"History is indeed little more than the register of
the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."
- Edward Gibbon
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Scott Ritter, "Geopolitical Analysis 3/21/24"
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 3/21/24
"Israel - Palestine War Update"
Comments here:
o
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/21/24
"Scott Ritter: Russia Beats NATO; Israel Beating Itself"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 3/21/24
"China And Allies"
"This explosive video dives into the dynamic shifts in global power structures, highlighting China's strategic economic enhancements and burgeoning international relationships aimed at becoming a comprehensive superpower. We explore China's focus on economic growth over military expansion, their establishment of key partnerships with nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and BRICS members, and the confident stance of countries like Russia in forming relationships outside of Western influence. Moreover, we delve into the geopolitical chess game involving the US, its reliance on traditional allies for control, and its unease with the evolving global alliances. This narrative also uncovers the contrasting perceptions of political dissent in Russia, the controversial figures of Alexa Naval and Julian Assange, and the dire human rights situations in Israel-Palestine. This video is a must-watch for anyone interested in understanding the complex web of international relations and the emerging global order."
Comments here:
The Poet: e. e. cummings, "Humanity I Love You"
"Humanity i love you because when you’re hard
up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink..."
"Humanity I Love You"
"Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death
Humanity, i hate you"
- e. e. cummings
Dan, I Allegedly, "Real Estate Has Changed Forever"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly AM 3/21/24
"Real Estate Has Changed Forever"
"They tore down a five story office building to that they can build a warehouse. This is the sign of the times for the economy. Things are so bad when it comes to office buildings being rented out."
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "It Has Begun! This Is What Just Happened, And What Will Happen Now As A Result!"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/21/24
"It Has Begun! This Is What Just Happened,
And What Will Happen Now As A Result!"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Holiday Deals At Kroger This Week!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 3/21/24
"Holiday Deals At Kroger This Week!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are checking out all of the holiday deals this week. With prices constantly rising in the grocery stores, now is the time to take advantage of some of these great sales going on at Kroger!"
Comments here:
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
"World War III Prelude, 3/20/24"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/20/24
"Red Alert! NATO Invades Russia!
3,000 US Tanks to Israel; 2,000 French Troops; Poland Info Blackout"
Comments here:
o
The Middle East:
Full screen recommended.
Nauctis, 3/20/24
"Iran's Deadly Weapon:
Can Launch 100,000 Ballistic Missiles in Minutes"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Military Weapons, 3/20/24
"Iran Armed Forces: 11 Million Soldiers"
"One of the most unusual military powers in the Middle East, let alone the world, is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s military obtains much of its manpower from conscription, and males are required to serve 21 months of military service. The army is the largest branch of Iran’s military, followed by the Revolutionary Guards. This body, organized in the republic’s early days, is the country’s most effective military force and consists of the most politically dependable and religiously devout personnel."
Comments here:
o
"Israel is Evil personified. Israel is Evil embodied."
- Scott Ritter
Judge Napolitano, 3/20/24
"Jeffrey Sachs: Israel Can't Survive, Will Become A
Pariah If Causing Major War In Rafah & With Hezbollah"
Comments here:
o
Col. Douglas Macgregor states that Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles, massive artillery resources, as well as over 100,000 extremely well trained and equipped professional soldiers, many battle-hardened by 10 years in the Syrian civil war. If Israel declares war, as threatened, The Israeli Occupation Force will be crushed. Hezbollah will take all of northern Israel and Syria will retake the occupied Golan Heights. Gaza will be resolved...
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.
This sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole. The position of a bright supernova is indicated in NGC 1365. Cataloged as SN2012fr, the type Ia supernova is the explosion of a white dwarf star.”
Jeremiah Babe, "Super Bubble Warning; The FED Is Doing A Lot Of Talking, Stocks Go Nuts"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/20/24
"Super Bubble Warning; The FED
Is Doing A Lot Of Talking, Stocks Go Nuts"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Travelling with Russell, "Russian Typical Local Food Market: Would You Shop Here?"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 3/20/24
"Russian Typical Local Food Market:
Would You Shop Here?"
"Join me on a tour of my local Russian foods market in the town where I live. Discover where Russians shop on a day to day basis. From food and drinks to clothes and household goods."
Comments here:
"We Don't Talk About Collapse To Revel In It, We Talk About Collapse to Prevent It"
"We Don't Talk About Collapse To Revel In It,
We Talk About Collapse to Prevent It"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Those of us who discuss collapse are generally dismissed as doom-and-gloomers, the equivalent of people who watch dash-cam videos of vehicle crashes all day, reveling in disaster. Why would we spend so much effort discussing collapse if we didn't long for it?
Those dismissing us all as doom-and-gloomers hoping for collapse have it backward: yes, some long for collapse as a real-life disaster movie, but those discussing collapse in systems terms are trying to avoid it, not revel in it.
If the system is vulnerable beneath a surface stability, then the only way to avoid negative consequences is to understand those vulnerabilities/fragilities and work out systemic changes that reduce those risks. It's not the analysis of vulnerabilities that causes collapse, it's refusing to look at vulnerabilities because to do so is considered negative. Why not be optimistic and just go with the consensus that the status quo is impervious to serious disruption? Can-do optimism is all that's needed to overcome any spot of bother.
The problem is humanity's propensity to confuse optimism with magical thinking. This confusion is particularly visible in any discussion of energy. The status quo holds that every problem has a technological solution, and doubting this optimism is dismissed as naysaying: "why can't you be positive?"
I consider myself an optimist in the sense that I see solutions that are within reach if we change our definition of the problem so we can enable new solutions. I consider myself a practical, pragmatic optimist because I understand from life experience that systemic solutions generally require arduous transformations that will demand great effort and sacrifice. In many cases, this process is mostly a series of failures and disappointments that are the essential parts of a steep learning curve. But little of this basic awareness is visible in media descriptions of "solutions."
Thus every advance in a lab somewhere is immediately touted as the globally scalable solution: algae-based fuel, modular nuclear reactors, new battery designs, etc., in an endless profusion of technologies which are 1) not even to the prototype stage 2) cannot be scaled 3) limited to specific uses 4) require the construction of new infrastructure 5) consume vast resources to be built, including hydrocarbons 6) are not renewable as they must be replaced every 10-15 years 7) are not cost-effective once externalities are included 8) are intrinsically impractical due to complexity, dependency on rare minerals, etc.
All this "optimism" is actually 95% magical thinking, as the practical, real-world realities are dismissed or glossed over: "Oh, they'll figure all that out." In other words, throw enough money and talent at a problem ("We went to the moon, so anything is possible!") and it will always be solved in a way that's bigger and better. This is not optimism, this is magical thinking being passed off as optimism. Real optimism is cautious and contingent, hyper-aware that solutions are a dependency chain that only reach cost-effective scalability if an entire chain of circumstances and advances line up just right.
There's another source of confusing optimism and magical thinking: being too successful for too long. Former Intel CEO Andy Grove discussed this in his book "Only the Paranoid Survive,": once an organization reckons it has succeeded and has everything necessary to continue achieving success without making any systemic changes, then it's doomed to decay and eventual collapse.
When success becomes the default then all the hard parts of success - sacrifices made, failures mopped up, gambles that didn't pay off and gambles that did - melt away and all that's left is a sunny confidence that somebody somewhere will work out a solution that scales up to solve the problem for all of us: "We have top people working on it - top people!" Meanwhile, back in the real world, it takes 20 years to get a new bridge approved and built in the U.S., 20 years for a new subway line approved and built and 20 years to get a new landfill approved.
We're supposed to make the leap to a renewable zero-net-carbon future in 20 years and we can't even build one new-design nuclear reactor prototype in 20 years, even as we'd need hundreds of new reactors to replace a significant slice of hydrocarbon consumption. But if you dare to point out this painfully visible discrepancy between the real-world difficulties in getting a single prototype built in less than 20 years and the claim that we're going to transition away from hydrocarbons in 20 years, then you're a doom-and-gloomer, a naysayer who derives some bitter pleasure from shooting down optimists working on painless, sacrifice-free techno-solutions.
The essence of magical thinking is the belief that the long dependency chain between the idea/lab experiment and a solution that's cost-effective and scales up to serve everyone will always fall into place because it's always fallen into place in the past, and so there's no reason to doubt that all the pieces will fall into place going forward.
This is magical thinking because it has zero interest in the real-world constraints embedded in each link in the long chain. If you bring up any of these constraints, the magical thinking "optimist" is immediately annoyed and accuses you of being a bitter naysayer. The idea that there might be real-world constraints that "top people" can't overcome is rejected as naysaying.
The possibility that there might be systemic constraints is rejected out of hand because "anything's possible if we throw enough money and talent at it." There will always be a solution/substitute which will be affordable and sacrifice-free.
That all the previous examples of this were enabled by our exploitation of the easiest-to-extract hydrocarbon wealth is overlooked as a footnote. This leaves us all frustrated. Those of us grounded in the real world are frustrated that if we bring up any real-world constraints--for example, those wondrous untapped ore deposits that are going to make all these new techno-wonders cheap and quick and easy are far from paved highways, far from major river or bluewater ports, far from processing plants, and far from sources of the millions of liters of diesel fuel that will be needed onsite to extract the ores - then we're bitter naysayers who can't bear optimism and easy success, while the magical thinking "optimists" are frustrated that we're not accepting the technocratic religion that "top people" and a tsunami of money will solve any problem.
One thing I've noticed is "top people" (actual experts with long experience) are never the ones hyping some new technology as the pain-free affordable solution unless they're paid shills of special interests. Then they hype nuclear reactors as the solution without mentioning the problem of what to do with the waste, to name one constraint "optimists" inevitably ignore.
In the real world, the hard part is getting every link of the long dependency chain to work reliably and at a cost that's sustainable/affordable. Success comes not from blithely dismissing constraints as naysaying but from accepting most potential solutions will fail due to issues for which there is no cost-effective, practical, scalable fix. On a systemic level, this requires questioning whether the system itself has to change if we want a different result. If one possible result of the current system is collapse, realizing the system itself must be changed isn't doom-and-gloom, it's problem-solving."
○
Related:
"U.S. Consumers Have Reached A Breaking Point"
"U.S. Consumers Have Reached A Breaking Point"
by Michael Snyder
"Over the past several years, the cost of living has been rising significantly faster than paychecks have. As a result, U.S. consumers have reached a breaking point. Delinquency rates are spiking and bankruptcies have risen to a very dangerous level. I have been hearing from so many people that are struggling to survive in this suffocating economic environment. It has become increasingly difficult just to pay for the basics, and so many Americans have very little or no discretionary income to spend these days. If you want evidence that this is having a major economic impact, just consider the fact that 1,000 dollar stores are going to be shut down. If U.S. consumers were in good shape, that wouldn’t be happening. The economic shift that we have witnessed since the turn of the decade has been nothing short of epic.
According to Zillow, the average monthly mortgage payment for Americans buying a home now is nearly double what it was in January 2020…"The real estate firm Zillow reports that since January 2020, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical U.S. home has nearly doubled. It’s up 96% in just four years. According to Zillow, a typical buyer will now pay nearly $2,200 a month, with a 10% down payment. Meaning, homeownership now costs well above the 30% of median income that was once thought to equate to “affordable” housing cost in America."
And with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovering around seven percent right now, there’s not a whole lot of light at the end of this tunnel. If home buyers have to shell out twice as much for their mortgage payments compared to four years ago, they are going to have a lot less money to spend on other things. And this is the primary reason why so many of our young people simply cannot afford to purchase a home right now.
At this point, you need to earn approximately $106,000 a year in order to “afford the median home in the United States”… “After the surge in home-buying demand and mobility during the pandemic, and the doubling of mortgage rates, home-shoppers now need to earn $106,000 to afford the median home in the United States,” said Divounguy. Back in 2020, the salary needed to afford the median monthly mortgage payment was just $59,000. Of course it isn’t just housing that has become extremely unaffordable.
For the first time I can ever remember, the cost of burgers has become a major national issue…
I can’t imagine paying more than 20 dollars for a burger, fries and drink at a fast food restaurant. But this is life in America in 2024. Our leaders have created an inflationary nightmare. The Biden administration continues to insist that inflation is a low, but that is a lie.
Another lie that we have been told is that the unemployment rate is low. How can that be possible when we just witnessed the worst February for layoffs since Challenger, Gray & Christmas started keeping records?…"The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated in February, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates.
That is according to a new report published Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 84,638 job cuts in February, a 3% increase from the previous month and a 9% jump from the same time last year. It marked the highest layoff total for the month of February in data going back to 2009."
The Biden administration keeps telling us that there are plenty of good jobs available. So why are so many highly qualified workers having such difficulty finding work? Here is one example… "Since leaving a university research administration job last May, Kyle Clark has cast an ever-widening net in his search for a new position. First the 30-year-old sought jobs in technical editing, a skill he honed at the university. Then he leveraged his administrative experience, applying for openings in insurance and project management. Finally, he tossed his hat in the ring for a job posting at a local big-box retailer, only to be told the store wasn’t hiring. After fruitlessly job hunting in the Portland, Oregon, area, Clark moved in with his parents in Tennessee with no better results. Now he’s heading to Chicago to try his luck in the Windy City.
Why can’t Kyle Clark find a job? He has submitted applications for approximately 250 jobs, and he hasn’t received a single offer… The tally so far: about 250 applications, 14 positive responses, 12 interviews. No job offers. “I am losing my mind,” Clark says, noting he has a four-year college degree and seven years of work experience. “I am just burned out. I just want to be employed. I have skills, I want to work, and that’s what’s frustrating. I want to. Just let me.”
I have heard from so many others that are in the exact same boat. So something is not adding up. The rosy picture of the economy that the Biden administration is giving us simply does not match reality at all. And now we have reached a breaking point.
Last year, the total number of bankruptcy filings in the United States was 18 percent higher than the year before…"U.S. bankruptcy filings surged by 18% in 2023 on the back of higher interest rates, tougher lending standards and the continued runoff of pandemic-era backstops, data published Wednesday showed, although insolvency case volumes remain well below the level seen before the outbreak of COVID-19. Total bankruptcy filings – encompassing commercial and personal insolvencies – rose to 445,186 last year from 378,390 in 2022, according to data from bankruptcy data provider Epiq AACER." Based on what we are seeing so far this year, I fully expect the final number for 2024 to absolutely crush the final number for 2023.
Meanwhile, it is being reported that corporate bond defaults were up by a whopping 80 percent last year…"Consumers aren’t the only ones defaulting on their debts: Corporate bond defaults were up massively in 2023, especially for high-risk junk debt, and the trend is continuing this year at a pace not seen since the 2008 global financial crisis. Unsurprisingly, companies selling low-rated junk debt are being hit the worst.
Last year, according to S&P Global Ratings, corporate bond defaults increased by a disconcerting 80%. High interest rates coupled with high inflation have made it a struggle for companies to make good on their commitments even as waves of new bond buyers continue to arrive, eager to lock in higher yields before rates go down."
Many have pointed out that corporate bond defaults spiked like this just prior to the financial crisis of 2008 too. We have entered such dangerous territory, and it appears that things will get even worse throughout the rest of this year. Our leaders were able to delay the inevitable for a while by flooding the system with trillions upon trillions of dollars. But now an economic nightmare has arrived anyway, and the days ahead are going to be exceedingly challenging for most U.S. consumers."
"How It Really Is"
"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.”
– Michael Lewis, “Boomerang”
"If only"... you don't stop because you can't stop.
If you do it's all over. It's all over anyway, you're just buying time.
Tell me I'm wrong...
Bill Bonner, "The Way of Empire"
(The English fleet in pursuit of the Spanish Armada during the abortive attempt by Spain to invade England in 1588. From “The Sunday at Home: A Family Magazine for Sabbath Reading, 1888”. Published in London by the Religious Tract Society. Source: Getty)
"The Way of Empire"
Lessons from Spain's spectacular downfall.
by Bill Bonner
"The government in Spain, short of revenue for its expensive imperial projects, increased the fiscal burden and manipulated the coinage, triggering inflation and further damaging the Spanish economy." ~ Christopher Storrs
Youghal, Ireland - "Inflation and war…war and inflation. Evil and stupid. Fool and knave. They follow patterns too.
You send a beautiful armada to deal with the English. It is so impressive, its huge oak ships rising out of the water… as much as 150 ft. long and 50 ft wide, with as many as 60 cannon poking out of its portals. Flags flying. Three tall masts and billowing grand sails. They were the magnificent aircraft carriers of their day; each one took 2 years and 2,000 stout trees to build. Named after saints…carrying a priest onboard for daily services…and adorned with a golden lion wearing a crown (for the royal vessels) – could there be any doubt who ruled the sea? You hold a sacred mass…the Pope himself blessed the fleet. Surely it is an Invincible Armada! And then, whaddya know…it sinks.
Spain – part of the Habsburg Empire – was the first empire on which the sun never set. It had the Philippines in the East… Central and South America in the West…and in Europe, it was the hegemon…the indispensable nation of its time.
So, when English terrorists began attacking Spanish ships, Philip II decided to take forceful, resolute action. His was the leading empire of the time…with the largest military budget in the world…and the 16th century equivalent of a reserve currency. That is, Spain was getting boatloads of gold and silver from the New World, thereby stimulating the Old World economy with newly minted money. Does any of this sound familiar? Alert readers will notice two important themes.
The Money: First, inflation. Or, more broadly, the Dutch Disease….commonly understood as the paradox that happens when good luck – finding billions in gold and silver that could be easily stolen – turns your economy into a sh*thole.
We usually think of gold as a protection against inflation. In this instance it was the cause of it. Typically, gold protects against inflation because it is so hard to get. You have to find it, and mine it…so it is very difficult to add to your money supply. And since gold is priced on the open market – like everything else – the quantity of it available as money tends to increase in line with everything else…at a rate more or less even with GDP growth. If supplies fall short, the price of the gold rises and miners are inspired to work harder. If there is ‘too much’ gold, on the other hand, the price of it tends to fall…and miners become unprofitable.
It was just a quirk of larceny and stroke of luck that the Spanish found so much above-ground gold and silver in the hands of the Aztec and Inca and were able to seize it and send it back to Spain. The adventurer, Pizarro, captured the Inca chief, Atahualpa, for example. The conquistador demanded a room full of gold for his release. The Inca dutifully filled the room…but Pizarro killed him anyway.
This increase in the Spanish money supply had one immediate effect – it made Spain rich – and one secondary effect…it caused inflation that made Spain poor.
Spain was still rich in July 1588, when the big fleet assembled and sailed north towards the English Channel. With 137 ships…including the great galleons and Atlantic-class caravels…it was intended to escort barges full of soldiers, horses, food and weapons from Flanders across the Channel for an invasion of England.
This was more or less the same naval force that had won the battle of Lepanto in 1571, a crucial battle of Christian Europe against the infidels of the Muslim world. And it was fought in the old-fashioned way…with sword, knife, musket and pistol. This was the battle the Armada of Philip II was prepared to fight again. Which brings us to our second theme: the surprising, and largely unwelcome, twists of war.
The Guns - The surprise to the Invincible Armada was that the English didn’t fight like the Ottomans. Or the Romans or Greeks before them. The Battle of Gravelines was not just another infantry battle, based on floating platforms moved by galley slaves.
Unnoticed by most of the rest of the world, the English had made technical progress. Their ships were smaller, swifter, but with less firepower. They had already proven effective in the hands of English privateers – terrorists! – such as Sir Francis Drake. They came at the enemy from windward. This left their prey heeled over with their underbellies (below the waterline) and rudders exposed.
Rather than come alongside, throw over grappling hooks and try to board the ship, the English just tried to sink it (or, better yet…knock down its masts and destroy its rudder so it was helpless). In this, they were successful. First, they broke up the Spanish formation off Calais by sending fireships in among the moored vessels. The Spanish panicked, cut anchors and dispersed the fleet.
Then, at the Battle of Gravelines, the following day, the two fleets faced off. The Spanish executed the maneuver that they had used with such success at Lepanto. They fired their cannon once…and prepared to board the enemy ships. They could only fire once because their cannons were not set up to be reloaded – not in the heat of battle. The English, meanwhile, kept their distance…and continued to blast away. By the time they had run out of ammunition, they had damaged and/or sunk so many of the Armada vessels that the battle was effectively won.
The End: The Armada was vincible, after all. The wind, then, blew from the south, and gave the Spaniards an escape route…to the north. The surviving vessels, many in rough shape, tried to sail around Scotland and Ireland so as to rejoin the Iberian peninsula without encountering English warships. Alas, many ran aground in Ireland, where their ships were stripped and sailors were killed mercilessly. Others died from cold, hunger and disease. (They were not prepared for a long ocean voyage.) Few made it back to Spain.
And while war did its damage, the new money did even more. It set off a now-familiar pattern of actions and reactions. The conquistadores grabbed huge new quantities of gold and silver. This increase in the basic money supply caused prices in Spain and Portugal to rise 500% over the next 150 years. Rising prices – along with higher interest rates – forced the Spanish emperor to borrow more and more money just to keep his expensive empire in business. It also provided a substitute for real output on the Iberian peninsula. The Spanish and Portuguese had money. They could buy things; they didn’t need to make them. ‘Let others sweat,’ they may have said to each other. ‘We conquer.’
But by neglecting their own commerce and manufactures, the Spanish and Portuguese set themselves up for a Big Loss. By the time the Invincible Armada set sail, the flow of new money from the colonies was already on the decline. After the battle of Gravelines, Spanish power sank too…and never recovered. Then, the Spaniards could neither conquer nor sweat. War and inflation had condemned them to 4 centuries of marginal, sh*thole status."
Gregory Mannarino, "It's Really Over, The FED Has Now Completely Weaponized Their System Against Us"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/20/24
"It's Really Over, The FED Has Now
Completely Weaponized Their System Against Us"
Comments here:
o
Related:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Homeowner Arrested Trying to Evict Squatters"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 3/20/24
"Homeowner Arrested Trying to Evict Squatters"
"The problem is getting much worse. Squatters are taking over real estate across the country. One woman in Florida was kicked out of her own home and arrested for trying to kick the squatters out. What’s next for real estate?"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Be Ready! Which Wall St. Bank Is Most Likely To Fail? Here It Is..."
Your guide...
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/20/24
"Be Ready! Which Wall St. Bank Is
Most Likely To Fail? Here It Is..."
Comments here:
o
“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."
Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up At Sam's Club!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 3/20/24
"Stocking Up At Sam's Club!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Sam's Club and are finding some great deals on many items. Grab your notepad as these are items everyone should be buying here in 2024!"
Comments here:
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal, 3/19/24"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 3/19/24
"I Will Kill Italian Goyim Celente!
He Is A Warrior For The Prince Of Peace!"
"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:
Comments here:
"World War III Prelude, 3/19/24"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/19/24
"Alert! It's Starting! 2,000 French Troops To Ukraine;
Nuclear Plant Attacked; Polish Nuclear F-35s"
Comments here:
These psychopaths are simply determined to get us all killed...
Bill Bonner, "Decline and Fall"
"Decline and Fall"
The eternal cycles of growth and depression…
bull and bear…war and peace...
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "We connect the dots. Like seeing constellations in the night sky – Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper, Las Tres Marias – some are obvious. Others are harder to see, with faint stars…far in the distance. But always, there are patterns… growth and depression…bull and bear…war and peace. Decline and fall. Some of them are very long patterns. Our friend, Chad Champion: "Since the founding of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the U.S. has lived through 3,000 percent inflation. A dollar equivalent back then is worth about 3.2 cents today! And to make the situation worse, the “over-population” of money has reached unprecedented levels since 2008. The Fed’s balance sheet has exploded. It went from just under $1 trillion before the Panic of 2008 to just under $9 trillion after the pandemic."
Rome wasn’t built in a day. And it will take a long time, we presume, to bring America to its knees. But the two parties – the stupid party and the evil party – are doing their best, coming up with programs that combine the worst of both. Here’s another friend, Jeffrey Tucker, explaining what happened in the crisis of 2020: "As for 2020, that was a disaster for the ages, the single worst policy decisions by the Fed in its entire history.
In the course of a few days, the Fed eliminated reserve requirements, introduced a huge range of new lending systems, bought every dollar of debt that the Treasury could create, and, over two years, unleashed the terror of $6.5 trillion on a demoralized public that was initially excited for the benevolence. That charity turned to dust once the inflation started. Now, it’s all gone, and we’re dealing with three straight years of real declines in median family incomes."
Power and Wealth - There’s another age-old pattern. As a nation/state/empire ages its ruling elites sit at the pinnacle of power and wealth. No matter which direction they look, it’s downhill. They become fearful…everything is a threat – a virus, a bear market, Russia, China…the future itself.
One of the funniest things to happen last week was that the free thinkers in Congress voted overwhelmingly to ban TikTok. One of the reasons given was that lawmakers thought the app was ‘dumbing down America’s youth.’ Really? Not Facebook. Not the New York Times. Not Paul Krugman. Not Morning Joe. Not the US Congress. Not the public schools. Not the parents who let their children waste their time with electronic gadgets. Neither Biden nor Trump. Nope.
Typical of a late-stage, degenerate empire, members of Congress are eager to protect themselves from anything new. Another claim made against TikTok is that it may collect data that could be used against us. What data? Where is it kept? What do they do with it? How would it be used against us? What damage could a Chinese-owned app do that our own insipid media cannot? The politicians have no idea, but they’d send troops to TikTokLand…if they knew where to find it.
‘Throw the Bums Out’ - Still another pattern: over time, ruling elites are prone to becoming corrupt and incompetent (stupid and evil). They favor war and inflation, partly as a way to keep the future from happening and partly as a way to continue to transfer more wealth and power to themselves. The increased supply of war and inflation leads to a decline in their value. Eventually, the elites cannot win a war (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Ukraine)…nor control inflation.
In theory, a democracy is supposed to solve the problem of decay at the top. The voters are supposed to ‘throw the bums out,’ and elect new, more vigorous leaders. But where are these new leaders? In smallish communities, democracy seems to work. But in practice, in a large government, the political parties, Congress, the administration, the press, Wall Street, powerful donors, lobbyists, organized special interests, and the firepower industry all lock arms to block change. You end up with geriatric leaders and disastrous policies.
Blow Up - Who really wants a rematch between Biden and Trump? We all know who they are…what they are…and what they will do. And what they won’t do. And neither of them, neither the fool or the knave, will face up to the most obvious crisis in America’s history…or avoid it in the most obvious way.
Here’s Bloomberg: "Rogoff Says Biden, Trump Favor ‘Blowing Up’ US Debt." Harvard University economics professor Kenneth Rogoff said both President Joe Biden and his predecessor and challenger Donald Trump risk sending US debt levels into dangerous territory as Washington fails to grasp that the era of ultra-low interest rates won’t come back. “Biden’s speech suggested blowing up the debt... We have really no idea what Donald Trump will do, but that’s what he did last time he was president — good guess he will do it again,” Rogoff said, referring to widening fiscal deficits when Trump was president 2017-21."
Since the last major financial crisis – 2008-2009 – the feds have added a staggering $25 trillion in new debt. And they’re on course to add another $16 trillion according to their own budget projections – over the next 10 years. If they don’t change course soon….there will be Hell to pay. What that Hell will look like, we will discover along with everyone else. But it is sure to include more inflation and more war. Stay tuned."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“This colorful skyscape features the dusty, reddish glow of Sharpless catalog emission region Sh2-155, the Cave Nebula. About 2,400 light-years away, the scene lies along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus.
Astronomical explorations of the region reveal that it has formed at the boundary of the massive Cepheus B molecular cloud and the hot, young, blue stars of the Cepheus OB 3 association. The bright rim of ionized hydrogen gas is energized by the radiation from the hot stars, dominated by the bright blue O-type star above picture center. Radiation driven ionization fronts are likely triggering collapsing cores and new star formation within. Appropriately sized for a stellar nursery, the cosmic cave is over 10 light-years across.”
"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."
"Time..."
“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so?
Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.
Before they know it, time runs out.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
○
“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”
- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”
○
“The problem is, you believe you have time.”
- Buddha
The Poet: David Whyte, "The Opening of Eyes"
"The Opening of Eyes"
"That day I saw beneath dark clouds
The passing light over the water,
And I heard the voice of the world speak out.
I knew then as I have before,
Life is no passing memory of what has been,
Nor the remaining pages of a great book
Waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things,
Seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
Speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees
Before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
As if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished,
Opened at last,
Fallen in love
With Solid Ground."
~ David Whyte
Free Download: Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"
“The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.
All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.
Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself.
Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance.
At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts.
At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts.
On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that. I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.”
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"
Freely download "Tropic of Cancer", by Henry Miller, here:
"That's How Life Works..."
"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
Judge Napolitano, "Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Israeli Government is Criminal"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/19/24
"Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Israeli Government is Criminal"
Comments here:
"Israel is Evil personified. Israel is Evil embodied."
- Scott Ritter
Scott Ritter, "Geopolitics 3/19/24"
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 3/19/24
"Israel Economy Faces Irreversible Collapse
as World and Arab Nations Turn Their Backs"
"This video delves into the current economic situation in Israel, analyzing the profound challenges the country is facing. We explore the reasons behind the potential collapse of Israel's economy, including the decline in support from the international community and Arab countries, along with the lack of support for the Palestinian people. The video also includes an analysis of the impact of this situation on Israel's future economic and political landscape, as well as the potential consequences for the broader region."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 3/19/24
"Malaysia Blows Hot; Announces Plan If Israel
Invades Gaza's Rafah Next Week; Netanyahu Loses Again!"
Comments here:
o
Scott Ritter, 3/19/24
"Russia has Destroyed the U.S. Military
and Putin is Exposing the Truth"
"Former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter explains how Putin's interview on Tucker Carlson exposed waning U.S. supremacy in all fields military and political, showing millions of people in the West that Russia is ready to assume global leadership."
Comments here:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)