Monday, September 18, 2023

"On the Nature of the Universe"

"On the Nature of the Universe"
A little classical wisdom for our broad-minded readers...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

"If you possess a firm grasp of these tenets, you will see
That nature, rid of harsh taskmasters, all at once is free
And everything she does, she does on her own, so that gods play no part."
~ "De Rerum Natura", Lucretius

London, England - "On the shelves at Jefferson’s library at Monticello were five dog-eared copies of an amazing book written more than 2,000 years ago. Not the Bible…not the Iliad…nor the Odyssey. It is a book that has fascinated and inspired thinking people for 70 generations…Copernicus, Galileo, Spinoza, Newton, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Franklin, Wallace…and many others.

Directly or indirectly, Adam Smith drew on it for his “Wealth of Nations”…and even more in his “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, used it as a model for his own poetry, passing along the insight that changed intellectual life in the Western world. Everything nature does, we paraphrase from above, she does on her own. This is what Darwin tried to demonstrate in his “Origin of the Species.” More recently, Steven Pinker relied heavily on the idea in his popular “The Better Angels of our Nature.”

And, importantly for us, it helps us understand why the Fed cannot really control inflation.

Money, Money, Money: This is, after all, a money-oriented ‘blog.’ While our thoughts and inquiries range far and wide, we also try to keep our eye on what is happening in the money world…and connect the dots, between current trends and events, and the deeper, longer-term tides of human society. Dan made the point on Friday: if you follow only the mainstream press, you will have a very distorted idea of what is really going on. Case in point, this article appeared at Markets Insider on the weekend: "5 common misconceptions about the US's $32 trillion debt mountain."

We read quickly, not wanting to waste time, but curious; the financial press is more likely to peddle misconceptions than to dispose of them. Sure enough, the article is a pot-pourri of error: the debt is not too high…it doesn’t need to be paid off… it’s not bad for the economy…there’s no crisis coming…and everybody does it. Here’s the gist of it:

"The US's $32 trillion debt mountain may not be as bad as it seems."
They’re right! It’s much worse than it seems.

First, the author tells us that paying the interest on the debt is a piece of cake: "It cost the US just $395 billion to service its debt last year, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That's around 1% of last year's GDP."

A Borrowing Binge: Well…yeah…with the lowest interest rates in 5,000 years. The key to understanding the debt is to realize that the ultra-low rates (courtesy of the Fed) lured borrowers to take on more debt than they can carry. When interest rates return to more normal levels…which they surely will…there will be trouble.

That is already happening. Two years ago, the feds could finance trillions of debt at the remarkably low 2-year treasury rate of only 0.22%. The rate went over 5% last week – 20 times more. And the Treasury needs to refinance $7.6 trillion of old debt, plus an estimated $2 trillion of new debt, in the next 12 months.

This borrowing binge by the government is almost guaranteed to keep interest rates up…even if inflation were to fall. It also assures us that investment capital will go to the government, rather than to private, wealth creating businesses. There is only so much time, so much labor, so much energy…and so much capital…available. If it is used to build factories and add services, it increases our wealth. But if it is consumed or wasted on dead-end “investments,” it is simply lost.

“Dead-end investments” is what the feds do better than anyone. Wars…weapons…spying…fighting poverty and drugs…encouraging people not to work… agencies for this…departments for that – resources are squandered, growth rates fall…there are fewer products and services to buy, while the demand for them increases. Result: inflation.

Here’s Bloomberg, on the case: "Fed’s Policy Paradox: Too-Slow Growth Threatens Inflation Fight." "… policymakers and Fed watchers are now giving more attention to a new line of argument, that central banks need to take account of what their actions mean for the supply side of the economy. The implication: Too-high rates could actually undermine the inflation fight, by squelching the benefits of increasing supply - which are just now coming on stream."

Yes, dear reader, you can get price increases from either side: rising demand or falling supply. The feds give us both. So…we move on…back to the book we were telling you about...

Origin Texts: It did not come out of nowhere. It had its antecedents…its forerunners and scouting parties. It was foreshadowed by two famous Greek philosophers, Epicurus and Democritus. The latter introduced an early form of atomic theory; none of Epicurus’s works survived, but he emphasized the ‘here and now’ and how to enjoy it..

The book we refer to was written by a Roman, not a Greek. And it came about at a unique period. Rome conquered Greece after the battle of Corinth in 146 BC. This book was written 100 years later, a special window in history, thought Flaubert, “when gods had ceased to be, and Christ had not yet come…a unique moment…between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.” Alone? On our own? No Fed to save us? More to come…"

Joel’s Note: Speaking of origins stories, here we admit to a shameless bias… the BPR team harbors an ill-concealed affinity for the classical texts. No doubt you notice the references bubbling to the surface in our various missives; sirens calling the Fed to shipwreck… the Herculean tasks laid at the feet of a once great nation… Thucydides' Trap lying in wait for an empire facing a “power transition”…

From ancient coin clipping… to hubristic politicos… to Athenian-style democracy (and the death of their beloved Socrates, by vote!)… the ancient world is replete with lessons for our modern times, provided we take the time to study and heed them.

It was a decade or so ago when, over an unhurried lunch at our favorite parrilla down in Buenos Aires, Bill floated the idea of building an online community for classics lovers, a modern publishing house that would bring these dusty tomes out of the public libraries and into the far-reaching light of the digital age. And so, after a few juicy steaks and enough Malbec to conquer a Persian army, we decided to go for it…

As it happens, your Editor-at-Large’s dear wife – Anya Leonard – had attended St. John’s College, Annapolis, the very same Great Books program that Bill’s own children had been steeped in… and the same one that BPR’s macro analyst, Dan Denning, had graduated from out in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In fact, it was Dan who came up with the name of the project that resulted from that very first conversation… It would be called: Classical Wisdom.

And here, we are chuffed to report, it’s still going strong more than a decade on… right here on Substack! Dear readers interested in some of the foundational texts and ideas that help underpin much of our writings in this space are kindly invited to check out Classical Wisdom, here…
"Classical Wisdom"
Bringing Ancient Wisdom for Modern Minds. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and receive our "How to be Happy: A Guide to Ancient Ethical Philosophy".

o
Freely download "De Rerum Natura", by Lucretius, here:

"Words..."

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they
are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes

Jim Kunstler, "Boldly Into the Chaos"

"Boldly Into the Chaos"
by Jim Kunstler

“When you give power over law to people who see law only as a weapon with which to get enemies, you destroy the rule of law. That’s what the dumbshit white liberals have done.” 
- Paul Craig Roberts

"Everybody I talk to feels a gnawing tingle of dread in their livers and lights as our world tilts into the season of darkness. The Party of Chaos rules solely on the basis of insults to its citizens. They are certainly trying to provoke something like civil war, something they can label “white supremacy,” as if that would justify declaring a state of siege - an emergency suspension of rights to speak, to move, to assemble, to resist the sticky pseudopods of the malevolent Blob that Washington has become.

These insults are all obvious untruths, and behind them, you can be sure, lurk great crimes. Crimes, of course, call for adjudication and payment. That has been the American way. So, naturally, the Party of Chaos, stolidly based against the American way, has hijacked the law to prevent it from being applied to them. They have spoiled and dishonored every authority in this land and disgracing the law is their ultimate prize.

It’s hard to say which of their insults is the worst, they are all so gross and arrant, but the untruths around the Covid-19 vaccine operation seem the most conspicuously sinister. CDC director Mandy K. Cohen is still pushing these shots for all Americans down to six-month-old babies, despite a freight train of evidence that they are useless for preventing the disease and blatantly harmful, especially for children. She is either very stupid, dangerously wicked, or insane. You decide:
Last autumn, the “uptake” on Covid boosters was 17 percent. That number should not induce a whole lot of confidence this time around among the CDC officials and their masters from Pfizer Inc. Papers are now circulating that say all the Covid variants coming out of the woodwork are lab-made pathogens. The CDC and its sister public health agencies lied extravagantly about the original virus, of course, and now everybody knows it. Who is left to fool in our country? If they move to surreptitiously release something with a much higher fatality rate - to reignite fear in the population - they could easily put their own lives in jeopardy, since its unlikely their labs might as quickly develop a vaccine they could protect themselves with.

Calling for more lockdowns and school closures won’t go over so well this time either, and federal enforcement efforts will be laughed at in the states where a majority is not insane. Working people know they’ll be ruined financially again if the schools are not available for babysitting. Even the states under the sway of mass formation psychosis, such as my New York, will be deeply divided. New Yorkers are sick of the vile automaton Kathy Hochul, even down in New Woke City.

The Ukraine war caper has pretty clearly lost its appeal as a supposed crusade for “democracy.” The yellow and blue flags vanished from the front porches and car bumpers months ago. It was a lie from the get-go that we have any national interest in that sad sack country. Our own government engineered the fiasco, and from every angle it has been a dead loss for all parties on our side. Ukraine has been reduced to a failed state in-waiting; Euroland has sacrificed its industrial economy for nothing; and the USA has squandered its last bits of prestige among other nations in this ignominious game of Lets You and Him Fight. Also, Americans have begun to notice that the billions funneled into Mr. Zelensky’s cadre of neo-Nazis and kleptocrats is money that is not going to places like East Palestine, Ohio, Lahaina, Maui, and the towns along our tortured southern border from Matamoros to Tijuana. Even the people who supposedly elected “Joe Biden” are becoming a little concerned about blundering into World War Three over the mess created by Victoria Nuland & Company.

How did we come to the point that it is now illegal to question the veracity of elections in America? And to charge a former president of the US for doing it? Much as the deck is stacked against Mr. Trump, his enemies have stupidly stuffed that deck full of jokers that are liable to shriek and giggle their way out of court when turned face-up. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the DC District Court is one of the jokers, having already branded Mr. Trump a seditious insurrectionist in the trails of many J-6 demonstrators she sent to jail on longer sentences than the prosecutors even asked for. DA Fani Willis of Fulton County, Ga, is another joker who constructed a career-ending booby-trap for herself, and DA Alvin Bragg of New York County (Manhattan) will not be the one laughing when he’s finally bum-rushed out of his law license.

An interesting fate awaits “Joe Biden” in the months ahead as the revenue stream of the Biden family foreign consulting firm gets audited in a House impeachment Inquiry. And an interesting-er fate awaits the Party of Chaos when it finally has to admit that it doesn’t have a candidate for the 2024 presidential election - at least a candidate anyone has ever heard of. The “president” stands (shakily) bestride a dilemma. He can gracefully bow out of office and avoid the historic humiliation of being unmasked as the crookedest chief executive ever - but if he does that, he loses the ability to pardon the son he so loves in any upcoming indictments, or pardon himself as CEO of Biden Consulting Inc.

Or, just maybe, the Blob will steal into the White House residence some gloomy pre-dawn morn, and settle its quivering, gelatinous endoplasm over “JB’s” face until his struggles with Congress and everything else on this plane of existence come mercifully (for us) to their end."

Dan, I Allegedly, "What Business Will Close Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly AM 9/18/23
"What Business Will Close Next?"
"We are seeing two things that you cannot stay away from. Number one, we are seeing that more businesses are filing bankruptcy than in the last 20 years. We are also seeing personal debt climb to a record, and people have no other choice than to file bankruptcy "
Comments here:

"Grocery Prices Set To Skyrocket In Fall And Winter 2023! This Might Get Rough!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 9/18/23
"Grocery Prices Set To Skyrocket In Fall 
And Winter 2023! This Might Get Rough!"
"We are discussing the recent surge in grocery prices and new reports coming in on more food shortages! It is getting crazy out here as more families are struggling to put food on the table!"
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/18/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/18/23"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...
o

Sunday, September 17, 2023

"Gas Prices Are Crushing Consumers; Americans Are Out Of Money And In Big Trouble"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 9/17/23
"Gas Prices Are Crushing Consumers; 
Americans Are Out Of Money And In Big Trouble"
Comments Here:

Musical Interlude: Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"

Full screen recommended.
Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey. 528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind. Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful video. Headphones recommended, not required."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Sometimes called the Iris Nebula and dutifully cataloged as NGC 7023 this is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this remarkable image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries in impressive detail. Within the Iris, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star.
The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the dusty clouds glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula may contain complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The bright blue portion of the Iris Nebula is about six light-years across.”

"Nothing Happens..."

"Nothing happens to anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear."
- Marcus Aurelius

"Mourning The Loss Of A Loved One Is Not A Disease"

"Mourning The Loss Of A Loved One Is Not A Disease"
by Dick Polman

"My wife of 45 years died six months ago this week. I have been processing her loss ever since. But the American Psychiatric Association now says that I have only six more months to heal myself, and that if I blow the deadline, I should be clinically defined as mentally diseased.

It’s not in my nature to use this column for personal business. But the APA’s decision to add “prolonged grief” (defined as one year or more) to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders strikes me as a ludicrous attempt to reboot natural bereavement as a disease. And once you’re diagnosed with this newly created disorder, I bet there will be meds to make it all better.

I can’t speak for other grieving souls, and, granted, I’m still a newbie. But I’ll hazard a guess that most people in similar straits fail to reorient their emotional framework within one year’s time. Heck, some people conclude their time on earth without ever finding a modicum of peace. We, the walking wounded, are grappling with life’s worst disorders, navigating at our disparate speeds. That doesn’t mean we’re “sick.”

Six months after my own heart was gutted, I seem to be an everyday functioning person. But there’s no way that I can clear the APA’s one-year hurdle. I’m quite sure I will meet the association’s new definition of diseased. I’ll still feel pained when I hear a song that my wife and I loved. I’ll still feel pained when I try to watch new seasons of a show that she never got to finish. I’ll still sit with a book and zone out about some shared moment 30 years past. I’ll still keep the “peasant dress” that she wore on our first New Year’s Eve. I’ll still hear echoes of her doctors talking in code (“it’s a tricky case” and “it’s a complicated case,” which meant she was doomed). At odd moments I’ll still hear her voice (“Oh, Rick?”) summoning me to her sickbed. At odd moments I’ll still feel lost in time and space. But I won’t see any of that as illness.

I’m sure there are extreme cases of grief that do require medical treatment, but, as NYU psychiatry professor Benjamin Sadock points out, “In rare instances, prolonged grief progresses to depression, a well-recognized disorder that encompasses all of the symptoms of the ‘new’ diagnosis of prolonged grief, a disorder that is unnecessary, unwarranted, and one that may stigmatize those so diagnosed.”

Devyn Greenberg, a grad student who lost her dad to COVID writes: “It’s not just personal indignation that stirs me about the (APA’s) decision. I worry for others who have loved and lost – at some point, all of us. I worry that this framing will render us even lonelier in our pain, even more convinced that our nonlinear, unpredictable paths through loss are ‘wrong’…Many of the symptoms the psychiatric association uses to define ‘prolonged grief’ are shockingly common. ‘Intense emotional pain (e.g., anger, bitterness, sorrow)’? Let’s call that a Tuesday. ‘Identity disruption’? When you’ve walked through a portal through which you cannot return, of course your sense of self changes dramatically.”

And Martha Weinman Lear, who authored a book about loss, writes that the beneficiaries of the APA’s new diagnosis will be “pill makers.” She says: “What strikes me as abnormal is not grief beyond the APA’s one-year prescription, but the degree of chutzpah required, professional training notwithstanding, to presume to set timelines for the normal grief of others, which in fact is as various as the grievers themselves.”

The APA’s one-year deadline smacks of classic American impatience: “Get over it” and “Move on with your life.” Like the cowboy in Lonesome Dove who said, “Best thing to do with death is to ride off from it.” Um, it’s not that simple. At my six-month mark, I do feel myself “getting over it” – the worst of it anyway, but with many caveats. I do feel myself “moving on” – as best I can, but with many caveats: Is it possible to feel happy again? Is it wrong?

Bottom line: I like the Bob Dylan line, “he not busy being born is busy dying.” What you do is, you learn to live with the emotional pain. Then you cushion it with all the joy you can muster for the good things in your life – be they family, friends (old and new), work, travel, biking, hiking, whatever – because you realize that gratitude can be a powerful palliative. You accept melancholia and whenever possible you lighten it with mirth. You honor your loss and accept the fact that your old life, and all the ways your loved one enhanced it, is irrevocably over – and that it’s now incumbent to craft a new one.

Sorry, headshrinkers. I won’t need meds for that."

The Daily "Near You?"

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Ex Obscurum"

Full screen recommended.
"Ex Obscurum, Adagio for Strings, Op. 11"
"From emotional turmoil, hatred, and addiction the miracle of recovery begins in this Spadecaller Video entitled "Ex Obscurum" (From Darkness). Featuring original poetry narrated by the author and visual artist, Matthew Schwartz. Composer Samuel Barber's powerful musical score, adopted for the movie "Platoon", (Adagio for Strings) sets the background for this spiritual exodus "From Darkness."

"The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity"

"The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning
 Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter to Life"
by Maria Popova

Excerpt: "Beneath our anxious quickenings, beneath our fanged fears, beneath the rusted armors of conviction, tenderness is what we long for - tenderness to salve our bruising contact with reality, to warm us awake from the frozen stupor of near-living. Tenderness is what permeates Platero and I (public library) by the Nobel-winning Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (December 23, 1881–May 29, 1958) - part love letter to his beloved donkey, part journal of ecstatic delight in nature and humanity, part fairy tale for the lonely.

Living in his birthplace of Moguer - a small town in rural Andalusia - Jiménez began composing this uncommon posy of prose poems in 1907. Although it spans less than a year in his life with Platero, it took him a decade to publish it. At its heart is a simple truth: What and whom we love is a lens to focus our love of life itself.

The tenderness with which Jiménez regards Platero - whom he addresses by name over and over, like an incantation of love - is the tenderness of living with wonder and fragility. He celebrates Platero’s “big gleaming eyes, of a gentle firmness, in which the sun shines”; he reverences him as “friend to the old man and the child, to the stream and the butterfly, to the sun and the dog, to the flower and the moon, patient and pensive, melancholy and lovable, the Marcus Aurelius of the meadows.” He beckons him: “Come with me. I’ll teach you the flowers and the stars.”

And so he does: "Look, Platero, so many roses are falling everywhere: blue, pink, white, colorless roses… You’d think the sky was crumbling into roses… You’d think that from the seven galleries of Paradise roses were being thrown onto the earth… Platero, it seems, while the Angelus is ringing, that this life of ours is losing its everyday strength, and that a different strength from within, loftier, more constant, and purer, is causing everything, as if in fountain jets of grace… Your eyes, which you can’t see, Platero, and which you are mildly raising skyward, are two beautiful roses."

Together, poet and donkey traverse the Andalusian countryside in a state of rapturous harmony with each other and the living world: "Through the low-lying roads of summer, draped with tender honeysuckle, how sweetly we go! I read, or sing, or recite poetry to the sky. Platero nibbles the sparse grass of the shady banks, the dusty blossoms of the mallows, the yellow sorrel. He halts more than he walks. I let him.
[…]
Every so often Platero stops eating and looks at me. Every so often I stop reading and look at Platero."

There are echoes of Whitman in Jiménez’s exultations: "Before us are the fields, already green. Facing the immense, clear sky, of a blazing indigo, my eyes - so far from my ears! - open nobly, welcoming in its calm that indescribable placidity, that harmonious, divine serenity which dwells in the limitlessness of the horizon."

This longing for the infinite accompanies the young man and the old donkey as they cross the hills and valleys on their daily pilgrimages: "The evening extends beyond its normal limits, and the hour, infected with eternity, is infinite, peaceful, unfathomable."

Again and again, Platero’s presence magnifies the poet’s relishing of beauty, deepens his contact with the eternal: "I remain in ecstasy before the twilight. Platero, his black eyes scarlet with sunset, walks gently to a puddle of crimson, pink, and violet waters; he softly immerses his lips into the mirrors, which seem to liquefy as he touches them."

Punctuating these ecstasies are the inevitable spells of melancholy stemming from the fact that the price of being awake to life is being also awake to mortality. Aware that this enchanted life with his beloved Platero is only for the time being, Jiménez reaches into the sorrow of the future to consecrate it with joy: "Platero. I shall bury you at the foot of the large, round pine in the orchard at La Piña, which you like so much. You will remain alongside cheerful, serene life. The little boys will play and the little girls will sew beside you on their little low chairs. You will get to hear the verses that the solitude will inspire in me. You’ll hear the older girls singing when they wash clothes in the orange grove, and the sound of the waterwheel will be a joy and a solace to your eternal peace. And all year long the goldfinches, greenfinches, and vireos, in the perennial freshness of the treetop, will create for you a small musical ceiling between your tranquil slumber and Moguer’s infinite, ever-blue sky."
Full, wonderful article is here:

The Poet: Robert Frost, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1
The Woman named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
… and the only listeners left now
… are … the rats … and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, “Caw, caw,”
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are … the rats … and the lizards.

4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

- Robert Frost

Free Download: T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

“Little Gidding”, Excerpt

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time. 
When the last of earth left to discover 
Is that which was the beginning; 
At the source of the longest river 
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree.

Not known, because not looked for 
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always - 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded 
Into the crowned knot of fire 
And the fire and the rose are one.”

- T.S. Eliot

The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," 
which you may freely download here:
o

An absolute treasure...


"The Credit Crisis Will Wipe Out Millions Of Americans This Winter"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/17/23
"The Credit Crisis Will Wipe Out 
Millions Of Americans This Winter"

"A credit crisis is already in motion in 2023, and it is threatening to collapse the standard of living of many American families as loan conditions get tighter while the cost of living continues to climb. Access to credit is about to become an enormous issue for U.S. consumers. Today, we’re carrying far more debt than ever before, and the risk of widespread failures in the banking system is much higher, so financial institutions are far more careful about who are they going to lend money to.

Now, a combination of persistent inflation and soaring interest rates is further stretching consumer’s budgets, and data shows that most households are reaching a breaking point. Last month, Americans’ debt levels just hit a new, but undesirable, milestone. For the first time ever, credit card debt surpassed $1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In the second quarter, credit card balances skyrocketed by $45 billion, or almost 5%, to land at $1.03 trillion. That's more than triple the average amount of new debt households have taken on in that period since after the Great Recession, the Fed’s latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit revealed.

This happened because the cost of living has risen four times faster than incomes since 2020. For the past two and a half years, we’ve been spending more to consume less each month. For households earning the median income or less, which represents about half of the population, turning to credit has become the only option they have to afford basic expenses.

From July 2022 to July 2023, total credit card debt grew by 8%, going up for five consecutive quarters, and increasing at some of the largest rates in 20 years, according to WalletHub, a personal finance website. “Unfortunately, it’s only going to go up from here,” says Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst for LendingTree. “What’s driving it is inflation, higher interest rates, and just generally how expensive life is in 2023.” The firm estimates that the average household’s credit card debt stands at $10,170. The Fed’s policies are allowing credit card companies to charge higher interest rates, making balances even tougher to pay off. At the moment, credit card interest rates are at a staggering 20.6%, the highest since data started being tracked in 1994.

At the same time, it’s been getting a lot harder for the average person to take out a loan or get approved for a credit card as banks and other financial institutions continue to tighten their lending standards. They are outright rejecting applicants, raising minimum credit score requirements, charging more interest, and lowering credit limits. Back in the spring, after the collapse of several major banks, several financial analysts sounded the alarm over a so-called “credit crunch,” a term used to describe the economy when consumers and businesses can no longer get access to the loans they need. Numbers from the U.S. central bank show the trend from a different angle. By the end of June, the rejection rate for all types of loans, including credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans, had jumped to nearly 22%: the highest point in five years and one of the highest readings since the survey started in 2013.

The ongoing credit crunch will financially strangle many borrowers who are carrying high levels of debt. Now is a time to batten down the hatches and prepare for the stressful years ahead. Banks are in danger. The financial system is being shaken. The Fed will not bail us out anymore. So the potential for disaster is very real, and the longer we wait, the bigger the problem becomes."
Comments here:

"WW 3 Update, 9/17/23"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 9/17/23
"Oh SH*T, What Russia And China Are Doing Will 
Change Everything, And The West Wants WAR"
"What Russia, China and North Korea are doing will change everything. The massive economic expansion is pushing the West to do some very desperate things. This week Russia and North Korea signed remarkable new trade agreements. It came on the same week as China and Russia launched a new cross border energy hub. Do you see what's happening?"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls 9/17/23
"We Don't Want War With Russia"
Comments here:
o
Community Church of Boston, 9/17/23
"CIA Analyst Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter
 Talk About Russia And Ukraine"
Comments Here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Reporterfy Media & Travel, 9/17/23
"Scott Ritter: UKRAINE IS DONE!
 Ukraine's Counteroffensive Fails, Millions Could Die"
"Join us for a riveting live stream live stream event hosted by Alex, a renowned personality from Reporterfy Media. In this captivating discussion, our attention will be firmly fixed on the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Scott Ritter is back and has a lot to say."
Comments:
Full screen recommended.
Vera Lynn, "Dr. Strangelove - We'll Meet Again"

"How It Really Is"

 

'Here Comes $10 A Gallon Gas"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 9/17/23
'Here Comes $10 A Gallon Gas"
"With everything that’s happened in the last two weeks we have seen gas prices around the country completely spike. Here in California they have shot up to seven dollars a gallon. What’s next? You got it - $10 a gallon gas."
Comments here:

"Food Shortage Reports And Grocery Price Hikes Coming!"

Adventures With Danno, 9/17/23
"Food Shortage Reports And
 Grocery Price Hikes Coming!"
"We are discussing the recent surge in grocery prices and new reports coming in on more food shortages! It is getting crazy out here as more families are struggling to put food on the table!"
Comments here:

Saturday, September 16, 2023

"This Is The Worst Economy In US History; Las Vegas Shocking Crime; Financial Crisis Unavoidable"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 9/16/23
"This Is The Worst Economy In US History;
 Las Vegas Shocking Crime; Financial Crisis Unavoidable"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
Be kind to yourself, forget all the troubles 
for a little while and enjoy this beautiful video...
Comments here:

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
"Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?" 

"What Is Hope?"

"What Is Hope?"

"What is hope? It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real and reality is less real than it looks. It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word. It is the suspicion that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe. That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual; and in a miraculous and unexplained way, life is opening creative events which will light the way to freedom and resurrection. But the two - suffering and hope - must live from each other. Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair. But hope without suffering creates illusions, naïveté and drunkenness.

So let us plant dates even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. That is the secret discipline. It is the refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our need for immediate sense experience, and it is a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the future they envisage. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope."
- Rubin Alves

The Poet: Charles Dickens, "Things That Never Die "

"Things That Never Die"

 "The pure, the bright, the beautiful
that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirits longing cry,
The striving after better hopes -
These things can never die.

The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need;
A kindly word in griefs dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart -
These things shall never die.

Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love -
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee -
 These things shall never die." 

- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)