 2023

 As Family Farms Shut Down Across America"

by Epic Economist

"Food shortages in the USA will become worse in 2023 as family farms are on the verge of collapse. As the whole world grapples with the supply chain issues, the American farms are also put in an unprecedented situation. While far away from the European battle lines, the impacts of disrupted supply lines are rippling through family farms in the midwestern United States. Ukrainian harvest has already dropped by more than 50 percent and will drop a further 45 percent in 2023. This might seem like good news for American farmers. However, this war is not just about agriculture. It is also about fertilizers and overall cost of operation.

More farm owners than anytime in history are now set to leave and sell off their businesses. This is why there will be food shortages in 2023. The problem is simple. Farms just cannot meet up their production cost. Even third and fourth generation farmers are disgruntled with the ever increasing expenses. Just in the last couple of years, the packaging costs have doubled, fuel costs are showing no signs of slowing down and Fertilizer costs will continue to be a problem.

The United Nations has warned that in 2023 there would be a 20 percent increase in droughts and erratic rainfalls. Vast agricultural areas will suffer under hot and dry weather conditions and yields will remain on the lower side. Soaring fertilizer costs, Inflation, interest rate hikes, and droughts mean that food shortages are coming. But not just America, we are looking at a Global food crisis. From Africa & Asia to Europe & Antarctica, no one is safe from the upcoming food shortage. Around 35 million people globally are not able to get basic food and that number will only go up. In America’s backyard, Haiti is about to be food extinct with 1.8 million in the Emergency phase.

Get ready for chaos. The world is on a path that ultimately leads to food riots. It is time to hit the panic button and declare a Food Emergency all over the world."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "Fed Confetti Party Will End Rudely & Abruptly"

"Fed Confetti Party Will End Rudely & Abruptly"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Lawyer John Titus is an ardent Fed watcher. He has some of the most popular videos on the internet explaining complicated Federal Reserve actions and policies. Titus says the Fed is in a dangerous situation where the slightest wrong move in any direction could cause a financial system meltdown worse than 2008. Titus explains, “When you have a debt based monetary system and you take away the drugs, you risk a withdrawal process that can get very nasty, and that’s exactly what happened in 2008. You start this downward deflationary spiral, and suddenly, people start calling in loans. Oh my goodness, the collateral is not good, and we all know what happened in 2008.

That’s why the Fed has got to be careful now. They are between a rock and a hard place. They don’t want the money supply, the bank money supply, at the retail level to rocket up. They’ve got to stop that. They have stopped that on one hand, but on the other hand, they don’t want the deflationary spiral. The last thing they want in the world is the twin nightmare. You’ve got raging inflation, and by the way, no one has a job, and nobody has any money. The money you do have doesn’t buy anything. The Fed is staring right at it.”

Titus contends the Fed has printed more money than ever before and at a much faster pace than ever before. Titus warns, “The confetti party has a way of ending rather rudely and abruptly.”

What should the common person do? Titus says, “Not losing is winning. Not losing is a win, and that’s kind of where we are. If you put your money on gold last year, you may have lost 5% or gained 5%. It really was not that much, but it was a big win compared to the S&P 500 and bonds, wasn’t it? I mean you crushed them - right? You just don’t know. With the Fed raising interest rates, there is deflation on one hand, but in the grocery store, everybody is seeing inflation. Those two forces spell trouble ahead to me. I don’t know how this story ends, and I am not sure I want to know, but we are going to find out.”

Titus says get anything you can and hold as much as you can outside the banking system. Titus likes tangible assets such as physical gold, silver, art, paid for land, paid for vehicles, paid for business and cash, to name a few. Titus says, “To leave your money in a bank, you are leading with your chin in a dangerous time.”

Titus is predicting the Fed will be forced to stop raising interest rates and “start cutting them early in the third quarter of 2023, and by the end of the year, we will see QE (money printing) again.”

Titus says the worse things get, the more dangerous it will be for “We the People.” Titus explains, “The people that have the power to create money out of thin air are not going to give up that power willingly. They are going to do whatever it takes to retain that power. I am telling you, they are in a situation where they have runaway debt, and they have to find a way to bring down liabilities. Whether that way is to saw into your bank account through bail-ins or whether that is to cull people, especially people who are sick and drawing a lot of money out of the system. 

The system is openly criminal. There is no nice, polite boundary with criminals anywhere. They don’t draw a line and say we are willing to defraud people, but we would never kill somebody. Crime is crime, and these people are going to do whatever they have to do to retain their power. If that means people will have to be culled because they are drawing too much from Medicaid, then so be it. This is a completely logical conclusion that a psychopath would draw, and that is what we are dealing with here. This is all on the table now.” There is much more in the 48-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes On-on One with Fed watcher 

John Titus, creator of the popular video series called “Best Evidence.”

- https://rumble.com/

"They Are Dropping Fast"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, 1/8/23:

"They Are Dropping Fast"

"As we start the new year, we are starting to see that businesses are failing at an incredibly fast pace. This is absolutely amazing how bad things really are. Look at all the retailers that are going down."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Divenire"

Full screen recommended.

Ludovico Einaudi, "Divenire"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle, is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System. 

Click image for larger size.

Arching across the top is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. Many famous stars and nebulas are also visible in the background night sky. The featured 29-panel panorama was taken and composed in 2015 September after detailed planning that involved the Moon, the rock spires, and their corresponding shadows. Even so, the strong zodiacal light was a pleasant surprise.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201011.html

Chet Raymo, “As Time Goes By”

“As Time Goes By”

by Chet Raymo

“Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God’s wristwatch say? Time doesn’t exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we’re just not there anymore. The future exists; we’ll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…

Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won’t understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like “Consciousness Explained”. Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?

As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it’s going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word “entanglement,” from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.

Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”

- https://www.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Can You Imagine?”

“Can You Imagine?”

“For example, what the trees do

not only in lightning storms

or the watery dark of a summer’s night

or under the white nets of winter

but now, and now, and now – whenever

we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine

they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing

to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting

a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly

more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just

stand there loving every

minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings

of the years slowly and without a sound

thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,

and then only in its own mood, comes

to visit, surely you can’t imagine

patience, and happiness, like that.”

- Mary Oliver, “Long Life”

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

by Jeff Thomas

"Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Therefore, if a tablecloth is spread out on a table and an object, such as the fishbowl above, is placed on that tablecloth, the fishbowl will tend to "want" to remain right where it is. If the tablecloth were to be yanked away quickly, the fishbowl would move very little. Inertia, having been overcome by the tablecloth, would then be overcome, but the fishbowl, already at rest, would tend to remain right where it had been before – on the table.

And the same is true of human nature. If a government or an economic system collapses, the populace will experience an immediate shock of change, but their tendency will be to adapt as quickly as possible to maintain their previous situation as much as can be accomplished.

Has the government collapsed? Create a new one, possibly on similar principles as the previous one (hopefully with revisions made, to prevent the next government from making the same self-destructive mistakes a second time.)

Has the economy collapsed? Throw together whatever new form of economy works best until a more solid one can be created. This could mean relying temporarily on barter, but might mean the establishment of a safer form of currency, such as precious metals. And, again, when a new currency is introduced, revisions might be made as to who controls it, in order to assure that the same mistake is not repeated.

But, these are natural calamities that happen from time to time in civilization and, as long as the people dealing with the re-establishment of the government or economy are motivated in the direction of the benefit of the populace, there’s every chance that a solution will be created that would be implemented quickly, might minimize damage and, hopefully, be better than the last version. After all, if left to their own devices, people will come up with whatever system serves them well.

But, of course, we rarely witness the above scenario with regard to governments and economies. What we do see playing out, time after time, in one era or another, in one geographical location or another, is something quite different. Historically, what we’ve seen is that government performs the political and/or economic equivalent of pulling the tablecloth away slowly. And, of course, anyone who’s familiar with the old tablecloth trick understands what will happen. The fishbowl ends up smashed on the floor and the fish are left gasping for their last breaths.

This latter fact illustrates vividly why no one should ever pull away the tablecloth slowly. And yet, in generation after generation, humankind is repeatedly suckered into a situation in which their government does exactly that.

The way it works is that the government first says, "It’s too troublesome for you to run your own lives; leave it to us and we’ll look after you. We’ll take care of all those pesky details of life that are nuisances for you now."

First, they take control of "protection" in the form of a military, to protect the populace from threats from without and, later, create a police force to protect the populace from threats from within. Then, clearly, the people need a central fire service. They also need roads and community buildings. And, of course, these all cost money, so taxes are implemented. Then they are raised, as the costs of such services inevitably increase over time.

Then, an increasingly expansive list of other services is put forward – assistance for the poor, retirement funds, universal health benefits, etc. Soon, it becomes "necessary" to increase taxes to pay for the ever-expanding list of services the government controls. Throughout this process, the populace nods as each new "benefit" is introduced. And, since the process is gradual, they almost invariably fail to worry that the tablecloth is in motion and that their fishbowl is closer to the edge of the table than it was before.

But, in the meantime, the political leaders are continuing to pull the tablecloth and are aware that the fishbowl is nearing the edge. At this point, if they were responsible people, they’d say, "Oh-oh, we’ve been a bit too greedy and we’ve put you folks in danger. But, at this point, it won’t do any good for us to tax you less and cut out the services that have been promised to you. At this point, we need to stop pulling entirely."

And, of course, were they to do that, two things would occur. First, the populace would be up in arms at their entitlements being cut off. Second, the political leaders would be out of a job. With no more services to provide, taxation would cease to have validation. The political leaders would be in far greater danger from a cessation of movement than the people themselves.

What to do? Well, most of us, as we become adults, recognize that, in order to live, we must become productive. That’s what turns us into responsible people. But, remember, political leaders never learn this lesson. They go straight from being parasitical as children to being parasitical as adults. When the jig is up and the fishbowl is nearing the edge, they act the way they’ve always acted – as parasites. Only now, they realise that it’s all about to end very soon. Therefore, it’s time to get a last squeeze of the lemon before it goes dry.

At that point, they ramp up the economy through the creation of debt. They also increase taxation dramatically, with the claim that benefits must be increased. They then do their best to get themselves out of the way as the last pull of the tablecloth sends the fishbowl over the edge.

This, of course, is why it’s so overwhelmingly common for political leaders to take a hike just as their economies and/or governments are collapsing. Regardless of the era, regardless of the geographical locale, whether the leader be Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista or Idi Amin, those who caused the problem tend to have a well-funded exit plan in place and are rarely themselves trapped in the fishbowl.

Since this has been the nature of governments throughout history, we’d be wise to observe the situation objectively when assessing the country in which we live, and, we’d be wise to concurrently assess how things are going in other countries. If our home country is literally getting close to the edge, we might wish to make a move before the inevitable occurs.

 

Historically, in any era, there are always some countries that are getting near the edge and others that are not. Unfortunately, there's little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible. The choice for anyone whose situation is reaching its expiry date might wish to vote with his feet, rather than to await the final pull of the tablecloth."

- internationalman.com