Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/6/23
"Blackrock Warning: 'Economic Shocks Ahead';
Federal Budget Deficit Skyrocketing"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/6/23
"New Fed. Vice Chairman Will Help
Destroy What's Left Of The USA"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Musical Interlude: Matt Simons, "After The Landslide"
Full screen recommended.
Matt Simons, "After The Landslide"
Oh yeah, we're in the landslide alright...
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
Redacted, "'Nuclear War Between U.S. and Russia is Inevitable' - Russian General"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 9/5/23
"'Nuclear War Between U.S. and Russia is Inevitable'
- Russian General"
"Retired Major General Alexander Vladimirov, who wrote Russia's three volume book called the 'General Theory of War,' says the moment war broke out in Ukraine is the moment that nuclear war with the West became inevitable."
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"Ukraine 'Lost' 66,000 Troops, 7,600 Weapons In Counteroffensive; Big Reveal By Russia's Shoigu"
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 9/5/23
"Ukraine 'Lost' 66,000 Troops, 7,600 Weapons In
Counteroffensive; Big Reveal By Russia's Shoigu"
"The Russian defense minister claimed that Ukraine lost more than 66,000 soldiers and over 7,500 heavy weapons since the counteroffensive began in June this year. Sergei Shoigu added that despite this "colossal cost, Ukraine continues its operation" to woo its Western allies. His comments came during a meeting with Russian military leaders as the war grinds on."
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"Russian Typical (European) Shopping Mall: Europolis Rostokino"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 9/5/23
"Russian Typical (European) Shopping Mall:
Europolis Rostokino"
"How does a Russian typical Shopping Mall look in 2023? Join me on a tour of Europolis Shopping Mall in Moscow, Russia. Europolis Rostokino originally opened as Golden Babylon, but changed its name to better fit with the large number of European stores opened in this mall."
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"Target Products Will Face Massive Price Spike This Fall As CEO Warns About Crisis Ahead"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/5/23
"Target Products Will Face Massive Price Spike
This Fall As CEO Warns About Crisis Ahead"
"Target’s products are going to get more expensive this fall. The company’s CEO is warning about tougher conditions for shoppers and also raising the alarm about the state of the U.S. economy. The retailer is one of the biggest general merchandise companies in America, and its household goods, groceries, and clothing are about to face some of the steepest price increases since 2019.
If you are a frequent shopper at other retail giants, you probably have noticed that Target’s prices are already notably higher. Even after offering deep discounts to get rid of inventory in 2022 and bearing a 90% profit drop, the company still had to pass higher supply chain costs to shoppers over the past year. And now, it is trying to stabilize its balance sheet by introducing significant price markups on thousands of products.
The Minneapolis retailer’s chief executive officer has issued a dire warning to U.S. consumers for the second half of the year. Brian Cornell said he expects rising interest rates, which makes credit cards more expensive to use, and higher prices on food and energy to continue to put a strain on shoppers. The big-box store chain missed sales expectations in the second quarter, and according to its latest earnings report, revenue also came lower than expected. Executives pointed to a growing economic malaise, and uncertainty from the restart of student loan repayments as some of the reasons for the deteriorating outlook for the months ahead. Despite falling sales volumes and a tighter environment for consumer spending, Target says it will have to continue hiking prices to improve profitability and meet its financial goals. Fiddelke noted that price increases are “always the last lever” the retailer pulls, but “external conditions led us to raise prices across a broad set of items in multiple categories,” he added.
Other retailers are doing the same. Home Depot, the nation's largest home improvement retailer, reported declining sales in its second-quarter earnings results. The company noted that it's seeing weak sales volumes in several big-ticket items like patio furniture and appliances. For that reason, it has decided to raise the price of smaller home-improvement items to offset its losses.
At this point, Target is considered as one of the highest-priced retailers of 2023. A Business Insider comparison between Target and other major retailers found that Target’s prices are on average 15% to 25% higher than some of its competitors. With consumers having to cover for the company's financial losses via higher prices, it's understandable why Wall Street isn't seeing a bright future for the retailer in the months ahead. Americans are sick and tired of price increases, and they are likely to search for better deals at other stores instead of going to Target. Even though the markups may help Target to boost revenue in the short term, it will hurt consumer confidence, and ultimately, do more harm than good to its bottom line in the long run. At a time when big retailers are facing a hightened risk of bankruptcy, Target should be actively considering better strategies to bolster its performance and avoid experiencing even more hardships in the future."
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Musical Interlude: Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The southern Milky Way appears spectacular in this composite image taken from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. Few sources of light pollution exist here, home to only 500 people.
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri. They point to Crux the Southern Cross. Near the horizon, two of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, the Small (left) and Large Magellanic Clouds are easy to spot.”
"If We Have No Idea..."
"If we have no idea what we believe in, we’ll go along with anything.
Truth takes courage. Courage to stand up for what we believe in.
Not necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a gentle yet firm way.
Like an oak tree, able to sway gently in the wind, but strongly rooted to the ground.”
- A.C. Ping
“I Can’t Wait For the Day When Life Finally Makes Sense”
“I Can’t Wait For the Day
When Life Finally Makes Sense”
by Rania Naim
“I can’t wait for the day when life finally makes sense, when we find the silver lining in every tragedy, when we learn the lesson from each mistake and when we understand why our hearts needed to get broken a few times to let love in.
I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we met the right people at the wrong time or the wrong people at the right time and why our lives didn’t align to bring us together. I wonder if it’s because they’re the wrong ones for us or because we still have a lot of growing up to do and we’re meant to be with someone who understand who we’re becoming not who we were.
I can’t wait for the day that we understand the lesson behind every struggle. Why we struggled to be successful, why we struggled to find love, why we struggled to reach our dreams and why we lost people who meant the world to us. I wonder if we needed these lessons to learn how to appreciate life and feel the pain of others or we just needed to learn that there is no living without suffering.
I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we had to hate ourselves to love ourselves, why we had to destroy ourselves to build ourselves up again and why we had to start over just before we got to the finish line. I wonder who saved us or who inspired us to save ourselves.
I wonder if we are meant to be reborn a few times so we can learn how to truly live. I want to know what triggered us to change and how we can no longer recognize who we used to be.
I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we keep falling for the wrong ones over and over again, why we can’t forget those who hurt us and why we sometimes can still forgive them and take them back. I want to understand how our hearts operate, how they function, how they move us to do things we would never do and lead us to places that we know we shouldn’t go to. I’m curious to know why we listen to it, why we follow it blindly like it never got us lost before, why we trust it even though it left us broken and why do we always go back to it for questions when it keeps giving us the wrong answers. I wonder if there will come a day when we stop listening to it and if we’ll ever be truly alive without it.
They say everything happens for a reason and I truly believe that, but I also want to know what this reason is and why it chose us. Why some reasons keep recurring and why some reasons leave us even more perplexed. I want to understand why we go through certain things, what’s the message behind it and what if we never respond to this message, what if we just ignore it and keep living, what will happen then? Will our lives get lost in translation?
I can’t wait for the day that life makes sense – some days I understand why certain things happened and others I’m not so sure, but all I know is that somehow we’ll connect the dots and someday we’ll complete the puzzle, until then, we have to learn how to live our lives without trying to understand it and we have to learn how to be comfortable with the irony and uncertainty of life; otherwise we’ll lose our common sense trying to make sense of the life we’re living.”
"If Only..."
“How do the geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us; there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"The Story Of Man"
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
Vangelis, "Alpha"
This tune always made me think, despite ourselves, of the relentless
March of Mankind across the ages towards our unknown destiny...
"Curveballs..."
"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"
"What In The World Is Wrong With This Country?"
"What In The World Is Wrong With This Country?"
by Michael Snyder
"Just when it seems like we can’t possibly go any lower, we always manage to top ourselves. In the old days, every once in a while I would come across a story that would make me shake my head in disbelief because it was just so absurd. Now it is happening on a daily basis. In this article I am going to share some examples with you. I realize that some of these things are difficult to believe, but all of them are true. Our country really is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes, and the pace of our national decline only seems to be accelerating. If we are not able to turn our cultural decay around, eventually we will not have a country at all.
Let me start with a new law which will go into effect in Illinois on January 1st. From that point forward, those guilty of second-degree murder, kidnapping, burglary and arson will always be released without having to post any bail at all…"A new Illinois law took effect in January, doing away with the cash bail system in the state, meaning suspects charged with felonies, including second-degree murder, aggravated battery, and arson, will be released without bail.
The Counter Signal reports the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, also called the SAFE-T Act, would end cash bail and includes 12 non-detainable offenses, second-degree murder, aggravated battery, and arson without bail, as well as drug-induced homicide, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing and eluding, drug offenses and threatening a public official."The law took effect on Jan. 1, 2023, and criminals charged with the crimes mentioned above will be released without bail.
How many hardened criminals do you think will actually show up for their trials? I am sure that there will be a few. Of course many of our “woke judges” are doing their very best to make sure that many violent criminals never pay the price for their crimes even if they do stand trial. In California, a judge recently granted a mistrial to one defendant just because he didn’t get a good night of sleep the night before…"A California judge, who hails from a powerful Democrat family who endorsed LA DA George Gascon, granted a mistrial for a man facing life in prison because he was sleepy. The alleged criminal apparently did not get a good night’s rest before the trial after spending the night in a cell without a bed or blanket."
Seriously? So now this violent criminal is back on the streets even though he pointed a gun in the face of a female fast food worker and threatened to blow her brains out…"Vamazae Elgin Banks, 24, appeared in court after threatening a McDonald’s worker with a gun before stealing less than $100. Court records accused Banks of telling the cashier at the fast food joint that he would kill her if she didn’t produce the cash quickly enough, allegedly telling her ‘hurry up or I’ll blow your brains out!’"
Our system of justice is systematically being destroyed. But many Americans simply don’t care because they are drugged out of their minds. The United States has the biggest problem with legal drugs on the entire planet, and it also has the biggest problem with illegal drugs on the entire planet. When I saw the following story, I thought that it perfectly summed up where we are as a nation today…"A speeding woman is accused of driving under the influence of cocaine and alcohol when she crashed into another car, killing its driver who was under the influence of methamphetamine, police said. Summer Butler, 37, faces charges of DUI resulting in death, reckless driving and being in possession of a controlled substance in connection with the fatal crash in January, court documents obtained by the 8 News Now I-Team said."
At this point, it seems like almost everyone is an addict, and that includes many of our government officials. Here is just one example…"A Louisiana state official was arrested for allegedly buying drugs from a drug dealer outside of a fast food chain on Tuesday. Bridgette Hull, 37, serves as the executive secretary for the Louisiana State Board of Private Security Examiners. She was purchasing drugs from dealer Steven McCarthy, who was under surveillance, when a Louisiana Attorney General Office employee recognized him at a Livingston Parish restaurant. Hull was arrested onsite, but McCarthy fled the scene after back up was called – resulting in a pursuit. He later crashed into another car and was arrested."
If we would secure our borders, we could at least reduce the flow of illegal drugs into this country. But the Biden administration refuses to do that. And so the worst drug crisis in all of U.S. history will continue to escalate, and substances that are laced with fentanyl will continue to kill countless numbers of our young people…
"San Diego and Imperial County comprise the epicenter of fentanyl drug trafficking in the United States, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which reported that seizures of fentanyl in San Diego were up 323% in FY2019-FY2021 and that fentanyl overdose deaths increased 2,375% in San Diego County between 2016 and 2021. “A decade ago, we didn’t even know about fentanyl, and now it’s a national crisis,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California Randy Grossman. “The amount of fentanyl we are seizing at the border is staggering. The number of fentanyl seizures and fentanyl-related deaths in our district are unprecedented.”
If you are waiting for our national leaders to fix our growing problems, you are going to be waiting for a really, really long time. Every major decision they make seems to make things even worse, and the Biden administration keeps appointing extremely alarming individuals to top positions of power. In fact, Biden just appointed a “doctor” that is absolutely obsessed with pentagrams to be the National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator.
Meet Demetre Daskalakis: Demetre was appointed by Joe Biden to be the official White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator. Demetre proudly wears the official symbol of the Church of Satan: The Pentagram.
Joe Biden appointed a Satanist to the White House.
pic.twitter.com/TiMPY29AtC - Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 8, 2022
Not cherry picking here. The Pentagram is proudly displayed in his *promotional* photos for a CDC appointment. It’s ubiquitous on his social media. Demetre has Pentagram tattoos. So it’s a fair question: Did Joe Biden appoint a Satanist?
pic.twitter.com/471Fp3uKss - Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 8, 2022
Only a very small handful of conservatives objected to his appointment to such an important position.
What in the world is wrong with this country? Have we gone completely and totally nuts? Perhaps we have. At this point, close to one-fourth of all Democratic voters actually believe that men can get pregnant…"A poll conducted by WPA Intelligence has found that almost one quarter of Democratic voters believe that “some men can become pregnant.” Twenty-two percent of Democrats overall agreed with the statement. The poll also found that more women agreed with the statement, and an incredible 36 percent of white, college-educated female Democrats agreed."
We aren’t just in a state of decline. The truth is that we are in a very advanced state of decline and the clock is ticking. If you love this nation, what has happened to us should deeply sadden you. We were once the greatest country on the entire planet, but now we are rapidly being destroyed from within. Please wake up America, because time to do anything about all of this is quickly running out."
○
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"We are in the process of creating, in sum, what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time in our history the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."
- Carl Bernstein
And nobody gives a damn, nobody cares...
Yeah...well guess what...
Robert Palmer, "You're Gonna Get What's Coming"
"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Have Been Released Upon Us"
"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Have Been Released Upon Us"
by Paul Craig Roberts
"Our rulers are mimicking the Book of Revelation. War has been unleashed on us for years. Covid and its laboratory-made variants are the beginning of Pestilence. Famine is in the works with the slaughter of cattle to combat a disputed global warming, withholding of fertilizers from farmers, sanctions, and the replacement of the human diet with bugs and artificial food. When these three horsemen accomplish their deeds, Death on the Pale Horse will sweep through our ranks. It is difficult to believe in prophecy, especially over thousands of years, but it is happening before our eyes.
War has done his job. Since the Clinton Regime war has been the primary activity of the United States and its empire. Yugoslavia was destroyed. Then Afghanistan. Then Iraq. Then Libya, now Ukraine. Syria’s destruction was attempted by Obama and Israel, but was blocked by Russia. The Russians’ reward was the war in Ukraine. Along the way reformist governments have been overthrown and leaders opposed by Washington assassinated. Millions of people have been killed, maimed, displaced and made refugees with the result being social and political chaos. This terrorism was inflicted in the name of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy.
Pestilence began with endless childhood vaccinations and escalated with the Covid “vaccine,” which has resulted in millions of deaths and permanent injuries. Now, Japanese scientists find, a new round of man-made Covid variants are being created in laboratories. Japanese scientists find that Covid-19 and all of the variants are laboratory creations. In the USA, covid hospitalizations are up because of variant EG.5.1 and there’s a scary new variant dubbed BA.X from Denmark and Israel, we’re told. Because of the BA.X variant “scientists” are … Continue reading: "New Study finds all Covid Variants have been made in a BioLab."
Although the whore media and the whore Medical Establishment continue to deny it, we have known for certain for some time from published articles by the world’s leading medical scientists that Covid-19 was a laboratory creation. We know from released official documents that NIH’s Tony Fauci financed “gain of function” research both at the University of North Carolina and then at the Wuhan Lab in China. There is no doubt about this. It is in the grant records Now we have a research report from two top Japanese medical scientists who show that all Covid variants are also laboratory creations, not mutations from a naturally occurring virus. This is a devastating revelation.
How can the conclusion be avoided that the release of pestilence is intentional? It is not the result of a lab accident or from bats. Is it not obvious that there is a conspiracy throughout the Western World to produce pathogens and orchestrated “pandemics” that become the excuse for inoculation of the world population with dangerous and untested substances and the excuse for the extinction of civil liberties and the suppression of truth as “misinformation?” An effort is underway to brand science that challenges the Covid narrative and vax safety as insanity and to impose compulsory Covid vaccination in order to “pacify society” and protect the false narrative (https://www.globalresearch.ca/discredit-covid-vaccine-sceptics-mentally-ill/5831168). It is the gullibility, the insouciance, the “trust in authorities” that characterizes white ethnicities that is leading to human destruction.
People wonder why some of the vaxxed die or have their health ruined, while others have no ill effects. The answer is, as studies by independent scientists have concluded, that there were several versions of the Covid vax, some more potent than others, and many were given saline placebos. The reason this was done is obvious. If everyone gets a death shot, or ruined health, the plot becomes visible even to the insouciant who trust authority, and the plot is exposed. Since more people survived the vax than were killed or injured by it, it creates a constituency for Covid vaccination.
Next time, and the time after, more will survive than die, but over time all will die as each released pathogen drives fearful and gullible people into “vaccination protection” that kills some and leaves others for the next round. As the Covid variants are lab produced and not natural developments, they can be made more lethal. It is certain they are working on a variant that is immune to Ivermectin and HCQ.
As I have emphasized, the inability or unwillingness of Congress, independent scientists, the medical establishment, judicial system, and media to hold accountable those who orchestrated the “Covid Pandemic” and knowingly injected people with a dangerous substance known to cause death and health injury has made possible a second round of death and injury. And a third, and a fourth, and a fifth . . .
“No recriminations, we must move on and focus on the new challenge” is the slogan that shields those murdering us from accountability. “Perhaps a mistake was made, but we must not distrust our leaders and appointed medical authorities or worse will happen.” “There is nothing to see but this new Covid variant, go get your vaccination.” Thus protected from recognition, the Four Horsemen ride among us undetected.
Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and a large number of others are intent on reducing the world population, and it seems they are enjoying success. Will people wake up? Probably not. They have already been brainwashed and indoctrinated that this article and all other warnings are “misinformation.”
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.
Gregory Mannarino, The Economic Ninja, 9/5/23
Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/5/23
"Alert! The Bond Market Sell-Off Resumes.
There Is No Safety Net Under This Market."
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The Economic Ninja, 9/5/23
"Another Bank In Trouble (Banking Crisis 3.0)"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/5/23
"Crude Oil Surges Higher; US Factory Orders Crater;
'A Day Of Reckoning Is Coming'
Comments here:
"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/5/23"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/5/23
"Ukraine War Casualties Are Enormous
w/Col. Doug Macgregor"
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/5/23
"U.S. Intel Mixed Messaging on Ukraine
w/ Larry Johnson fmr CIA"
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"Adventures With Danno, AM/PM 9/5/23"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 9/5/23
"Sales At Meijer This Week!"
"In today's vlog, we are going over all the different sales on groceries at Meijer! With all of the recent price increases in the supermarkets, we have to take advantage of all of these sales as they come!"
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Adventures with Danno, PM 9/5/23
"7 FoodsThat Will Become Unaffordable In
Fall & Winter 2023! This Is Not Good!"
These 7 foods have been becoming unaffordable all Summer of 2023, and we're expecting another huge surge in prices on these products during the fall and winter of 2023 and beyond. We discuss why these products are rising in costs and why we must be prepared for this!
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Full screen recommended.
The Next News Network, 9/5/23
"Burger King's Whopper Scandal
Could Change Fast Food Forever"
"From Burger King's Whopper size scandal to Taco Bell's half-stuffed Crunchwraps, a storm of multi-million-dollar lawsuits is brewing. And tonight, you're going to want to hear how your favorite burger or taco might be more fiction than fact."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "You Cannot Deny the Debt Bomb"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 9/5/23
"You Cannot Deny the Debt Bomb"
Credit card debt is growing. We have had over $1 trillion in personal debt. The next thing is auto loans. More people are behind on their car than we have ever seen since 2010.
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"It's Going To Be Bad And You're Running Out Of Time"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, AM 9/5/23
"It's Going To Be Bad And You're Running Out Of Time"
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"Putin Just Changed Everything With This Move And NATO Knows It"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 9/5/23
"Putin Just Changed Everything
With This Move And NATO Knows It"
Russian President Putin has placed his most advanced nuclear warheads on the highest alert possible. Tucker Carlson says NATO will start a hot war with Russia by next year. This is all part of the plan.
Comments here:
Monday, September 4, 2023
“'Mad Max' Conditions Are Coming: Desperation Is Rising As The Economy Rapidly Deteriorates And Food Costs Soar"
“'Mad Max' Conditions Are Coming: Desperation Is Rising
As The Economy Rapidly Deteriorates And Food Costs Soar"
by Michael Snyder
"How far would you go to feed your family? Hopefully that is a question that you will not have to answer any time soon, but right now we are seeing millions upon millions of people become more desperate as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate and food costs soar. At this point, most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month, and in poorer countries on the other side of the world there are people that are literally starving to death. As I have detailed previously, the UN has reported that 2.4 billion people did not have enough food to eat last year, and 900 million of them were facing severe food insecurity. Sadly, those numbers will inevitably be even higher for 2023. A global rice crisis has erupted, and the collapse of the Black Sea grain deal has greatly restricted the flow of agricultural goods from that part of the globe. Food costs are spiking all over the planet, and that is really bad news for all of us.
For those of us that live in the United States, the good news is that nobody is starving at this stage. But food prices have become extremely oppressive, and economic conditions are quickly moving in the wrong direction. 670,000 full-time jobs have been lost in just the past two months, and on Friday we witnessed the worst unadjusted payrolls report for the month of August since the Great Recession. Yes, things really are that bad.
One recent survey discovered that 61 percent of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, but I expect this number to go even higher in the months ahead…"Inflation, mortgage rates over 7% and credit card APR’s north of 20% have pushed all income brackets into living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new survey from Lending Club Bank.
“In July 2023, 61% of U.S. consumers live paycheck to paycheck, unchanged from June 2023, but 2 percentage points higher than July 2022. Generally, more consumers of all income brackets reported living paycheck to paycheck in July 2023 than last year,” Alia Dudum, a money expert at LendingClub told FOX Business."
Things are particularly dire for low income workers. That same survey discovered that a whopping 78 percent of those that earn less than $50,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck at this point…"Lower-income workers have been the hardest hit by higher prices, particularly for food and other necessities, since those expenses account for a bigger share of the budget, studies show. Now, 78% of consumers earning less than $50,000 a year and 65% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 were living paycheck to paycheck in July, both up from a year ago, LendingClub found. Of those earning $100,000 or more, only 44% reported living paycheck to paycheck."
As I discussed last week, U.S. households that are feeling financial strain are increasingly turning to debt to make ends meet, and this has pushed debt levels to unprecedented heights…"Total household debt climbed to a new high in the second quarter of 2023, reaching $17.06 trillion, with credit card debt exceeding $1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As interest rates stay high, costs continue to rise for expenses like housing and cars, and student loan payments resume, the amount of debt may rise, according to economists who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The amount of debt outstanding, and in particular the surpassing of the $1 trillion mark, is significant and worrisome,” Peter Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF. “It owes to a combination of several factors. The initial response to the pandemic, which prominently included the Fed setting policy (interest) rates at essentially zero for several years, made the amount of credit and the price of taking on debt extraordinarily cheap.”
As economic conditions get worse, people are becoming more desperate. This is helping to fuel a crime wave all over the nation, and retailers are being forced to implement extreme measures. According to the Wahington Post, a Giant Food store in Washington D.C. is actually going to be taking all Tide, Colgate and Advil products off the shelves completely because theft has become such a problem…
"In the coming weeks, a Giant Food market in D.C. will clear its beauty and health aisles of all national labels. No more Tide, Colgate or Advil, only store brands. Shoppers also will have to present their receipts to an employee before exiting the store. It’s the regional supermarket chain’s most overt gambit against the rampant theft that’s plaguing retailers of all sizes. It’s also a potential last-ditch effort to avoid shutting down the unprofitable store on Alabama Avenue — the only major grocer east of the Anacostia River in Ward 8.
An executive for the chain told the Washington Post that the company has “no other choice” and she noted that other stores in the area have done similar things… “We have no other choice,” Diane Hicks, senior vice president of operations said Thursday during a walk-through with officials from the D.C. mayor’s office, the Metropolitan police and fire departments, and Chamber of Commerce. She added that other nearby stores have locked up all their product on those aisles or removed them altogether. “I’ve been leaving it out for our customers and unfortunately it just forces all the crime to come to us.”
This is where our entire society is heading. It is just a matter of time before we see armed guards stationed in grocery stores and on food trucks all over America. Desperate people do desperate things, and right now we are seeing things happen that are absolutely nuts.
Just a few days ago, an extremely shocking incident that happened in broad daylight at a Home Depot store in California made headlines all over the nation…"Brazen thieves were caught on camera casually walking out with $9,000 worth of goods from separate California stores as lawlessness in the state governed by Gavin Newsom continues. A group of masked thieves stormed into a Home Depot store in Signal Hill on August 27 and stole $5,000 worth of power tools in full view of shocked staff and customers. The seven men loaded two shopping carts with expensive goods and carried as much as possible in their arms before walking out."
These sorts of robberies have become so common that I couldn’t possibly cover them all. We really are starting to become a “Mad Max” society. Of course the truth is that the entire world is moving in that direction. Global supplies of food are getting tighter and tighter, and the recent spike in rice prices has created a tremendous amount of concern…
"Countries worldwide are scrambling to secure rice after a partial ban on exports by India cut global supplies by roughly a fifth. Global food security is already under threat since Russia halted an agreement allowing Ukraine to export wheat and the El Nino weather phenomenon hampers rice production.
Now, rice prices are soaring, and it’s putting the most vulnerable people in some of the poorest nations at risk. Vietnam’s rice export prices, for instance, have reached a 15-year high. Even before India’s restrictions, countries already were frantically buying rice in anticipation of scarcity later when the El Nino hit, creating a supply crunch and spiking prices."
Civil unrest has already started to erupt in various parts of Africa, but if current trends continue things will get a whole lot worse around the globe in 2024. Are you prepared for what is ahead? Right now, a lot of people are apparently asking that question. In fact, according to Zero Hedge the number of Americans searching for the term “live off grid” on the Internet has hit the highest level in years…"What’s piqued our interest is the sudden panic by some Americans searching ‘live off grid’ on the internet, hitting the highest level in five years. The driving force behind finding a rural piece of land for dirt cheap, buying or building a tiny home, installing solar panels, and sourcing your own food and water might have to do with the worst inflation storm in a generation while Democrat cities implode under the weight of soaring violent crime."
I have been relentlessly warning my readers that “Mad Max” conditions are coming for years. Anyone that took an honest look at the long-term trends should have been able to see that. Global leaders have been making absolutely disastrous decisions for a very long time, and now we are all going to reap the consequences."
Jeremiah Babe, "Desperate People Will Get A Lot More Desperate"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/4/23
"Desperate People Will Get A Lot More Desperate"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.
About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous featured image combines both narrowband and broadband images."
"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.
"Something Like Reverence..."
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
"If Only You Knew"
"If Only You Knew"
by Teresa Marchese
"This morning, I saw a young man, hanging dead from a tree. It started out as a typical morning. It was 6:45 am. I brought the "toys" today; weights, bars, balls and boxing gloves, to have my clients work at stations. I run Rock Solid Fitness, a women's outdoor fitness club, at San Francisco's Land's End. We run trails and hills and stairs on this rocky park of cypress and redwood. But this morning, the first client to arrive begged for a "wimpy" workout, so we headed out to Land's End trail. It was a beautiful morning, and I thought some deep stretching overlooking the Golden Gate as the sun rose was in good order.
Walking that path shoulder to shoulder with three of the amazing women with whom I begin each day, whose stories I learn, whose lives weave through mine with soft, smiling, shimmering threads. An evening at the theater was recounted, a daughter was praised, a mention of Bill Clinton's charm (if you were to meet him in person), a reference to Vince Neil. Setting a quick pace, marching on, the stories continued. Looking forward, as I tend to do, I noticed an unfamiliar silhouette in those well-known woods. My stomach lurched, but only slightly, as I was unbelieving. A body hung from a tree, heels in the leafy ground. "Is it real?" I asked, as we moved toward him. Hands. Face. Body. It looked almost an effigy, a sick waxy joke, at the end of a rope.
We moved closer. And we moved quickly. There was no doubt he was real. There was no doubt he was dead. Clearly trained in knots, he had hung himself well in the night with a brand new electrical cord. A suicide. Finished.
He was young. Early twenties? Looking back, I wonder if he was younger, maybe in his teens. I don't meet Death often, but I suppose his mask makes one look older. Apart from being lifeless, he was everything a young man should be - handsome, well-heeled, sporting backpack and iPod. Hood up over dark curly hair - a San Francisco kid. His hands rested, resolute, at his sides.
Not one of us hesitated to touch him, to hold him, to relieve the tension that took his last breath. We four women strongly played our part - mother, sister, tender, friend - released him from his hold. Normally, I'm in charge. I'm the teacher. I'm the trainer. I give the orders. But something else took over here - a solidarity among women. One a doctor, another a mother, all of us upright and bold. We didn't speak. We didn't need to, I guess. We understood that we wanted to get him down and we moved accordingly. The thick branch that held him was about seven-and-a-half feet off the ground. I got underneath him and lifted his weight as the tallest of us lifted the smallest of us to reach and unwrap the cable. We laid him on the soft, grassy earth. Our doctor checked his pulse, his pupils. I felt his fingers, tried to open his stiff hand.
I looked at the group, I knew none of us was carrying a phone. Addressing the three of them, I said, "You'll stay? And I'll go for help." Help? There was no helping this one. I would take the next proper step. I spotted a morning hiker, ran to him and explained the situation. I took his phone while he went to the parking lot to direct the first-responders to the trail.
911 answered immediately, but wanted an address. Frustrated, I asked to be connected to San Francisco dispatch, to someone who could listen to my instructions and understand where I was. I heard sirens within two minutes, hung up the phone, and waved the paramedics to the trailhead. The first jumped from the engine to walk with me. "How do you know he's dead?" he asked me. "He's dead," I answered.
We left them to their work and deferentially gave a park police officer our statements. We were commended for staying - merely for staying on the scene. Most people call and leave, he told us. Really? How can someone just walk away from the dead? Because we took him down, we had to give detailed written statements. Our foursome huddled together in one car and rode in silence. There was a deep sadness and reverence among us - among all of us. Even the paramedics and the police officers, who surely meet grief often, were dejected and mindful. Because of the hour and "remote" location, the scene was respectfully not tainted with gawking onlookers and gossip-hungry voyeurs. For this, I was grateful.
We handed over our statements, hugged each other hard, and dispersed. It was 7:58 a.m. I canceled my next class and the day's remaining appointments and sat in my truck for a while, looking out over the edge of the world. I wanted to shout out to everyone I love, "We belong on this earth! We are here for a reason! Stay here with me!" I decided I would do just that, in my own way. I would start with my husband. I drove home, vowing to better love those I love, as well as those I don't yet.
To the family of the nameless one, I am sorry I could not speak his name. Please know he was carefully and lovingly tended to when he was found. Four gentle, but rock-solid women, took him from that tree and laid him down to rest.
To the nameless one, whom I briefly held, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the loss of those who loved you. (They did, of course, you know.) I'm sorry that it wasn't enough for you, here, now. Alas, you've moved on, young friend. You left your sorrow in that tree. Let your despair roll down those rocky cliffs, and be taken with the tide, pummeled and churned in the pacific surf, sprayed and splayed on the horizon, metamorphosed into air and light. Now do you see that you interrupted the rhythm of all things? If only you could have known how important you are to the fabric of this life, this place, you could have stayed, and lived your short life longer. You surely would have cried more tears, but you would have laughed more, you would have loved, you would have learned and lost and traveled. You might have started a business, a revolution, a country. You might have saved a life. I wish you would have. And now I wish I would have."
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