Wednesday, October 7, 2020

"What Happens After The Election"

"What Happens After The Election"
by Doug Casey

"Whenever a really radical group takes over - and the Democrats are serious radicals - they try to cement themselves in power. I’ve explained my reasons for believing the Democrats are going to win, and it only takes a small number of people working as a cadre to do it. I’d like to discuss what happens next.

At the time of the Russian Revolution, the hardcore Bolsheviks only numbered in the hundreds. That was enough to take control of a hundred million Russians and stay in power for 70 years until they totally ran the wheels off the economy. The same thing happened with Fidel Castro in Cuba. He landed with only 50 or 60 guys, but once he took over the country, his apparatchiks were able to keep control of it.

Serious populists, socialists, Marxists, and other authoritarians can pull that off because they’re completely unbound by conventional notions of morality. They sincerely believe the ends justify the means, and nothing is off the table when it comes to gaining and maintaining power. They always say they’re working for the people and invariably promise lots of free stuff. The hoi polloi want to hear that during a crisis - like the one we’re entering. When things get tumultuous, once they’re in, it’s almost impossible to get them out. Democracy - which is a sham anyway in today’s world - be damned.

If the positions discussed by the twenty final contenders for their presidential nomination are any indication, the Democratic Party has been completely captured by leftists like AOC and her gang of four, who really want to change the very nature of the US. If they win, they’ll be able to do so. In order to succeed in an American Purple Revolution, they’ll need to cement themselves in place. It takes time for cement to dry. Even though the Republicans are just ineffectual and spineless "me too-ers" with no core beliefs, the Democrats will see there’s no point in letting them regain power.

How will they ensure that? First, it seems almost certain that the Democrats will make both Washington DC and Puerto Rico states; there will then be 104 senators voting - and they will without question be left-leaning Democrats. That will also help assure control of the Electoral College - assuming it’s not abolished - since it will have two more reliably Democratic states. Second, the 20 million undocumented people - illegal aliens - now in the US will undoubtedly be made citizens; they lean heavily toward the Democrats. Third, they’ll expand the size of the Supreme Court and pack it with leftists, so any new laws they pass can’t be challenged effectively.

There could be more, of course. Perhaps they’ll reduce the voting age to 16; such is already the case in Argentina and a growing number of other countries. Young people, especially once they’re freshly indoctrinated by the State schools, always tend to favor socialist ideas. Maybe they’ll even engineer a new Constitutional Convention to change everything. The 2nd Amendment will go, of course, and the rest of the Bill of Rights would be heavily modified. Most of it is already a dead letter - but that would formalize the change once and for all. There will probably be "free" college in order to ensure an extra four years of intense leftist indoctrination for all. State-administered and paid medical care is a sure thing, as well.

These things would cement the Democrats into office for at least a generation. But please don’t think I support the Republicans. That would be like supporting tuberculosis just because it’s better than terminal cancer. Could things get violent? Yes.

There are quite a few examples, and these things can come out of almost nowhere, like the witch hysteria in Salem in the late 17th century. It was completely irrational, of course, and couldn’t have been predicted. But if you argued against the prevailing hysteria, you too could be accused and hung.

Sometimes, these things are ethnic. Look at what happened in Rwanda a generation ago. The Hutus and Tutsis had lived together, more or less amicably, for generations. Then, all of a sudden, a million people were hacked with machetes. The wave blew over, and now things are peaceful again. But if you weren’t out there slaughtering Tutsis during the hysteria, you might be accused of being a sympathizer and be killed yourself.

Sometimes, these things are religious, like the war between Christians and Muslims in Bosnia, or Lebanon, or the Central African Republic - among other places.

Sometimes, conflict is political, like the gang warfare between the National Socialists and Communists in 1920s Germany.

But what the US seems to be facing isn’t so much political, or religious, or ethnic as it is cultural, which is much more serious. The country is on the cusp of a full-blown cultural revolution. It happened during the Terror of the French Revolution. In a short period, perhaps over 20,000 people were murdered, mostly guillotined. Who would have guessed that simple regime change could get so out of control? It did, however, because it wasn’t just a political revolution. It was a cultural revolution, right down to changing the names of the months.

It famously happened in Russia in 1917, when the Bolsheviks succeeded in changing the basic structure of society. And it happened in Cambodia in the late 1970s with Pol Pot, when a quarter of the population was murdered. Who would have thought that even possible in modern times? That was also a cultural revolution against the educated and essentially anyone who wasn’t a peasant.

Of course, the mother of all social convulsions was Maoist China’s Great Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. The whole country, or at least what looked like the whole country, was bamboozled into overthrowing what they called the Four Olds - old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. It went on for ten years, killed perhaps two million people, and destroyed the lives of tens of millions more.

Right now, the same meme is spreading in the US. Absolutely anything could happen after the November election, no matter who wins. But with the serious financial, economic, and social problems the US is facing, authoritarians will know how to use them to their own advantage.

The people promoting a US cultural revolution aren’t getting much resistance. The old regime - the conservatives, the Republicans - are totally intimidated. They’ve been brainwashed into accepting the righteousness of the Left’s cultural, political, economic, and social agendas. They don’t like it, but they sheepishly accept it. The schools, the NGOs, corporations, Hollywood, and the media are completely controlled by leftists and have inculcated their notions into society. This is a real problem. When these things get out of control, the consequences can be genuinely terrible. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion - and this one is even accelerating.

America was unique among the world’s countries because it was founded on the premise of individualism and capitalism, free minds, and free markets. More than any other country, it’s lived up to those ideals. But these people don’t want just a change of government; they want to overturn the actual things that have made America - America. There’s no other place to go once America goes.

Where can you run? In fact, the whole world is moving in the same direction. That’s really dangerous because the president has a lot of power, including the power to make several thousand direct appointees with immense influence. Trump has been very unsuccessful in all his appointments. Most of them turn on him viciously. He might as well have picked random names out of the telephone directory. The Democrats, however, can be counted on to plug in fully vetted idealogues.

If Biden wins, he’ll probably get the Senate and the House, too. The Democrats will get a vast array of programs and departments approved. The changes will be much more radical than either Roosevelt’s New Deal or Johnson’s Great Society. Taxes will skyrocket, along with unlimited money in a world of Modern Monetary Theory. The US will get a makeover. America will cease to exist.

I don’t know how the red areas of the country will react if/when the Dems win. They’re culturally conservative, so I doubt there will be serious counterviolence. But if Trump does wind up in office, after a seriously contested election, we can count on more Portlands and Kenoshas. A domestic version of the leftist saying during the ’60s: "Two, three, many Vietnams." It’s really serious.

The consequences of the Greater Depression will go far beyond a simple bear market. If Trump does win, no doubt the Republicans will crack down on the country in an attempt to keep order. The Dems will have cause to say they were right about his dictatorial tendencies. Then, assuming we have an election in ’24, we’ll certainly get a leftist Democrat in office. Then it’s game over for the Old America. Even if we don’t have an actual civil war.

Right now, the US is the most polarized it has been since the Civil War.  If you're wondering what comes next, then you're not alone. The political, economic, and social implications of the 2020 vote will impact all of us."

“Never Despair”

“Never Despair”

“Empires and cultures are not permanent and while thinking about the possibility that ours is collapsing may seem a dismal exercise it is far less so than enduring the frustrations, failures, damage and human casualties involved in constantly butting up against reality like a boozer who insists he is not drunk attempting to drive home. Peter Ustinov in ‘Romanoff and Juliet’ says at one point: “I’m an optimist: I know how bad the world is. You’re a pessimist: you’re always finding out.” Or as GK Chesterton put it, “We must learn to love life without ever trusting it.”

Happiness, courage and passion in a bad time can only be based on myth as long as reality does not intrude. Once it does, our indifference to it will serve us no better than it does the joy riding teenager whose assumption of immortality comes into contact with a tree. But this does not mean that one must live in despair. An ability to confront and transcend – rather than deny, adjust to, replace, recover from, or succumb to – the universe in which you find yourself is among the things that permits freedom and courage.

To view our times as decadent and dangerous, to mistrust the government, to imagine that those in power are not concerned with our best interests is not paranoid but perceptive; to be depressed, angry or confused about such things is not delusional but a sign of consciousness. Yet our culture suggests otherwise.

But if all this is true, then why not despair? The simple answer is this: despair is the suicide of imagination. Whatever reality presses upon us, there still remains the possibility of imagining something better, and in this dream remains the frontier of our humanity and its possibilities To despair is to voluntarily close a door that has not yet shut. The task is to bear knowledge without it destroying ourselves, to challenge the wrong without ending up on its casualty list. “You don’t have to change the world,” the writer Colman McCarthy has argued. “Just keep the world from changing you.”

Oddly, those who instinctively understand this best are often those who seem to have the least reason to do so – survivors of abuse, oppression, and isolation who somehow discover not so much how to beat the odds, but how to wriggle around them. They have, without formal instruction, learned two of the most fundamental lessons of psychiatry and philosophy:

You are not responsible for that into which you were born.
You are responsible for doing something about it.

These individuals move through life like a skilled mariner in a storm rather than as a victim at a sacrifice. Relatively unburdened by pointless and debilitating guilt about the past, uninterested in the endless regurgitation of the unalterable, they free themselves to concentrate upon the present and the future. They face the gale as a sturdy combatant rather than as cowering supplicant.”

- Sam Smith

"The Helicopters Are Standing By"

"The Helicopters Are Standing By"
By Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "Our dear readers look into the future. Some see catastrophe if Donald Trump is re-elected. Others see disaster if Biden wins next month. Here at the Diary, denied the gift of prophecy, all we can do is extrapolate the trends of the present based on the experience of the past. We expect another big giveaway… soon.

No Deal: But yesterday, for a few hours, it looked like we were wrong. Donald J. Trump tweeted that he was calling off negotiations on another COVID bailout until after the election: "I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business."

This seemed unlikely. Mr. Trump has never shown any interest in budget control. He even urged Republican bailout negotiators last month to “go for the much higher numbers.” Besides, we figured he’d be desperate to keep the stock market bubbling and consumers spending. A sitting president doesn’t want to go to an election with the voters in a sour mood, especially those in key states that could decide the outcome.

Economist Richard Duncan spelled it out: "If Congress fails to pass a new economic rescue bill soon, the United States is likely to experience a new severe economic downturn that could bankrupt the US financial sector and destroy millions of additional jobs."

Unsustainable Path: Also on Tuesday, according to CNN: "[Fed Chairman Jerome] Powell “reiterated his calls for more fiscal stimulus aimed at supporting America’s most vulnerable.” Powell said Tuesday that the risks of Congress pouring too much stimulus into the economy are far lower than the risk of not doing enough. Although government spending is adding to an already sky-high federal budget, lawmakers should act, Powell argued. “The US federal budget is on an unsustainable path, has been for some time,” Powell said. But “this is not the time to give priority to those concerns.”

The complicating circumstance is that the federal government is already tapped out. It has no more money now to pay for a new rescue bill than it had for the $2.2 trillion rescue boondoggle it passed in March. The money will have to be borrowed. But there aren’t enough savers to furnish the kind of money the feds need – not at today’s artificially low rates. So, they will have to depend on the Federal Reserve; it will print more money. That is the “unsustainable path” of which Mr. Powell spoke. Ultimately, this will make the bankruptcies, the downturn, and the job losses worse. He and everyone with a brain knows it.

Inconvenient Detail: Once you begin living on “printing press” money, you soon become dependent on it. Then, you need to print more and more just to keep from slipping backwards. There’s no example in history where printing-press money has actually made an economy better off – none. Nor has it ever made people a penny richer. Instead, it always leads to poverty, chaos, inflation, social upheaval, and corruption.

But this inconvenient detail will stop neither Republicans nor Democrats, neither the Fed nor Congress, neither Trump nor Biden. Nor was it this detail on the president’s mind that caused him to forgo another giveaway before the election.

Magic Trick: So what is going on? A bold political move? An amateur’s mistake? Down in the polls… Mr. Trump needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Not only is he in danger of losing the White House, some pollsters say the Republicans could lose the Senate. But after the Dow had lost 375 points, politics and short-term self-interest triumphed over sound fiscal policy… and The Donald reached into his hat… NBC News reported: "Trump reverses course on coronavirus relief talks, dangles new $1,200 stimulus checks. President Donald Trump reversed course Tuesday night and urged Congress to approve a series of coronavirus relief measures that he would sign, including a new round of $1,200 stimulus checks for Americans."

If the latest polls are to be trusted, it looks as though the nation has had enough of Mr. Trump’s antics. This would normally be cause for good cheer. Mr. Trump has done more damage to the nation’s finances than any president in history.

Worse to Come: But come November – again, if the pollsters are right – we will likely find out that the “unsustainable” trends of Mr. Trump will become even more unsustainable under Mr. Biden. There will be an even bigger bailout boondoggle… along with a Green New Deal… and even nuttier lockdowns and “shutups”… And tax increases, too.

We don’t know, but their hour come round at last, the rough beasts now slinking towards the Potomac could turn out to be even worse. Either way, the printing presses are warming up… and the helicopters are standing by…"

"Only One Question..."

“There’s only one question that matters, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take?”
- Karen Marie Moning

"Get Ready For Chaos"

"Get Ready For Chaos"
by James Rickards 

"There’s less than a month until Election Day. Once the votes are in, the die will be cast for the next four years, perhaps longer. Trump or Biden? The difference could not be more clear, and the stakes could not be higher for your life. Again, this is the most consequential election of our lifetime. If that sounds like an overstatement, it’s not.

If Trump wins, he may actually be able to finish his task of cleaning out Deep State actors, reducing regulation and taxes, securing U.S. energy independence, facilitating peace in the Middle East and finally bringing U.S. troops home from multi-decade wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Biden wins, brace yourself for higher taxes, the end of fracking, the Green New Deal, free tuition, free healthcare and free child care (of course, none of this is truly “free,” it’s just paid for with more debt financed by higher taxes or more money printing).

In a Trump administration, the decoupling from China will continue, and China’s ability to spy on the U.S. and steal our best ideas will be curtailed.

If Biden wins, it will be back to business as usual with China stealing U.S. jobs, stealing U.S. intellectual property and cheating on their obligations to the World Trade Organization and the IMF.

This list of policy differences goes on, but those differences are not even the most important distinction between Trump or Biden in the White House. The main difference is that the country will set out on two entirely different paths depending on the outcome. In that sense, this will be the most consequential election since 1860, when a vote for Lincoln pointed toward a possible Civil War because the South had already made its intentions clear if Lincoln won.

Today, the Rebels are not Southern secessionists. They are home-grown neo-Marxists, anarchists, thugs and goon squads who are rioting and looting daily in scores of U.S. cities.

If Trump wins, you can expect to find U.S. cities in flames within 24 hours of the election results. If Biden wins, the neo-Marxists will have a seat at the table in the form of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they insist on full implementation of their agenda. This includes higher taxes, higher spending, more regulation and permanent changes to U.S. governance in the form of an end to the Electoral College, a packed Supreme Court (by expanding the number of justices), single-party rule in the Senate (by ending the filibuster) and more.

Think that’s bad? It gets worse. The two paths involving riots or left-wing governance depend on someone winning. What if there is no winner? Millions of votes are being cast in the form of mail-in ballots. State counting systems have broken down lately when they had to count a few hundred thousand ballots in close races. What happens when the ballots are in the tens of millions?

Secretaries of State in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will be ordered by Democratic governors not to certify the results. Armies of lawyers will descend on courthouses demanding extending voting hours, impoundment of mail-in ballots and counting of all ballots regardless of postmarks, timely mailing, timely receipt and other formalities. Other lawyers will push back. Neither side will concede. The outcome could be uncertain for weeks. The riots will continue in the meantime.

And if Biden does win, it’s entirely possible he won’t be president for more than a few months. His cognitive decline, probably the result of Alzheimer’s Disease or some other form of dementia, is already apparent to observers. I realize he performed well during his debate with Trump, but Alzheimer’s does not progress in a straight line.

The type of cognitive decline Biden is suffering is not a continuous downhill slide. It’s what’s called a “step function.” That means the mental ability drops suddenly, then stabilizes or plateaus for a while, then drops again. It never improves, but it can appear stable for a time until the next sudden drop comes.

It will be relatively simple to remove Biden from office under the 25th Amendment and install Kamala Harris as Acting President. This could be followed by a formal resignation by Biden, at which point Harris would become President. This was hinted at on September 12 when Kamala Harris made reference to a coming “Harris Administration,” and again on September 15 when Joe Biden referred to the “Harris-Biden administration” at a campaign event.

These are not mere slips of the tongue, but rather a preview of the fact that a vote for Biden is really a vote for President Harris. Kamala Harris does not have the cognitive challenges of Joe Biden, but she is a malleable blank slate who will be easily handled by the radicals whom she supports.

Compared to disputed election results and the removal of Joe Biden (if he wins) coming so soon after the removal of Donald Trump (through mail-in ballot fraud), maybe a 39.6% capital gains tax doesn’t seem so bad. Actually, it should. It will tank the stock market as savvy investors get out ahead of the 2021 tax law change by selling stocks in late 2020.

All of these issues – taxes, regulation, foreign affairs, social unrest – are now playing out against the backdrop of the process to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. That vacancy emerged when Justice Ginsburg passed away on the evening of September 18. Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a judicial conservative who once clerked for Antonin Scalia. Those who oppose her fear she’s a threat to abortion rights and other causes supported by progressives.

A Supreme Court Justice confirmation fight is an intense political battle at the best of times. This has been true since the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987. The Senate rejected the Bork nomination, but that confirmation process set the standard for personal attacks and the extreme political invective that has been with us ever since.

This personal attack process was on full display in the confirmation hearing for Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the summer and fall of 2018. Many members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who engaged in the Kavanaugh attacks, including Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and presidential candidates Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, are still on that committee. There is every reason to expect that this new confirmation process will be just as bitter and divisive as those for Bork and Kavanaugh. In the broader context, this is just another wild card in what has already been an unpredictable and contentious electoral year.

Uncertainty will reign until Election Day. People understand this. What is not as well understood is that uncertainty will continue to reign after Election Day. If Trump wins, the Resistance will not take it well. They will challenge the outcome in court, deny the legitimacy of a Trump victory, and extreme elements in the Resistance will burn American cities. If Biden wins, his behind-the-scenes handlers will come to the fore with demands for high taxes, more regulation, the Green New Deal and other elements of the Socialist and globalist agendas. Be prepared for the turmoil that is in store."

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 10/7/20"

by David Leonhardt

Oct 7, 2020, 8:11 AM ET:
 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 35,854,100 
people, according to official counts, including 7,529,481 Americans.

      Oct 7, 2020 8:11 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
Updated 10/7/20, 7:23 AM ET
Click image for larger size.

"How It Really Is"

"Eventually You Understand..."

“That’s where it all begins. That’s where we all get screwed big time as we grow up. They tell us to think, but they don’t really mean it. They only want us to think within the boundaries they define. The moment you start thinking for yourself – really thinking – so many things stop making any sense. And if you keep thinking, the whole world just falls apart. Nothing makes sense anymore. All rules, traditions, expectations – they all start looking so fake, so made up. You want to just get rid of all this stuff and make things right. But the moment you say it, they tell you to shut up and be respectful. And eventually you understand that nobody wants you to really think for yourself.”
- Ray N. Kuili

"As Trump Abandons Stimulus Talks, Renters and Landlords Face a Financial Cliff"

"As Trump Abandons Stimulus Talks, 
Renters and Landlords Face a Financial Cliff"
By Jacob Passy

"President Donald Trump has quashed hopes for a new federal stimulus package before the presidential election in November, saying Tuesday that he had instructed his team to stop negotiating with Democrats until after the election. And that could leave America’s renters and landlords in a lurch.

As the coronavirus pandemic has upended the nation’s economy, so too has it disrupted the country’s rental housing market. Months of layoffs and furloughs have left millions of Americans unable to afford to pay their rent. Landlords, meanwhile, have been forced to shoulder property tax and mortgage payments in the interim.

All told, some 30 to 40 million Americans face the threat of eviction as a result of the pandemic. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took historic action by issuing a nationwide moratorium on evictions. Public-health experts worried that if millions of people were kicked out of their homes, it could exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 and complicate efforts to reduce transmission.

The CDC’s moratorium didn’t automatically provide protection to tenants. Instead, renters have to proactively notify their landlords that they cannot be evicted under the order by meeting certain specifications. Gaps in the way the moratorium was designed have led to thousands of renters facing eviction hearings.

When the CDC’s order was announced, housing experts said it was merely “slowing the clock on evictions.” That’s because moratorium did not come with funding for rental assistance. And now that Trump has signaled that his administration will no longer participate in stimulus negotiations, it’s becoming less likely that rent relief will come soon. “The president has threatened to collapse the rental market with his egregious inaction,” said Noëlle Porter, director of government affairs at the National Housing Law Project.

Emergency rental aid was nearing bipartisan agreement: While Democrats and Republicans differed on how much money they wished to allocate for another stimulus package, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were getting closer on the need for rent relief, said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “It’s extraordinarily reckless and irresponsible for Trump to blow up negotiations now, when so many renters and small landlords are struggling and when there is growing bipartisan agreement on the urgent need for emergency rental assistance,” Yentel said.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives last week passed a $2.2 trillion package that included $50 billion in emergency rental assistance funds, while extending a ban on evictions for 12 months. The legislation also earmarked up to $80 million per state for a homeowner assistance fund. In August, Trump had tweeted that he was “ready to send Rental Assistance payments to hardworking Americans,” though a trimmed-down stimulus package advanced by Senate Republicans last month did not include money for rent relief. Separately, a stimulus proposal released in September by the House Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, called for $25 billion to be set aside for rental assistance.

Housing advocates and rental industry officials have argued that lawmakers need to approve around $100 billion in emergency rental relief to stave off an eviction crisis, though some argue that more money than that is needed.

This spring and summer, the CARES Act stimulus package provided a temporary lifeline, thanks to the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits it distributed to out-of-work Americans. An extra $300 in unemployment checks in recent weeks also helped, though those funds have run out. Even with the boosted unemployment though, many families struggled to put together enough money to afford their rent. Delays in unemployment checks earlier in the pandemic created a mountain of unpaid rent for tenants, making it harder to catch up on payments.

Complicating matters, millions of Americans were already rent-burdened before the pandemic, meaning that they spent more than a third of their income on housing, leaving little left over for other necessities or to build an emergency fund. Some renters could now go many more months with receiving financial support, digging them in a deeper hole that will be all the more difficult to get out of once the CDC’s eviction ban lifts in January, advocates say. “The longer the federal government waits to act, the steeper the financial cliff that renters will be pushed off when the eviction moratorium expires this winter,” Yentel said.

In the meantime, landlords are being expected to carry this economic burden. “With no rental assistance, reduced unemployment benefits, spotty foreclosure protections, and seemingly endless eviction moratoria — landlords have become the backstop to the rental crisis,” said David Howard, executive director of the National Rental Home Council.

Mom-and-pop landlords are especially vulnerable, housing industry officials say. Many of these landlords only own one or two properties, and the rent goes toward paying off the mortgage and taxes, with little left over for a financial cushion. Some have warned that these property owners could eventually opt to sell the homes they own, which could end up displacing tenants and shrink the supply of rental housing."

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/7/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/7/20" 
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
George Bernard Shaw
Gregory Mannarino,
AM Oct 7, 2020: 
"Critical Updates! Trump Folds, Stocks Poised For Rebound"

'Life, Eh?"

"We said together, wistfully, 'Life, eh?' It says everything without having to say anything: that we all experience moments of joyful or painful reflection, sometimes alone, sometimes sharing laughs and tears with others; that we all know and appreciate that however wonderful and precious life is, it can equally be a terribly confusing and mysterious beast. 'Life, eh?"
- Miranda Hart
Full screen mode suggested.

“In America Money Does Grow on Trees”

“In America Money Does Grow on Trees”
by MN Gordon

"Full Commitment: This week provided additional confirmation that America is fully committed to a program of currency destruction. Decades of terminal intelligence have gotten us to this special place. We will have more on this in a moment. But first some words on being fully committed.
Say hello to the provider of bacon… lots of bacon, in this case. [PT]

We have never gutted a hog. But we hear it is a bloody mess. The volume of blood that gushes out – as in, ‘bleeding like a stuck pig’ – is profuse. Contemplating a bacon and egg breakfast plate reveals two types of commitments. That of the chicken. And that of the pig. You may know this allegory. The chicken is involved in providing for the breakfast. It provides the eggs. But the pig is fully committed to it. For the pig must perish to provide the bacon.

America is presently bleeding like a stuck pig. Public and private debts are hemorrhaging a bloody mess. For example, the budget deficit for fiscal year 2020 which concluded on September 30 was $3.3 trillion. By this, the federal government spent double what it generated via tax receipts and other confiscatory measures. And the federal debt held by the public is now well over 100 percent of GDP.
Click image for larger size.
The federal budget deficit, quarterly, as of Q2 2020. [PT]

There is no way the debt will be honestly paid. It is mathematically impossible. Nor will it be paid through an honest default. That is politically unacceptable. The debt, however, will be paid dishonestly. It will be paid through dollar debasement. America is fully committed to this. Here’s why…

Words of Omission: Last Tuesday’s presidential debate has been called many things. Most descriptions have cast it in a negative light. Some political pundits used French to describe, in colorful terms, what type of show it was. Here at the Economic Prism we offer a different assessment. Namely, we found the presidential debate to be invigorating. Like a New Year’s Day polar bear plunge, or a predawn distance jog, it was so painful that it was enjoyable.

President Trump’s grumpy bombast and bluster. Biden’s scratching attempt to overcome his slide toward senility. Utter disregard for facts. And Chris Wallace, once again, striving, yet failing, to be Mike Wallace.
Presidential faith healers… [PT]

It was the sort of spectacle that demonstrates public degradation is integral to democratic government. To be president, you must simultaneously sell your soul and roll around in the gutter. For this reason, we give the debate a five star seal of approval. However, the debate also offered another critical insight… There were words that should not have been said. There were also words that should have been said. You see, words, and the absence of words, can be distractions. And within a sequence of words there are sometimes obvious omissions.

Nowhere within the 98 minute presidential debate was there a single word of the country’s burgeoning $3.3 trillion budget deficit. Nowhere was there a single word of the great $26.8 trillion national debt default that is conflagrating like a savage windblown California wildfire.

Nowhere was there mention of the fake money system and the insidious way it concentrates wealth in the upper most end of the wealth spectrum. Nowhere was there mention of the $157.7 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which includes the sacred cows of social security and Medicare.

Not from Trump. Not from Biden. Not even from Wallace the Younger. What gives? Where is the opposition?

The real issue at hand – the one omitted from debate – is the present crisis brought on by 50 years of relentless debt accumulation. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the federal government has spent more than it takes in. Now the debt has piled up past the point of no return; there is no longer an expedient way to reverse course. This is the real topic for debate. This is the story that is entirely ignored by both presidential candidates. This is the story of America’s decline. This is a story that is too grim to mention. And this obvious omission from Tuesday’s debate is what makes the affair nothing more than a great big distraction.

“In America Money Does Grow on Trees”: The U.S. government, and by extension the American people, are fully committed to a program of currency debasement to inflate away the debt problem. They believe executing an implicit default via inflation is the easier and softer way.

Intelligent minds, from John Law to Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman to Ben S. Bernanke, from Benjamin Strong to Alan Greenspan to Jerome Powell, and everyone in between, have promised something for nothing. They have put their intelligent minds to the task…

Counter-cyclical stimulus spending. Interest rate suppression. Quantitative easing. Elastic currencies. Money shuffling. Inflation targeting. Smoke and mirrors… all so governments, and individuals, can spend well above what they can afford, and then welsh on the debt without consequences. The ultimate gift of this intelligence is terminal.
Click image for larger size.
At the end of Q2, the US debt-to-GDP ratio has reached a new high of 135%. [PT]

But why stop now? Americans, like a pig supplying bacon, are fully committed. The hottest incarnation of terminal intelligence is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). According to its purveyors, the USA can print all the money it needs to amplify the economy – debts and deficits be damned. MMT, no doubt, is a system of big government statists. A system where governments can hatch boondoggles without limits. The whole theory, or lack thereof, is absurd. But a growing base of supporters finds it alluring.
Well, here it is – the money tree! 
Apparently the government has been hiding it all these years… [PT]

The latest MMT messiah, Stephanie Kelton, has a new book. It is called, “The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy,” and it is getting rave reviews from unlikely places.
Ms. Kelton explains MMT: first take this pile of free money, 
then add that pile of free money, and presto, there’s free sh*t for everybody! [PT]

Upon reading the book, gangsta rap pioneer, Ice Cube, for example, tweeted the following means of salvation: “America loves to cry broke. But in America money does grow on trees.”

You can already see what is coming… When financial markets crack and the economy collapses and the populace pleads for someone to “do something,” the President and Congress will oblige with full commitment. MMT – or QE for the people – will be granted with money from nothing. Debts will be paid in full. And like the pig, the dollar will perish. Enjoy the bacon while it lasts."

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

“FED Calls For Help; Greatest Depression Upon Us; Holiday Shopping Catastrophe; US Economy Hurting”

Jeremiah Babe,
“FED Calls For Help; Greatest Depression Upon US;
 Holiday Shopping Catastrophe; US Economy Hurting”

Moby, "Love Of Strings"

Moby, "Love Of Strings"

Please view in full screen mode.

"I Have Hope..."

 

"Corruption Is Now Our Way Of Life"

"Corruption Is Now Our Way Of Life"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"Social and economic decay is so glacial that only those few who remember an earlier set-point are equipped to even notice the decline. That's the position we find ourselves in today. Many Americans will discount the systemic corruption that characterizes the American way of life because they've known nothing but systemic corruption. They've habituated to it because they have no memory of a time when looting wasn't legalized and maximizing self-enrichment by any means available wasn't the unwritten law of the land.

If you don't yet see America as little more than an intertwined collection of skims, scams, frauds, embezzlements, lies, gaming-the-system, obfuscation of risk and exploitation of the masses by insiders, please read "How Corruption is Becoming America's Operating System." (nakedcapitalism.com, via Cheryl A.)

Here on oftwominds.com, you might want to read "No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements". (May 2015)

When JP Morgan Chase engaged in fraud and was fined a wrist-slap $1 billion, nobody went to prison because nobody ever goes to prison for corporate fraud and criminal collusion: "JPMorgan to pay almost $1 billion fine to resolve U.S. investigation into trading practices."

Simply put, corruption is cost-free in America because most of it is legal. And whatever is still illegal is never applied to the elites and insiders, except (as per Communist regime corruption) for a rare show trial where an example is made of an egregious fall-guy (think Bernie Madoff: whistleblowers' repeated attempts to expose the fraud to regulators were blown off for years. It was only when Madoff ripped off wealthy and powerful insiders did he go down.)

There are three primary sources for the complete systemic corruption of America. One is the transition from civic responsibility for the social contract and the national interest to winner-take-most legalized looting. This transition is visible in the history of empires in the final stage of collapse. The assumption underlying the social order slides from a shared duty to the nation and fellow citizens to an obsession with evading civic duties: military service, taxes, and following the rules are all avoided by insiders and elites, and this moral/social rot then corrupts the entire social order as elites and insiders lean ever more heavily on the remaining productive class to pay the taxes and provide the military muscle to defend their wealth.

That corruption is now everywhere in America is obvious to all but those adamantly blinded by denial. The JP Morgans pay fines as a cost of doing corrupt business, while "public servants" game the system to maximize their pensions with a variety of tricks: colluding to boost the overtime of the retiring insider; finding a quack physican to sign off on a fake "heart murmur" so the insider pays no taxes on their "disability" check, and so on in an endless parade of lies, scams, skims and insider tricks.

The excuse is always the same: everybody does it. This is of course the collapse not just of the social contract but of morality in general: anything goes and winners take most. Insiders look the other way lest their own skims and scams be contested, and elites and insiders view those who aren't skimming and scamming as chumps to be pitied.

The second dynamic is that financialization has completely corrupted the American economy, and that corruption has now spread to the political and social orders. Once the financial sector conquered the real economy, it began siphoning 95% of the economy's wealth to the top .01% and their toadies, lackeys, apologists, enforcers and technocrats. As they hollowed out the real economy, distorted incentives and made moral hazard the guiding principle of the American way of life, the recipients of financialization's domination gained the wealth to buy political power from the pathetically corruptible political class.

The corruption that we call financialization corrupted democracy and undermined the social contract by eviscerating the value of labor and creating a pay-to-play political order that's a mockery of democracy.

The third factor is the decay of America's institutions into fronts for personal gain. While Higher Education insiders are masters of self-serving PR, the truth is they're not concerned about their debt-serf "customers" (students) learning the essential skills needed in the tumultuous decades ahead--they're worried that the revenues needed to pay their enormous salaries and benefits might dry up.

"Education" is nothing but a front for the corruption of self-enrichment by the elites and insiders at the top. The same is true of "healthcare." The concern of insiders isn't the declining health of America's populace, it's the decline in revenues as fewer "customers" come in for the financial scalping of emergency care. "Healthcare" is nothing but a front for the corruption of self-enrichment by the elites and insiders at the top.

Thanks to the Federal Reserve's endless free money for financiers and endless federal borrow-and-blow deficits, the unstated belief is since there's endless "money", my petty frauds and skims won't even dent the feeding trough--there's always another trillion or three to skim and scam, and there will never be any limit to the feeding trough.

There is no limit until the system implodes. Then the collapse becomes limitless. Ironic, isn't it? The oh-so convenient belief that America's wealth and power are eternal and godlike in their glory fosters the crass corruption that has weakened America to the point of no return: systemic fragility and brittleness.

American Exceptionalism has been turned on its head: America is now as perniciously corrupt as any developing-world nation we smugly felt so superior to, and with extremes of wealth and income inequality that surpass even the most rapacious kleptocracies. This destabilizing "exceptionalism" is now the defining characteristic of the American economy, society and political order. Systemic corruption and the implosion of the social contract have consequences: It's called collapse, baby, and the rot is now too deep to reverse."

"Movie Industry Collapsing, Airline Companies Falling, Retailers Closing, Gigantic Lines At Food Banks"

"Movie Industry Collapsing, Airline Companies Falling, Retailers Closing, 
Gigantic Lines At Food Banks"
by Epic Economist

"Many determinant events will likely boost another round of economic collapse. The US GDP has dropped to levels never seen before in history. And despite the belief there will be a rebound in the third quarter, there is plenty of reason to believe things will get worse. In this video, we discuss how the recent unfoldings will create another economic meltdown.

Considering the generalized lockdowns drastically collapsed the economic activity, the GDP dropped to rates last seen in 1958. But as states started to reopen, regaining a few jobs, the third-quarter GDP is expected to show a significant rebound. However, as we approach the end of the year, many aggravating events, such as another round in bankruptcy files and lay-offs, and another surge of viral cases are still going to resonate their effects in the beaten US economy. 

Recent evaluations indicate that even if we record a rebound on the third-quarter GDP, the US economy will shrink this year, for the first time since the Great Recession. In the April-June quarter, the GDP declined at a rate of 31.4%, the largest decline in U.S. history.

The unprecedented economic plunge documented in the spring may lead to a reversal effect, in which the GDP could register a record rebound. However, this only means the drop was so deep that to get out of the economic rock bottom a major spike had to happen. That is to say, since some businesses have reopened and people have gone back to work, a significant bounce could be seen, but economists affirm it is still a longshot and it will not be translated into economic growth.

Quite the opposite, forecasts suggest that economic growth will dramatically fall in the final three months of this year to 4%, leaving America on the brink of another deep recession if Congress doesn’t approve another stimulus bill or if there is a resurgence of viral cases. Right now, there are spikes in infections occurring in some regions of the country, including New York.

The estimated 4% GDP fall would mark the first annual decline in GDP, signaling an end to an almost 11-year-long economic expansion. Moreover, as the economic momentum is cooling, fiscal stimulus expiring, flu season approaching and election uncertainty rising, all the pressure is now on the fragile labor market, which can lead the country to a lot of trouble, because as jobs are being recovered, job losses are mounting, pointing the critical deterioration of the labor market.

Many workers that were re-hired are being let go once again, and others who thought their dismissal was temporary are now being permanently laid-off. 787,000 initial claims for unemployment insurance were filed last week, but the real numbers are likely to be much bigger than that. So far, almost 60 million people have sought benefits, but as the health outbreak lingers, employers continue to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers. 

The unemployment figures track the course of the virus, and the rate of positive viral tests has been staying high. This can induce states to pause or roll back plans to reopen businesses, slowing the rehiring of workers or laying off workers for a second time, as they run out of federal aid, and businesses struggle with sharply reduced revenue.

To make things worse, companies are announcing massive lay-offs to take place before December. As many as 50,000 airline employees will be laid-off starting Thursday. Collectively, American Airlines and United Airlines will let 32,000 employees go. Allstate communicated that it will be laying off 3,800 employees, and Disney has scheduled 28,000 lay-offs to happen by December, at least a quarter of those job losses will come from Florida, counting 6,390 dismissals and the numbers could get even bigger. 

We also analyzed the stories of some workers to illustrate the instability of the labor market, giving us reason to imply that much more distress is coming for us. In short, the gain in jobs from the recall of workers on temporary layoff is hiding an increasing number of permanent job losses, and none of these second layoffs are reflected in the most recent numbers from the Labor Department. Furthermore, the situation of many workers many not allow them to find a job in their field any time soon. So everything points to the fact that things are not going to "come back to normal" any time soon. By the year-end, we will witness a colossal breakdown of the American economy."

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Shadows of White"

Liquid Mind, "Shadows of White"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait. Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral. 
NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."

"Lemons..."

"When life hands you a lemon, say
"Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"
- Henry Rollins

Chet Raymo, “Examination of Conscience”

“Examination of Conscience”
by Chet Raymo

"I have been reading Stephanie Smallwood's “Saltwater Slavery,” a close examination of the trade in human beings between the coast of West Africa and the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a sobering read, but if there is one thing I came away with, it was this: We have an enormous capacity to rationalize the most horrendous crimes. Everyone involved in the slave trade - the European owners of the ships, the masters of the trading companies, the ship captains and crews, the plantation owners in the West Indies and the Chesapeake, the African tribal chiefs who captured and sold their neighbors to the European merchants - knew in some part of their souls that what they were doing was wrong. All of them - good Christians among them, pillars of their communities - found ways to rationalize their participation.

Who among us is immune to self deceit? To what extent am I implicated in the horrendous tragedies that are Darfur and Iraq? What do I owe to the global environment? Is there such a thing as innocence when we are so intimately connected that people in Fiji and Japan will read these words only moments after I write them?

What about science, the favored subject of this blog? Here is Smallwood: “The littoral [of the West African coast]...was more than a site of economic exchange and incarceration. The violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied upon a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas.”

Even science, like religion and democratic politics, can be pressed into the service of evil. We are all of us to some extent in the grip of economic forces as powerful and sometimes as pernicious as those that drove the saltwater slave trade. Few of us are required to personally face the direst evils. We are saved from moral anguish only by the fact that our acts of commission and omission ripple outward until their consequences are diluted and lost in the general happiness or unhappiness of humankind.”

"Once We Begin To See..."

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin
to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."
- Arthur Miller

The Daily "Near You?"

 

Philomath, Oregon, USA. Thanks for stopping by!