Full screen recommended.
The Temptations, "Ball of Confusion" (1970)
Prophetic...
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, March 16, 2023
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! How Can We Afford This?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 3/16/23
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! How Can We Afford This?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! This is not good as we are also seeing empty shelves everywhere! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and then charging extremely high prices!"
Comments here:
o
"Alert! FED To Pump 2 Trillion Dollars Into The Banking System! Regional Banks For Sale!"
Gregory Mannarino, 3/16/23
"Alert! FED To Pump 2 Trillion Dollars Into The Banking System!
Regional Banks For Sale!"
Comments here:
"Ukraine's Death By Proxy" (Excerpt)
"Ukraine's Death By Proxy"
by Chris Hedges
Excerpt: "Proxy wars devour the countries they purport to defend. There will come a time when the Ukrainians will become expendable to the U.S. They will disappear, as many others before them, from U.S. national discourse and popular consciousness...
There are many ways for a state to project power and weaken adversaries, but proxy wars are one of the most cynical. Proxy wars devour the countries they purport to defend. They entice nations or insurgents to fight for geopolitical goals that are ultimately not in their interest.
The war in Ukraine has little to do with Ukrainian freedom and a lot to do with degrading the Russian military and weakening Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power. And when Ukraine looks headed for defeat, or the war reaches a stalemate, Ukraine will be sacrificed like many other states, in what one of the founding members of the C.I.A., Miles Copeland Jr., referred to as the “Game of Nations” and “the amorality of power politics.”
I covered proxy wars in my two decades as a foreign correspondent, including in Central America where the U.S. armed the military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala and Contra insurgents attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. I reported on the insurgency in the Punjab, a proxy war fomented by Pakistan.
I covered the Kurds in northern Iraq, backed and then betrayed more than once by Iran and Washington. During my time in the Middle East, Iraq provided weapons and support to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) to destabilize Iran. Belgrade, when I was in the former Yugoslavia, thought by arming Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, it could absorb Bosnia and parts of Croatia into a greater Serbia.
Proxy wars are notoriously hard to control, especially when the aspirations of those doing the fighting and those sending the weapons diverge. They also have a bad habit of luring sponsors of proxy wars, as happened to the U.S. in Vietnam and Israel in Lebanon, directly into the conflict."
Full article is here:
"Major Insider Warning! Plan-B For NATO-Russia WW3; 400,000 Troops; Financial Collapse Happening Now"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/15/23
"Major Insider Warning! Plan-B For NATO-Russia WW3;
400,000 Troops; Financial Collapse Happening Now"
Comments here:
"Silcon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It"
"Silcon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It"
By John Wilder
"On March 15, 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was walking to work, since Rome was declared by Gretanius Thunbergium to be a “walkable city” because she was concerned about the sweat of galley slaves and horses making the oceans too salty, thus enraging Neptune, the god of the sea. This particular day was a good one in Rome, and the bright warm Sun shone down on Caesar as he made it to the Senate. Caesar loved the Senate, since all of the Senators were really cool and he loved hanging out with them to watch the gladiator games every Sunday.
Then, on arriving at the Senate? Caesar was stabbed in the back by raising interest rates, and, with his last, dying words, he said, “Please, take this salad dressing, and remember me by it. Oh, and name a way that babies are born after me. And Kaiser and Czar might be cool titles for kings in the future.”
Okay, that might not be exactly what happened. But you can’t prove it wasn’t, because it’s not on YouTube®. But interest rates have been a thing since long before even Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, took the throne, and then became a human pincushion. And they’ve been gumming up society both before then, and also since then.
Last Friday, on March 10, a curious thing happened – the 19th largest bank, Silicon Valley Bank, went tango uniform. To paraphrase Python, Monty: “It’s a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. If you hadn’t backfilled the coffers with Federal Reserve® notes, it would be pushing up daisies. Its metabolic processes are now history. It’s off the twig. It’s kicked the bucket. It’s shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. THIS IS AN EX-BANK.”
How, exactly, does a Norwegian blue parrot bank die so quickly? The truth is, it has been dead for a bit. I’ll explain. You can get explanations of this elsewhere, but none of them will be as funny, since that’s what my job is.
When banks take in money, they have several options of what they can do with it. They can bury it in Mason® jars in the back 40, they can loan it to other people, or they can park it in an investment. Back in 2008, the big financial crisis was that the loans were to people that could never have paid the money back. I was offered a guaranteed approval home loan on a house (with zero down!) that was ten times my income. “Why would you offer me that? I could never pay that back?” was my response. The loan lady sighed audibly over the phone. “I know, but I’m required to tell you that.”
So, part of the problem in 2008 was that the loans were junk because some folks said, “I could use a pool surrounded by marble columns with a champagne fountain built out of PEZ™. I’m in!” even though they only made $32 dollars a month. They even had a name for these loans – NINJA – “No Income, No Job”. These banks also gambled with the cash of the average depositor, investing in champagne PEZ© fountain manufacturers. Hey, how could they lose?
Oh, yeah. Things don’t go up forever. So when they end? It gets ugly. The response to that by the Fed® was to use a cash cannon and barrage the banks. The idea was this, the banks would soak up the cash to paper over the bad debts, and if they had extra cash, they’d park it at the Fed™. Essentially, the Fed™, working with the banks, made sure that the bankers could keep getting big bonuses, not face criminal charges like the average small-town banker might if he stole the cash from the deposits to pay for his 4.5 out of 10 mistress and trips to Vegas.
Nope. They got to keep their penthouses, private jets, and bimbos. In order to keep this nonsense so it wouldn’t implode, the one thing the Fed™ had to do was keep interest rates low. If the Fed© had tried this in 1975, or 1985, or 1995, the world would have punished it by driving the value of the dollar down (faster), cratering purchasing power and the economy.
But after 2008, there was no other big power. Japan was a basketcase, Europe was still the Jekyll and Hyde level continent, with Western Europe mainly concerned about how many “Syrians” they could import, and Eastern Europe mainly working out how to make more potatoes so they could make more vodka. Roads? Why?
That left the United States as, amazingly, still the only kid with a currency anyone trusted, even though we were spending like a sixteen-year-old with dad’s credit card.Not now. The COVID world created the Trump/Biden policy of “How can we spend more money today?” Contrast that with China’s “No body count is too high” policy, and, oddly, the world began to trust the United States less. Add in Biden’s incoherent policy of a.) letting wars start and b.) pushing away allies like the Saudis, and now we live in a world driven by chaos. And we’ve lost the trust of the world.
So, the banks still do the same three things with the cash deposited in their banks: Mason™ jars in the backyard, loan it, or invest it. Last time, the banks invested in whatever crap floated in the window. That was silly. The banks thought they had cracked the code: this time, they invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds. Yay! That’s what a sober person would do, right?
Well, maybe. But when a bank buys a 10-year bond that has an attached interest rate of 0.08%, and the stated inflation rate is 6%, the value of that 10-year bond craters. Interest rates go up? Bond values go down. It turns out Silicon Valley Bank™ had some of these bonds. How many? Enough to wipe out all of the shareholder and bondholder (yeah, they bought and sold bonds) value. And it’s not limited to them. Here’s the take on the unrealized losses of the biggest banks in America:
Click image for larger size.
Losers in 1901, Losers in 1921, Losers in 1929, Losers in 1937, Losers in 1945, Losers in 1948, Losers in 1953, Losers in 1957, Losers in 1950, Losers in 1960, Losers in 1969, Losers in 1973, Losers in 1980, Losers in 1981, Losers in 1990, Losers in 2001, Losers in 2007 . . . Oh, wait, the banks didn’t lose anything, it was just regular people.
The FDIC insures deposits to $250,000. Except when (reportedly) Oprah had half a billion in that particular bank. Turns out that the United States blinked: “You get all your money, and you get all your money, and you get all your money,” because Oprah is more important than you and I.
Two other banks have failed already. You can see that some of their CEOs were serious people only worried about the welfare of their depositors. This will not result in an immediate run. The Fed® and the Treasury will continue to backstop the banks because to do otherwise would collapse the system. They even say so. Valuing assets “at par” means at what the banks paid for them. I own a car from 2003. In Fedspeak® that asset would be valued at the initial purchase price, despite the fact that it has one light-second worth of miles (kilopascals) on it. Here’s proof:
Click image for larger size.
The Fed™ is screwed. They want to keep Biden in office, which requires low interest rates and a booming economy and no inflation. But to lower inflation, they have to jack up the interest rates far above the rate of inflation. Biden cannot be re-elected. Period, unless there’s a global war.
Ooops. I’d say sorry, but this is already in the playbook. Me? My bet is this can keeps rattling around causing damage for several months. Six or seven? Maybe. Eventually, the Fed® is going to figure out that they can’t paper over this mess. In the meantime, the cash for businesses will dry up, and the only people that can borrow money will be those that don’t need it. New projects? They’ll be cancelled unless the company has the cash or it will ruin them if they don’t stop. New housing? Forget it. The housing market will collapse, (it already is) and the costs of new stuff to make new are so high that no one can afford it, forget the interest rate.
People will stop eating dinner in a restaurant. We already have. No, the Ides of March won’t be the end. But you can see it from here. While you can, enjoy the nice walk on a sunny day. And Neptune? He’s always been a whiney bitch. Ignore Neptune."
"Pedestrian Rants"
"Pedestrian Rants"
by Addison Wiggin
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time
to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“You are gambling with people’s lives!” Warren rips into Powell over job-killing rate hikes. Roughly two million people in the U.S. would be out of a job if the Fed’s projected unemployment number of 4.6% by the end of the year turns out to be accurate. “What would you say to them?” Warren asked. “How would you explain your view that they need to lose their jobs?”
Rarely (if ever?) do we side with the ultra left. Facts are facts though, and these ones curdle like an open wound. We asked our viewers on YouTube what they’d do if they were in Jay Powell’s position:
Click image for larger size.
The results were divisive but a clear winner emerged… “We should NOT pivot however that’s what the Fed will do,” explains voter Moon Over Miami. “It will bail out all these banks and accounts with our tax money. All for nothing since this unsustainable system is doomed to crash anyway.”
Original Main St Mama concurs, writing, “At this rate, the FED & CBs may well go up in smoke. Paulson’s 2008 sidekick N. Kashkari is now Minneapolis’ Fed Prez. If he was being groomed to replace Powell, he may have to reverse course & return to engineering in Space Race… Maybe Musk could use him.”
“We have the testicles of this corrupt government firmly in our grip,” another reader writes in more aggresively. “And all we have to do is collectively squeeze. I think it's time to drop by your bank, don’t you?”
“If you don't spot the fish in the first half hour you're the fish!” reader James M chimes in.
Fighting words, fighting words, but the words of the people no less. What do you have to say? You can write to me here with your opinion.
Follow your own bliss,"
o
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
"Grocery Prices Reaching Catastrophic Levels!"
"Adventures With Danny," 3/15/23
"Grocery Prices Reaching Catastrophic Levels!"
"Grocery prices have gotten out of control. They have gotten so expensive that it is getting harder, and harder to even put food on the table."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
"The Car Market Collapse Nobody Thinks Possible Is Already Upon Us And It Is Worse Than You Think"
Full screen recommended.
"The Car Market Collapse Nobody Thinks Possible
Is Already Upon Us And It Is Worse Than You Think"
by Epic Economist
"The U.S. car market is collapsing before our very eyes, and used car prices just faced the biggest month-over-month drop on record as supplies went up while demand vanished. Auto sales are plunging so deep that some famous carmakers are already slashing prices by over $10,000! Meanwhile, lenders are in panic as millions of buyers see themselves underwater on their auto loans. The situation is chaotic and the outlook is alarming.
The average used car price in America currently costs $29,533, down from the record high of $31,095 reached in April 2022, but still 45% higher than the 2019 average. Between 2020 and 2022, used car prices surged by almost 70%, and despite some sharp losses seen since December, there’s more downside ahead.
Just as used car prices have spiked in an unprecedented manner, Americans should get ready for used car prices to drop by 50% to 60% from where they are today. The price crash is going to be significant – and quite painful for some motorists – but still, we may never come back to “normal” levels, experts say.
In a recent analysis, they forecasted that by the end of the car market crash, roughly $1 trillion worth of both new and used cars could be wiped out from the system. Like any financial bubble, what goes up, must come down. The used car price bubble burst means that millions of car owners will owe more than what their car is worth. In other words, all people overpaying for used cars right now may see themselves underwater on their auto loans soon.
The latest reading of the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index showed that wholesale auto prices dropped a whopping 15% month-over-month, the largest annualized price decline ever in the 26-year history of the index. On the supply side, it could take years for a healthy balance to be achieved again. A recent study conducted by the car insurance comparison site Jerry found that the U.S. auto market won’t recover in the foreseeable future.
In fact, car sales had a terrible start to a year in 2023, going down by 8%, the lowest total since 2011 when the economy was trying to reignite after the Great Recession. Automakers sold 13.9 million cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans, compared to a historic average of 17 million. Analysts are now expecting sales to decline by roughly 1 million in the coming months, and we’re already witnessing the harsh effects plummeting demand can have on the market.
Red flags are emerging everywhere. Amid an ongoing bank collapse, Wells Fargo just reported higher-than-expected losses from auto loans. Meanwhile, Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) is reducing loan originations, likely seeing the threats on the horizon. No wonder why Elon Musk is saying that this can set off the “biggest financial crisis in history.” The liabilities are far greater than lenders would like to admit. And now that banks started to collapse, we have a ton of system risk stemming from the car price bubble. A 2008-style crash with automaker bankruptcies and widespread bank failures is starting to unfold, and the result will be disastrous."
Comments here:
"Bank Collapse Are Accelerating, Markets Ignore Danger. Banks Are Gambling With Your Money"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/15/23
"Bank Collapse Are Accelerating, Markets Ignore Danger.
Banks Are Gambling With Your Money"
Comments here:
"Why Not Despair? "
"Why Not Despair? "
"To view our times as decadent and dangerous, to mistrust the government, to imagine that those in power as not concerned with our best interests is not paranoid but perceptive; to be depressed, angry or confused about such things is not delusional but a sign of consciousness. Yet our culture suggests otherwise. But if all this is true, then why not despair? The simple answer is this: despair is the suicide of imagination. Whatever reality presses upon us, there still remains the possibility of imagining something better, and in this dream remains the frontier of our humanity and its possibilities To despair is to voluntarily close a door that has not yet shut. The task is to bear knowledge without it destroying ourselves, to challenge the wrong without ending up on its casualty list. You don't have to change the world, the writer Colman McCarthy has argued. Just keep the world from changing you.
Oddly, those who instinctively understand this best are often those who seem to have the least reason to do so, survivors of abuse, oppression, and isolation who somehow discover not so much how to beat the odds, but how to wriggle around them. They have, without formal instruction, learned two of the most fundamental lessons of psychiatry, philosophy, and religion:
You are not responsible for that into which you were born..
You are responsible for doing something about it.
These individuals move through life like a skilled mariner in a storm rather than as a victim at a sacrifice. Relatively unburdened by pointless and debilitating guilt about the past, uninterested in the endless regurgitation of the unalterable, they free themselves to concentrate upon the present and the future. They face the gale as a sturdy combatant rather than as cowering supplicant. "
- Sam Smith
“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”
- C. Joybell C.
"In A Word...
“In a word, there are many thorns, but the roses are there too.”
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
"Banks Get a Bad Grade"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 3/15/23
"Banks Get a Bad Grade"
"Moodys came out and gave the banking industry a terrible rating. This is the beginning of the collapse that is going to happen right in front of us."
Comments here:
"Price Increases At Target! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 3/15/23
"Price Increases At Target! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Target and are noticing massive price increases! We are finding a lot of skyrocketing prices, and some empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"Brace For More Fallout"
Dan, iAllegedly 3/15/23
"Brace For More Fallout"
"Today we discuss everything from banking, metals, stocks, natural gas with the one and only Bob Kudla. It's time for more fallout."
Comments here:
"Banking Crisis Goes Global! The Federal Reserve Begins A New Banking System Bailout!"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/15/23
"Banking Crisis Goes Global! The Federal Reserve
Begins A New Banking System Bailout!"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "Heaven And Hell"
"Heaven And Hell"
by Bill Bonner
From banking crises to our chapel on
the ranch, a look at solid foundations
San Martin, Argentina - "As predicted…when the fight gets tough, the Fed takes a dive. That is what we are watching now…in slow motion. After the crisis of ’08, the feds insisted that the banks hold more reserves. They were told to buy safe, government debt – T-bonds. The Treasuries were supposed to be financial ballast, designed to keep them safe in a market squall.
Oh, if only Mother Nature, in all her guises and disguises, would cooperate! A storm blew up last week. Now loaded up with Treasury debt, banks are much more solid – on paper – than they were in 2008. But what happened? The ballast sank. And two banks sank with it.
Foxes in the Henhouse: The California bank, Silicon Valley Bank, has a CEO, Greg Becker, who was also a director of the San Francisco Fed. The New York bank, Signature, has none other than Barney Frank, who, along with Elizabeth Warren, actually wrote key parts of the 2010 bank regulations.
But neither regulators nor regulations saved them. As interest rates rose, fixed-return assets, notably bonds, were not as valuable as they had been before. Two years ago, you could get only a 1.5% yield from your 10-year Treasury. Today, the yield is 3.7%. The income stream from the old bond is now worth only half as much as it was. Which means, the value of the banks’ reserves – their balance sheets – fell. As this continues, more banks can be expected to get into trouble. And the Fed will have to bail them out. Or give up its interest rate hikes altogether.
One big bank that people are watching is Credit Suisse. Naked Capitalism: "Silicon Valley Bank Fallout Nudges World’s Most Troubled Systemic Lender, Credit Suisse, Closer to Edge" ...despite losing over 95% of its market value since 2008, it is still too big to fail.
The shares of Credit Suisse Group AG, the world’s most troubled systemic lender, fell by as much as 15% on Monday (March 13) to another fresh record low, before recovering slightly in the latter hours of trading. They are down a further 4% so far today (12pm CET, March 14). This latest crisis of confidence in global banking has also fueled a fresh surge in the cost of insuring CS’s bonds against default. The five-year credit default swaps on CS’ debt surged to a new record of 453 basis points on Monday. It was the widest move of 125 European high-grade companies tracked by Bloomberg.
Will Credit Suisse be next? Will it push investors and the Fed into a panic? Will the Fed publicly reverse course and begin cutting rates? We don’t know…we’ll await events.
An Honest Day’s Work: Meanwhile, our 14-year-old grandson is visiting. The boy lives in the suburbs in the US with little opportunity to get out beyond the reach of Iphones, Ipads, Tik Toks, video games and whatever else it is that occupies the time and attention of American youth. His parents say he is bored by school and developing ‘a teenager attitude.’
We decided the best thing might be just to put him to work. Physical work. As long-time sufferers of our ‘blog’ know, we do not play golf…or hunt…or hang out with friends. We have no TV. And on weekends, we avoid opening our computer, if we can manage it. Instead, we find projects that require physical activity…and give us something to show for our time. Carpentry. Masonry. Painting. We do it all – badly.
(Chapel, rear view. Source: Bill)
A couple of years ago, down here at the farm, we began building a tiny family chapel. It is built of adobe blocks, just as all the churches in the area are, with a cross – illuminated by the sun – made of wine bottles.
(In vino veritas. Source: Bill)
A couple of years ago, down here at the farm, we began building a tiny family chapel. It is built of adobe blocks, just as all the churches in the area are, with a cross – illuminated by the sun – made of wine bottles.
The other odd thing about it is the roof. We began by making four arches of reinforced concrete, to form a square at the base. This is not at all traditional, but it guarantees the solidity of the structure.
Chapel, side view. Source: Bill)
“Good idea,” said a former owner, now neighbor. “The old house was largely destroyed by an earthquake in the 1920s.”
Adobe walls were laid up on all four sides, about a foot outside the concrete arches. Why the gap between the arches and the walls? We don’t remember. The plans were sketched out on a piece of paper…and then lost. Maybe the idea was just to give it, from the inside, a more complex and more interesting form.
A vaulted roof was fashioned out of barrel staves that we took from some long-abandoned oak wine barrels. The barrel wood, set on top of the concrete arches gave us the bones of the roof. The flesh of it was made from small cane, laid down on top of the barrel staves…and covered with mud. It rains very little here, so the same mud was used to make the adobe bricks as well as the roof itself.
A Solid Foundation: All in all, we were pleased with how it turned out. But when we left last year, it was still unfinished…so we returned this time with work still to do – the floor. There were some blocks of very hard wood – quebracho – left over from a floor in the house. The blocks are heavy and almost impossible to cut, but they make a nice surface when they are polished. There aren’t enough of them to do the entire floor, so we will use them to make a border around the edge of the chapel floor…and a cross in the center.
We began on Saturday, using our grandson as a ‘hod carrier’ and ‘mud boy.’ We showed him how to ‘screen’ the sand to remove the pebbles. Then, he learned how to mix it with lime in a wheelbarrow, add water, and end up with a creamy consistency. “Grandad, can I lay down the blocks?” “I don’t know…it takes some real skill. The blocks are not all the same size. You’ve got to make sure they come out flat on top.”
We showed him how to put down a bed of mortar…making ridges in it to give it some squishability. And then we tapped the block down with a hammer until the top of it lined up with the other blocks. “I can do it, Grandad.”
The first row of blocks we laid down weren’t the best. They had to be taken up and re-done. It was a mistake, we discovered, to try to line them up with the wall. The base of the wall was made out of stone, which keeps the mud bricks up off of the ground. But it is irregular. “How did you learn to do this, Grandad?” “Oh…I’m an autodidact.” “A what…?” “It means I learned on my own.”
“You mean by trial and error.” “Mostly error. But that’s the way you learn everything. Either your mistake or someone else’s. But the nice thing about life is that it corrects errors…whether you like it or not. ” “What’s the problem in school,” we asked. “Oh…it’s just boring. I want to drop out.” "What would you do instead?” “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.” “That doesn’t sound very interesting. But if you want to drop out of school you could help me. We could do this kind of work every day.”
We were working inside, but on our knees. And the day was hot. After a while, the enthusiasm for manual labor began to wane. “How long are we going to do this, Grandad?” “Until they call us for dinner.” “But I’ve got to study my Spanish.” “We’ll, how about finishing this row, then you can go study.” “Okay…” The results were so-so. But they will give the old man cover for his own sloppy work. “Yeah…they’re a little uneven,” we’ll admit. “I let my grandson do it.”
"The Dominoes Are Starting To Fall Very Rapidly Now – Could These Banks Be Next?"
"The Dominoes Are Starting To Fall Very Rapidly Now –
Could These Banks Be Next?"
by Michael Snyder
"Welcome to the great banking collapse of 2023. Please try to enjoy the ride. When FTX crumbled, I explained to my readers that it was not the first domino to fall and that it certainly would not be the last. Sadly, that prediction turned out to be completely accurate. Within the last week, we have witnessed the second and third largest bank collapses in the entire history of our country. But Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are not unique cases. The Federal Reserve created a 620 billion dollar blackhole in our banking system by aggressively raising interest rates, and our quadrillion dollar derivatives pyramid scheme is starting to tremble violently. The Federal Reserve is desperately trying to fix things by recklessly spraying money around, but the truth is that Fed officials are ultimately going to need a much bigger hose.
The speed at which financial institutions can collapse in a digital economy is absolutely breathtaking. It is being reported that $42 billion dollars was withdrawn from Silicon Valley Bank in one day alone…"Customers withdrew $42 billion in a single day last week from Silicon Valley Bank, leaving the bank with $1 billion in negative cash balance, the company said in a regulatory filing. The staggering withdrawals unfolded at a speed enabled by digital banking and were likely fueled in part by viral panic spreading on social media platforms and, reportedly, in private chat groups."
Signature Bank was also hit by a withdrawal tsunami, and right now many other regional banks are also seeing huge outflows. So which banks will be the next to implode? Well, on Tuesday Moody’s Investors Service suddenly slashed its outlook for the entire U.S. banking sector…"In a harsh blow to an already-reeling sector, Moody’s Investors Service cut its view on the entire banking system to negative from stable.
The firm, part of the big three rating services, said Monday it was making the move in light of key bank failures that prompted regulators to step in Sunday with a dramatic rescue plan for depositors and other institutions impacted by the crisis."
But what was far more troubling was the fact that Moody’s identified six specific banks for potential downgrades…"Moody’s also warned it was reviewing the rates of First Republic Bank, Zions, Western Alliance, Comerica, UMB Financial, and Intrust Financial. It said it had cut the rating on Signature Bank, which was seized by bank regulators over the weekend, to junk." Needless to say, we will want to keep a very close eye on those six names.
Meanwhile, one of the most important banks in Europe has acknowledged “material weaknesses”…"Credit Suisse has acknowledged ‘material weaknesses’ in its internal controls as the Swiss bank released its annual report on Tuesday, in the latest blow to the scandal-hit bank. The annual report was delayed following queries from U.S. regulators regarding its books. The bank was supposed to publish its report last week but it postponed the release after a last-minute call from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over revisions made to cash-flow statements for 2019 and 2020."
Shares of the bank just fell to an all-time low. Overall, Credit Suisse is now down a staggering 97 percent since 2007. But we have known that Credit Suisse has been in trouble for years.
Sometimes these things just take time to fully play out. For example, insiders knew that Silicon Valley Bank was “technically insolvent for months” before it finally collapsed…"In fact, Silicon Valley Bank has been technically insolvent for months: the company had more assets than liabilities, but a huge chunk of those assets could not be liquidated without taking a major loss; everything would be ok, though, because those securities would mature in time, paying back their value in full. The big loser would be Silicon Valley Bank stock holders, who would forego all of the unrealized interest on the more attractive securities the bank could not buy in the meantime; small wonder the stock lost 66% of its value last year.
Many other banks that are “technically insolvent” right now may be able to survive for a while, but their days are numbered. We are watching a slow-motion train wreck play out right in front of our eyes, and our leaders are not going to be able to stop it. But they could at least try to make good decisions.
It turns out that there were private buyers for Silicon Valley Bank that had emerged, and having a private buyer purchase the bank would have solved a lot of problems. Unfortunately, it is being reported that the Biden administration rejected those buyers, and if that is true than this is definitely “another Biden scandal”…"Kevin Hassett, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Trump, told Fox Business that “there were buyers who were willing to step in & buy [SVB, but] the radicals at the @FDICgov basically weren’t going to allow that to happen. The Biden Admin had a whitelist of companies that were allowed to buy the failed bank & companies that weren’t.” “If this is true,” said Grabien founder Tom Elliott, “then this is another Biden scandal.“
Hopefully the truth will come out about this, because if the Biden administration purposely made this crisis worse for political purposes that should make all of us deeply angry. We have a major crisis on our hands, and now is not a time to be playing politics. All over the nation, economic activity is slowing down and large corporations are laying off workers.
In fact, Facebook just announced a second round of layoffs…"Another 10,000 employees of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will be laid off, after the tech giant announced further cuts on Tuesday. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a message to employees said he “made the difficult decision” to make the cuts, adding that recruiting employees were expected to be impacted by the layoffs this week."
We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008. Through the end of February, announced job cuts in the United States were running 427 percent higher than they were at the same time last year. A major economic meltdown is here, and eventually things will get a whole lot worse than they are right now. So I would encourage you to brace yourselves for the incredibly challenging times that are ahead of us, because they will truly shake our society to the core."
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
"Russia Takes Down US Warplane, NATO Retaliates; System Crashing; China Preps for WW3"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper 3/14/23:
"Russia Takes Down US Warplane, NATO Retaliates;
System Crashing; China Preps for WW3"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
"Relaxing fantasy music, "Dance of Life"
by Peder B. Helland, for relaxation and meditation."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Is our Milky Way Galaxy this thin? Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This sharp, colorful image reveals the spiral galaxy's boxy, bulging central core cut by obscuring dust lanes that lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane.
An assortment of other background galaxies is included in the pretty field of view. Thought similar in shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 4565 lies about 40 million light-years distant and spans some 100,000 light-years. Easily spotted with small telescopes, sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed.”
"Even With Good People..."
"Cause even with good people, even with people that
you can kinda trust, if the truth is inconvenient,
and if the truth doesn't, like, fit, they don't believe it. "
- Marie Adler
“In The Long Run… We Are All Alive”
“In The Long Run… We Are All Alive”
by MN Gordon
“In 1976, economist Herbert Stein, father of Ben Stein, the economics professor in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, observed that U.S. government debt was on an unsustainable trajectory. He, thus, established Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Stein may have been right in theory. Yet the unsustainable trend of U.S. government debt outlasted his life. Herbert Stein died in 1999, several decades before the crackup. Those reading this may not be so lucky.
Sometimes the end of the world comes and goes, while some of us are still here. We believe our present episode of debt, deficits, and state sponsored economic destruction, is one of these times.. We’ll have more on this in just a moment. But first, let’s peer back several hundred years. There we find context, edification, and instruction.
In 1696, William Whiston, a protégé of Isaac Newton, wrote a book. It had the grandiose title, “A New Theory of the Earth from its Original to the Consummation of All Things.” In it he proclaimed, among other things, that the global flood of Noah had been caused by a comet. Mr. Whiston took his book very serious. The good people of London took it very serious too. Perhaps it was Whiston’s conviction. Or his great fear of comets. But, for whatever reason, it never occurred to Londoners that he was a Category 5 quack.
Like Neil Ferguson, and his mathematical biology cohorts at Imperial College, London, Whiston’s research filled a void. Much like today’s epidemiological models, the science was bunk. Nonetheless, the results supplied prophecies of the apocalypse to meet a growing demand. It was just a matter of time before Whiston’s research would cause trouble…
Judgement Day: In 1736, William Whiston crunched some data and made some calculations. He projected these calculations out and saw the future. And what he witnessed scared him mad. He barked. He ranted. He foamed at the mouth to anyone who would listen. Pretty soon he’d stirred up his neighbors with a prophecy that the world would be destroyed on October 13th of that year when a comet would collide with the earth.
Jonathan Swift, in his work, “A True and Faithful Narrative of What Passed in London on a Rumour of the Day of Judgment,” quoted Whiston: “Friends and fellow-citizens, all speculative science is at an end: the period of all things is at hand; on Friday next this world shall be no more. Put not your confidence in me, brethren; for tomorrow morning, five minutes after five, the truth will be evident; in that instant the comet shall appear, of which I have heretofore warned you. As ye have heard, believe. Go hence, and prepare your wives, your families, and friends, for the universal change.”
Clergymen assembled to offer prayers. Churches filled to capacity. Rich and paupers alike feared their judgement. Lawyers worried about their fate. Judges were relieved they were no longer lawyers. Teetotalers got smashed. Drunks got sober. Bankers forgave their debtors. Criminals, to be executed, expressed joy.
The wealthy gave their money to beggars. Beggars gave it back to the wealthy. Several rich and powerful gave large donations to the church; no doubt, reserving first class tickets to heaven. Many ladies confessed to their husbands that one or more of their children were bastards. Husbands married their mistresses. And on and on…
The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Wake, had to officially deny this prediction to ease the public consternation. But it did little good. Crowds gathered at Islington, Hampstead, and the surrounding fields, to witness the destruction of London, which was deemed the “beginning of the end.” Then, just like Whiston said, a comet appeared. Prayers were made. Deathbed confessions were shared. And at the moment of maximum fear, something remarkable happened: the world didn’t end. The comet did not collide with earth. It was merely a near miss.
The experience of Whiston, and his pseudoscience prophecy, shows that predictions of the end of the world come and go while people still remain. Sometimes the fallout of these predictions, and the foolishness they provoke, is limited. Other times the foolishness they provoke leads to catastrophe. Here’s what we mean…
“In the long run we are all dead,” said 20th Century economist and Fabian socialist, John Maynard Keynes. This was Keynes rationale for why governments should borrow from the future to fund economic growth today. Of course, politicians love an academic theory that gives them cover to intervene in the economy. This is especially so when it justifies spending other people’s money to buy votes. Keynesian economics, and in particular, counter-cyclical stimulus, does just that.
U.S. politicians have attempted to borrow and spend the nation to prosperity for the last 80 years. Over the past decade, the Federal Reserve has aggressively printed money to fund Washington’s epic borrowing binge. The world as it was once known – where a dollar was as good as gold – has come and gone. Today, in life after the end of that world, we are witnessing the illusion of wealth, erected by four generations of borrowing and spending, crumble before our eyes. Moreover, contrary to Keynes, in the long run we are not all dead. In fact, in the long run we are all very much alive. And we are all living with the compounding consequences of shortsighted economic policies.”
"Breaking! The Great Collapse Continues as More Banks Warn of Failure"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/14/23:
"Breaking! The Great Collapse Continues
as More Banks Warn of Failure"
"Credit Suisse is just the latest bank warning of structural collapse as the orchestrated financial slide continues. The Biden administration is saying it's not a bailout but what would you call it when the government steps in to pay off deposits? And why didn't the government save FTX depositors?"
Comments here:
"Be Ready For Evictions As 50% Of American Workers Can’t Afford Rent Prices"
Full screen recommended.
"Be Ready For Evictions As 50% Of
American Workers Can’t Afford Rent Prices"
By Epic Economist
"Nearly half of all American workers can’t afford rent prices in most U.S. cities, according to a new report. They are at risk of becoming homeless this year as a nightmarish scenario unfolds in the rental market, analysts say. Evictions are spiking again, and in some states, eviction fillings have already soared 40% above pre-pandemic levels. Conditions are tight, with less than 5% of rental units still vacant across the country. As competition amongst renters grows, prices continue rising much faster than incomes at a time job cuts are also increasing. The combination is painting a dire picture for housing affordability, and it is threatening to disrupt the lives of millions of Americans.
A new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed that nearly half of Americans – or about 46% – do not earn enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Rents in the U.S. continued to rise in recent years as demand increased due to expensive home prices, and a worker now needs to earn about $21.40 an hour to afford a modest one-bedroom rental. The median wage in the US is about $21 an hour.
And this trend is not just happening in big cities. The report reveals that a two-bedroom rental – a reasonable size for a family – would stretch the budgets of renters in the vast majority of U.S. counties. In California, where the minimum wage is $14 an hour, the cost of housing is so high that the benefit of higher hourly pay is completely erased. Today, a person in California needs to earn $39.03 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment and $31.06 for a one-bedroom. That is to say, a minimum-wage worker in the state would have to put in 89 hours every week just to afford the one-bedroom and 112 hours to afford the two-bedroom.
Nationally, the average fair market rent is $1,718 a month for a one-bedroom and $1,956 a month for a two-bedroom, according to the report. In contrast, the average renter’s hourly wage is $18.78, an income that can absorb only $977 a month in rent without being housing cost-burdened. A household living on one minimum wage income can afford even less, $377 a month, the organization showed.
Meanwhile, a nightmarish scenario for evictions is unfolding in the U.S. rental market. A recent GOBankingRates survey found that roughly one-third of Americans, or 32.56%, are worried they won’t be able to pay for rent over the next three months as they face a job loss.
The ripple effects that mass evictions can have on our society are beyond scary. The human toll of losing one's home, community, and sense of security cannot be underestimated. As more and more people are pushed out of their homes and into homelessness, the fabric of our society will start to desintegrate.
In short, the housing crisis is a moral and political crisis, and we cannot afford to ignore the plight of those who are being left behind by our broken housing system. In the end, we must recognize that the problem of mass evictions and soaring rent prices is not a mere economic issue, but a human one. And our country's failure to act now will have dire consequences for generations to come."
Comments here:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)