A fate worse than death...
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, October 9, 2020
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/9/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/9/20"
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 9, 2020:
"The State Wants To Live At The Expense Of EVERYONE!"
○
Updated live.
○
Daily Update (October 9th to 13th)
○
"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 10/9/20"
by David Leonhardt
Oct 9, 2020, 7:47 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 36,567,300
people, according to official counts, including 7,639,636 Americans.
Oct 9, 2020 7:47 AM ET:
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count◆
OCT 9, 2020 2:10 PM: "France Daily COVID-19 Cases Rise To Record 20,000: Live Updates"
◆
Updated 10/9/20, 5:23 AM ET
Click image for larger size.
"In A Pandemic We Learn Again What Sartre Meant By Being Free"
"In A Pandemic We Learn Again What Sartre Meant By Being Free"
by Julian Baggini
"One of the most powerful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, after its terrible toll on human life, has been on our liberty. Around the world, people’s movements have been severely curtailed, tracked and monitored. This has had an impact on our abilities to earn a living, study and even be with loved ones at the end of their lives. Freedom, it seems, is one of this virus’s biggest casualties.
But an article by Jean-Paul Sartre for The Atlantic in 1944 makes me question whether this is a straightforward tale of loss. The French philosopher summed up his thesis in the line: ‘Never were we freer than under the German occupation.’ Sartre’s core insight was that it is only when we are physically stopped from acting that we fully realize the true extent and nature of our freedom. If he is right, then the pandemic is an opportunity to relearn what it means to be free.
Of course, our situation is not nearly as extreme as it was for the French under occupation, who, as Sartre said, ‘had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk’. Still, like most of us, I have at times found myself unable to do almost everything I had taken for granted. During the strictest lockdown period, nights out at theaters, concert halls and cinemas were cancelled. I couldn’t go for a walk in the countryside, relax in a bar or restaurant, sit on a park bench, visit anyone, even leave my home more than once a day.
Yet I haven’t been the only one to experience this as, at least in part, a liberation. It drove home to me how so many of the things I habitually ‘chose’ to do I did simply because they were there or because I had got into the habit of doing them. Others have noticed how much they were just going along with what other people were doing. In a fast-paced consumer society with endless options, we are easily bounced around by our whims, manipulated by advertisers and marketers. Very little of what we do every day is the result of a considered decision. Being able to do what we want without constraint, but also without thought, is the lowest and least valuable form of freedom.
In lockdown, I learned that I missed much less about this old life than I would have thought. I was reminded how shallow many of our preferences really were. When my options shrunk and any activity required more planning, the choices I made became more authentic because they had to be more thought-through. This capacity for reflective decision-making is the highest and most valuable form of freedom a human being can have.
A new urgency screams at us: unless we make a change, this will be our lot until we die, which could be sooner than we think. In short, the pandemic enables us to see more clearly the difference between the hollow freedom to act without impediment and the true freedom to act in accordance with our all-things-considered judgments. The American philosopher Harry Frankfurt in 1971 illuminated the difference with his distinction between the things that we simply want and the ones that, after consideration, we want to want. For instance, if I want a doughnut and eat it, I’m simply following my desires, the wants I find myself having at any given moment. But if, on reflection, I don’t want to eat junk food (or, at least, not often) then I have the capacity to veto these wants in the light of what I know I want to want. This kind of freedom requires self-restraint. A person without this capacity is not truly free but is what Frankfurt calls a ‘wanton’: a slave to his desires.
The consumer society encourages us to act like wantons. So when it is disrupted, by war or pandemic, so too is the lazy habit of acting on desire without proper reflection. Any time when our ability to act on impulse is severely restricted, we have the opportunity to break the habitual link between desire and actions, and question whether the desires we act on are the ones we endorse, all things considered.
The vital importance of our capacity for freedom is also made starker by the gravity of our circumstances. During the occupation, Sartre wrote: "At every instant we lived up to the full sense of this commonplace little phrase: ‘Man is mortal!’ And the choice that each of us made of his life and of his being was an authentic choice because it was made face to face with death…"
In 1944, this was truer than today because many choices were literally life-and-death ones. Resistance fighters found themselves thinking ‘Rather death than …’ Today, few of our choices have such stark and immediate consequences. But the daily reminders of death force us to take seriously the choices we make, about our work, our relationships, our lifestyles. Many have discovered that they are living a life they never really chose, but merely drifted into. A new urgency screams at us that, unless we make a change, this will be our lot until we die, which could be sooner than we think.
So instead of following the path of least resistance, I’ve been trying to make more considered choices, which means saying ‘No’ more often and picking my projects more carefully. Many of us are now making hard choices, the most authentic ones we have made in years, to try to live a life more aligned with what we truly value, with what we want to want. Although the military metaphor of a war on the coronavirus is overused and often inapt, it works perfectly when applied to another of Sartre’s striking sentences: ‘The very cruelty of the enemy drove us to the extremities of this condition by forcing us to ask ourselves questions that one never considers in time of peace.’ Without state ‘interference’, many more lives would have been lost, jobs destroyed and businesses ruined
Another line that resonates is ‘Total responsibility in total solitude – is this not the very definition of our liberty?’ For Sartre in 1944, the solitude was that of the underground resistance fighter, working alone for the common good. ‘In the depth of their solitude, it was the others that they were protecting, all the others …’ Our solitude in this pandemic is less extreme, as are the risks and sacrifices we’re called on to make. Still, the same essential moral insight applies. How we behave in ordinary life is a poor measure of our moral backbone, since we’re rarely called on to go above and beyond the call of duty or given the opportunity to break the social contract without penalty. Now, however, our socially isolated choices reveal our true colors.
People who have voluntarily worked at the frontline, risking their own lives, have shown their courage. Others who have rallied around to feed and shelter the most vulnerable instead of simply holing up at home have shown thier compassion and care. On the other hand, those who have broken the rules merely for their own convenience have exposed their selfishness, and often a sense of privilege. Like most of us, I fall in between, showing that I am no hero but no villain either, just one of the many ordinarily decent people who are neither especially praiseworthy nor blameworthy.
The pandemic also teaches us about freedom in ways that go beyond Sartre’s discussion of the individual. Politically, using Isaiah Berlin’s distinction, we talk of the ‘negative liberty’ to go about our business without restraint, and the ‘positive liberty’ to do the things that give us the possibility to flourish and maximize our potential. For example, a society where there is no compulsory schooling gives parents the negative liberty to educate their children as they wish. But, generally speaking, this doesn’t give the child the positive liberty to have a decent education.
Over recent decades in the West, negative liberty has been in the ascendancy and positive liberty has been tarred with the brush of the nanny state. What we should have learned in 2020 is that without health services, effective regulation and sometimes strict rules, our negative freedom is useless and even sometimes destructive. Without state ‘interference’, many more lives would have been lost, jobs destroyed and businesses ruined.
We now have an opportunity to reset the balance between negative and positive liberty. There isn’t a trade-off between big government and personal freedom: many freedoms depend on the state for their very possibility. What the social scientists Neil and Barbara Gilbert in 1989 dubbed the ‘enabling state’ and the economist Mariana Mazzucato in 2013 called the ‘entrepreneurial state’ are essential for giving us the opportunity to realize the full potential of our freedom.
One final way in which we are waking up to our freedom is that our conception of what’s possible has been expanded. Hospitals can be built in weeks, not years; air quality can be improved almost overnight; governments can subsidize employment rather than just pay unemployment; private companies, such as food retailers, can be held accountable as public services and not just private enterprises. The Overton window has been flung wide open. More is possible than we imagined.
Freedom to act without a belief in the possibility to act is empty. Our eyes have been opened to more potential futures than we believed were available to us. The challenge is to respond to this opportunity without falling into naive utopianism or wishful thinking. Our realization is not the simplistic belief that we have fewer constraints than we thought we had, but that the actual constraints we have are not the ones we believed them to be.
I am not equating the trials of living under Nazi occupation with living with the scourge of COVID-19. But despite the many and important differences, Sartre’s message of freedom in 1944 rings just as true today. Our primary experience is one of restriction, of loss of liberty. But, with thought and reflection, we can follow this with a renewed sense of what freedom really means, why it matters, and how we can use it to forge a better future. Perhaps we will soon look back and say, as Sartre did: ‘The circumstances, atrocious as they often were, finally made it possible for us to live, without pretense or false shame, the hectic and impossible existence that is known as the lot of man.’"
"We Don't Have A Clue..."
“We don’t have a clue what’s really going down, we just kid ourselves that we’re in control of our lives while a paper’s thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they’re tired, or bored.”
- Neil Gaiman
Thursday, October 8, 2020
"Alert! Eruption Of Business Closures And Layoffs Make 20 Percent Of Americans Out Of Money In 2020"
"Alert! Eruption Of Business Closures And Layoffs Make
20 Percent Of Americans Out Of Money In 2020"
Epic Economist
"A new stimulus bill is now out of sight, boosting a widespread businesses collapse and compromising many American households whose lives are hanging by a thread. In this video, we investigate the repercussions of this measure, how the economic collapse will be influenced by another coup, and analyze a very concerning survey that found one out of every five Americans will be completely out of money by the end of the year.
Delaying the urgently needed unemployment aid and a second round of payments will have a huge impact on tens of millions of out-of-work Americans who are coping with mountain-scale debt, the prospects of eviction and not being able to afford food. The huge wave of job losses put those who worked in especially hard-hit industries such as travel and hospitality in a vulnerable position, making them reliant on another stimulus check to be able to make ends meet.
A recent report informed that almost one-quarter of U.S. consumers have less than three weeks of financial runway before they run out of cash, meaning 1 in 5 Americans could be entirely out of money by the first week of November. And things are about to get way more complicated - experts say “many will have to sacrifice and prepare because it could get worse before it gets better”.
And even though we want to believe there is an outlook where things could get better, considering the level of economic deterioration we have witnessed so far and the extra suffering we are being submitted to right now, it doesn’t seem realistic. In fact, it is an evidence that the economic depression is accelerating.
There is no way to certainly ascertain that economic conditions will get any better especially because an enormous part of the population won't be able to pull through without more emergency government assistance, and the pressure of all the unfoldings seen in 2020 keeps building up. Americans are seeing their finances increasingly worsening during the current economic downturn. Now that stimulus discussions have been effectively suspended, and most of that previous relief has dried up, another wave of mass layoffs is about to be witnesses as the holiday season approaches.
Airlines will be leading this trend. The airline industry was unquestionably one of the most affected, the sector is dealing with a disastrous collapse. However, the desperate need for more aid is not exclusive to it. Every day, more businesses go under and more jobs are lost, and approximately 50% of all American small businesses from all sectors are in the same situation.
Furthermore, more families are struggling to pay their bills, make rent, afford basic needs. Their overall income is being pushed to below pre-outbreak levels, as a consequence, reducing spending and deepening the economic deterioration.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy still has "a long, long way to go", and it is at risk of derailing. Likewise, chief economist at RSM, Joe Brusuelas said there’s a 50% probability of a deep recession over the next 12 months. Also, the annual growth rate will likely drop to 1%, a sharp decline from the previous forecast of 4%.
With all that said, it doesn’t make any sense to be talking about a “recovery”, because absolutely nothing points out to one. At this point, we are still seeing small and large businesses collapse. Last month, 54 large companies filed for bankruptcy, totaling 509 registered bankruptcies so far.
Additionally, a Brookings survey reminded us that small businesses account for about 99% of all businesses in the US and about 47% of jobs in businesses, and their downfall mean that we have lost at least 4 million jobs that will only return with the creation of new businesses.
The most optimistic scenario would see around 50 percent more business losses than at the peak of the Great Recession, and while some businesses largely benefited from the crisis, most of the small ones are severely injured. Considering all industries will soon need federal help, and not everyone would be able to get it, what lies ahead of us is even more financial distress."
Gregory Mannarino, "Market Bubbles And Economic Troubles... Going Down The Toilet"
Gregory Mannarino,
"Market Bubbles And Economic Troubles... Going Down The Toilet"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident.
The featured exposure covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight."
"At Last..."
“At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.”
- Richard Bach, “Nothing by Chance”
"What Foolish Forgetfulness..."
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”
- Denis Diderot
○
Hans Zimmer, "Time"
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” (public library) and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
“Sometimes”
“Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
- David Whyte
Complement with Whyte on anger, forgiveness, and what maturity really means, hardship as the ground for self-expansion, and his lovely letter to children about reading as a portal to self-discovery, then revisit other great poets bringing their own versed wisdom to life: Marie Howe reading “Singularity,” Marissa Davis reading her own “Singularity” in response to Howe’s, Jane Hirshfield reading “Today, Another Universe,” Ross Gay reading “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt,” Marilyn Nelson reading “The Children’s Moon,” and former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith reading from “My God, It’s Full of Stars.”
"A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall"
"A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall"
by Charles Hugh Smith
You'll recognize A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall as a cleaned-up rendition of Bob Dylan's classic "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". Since the world had just avoided a nuclear conflict in the Cuban Missile Crisis, commentators reckoned Dylan was referencing a nuclear rain. But he denied this connection in a radio interview, stating: "...it's just a hard rain. It isn't the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen...." ( Source)
Which brings us to the present and America's dependence on the sandcastles of monopoly, corruption, free money and a two-tier legal/political system. You know, BAU - business as usual. A hard rain's a-gonna fall on these sand castles because, well, the end of unsustainable stuff has just gotta happen, as the man said.
Here's the problem with monopoly, corruption, free money and a two-tier legal/political system: they impoverish and diminish everyone who isn't an insider or in the top 10% Protected Class, as these are institutionalized forms of legalized looting: monopolies and cartels raise costs by smothering competition, corruption is a hidden tax on everyone not at the feeding trough, free money devalues the dollar, robbing everyone forced to use it, and a two-tier legal system enriches the few (corporate criminals never go to prison) and undermines the social contract via blatant unfairness and lack of justice.
As for the two-tier political system: monopoly, corruption and Fed free money have undermined democracy. Regardless of who wins the election, lobbyists and billionaires will still dominate the day-to-day business of political pay-to-play.
By enriching and protecting the few at the expense of the many, America's business as usual has eroded the social contract and trust in institutions and authority. When everybody's on the take and has an insider skim, then denying a conflict of interest simply confirms the ubiquity of conflicts of interest. The pendulum has swung to such extremes of unfairness, corruption and inequality that the swing back will be monumental in scale and duration.
Another reason a hard rain's gonna fall is America's core institutions have been obsolete for years or decades, but those feeding at the trough refuse to allow any change that threatens their place at the trough. Peter Drucker explained how tectonic shifts in the economic order obsoletes entire sectors in his 1993 book "Post-Capitalist Society". Drucker mentions higher education and healthcare as sectors ripe for the plow, yet these politically sacrosanct sectors have ground on unchanged for decades, vacuuming up trillions in borrowed money to keep from being obsoleted.
Despite the best efforts of self-serving insiders, sand castles still melt in a hard rain. Speaking of sand castles, consider the vast number of sectors teetering on massive excess capacity: commercial real estate, retail space, restaurants, etc. Two generations ago, going to a restaurant - even a fast-food outlet - was a rare event. Since then, it somehow became a birthright to eat out once or twice a day.
A hard rain's a-gonna fall on over-capacity and debt-dependent spending. Free money for financiers constructed a fragile sandcastle of too much of everything but actual value, so now the status quo frantically seeks to protect every melting sandcastle of over-capacity.
The status quo is about to discover that it can't stop the hard rain or protect its fragile sandcastles. Whatever piles of sand are left after the rain will be swept away by the karmic tide as the pendulum swings back: the way of the Tao is reversal."
○
Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall "
"The Coming Doomsday Debt Debacle"
"The Coming Doomsday Debt Debacle"
By Bill Bonner
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "The New York Times says that the major hobgoblins of our time – COVID-19, global warming, racism, etc. – have been upstaged by a new concern. No kidding: Now, in a stark reminder of the tumultuous nature of the 2020 race, all of those issues […] have been eclipsed in the political dialogue by a fight over health precautions and transparency that is set to define the next presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 15. The NYT is not known for tongue-in-cheek news reports. We assume it is serious. But it is the kind of seriousness you expect from a mental defective. The health precautions taken at the next presidential candidate debate are going to have no plausible consequences for the nation. They are just a distraction.
No Mention: That said, so far, the entire election campaign has been little more than a distraction. Not once in the Trump-Biden debate did the No. 1 threat facing the nation ever come up. Instead, both candidates showed how unsuited they were to America’s top office. Neither revealed any trace of real dignity, real modesty, real intelligence… or any awareness of the danger. And last night came the Pence-Harris showdown. This time, the newspapers celebrated the event as a “serious political debate.”
But again, the most serious threat to the U.S. and its people was not even mentioned. We found out a bit more about the candidates’ opinions on climate change, tax policy, COVID control, and other miscellany. But nothing about how the country might get out of its Doomsday Debt Debacle.
Cover Up: The federal government now owes $27 trillion that it can’t pay. The country as a whole, including the private sector, owes $80 trillion… that it can’t pay. And the government has promised America’s 76 million baby boomers (and others) $210 trillion in unfunded “entitlements” – pension, medical, and Social Security benefits – that can’t be paid, either.
Rather than man-up… and cut back on spending, both parties are committed to covering these unpayable debts by printing money – a policy that always leads to bankruptcy, poverty, depression, and inflation, as well as social and political chaos. But mum’s the word. Shhh… Cover your eyes. Plug your ears. And seal your lips. The candidates, the Federal Reserve, the press – all keep silent because they know the voters don’t want to hear about it. And their own fortunes, reputations, and careers depend on keeping the jig up.
Lagging Behind: Trouble is, you can’t keep this sort of party going forever. Yes, people are still willing to shake a leg… and the feds can keep spiking the punch. But the band gets tired. On Tuesday, the president claimed the U.S. is “leading the world in economic recovery.” That is not true. The U.S. is lagging. The official unemployment rate is nearly 8% – more than the 7.4% average for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. Some nations have unemployment as low as 3%.
But there are 28 million Americans still collecting unemployment benefits – state and/or federal. The American labor force is said to be 160 million. So the real unemployment rate may be closer to 18%. And there are 13 million people on “disability.” (These "official" numbers are totally incorrect. - CP)
As for the growth rate, China is still growing at more than 10% per year. The U.S. is not growing at all – it is in recession, with GDP growth at MINUS 9%.
Rising Inflation: Most interesting, from our standpoint, is that the inflation rate is rising. Here’s NBC News: "Inflation in the U.S., a measurement of price increases for consumers, stands at 4.6 percent, compared to an average of 3.9 percent for other OECD countries. That means American wages aren’t going as far to cover bills."
Sooner or later, higher rates of inflation are inevitable. And a lower dollar, too. Stephen Roach explained why in the Financial Times… "A crash in the dollar is likely and it could fall by as much as 35 per cent by the end of 2021. The reason: a lethal interplay between a collapse in domestic saving and a gaping current account deficit. […] At -1.2 per cent in the second quarter, net domestic saving as a share of national income was fully 4.1 percentage points below the first quarter, the steepest quarterly plunge in records that go back to 1947. […]
This was an accident waiting to happen. Going into the pandemic, the net domestic saving rate averaged just 2.9 per cent of gross national income from 2011 to 2019, less than half the 7 per cent average from 1960 to 2005. This thin cushion left the U.S. vulnerable to any shock, let alone COVID."
Complex Web: And here we pause to clear up a misunderstanding. The press reports the money-printing as a “stimulus” measure. But there is no record in the long, sorry history of state-managed economies of a single one that was actually improved by printing-press money. “Distort” would be a better word. “Pervert” is even better, because it suggests unnatural and disgusting tendencies.
There are a lot of things you can stimulate… You can stimulate a dipsomaniac with a bottle of whiskey… You can stimulate a poet by flattering his rhymes… and a Malvolio by admiring his stockings. But economies are neither vain nor addicted. They are complex webs… intricately balanced and trussed up… each strand with two ends and many connections. Tug on one end… and you bend the entire web.
You can stimulate savers by increasing interest rates (which America’s last honest central banker, Paul Volcker, did in 1980). Or you can stimulate borrowers (which the Federal Reserve has done this entire century… by lowering interest rates). But stimulate the savers and you un-stimulate the borrowers. Stimulate the borrowers and you un-stimulate the savers.
What you can’t do… or at least no one has ever figured out how to do it… is stimulate both ends at the same time.
Basic Problem: Apart from the historical record… which is empty (that is to say, vacant of success stories on the subject)… there is the obvious theoretical problem. It is impossible to give one group an advantage – more money, lower interest rates, higher stock prices – without simultaneously giving another group a disadvantage. Higher prices may be great for the seller… but what about the buyer? Higher interest rates may be great for the saver… but what about the borrower?
The problem is so basic and inescapable that we suspect the professional economists – like the politicians themselves – of being liars and frauds. To make a long story short… the feds’ printing-press money can distort. It can’t improve. And the more they pretend to stimulate the economy with printing-press money, the more they make a mess of it.
The distortions reduce efficiency, real investment, and wealth… slow growth… cause people to make mistakes… and make them feel, correctly, that they are getting ripped off. And then, the more you distort, the more you have to distort… or the whole thing blows up in a Doomsday Debt Debacle.
You’d think at least one of the candidates – perhaps in an unguarded moment – would say something about it. ‘Til tomorrow…"
"Still, Sometimes..."
“The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven’t been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still, sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug, until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant: That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.”
- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
“7 Things Fear Has Stolen From You”
“7 Things Fear Has Stolen From You”
by Marc Chernoff
“There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.”
- Ben Johnson
“Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid; courage means you don’t let fear stop you. Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Don’t ever hesitate to give yourself a chance to be everything you are capable of being. Although fear can feel overwhelming, and defeats more people than any other force in the world, it’s not as powerful as it seems. Fear is only as deep as your mind allows. You are still in control. The key is to acknowledge your fear and directly address it. You must step right up and confront it face to face. This tactic robs fear of its power, instead of fear robbing YOU of…
1. Your true path and purpose. Fear of being different: Don’t be fooled by what others say, especially when they try to tell you what is right for you. Listen and then draw your own conclusions. What is your intuition telling you? There is not a clear path that everyone should follow. Your greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding in life at all the wrong things. Choose a path that fits YOU. Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. Challenge yourself to ask with each and every step, and each focus point that consumes your energy: “Does this thing I’m doing right now truly serve me and those I care about in the next few minutes, few months, and few years?” Whatever you settle on, just make sure you don’t gain the whole world by losing your soul and purpose in the process.
2. Self-respect. Fear of not being good enough: Don’t be too hard on yourself. There are plenty of people willing to do that for you. Do your best and surrender the rest. Tell yourself, “I am doing the best I can with what I have in this moment. That is all I can ever expect of anyone, including me.” Love yourself and be proud of everything you do, even your mistakes, because your mistakes mean you’re trying. If you feel like others are not treating you with love and respect, check your price tag. Perhaps you subconsciously marked yourself down. Because it’s YOU who tells others what you’re worth by showing them what you are willing to accept for your time and attention. So get off the clearance rack. If you don’t value and respect yourself, wholeheartedly, no one else will either.
3. Your ability to make concrete decisions. Fear of commitment: You cannot live your life at the mercy of chance. You cannot stumble along with a map marked only with the places you fear, or the places you know you don’t want to revisit. You cannot remain trapped, endlessly, in a state where you are unable to ask for directions, even though you’re terribly lost, because you don’t know your destination. You have to commit to goals that speak to you. You have to stand up, look at yourself in the mirror, and say, “It isn’t good enough for me to know only what I DON’T want in life. I need to decide what I DO want.”
4. Priceless opportunities and life experiences. Fear of change and discomfort: As Thich Nhat Hanh so perfectly said, “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” In many cases you stay stuck in your old routines for no other reason than that they are familiar to you. In other words, you’re afraid of change and the unknown. You continually put your dreams and goals off until tomorrow, and you pass on great opportunities simply because they have the potential to lead you out of your comfort zone.
You start using excuses to justify your lack of backbone: “Someday when I have more money,” or “when I’m older,” or the over-abused “I’ll get to it as soon as I have more time.” This is a vicious cycle that leads to a deeply unsatisfying life – a way of thinking that eventually sends you to your grave with immense regret. Regret that you didn’t follow your heart. Regret that you always put everyone else’s needs before your own. Regret that you didn’t do what you could have done when you had the chance.
5. General happiness and peace of mind. Fear of facing inner truths: If you keep looking for happiness outside yourself, you will never find it. Happiness is found from within. What you seek is not somewhere else at some other time; what you seek is here and now, within you. The more you look for it outside yourself, the more it hides from you. Relax, remember the source of your deepest desires, and allow yourself to know their fulfillment. A choice, not circumstances, determines happiness. Each morning when you open your eyes, say to yourself: “I, not external people or events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. It’s up to me. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn’t come yet. I only have today and I’m going to be happy in it.”
6. Your willingness to love, truly and purely. Fear of not being loved in return: Although it is nice when gestures of love are returned, true love is one-way traffic. It’s a pure flow of giving and expecting nothing in return. Anything else is a contract. Notice how whenever you allow love to flow you are always clear, calm and strong. It is only when the thought arises, “What have they given me in return?” that there is confusion and resentment. Ego transacts, love transforms. Life is too short for all these meticulous contracts and transactions.
Look out for yourself by focusing your love in a direction that feels right to you, but once you decide to love, remain clear, remain bright, and remain strong. Love without expectation. Don’t let fear get in your way. When the love you give is true, the people worthy of your love will gradually reveal themselves over time.
7. The right company. Fear of being alone: Sadly, no matter how much love you give, some relationships simply aren’t meant to be. You can try your hardest, you can do everything and say everything, but sometimes people just aren’t worth stressing over anymore, and they aren’t worth worrying about. It’s important to know when to distance yourself from someone who only hurts you and brings you down. When you give your love to someone, truly and purely without expectation, and it’s never good enough for them, there’s a good chance you’re giving your love to the wrong person.
The bottom line is that long-term relationships should help you, not hurt you. Spend time with nice people who are smart, driven and like-minded. And remember, good relationships are a sacred bond – a circle of trust. Both parties must be 100% on board. If and when the time comes to let a relationship go, don’t be hostile. Simply thank the relationships that don’t work out for you, because they just made room for the ones that will.
Next steps: Your biggest fears are completely dependent on you for their survival. Every new day is another chance to change your life, and it’s way too short to let fear interfere. Today, focus your conscious mind on things you desire, not things you fear. Doing so can bring your dreams to life.
Your turn… What has fear stolen from you? What has it stopped you from doing, being, or achieving? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with the community.”
- http://www.marcandangel.com/
Musical Interlude: "432Hz Positive Energy Boost, Self-Healing"
○
PowerThoughts Meditation Club,
"432hz Positive Energy Boost, Self-Healing"
"These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind. Listening to the 432Hz frequency resonates inside our body, releases emotional blockages and expands our consciousness. The most elemental state of vibration is that of sound. Everything has an optimum range of vibration (frequency), and that rate is called resonance. When we are in resonance, we are balanced. Every organ and every cell in our precious body absorbs and emits sound with particular optimum resonate frequency. 432Hz and 52Hz tuned music creates resonance in our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual body."
Full screen mode highly recommended. Relax...
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/8/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 10/8/20"
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
Updated live.
○
Daily Update (October 7th to 8th)
○
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)