"A World Without the Fed"

"A World Without the Fed"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"What would happen if the Federal Reserve ceased to exist? We all know the answer: global markets would instantly collapse. And the global financial system, now entirely dependent on Fed stimulus, intervention, manipulation, free money for financiers and endless printing of trillions of dollars out of thin air, would crash, leaving nothing but a steaming, fetid pile of corruption infested by the cockroaches scurrying around gobbling up the few crumbs left.

What would happen if the Federal Reserve ceased to exist? The Treasury would sell its bonds on the open market, where buyers and sellers would set the yield on the bonds. Private banks would take deposits and lend money at rates set by supply and demand.

We all know what would happen: yields and interest rates would explode higher in response to risk having to be priced in and every flimsy, worm-eaten enterprise that depended on zero-interest rates would collapse in a heap. Every putrid, staggering zombie corporation would crumble to dust, and its phantom assets, illusions generated solely by the artificial spew of the Fed, would fall to their real value, i.e. near zero.

Let's modify the question slightly: what would happen if the Fed's policies stopped working? In other words, what if the Fed's spew no longer created the illusion of risk-free gambling in bubble-valuation assets? What if risk raised its Gorgon-like head despite every intervention, every manipulation, and every foul burp of propaganda from the Fed?

You Can’t Eliminate Risk: The faith in the Fed's omnipotence that magically reduces the perception of risk to zero is ultimately a faith in incremental change: the Fed tweaks the dials of bond purchases and its spew of free money for financiers, and voila, risk is banished and risk assets get another rocket booster.

Alas, risk cannot be banished, it can only be transferred to others. The Fed's endless spew and its constant tinkering with incremental adjustments have created a delusional faith that these tweaks will work forever and ever.

All that's actually happened is the Fed's spew has transferred the skyrocketing risks generated by its policies to the entire economy. The economy has been capacious enough to absorb the astronomical risks generated by Fed policies, but the economy has been stuffed to the gills with Fed-generated risk, and now the bursting of the risk bubble is upon us.

Put another way, there's no closets left to hide the risk in. Now the risk will escape the Fed's rusting, hubris-soaked chains and decimate the financial sector, which is now the dominant force in the economy. Once the delusions of no-risk gambling and phantom valuations implode, the real economy with undergo a devastating cold turkey withdrawal from the Fed's malevolent spew of free money for financiers masquerading as "stimulus."

Extremes get more extreme until risk breaks out; then the reversal will be as extreme as the bubble expansion. Delusions, illusions, phantoms of value: these are not real. Want to know what's real? Risk.

20 Years of Deflation: The absolutely last thing anyone expects is a collapse of all the asset bubbles, i.e. a deflation of assets that reverses the full 20 years of bubble-utopia since 2000. The consensus is universal: assets will continue to lift ever higher, forever and ever, because the Fed has our back, i.e. central banks will create trillions out of thin air without any consequence other than assets lofting ever higher.

This research paper from the San Francisco Federal Reserve begs to differ. Here is an excerpt from Longer-Run Economic Consequences of Pandemics (San Francisco Federal Reserve): "Measured by deviations in a benchmark economic statistic, the real natural rate of interest, these responses indicate that pandemics are followed by sustained periods -- over multiple decades -- with depressed investment opportunities, possibly due to excess capital per unit of surviving labor, and/or heightened desires to save, possibly due to an increase in precautionary saving or a rebuilding of depleted wealth. Either way, if the trends play out similarly in the wake of COVID-19 then the global economic trajectory will be very different than was expected only a few months ago."

Allow me to translate: wars launch 20-year booms of rebuilding, pandemics launch 20 years of deflation. Oops! Not only do wars destroy physical assets that must be rebuilt, they also tend to kill off a consequential percentage of the labor force, generating a labor shortage that pushes up wages. So capital wins funding the rebuilding and labor wins because workers are scarce and in demand: win-win baby! Pandemics are considerably less warm and fuzzy, especially Covid-19. Pandemics are like neutron bombs, they leave the built environment intact so there's no impetus to invest.

Unlike the Black Death that decimated the human workforce from China to Europe in the 1350s, Covid disproportionately takes the lives of the elderly, most of whom have already left the workforce. So the Covid pandemic's reduction of the workforce is too modest in scale to create labor scarcities consequential enough to push wages higher. In other words, lose-lose: capital earns low returns in a low-demand environment and labors' wages stagnate in this low-demand economy.

Fantasies and Delusions: Cue 20 years of asset deflation. Bu-bu-but the Fed is omnipotent, godlike in its powers! The Fed can push stocks to the moon, never mind history, fundamentals or reality! Yes, well, um, fantasies are nice, and delusions are fun, but reality inevitably intrudes and diminishing returns on the Fed's neo-feudalist feast for the super-wealthy are about to grab markets by the throat, regardless of what the Fed bleats.

There are a couple of funny little things called reversion to the mean, bubble-symmetry and non-linear dynamics that the Fed doesn't actually control (gasp!) because they are not fully controllable by human policies. Statistical outliers/extremes have a strong propensity to reverse, regardless of human manipulation.

And these reversals are not "buy the dip" wiggles; they completely reverse the entire bubblicious move to the stars via bubble-symmetry: so markets that go from 1,000 to 30,000 retrace all the way back down to 1,000, no matter how many humans shout, scream, plead and whine "that's not possible!"

Oh yes it is. Hubris weighs heavily on our faith in the "right" human policies to work magic forever and ever. So as long as the Fed follows the "right policy" and continues printing trillions of dollars out of thin air and buying bonds (and whatever else needs to be bought up to lift markets higher) then Dow 100,000 is in the bag.

Or not. The idea that human don't control everything is anathema to a technocrat elite, and so when the inevitable reversal crashes assets, everyone will rush around looking for the human-action cause of the disaster and the human-action fix, so we can get back on track to Dow 100,000.

The Pendulum Has Swung Too Far: But the search for causes will be in vain, for extremes pendulum swings reach a limit and then swing back, eventually reaching the opposite extreme minus a bit of friction, which is minimal in a frictionless financial sector of printing trillions with keystrokes. If you want evidence that the pendulum has swung as far as it can go, consider that billionaires have gained $1 trillion since the pandemic started.

Can 20 years of asset deflation be compressed into a mere two years? Absolutely. The global financial system has been running a 20-year experiment in extremes that's close to producing interesting results. Extremes become more extreme right up until they reverse, a reversal no one believes possible here in the waning days of 2020. If we could measure hubris, it would be near-infinite. And the reversal of that near-infinite extreme will be one for the ages."

- dailyreckoning.com

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

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Related:

"It’s Not Often I Get to Proclaim “THE FED IS DEAD” 

Then Watch the Fed Put on the Toe Tag!"

"How It Really Is"

 

"When Deplorables Become Ungovernables"

"When Deplorables Become Ungovernables"

by Pepe Escobar

"China, Russia and Iran are the top three existential “threats” to the U.S., according to the National Security Strategy. Three features distinguish the top three. They are all sovereign powers. They are under varying degrees of sanctions. And they are the top three nodes of the 21st century’s most important, evolving geopolitical process: Eurasia integration.

What do the three sovereigns see when they examine the dystopia that took over Exceptionalistan? They see, once again, three – discombobulated – nodes in conflict: the post-historic Pacific and Atlantic coasts; the South – a sort of expanded Dixieland; and the Midwest – what would be the American heartland.

The hyper-modern Pacific-Atlantic nodes congregate high-tech and finance, profit from Pentagon techno-breakthroughs and benefit from the “America rules the waves” ethos that guarantees the global primacy of the U.S. dollar.

The rest of America is largely considered by the Pacific-Atlantic as just a collection of flyover states: the South – which regards itself as the real, authentic America; and the Midwest, largely disciplined and quite practical-minded, squeezed ideologically between the littoral powerhouses and the South.

Superstructure, though, is key: no matter what happens, whatever the fractures, this remains an Empire, where only a tiny elite, a de facto plutocratic oligarchy, rules. It would be too schematic, even though essentially correct, to assert that in the presidential election, invisible campaigner Joe Biden represented the Pacific-Atlantic nodes, and Trump represented the whole South.

Assuming the election was not fraudulent – and that remains a big “if” – the Midwest eventually swung based on three issues:

1. Trump, as much as he relied on a sanctions juggernaut, could not bring back manufacturing jobs home.

2. He could not reduce the military footprint across the Greater Middle East.

3. And, before Covid-19, he could not bring down immigration.

Everything that lies ahead points to the irreconcilable – pitting the absolute majority that voted Dem in the Atlantic-Pacific nodes versus the South and a deeply divided Midwest. As much as Biden-Harris is bound to isolate the South even more, their prospects of “pacifying” the Midwest are less than zero. Whose ground control? Beyond the raucous altercations on whether the presidential election was fraudulent, these are the key factual points:

• A series of rules in mostly swing states were changed, through courts, bypassing state legislatures, without transparence, before the election, paving the way to facilitate fraud schemes.

• Biden was de facto coronated by AP, Google and Twitter even before the final, official result, and weeks before the electoral college vote this past Monday.

• Every serious, professional audit to determine whether all received and tabulated votes were valid was de facto squashed.

• In any Global South latitude where the empire did “interfere” in local elections, color revolution-style, this set of facts would be regarded by scores of imperial officials, in a relentless propaganda blitz, as evidence of a coup.

On the recent Supreme Court ruling, a Deep State intel source told me, “the Supreme Court did not like to see half the country rioting against them, and preferred the decision be made by each state in the House of Representatives. That is the only way to handle this without jeopardizing the union. Even prominent Democrats I know realize that the fix took place. The error was to steal too many votes. This grand theft indicts the whole system, that has always been corrupt.”

Dangers abound: On the propaganda front, for instance, far right nationalists are absolutely convinced that U.S. media can be brought to heel only by occupying the six main offices of the top conglomerates, plus Facebook, Google and Twitter: then you’d have full control of the U.S. propaganda mill.

Another Deep State source, now retired, adds that: “The U.S. Army does not want to intervene as their soldiers may not obey orders. Many of these far right nationalists were officers in the armed forces. They know where the nuclear missiles and bombers are. There are many in sympathy with them as the U.S. falls apart in lockdowns.”

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s dodgy dealings simply will not be made to vanish from public scrutiny. He’s under four different federal investigations. The recent subpoena amounts to a very serious case pointing to a putative crime family. It’s been conveniently forgotten that Joe Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations "that he forced Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin to be fired exactly when he was investigating corruption by Burisma’s founder." Of course, a massive army of shills will always invoke another army of omniscient and oh so impartial “fact checkers” to hammer the same message: “This is Trump’s version. Courts have said clearly all the evidence is baseless.”

District Attorney William Barr is now out of the picture (see his letter of resignation). Barr is a notorious Daddy Bush asset since the old days – and that means classic Deep State. Barr knew about all federal investigations on Hunter Biden dating back to 2018, covering potential money laundering and bribery. And still, as the Wall Street Journal delightfully put it, he “worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign”.

A devastating report (Dems: a Republican attack report) has shown how the Biden family was connected to a vast financial network with multiple foreign ramifications.

Then there’s Barr even daring to say there was not enough reason for the Department of Justice to engage in a far-reaching investigation into voting fraud, finally putting to rest all “baseless” conspiracy theories. Move on. Nothing to see here. Even if an evidence pile-up featured, among other instances, ballot stuffing, backdated ballots, statistical improbabilities, electronic machine tampering, software back doors, affidavits from poll workers, not to mention the by now legendary stopping the vote in the dead of night, with subsequent, huge batches of votes miraculously switching from Trump to Biden. Once again an omniscient army of oh-so-impartial “fact checkers” will say everything is baseless.

A perverse blowback: A perverse form of blowback is already in effect as informed global citizens may now see, crystal clear, the astonishing depth and reach of Deep State power – the ultimate decider of what happens next in Dystopia Central. Both options are dire.

1. The election stands, even if considered fraudulent by nearly half of U.S. public opinion. To quote that peerless existentialist, The Dude, there’s no rug tying the room together anymore.

2. Was the election to be somehow overturned before January 20, the Deep State would go Shock and Awe to finish the job.

In either case, The Deplorables will become The Ungovernables.

It gets worse. A possible implosion of the union – with internal convulsions leading to a paroxysm of violence – may even be coupled with an external explosion, as in a miscalculated imperial adventure.

For the Three Sovereigns – Russia, China and Iran – as well as the overwhelming majority of the Global South, the conclusion is inescapable: if the current, sorry spectacle is the best Western liberal “democracy” has to offer, it definitely does not need any enemies or “threats”.

- https://www.strategic-culture.org/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"2020: The Year We Lost The Plot"

"2020: The Year We Lost The Plot"

by Rob Slane

"“Our Government, along with Governments around the world will shortly announce the quarantining of whole populations for a seasonal respiratory virus which leaves 99.8-99.9% of those who get it in the land of the living. What is more, they will also announce a shutdown of the entire economy for months and then, when the epidemic has actually gone, will mandate that you cover the lower half of your face with a bit of cloth. They will do this by frightening people into compliance with a barrage of propaganda, slogans, data entirely taken out of context, and the threat of massive fines.”

Anyone making this claim at the beginning of the year would rightly have been thought to have mislaid the plot and their marbles, long ago. But here we are, at the end of that same year, and it is precisely what has happened. Only it is much worse than that.

Had you somehow been persuaded to give credence to this insane prophecy, you would probably have been comforted by the following thought: “They’ll never get away with it. The people will never stand for it.”

Not a bit of it. Somehow, millions of people across the country, and in fact across the world, were persuaded to accept it. By far the majority somehow thought that quarantining whole nations of healthy people for a virus, for the first time in history, was a good idea. Well, actually the second time in history to be precise. It was tried in 2009 by the Mexican Government during the Swine Flu outbreak, but they had the good sense to end it after a couple of weeks after realising how much it would devastate the country.

Yet not only do we have our imaginary conspiracy loon’s mad ravings come true, but those same people who have accepted it look upon those of us who have been pointing out the madness of it all as if we were those who had taken leave of our senses. Oh irony, thou hast had a field day in 2020. As St. Antony the Great put it: “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”

To cut to the chase, we have gone and thrown out reason, rationality and proportionality this year. A coronavirus, which posed a danger to a very small proportion of our society, but which actually has an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26% (not too dissimilar to a bad seasonal flu), and which could thus have been dealt with proportionality, somehow became the catalyst for the biggest mass hysteria in the history of the human race. Indeed, many were so taken in by the great hypnotic spell set in motion by charlatans with their “hard-hitting emotional messaging,” that they adopted practices so irrational and disproportionate to the threat, one wonders how they managed to live before this year.

The history books tell of one of our great Kings, Canute, demonstrating to his courtiers that contrary to their supposition, he could not in fact control the waves. In our day, it’s like King Canute has gone rogue, telling his subjects that he can control the waves and viruses, and his subjects have responded by not only believing him, but by taking any action he tells them they must do to stop the waves or the virus, including confining themselves to their homes, closing their businesses, wearing cloths on their faces, along with umpteen other truly bizarre and wholly useless diktats. Then, when the waves or the virus continue doing what waves and viruses do, a wave of Covidian Logic bursts over us and we find it is our fault that they have not been controlled. We didn’t shut down hard enough or long enough, or we played board games at Christmas.

In the real world, the only thing that got controlled this year was not a virus, but people. That all went off spiffingly, or spaffingly as Comrade Johnson might put it. People were suppressed, people were controlled, people were - you might say - owned. And by and large they acquiesced in putting their hand to this National Suicide Plan.

Of course, the reply that comes the way of anyone who points this out is: “Ah, but if we hadn’t locked down and masked up, the deaths would have been in the hundreds of thousands.” To which the answer is simply: “Nope. Lockdown cannot be shown to have saved a single life.”

Sweden, by not turning itself into a basketcase, failed to have the anything like wave of mass deaths predicted by the Enthusiasts for Lockdown. Nor did other nations that took a similar approach. A recent peer-reviewed study from France, looking at 188 countries, has confirmed what should have been obvious all along: “Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.”

Then of course there was the Danish RCT study, which showed no significant statistical difference between infection rates of those wearing surgical masks, and those with no masks. Imagine that!

Imagine that we were put under house arrest for months, made to cover our respiratory passages with bits of cloth, forced to alter our lives, and threatened with fines for non-compliance - and none of it made any difference to mortality.

Imagine that this Government and Parliament caused the complete shutdown of the economy for months, putting millions on the dole, wrecking 1,000s of businesses, causing the worst recession for 300 years, and piling up a future of debt, poverty, mental health issues and reduced life expectancy - and none of it saved any lives.

Imagine that we are still in this situation, with people still acquiescing in the destruction of their own country, the Government and media still feeding us lies, and with no real plausible end to this madness.

Actually, you have no need to imagine it. Even though it is so outlandish that even the most unhinged, basement-dwelling “conspiracy nut” on the planet could not have come up with this, it is indeed the year you just lived through. We lost the plot in 2020, and the most pressing question is: will we get it back in 2021?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

- http://www.theblogmire.com/

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Related:

"Americans' Mental Health Hits 20-Year Low 

Ahead Of Renewed Lockdowns, Gallup Poll"

Lost the "plot?" We've lost our minds...

“A Super-Depression Is Coming; US Economy Is Crashing Now; Economic Diversification; Dollar Is Dead”

Jeremiah Babe,

“A Super-Depression Is Coming; US Economy Is Crashing Now;

 Economic Diversification; Dollar Is Dead”

"Once Americans Get Desperately Hungry Is When We Will See Absolutely Insane Economic Riots"

"Once Americans Get Desperately Hungry Is When 

We Will See Absolutely Insane Economic Riots"

by Epic Economist

"The events we all witnessed throughout this year have changed our perception of what is considered normal. We have gotten so used to bad news, that many of us can already anticipate that what is coming ahead are even more hardships. Our optimism isn't based on future achievements anymore, but instead coming back to where we were before this whole meltdown has started. Since the burst of the crisis, in every month and every week that passes by we've seen some part of our economy collapsing, we've experienced the damages of this crisis in our lives, we have come to expect the unexpected. 

At this point, it feels like another major disaster might happen at any moment, but as so many issues are being unfolded at once we can't tell for sure what's going to be the pivot of the next breakdown, but as we wait for “the other shoe to drop”, the state of economics in America continues to rapidly deteriorate. That's what we're going to discuss in this video. 

It seems that as we reach the final stretch of 2020, the pace of economic deterioration has considerably intensified. Amid a spike in confirmed viral cases and a new round of lockdowns, U.S. business owners are getting increasingly desperate with the effects of the restrictions, and the lack of revenue and financial support. Consequently, massive waves of layoffs are being recorded during this holiday season. For instance, last week, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits was the highest in four months. 

At this stage of the crisis, this upward trend indicates that things are going to get even worse as winter gets closer. As a result, closures and bankruptcies will continue to impact the labor market. Last Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales declined 1.1 percent in November, which used to be the start of the all-important holiday shopping season, but instead, in Black Friday month we registered the biggest drop in retail sales in seven months. 

Currently, according to data published by a Daily News report, the number of unemployed people who are receiving aid from the federal extended-benefit program, which offers coverage to gig workers and others who don´t qualify for traditional benefits, surged to 9.2 million. 

Additionally, the number of people receiving aid under a second program, which provides 13 weeks of federal benefits to those who have exhausted their assistance, also increased to 4.8 million. However, both of these programs and many others are scheduled to expire by year's end, leaving over 12 million jobless workers and their families without a financial safety net to afford their bills and expenses. 

Some may argue that the biggest share of job losses was driven by the downfall of small businesses while large corporations are still thriving and leading our economy, which is partly true. However, major companies keep letting workers go at an astounding pace. Yesterday, Coca-cola announced plans to cut 2,200 jobs, which accounts for nearly 12 percent of their entire U.S. workforce, as it faces declining sales during the recession. What this highlights to us is that these big corporations are massively laying off their staff because they can predict what is about to happen, so they are trying to slim payrolls to survive the coming storm.

Meanwhile, the debate regarding another stimulus package is getting heated amongst representatives and policymakers in Congress. And considering authorities are being forced to choose between unemployment benefits and $600 weekly stimulus checks, apparently the new trillion-dollar relief bill is mostly going to support the financial markets while leaving people fighting for the crumbles. Dealing with the current crisis by launching unprecedented amounts of printed money instead of restrengthening our economy will only lead us to a different crisis. 

As our money supply has been increasing at an almost vertical rate this year, hyperinflation is now on the horizon, and the effects of it can already be seen in food prices. According to Zero Hedge experts are panicking about surging food prices and we should all be worried about the coming food inflation.

On the same note, SocGen's Albert Edwards has outlined how even in the richest country in the world, food poverty has become a real problem during this crisis. And, in short, this means that we should all be carefully watching for mounting social agitation regarding access to food. As economic collapse expert Michael Snyder has perfectly summarized in his latest article: "once millions upon millions of Americans get desperately hungry, that is when we will see absolutely insane economic riots in this country. All of these things are coming, and we definitely will not have to wait very long at all for “the other shoe to drop.”

-  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/18/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/18/20"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

DEC 18, 2020 - 19:40: "The Response To COVID-19 In Oregon Has Entered The Surreal"

DECEMBER 18, 2020 AT 2:15 PM: "Apple Closes LA Stores; White House Prepares National Shutdown Guidance: Live Updates"

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Dec. 18, 2020 3:13 PM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 75,357,400 

people, according to official counts, including 17,401,776 Americans.

At least 1,668,500 have died.

  Dec. 18, 2020 3:13 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/

"Come, My Friends..."

“The long day wanes; 

the slow moon climbs;

 the deep

Moans round with many voices. 

Come, my friends,

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars...”

~ from “Ulysses,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"

Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"

Full screen mode highly recommended!

Rest, relax a little...

"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

"We Never See..."

“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”

- Maria Popova

"Feeling Overwhelmed: Breathing into Order"

"Feeling Overwhelmed: Breathing into Order"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Always know, the Universe works in perfect order and you are never given more thank you can handle. Sometimes we may feel like there is just too much we need to do. Feeling overwhelmed may make it seem like the universe is picking on us, but the opposite is true: we are only given what we can handle. Difficult situations are opportunities to be our best selves, hone our skills and rise to the occasion.

The best place to start is to take a deep breath. As you do, remind yourself that the universe works in perfect order and therefore you can get everything done that needs to get done. As you exhale, release all the details that you have no control over. The universe with it‘s infinite organizing power will orchestrate the right outcome. Anytime stress begins to creep up, remember to breathe through it with these thoughts. Then, make a list of everything you need to do. Note what needs to be done first, and mark the things others may be able to do for you or with you. Though we often think no one else can do it correctly or well, there are times when it is worth it to exhale, let go of our control, and ask for help from professionals or friends. With the remaining things that feel you must do yourself, take another breath and determine their true importance. 

Sometimes they are things we’d like to do, but aren’t really necessary. After taking these quick steps, you will find you have a plan laid out, freeing you from frenzied thoughts circling in your head. With calming deep breaths, you are now free to focus more fully on our priorities. Herbal teas or flower remedies along with wise choices about caffeine and food can help keep us from becoming frantic too. But with nothing further from us than our breath, we can breathe in our best intentions and let the rest go with an exhale. Keeping ourselves centered and breathing into and through life’s challenges helps us learn what we are truly capable of doing, and we will find we have the ability to rise to any occasion. Remember you aren’t being picked on, and you are never alone."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

Chet Raymo, “Thinking About Thinking”

“Thinking About Thinking”

by Chet Raymo

“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living," wrote the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch. And, of course, he was right. Our brains are separated from the world by a permeable membrane. Attention flows outwards. Sense impressions flow inwards. Of this two-way traffic- this awareness- we create a soul.

At this moment, as I sit at my desk on a hillside in the west of Ireland, I try to be aware. Sunlight streams across my computer keyboard; eight minutes ago these photons were on the surface of the sun. A Pholcus phalangioides spider spins its web under the shelf above the desk; I touch the web with a pencil point and the spider does a dervish dance. Outside the window, clouds scud in from the Atlantic; there will be rain in the afternoon.

Continuous awareness: It can be exhausting. Which is why, I suppose, we sometimes wish for the mind to go blank, for the windows of the soul to close, for darkness to fall.

Fortunately, the one thing we don't have to attend to is awareness itself. The brain does its thing without the least bit of conscious control on our part. And a good thing, too; if we had to attend to what is going on in the brain when we attend to the world, we'd... We'd go nuts.

Nothing we know about in the universe approaches the complexity of the human brain. What is it? A vast spider web of neurons, cells with a thousand octopuslike arms, called dendrites. The dendrites reach out and make contact at their tips with the dendrites of other cells, at junctions called synapses. A hundred billion neurons in the human brain, with an average of 1,000 dendrites each. A hundred trillion octopus arms touching like fingertips, and each synapse exquisitely controlled by the cells themselves, strengthening or weakening the contact, building webs of interlinked cells that are knowledge, memory, consciousness- self.

A hundred billion neurons. That's more brain cells than there are grains of salt in 1,000 one-pound boxes of salt. A roomful of salt grains, floor to ceiling. Each in contact with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of others. The contacts flickering with variable strength. Continuously. Unconsciously. Never ceasing. Remembering. Forgetting. Feeling joy. Feeling pain. Thinking. Speaking. Lifting a foot, moving it forward, putting it down again. Flickering. A hundred trillion flickering synapses. Just thinking about it is exhausting.

Neuroscientists are busy trying to figure it all out. Some folks would say that bringing the scrutiny of science to bear upon the human soul is the height of presumption. Others would say that the more we learn about what makes our brains tick, the more we stand in awe at the mystery of soul.

The sheer complexity of the human brain makes any adequate description a daunting task. Which is why some neuroscientists choose to work with simpler organisms- sea snails, for example- to get a grip on the basic structure and chemistry. In recent years, new scanning technologies enable neuroscientists to watch live human brains at work. Active neural regions flicker on the screens of computer monitors as subjects think, speak, recite poems, do math. Continuous awareness, displayed on the screen of a scanning monitor, can look like a grass fire exploding across a prairie.

Still other scientists attempt to model the brain in silicon, building electronic circuits called neural networks that mimic the activity of the brain as it creates constantly changing webs of neurons. So far, no electronic network begins to approach the complexity of the human brain, but the time is not far off when silicon brains will rival brains of flesh and blood. Just trying to make it happen teaches us a lot about how human brains work.

Perhaps the most exciting research is that of the scientists who study the biochemistry of neurons: How do the cells regulate synaptic connections to build new neural webs? One big surprise is just how much of the "thinking" of neurons is done by the dendrites, those hundreds of spidery arms that connect neurons to one another. DNA in a neuron's nucleus sends messenger RNA down along the dendrites to active synapses, where they are translated into proteins that regulate the strength of synaptic connections. Tiny protein factories in the dendrites are apparently key to learning and memory. Once the regulation of these protein factories is understood, drugs that ameliorate some kinds of hereditary mental retardation might be possible. As will drugs that help all of us to learn and remember. Are we ready for "smart" pills? Memory pills?

What all this amounts to is awareness of awareness. For the first time in the history of consciousness, the machinery of awareness has been turned upon itself. As neuroscientists have discovered, thinking about thinking is not easy. Thank goodness we don't have to think about thinking to think.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

"Tell Yourself..."

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

- Louise Erdrich

Gregory Mannarino, "COLLAPSE: The New America Welcomes You"

Gregory Mannarino,

"COLLAPSE: The New America Welcomes You"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Food for thought:

"What Would Happen If the Fed Ceased to Exist?"

The Daily "Near You?"

Frankfurt Am Main, Hessen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!

"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "

"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "

by Marc Chernoff

"1. Life is not easy. Hard work makes people lucky, it's the stuff that brings dreams to reality. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.

2. You will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You'll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won't work. So get out there and do something! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win, Win.

3. Right now, there's a lot you don't know. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. Embrace new information, think about it and use it to advance yourself.

4. There may not be a tomorrow. Not for everyone. Right now, someone on Earth is planning something for tomorrow without realizing they're going to die today. This is sad but true. So spend your time wisely today and pause long enough to appreciate it.

5. There's a lot you can't control. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and stagnation. Invest your energy in the things you can control.

6. Information is not true knowledge. Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task a hundred times, but these discussions will only give you a philosophical understanding. You must experience a task firsthand to truly know it.

7. You can't be successful without providing value. Don't waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. When you're valuable to the world around you, you will be successful.

8. Someone else will always have more than you. Whether it's money, friends or magic beans that you're collecting, there will always be someone who has more than you. But remember, it's not how many you have, it's how passionate you are about collecting them. It's all about the journey.

9. You can't change the past. As Maria Robinson once said, "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."  You can't change what happened, but you can change how you react to it.

10. The only person who can make you happy is you. The root of your happiness comes from your relationship with yourself. Sure external entities can have fleeting effects on your mood, but in the long run nothing matters more than how you feel about who you are on the inside.

11. There will always be people who don't like you. You can't be everything to everyone. No matter what you do, there will always be someone who thinks differently. So concentrate on doing what you know in your heart is right. What others think and say about you isn't all that important. What is important is how you feel about yourself.

12. You won't always get what you want. As Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need."  Look around. Appreciate the things you have right now. Many people aren't so lucky.

13. In life, you get what you put in. If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.

14. Good friends will come and go. Most of your high school friends won't be a part of your college life. Most of your college friends won't be a part of your 20-something professional life. Most of your 20-something friends won't be there when your spouse and you bring your second child into the world. But some friends will stick. And it's these friends, the ones who transcend time with you, who matter.

15. Doing the same exact thing every day hinders self growth. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Growth happens when you change things, when you try new things, when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.

16. You will never feel 100% ready for something new. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won't feel totally comfortable or ready for it. 

 

And remember, trying to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. Strength comes from being comfortable in your own skin."

- http://www.marcandangel.com/

"Think..."

"Governing By Rage And Ridicule"

Click image for larger size.

"Governing By Rage And Ridicule"

 by Simon Black 

"Back in July, Yale University began a critical study on COVID vaccines. But there was an interesting twist to Yale’s study: scientists weren’t looking at the actual vaccine candidates; instead they were studying how to most effectively convince people to take a vaccine. One of the things they tested, in fact, was how guilt, embarrassment, and negative social stigma could pressure people into taking a vaccine, even if they have doubts or concerns about it. In other words, the study examined if shaming people would be an effective way to compel everyone to take a COVID vaccine.

The results of that study have not yet been reported. But the mainstream media and Twitter mob have already decided that shaming people is the best approach to vaccine compliance. As I wrote earlier this week, comprehensive trial results from a handful of vaccine candidates have only been published within the last week or so. But Twitter and the media have been essentially pre-shaming people for months. CNN ran a story in early AUGUST, for example, entitled, “Covid-19 conspiracy theories: 6 tips on how to engage anti-vaxxers”.

This is the perfect illustration of pre-shaming. There was practically zero data on any vaccine candidate back in August. Yet the luminaries at CNN had already decided that anyone who expressed concern was a conspiracy theorist. And now that some vaccines have received emergency authorization, tactics have moved from pre-shaming to full blown rage and intimidation.

Fines and jail time are now being openly discussed in the United States, Europe, Australia, etc. And many prominent companies in the private sector have piled on, proposing rules that could forbid unvaccinated customers from airplanes or hotels. I recently read an editorial in a British paper that went so far as to suggest that unvaccinated people should potentially be brought up on murder charges. But as we can see, this approach is nothing new. There are countless other examples of their ‘rule by rage and ridicule’.

Just look at tax policy - The Bolsheviks want to raise trillions of dollars in tax revenue; and they want to raise a good chunk of that money from large corporations and the richest citizens. Now… one possible method might be to approach billionaires and CEOs as respected partners. Explain to them that the country is in a deep fiscal hole, and ask if they’d be willing to make a financial sacrifice. Treat them with dignity and kindness, and vocally praise their generosity if they go along with it.

But that’s not how these people operate. Instead, they threaten to nationalize entire industries, propose outright asset confiscation, and publicly ridicule wealthy people simply for being successful; they think Jeff Bezos is the worst scum of the earth. Most strikingly they’ve managed to cast a dark cloud of suspicion on the entire idea of being rich. (A "dark cloud" is the very least these scum deserve, as 12 years of heaping scorn, contempt and ridicule on them on this blog will demonstrate. - CP) When I was growing up in the 80s, every kid I knew wanted to be a millionaire. Becoming rich was a common aspiration in the West. And wealthy people used to be admired. Now they’re despised. (My heart breaks, it breaks I tell you! These innocent little lambs, so abused and misunderstood... - CP)

These Bolsheviks have succeeded in shifting public opinion so much that wealth is now something you have to apologize for. AOC sums it up the best when she says, “You don’t MAKE a billion dollars. You TAKE a billion dollars.” People actually believe this nonsense. (This, coming from a person who sells ‘Tax the Rich’ sweatshirts for nearly $60 and books the revenue as tax-free campaign contributions.) It’s a perfect example of rage and ridicule in action.

We’ve also seen this approach with social justice (heavens forbid someone commit the heresy of saying that all lives matter…) We’ve clearly seen rage and ridicule over the past 9+ months of Covid lockdowns, because you now have the right to be pepper-sprayed by your fellow citizens if you’re not as terrified as they are. We’ve seen a whole lot of rage and ridicule over the election, with Twitter mob and Bolsheviks creating their ‘enemies list’ of people who espouse different ideological views.

(Some prominent Bolsheviks have even called for a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in the new Biden administration.) And now we’re seeing this same rage and ridicule approach to vaccines. These tactics have been extremely effective; they keep sane, normal people quiet for fear of being publicly maligned and ostracized.

lol, lol, LOL...so very scary! 

• You’re not allowed to talk about the vaccine.

• You’re not allowed to talk about the election.

• You’re not allowed to have an opinion about social justice (unless you’re groveling for forgiveness).

• You’re not allowed to ask intelligent, informed questions.

• Your assertions will always be baseless.

• You will always be an evil conspiracy theorist.

• Their assertions will always be true.

• They will always be righteous.

And anyone who believes their talk of openness, compromise, healing, and unity is in for a rude awakening."

- https://www.sovereignman.com/

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Lest I be insensitively negligent in equally sharing my contempt, scorn,

and ridicule let's not forget the truly terrifying ANTIFA Amazons...

Click image for larger size... well, no, don't...

- CP

"How It Really Is"

"Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop…"

"Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop…"

by Michael Snyder

"Do you feel like another major crisis could erupt at any moment? If so, you are certainly not alone. Here in 2020, it has just been one thing after another, and we have come to expect the unexpected. Right now, so many people that I am hearing from are anticipating that more big trouble is just around the corner, but as we wait for “the other shoe to drop”, economic conditions all over the United States continue to rapidly deteriorate. For example, on Thursday we learned that the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits last week was the highest in four months:

"The US job market continues to suffer, and Thursday brought more bad news. Another 885,000 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week - an increase from the week prior and higher than the 800,000 claims that economists were expecting. The latest figures, which are adjusted for seasonal factors and reported by the Labor Department, are particularly grim since last week’s numbers were revised up to 862,000. And even before the revision, that week had been the highest level since mid-September."

This isn’t how the numbers were supposed to be trending. For four of the past five weeks we have seen the number of new unemployment claims go up, and experts are warning that we should expect things to get even worse as we head into winter: ‘US weekly jobless claims continue to head in the wrong direction,” Edward Moya, an analyst at the currency trading firm OANDA, wrote in a research note. ‘The labor market outlook is bleak as the winter wave of the virus is going to lead to more shutdowns.”

Could we soon see more than a million Americans filing new claims for unemployment each week like we did earlier in the pandemic. To put this in perspective, the previous all-time record prior to 2020 was just 695,000, and that old record was set all the way back in 1982. We absolutely shattered that record once COVID-19 started spreading widely in the United States, and we have been above that old record every single week throughout this entire pandemic.

Just think about that. We are seeing numbers that we have never seen before in all of U.S. history every single week, and now they are starting to climb higher once again thanks to the new lockdowns. In addition, the number of Americans that are collecting unemployment aid from two major federal programs is also on the rise again: "The number of jobless people who are collecting aid from one of the two federal extended-benefit programs – the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which offers coverage to gig workers and others who don't qualify for traditional benefits – surged to 9.2 million from 8.6 million for the week that ended Nov. 28.

But the number of people receiving aid under the second program – the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides 13 weeks of federal benefits to people who have exhausted their state aid – also rose from 4.5 million to 4.8 million."

By now, the “recovery” was supposed to be in full gear, but instead major companies keep laying off more workers at an astounding pace. For example, on Thursday we learned that Coca-Cola will be eliminating 12 percent of their entire U.S. workforce: "Coca-Cola is planning to cut 2,200 jobs, including 1,200 in the United States, as it faces declining sales during the pandemic. In the United States, where there were about 10,400 employees at the end of last year, the cuts represent roughly 12% of the workforce. In Atlanta, where the company is headquartered, about 500 jobs are being eliminated, the company said Thursday."

Coca-Cola wouldn’t be doing this if the U.S. economy was about “to turn a corner”. All of these big corporations that are letting workers go can see what is about to happen, and they are slimming their payrolls in an attempt to make it through the coming storm.

Meanwhile, Congress is getting close to approving yet another “stimulus package”, and the Federal Reserve is promising to do whatever it takes to support the financial markets. Trillions upon trillions of dollars are being slammed into the system, and as a result M2 is up more than 60 percent so far this year. In other words, our money supply has been increasing at an almost vertical rate in 2020. Back in November I included a chart in an article that I wrote which shows exactly what I am talking about. If you are not one of my regular readers, you can find that article right here.

For many years, many of us have been warning that hyperinflation would arrive someday. But now we can stop warning, because the process has actually started. Other industrialized nations have also been flooding their systems with new money, and this is really starting to drive up food prices all over the globe. The following comes from Zero Hedge:

"The reason this has suddenly become a hot topic is because while overall inflation remains subdued (we will spare a discussion here of why the CPI is purposefully distorted to stay as low as possible – readers can catch up here, here and here), food inflation has been on a tear in recent months. In fact, it has gotten so high that earlier this week Goldman published a report looking at “The Recent Spike In Food Inflation”, in which it noted that “in recent months, inflation has risen and surprised to the upside across a number of major EM economies (e.g. Turkey, South Africa, India, Brazil andRussia).” According to Goldman, one of the main drivers of these increases has been higher food inflation, which has coincided with a sharp increase in the price of some key agricultural commodities (e.g. grains, oils and soybeans).”

Sadly, this is just the beginning. Eventually, the food riots which have already started on the other side of the planet will start happening in the western world too. And as hungry people become increasingly desperate, I believe that eventually companies will start putting armed guards on food trucks. We aren’t quite there yet, thankfully, but things are really starting to get crazy out there. A few days ago I went to the supermarket again, and I really tried to economize and get things that were on sale, but I still spent more than 260 dollars on one cart of food. Just one cart!

As the cost of living continues to soar into the stratosphere, many American families are going to discover that they are no longer able to afford enough food for the week. And once millions upon millions of Americans get desperately hungry, that is when we will see absolutely insane economic riots in this country. All of these things are coming, and we definitely will not have to wait very long at all for “the other shoe to drop.”

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"The Gyre Widens"

"The Gyre Widens" *

by Jim Kunstler

"The mind-numbing weirdness of Joe Biden’s insertion into the election of 2020 - like the furtive groping of an intern in a cloakroom - only signals the Democratic Party’s reckless drive to self-destruction, dragging the republic over the edge of an abyss with it. How did this hollowed-out figure of a grifting old pol find himself pretending to national leadership, and in an historic moment of crisis that goes far beyond the mere wrecking of an election? Who wanted him there so badly, and why?

My guess would be Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and John Brennan anxious to stay out of prison, heading a long list of officials present and former who committed crimes trying desperately to protect them, with accessories aplenty across the aisle. That’s what this four-year coup has been about, snowballing criminality, culminating in an orgy of blatant ballot fraud. At this fraught stage of the drama, they’re hiding behind the pretense that all the old rituals of torch-passing must be observed for the sake of decorum, and they’re mistaken.

The Biden family’s moneygrubbing exploits in foreign lands had already been revealed in the previous act of sedition, the ridiculous impeachment attempt. In that episode, it was well-established in the public record that Hunter Biden grifted more than a million dollars out of the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, and that his father had stupidly bragged on tape about covering for him. Yet William Barr’s DOJ was already in the possession of Hunter’s laptop, chock full of evidence that Hunter was raking in way more millions from other countries, and that the loot was being distributed to his relatives. Why did they keep that from the president’s lawyers with the Mr. Trump in jeopardy of being railroaded for asking Ukraine’s president to have a look at it? Would Mr. Barr say they were protecting an ongoing investigation by keeping it all secret? What a lame excuse, under the circumstances.

Just as impeachment concluded in failure, Mr. Biden got smoked in the early primaries, only to triumph mysteriously in the March Super Tuesday voting. After all, a primary is the party’s own election, and they can engineer it however they want. So, they contrived to elevate someone already criminally culpable in the mind of any citizen paying attention and capable of adding two-and-two to get four. Weird, a little bit?

But then Super Tuesday segued right into the Covid-19 virus crisis, with all the destruction to livelihoods and interruptions of normal life that ensued, and the lingering odor of the Hunter Biden story wafted away in the bleak spring zephyrs. Only to return in the fall, because the fellow who ran the computer shop where Hunter B foolishly abandoned his laptop - one John Paul Mac Isaac - became annoyed that the FBI seemed to be ignoring it, and gave a copy of the hard-drive to Rudy Giuliani, who examined its contents closely and went public with it - quite a trove of evidence, with an added frosting of selfie porn photographs showing Hunter enjoying sex and drugs. You know the rest, with the news and social media striving to bury all of it for two weeks before the election.

So, the Biden family must be strongly motivated to finish the burial by getting into the White House, installing an attorney general who will lower that casket of turpitude into a grave, and whistle the back-hoes to fill it in. And while they’re at it, dig a few more holes in the ground to bury the treasonous activities of the Clintons and Barack Obama in matters that might be labeled “Uranium One,” “Skolkovo,” “Hillary’s Emails,” “the Iran Deal,” “Fusion GPS,” “John Brennan’s 2017 IC Report,” “the Mueller Investigation,” and more. Donald Trump had to be prevented from winning a second term at all costs, lest that burden of rot get spewed into any actual courtrooms like so much spoiled lunchmeat.

The trouble is, Mr. Trump actually does have the evidence, and he intends to use it after four years of being remorselessly f**ked around by his antagonists. So, the nation is at the point in this long, winding drama that has become a fight to the death and there will be no rituals of torch-passing just to keep up appearances that everything is functioning normally. Mr. Trump has the evidence of widespread, yes widespread, ballot fraud. He is the president, after all, and he has all the information. As he’s said more than once, he’s caught them all. And they know it.

Of course, the CIA and the FBI, those pillars of the Intel Community, are still trying to withhold what they can, but the president is not having it. He’s taking away the CIA’s most precious asset: its resources for making mischief on-the ground - its airplane fleet and its armaments, handing them over to the Pentagon - reducing the CIA to the simple task of analyzing signals from the world scene. And so, the CIA has been refusing to cooperate with the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, as a last gasp to preserve its long-running illicit prerogatives. That will eventually trigger the president’s invocation of the 2018 Executive order 13848, allowing, at long last, the arrest and prosecution of many desperate characters who tried to run away with the US Government.

But probably not before the last legal avenues have been traveled: Sidney Powell’s case against the Dominion vote system in the Supreme Court, a long-shot like all the other cases that the court is loath to touch; and the business of the alternate electoral college slates to be hashed out in the Senate on January 6, Vice-President Mike Pence, presiding. Democrats and their coastal elite supporters are not going to like it. If they call out their Antifa troops, those feckless weenies with their hoisted cell phones and stupid umbrellas are going to be crushed this time, not indulged like three-year-olds.

The wild-card all of a sudden is what the nation will also do about the foreign actors reportedly messing around with the government’s most critical computer systems. China? Iran? Russia? They’re a match for America’s own domestic enemies, who must be neutralized first before we’re capable of dealing with outsiders. The gyre widens."

- https://kunstler.com/

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DEC 18, 2020 - 11:12: "Pentagon Abruptly Halts Biden Transition Briefings, Leaving Officials 'Stunned'" "Axios' Jonathan Swan reports a bombshell potential major disruption in a key part of the presidential transition before President-Elect Joe Biden is sworn in on January 20: the Pentagon has without warning or explanation halted Biden's intelligence transition briefings. Reports Swan: "Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation with the transition of President-elect Biden, shocking officials across the Defense Department, senior administration officials tell Axios."

December 18, 2020 by IWB: "BOOM! Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller has ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation with the transition of President-elect Biden. President Trump to meet Acting Defense Secretary Miller in the Oval Office at 3:30 pm today."

Ponder this, Good Citizen... 

what could this most-unusual occurrence possibly mean?