Thursday, April 6, 2023

"The Retirement Crisis Financially Destroys The Entire Baby Boomer Generation"

Full screen recommended.
"The Retirement Crisis Financially Destroys 
The Entire Baby Boomer Generation"
By Epic Economist

"The Baby Boomer retirement crisis is a whole lot worse than we’re being told. Thousands of Baby Boomers hit retirement age every day, but less than half of them are financially ready for retirement. Economists argue that by the end of the decade, Social Security will have gone bankrupt, both the stock market and the economy will take a massive hit, our healthcare system will be completely overwhelmed and our workforce will see a huge gap all due to this crisis. Ultimately, it is going to have a detrimental impact on all of our lives, and the most worrying part of it all is that older Americans predict that conditions are going to get even worse for them in the short and longer term. That’s what we’re going to expose today.

Baby Boomers are going to completely change our economic and financial landscape by the end of this decade. The problem is that economists predict this will be a change for the worse. A generation of this size transitioning out of the workforce will inevitably impact the U.S. economy in many more ways than we’re actually being told right now. With more and more boomers elected to begin receiving Social Security benefits, the outlook for the financial health of the fund is concerning.

Amid an ongoing banking collapse that is forcing the government to bail out huge banks, economists question whether politicians will also bail out its citizens. Considering how shockingly large is our current debt load, with the U.S. national debt surpassing $31 trillion, or $246,868 per taxpayer, it’s not unwise to assume that Social Security is likely to go bankrupt.

At the same time, the Baby Boomer retirement crisis will probably disrupt the U.S. job market in a major way. Economists say that they’re paving the way for what is now called "The Great Retirement," which will likely surpass The Great Resignation as the most significant trend in the labor market in the 21st century. By the fall of 2022, almost 30 million Boomers had retired, an increase of 213% from the previous year, the firm reported.

A recent study by Pew also found that one in four workers in the United States is a boomer, amounting to 41 million in total. “The mass retirement likely will lead to an even wider workforce gap as companies will need to fill positions made available after the Boomers' retirement. These workers generally hold higher positions, making the need for recruiters even more critical,” the researchers highlighted.

Given the incredibly large number of retirements, there will be a huge shift in the balance between supply and demand in the overall economy. In other words, we must brace for a significant decrease in consumer spending, which is a decisive component of GDP. On top of all that, experts anticipate the influx of retiring baby boomers will soon lead to healthcare expenses that will outstrip what most retirees have in savings. That’s why many healthcare providers are warning about deteriorating affordability and accessibility for millions of Americans.

At the end of the day, this isn’t simply a retirement crisis, but an economic and financial crisis that will be felt by all of us. All of this means that the future of our younger generations is being stolen from them as our leaders fail to assist older Americans. In fact, at this point, the future in America no longer looks prosperous and promising, but rather worrying and grim."
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Musical Interlude: Adiemus, "In Caelum Fero"

Full screen recommended.
Adiemus, "In Caelum Fero"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"As far as ghosts go, Mirach's Ghost isn't really that scary. Mirach's Ghost is just a faint, fuzzy galaxy, well known to astronomers, that happens to be seen nearly along the line-of-sight to Mirach, a bright star. Centered in this star field, Mirach is also called Beta Andromedae. 
About 200 light-years distant, Mirach is a red giant star, cooler than the Sun but much larger and so intrinsically much brighter than our parent star. In most telescopic views, glare and diffraction spikes tend to hide things that lie near Mirach and make the faint, fuzzy galaxy look like a ghostly internal reflection of the almost overwhelming starlight. Still, appearing in this sharp image just above and to the right of Mirach, Mirach's Ghost is cataloged as galaxy NGC 404 and is estimated to be some 10 million light-years away."

Chet Raymo, “Silk Dawn”

“Silk Dawn”
by Chet Raymo

“A magical morning. Warm and still. The hillside is cloaked in a fine, soft mist that will burn away by ten. I walk down the drive to open the gate. The field is carpeted with silk. Silk made visible by dew. 

The spiders were there all along, of course. Their webs too. Everyday as I walked through the grass, they were there, unseen. Unknowingly, I crushed them with my footfalls. A field full of snares, each silken net flung across the grass, each net with its tunnel lair where the predator waits, patiently, for dinner. And now they are made visible in all their arachnoid glory, each grass tuft slung with Chinese silk, each furze bush as finely draped in silk as a pasha’s palace.”

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 4/6/23
"Trends In The News"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:

"World De-Dollarization Will Lead To Global War, Count On It"

Gregory Mannarino, 4/6/23
"World De-Dollarization Will Lead To Global War, Count On It"
Comments here:
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Market Data Center, Live Updates:
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin

“Too Much Rain Will Kill Ya”

“Too Much Rain Will Kill Ya”
by Bruce Krasting

"My first week on Wall Street was in August of 1973. I was newbie to NYC. My office was on the south side of 100 Wall, on the second floor, looking out over Front Street. There was a tremendous thunderstorm one afternoon. I looked out the window as the street filled with water. The flood poured into a street gutter and overwhelmed it. With the gutter flooded, the rats were drowning. They came out of every hole. In twenty minutes, 500 came out of the one gutter I was watching. The rain stopped and the flooding abated. The rats on the street followed the receding water back into their holes. A memorable first impression of life in the financial district."

The Daily "Near You?"

South Jordan, Utah, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Paulo Coelho, “Dreams: The 12 Steps”

“Dreams: The 12 Steps”
by Paulo Coelho

"When Joseph Campbell created the expression “follow your blessing,” he was reflecting an idea that seems to be very appropriate right now. In “The Alchemist,” this same idea is called “Personal Legend.” Alan Cohen, a therapist who lives in Hawaii, is also working on this theme. He says that in his lectures he asks those who are dissatisfied with their work and seventy-five percent of the audience raise their hands. Cohen has created a system of twelve steps to help people to rediscover their “blessing” (he is a follower of Campbell):

1. Tell yourself the truth: Draw two columns on a sheet of paper and in the left column write down what you would love to do. Then write down on the other side everything you’re doing without any enthusiasm. Write as if nobody were ever going to read what is there, don’t censure or judge your answers.
 
2. Start slowly, but start: Call your travel agent, look for something that fits your budget; go and see the movie that you’ve been putting off; buy the book that you’ve been wanting to buy. Be generous to yourself and you’ll see that even these small steps will make you feel more alive.
 
3. Stop slowly, but stop: Some things use up all your energy. Do you really need to go that committee meeting? Do you need to help those who do not want to be helped? Does your boss have the right to demand that in addition to your work you have to go to all the same parties that he goes to? When you stop doing what you’re not interested in doing, you’ll realize that you were making more demands of yourself than others were really asking.
 
4. Discover your small talents: What do your friends tell you that you do well? What do you do with relish, even if it’s not perfectly well done? These small talents are hidden messages of your large occult talents.
 
5. Begin to choose: If something gives you pleasure, don’t hesitate. If you’re in doubt, close your eyes, imagine that you’ve made decision A and see all that it will bring you. Now do the same with decision B. The decision that makes you feel more connected to life is the right one – even if it’s not the easiest to make.

6. Don’t base your decisions on financial gain: The gain will come if you really do it with enthusiasm. The same vase, made by a potter who loves what he does and by a man who hates his job, has a soul. It will be quickly sold (in the first case) or will stay on the shelves (in the second case).
 
7. Follow your intuition: The most interesting work is the one where you allow yourself to be creative. Einstein said: “I did not reach my understanding of the Universe using just mathematics.” Descartes, the father of logic, developed his method based on a dream he had.
 
8. Don’t be afraid to change your mind: If you put a decision aside and this bothers you, think again about what you chose. Don’t struggle against what gives you pleasure.
 
9. Learn how to rest: One day a week without thinking about work lets the subconscious help you, and many problems (but not all) are solved without any help from reason.
 
10. Let things show you a happier path: If you are struggling too much for something, without any results appearing, be more flexible and follow the paths that life offers. This does not mean giving up the struggle, growing lazy or leaving things in the hands of others – it means understanding that work with love brings us strength, never despair.
 
11. Read the signs: This is an individual language joined to intuition that appears at the right moments. Even if the signs point in the opposite direction from what you planned, follow them. Sometimes you can go wrong, but this is the best way to learn this new language.
 
12. Finally, take risks! The men who have changed the world set out on their paths through an act of faith. Believe in the force of your dreams. God is fair, He wouldn’t put in your heart a desire that couldn’t come true.”

"Happily Men Don't Realize..."

"Happily men don't realize how stupid they are, or half the world would commit suicide. Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is even seen. It is only when a man knows a good deal that he discovers how unfathomable is his ignorance. The man who knows nothing is satisfied that there is nothing to know, consequently that he knows everything; and you may more easily persuade him that the moon is made of green cheese than that he is not omniscient."
- W. Somerset Maugham
“It takes considerable knowledge just to
realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
- Thomas Sowell

"Surely..."

"It's 3:23 A.M.
"And I'm awake because my great great grandchildren won't let me sleep.
They ask me in dreams,
' What did you do while the planet was plundered?
What did you do when the earth was unraveling?
Surely you did something when the seasons started flailing?
As the mammals, reptiles and birds were all dying?
Did you fill the streets with protest?
When democracy was stolen, what did you do once you knew?
Surely, you did something...'"  

- Drew Dellinger

"Tales From The Calchaqui Valley"

Cuesta del Obispo, "Bishop's Slope",Valles Calchaquíes, 
Salta, Argentina
"Tales From The Calchaqui Valley"
Murder, intrigue and hard luck farming from
 high in Argentina's great northwest...
By Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "Valley Tales…“The valley is a special place,” commented a neighbor, whose family has been farming here for generations. “It drives some people crazy. Everything is so hard to do…it’s almost impossible to make any money. When new people come in, they bring up experts who tell us how to improve our herds or how to manage our fields. They’re always a disaster. Things that work in other places don’t work here. And things that sound good on paper never work at all. And maybe it’s the isolation…or the altitude…but the valley is full of eccentrics, dreamers, and nuts.”

We weren’t sure which category he put us in. But after 15 years, we had to acknowledge that the valley takes its toll. “Poor Fermina came to visit,” Elizabeth reported. The role of the landowners (those who actually spend time here) is complex. We keep people employed. We bring money into the valley (all of the farms lose money). We come with new machinery and new ways of operating…always hoping for a breakthrough that will finally justify our investments. But we also act as intermediaries between the special life of the valley, its families, its customs and its rituals…and the outside world.

Broken Hearts: Fermina’s son – Fernando – was the second of the mysterious deaths on our farm. Two years ago, Carlos inexplicably and improbably drowned, accidentally, in a reservoir. At least, that’s what they say. Nobody believed it. More recently, Fernando, a gardener, died for no apparent reason at all. “Fermina says he died of a heartbreak,” Elizabeth told us. “That family has so many problems. She’s now alone. Fernando, who must have been about 40 years old, lived with her all his life.

There are other members of the family…and she has at least two grandchildren. But something went very wrong. She never sees them. The grandchildren’s father is in jail…he got a 5-year sentence for beating his wife. And the wife – the mother of the children, Fernando’s sister – is in prison for murdering her youngest child.”

“Well, how can we help Fermina?” we wanted to know. “She has to go to Salta for treatments for breast cancer. She asked if we could help find somewhere she could stay. I told her we’d ask Sergio to look for a hostel near the hospital.”

Broken hearts aren’t the only danger. One of our distant neighbors is a smart agricultural engineer who came from Australia more than 20 years ago. He bought a large farm up in the mountains and put in an extensive system of irrigation. He planted onions. He tried quinoa. He tried alfalfa. He tried grapes. Nothing worked as he hoped.

Maybe it’s the loneliness or the frustration, but then, he took up drinking. That led him to drive off a cliff into the river. He broke a leg and was stuck in his car, while the river water was rising. He was only saved because a faithful friend went looking for him, and found him trapped in the wrecked car.

Lately, he’s turned to tourism. We had our doubts about it when we drove up to visit. Like Gualfin, his ranch is far away and is only accessible by a treacherous, narrow road winding along the side of the mountain. Another friend, who drove up a couple years ago, was so terrified by the road, he couldn’t go on. His wife had to complete the drive. And even we, who are accustomed to the roads of the area, and equipped with 4-wheel drive, still don’t dare to look down as we drive to the Australian’s place. “You don’t understand,” he explained. “Tourists love it. It’s the highlight of their trip. They don’t get that kind of thrill in Paris or New York. They tell their friends back home.”

The Paris of the South: Among the other dreamers in the valley are a “French” couple who got excited about high altitude wine and bought a small vineyard about an hour up the river. Neither is actually French, but they live in Paris…and we enjoyed visits with them when we were both ‘locked down’ during the pandemia. They were staying at a local hotel, with nowhere else to go. So, the management of the hotel, ordered to close its doors, simply handed them the keys and told them to make themselves at home. When we realized they were there, we went to visit.

It was strange, almost spooky, the four of us dining alone in the abandoned hotel. He, Orlando, is a neurologist. More importantly, she, Virginia, is a psychiatrist. Both are witty and charming. And now we have someone to call if either of us starts barking at the moon. Orlando comes here on his vacations to make wine. The bottles are shipped to Paris, where he sells them at very high prices – visiting the finest restaurants in person.

“Our wine is much richer than French wine,” says Orlando. “It’s the soil…the sun…the altitude. Everything is more intense.” Orlando is intense, too. He sneers at other wines…and regards oak barrels – a staple of most high-priced winemakers – as a sin. His wine is excellent. But making it is not easy. One year there is a drought. Another year is an early frost. And this year? “It was a nightmare; the grapes were ready to pick and we couldn’t find any cosecheros (pickers) to pick them. Everybody had grapes to pick…and the pickers were all in town, getting their welfare checks and getting drunk.”

The intensity seems to affect everything and everyone. Sergio is our own “administrador.” He comes every week, bringing news, spare parts, and food, from the city. His roundtrip is about 15 hours, over bumpy…often impassable…roads, while listening to the Grateful Dead.

“I came through the pass…at the Colorados (a stretch of red hills),” he reported yesterday. “It almost never rains here…but it was raining yesterday…just enough to put a slick layer of mud on the road. There were a couple big trucks there. They couldn’t make it up the hill. Their wheels just spun around. They are just going to stay there until the sun comes out. Tomorrow, I guess.”

Lambs to the Slaughter: Sergio comes with dreams too. “I have an idea,” he said, at last night’s dinner. “Sheep.” Ours is a cattle ranch. But along with Sergio at the table, an empty bottle of wine in front of him, was a veterinarian who made the case.

“Sheep are not a commercial enterprise around here. There are a lot of them. But there is no real market. People sell one or two, especially during Holy Week. [The custom is to eat a lamb for Easter Sunday.] But we’re trying to find ways to give the local people something to do…ways that they can earn money. The mayor of Seclantas [a nearby town], for example, is building a licensed slaughterhouse…so they can sell their sheep. And he got a refrigerated truck that will take it to the city.”

“Everybody knows that things from here taste better,” interrupted Sergio. “The wine…the fruit..and the meat too. You get a lamb from down on the pampas and it is not at all the same taste as a lamb from up here. Because the grass is richer. The idea is to develop a breed and a brand – Calchaqui Lamb…or Gualfin Sheep – so we could sell good animals in quantity at a good price.”

You can learn marketing and brand management in business school. Or you can learn it by going into business yourself. Sergio didn’t bother with either. Just as well; real knowledge probably would have quashed the plan. “If it’s alright with you, we’ll start with 50 animals. We’ll get a breed that gives both good wool and good meat. We’ll sell the meat in the city. And we’ll sell the wool to local artisans to make ponchos.”

“Three to one,” was the cryptic remark from Sebastian, the vet. “You can feed three times as many sheep per acre…maybe 5 times. A cow weighs 10 times as much as a sheep. But you get 2 lambs per year, not just one calf. And with three times as many sheep, you end up with 6 times as many young animals. I believe you can make 3 times as much money, too, if you manage it right. Because sheep only take half as much labor.”

Our heads spinning with single digits, it was left to Elizabeth to come up with a plan of action. “Yes…let’s raise sheep. And we can sell them like Orlando sells his wine. We’ll get a 3-legged lamb and lead him around from restaurant to restaurant. Nice and fluffy. Cute. And when people ask how come the leg is missing we’ll explain...This is a Calchaqui lamb. Not a normal lamb. It is so tasty, we didn’t have the heart to eat him all at once.”

"They Are Coming After You"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/6/23
"They Are Coming After You"
"Janet Yellen has just spoken and said that more people are going to be audited. It looks like a slew of people will be audited that make less than $400,000 a year. This is most of us."
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"How It Really Is"

 

“The Myth of Human Progress”

Full screen recommended.
“The Myth of Human Progress”
By Chris Hedges

“Clive Hamilton in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.” This obliteration of “false hopes,” he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth – intellectually and emotionally – and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us.

The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth – as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury – as well as unrivaled military and economic power – for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates.

Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship.

“There is a pattern in the past of civilization after civilization wearing out its welcome from nature, overexploiting its environment, overexpanding, overpopulating,” Wright said when I reached him by phone at his home in British Columbia, Canada.

“They tend to collapse quite soon after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity. That pattern holds good for a lot of societies, among them the Romans, the ancient Maya and the Sumerians of what is now southern Iraq. There are many other examples, including smaller-scale societies such as Easter Island. The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation, lead to disaster in the long run because of unforeseen complications. This is what I called in ‘A Short History of Progress’ the ‘progress trap.’ We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature. We have failed to control human numbers. They have tripled in my lifetime. And the problem is made much worse by the widening gap between rich and poor, the upward concentration of wealth, which ensures there can never be enough to go around. The number of people in dire poverty today – about 2 billion – is greater than the world’s entire population in the early 1900s. That’s not progress.

If we continue to refuse to deal with things in an orderly and rational way, we will head into some sort of major catastrophe, sooner or later. If we are lucky it will be big enough to wake us up worldwide but not big enough to wipe us out. That is the best we can hope for. We must transcend our evolutionary history. We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Wright, who in his dystopian novel “A Scientific Romance” paints a picture of a future world devastated by human stupidity, cites “entrenched political and economic interests” and a failure of the human imagination as the two biggest impediments to radical change. And all of us who use fossil fuels, who sustain ourselves through the formal economy, he says, are at fault.

Modern capitalist societies, Wright argues in his book “What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order,” derive from European invaders’ plundering of the indigenous cultures in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries, coupled with the use of African slaves as a workforce to replace the natives. The numbers of those natives fell by more than 90 percent because of smallpox and other plagues they hadn’t had before. The Spaniards did not conquer any of the major societies until smallpox had crippled them; in fact the Aztecs beat them the first time around. If Europe had not been able to seize the gold of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, if it had not been able to occupy the land and adopt highly productive New World crops for use on European farms, the growth of industrial society in Europe would have been much slower. Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible.

Wright explained this further on our call. “The experience of a relatively easy 500 years of expansion and colonization, the constant taking over of new lands, led to the modern capitalist myth that you can expand forever. It is an absurd myth. We live on this planet. We can’t leave it and go somewhere else. We have to bring our economies and demands on nature within natural limits, but we have had a 500-year run where Europeans, Euro-Americans and other colonists have overrun the world and taken it over. This 500-year run made it not only seem easy but normal. We believe things will always get bigger and better. We have to understand that this long period of expansion and prosperity was an anomaly. It has rarely happened in history and will never happen again. 

We have to readjust our entire civilization to live in a finite world. But we are not doing it, because we are carrying far too much baggage, too many mythical versions of deliberately distorted history and a deeply ingrained feeling that what being modern is all about is having more. This is what anthropologists call an ideological pathology, a self-destructive belief that causes societies to crash and burn. These societies go on doing things that are really stupid because they can’t change their way of thinking. And that is where we are.

And as the collapse becomes palpable, if human history is any guide, we like past societies in distress will retreat into what anthropologists call “crisis cults.” The powerlessness we will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist belief in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us.”

As Wright told me: “Societies in collapse often fall prey to the belief that if certain rituals are performed all the bad stuff will go away. There are many examples of that throughout history. In the past these crisis cults took hold among people who had been colonized, attacked and slaughtered by outsiders, who had lost control of their lives. They see in these rituals the ability to bring back the past world, which they look at as a kind of paradise. They seek to return to the way things were. Crisis cults spread rapidly among Native American societies in the 19th century, when the buffalo and the Indians were being slaughtered by repeating rifles and finally machine guns. People came to believe, as happened in the Ghost Dance, that if they did the right things the modern world that was intolerable – the barbed wire, the railways, the white man, the machine gun – would disappear.

We all have the same, basic psychological hard wiring. It makes us quite bad at long-range planning and leads us to cling to irrational delusions when faced with a serious threat. Look at the extreme right’s belief that if government got out of the way, the lost paradise of the 1950s would return. Look at the way we let oil and gas exploration rip when we knew that expanding the carbon economy was suicidal for our children and grandchildren. The results can already be felt. When it gets to the point where large parts of the Earth experience crop failure at the same time then we will have mass starvation and a breakdown in order. That is what lies ahead if we do not deal with climate change.

If we fail in this great experiment, this experiment of apes becoming intelligent enough to take charge of their own destiny, nature will shrug and say it was fun for a while to let the apes run the laboratory, but in the end it was a bad idea.”

"Sometimes..."

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether 
it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

That ultimately is the question...

"Will Civilization Collapse?"

Full screen recommended.
Academy of Ideas,
"Will Civilization Collapse?"
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"The Collapse Of Complex Societies"
"Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses."
Freely download “The Collapse of Complex Societies” here;

"The Uncensored Truth about Inflation - How Inflation Enriches Politicians and the 1%"

Full screen recommended.
Academy of Ideas,
"The Uncensored Truth about Inflation - 
How Inflation Enriches Politicians and the 1%"
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Full screen recommended.
Academy of Ideas,
"How Inflation Precipitates Societal Collapse"
Comments here:

"Critical Alert: The System Has Been Fully Weaponized; Economic Collapse And Hyperinflation"

Gregory Mannarino, 4/6/23
"Critical Alert: The System Has Been Fully Weaponized; 
Economic Collapse And Hyperinflation"
Comments here:

"Massive Price Increases At Publix! This Is Crazy! Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/6/23
"Massive Price Increases At Publix! This Is Crazy! Not Good!"
"In today's vlog we are at Publix, and are noticing massive 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!"
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Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.
Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”
"Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"
- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"

"And Never, Never To Forget..."

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."

"Walmart Warning Sign More Job Losses To Come"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/5/23
"Walmart Warning Sign More Job Losses To Come"
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The Daily "Near You?"

Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. Thanks for stopping by!

"Live All You Can..."

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much 
matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.
If you haven't had that, what have you had?"
- Henry James

"Ranchers Warn About Record Drop In Cattle Production As Retailers Brace For Disastrous Meat Shortage"

Full screen recommended.
"Ranchers Warn About Record Drop In Cattle Production 
As Retailers Brace For Disastrous Meat Shortage"
by Epic Economist

"U.S. ranchers are shocked to see the biggest drop in cattle production in almost 60 years. Costs are shooting up as well, with everything from livestock to supplies to feed and fuels facing increases of more than 50%. Industry experts say that now profitability is in jeopardy, and many operations are becoming unviable due to the massive losses farmers and ranchers have suffered in recent years. The outlook couldn’t be gloomier for the nation’s food supply chain. Beef prices are expected to skyrocket as inventory shrinks even more in the months ahead. This is an unprecedented crisis that will hit producers, retailers, and consumers alike and trigger some worrying consequences for our food systems.

In 2022, producers sold thousands of extra cattle in the fall to make up for a shortage in feed, adds Stuart Smyth, associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources. "People just had to take a huge hit that year," he said. "Cattle producers are used to dealing with extreme situations," Laycraft stressed. "Unfortunately, when you get multiple years in a row, that's where you start to run out of the feed inventories. And that forces you into more difficult decisions in terms of reducing cattle numbers.”

The same concerns beef producers faced in the past couple of years are likely to linger for 2023. The year following a drought year can be tough for forage production for grazing, even with normal precipitation, explains Jerry Volesky, Nebraska Extension range and forage specialist. “The reasons are most likely associated with the reduced root and rhizome growth, formation of new buds, and overall energy reserve status of grazing plants,” he says.

In Kansas, Pratt Livestock Assistant Manager Steve Stratford says that everybody is concerned about what will happen this summer. “There’s no hay left, no pasture coming unless we get rain. That, plus inflation and the high cost of inputs right now, expenses are just crazy, and we don’t know what to do.” On top of that, the cost of inputs, such as minerals, premix, and proteins – additives that can extend feed supplies or make poorer quality feed palatable or part of a balanced ration – faced price increases of more than 50%, putting them out of reach for the typical, local, cattle producer.

The director of public and governmental affairs at the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Brett Moline, highlighted that it’s more than just the hay prices leading people to give up their cows.“Equipment costs, diesel fuel, supplies – everything is going up,” he stressed. “The farmers were having a hard time even being able to get some of their fertilizer, let alone afford it. So that's cut into the crop yields."

Since producers can only contract their herds so much, eventually they will need to sell fewer cattle and rebuild the herd, which means less production over the next few months — and that usually sends cattle prices higher. It won’t take a lot of time for people not directly tied into cattle production to notice less beef in the grocery stores.“There is a shortage coming,” Stratford. “By the end of the summer, if we don’t get rain, there will be a considerable lack of beef for the consumer.”

This crisis could literally break our food systems and spark shortages that would persist for way longer than anyone could even imagine. Our food supply chains are already in shambles, and any new disruption has the potential to trigger a cascade of failures that would send not only ranchers but retailers and consumers over the edge."
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"Grey's Anatomy"

"Grey's Anatomy"

“Whoever said, "What you don't know can't hurt you."
was a complete and total moron.
Sometimes not knowing is the worst thing in the world."
- Meredith Grey

"Knowing is better than wondering.
Waking is better than sleeping,
and even the biggest failure, even the worst,
beats the hell out of never trying."
- Meredith Grey

“Yes or no. In or out. Up or down. Live or die.
Hero or coward. Fight or give in.
I'll say it again to make sure you hear me.
The human life is made up of choices. Live or die.
That's the important choice. And it's not always in our hands."
- Derek Shepherd

"How It Really Is"

 

Gerald Celente, "We Need A Revolution In The Hearts And Minds Of Men"

Gerald Celente, 4/5/23
"We Need A Revolution In The Hearts And Minds Of Men"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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"Our Very Own 'Minsky Moment'”

"Our Very Own 'Minsky Moment'”
by Addison Wiggin

"Whereas all capitalisms are flawed, 
not all capitalisms are equally flawed.”
- Hyman Minsky

“The mere mention of a ‘Minsky moment’,” Enda Curran wrote in a Bloomberg piece last week, “is enough to send shudders through the spines of policy makers.” The Minsky Moment is defined as “a sudden crash of markets and economies that are hooked on debt.” Curran: "The theory stems from the work of Hyman Minsky, a US economist who specialized in how excessive borrowing fuels financial instability. Sky-high debt levels around the world, coupled with towering financial market valuations, have kept Minsky’s theory prominent, drawing warnings from the International Monetary Fund and others. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen once described his work as “required reading.”

What, we wonder, has Janet Yellen learned? Yellen is a disciple of Ben Bernanke, himself a disciple of Alan Greenspan. She is also the mentor to San Francisco Fed CEO Marcy Daly, who, while keeping an eye on banking equity, diversity and climate change… forgot to look at the risk posed by rising interest rates at banks like Silicon Valley Bank.

It’s puzzling, obviously. Fortunately, it’s one we’re actively engaged in trying to solve. Or… at least… trying to recognize what pieces we’ll need to have on hand in order to solve the puzzle. Below is an excerpt from our 2003 best-seller Financial Reckoning Day where we first described the “Minsky Moment.” We’re on deadline with John Wiley & Sons to produce an updated edition of FRD that will encompass the past 15 years since the 2008 crisis. We hope you’ll forgive us for having Minsky on the brain at the moment.

From the chapter in Financial Reckoning Day titled, “Progress, Perfectibility and the End of History”: "The obvious “flaw” in capitalism is that both the capitalists and the proletariat are all too human. They are not Digital Men: They do not calmly measure the risk and calculate the return. Instead, they make their most important decisions - such as where to live, what to do, and with whom they will do it - not with their heads, but with their hearts.

A man gets married, for example, not after carefully toting up the pluses and minuses, as a machine might, but as a dumb beast of burden following instincts he will never understand. He lumbers into church as if he were going to war—that is, without a clue. Men do not usually go to the altar or to war after much rational calculation and reflection. Instead, they are swept along by whatever emotional currents come their way, and they risk their lives and their comforts for causes that, in the calm of retrospect, usually seem absurd. Caught up in whatever madness is fashionable, men do the most amazing things. But that is this vale of tears that we live in.

Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis sets out to show how capitalism is inherently unstable. He might as well have set out to show that beer goes bad if you leave it to sit out too long or that children get cross if they do not get enough sleep. For capitalism, like life and death, is a natural thing; and like all things natural, it is unstable.

But what is interesting in Minsky’s oeuvre is a little insight that might have been useful in the late 1990s. Among the delusions suffered by investors at the time was the notion that American capitalism had reached a stage of dynamic equilibrium and was constantly inventing new and more exciting means of making people rich. Booms and busts were thought to be a thing of the past for two reasons: First, because better information made it possible for businesses to avoid inventory buildups; and second, because the science of central bank management had attained a new level of enlightenment. It could now figure out precisely how much credit the economy wanted at any moment and make sure it got what it needed.

In the absence of the normal down phases of the business and credit cycles, the economy seemed more stable than ever before. But Minsky noted that profit-seeking firms always try to leverage their assets as much as possible. He might have added that consumers do the same thing. Without fear of a recession or credit crunch, Homo sapiens, whether in the office or the den, were likely to overdo it. “Stability is destabilizing,” Minsky concluded. Nothing fails like success, in other words.

Minsky refers to Keynes’s concept of a “veil of money” between real assets and the ultimate owner of the wealth. Assets are often mortgaged, financed, leveraged, or otherwise encumbered. This veil of money gets thicker as financial life becomes more complex and makes it hard to see who is actually getting rich and who is not. When house prices rise, for example, it seems that the homeowner should be the beneficiary. But homeowners now own much less of their homes than they did a few years ago.

Banks, we noted during the run up to the housing bubble, had a strong stake in home values. Fannie Mae had worn a veil of money as sticky as flypaper. The hapless homeowners hardly had a chance. They got stuck almost immediately. In the end, they were hopelessly glued and could not get away. Instead of coming up with innovative new ways to make people rich, the United States’ financial intermediaries - notably Wall Street and the banks - came up with ways to make them poor.

“The financial instability hypothesis,” Minsky explains, “is a theory of the impact of debt on system behavior and also incorporates the manner in which debt is validated. In contrast to the orthodox ‘Quantity Theory’ of money, the financial instability hypothesis takes banking seriously as a profit-seeking activity. Banks seek profits by financing activity and bankers, like all entrepreneurs in a capitalist economy, are aware that innovation assures profits. Thus, bankers whether they be brokers or dealers, are merchants of debt who strive to innovate in the assets they acquire and the liabilities they market.”

So it goes,"

P.S. “In Minsky’s mind,” we wrote in 2003 referring to his theory put forth in the 1950s while he was studying the Great Depression, “capitalism is naturally unstable and needs the government to stabilize it. Roughly, this is also the view of the Democratic Party.” It’s hard to believe we wrote that two decades ago, until you look at how much more the Democratic Party… and Republicans, too… have come around to the same point of view. Both, more aggressively pursuing their aims without regard to individual or economic liberty. Alas, that too, is a story for another day."

"The Exit is Closing"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/5/23
"The Exit is Closing"
"We are now seeing large asset managers cut off withdraws to investors.
 The exits are closed. Plus, home sellers go on strike."
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Tuesday, April 4, 2023

"Banks Are Bleeding Cash, Emergency FED Rate Cut Won't Work"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/4/23
"Banks Are Bleeding Cash,
 Emergency FED Rate Cut Won't Work"
Comments here:

"Trader Joe's Facing Extensive Shortages As Essential Products Disappear From Store Shelves"

Full screen recommended.
"Trader Joe's Facing Extensive Shortages As 
Essential Products Disappear From Store Shelves"
by Epic Economist

"Are you noticing that shelves are getting emptier at your local Trader Joe’s? Many shoppers say that multiple essential grocery products have disappeared from the supermarket chain’s stores, and experts confirm that shortages are back. Not only that but the company recently reported that it is discontinuing several items, and new reports reveal that Trader Joe’s is facing rising backlash from some of its recent controversies. The future of the grocer is also being put into question due to supply chain and delivery issues in the era of the relentless retail apocalypse.

One of the most popular grocery store chains in America, the Hawaiian-themed Trader Joe’s, is suffering a disproportionate impact from supply chain problems compared to other big competitors, experts say. In a recent Reddit thread, thousands of shoppers have mentioned that some of their favorite products are out of stock or have disappeared from the store for good. According to Eat This, Not That, the social media conversation started when one user shared a photo of Trader Joe’s frozen hash browns behind a red sign that read: "Limit 2 hashbrowns per household."

The Reddit user noted that the purchasing limit he saw was being implemented in a Los Angeles-area store, but shortly after that, a flood of comments revealed that many other Trader Joe’s locations are in short supply of the beloved breakfast item. But that wasn’t the only shortage customers have reported in recent times. Over the last few weeks and months, several shoppers have taken to social media to complain about the constant product scarcity and supply chain issues seen at the food retailer.

“I miss the multigrain hot cereal,” says one shopper in the comments. “ “I never get the vegetarian chili,” another exclaimed. [It’s] been out of stock for MONTHS and [they] keep saying they'll get it eventually.” “A fond farewell to the only mayo I've ever liked - nay, loved. I know they discontinued it several months ago, but I'm still suffering the loss,” a third comment reads. “Some of my favorite gone but never forgotten items include the round BBQ ridge chips, fudge sauce, and frozen aloo chaat,” another user noted.

That the company has a cult following, everyone already knows. It became a TikTok sensation, and devoted consumers love its accessible prices, unique product range, and singular store design that makes the shopping experience more exciting than at the usual big-box retailer. On the internet, Trader Joe's has somewhat of a glittering reputation. But in real life, the grocer is dealing with huge scandals that are rocking its business.

For instance, it has been recently called out for using too much plastic. On top of that, an industry insider revealed who really supplies the store brand favorites, and shoppers weren’t too thrilled to find out that the grocer mainly relies on giant food corporations. “It's scandalous because one of Trader Joe's selling points for its loyalists is the sense that they're getting something unique and supporting a local grocer,” he notes.

Amid all of this controversy, retail experts believe that Trader Joe’s success formula is becoming obsolete. Its business model is suited poorly for delivery, they argue. And the company’s resistance makes it vulnerable to losing shoppers who have gotten accustomed to the convenience of online ordering. For Trader Joe’s, the future look bumpy, and if the company fails to weather the storm that is now upon us, it may soon be crushed by the worst retail crisis we have witnessed in the modern era."
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "Life Is"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Life Is"