Jeremiah Babe, 6/1/23
"Tipping Restaurant Cashier For Doing Nothing;
Grocery Stores Under Attack; Macy's Economic Red Flag"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, June 1, 2023
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/1/23
"Trends Journal"
T'he Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current
events forming future trends. Find out more here: https://trendsjournal.com
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent on the left; the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond.
Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky."
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html
"Know What's Weird?"
"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,
but pretty soon... everything's different."
- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"
"The Great Enemy Of Freedom..."
"In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means."
- Wendell Berry,
"The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"
"It Takes Considerable Knowledge..."
"The greater our knowledge increases,
the greater our ignorance unfolds."
- John F. Kennedy
o
"It takes considerable knowledge just to
realize the extent of your own ignorance."
- Thomas Sowell
o
The Poet: Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
- Dylan Thomas
"Good Or Bad..."
"Good or bad, everything we do is our best choice at that moment."
- William Glasser
o
“Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.”
- Richard Bach, “Running From Safety”
"Billions May Die in Mankind's Greatest War w/ Artificial Intelligence"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/1/23
"Billions May Die in Mankind's
Greatest War w/ Artificial Intelligence"
Comments here:
"Who Wants This?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/1/23
"Who Wants This?"
"It sounds like some futuristic world where crime is running rampant. But it’s not a movie, it’s happening right here. Los Angeles is going to have no bail for most crimes."
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"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! It's Getting Unaffordable!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/1/23
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger!
It's Getting Unaffordable!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing some huge price increases on groceries! This is getting very concerning as many families are struggling to put food on the table."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 6/1/23
"Russian Typical (Close to Home)
Supermarket Tour: Pyaterochka"
"What does a Russian typical supermarket look like in Moscow, Russia. Take a look inside the most popular supermarket in Russia. With over 19,000 locations Pyaterochka is the best known Russian typical supermarket by a long way."
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Comments, Good Citizen? Yeah, what could you say?
"10 Big Retailers in US Collapsing Right in Front of Our Eyes"
Full screen recommended.
"10 Big Retailers in US Collapsing
Right in Front of Our Eyes"
by Finance Today
"Because of the most challenging economic climate that has been witnessed since the 1970s, the retail industry is going through widespread destruction. Even long-established enterprises that have been there for generations are suddenly going out of business because of the current climate. It has been reported by a number of different sources that customers' favorite stores, such as Starbucks and Disney, as well as clothing merchants and department stores, will close their doors this year. The sector as a whole is in a precarious position as a result of the widespread closures that have already taken place. This is due to the fact that retailers are currently grappling with falling sales, rising inflation, and enormous debt burdens during a period of heightened financial unpredictability and higher potential for catastrophe. This video presents a list that we have developed of the top ten retailers who will be fighting for their very existence in the year 2023. Only the most robust brands will make it through, so check out our list of companies to keep an eye out for if they are filing for bankruptcy."
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"Something Like Reverence..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
○
“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
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is here.
God help us, God help us all...
"Ukraine Preparing to Engulf the Entire World in Death & Carnage"
Click image for larger size.
"Ukraine Preparing to Engulf
the Entire World in Death & Carnage"
By Martin Armstrong
"Some people have been sending hate mail claiming I am a Putin supporter. My advice to you is to grab a gun and go volunteer to fight for Zelensky. ALL my sources have been screaming from the beginning that this Ukrainian war has been instigated by the US which has been taken over by a silent coup of the Neocons. Then some just hate Trump and are so blinded by it that they are walking into their doom.
Ukraine is out to create World War III. Russia has NOT been using military aircraft in Ukraine. They have only used missiles and drones. Ukraine has no need for F16 jets other than to launch a war on Crimea to try to destroy the Russian fleet and they will use them to attack Moscow directly. They want the F16s from Biden but the long-range missiles from Germany. They are giving the Neocons cover so they can pretend that they did not supply those weapons to Moscow and when they attack a NATO country, then World War III will begin.
Get your head out of the sand. Wake up! Pull that COVID mask off of your eyes and get your head out of the sand. You are taking your family down a very dark path.
Russia will have NO CHOICE but to protect its own people and that will be through nuclear confrontation. UKRAINE is the enemy of the entire world – they only seek death & destruction. Had the Minsk Agreement been honored – there would have been NO war!"
"Fall Of American Empire And Descent Into A New Dark Ages" (Excerpt)
"Fall Of American Empire And Descent Into A New Dark Ages"
By Jim Quinn
Excerpt: “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.” - Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38 “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”
“The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.” - Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38 “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”
The moniker of my website originated from a quote by David Walker, then Comptroller General of the U.S., in 2007. I wholeheartedly endorsed Walker’s viewpoint and become politically active in trying to get Ron Paul elected as president in 2008 and 2012. It was a fruitless effort, as the uni-party in Washington DC, controlled by the dark forces of the Deep State, do not allow men and women who truly want to reduce the size and scope of government to ever get elected. His warning sixteen years ago is a perfect example of being right but being early. When talking about the decline of empires, you are really deliberating about a process, not an event. The Roman Empire did not fall on a specific day due to a specific cause. It collapsed in stages over hundreds of years due to numerous reasons, each triggering events which compounded upon each other and ultimately led to the final collapse.
Walker said, “The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.” He believed we were resting on the laurels of being the sole superpower, as our empire built on debt was slowly and methodically crumbling. He cited three reasons for the fall of the Roman Republic that resonated in 2007 regarding the American Empire (formerly a republic):
• There has been a decline in moral values and political civility at home. Examples include the devaluation of life, greater self-centerdness by individuals and increased partisanship and ideological divides in Congress.
• We now have an overextended military around the world. While the US military is unmatched as to its capabilities, it is under stress and stretched very thin.
• There is fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. Our debt ratios are set to increase dramatically when the baby boomers retire.
It’s almost humorous Walker was issuing these dire warnings when the 2007 annual deficit was $160 billion. At our current rate of debt accumulation, it takes only one month to reach $160 billion. In 2020 and 2021 it only took 20 days to accumulate $160 billion. The national debt in 2007 was $9 trillion, up from $5.6 trillion in 2000. Today it stands at $31.8 trillion. Interest on the national debt will approach $900 billion this year, exceeding defense spending.
Walker warned about our debt ratios skyrocketing when the baby boomers retired. Well, the debt to GDP ratio has doubled from 62% in 2007 to 124% today, and most boomers can’t even afford to retire. U.S. unfunded liabilities total $188 trillion. Personal debts total $25 trillion, with $1.8 trillion of student loan debt and $1.3 trillion of credit card debt. The fiscal irresponsibility of our government and its citizens is breathtaking, unsustainable, and ultimately fatal to our empire. Walker may have been early, but he certainly was not wrong."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
"War Alert Sent To Millions; Russian Doomsday Planes Sent To Siberia; STRATCOM Targeted"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/31/23
"War Alert Sent To Millions; Russian Doomsday
Planes Sent To Siberia; STRATCOM Targeted"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Douglas Macgregor, 5/31/23
"Orlan Drones - Ukraine Should Not Strike Inside Russia"
Comments here:
"Middle Class Families Can't Afford Homes Anymore As Mortgage Rates Hit Record Levels"
"Middle Class Families Can't Afford Homes
Anymore As Mortgage Rates Hit Record Levels"
By Epic Economist
"90% of Americans say that owning a home is a key part of the American dream. But today, more than half of them believe they will never own their dream home, and about 70% of U.S. households can’t afford the average-priced home, especially when considering that mortgage rates have more than doubled since 2020. What’s even more alarming is that homeownership rates amongst middle-class families are rapidly shrinking. Month after month, more and more middle-income Americans are being priced out of the market entirely, and that is having a huge impact on their ability to build equity, save money, and actually have a middle-class lifestyle. Never before in history, middle-class families have been so close to financial insecurity and poverty. And the ongoing housing crisis has everything to do with it.
In the past decade, mortgage payments on homes sold at the median price in the United States have tripled. Over the past three years alone, mortgage rates shoot up by 131%, going from 3.15% in May 2020 to 7.29% in May 2023. It is safe to say that the growth of median salaries hasn’t approached that pace. There is a nationwide shortage of homes for sale right now, and those listed on the market are reaching record highs. No wonder why increasingly more middle-class Americans are finding themselves completely priced out of the housing market.
In fact, the National Association of Home Builders reports that the average new home price is $436,800 in 2023. That's a 32% increase from 2020 when that average was at $329,000. Moreover, at least 500 cities in the U.S. now have an average home price of $1 million. Over that same time span, middle-income earners have seen their salaries rise by 5.1%, U.S. Labor Department data shows. Adding the highest mortgage rates in two decades to the picture, the conditions look even grimmer for would-be buyers this year.
NAHB’s priced-out index estimates that for every 0.5% increase in mortgage rates, 1.3 million households are pushed out of the market. This means that since the third quarter of 2022, an additional 5.2 million families became unable to purchase a new median-priced home. To be fair, more than 70% of Americans don’t earn enough to buy a new home in 2023, according to NAHB’s housing affordability Pyramid. Their calculations revealed that out of 132.5 million American households, 96.5 million of them aren’t able to afford a $430,000 median home.
The combination of the current lack of affordability and weak wage growth, is putting middle-income earners in great danger. A separate report by Primerica reveals that Nearly three-quarters, or 72%, of middle-income families, say their earnings are falling behind the cost of living, up from 68% a year ago, making it harder to live the same
Almost 60% of middle-income Americans said it is very or somewhat unlikely that today’s young adults will have a better life than their parents. And one of the biggest contributors to that decay in their living standards is the lack of access to affordable housing.
In other words, the middle class is literally being excluded from the American dream. If we can’t afford homes, how can we become financially independent? Younger generations are doomed to a future of economic uncertainty and declining quality of life all thanks to the asset bubbles created by reckless monetary policies, inflation, and now the highest mortgage rates in years. We’ve been warned that a great reckoning would come. Now it is clear that the countdown has begun."
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"American Will Struggle To Pay their Bills; Debt Ceiling Will Be Catastrophic To Middle Class"
Jeremiah Babe, 5/31/23
"American Will Struggle To Pay their Bills;
Debt Ceiling Will Be Catastrophic To Middle Class"
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Musical Intelude: Peder B. Helland, "Sunny Mornings"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation,
"Sunny Mornings"
"I am a composer from Norway and I started this channel with a simple vision: to create a place that you can visit whenever you want to sit down and relax. I compose music that can be labeled as for example: sleep music, calm music, yoga music, study music, peaceful music, beautiful music and relaxing music. I love to compose music and I put a lot of work into it.
Thank you very much for listening and for leaving feedback. Every single day I am completely astonished by all your warm support and it really inspires me to work even harder on my music. If you enjoy my work, I would be very happy if you decided to subscribe and join our community. Have a wonderful day or evening!"
- Peder B. Helland, composer for Soothing Relaxation
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”
"I Promise You This..."
"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am- a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."
- Edward Abbey
Chet Raymo, “Singing Beside Me In The Wilderness”
“Singing Beside Me In The Wilderness”
by Chet Raymo
by Chet Raymo
“In one of those infuriating lapses that go with being a certain age, we could not remember the other evening the name of the poet who wrote "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou..." After scraping the tip of my tongue for a few minutes, I turned to the computer (Google is my browser's home page) and by typing "jug thou" brought Omar Khayyam back into consciousness. (Another click and I could have had the entire Rubaiyat.) (Freely download the entire "Rubaiyat" at that link. - CP)
And so it is that the Googlized internet arrives just in time to compensate for our withering brain cells. Everything I ever remembered is there to be Googled, plus everything I never remembered. Ten billions pages. The searchable memory of the human race. With more yet to come.
My great-great-grandchildren will no doubt have tiny video cameras implanted in the middle of their foreheads, like Hindu beauty marks, recording everything that passes before their eyes 24-7, with a sound track too. All of which will be stored digitally, ready for instant playback, and searchable by date, time, GPS coordinates, or keywords- the whole of a life, not only available to the subjects themselves in their memory-lapsed dotage, but to future generations. "Here's great-great-grandpa on his ninety-first birthday, back in 2027. Look how he dribbles soup on his shirt. Ha, ha."
I think nature knew what it was doing when it allows our memory to fade with age. It is particularly notable that the more unpleasant memories go first, so that every summer past was golden with sunshine, and every child was a model of respectful propriety. And no one, not even grandpa himself, remembers the time he... “
"In These Downbeat Times..."
"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each other s throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation - and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."
- Cornel West
"Economic Death Spiral, Be Ready Because The Worst Is Yet To Come!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/31/23
"Economic Death Spiral,
Be Ready Because The Worst Is Yet To Come!"
Comments here:
'Every Human Decision..."
"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, every human
decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."
- Jeff Duntemann
"Doug Casey on the Bankruptcy of the US Government"
"Doug Casey on the Bankruptcy of the US Government"
by International Man
"Everyone knows that the US government is bankrupt and has been for many years. Whenever the chattering classes talk about cuts, it’s only about cuts over the course of 10 years. Which is a dodge, a fraud. Partly because most of the supposed cuts will be scheduled for the end of the period, but also because new programs, new emergencies and hidden contingencies are guaranteed to creep in, offsetting any announced cuts. The anticipated $2 trillion deficit for 2024 isn’t a temporary worst case; it’s the rosiest possible scenario.
People thought I was joking when, asked how bad the Greater Depression was going to be, I answered that it would be worse than even I thought it would be. But I haven’t been joking. To sum up the situation, given its financial condition and the political forces working to worsen it, the US government is facing a completely impossible and irremediable situation. The problems we face are one hundred percent caused by the US government – not by bankers or brokers, although they have been complicit.
Recall what government is: an organization with a monopoly of force within a certain geographical area. Its purpose is, ostensibly, to protect the inhabitants of its bailiwick from the initiation of force. That implies three functions: an army to protect against aggressors coming from outside of its borders, police to protect citizens from aggressors inside its borders and a court system to allow citizens to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force. Assuming you’re going to have a government, it’s important to limit it strictly, lest it get completely out of control – it’s got a monopoly of force, after all – and overwhelm the society it’s supposed to protect.
Here I want you to distinguish government from society. They are not only two totally different things, but are potentially antithetical to each other. This is because the essence of government is force, not voluntary cooperation. Everything that people think the government provides (beyond some forms of protection) is really provided by society, or with resources the government has taken from society. It’s critical to understand this, or you won’t see the slippery slope the US is now sliding on. Is there any chance that the US government can reform and go back to a sustainable basis at this point? I’d say no.
Past is Prologue: Its descent started in earnest with the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it acquired its first foreign possessions (Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc). It accelerated with the advent of the income tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913. It accelerated further with World War I, when the government took over the economy for 18 months.
The New Deal and World War II made the state into a permanent major feature in the average American’s life. The Great Society made free food, housing and medical care a feature. The final elimination of any link of the dollar to gold in 1971 ensured ever-increasing levels of currency inflation.
The Cold War and a series of undeclared wars (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others) cemented the military in place as a permanent focus of the government. And since 9/11, the curve has gone hyperbolic with the War on Terror. It’s been said that war is the health of the state. We have lots more war on the way, and that will expand the state’s spending. But the Greater Depression will be an even bigger drain, and it will likely destroy the middle class, as an unwelcome bonus.
In all that time, from 1898 to today, there have been no substantial retrenchments of the US government, and the situation is getting worse, on a hyperbolic curve. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until a genuine crisis changes them, and this trend has been gaining momentum for over a century.
The Death of the Middle Class: Let’s divide people into three classes – rich, poor and middle class. Rich people are going to be okay. They can bribe the politicians to change the laws, hire the lawyers to interpret the laws, the accountants to limit their liabilities, advisors to help them profit from distortions and travel agents to get them out of Dodge. They may get eaten later, but for the moment, don’t worry about them.
The poor don’t have much to lose, and the government is going to keep throwing benefits at them to keep them happy. That’s a shame because it cements them to the bottom as poor people – but that’s a topic for another day.
The real danger is to the middle class, and it’s a serious matter because the US is a middle-class society. These are people who try to produce more than they consume and save the difference, in order to grow wealthier. That formula has worked well up to now – but almost everybody saves dollars. What happens, however, if the dollars are destroyed? It means that most of what they saved disappears, and most of the middle class will disappear with it, at least for that generation. They’ll be very unhappy, and they’ll be up for some serious changes.
What Happens Next: My point is that there really is no conventional solution to the US government’s financial crisis. It’s reached a stage where it will either have to start defaulting on some of its obligations, or vastly increase its rate of money printing. You decide which. The only questions are political; the economics are quite clear. Money printing it is. Especially since the Jacobins who now control Washington are believers in Modern Monetary Theory.
It won’t be the end of the world when the US government goes bust, although it will certainly have plenty of inconveniences and unpleasantness. Lots of governments have gone bankrupt before, some of them numerous times – like all of them here in South America, where I am at the moment.
In fact, there’s a temptation to look forward to it, since the state is the enemy of any decent human. One might hope that when they bankrupt themselves, we might get to live in a libertarian paradise. But that’s not likely the way things will come down; rather, just the opposite. Not all State bankruptcies are just temporary upsets. Most of the great revolutions in history have financial roots.
Great revolutions are more than just unpleasant and inconvenient; they’re extremely dangerous. The French Revolution of 1789 was brought on by the financial collapse of the French government. It was a good thing to depose Louis XVI, but things didn’t get better – they got much, much worse with Robespierre and then Napoleon.
The collapse of the Czar’s regime in Russia in 1917, bankrupted by WW1, seemed to be good news at first – but then things got worse under Lenin, and stayed worse for a long time. In Germany, the destruction of the German mark in 1923 set the stage for the Nazis – and then the depression ushered them in.
The fact is that when a government collapses, especially when the government is providing all the things the US government does today, people want somebody to fix it; they want their goodies back. It’s well known that over 50% of the US population are net recipients of state largesse. And the degree of state support and involvement in the US today is far, far greater than it was in France, Russia or Germany. After a period of chaos, it’s always the people who are most political, who have the most rabid statist ideas, who get the public’s attention and rise to the top.
It seems highly likely that the US will get a savior, someone full of bravado, who assures the booboisie that he can straighten things out – if he is given sufficient power. Perhaps it will be an arrogant windbag, perhaps some narcissistic general. The government won’t wither away; it will reassert itself. I don’t see any way around it, actually.
We are already moving into a police state. But, on the bright side, it’s a police state with a fairly high standard of living, one with Walmarts, McDonalds, and SUVs – at least for the time being.
But rest assured that if the situation evolves the way I expect, the standard of living will drop steeply, financial markets will become chaotic, and the US will become quite repressive. I’ll bet you money on this. In fact, I am betting money on it. We’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. It seems to me that this trend can no longer be reversed. The US government’s budget is, in fact, the biggest thing in the world. It won’t be turned around, because it is like a gigantic snowball rolling down a hill. It will only stop when it smashes into the village at the bottom of the valley."
"This Is The End Of A Mega-Cycle"
"This Is The End Of A Mega-Cycle"
by Michael Snyder
"Have we finally reached the end of the road? When it comes to the economy, most of us focus on short-term cycles. In recent years there have been times when the economy has been growing and there have been times when the economy has been shrinking, but all of those short-term fluctuations have happened in the context of a long-term trend of debt-fueled “growth”. We have been relentlessly stealing from the future in order to make the present more pleasant, and most of us pretend that the piper will never have to be paid. But of course the truth is that a day of reckoning is fast approaching, and that day of reckoning is going to be immensely painful.
Earlier today, I came across a tweet by End Wokeness that really does a great job of pointing out the harsh reality of what we are facing…
"US national debt, 1960: $286 billion
US national debt, 2023: $31.4 trillion
Are our roads better?
Are our streets safer?
How about healthcare?
Is it easier to raise a family?
Did we improve our schools?
If not, then what the hell did they do with that $31,124,000,000,000?"
I can actually answer that last question. They bought time. By kicking the can down the road over and over again, they have been able to delay the severe economic consequences that myself and so many others have been warning about all these years.
About two-thirds of our national debt has been accumulated since Barack Obama first entered the White House. Over the past 15 years, our politicians in Washington have been on an absolutely insane debt binge. Adding more than 20 trillion dollars to the national debt has allowed them to extend the party for a lot longer than many of us originally anticipated, but now the jig is up. Our currency is rapidly losing value, inflation is wildly out of control, the Federal Reserve has been forced to dramatically hike interest rates, and economic conditions are steadily deteriorating all around us.
Thankfully, there are still some politicians in Washington that want to get federal borrowing under control, and they are going to try to block the debt ceiling agreement from getting through Congress. And there are some that are even suggesting that Kevin McCarthy should be removed from his position…"On a House Freedom Caucus call Monday night, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., floated using the motion to vacate, a rule that would allow any member of Congress to force a vote to remove the speaker, two sources familiar with the call told NBC News. Buck, speaking toward the end of the call, referred to it as the “elephant in the room,” one source said.
After House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry, R-Pa., suggested it might be too early for such a drastic threat, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., proposed using the threat to force McCarthy to allow members to amend the bill on the House floor, under an “open rule” that could stall the bill’s passage. Perry responded that they would discuss the issue more when members return to Washington after the long weekend."
Ultimately, I don’t think they will be successful. I think that there will be enough votes from the Democrats to pass the debt ceiling agreement, and I believe that Kevin McCarthy will remain the Speaker of the House. But if I am wrong, things will get quite “interesting” very rapidly.
Of course it isn’t just the federal government that is drowning in debt. State and local governments have taken on mountains of debt, corporate debt has surged to levels that we have never seen before, and U.S. consumers are currently more than 17 trillion dollars in debt.
High interest debt is particularly destructive, and it is being reported that Americans now owe more than a trillion dollars on their credit cards…America’s credit card balance has passed $1 trillion, or it’s about to, depending on whom you ask. The average interest rate on a new card is 24 percent, the highest figure since the Reaganomics era.
This really is a form of predatory lending, and most of the large financial institutions are doing it now. Don’t fall into their trap.
Because once you get into a situation where you cannot pay off the balance every month, you can end up paying back far, far more than you originally borrowed…A typical American household now carries $10,000 in credit card debt, by one estimate, another record. If that doesn’t sound like a lot of debt, try paying it off. At $250 per month, with 24 percent interest, you’ll be making payments until 2030, and you’ll spend a total of $20,318, twice what you owed. And that assumes you never use the card again.
What we are facing is an entire society that is completely and utterly saturated with debt. From the very top to the very bottom, we have pushed things just about as far as they can go, and now the wheels are starting to come off. In order for the party to continue, our debt levels have to continue to expand, and the Uniparty in Washington understands this very well. But this madness cannot go on forever.
We are like an addict that needs larger doses over time in order to achieve the same buzz. That can work for a while, but eventually the addict overdoses and ends up dead. Sadly, the end of our story is rapidly approaching as well. The debt mega-cycle that we are currently experiencing has reached a terminal phase, and there is going to be immense pain as the system implodes all around us.
I really do hope that the abominable debt ceiling agreement that they are trying to push through Congress right now does get defeated. But no matter what happens in Washington, this debt mega-cycle is coming to an end, and that has very serious implications for each one of us."
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/31/23"
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/31/23"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
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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: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
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And now... The End Game...
o
Jim Rickards, 5/31/23
"This Is Terrible News!"
"Jim Rickards warns about the irrational exuberance and warns people to prepare for an 80% market crash. He warns about the Fed and explains that the Fed will cause a recession, stock market crash, and much higher unemployment."
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