"We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s"

"We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful 

Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s"

by Michael Snyder

"I warned that an economic collapse was coming, and an economic collapse is exactly what we got. 2020 was a “personal financial disaster” for 55 percent of all Americans, approximately 12 million U.S. renters are “at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments”, the Aspen Institute is projecting that up to 40 million people could be facing eviction when the rent and mortgage moratoriums finally end, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed since the COVID pandemic began.

Nobody can point to a time since the Great Depression of the 1930s when the U.S. economy was in worse shape than it is right now. Unfortunately, there are no indications that this nightmare is going to end. Last week, another 900,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits: "Another 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, President Donald Trump’s last in office, a snapshot of the significant labor market challenges facing President Joe Biden. An additional 423,000 people in 47 states filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program created to help gig and self-employed workers."

Prior to 2020, the all-time record for new unemployment claims in a single week was just 695,000, and that old record was set all the way back in 1982. We shattered that old record early in 2020, but the bigger story is what has happened since we broke it. At this point, the number of new claims for unemployment benefits has been above 695,000 for 44 weeks in a row. That is starting to come close to a full year.

If that does not qualify as a “collapse”, then you are probably using a completely different definition of the word than I am using. This unemployment crisis has hit low wage workers particularly hard. At this point, even Fed officials are being forced to admit that the unemployment rate for low wage workers “is above 20%”.

Many of those low wage workers used to be employed in the restaurant industry, but the restaurant industry continues to be mired in the worst stretch that it has ever encountered: "The number of “seated diners,” a daily measure with which OpenTable tracks walk-ins and diners with reservations, in the week through January 20 in the US was down on average by 57% from the same period last year."

The hospitality industry also typically employs large numbers of low wage workers, and we are being told that last year was the “worst year on record” for that industry: "According to STR, Inc, a hotel industry market data firm, 2020 was absolutely the worst year on record for hotels as industrywide profits fell to zero, as the virus pandemic and resulting government-enforced social distancing measures kept travelers at home.

STR’s latest report said the US hotel occupancy rate was 44% for the year, down from 66% in 2019. This was the lowest occupancy rate on record. In an earlier STR report, we noted weeks ago that the industry had one billion unsold room nights for the first time, surpassing the record of 786 million in 2009."

Countless numbers of small business owners have also been absolutely devastated by this economic downturn. Each month, thousands of small businesses die a permanent death, and the outlook for the months ahead is not good at all. The Epoch Times recently interviewed one small business owner in Minnesota who admitted that “the fallout by this time next year will be shocking”: "The ramifications of the forced shutdowns on thousands of small businesses in Minnesota is going to be huge, says Julie Schroeder, who owns two craft stores in the Minneapolis metro area. “The fallout by this time next year will be shocking,” she told The Epoch Times on Dec. 30, 2020."

Meanwhile, north of the border small businesses are being destroyed at a staggering rate as well: "The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is warning that more than 220,000 businesses across the country are at risk of permanently closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CFIB, a lobby group that represents small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Canada, released a new report on Thursday that surveyed 4,129 members about business prospects through the pandemic. The survey found that 181,000 businesses – or one in six – are seriously contemplating permanently closing. That’s up from a similar survey conducted in July, which found that 158,000 businesses were at risk of closing."

In the end, if we can keep the amount of small businesses in the U.S. and Canada that go under to less than 20 percent that should be considered a major victory. Because I have a feeling that the final number is going to be well above that threshold.

And the Biden administration does not seem too sympathetic to the needs of small businesses at this point. For example, one new law that Biden is likely to sign would absolutely cripple small truckers: "Trucking industry experts expect Joe Biden’s presidency to seriously jeopardize many small American trucking companies, and the prospects of truck drivers who work as independent contractors. Biden is poised to sign a transportation law passed in the Democratic House and stalled in the then-Republican Senate in 2019. The Moving Forward Act had required commercial motor vehicles to maintain more than $2 million in insurance liability, more than doubling the existing $750,000."

Wouldn’t it be nice if our representatives in Washington were forced to take a basic course in economics before they were allowed to serve? The blind are leading the blind, and the economic nightmare that we are currently experiencing is eventually going to get a whole lot worse. But hopefully we can at least have a short period of time where things will plateau a bit before the next major trigger event happens.

So many people out there are really hurting right now, and it is not just financial pain that they are dealing with. The past several months have been excruciatingly painful for tens of millions of Americans, and the truth is that there are countless people out there that are emotionally shattered at this moment. If you are one of those people, just keep hanging in there. It will take some time, but you will get through this and you will recover. And I will continue to be here pumping out articles as I do my very best to try to help everyone make sense of a world that is going completely mad."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Grasse, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Life Is Truly A Ride..."

"Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up."

- Jerry Seinfeld

○

"Time, Life, and the Roller Coaster"

Remember when you were 10 years old, and summer felt like it lasted forever? Got a little older, not so bad, still plenty of time to do everything you wanted. Someone told me back then that time speeds up the older you get. Being young, and knowing everything as the young do, I of course ridiculed this idea. But guess what- it’s true. Now I view life, and time, as a roller coaster with just one enormous riser. As you climb the beginning towards the top time is slower to pass. At 30 or so you’re at the very top, then you start the fall towards the bottom. Faster and faster you go, as time goes by ever quicker. Weeks and months flash by, and you wonder where it all went, and as you descend ever faster you suddenly realize that somewhere on the tracks below there’s a solid brick wall or some other disaster awaiting your arrival. The only things you don’t know is where on the tracks ahead of you it is, or how soon you'll arrive. So, while you still can, you'd better appreciate even more the things you can enjoy, and the people whom you love and that love you, because the ride isn’t going to last forever... - CP

“Never Hate Your Enemies..."

“Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.”

- "Michael Corleone"

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." 

- John F. Kennedy

"Here We Are..."

"The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are."

- David Icke

“We Deserve To Be Eaten”

“We Deserve To Be Eaten”

by Karl Denninger

“Let's be clear about this folks: We deserve to be eaten. Yes, I said eaten. As in caused to assume room temperature. Then skinned. Then slathered in BBQ sauce (to cover the bad taste.) Then grilled. And consumed. And the people who should do it to you? Your children.

Now granted, that's harsh. And no, I'm not advocating it, I'm saying we deserve it. The people of this nation have no right to the love and respect of their offspring. None. Quite the contrary, we deserve to treated as food. We have managed to extract promises that cannot be kept and what's worse the attempt to do so is guaranteed to essentially enslave our younger generation.

I have for a long time lamented that the younger folks in our country seem to be very unmotivated, striving only to do what they have to in order to get by rather than being innovators and making a true effort to excel. I no longer hold this against them. I understand it. Their response to these abuses is non-violent and cannot be assailed - it is in fact logical. Let me ask you the obvious but damned uncomfortable question: Would you prefer the violent - yet still logical, considering what we've done to them - alternative?

We, the older people in this country who not only refused to act over the last four decades of financial fraud and abuse in both the private sector and government but in addition continue to refuse to act to stop it to this very day deserve it.

Even though this attitude and passive refusal by our youth has destroyed our nation's competitiveness, the root cause of it is our pig-headed acts and the demand to write checks we cannot cash, insisting that they cash them instead so we can feast while they starve.

We lose the fundamental right to do that with our offspring when our children reach 18 and no longer have a claim on our assets and earnings power in exchange for their sustenance and protection. Note that from birth to 18 while the relationship may have an essentially parasitic character to it there is a quid-pro-quo that we return to our kids. You can argue over whether this is just but not whether it's necessary, since an infant is physically incapable of survival and growth without outside assistance. That transition from a power relationship to one of equals, even friends, is one that is supposed to happen over time from birth to emancipation. It is in fact our jobs as parents - our only job - to execute on that.

But we've become pigs. We're not content to perform that task and discharge our responsibilities. When we discovered that we can't force our now-18 year olds to mow the lawn any more in exchange for an allowance, we then passed laws that tax them to cover our health care after we chose to be gluttonous jackasses, poisoning our bodies and then demanding the latest, most-expensive medical care that we cannot pay for ourselves. Worse, we let government and the "educational monopoly" design a system that is utterly rapacious and designed to screw our youth through uneconomic options sold to them as the "essential" educational background necessary for success.

Sure, there are exceptions. Some can claim those exceptions personally, but damn few can claim them socially. While you may claim you don't want to burden your children you still continue to vote for, support and allow government to continue to **** the next door neighbor's kid to get what you claim you deserve.

And don't tell me it matters if you're Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or otherwise. It does not. The fact of the matter is that no government can exist without the consent of the governed and no government can issue debt successfully if the people refuse to provide something that creditors can rely on for repayment.

We have the ability to stop all of this stupidity, from top to bottom. But we won't do it because we are afraid. And in response to that fear, instead of standing up to what we've done and accepting that we must take risk in order to right the wrongs we committed we instead choose to financially enslave those young adults we brought into this world, as if we bred them to be our slaves from the outset.

If you're wondering why I believe we deserve to be eaten - or our youth simply shut down and refuse to make their best effort - read the above paragraph as many times as you need to until it sinks in.

'Nuff said.”

- http://market-ticker.org

"All Of The Available Data..."

"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about 

as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."

- Morris Berman

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...

"Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?"

"Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?"

by Paul Rosenberg

"Aside from a breathless stream of headlines and a few random inputs, I haven’t seen many facts regarding the events of January 6th. Circumstances made things that way for me, and now I’m glad they did, because it set me up for the really important issue: Am I allowed to ask questions about this, or am I not?

Bear in mind that I haven’t voted for or otherwise championed Mr. Trump. (Nor did I support his opponents.) More than that, I really want to know the answers to these questions. Especially given the fallout from January 6th, honest answers to these questions matter a great deal. So, I’m going to stick my neck out and ask questions about this event that seem pertinent.

Question #1: What was the actual time line? As I was driving on the 6th, I flipped on the radio and heard Mr. Trump speaking. I was aware that there was going to be a rally in the capitol, and so I listened for a minute or so, just enough to get the tone of it; a rally on the same day electoral votes were counted concerned me. What I actually heard from Mr. Trump, however, was less than his strongest, and included something like, “I know you’re going to go down there…” combined with “patriotically and peacefully.” Hearing him mention “peacefully” comforted me. (Plus the fact that American conservatives take pride in being peaceful and courteous.)

And so I was rather shocked, not many minutes later, when a friend called and said something about the capitol. I responded along the lines of, “it sounds harmless enough”… whereupon I learned that protesters were already inside the building. Since then I’ve seen claims that Mr. Trump was a mile away, in the middle of his speech, when the capitol building was being broken into. So, between my own observations and the claims, I’d like to know what really happened when. Again, I honestly don’t know. What troubles me is that I haven’t seen the claim refuted, only ignored.

Question #2: Were agents provocateur involved? One of the random things I came across was a report from Michael Yon, perhaps the most experienced war reporter in the world, claiming BLM and Antifa agents provocateur led the break-in. This is a guy who should be able to tell. I’ve further seen reports that someone named Sullivan was a known BLM leader, and was at the vanguard of people entering the building. So, I don’t actually know that BLM and Antifa were involved with this, but I’d very much like to know. And once again, I haven’t seen this question addressed. Perhaps I’ve missed something conclusive on this, but the question deserves to be addressed with facts.

Question #3: Is thinking an election was rigged considered insane? This is the impression I get from about half of my headline stream: That anyone believing the recent election was rigged is flat-out insane. But for me, that’s a real problem, because I’ve experienced election rigging, personally. On top of that, I’ve known a lot of inside players in my home state, giving me many more reasons to believe in election rigging. That’s not proof that the November election was rigged, of course, but it’s clearly a reason for me to take seriously the possibility. And if I’m not allowed to ask, I have to wonder why.

As best I can tell, none of the loud voices (news networks, etc.) have analyzed what has been claimed as evidence. Again, I may have missed something, but I simply haven’t seen it. So far as I know, the courts have never examined it (they got rid of the cases on procedural grounds in every case I recall), nor did congress: the “insurrection” interrupted that, after which it was ignored. That sounds very convenient to me, but again, I could have missed a lot. So again I’d like to know: Is such a question permissible, or will I be punished for asking it?

Question #4: Aside from trespassing and a few broken windows, what harm was done?So far as I know, the answer is “not much,” though I may have missed something. A lady named Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed, but she was killed by the police, not the protesters. And details about other reported deaths are spotty. So, I think my question is valid.

Several hundred politicians were inconvenienced, of course, but that’s hardly a major issue. A congressional baseball team being murderously shot up not too long ago was a big deal, but that came and went with almost none of the fanfare and fallout we’ve seen since January 6th. So again I ask, precisely what harm was done? And I ask especially because I’ve seen words like “sacred” applied to this, and to me that reeks of idolatry and dogma, the opposites of reason and proportion.

Question #5: Where are the civil libertarians? I’ll admit that this one rather ticks me off. Tens of thousands of people have been ejected from the public square, not because they caused actual harm, but because someone thinks they’re part of an “insurrection.” Bear in mind that almost none of these people were anywhere near Washington, DC on the 6th. All they did was to fall within some algorithm produced by a surveillance capitalism company. (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

I’ve further heard that people have lost jobs and financing in precisely the same manner: They had nothing to do with the event, but were somehow associated with it. Either that’s a witch hunt or there’s massive and direct evidence against all those people… and it sure doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Since when do we impose penalties for insurrection without a serious finding of fact? And Ron Paul, for goodness sake? He’s a congenitally polite doctor, now old and retired. Disagree with him all you like, but to eject him from the public square is naked thuggery.

So again, I ask: Where are all the civil libertarians? They’re absent without leave, as best I can tell. Either that or it was always a charade, and their high-sounding rhetoric was just sucker-bait for the rubes.

If These Things Can’t Be Asked… Here’s where the rubber meets the road: If we cannot ask these questions, confident that we’ll be met with reason and proportion, we’re living in a tyranny.

What appears to be happening is an illogical statement being writ very large. This is the statement: Some people broke into the capitol and a few windows were broken, therefore our lives are in danger and we must stomp out all evildoers. Any connection between the first part of that sentence and the second is uncertain and (as best I can tell) unproven. And yet, the responses to January 6th treat it as completely verified.

And so, if these questions are not permissible, we are living in tyranny, and particularly under the tyranny of those who punish the asking. So many times we see the true importance of things only once we lose them, and this moment has been revelatory in just that way: We can now see why free speech must be held sacrosanct. Free speech is inherently oppositional to tyranny. It’s the canary in our coal mine. When we see free speech abandoned and punished, we can be certain that tyranny is upon us."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

So, if this blog suddenly disappears, as many have,

as the previous one did, you'll know why...

"How It Really Will Be"

 

Must Watch! "Bank Crisis Unavoidable; Stimulus Won't Save Economy; Economic Losses Will Be Alarming; Jobless"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Bank Crisis Unavoidable; Stimulus Won't Save Economy;

 Economic Losses Will Be Alarming; Jobless"

FUBAR, on steroids...

"Be Ready For Global Currency Reset And Central Bank Digital Currencies"

by Epic Economist,

"Be Ready For Global Currency Reset 

And Central Bank Digital Currencies"

"The global health crisis has impacted millions of lives and caused unprecedented damages to the economy of several countries, but it also brought to light a series of social and financial issues that were previously overlooked. In view of the unsustainability of the current financial model as well as the growing social upheaval in the face of the enormous inequality gap - which has been further expanded by the crisis -, economists, central bankers, politicians, and globalists have been treating the health crisis as a perfect opportunity to start the global currency reset.

Evidently, the reset will not come without huge consequences for the entire world population, including increased surveillance and dominance over our lives, greater dependence on governments, and according to some analysts, this elites' masterplan is just a delusional idea that will prompt people to grant some of their freedoms in exchange for a "greener economic plan" that will never be effectively put into practice. Meanwhile, the wealthy will find the perfect cue to pursue their infinite money fantasy by making Modern Monetary Theory policies permanent. That's why, in this video, we are going to expose how these changes will affect all of our lives, and discuss how we are already inevitably diving into the establishment's plan of widespread monitoring, endless money printing, and the creation of digital identities.

Recently, a new hot topic amongst world leaders and central bankers is how the sanitary outbreak has highlighted the need for a major change in the global financial and economic system. Central bank digital currencies are being developed by numerous countries but, of course, politicians and policymakers are justifying their creation as the next "obvious move" to make in a society where technology is taking over. 

By making extraordinary policies permanent, such as the limitless issuance of printed money, world governments are essentially making us more reliant on their financial "support" while they put the economy and financial markets in a huge bubble. Leaders are setting the stage for a financial catastrophe that will give us no choice but to accept their "help". In the United States, the Federal Reserve has already announced plans to launch a digital currency so that they could deposit UBI in digital wallets for all Americans. It sounds good in theory, but how would you feel knowing that cash will essentially have no more value and that federal agencies can track, block, and tax all of your virtual money transactions?

Considering that pretty much everything that is done in Wall Street offices is already digital, this transition is expected to happen smoothly. But, on the other hand, this will certainly trigger more job losses and accelerate the commercial real estate collapse. Meanwhile, with traveling stalling and remote working expanding, we're about to experience an irreversible transformation in the job market. Conversely, as more and more employees will be working from home, employers won't have to hire local workers. Instead, they will be able to employ highly qualified workers from places where wages are considerably lower, such as China and India. 

The U.S. middle class has already undergone unparalleled financial setbacks during the current recession, with millions of previously well-off families falling right into poverty in a timespan of months. The measures put in place to avoid the total meltdown of the country and to allegedly aid the American citizens have immersed this group in more debt, and amid a tragic outlook for the economy and the job market, debt canceling will sound like a practical option. However, what seems to be a debt reset to repair some of the damages caused by reckless government policies, is actually a plan to expand government power and suppressing liberty through enhanced surveillance state via real-time tracking worldwide. 

Initially, the introduction of such measures will be conceived as a response to the health crisis, but the creation of a digital identity that includes contact tracing and immunity passports are means to an end. They can sell us the idea of the formation of a new system that would improve the livelihoods of millions, but on the flip side of the coin, they will also guarantee access to private information that could be used by authoritarian governments to profile and police citizen behavior. And one thing we clearly learned about fascism from past crises is that it's better not to ever count on authorities not to abuse their power because they will if they can. So beware of the Great Reset, because just as all the other elites' plots, it's not as good as it sounds and, this time, it’s not only our finances but our freedoms that are on the line."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, “Biden Presidency = Obama Team 2021”

Gerald Celente,

“Biden Presidency = Obama Team 2021”

- https://trendsresearch.com/

The incomparable Gerald... lol

Gregory Mannarino, "WAKE UP! You Are Continually Being Lied To"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/21/21:

"WAKE UP! You Are Continually Being Lied To"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Foy Vance, Ed Sheeran, "Make It Rain"

Foy Vance, "Make It Rain", Original

Ed Sheeran's cover version, "Make It Rain"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Cradled in cosmic dust and glowing hydrogen, stellar nurseries in Orion the Hunter lie at the edge of a giant molecular cloud some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning nearly 25 degrees, this breath-taking vista stretches across the well-known constellation from head to toe (top to bottom). The Great Orion Nebula, the closest large star forming region, is right of center. To its left are the Horsehead Nebula, M78, and Orion's belt stars. Red giant Betelgeuse is at the hunter's shoulder, bright blue Rigel at his foot, and the glowing Lambda Orionis (Meissa) nebula at the far left, near Orion's head.

Of course, the Orion Nebula and bright stars are easy to see with the unaided eye, but dust clouds and emission from the extensive interstellar gas in this nebula-rich complex, are too faint and much harder to record. In this mosaic of broadband telescopic images, additional image data acquired with a narrow hydrogen alpha filter was used to bring out the pervasive tendrils of energized atomic hydrogen gas and the arc of the giant Barnard's Loop.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101023.html

"The Extra Ounce Of Power..."

"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can 

reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the 

extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even."

- Muhammad Ali

Chet Raymo, “The (Unattainable) Thing Itself”

“The (Unattainable) Thing Itself”

by Chet Raymo

“Clear water in a brilliant bowl,

Pink and white carnations. The light

In the room more like a snowy air,

Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow

At the end of winter when afternoons return.

Pink and white carnations- one desires

So much more than that. The day itself

Is simplified: a bowl of white, 

Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,

With nothing more than the carnations there.”

"Simplicity. Morning. Forty minutes till sunrise. Coffee. An English muffin. Sit on the terrace. The sky a deep violet. Then rose. Then gold. Simplicity. The senses fill to overbrimming, displacing thought. The moment is sweet and pure. Distilled. The shackles of conscience fall away. One simply is.

“Say even that this complete simplicity

Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed

The evilly compounded, vital I

And made it fresh in a world of white,

A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,

Still one would want more, one would need more,

More than a world of white and snowy scents.”

Now I wait with my eyes fixed on that place along the horizon where the Sun will rise. The sky itself holds its breath, anticipates the flash of green. I try, I try to empty myself, Zenlike, to become an empty vessel for nature to fill. A gathering vessel, brilliant edged. To exist entirely in the moment, outside of time, this moment, just now, now, as the disk of the Sun bubbles up on the sea horizon, that orb of of molten gold.

“There would still remain the never-resting mind,

So that one would want to escape, come back

To what had been so long composed.

The imperfect is our paradise.

Note that, in this bitterness, delight,

Since the imperfect is so hot in us,

Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”

It's no use, of course. No way to obviate the conscious mind. Perhaps a Zen master might do it, a mystic in transport, a drunken sailor who walks into a lamppost. Even as the Sun's disk inflates, swells, unaccountably huge, the mind parses, frames, construes. I close my eyes to shut out thought and the words fill up the space behind my eyelids. The thing itself is out of reach, the moment adulterated by mind. The blessing of consciousness. And the curse."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

(The three stanzas are Wallace Stevens' "The Poems of Our Climate.")

“Requiem for a Ladybug”

“Requiem for a Ladybug”

by Frankly Francis

“You lie still less than a foot away on top of the soft mouse pad that protects me from carpal tunnel syndrome. I noticed this morning, through eyes not yet clarified by my first coffee of the day, your presence in my study. Odd, I thought, that you would even be present now. It is certainly past your time of the year in these parts.

I had the presence of mind to reckon that your life must be short. Rather than remove you from my space, both physical and mental, I decided that if these were your final moments then my study could be your Hospice and I your companion.

Your flight and movement were a little chaotic, seemingly random. You nestled in the heat of the light in the globe of my desk lamp, you circled my cranium, you landed in various spots, and in and on various objects on my desk while I got about the business of the day.

Sometimes I could see you, other times I did not know where you were. Then you would rise again to a new location. I wondered if you had any purpose in this, if there was more going on than my conscious programming allowed me to realize.

Perhaps it was, in your reality, some last business to be done? Or perhaps a ritual of your species’ existence? I hoped that if there is any pleasure in being a Ladybug that it was satisfying in some way, even so far from your natural habitat. Then you landed on your final resting spot and moved no more.

For me, my study is a place of many good things. I hope in your last moments it was to you as well. Rest in Peace my little Ladybug. And thanks for reminding me of the preciousness and fragility of life.”

- http://franklyfrancis.com/?p=1255.

The Poet: James Kavanaugh, “Searchers”

“Searchers”

“Some people do not have to search - 

they find their niche early in life and rest there,

seemingly contented and resigned. 

They do not seem to ask much of life, 

sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously. 

At times I envy them, 

but usually I do not understand them - 

seldom do they understand me. 

I am one of the searchers. 

There are, I believe, millions of us. 

We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. 

We continue to explore life, 

hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. 

We continue to explore ourselves, 

hoping to understand. 

We like to walk along the beach - 

we are drawn by the ocean, 

taken by its power, its unceasing motion,

its mystery and unspeakable beauty. 

We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers,

and the lonely cities as well. 

Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. 

To share our sadness with the one we love is 

perhaps as great a joy as we can know - 

unless it is to share our laughter. 

We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, 

for everything beautiful it can provide. 

Most of all we want to love and be loved. 

We want to live in a relationship that will not impede 

our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls. 

We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love. 

We are wanderers, dreamers and lovers, 

lonely souls who dare ask of life everything good and beautiful.”

- James Kavanaugh

The Daily "Near You?"

Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"River of No Return"

"River of No Return"

By Bill Bonner

"Today, we drift downriver…  It is the same stream we were on yesterday… leading from the crystal source, way up at the top of America’s imperial glory at the end of the 20th century… and then down to a muddy, bitter, confusing puddle in the 21st.

You’ll recall from yesterday’s Diary that there are only two important things a president has to do: He has to protect the American people… and their property. Like two banks of a river, they can never be entirely separated.

Wealth Erosion: We’ve been exploring the financial side… looking at the ways the feds have failed to protect Americans’ wealth. According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s calculation – shown here yesterday – normal, pre-fake-money growth rates would have produced twice as much additional GDP in the last decade, an extra $10 trillion to divvy up over the last 10 years. So most people are deprived of both wealth and income as a result of the feds’ fake economy. Even more egregious, the Federal Reserve gave some $7 trillion of fake money to the richest people in the nation. Relatively, everyone else is poorer.

More Capital: But today, we’re going to cross over to the other bank of the river. We will take a look at how America’s presidents have protected our freedom… or not. On neither side of the river is the U.S. blazing any new trails. This process of government-led impoverishment is nothing new. Or strange. Or mysterious. The Soviets and the Chinese took nearly full control of both sides of the river – their citizens… and their wealth. The results were stark and obvious – famines… empty shelves… shoddy products… bad food… and so forth.

But as we cast off, let’s take a look at this important island in the stream… connecting the two sides. Economists call it “capital formation.” It refers to the thing that separates free, rich societies from poor, slave economies. “Net real investment” is the amount of savings put to use training people, building new plants, and buying new “capital” equipment. That is, it’s the part of what we earn that is not consumed… but used to create more wealth.

It’s why wages are higher in the U.S. than in Mexico, for example; because America has more accumulated “capital.” Free people, once they get the taste for it, build capital. They save their money. They start new businesses. They create goods and services that add to the wealth of the whole group. Unfree people don’t. They are not allowed to. Or sometimes, they fear their new wealth might be taken away from them, so why bother? Or they are faked out by fake money, false interest rates, regulations, subsidies, bailouts, stimmy checks… and other abominations.

Small Government = Good: And here, we will make it even simpler for the new president to understand what he is supposed to do. Time and resources can either be used to create more wealth (capital formation)… or they can be consumed.Government, with some small exceptions, is a consumer of wealth. The private sector creates it. So the smaller and less intrusive the government, relative to the private sector, the richer and freer the society. There’s only so much time and space available. The more of it that is taken up by gun-toting, bossy-pants politicos, the less is left for the free, win-win, private sector. How hard can it be to remember that?

Small government = good. Big government = bad.

Power Balance: But there is no point putting this on Joe Biden’s desk. It is the last thing he will want to read. The governing elite gain power and wealth by forgetting that kind of logic. That is, after all, the aim of all politics – to hold onto power at any price… and use it to reward your friends and supporters.

Which is why America’s founders aimed to keep the feds from getting too big for their britches…by balancing the power of the executive with the power of the legislation… and restraining both with the power of the judicial branch…by having two houses of Congress. One was supposed to represent the people – carefully studying new laws to make sure they served the interests of their constituents. The other was meant to represent the states – which were sovereign members of the union… and able to walk away whenever it no longer served them…

by making sure that the House of Representatives had the “power of the purse”… recognizing that everything the feds did – whether passing out $2,000 stimmy checks or $2 billion defense contracts – came at the expense of the people. Leaving all spending bills to the discretion of the House guaranteed that no expense would be undertaken without the prior consent of the voters (through their representatives)…

by insisting that only Congress (not the president) had the ability to declare war and the responsibility to raise the troops and the money to pay for it…

by enacting a Bill of Rights to lay out clearly what the federales couldn’t do, no matter how good an idea they thought it would be at the time…

and by limiting the Republic’s money to “gold and silver”… so the feds couldn’t just print up paper money and use it for any foolish thing they wanted.

Out of Date: But all of those things seem quaint and out of date today. Congress never declares war… or raises money to cover the costs. Congressmen don’t even read the laws they pass. The power of the purse is meaningless; there is no money in the purse… Our money is fake. The states now look to the federal government for support. They are no longer sovereign and cannot leave the union or just say “no” to the feds’ rules and regulations.

The Bill of Rights is still there… but there is hardly a single part of it that has not been eroded away. All the feds have to do is declare an emergency – terrorism… plague… you name it – and they can get away with murder. Americans’ freedom has been taken away… one pettifogging regulation, one fake dollar, one lie… at a time.

Falling Apart: And now, the whole system seems to be coming apart. Nothing is too extreme. Or too absurd. Some 100 Democratic members of Congress have proposed a law expelling Republicans who challenged the election results. According to the charges, the Republicans are guilty of “insurrection.” Said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), expelling the duly elected representatives was a way of “healing” the nation. Representative Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, said that those who disputed the election results had “blood on their hands.”

While these were clearly over-the-top rhetorical excesses, they revealed a sad trend. Even the new president himself proposed to treat those who broke into the Capitol Building as “domestic terrorists.” The Wall Street Journal reports that one of his first priorities is to pass a law against “domestic terrorism.”

And now, the War on Terror comes home. Here’s General Stanley McChrystal – for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan: "…a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America. […] I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize."

Get ready, Guantanamo! Order some more yellow jumpsuits… More to come…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Memento Mori"

"Memento Mori"

by Ryan Holiday

"Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We're tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers."  - Seneca

Born with a chronic illness that loomed large throughout his life, Seneca was constantly thinking about and writing about the final act of life. "Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life," he said. "Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."

Most interestingly, he quibbled with the idea that death was something that lay ahead of us in the uncertain future. "This is our big mistake," Seneca wrote, "to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death." That was Seneca's great insight - that we are dying every day and no day, once dead, can be revived.

So we should listen to the command that Marcus gave himself. He wrote,"Concentrate every minute like a Roman on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions." The key to this kind of concentration? "Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life."

That's the power of Memento Mori - of meditating on your mortality. It isn't about being morbid or making you scared. It's about giving you power. It's to inspire, to motivate, to clarify, to concentrate like a Roman on the thing in front of you. Because it may well be the last thing you do in your life.

The Stoics were philosophers, but more than that they were doers. They didn't have room for big words or big ideas, just stuff that made you better right here, right now. As Marcus Aurelius said: "Justice, honesty, self-control, courage, don't make room for anything but it - for anything that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours."

- ryanholiday.net.

"None Of You Understand..."

 

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/21/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/21/21"

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

JAN 21, AT 7:35 AM: "US COVID Hospitalizations Reach Turning Point; Dr. Fauci Confirms Joining WHO's Gates-Backed Vaccine Plan: Live Updates"

JAN 21, AT 4:30 AM: "Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce COVID False Positives"

○

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Jan. 21, 2021 7:40 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 96,942,500 

people, according to official counts, including 24,496,018 Americans.

Globally at least 2,075,900 have died.

  Jan. 21, 2021 7:40 AM ET: 

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

- www.nytimes.com

○

"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/
○

- https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/

Musical Interlude: Adiemus, "Adiemus"

Adiemus, "Adiemus"

Full screen recommended.

"How It Really Is"

 

"Heading Down The Dangerous Road To Despotism"

"Heading Down The Dangerous Road To Despotism"

by Christine Flowers

"People often try and sound profound by quoting Santayana's apocryphal statement, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." But Santayana had his finger on the pulse of my nation in this moment. There is a lot of hysteria spreading among the cultured classes, but since they are the cultured classes, it is repackaged as concern for social norms and national security. What appears to the naked eye and the unbiased mind as a dance with totalitarianism is described by the dancers as "damage control."

Silencing voices that we don't like isn't new. It has happened since time immemorial. Having practiced immigration law for over two decades, I am intimately familiar with what happens when governments decide that certain thoughts are dangerous, certain views are unwelcome and certain questions should never be asked.

My asylum clients have ranged from the Haitian journalist who fled the bloody regime of Baby Doc Duvalier in the 1980s to an Albanian poll watcher who had the teeth beaten out of his mouth by political opponents. I represented a Pakistani schoolteacher who thought that girls should be given the same education as boys, and saw his one room school house burned to the ground in retaliation.

Add these people to the religious refugees, the Baha'i businessman in Iran who was stripped of his license because the mullahs called him an "apostate," the Maronite Christian police officer in Lebanon who was beaten with electrical chords by his Syrian persecutors, and the Evangelical Christian in El Salvador who was raped because she wouldn't stop preaching to the gangs.

When the tech companies started shutting down conservative social media accounts, starting with Donald Trump's, my friends on the left started ridiculing those of us who raised the red flag of censorship. But when a governmental role is taken up by non-governmental actors with the winking acquiescence and dog-whistle complicity of the official ruling body, you can no longer easily distinguish public acts from private ones.

Remember what happened in East Germany? The communist overlords used their Stasi secret agents to spy on possible dissidents. In order to make their jobs easier, they enlisted the help of average East Germans, the neighbors down the road and-chillingly-in the same homes as the targets. If you've ever seen the Academy Award winning movie "The Lives of Others," you know exactly what I'm referring to. Tina Rosenberg also mentioned this phenomenon in her book "The Haunted Land," which described what happened when the Stasi books were made public after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In many cases, wives found out that they had been spied on by their own husbands, children by their parents, and vice versa.

The horror was that ordinary human beings, private citizens, had been enlisted in the effort to silence the uncomfortable non conformists.

And then you have the memorable example of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who filled their Killing Fields up with the intelligentsia, professors and doctors and lawyers and other people with independent minds so they could more easily manage the masses. A friend of mind called what is happening now, this silencing from the left as a Khmer Bleu. I laughed, until I started crying.

That's why when I hear people say that it's whining and overkill to worry about the suspension and cancellation of conservative voices, I remember what happened in the past, and how it was excused. People are using those same excuses again, "public safety" and "keeping order" and "making people accountable." It is chilling that they do not hear themselves echoing the words of the totalitarian elders.

I do not agree that everything should be said. There are limits, and not every move to keep someone from speaking is a human or civil rights violation. But to suggest that someone who says "stop the steal" or who questioned the validity of an election is an enemy of the state, is itself a toxic injection into the civic body. It is also wrong to demand capitulation, penance and some sort of begged-for absolution from those who voted for and supported a president who is being compared to Hitler. As an aside, anyone who dares to compare anyone but the actual Hitler, to Hitler, is a pure and unadulterated anti-Semite, in my opinion.

So while it may seem trite to throw out quotes that end up on cards or embroidered on pillows to make a point, I don't think it's out of line to suggest that we crane our necks backwards to check on what happened to our ancestors. Ignoring the obvious is a very effective way to guarantee the inevitable. You can quote me on it."

- https://www.cagle.com/

○

Christine Flowers is a Philadelphian who loves the Eagles but can leave the cheesesteaks. She writes about anything that will likely annoy the majority of people, and in her spare time practices immigration law (which is bound to annoy at least some people.)

"The Dangerously Diminishing Returns on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus"

"The Dangerously Diminishing Returns 

on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The euphoria of ever greater monetary and fiscal stimulus overlooks the diminishing returns and higher risks generated by near-exponential increases in stimulus. I prepared a chart that graphically displays the extraordinary increases in stimulus and the declining results in the primary goals of economic policy: broad-based opportunity to get ahead and reducing systemically destabilizing wealth inequality.

Looking back on this era, the fatal irony that all this stimulus has rocket-boosted wealth and income inequality while gutting the bottom 90% will be glaringly obvious. It's actually glaringly obvious right now to those not blinded by euphoria. Consider this excerpt from the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, an article entitled Monopoly Versus Democracy (paywalled): "Like their forebears in the early twentieth century, today's Americans have experienced decades of growing inequality and increasing concentrations of wealth and power. The last decade alone witnessed nearly 500,000 corporate mergers worldwide. Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans." (Editor's note: emphasis added.)

In most industries, a few companies control the field, dictating terms, squeezing out competitors, and using differential pricing to extract cash and power. Three companies control digital advertising, four companies dominate beef packing, and an ever-shrinking number own the country’s hospitals.

While RobinHood stock traders may reckon their hot hand will boost them into the ranks of millionaires, it would take trillions of dollars of gains to even move the needle of our immense inequalities of capital and income: the top 10% skim 97% of capital income and own about 90% of all capital.

The ugly truth is all the monetary and fiscal stimulus of the past decade has only served to boost wealth and income inequality and reduce opportunity to gain a foothold in the New Gilded Age. In terms of offering those in the bottom 50% a stake in all this ballooning wealth, monetary and fiscal stimulus has failed completely: The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans.

The euphoric faithful also overlook the systemic risks created by exponential increases in stimulus that overwhelmingly benefit only the top 10%, top 1% and most especially the top .01%. The exponentially asymmetric benefits of ever greater stimulus generate social disorder that eventually breaks down the entire social order, while the exponential increases in debt, leverage and speculation increase the risks of a systemic financial collapse.

Allow me to translate the risible claims of Jay Powell and Janet Yellen that their stimulus policies haven't boosted wealth inequality to the moon: Let them eat cake. And we all know how that worked out."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/