"Bracing For A Very Painful Year: 38% Of Americans Say That They Will Spend 2021 In 'Survival Mode'”

"Bracing For A Very Painful Year: 38% Of Americans

 Say That They Will Spend 2021 In 'Survival Mode'”

by Michael Snyder

"If nearly 40 percent of the entire nation anticipates spending the next 12 months in “survival mode”, that is not a good sign for what the coming year will bring. Traditionally, Americans have looked forward to the turn of the year with tremendous optimism, but this time around things are very, very different. 2020 brought us the COVID pandemic, tremendous violence and civil unrest in our major cities, and the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sadly, a large chunk of the country is anticipating more difficulties in the coming months, because one recent survey found that 38 percent of all Americans plan to spend 2021 in “survival mode”: "Of the 3,011 surveyed adults, over 38% said they will spend the year in “survival mode,” meaning they’ll focus on the day-to-day rather than long-term goals to try to get themselves and their families through 2021."

The biggest reason why so many anticipate being in “survival mode” is because of the financial problems that they experienced this year. According to that same survey, a whopping 68 percent of all Americans say that they experienced some sort of “financial setback” in 2020: "Although some respondents maintained their usual income over the past year, 68% had setbacks. Of those, 23% lost a job or household income; 20% had an unexpected non-health emergency; 18% had to provide unexpected financial aid to family or friends; and 16% had a health emergency in their family."

As I keep reminding my readers, Americans have filed more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits this year, but even many of those that have been able to keep their jobs have fallen on very hard times. Another new survey found that approximately one-third of all full-time workers in the U.S. “have experienced a pay cut” in 2020: "Roughly 1 in 3 full-time workers have experienced a pay cut due to the coronavirus pandemic this year, according to a recent MagnifyMoney survey of 984 professionals surveyed Nov. 6 to 11."

If you were employed throughout all of 2020 and you are still able to pay all of your bills on time, you should be very thankful for your blessings, because you are now in the minority.

For most Americans, the past 12 months have been exceedingly painful, and this new round of lockdowns promises to extend the economic suffering long into 2021. Some industries that were absolutely devastated by the first round of lockdowns are officially in panic mode at this point. For example, we have already permanently lost approximately 17 percent of all of the restaurants in the entire country, and the National Restaurant Association is warning that 10,000 more could permanently shut down “in the next three weeks”: "About 17% of America’s restaurants have already permanently closed this year, with thousands more on the brink according to a new report.

The National Restaurant Association is publicly pleading with Congress to pass new stimulus to help the industry that has been damaged by the pandemic. The group said Monday that 10,000 restaurants could close in the next three weeks, in addition to the 110,000 that have already shuttered in 2020."

Even during the best of times, running a successful restaurant is exceedingly difficult. The margins are razor thin, new competition is always popping up, and employees are constantly coming and going. When you add a global pandemic on top of all of that, it has become almost impossible for many eateries to keep going, and we are being told that the future for the industry looks quite “bleak”: 

• "87% of full-service restaurants (independent, chain, and franchise) report an average 36% drop in sales revenue. For an industry with an average profit margin of 5%-6%, this is simply unsustainable. 83% of full-service operators expect sales to be even worse over the next three months."

• Although sales are significantly lower for most independent and franchise owners, their costs have not fallen by a proportional level. 59% of operators say their total labor costs (as a percentage of sales) are higher than they were pre-pandemic.  

• The future remains bleak. 58% of chain and independent full-service operators expect continued furloughs and layoffs for at least the next three months.

Of course it isn’t just the restaurant industry that is laying off workers in large numbers. Just about every day there are more major layoff announcements in the news, and many experts are expecting the job loss numbers to accelerate as we make the transition into 2021. Without paychecks coming in, millions of unemployed Americans are unable to pay the bills, and we are being warned that we could be facing a historic tsunami of evictions starting just after the holiday season: "The day after Christmas, the extended unemployment benefits that have kept 12 million people and their families afloat are scheduled to expire. Then, mere days after that cliff, on New Year’s Day, a national ban on renter evictions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also set to lapse.

Overnight, an unprecedented bill of $70 billion in unpaid back rent and utilities will come due, according to estimates by Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. In all, up to 40 million people could be threatened with eviction over the coming months, research from the Aspen Institute says."

The politicians insist that they are keeping us caged up for our own good, but the truth is that they are absolutely destroying millions upon millions of lives in the process. There is a lot of debate about whether or not the lockdowns have helped to prevent the spread of the virus, but what we do know is that thousands of businesses have been permanently destroyed, millions of jobs have been lost, more people are committing suicide, and Americans are increasingly engaging in self-destructive behaviors: "Overall, one in three Americans report binge drinking during the coronavirus pandemic. The average person also reports spending about four weeks in lockdown this year; spending 21 hours a day at home. More than seven in 10 people in the survey did not even leave their home for work."

If we cannot even handle the COVID pandemic, how in the world is our society going to be able to handle what else is coming? As things continue to unravel all around us, people are going to be in great need of hope. Millions of Americans are already in “survival mode”, and the road ahead is certainly not going to get any easier."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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Related:

Michael Zubar, "Dec 9 Financial News: 

10,000 Restaurants to Close This Month, Mall Owners"

- https://onerentalatatime.com/

"The Limits of Our Freedom"

"The Limits of Our Freedom"

by Mark Harrison

"Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote in "Man's Search for Meaning", "Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies all our freedom.In the most extreme conditions of privation imaginable, Frankl discovered that he was, remarkably, free to choose his response to any situation. I love this quote because it sums up the essence of my philosophy. I believe it is the cornerstone of a happy and effective life. A real, experiential understanding of this radical freedom is life changing, liberating and empowering. To suddenly come upon the realization that we have always been free, not in some abstract sense, but in a real, personal and imminent way, is like being let out of prison.

We are not free to control others: The point is that we are free. And so is everyone else. That means we cannot impinge on the freedom of others. This is not some moral statement. I'm not saying we should not interfere with other people's freedom - it is simply impossible to do so. You cannot make another person do anything. Even putting a gun to someone's head cannot make them do anything. If someone is threatened to the extent that they fear for their life, they are likely to comply with whatever is being demanded of them, but this compliance is not a result of the threat, it is still a choice they make. If you doubt it, think about the people who have been threatened and not complied, think about people who have died for what they believe in rather than comply with an external demand.

The belief that we can control and coerce others, bending them to our will, is the cause of a great deal the misery in the world. This belief, springing from the external control psychology that we have overwhelmingly been conditioned to accept, is the cause of much of our pain. To let go of our belief that we can control others is astonishingly liberating. To accept other people as they are, to make no demands on them, simply to dance our own dance, as Anthony de Mello would have put it, and to accept that we cannot but allow everyone else to do the same, is not only the only choice that makes any sense, but is also the only way we can make any difference in the world.

We have a choice: In every situation, there is a choice. Accept that we cannot control other people or try to force, coerce, manipulate and bully to get our own way. The latter course of action damages relationships and, in the end, leads to pain and dysfunction. Or, we can accept people as they are, accept they are utterly free agents, accept that we cannot force them, and concentrate instead on building relationships with them and on building the inner world which echoes back to us as our experience. When we have good relationships, things work. Perhaps not in the way we might have expected, or even in the way we would have preferred, but things will work. The world is not ours to control, so let it go, and let it work in its own miraculous way. This is the effortlessness to which Lao Tzu alluded when he wrote, "The world is a mysterious instrument, not meant to be handled." Those who act on it never, I notice, succeed. 

We are responsible: We are responsible for ourselves. We make our choices and then we must live with them, not blaming others or circumstances, and not cowardly abdicating responsibility to some external forces. We are not victims! We are in control. By the same token, we are not responsible for other people. Their fear, their anger, their pain, their misery - it's all a choice they make, as freely as we make ours, and they need to shoulder the consequences of these choices, they are not our crosses to bear. Their happiness, their success, their joy - it's all their doing, not ours.

Being proactive: So here lies our freedom, it is inside us every moment and we can recognize it and live our lives according to the truth of this freedom, or we can continue to behave in the way we have been conditioned by society and try to force our way through life, pushing and coercing others into doing our will. One way is peace and happiness, the other way is pain and madness. Being proactive is the first of Steven Covey's "Seven Habits" and is the cornerstone of a truly effective life. I believe that living a proactive life, centered in the self, accepting that we can change nothing but ourselves, and choosing to focus on the good in our life and seeking to attract more it to ourselves is the purpose of our existence." 

- http://www.thechangeblog.com/

"Watchdog Report: Fed’s Billions in Emergency Repo Loans to Wall Street Didn’t Go Away in June; They Just Went Dark"

"Watchdog Report: Fed’s Billions in Emergency Repo Loans to 

Wall Street Didn’t Go Away in June; They Just Went Dark"

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

"The U.S. Senate Banking Committee, the House Financial Services Committee, and the U.S. mainstream business media now thoroughly qualify as the dumb tourists snapping photos of the raging bull statue on Wall Street as the Wall Street banks loot the country for the second time in a decade.

Last Thursday the Financial Stability Oversight Council (pronounced F-SOC) released its 2020 Annual Report. Those tend to be tediously boring reports that tell one nothing meaningful about the true state of the Wall Street mega banks, so we just got around to perusing the document yesterday. Mixed in with the typical snooze-worthy minutiae was a bombshell that made us sit up straight in our chair. Those cumulative repo loans totaling more than $9 trillion to the trading houses on Wall Street that the Fed had been making from September 17 of 2019 – months before the onset of COVID-19 anywhere in the world – didn’t actually stop in July as the daily data from the Fed made it seem. The New York Fed simply went dark and stopped reporting how many billions of dollars a week it was funneling to miscreant mega banks on Wall Street as food pantry lines grew by miles across the U.S. and 3.3 million small businesses were forced to shutter."

Please view this complete, and completely disgusting, article here:

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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So... 3.3 million small businesses crushed and destroyed forever, 70 million jobs lost, 40 million pending evictions, millions of hungry people everywhere lining up at food banks...and THESE m#$th#$^f$#rs get $9 TRILLION given, not lent, to them since last September?!!! And the totally vile and worthless money-whore politicians can't agree to send desperate citizens a lousy $1200 "stimulus" crumb? Excuse me, but WTF?!!! - An enraged and vengeful CP, as you should be, too...

Join me, help yourself...

"How It Really Might Be"

"Ex-Israeli Space Chief Claims Aliens, 

US Astronauts Signed Secret Deal and Trump Knows it"

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. 

It's just been too intelligent to come here."

- Arthur C. Clarke

"Ask your friends why scientists have failed to find extraterrestrials, and you can be sure at least one of them will offer the following answer: Humans are not worthy. Some astronomers ascribe to the so-called zoo hypothesis, which holds that space aliens are keeping Earth and its inhabitants in a sort of cosmic zoo."

- https://www.nbcnews.com/

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/9/20: “By Design, A Monster Financial Crisis Is Coming - Be Ready For It”

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/9/20:

“By Design, A Monster Financial Crisis Is Coming - Be Ready For It”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Tenants, Landlords Face Imminent Crisis As Pandemic Lifelines Expire"

"Tenants, Landlords Face Imminent Crisis 

As Pandemic Lifelines Expire" 

by Tyler Durden

"January is going to be a mess. America's small-time landlords, along with their tenants, are in trouble as safety nets are set to expire. Tenants haven't paid rent in months, with a looming eviction moratorium expiring at the end of December. According to Reuters, the lack of rental income for landlords has also been troublesome, with many skipping mortgage payments, potentially resulting in a firesale of properties in the year ahead. 

For 12 million Americans and their families - this Christmas will be their worst - as the extended unemployment benefits that have kept many of them afloat are set to expire later this month. Then on New Year's Day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's eviction moratorium expires, which could result in a massive wave of evictions in the first half of 2021.

At the moment, $70 billion in unpaid back rent and utilities are set to come due, according to a new report via Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. 

Last month, Maryland utility companies began to terminate customers with overdue bills, many of which were unable to pay because of job loss due to the coronavirus downturn. 

New research from the Aspen Institute warns 40 million people could be threatened with eviction over the coming months as the real economic crisis is only beginning. 

According to Stacey Johnson-Cosby, president of the Kansas City Regional Housing Alliance, landlords are also in deep turmoil. She said more than 40% of the landlords surveyed in her coalition said they will have to sell their units because of the lack of rental income. 

"They are sheltering our citizens free of charge, and there's nothing we can do about it," said Johnson-Cosby. "This is their retirement income." She said small landlords are frightened to speak out about non-paying tenants because social justice warriors and their "Cancel Rent" groups have attacked landlords. "What they don't realize is that if they run us out and we fail, it will be private equity and Wall Street firms that buy up all our properties, just like they did with houses after the last foreclosure crash."

Reuters interviewed Clarence Hamer, who may have to sell his house in the coming months because his "downstairs tenant owes him nearly $50,000." He owns a duplex in Brownsville, Brooklyn - and without those rental payments, Hamer has been unable to pay his mortgage. "I don't have any corporate backing or any other type of insurance," said Hamer, a 46-year-old landlord who works for the city of New York. "All I have is my home, and it seems apparent that I'm going to lose it." Hamer is not alone - millions of Americans are headed for a "dark winter" as they could be evicted or lose their homes in the coming months as government safety nets are set to expire.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, stimulus talks quickly faded after it was reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell touted his own plan rather than a bipartisan compromise for a deal.

John Pollock, a Public Justice Center attorney and coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, recently said January could bring a surge of eviction and homelessness," unlike anything we have ever seen" before."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - Psychological Warfare Disguised As A Pandemic Threat"

"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - 

Psychological Warfare Disguised As A Pandemic Threat"

by John W. Whitehead

“Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? 

They’re after you! They’re after all of us! 

Our wives...our children...they’re here already! You’re next!”

- Dr. Miles Bennell, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)

"It’s like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' all over again. The nation is being overtaken by an alien threat that invades bodies, alters minds, and transforms freedom-loving people into a mindless, compliant, conforming mob intolerant of anyone who dares to be different, let alone think for themselves.

However, while Body Snatchers - the chilling 1956 film directed by Don Siegel - blames its woes on seed pods from outer space, the seismic societal shift taking place in America owes less to biological warfare reliant on the COVID-19 virus than it does to psychological warfare disguised as a pandemic threat.

As science writer David Robson explains: "Fears of contagion lead us to become more conformist and tribalistic, and less accepting of eccentricity. Our moral judgements become harsher and our social attitudes more conservative when considering issues such as immigration or sexual freedom and equality. Daily reminders of disease may even sway our political affiliations. Various experiments have shown that we become more conformist and respectful of convention when we feel the threat of a disease… the evocative images of a pandemic led [participants in an experiment] to value conformity and obedience over eccentricity or rebellion.

This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm."

This is not a new experiment in mind control. The powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy.

That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era’s “Red Scare.” Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.

This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state.

The 9/11 attacks followed a similar script: a foreign invasion mounts an attack on an unsuspecting nation, the people unite in solidarity against a common foe, and the government gains greater war-time powers (read: surveillance powers) that, conveniently enough, become permanent once the threat has passed.

The government’s scripted response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been predictably consistent: once again, in order to fight this so-called “foreign” foe, the government insists it needs even greater surveillance powers.

As we’ve seen since 9/11 and more recently with the COVID lockdowns, those in power have always had a penchant for enacting extreme measures to combat perceived threats. However, unlike the modern America police state, the American government circa the 1950s did not have at its disposal the arsenal of invasive technologies that are such an intrinsic part of our modern surveillance state.

Today, we are watched and tracked 24/7; data is collected on us at an alarming rate by governmental and corporate entities; and with the help of powerful computer programs, American domestic intelligence agencies sweep our websites, listen in on our telephone calls and read our text messages at will. Now with the COVID pandemic and its offshoots such as contact tracing and immunity passports, the governmental landscape is even more invasive.

Yet no matter the threat, the underlying principle remains the same: can we hold onto our basic freedoms and avoid succumbing to the soul-sucking dredge of conformity that threatens our very humanity?

This conundrum is at the heart of the 1956 classic 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' which was based on a 1954 science fiction novel by Jack Finney (and later remade into an equally chilling 1978 film by Philip Kaufman). 'Body Snatchers' not only captured the ideology and politics of its post-war era but remains timely and relevant as it relates to the worries that plague us today. Filmed with only seven days of rehearsal and 23 days of actual shooting, 'Body Snatchers' is considered one of the great science fiction classics.

'Body Snatchers' is set in a small California town which has been infiltrated by mysterious pods from outer space that replicate and take the place of humans who then become conforming non-individuals. Miles Bennell, the main character, is a local doctor who resists the invaders and their attempts to erase humanity from the face of the earth.

At the very least, the film conveys a double meaning, serving as both a mirror of a particular moment in history and a compass pointing to a growing societal illness. Following World War II with the emerging military empire, the atomic bomb and the Korean War, Americans were confused and neurotically preoccupied with domestic threats, the polio pandemic and international political events, not much different from today’s populace preoccupied with domestic and international political drama, terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet Siegel’s film delves beneath the surface to confront an even more sinister threat: the dehumanization of individuals and the horrifying possibility that humanity could become infused as part of the societal machine. Central to the film is one key speech delivered by Bennell while hiding from the aliens: "In my practice, I see how people have allowed their humanity to drain away...only it happens slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind. All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts...grow callous...only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is."

As Siegel makes clear, it is not Communists or terrorists or even viral pandemics that threaten our well-being. The real enemy is invasive governmental measures - something we now see happening across the country - and, thus, totalitarian conformity. And resistance must be against all government measures that threaten our civil liberties and against all kinds of conformity, no matter the shape, size or color of the package it comes in.

When all is said and done, however, the real threat to freedom (in the fictional world of Body Snatchers and in our present-day America) is posed by an establishment - be it governmental, corporate or societal - that is hostile to individuality and those who dare to challenge the status quo. The mob hysteria, sense of paranoia, fascist police and the witch hunt atmosphere of the film mirror the ills of a 1950s America that is frighteningly applicable to present American society.

Acknowledging that 'Body Snatchers' portrayed the conflict between individuals and varied forms of mindless authority, Siegel stated, “I think the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them.” He explained: "People are pods. Many of my associates are certainly pods. They have no feelings. They exist, breathe, sleep. To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, the spark has left you. Of course, there’s a very strong case for being a pod. These pods, who get rid of pain, ill-health and mental disturbances are, in a sense, doing good. It happens to leave you in a very dull world but that, by the way, is the world that most of us live in. It’s the same as people who welcome going into the army or prison. There’s regimentation, a lack of having to make up your mind, face decisions. People are becoming vegetables. I don’t know what the answer is except an awareness of it."

All of the threats to freedom came about because “we the people” stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished control over our lives and our country to government operatives who care only for money and power.

While the specific game plan for turning things around is complicated by a police state that wants to keep us at a disadvantage, the solution is relatively simple: Don’t be a pod person. Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, think for yourself."

- https://www.rutherford.org/

"How Are Things Going, Joe?"

"People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer."

- Eve Ensler

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"You go up to a man, and you say, 'How are things going, Joe?' and he says, 'Oh fine, fine... couldn't be better.'  And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much." 

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

- Kurt Vonnegut, "Mother Night"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/8/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/8/20"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

DEC 8, 2020 6:20 PM: "Biden Claims Wearing Masks Is "Patriotic Act"; US COVID Cases Top 15MM: Live Updates"

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Dec. 8, 2020 2:07 PM ET: 

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 67,949,100 

people, according to official counts, including 15,113,900 Americans.

At least 1,550,500 have died.

  Dec. 8, 2020 2:07 PM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

- www.nytimes.com

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"The COVID Tracking Project"

Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 

hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.

- https://covidtracking.com/

Musical Interlude: Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”

Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way. Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. Today, there are less than 200 left. Many globular clusters were destroyed over the eons by repeated fateful encounters with each other or the Galactic center. Surviving relics are older than any Earth fossil, older than any other structures in our Galaxy, and limit the universe itself in raw age.

There are few, if any, young globular clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy because conditions are not ripe for more to form. Pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope are about 100,000 of M72's stars. M72, which spans about 50 light years and lies about 50,000 light years away, can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120819.html

"A Wise Man Once Said..."

“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”

- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"

Chet Raymo, “On Saying ‘I Don't Know’"

“On Saying ‘I Don't Know’"

by Chet Raymo

"When Charles and Emma Darwin bought the house that would be their family home for forty years, at Downe, sixteen miles south of London, one of Charles' first improvements was to have the flints removed from the property's chalky meadow. The glassy stones were more than an agricultural nuisance; they were a puzzle to be solved. The countryside about Downe is pretty much pure chalk, and Darwin was confident he knew where the chalk came from: the calcerous deposits of the myriad planktonic organisms that lived in a sea that was once superincumbant upon the land. But what was the origin of the flints and how did they find their way into the chalk?

Tramp across any plowed field in England's chalky North or South Downs and these fist-sized nodules of pure, hard, yellow silica are common underfoot. In the white cliffs along the English Channel they can sometimes be seen interspersed in the chalk as dark bands. The flints are chemically very different from chalk, and their presence in the otherwise pure calcium carbonate has long been something of a geological mystery.

Darwin was baffled. The most plausible modern explanation is that the nodules had their origin in siliceous sponges that grew on the sea floor and other siliceous marine microfossils. When these organisms died, their substance dissolved in sea water and was dispersed within the carbonate ooze, then precipitated out around other organic remains in a process called petrification. This modern explanation sounds a little iffy to me. I'm no geologist, but if someone asked me where the flints came from, I'd say with Darwin: "I don't know." Those three little words - "I don't know" - may be modern science's most important contribution to the world. Yes, we have learned an astonishing amount about how the world works, but of equal significance is our growing awareness of how much we don't know. The physician/essayist Lewis Thomas wrote: "The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance."

Charles Darwin was certainly not adverse to saying "I don't know," and did so frequently in his many letters to family and friends. He was especially ready to confess his ignorance with regard to the big questions, the questions traditionally addressed by religion. Like Einstein and other great scientific minds after him, he was deeply conscious of the profound mystery of existence, and reluctant to cover his ignorance with myth and fable.

In a letter to the American biologist Asa Gray, Darwin wrote: "I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can."

The physicist Heinz Pagels might have been describing Charles Darwin when he wrote: "The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration."

Consciousness of our ignorance is a very modern thing, and an open door to mystery. Darwin counted himself an agnostic, but in his reverence for the creative agency of nature I would count him a devoutly religious man. "There is a grandeur in this view of life," he famously wrote on the last page of "The Origin of Species"; the grandeur Darwin spoke of has more of the divine about it than did any Olympian diety.

Today, Darwin's home has been lovingly restored to what it was in his lifetime, and a visitor can almost feel the spirit of the great man moving through the rooms that once bustled with happy family life. A collection of flints is arrayed on a table in Darwin's cluttered study, as they might have been when Darwin sat beside them pondering their meaning. Those glassy stones were a adamantine reminder of how rich was the mystery of existence and how little of it he yet understood.”

- https://www.sciencemusings.com/

"Acceptance..."

"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."

- Margaret E. Rise

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/8/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/8/20"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/8/20:

"Freak Show: Market Hits All-Time New High;

 I Reveal A Secret!"

-  https://traderschoice.net/

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- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

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- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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Daily Update (Dec. 8th to Dec. 10th)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Insanity... 

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And now... The End Game...

The Daily "Near You?"

Arkansas City, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Science Über Alles"

"Science Über Alles"

by Bill Bonner

"But the Earth does move!"

– Physicist and philosopher, Galileo Galilei, 

recanting his recantation, after being tried for heresy.

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Now in its tenth month in the U.S., the coronavirus is becoming as familiar as bad breath. And many of the things we knew for sure about it in March… well… we’re not so sure anymore.

At first, we were told that face masks weren’t important. Later, we were told that the public health officials simply lied scientifically; they were afraid people might buy up all the available masks… thus depriving the “first line defenders” of their precious armor. Then, face masks became compulsory. “The science” tells us that they help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But if that were so, how come places that require face masks don’t have lower case counts? According to the COVID Tracking Project, there is no difference in caseloads between places where face masks are required by law… and places where they are not. We don’t know whether face masks help or not. But neither do the “scientists.”

Evolving Science: Today, we write with no new information. Instead, we have an old observation: Science is overrated. Every society has its elites – people with brains, ambition, talent, and confidence. These elites turn to government to get power. Then, they use that power to get money.

In the very old days, they claimed a special relationship with God. Today, it is scientific Truth that sits on their shoulders and whispers in their ears. But science is never fixed… never solid… never, ever figured out. Instead, it drifts on a river of uncertainty… picking up useful insights along the way… but never knowing where it is going, and never arriving at its final destination. One hypothesis is put forward. And then, discredited, another takes its place.

Aristotle wrote his essay, "Physics", in the 4th century BC. Then came Ptolemy… Copernicus… Galileo… Newton… and Einstein. And then, leaving Einstein like a baby abandoned in the bullrushes, came Werner Heisenberg, with his quantum physics. Each one brought not just an incremental improvement, but a revolution. Each one came up with a better model. But none discovered the Complete Truth.

Always in Doubt: Only a quack scientist would ever say, “Lockdowns and face masks work.” Real scientists know that lockdowns and face masks are only ways to implement a hypothesis…that the coronavirus can be slowed by putting up barriers, which itself is just part of another hypothesis…that we should slow down the virus rather than let it speed up, a subset of still another hypothesis that it is better not to get the virus than to get it…which is just a subset of a further hypothesis, and so on.

Scientists never know anything for sure. Everything is a hypothesis. And it is only valid until it is disproven. Always and everywhere is doubt. We have only a few pieces of the puzzle. Yes, we add pieces from time to time… And yes, we have a better picture today than we had 100 years ago. But a real scientist knows that a few more pieces might alter the scene completely.

Brightest and Best: Pharaoh claimed to be a god himself. Later kings and queens claimed to have been divinely appointed. And now, we have leaders who think they have the right to boss us around – as long as they get a majority vote in the Electoral College.

When few people could read, the elites were said to have the Truth available to them – and only them – in the sacred books. And then, when reading and writing became ubiquitous, the Truth was made available to all through the public schools. There, children were taught to pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands. In “civics” class, they learned that democracy inevitably puts the brightest and best in command.

And these enlightened leaders claim to be guided neither by gods nor by tradition nor by self-interest… but by “The Science.” With their Ph.D. advisers, they can be counted on to make the best decisions in every arena – foreign policy, domestic policy, money matters, public health issues… you name it.

Scientific Socialism: The Nazis claimed, for example, that their master race theories were based on the science of eugenics (improving the human race), which was very popular before Hitler gave it a bad name. Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes, and Linus Pauling all favored it to one degree or another. Germany’s race laws were supposedly based on California’s eugenics laws of the early 20th century.

Over in the Soviet Union, meanwhile, the Bolsheviks advertised that their whole system was based on science, from the Kremlin to the Gulag Archipelago. “Scientific socialism” they called it. The term was used by German philosopher Friedrich Engels, among others, to describe a society ordered along supposedly rationalist – rather than traditionalist – lines. Why leave it to the capricious “market” to decide who gets what, in other words? The Communist Party elite could decide it themselves.

Constitutional Rights Trump Science: And in today’s America, many people are ready, once again, to bow before the graven image of Science. Here’s Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, claiming that science should overrule the U.S. Constitution: "When it ruled this week against New York state’s decision to limit religious gatherings in a few high-incidence parts of New York City, the court proved the dangers of scientifically illiterate judges overturning government decisions that were based on scientific evidence.

Quick-witted readers will realize that the Constitution clearly gives citizens the right to go to church. The Supreme Court did not say – in this year of The Plague – whether it was a good idea or not. It merely pointed out the obvious fact that observing the fundamental law of the land, as written in the Constitution, is not optional. Neither the mayor, the city council, nor the governor had the right to ignore it."

Dear Readers who have been doing their homework also know that the “science” supporting lockdowns… close-outs… and button-ups is weak, at best. Wearing a mask may or may not prevent you from spreading the virus… or from getting it; we don’t know. But we also know that the Constitution was written to limit the power of the feds – even when there’s a nasty bug going around.

Recall, too, that science worshippers went into hysterics when Amy Barrett, during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, dared to doubt the Global Climate Change creed. Said Ms. Barrett: "I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge. Nor do I feel like I have views that are informed enough, and I haven’t studied scientific data. I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion."

Fake scientists cannot tolerate open minds. It is like knocking over tombstones, says Shana Lazerow, a busybody in California: "The people who will be impacted the most are the low-income communities of color who already bear a disproportionate burden of our society’s industrial activities. Striking down our climate protections is a specific act of racism."

Suspend Your Disbelief: But here at the Diary, our beat is money… And that is where we find the most strident and most delusional of the science disciples. There, they must not only suspend their disbelief… they must leave their good sense dangling, too, like a heretic hung from a willow tree. Stay tuned."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"A Little Late..."

 

"A Resolving Picture"

"A Resolving Picture"

by Jim Kunstler

"Much as Chief Justice John Roberts would like to be the finger down the Deep State’s throat to trigger the up-chucking of Mr. Trump from the nation’s gullet, it looks like he won’t get his chance in the new 6-3 disposition of the US Supreme Court. So far, it is Justice Samuel Alito in the lead, preparing a landing zone for the President’s case against the state of Pennsylvania in its shabby-ass attempt to stuff its ballot boxes with iffy mail-in votes. I believe that case is going to be heard, and Justice Robert’s position will be moot.

The problem over in PA is that its Act 77 bill passed before the election by the state legislature to expand absentee balloting (i.e., mail-in voting) did not comply with the PA state constitution, and required a constitutional amendment, which never happened. Could be pretty cut-and-dried. While the SCOTUS is thought to be reluctant to intervene in state constitutional issues, a case involving federal elections may prove an exception. And then there are other issues with the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. A lot of electoral votes there.

The virtual takeover of US elections by the Dominion vote tabulation company was a stealth operation probably enabled by the connivance of scores of elected officials at both the federal and state levels - senators, congressmen, governors, and on down. It’s been going on for years due to the secrecy of the op and the complacency of the public, with a little help from the Democratic Party’s friends in the news media. Did money change hands? Potential criminal violations abound.

What on earth was Canada-based Dominion, with its grotty Smartmatic software - connected to Venezuela and to George Soros’s would-be world-changing Open Society Foundation, and very possibly to China’s ruling party - doing in charge of counting our votes? Perhaps serving something other than America’s national interest. We’ll soon find out in a way that will make a lot of heads explode.

An awful lot has been churning in the deep background for months before the election. Mr. Trump was onto the mass write-in vote scam enabled by the media-assisted hysteria over Covid-19. The wheels of genuine US intel against national security threats still turned in spite of whatever Deep State perfidy had been aimed at Mr. Trump himself from Day One in office, and the president made use of his own private counter-intel hackers to suss out the game - which was finally to overthrow him by ballot fraud. The result was Executive Order 13848 issued in September 2020, which specified foreign interference in elections as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security” and laid out some pretty stringent remedies.

The main one was a requirement for the top executive agencies - DOJ, DOD, Homeland Security, Treasury plus the Director of National Intelligence (Mr. Ratcliff) - to deliver an assessment within 45 days of the election. We’re now in the sweet-spot of that 45-day delivery period when something has to pop. Looks a little like the AG, Mr. Barr, has been dithering and wriggling painfully over this, and even making noises about resigning. But he may have already surrendered his credibility, with the foot-dragging of the FBI under Christopher Wray and the agency’s apparent lack of interest in election fraud. The consequences of EO 13848 will roll out with him or without him.

The real action was over at the Department of Defense, where the President hastily cleaned house this fall and installed the trustworthy Christopher Miller as SecDef, along with top aide Kash Patel and Joshua Cohen-Watnick as Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Mr. Cohen-Watnick had been an assistant to General Michael Flynn, former Director of Defense Intelligence, in his brief tenure as National Security Advisor before getting sandbagged by Barack Obama and James Comey.

Both Mr. Cohen-Watnick and General Flynn are intimately familiar with the apparatus of Defense Intelligence, of course, and have been actively using it to identify DNC and Joe Biden activists who played a role in election irregularities as well as foreign actors. This wasn’t any RussiaGate type bullshit; it was the real deal. EO 13848 includes this provision:

"The report shall identify any material issues of fact with respect to these matters that the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security are unable to evaluate or reach agreement on at the time the report is submitted. The report shall also include updates and recommendations, when appropriate, regarding remedial actions to be taken by the United States Government, other than the sanctions described in sections 2 and 3 of this order.”

The “remedial actions” are interesting. They include pretty severe sanctions against any “persons” (entity or company) involved in or enabling foreign interference in elections: attaching property in the US, blocking trade, and an array of financial restrictions and penalties. The EO does not spell out criminal penalties that might fall under the sedition and treason statutes, but expect these to be activated as the law provides. Quite a few political celebrities and figures in the news and social media may have exposed themselves to liability in this. If it doesn’t mean the end of Facebook or Twitter, it may spell the end of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey running them. Also include the less-well-known execs at The WashPo, The New York Times, and several cable news networks.

Eventually, Mr. Trump will have to personally deliver the bad news to Joe Biden that he and Dr. Jill won’t be attending the inaugural ball on January 20 (live or on Zoom). Sound too wild to be true? Well, stand by on it. We’ll know soon enough."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Covid Is Toppling America's 'Points of Failure' Dominoes"

"Covid Is Toppling America's 'Points of Failure' Dominoes"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"America's many points of failure - leverage points where a break brings down the entire system - are falling like dominoes, a process catalyzed by Covid. These systemic points of failure have been masked for the past 20 years by the widespread distribution of trillions of dollars, either printed or borrowed. There's no point of failure that can't be glued together or covered up a bit longer with fountains of cash. That's the American way of solving problems: just throw more money at it.

Unfortunately for America, substituting borrowed trillions for real problem-solving generates its own set of problems, problems that increase the system's vulnerability to collapse. Healthcare/sickcare is a leading example of this: as the corruption, pay-to-play and profiteering deepened, the federal government's endless borrowed trillions boosted healthcare/ sickcare from 5% of the nation's economy to roughly 20% today. "Covid Is Revealing the Cancerous Underbelly of U.S. Healthcare".

As I've noted for a decade, this has created an enormous fragility: healthcare is now so immense that it will bankrupt the nation all by itself. Once the corrupt, pay-to-play, profiteering sectors such as healthcare and banking become "too big to fail," then the Federal Reserve and Treasury are obliged to bail them out or continue funding their spiraling-out-of-control demands.

Speaking of "too big to fail," look at the voracious monster the Fed's endless monetary goosing has incentivized - a financial system addicted to Fed "free money," soaring debt, accelerating leverage and near-infinite speculation.

Given that the Fed has effectively promised to backstop all of Wall Street's bets, bail out every major player and never let the stock market falter for longer than three weeks, the Fed has created this incentive structure: there is no risk at all in borrowing billions, leveraging it into tens of billions and then dumping these multiplying billions into the most speculative bets available. And so that's what every fund manager, hedge funder, punter, gambler and guru has done, and been richly rewarded for doing so.

There's just one tiny little second-order consequence of the Fed's incentivizing debt, leverage and speculation: wealth and income inequality have reached such extremes that they've unraveled the social order. Social cohesion: gone. The social contract: shredded. Social disorder: in the first inning of a very long game.

Now the Fed is backtracking while it laughingly claims its policies didn't have anything to do with America's skyrocketing wealth/income inequality. That the Fed is well aware of the destructive consequences of its endless quantitative easing is evidenced by their recent proposals (FedNow) to start sending "free money" directly to households via a new system of household accounts at the Fed. (Look for an initial rollout by 2022.)

Sorry Fed, it's too late. The dominoes are already toppling, and every point of failure is being exploited by the catalyzing effects of Covid, either first-order or second-order effects. Every weak point - corruption, incompetence, bureaucratic sclerosis, self-serving insiders, counterproductive complexity, regulatory thickets, clinging to the past, and most especially doing more of what's failed spectacularly - will give way, bringing down existing systems with a momentum that will surprise all those who thought every system in America was rock-solid and forever.

Two words will define 2021: acceleration and amplitude. The catalyzing effects will accelerate throughout all the interconnected systems like wildfire and the consequences will move rapidly from linear (predictable) to non-linear (geometric, unpredictable) as each weakness is amplified by the self-reinforcing dynamics unleashed as every point of failure triggers another failure in a connected system."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/8/20: "Be Ready For An EPIC Engineered Crisis In The Debt Market To Hit"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/8/20:

"Be Ready For An EPIC Engineered 

Crisis In The Debt Market To Hit"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid. It was an experience for which the captains of industry were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public. It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified. In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway; saw the clouds of dust rising up, and heard the roar of it swelling, and realized it was only a matter of time before it swept them to their destruction... But it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."

- Upton Sinclair, "The Moneychangers"

"How It Really Was, And Is"

 
Click image for larger size.

Related:

DEC 8, 2020 12:55 PM: "Rand Paul: No Scientific Evidence "Tyrannical" Lockdowns Work"

DEC 8, 2020 9:54 AM: "Admiral Giroir Slams Bans On Outdoor Dining As Without Scientific Basis"

DEC 8, 2020 9:22 AM: "'V-Day' Arrives In UK - 2nd Patient Vaccinated Is 81-Year-Old Man Named "William Shakespeare": Live Updates"

"The Most Beautiful Lies..."

"Memories and feelings of nostalgia are nothing more than cruelties; they are the most beautiful lies we will ever convince ourselves to believe. We chase the false hope so fiercely that we nearly push ourselves past the edges of our sanity, longing for that which can never be in our possession again. These edges are blurred by our regrets and desperation all throughout the darkest hours of the night, until finally we are set free from the illusions and the ghosts of our past with the rising of the sun... and we are changed in some small, yet permanent way."

- Margaret E. Rise

"Hedge Funds Wait For Housing Crisis; Real Estate Utopia; Food Is A Luxury; Signs Of Uncertainty"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Hedge Funds Wait For Housing Crisis; Real Estate Utopia;

Food Is A Luxury; Signs Of Uncertainty"

"This Is Going To Be The Worst Winter For The U.S. Economy In Modern Times"

"This Is Going To Be The Worst Winter For 

The U.S. Economy In Modern Times"

by Epic Economist

"The darkest, toughest winter this country has ever experienced since the 1930's Great Depression has just started. A new round of lockdowns is about to wreak havoc on hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the nation, pushing workers to unemployment days before a period that used to be marked by celebration and festivities. Americans are about to lose the aid that has been helping them to stay afloat during the current recession and many are having to make aching decisions in face of their lack of income and growing debt. 

Living paycheck-to-paycheck, more than 60% of the population is about to face major struggles as the economic activity freezes once again. Over 33 million are already under stay-at-home orders and many more are to come since we seem to be at the worst peak of the outbreak ever registered. In this video, we expose the damaging effects of the shutdown of our economy on our businesses and our lives. 

Amid a tragic spike in confirmed viral cases and hospitalization rates, several governors decided that the best they could do to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control would be to enforce rigorous lockdowns that have been choking the life out of our economic activity. 

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has issued a stay-at-home order and about 33 million Californians, which represents 84% of the state’s population, are going to have their right to free movement temporarily removed, being impeded from gathering indoors and outdoors, and having their daily lives significantly disrupted since hundreds of thousands of businesses are being obligated to shut down their operations. 

The Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett has described how some business sectors are being “unfairly punished” by the new regulations. A matter that should be the government's responsibility through the enaction of efficient education about safe health measures and effective public policies that could indeed help to bend the curb has turned out to be a huge bill that is going to be ultimately paid by small business owners.

There are alternatives for the shutdown, but authorities waited for the situation to get calamitous to start taking action, and now that hospitals are completely overwhelmed governors seem to think that it's reasonable to radically close some sectors of the economy without pondering about the consequences. Several small business that operated in California for generations and now are finding themselves on the verge of extinction. 

Rory Cox, the founder of the San Francisco Small Business Alliance, said to be talking with numerous small business owners around the city, and every story is sadder than the next. Several Bay Area small businesses that survived the first round of lockdowns but were left hanging by a thread are currently facing their inevitable downfall. During the first time, outdoor dining was still allowed if owners and customers followed safety protocols. But this time around, there is no compromise.

The truth is, in spite of the strict rules, people didn't stop gathering, they are just choosing different kinds of locations. Most of these private reunions have little to no regulation at all regarding health safety measures, which shows how the governmental response hasn't been actually successful in mapping and controlling the surge of viral cases.

In fact, due to the massive wave of lay-offs prompted by the shutdowns, a recent survey found that one in four Americans, or nearly 63%, have disclosed not to feel that their income is stable. Living paycheck-to-paycheck since March, and without any further federal aid on the horizon, a quarter of the respondents to the poll affirmed they've built up over $10,000 in credit card debt while covering their expenses. 

What used to be the most festive part of the year, is now becoming marked by the struggles of millions of Americans who are being forced to make aching decisions in face of the growing number of lay-offs during this holiday season. Each number on these rates has a name and a story. These workers have been relying on unemployment benefits that are about to expire the day after Christmas. 

Authorities have stripped away any real prospects for an economic recovery with the enforcement of new lockdowns. And Congress doesn't seem to bother in enacting another stimulus relief to ease the pain of those most affected by the economic downturn. Now, millions upon millions were left to struggle with the effects of a crisis that was perfectly avoidable, and unfortunately, there will be a lot more pain for our great workers and our once-great nation over the next chapters of this devastating economic collapse."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com