"Let the Games Begin!"

"Let the Games Begin!"

By Bill Bonner

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Today, we turn away from Washington and look to Wall Street for our usual dose of claptrap. And yesterday… in what must be some kind of Bubble Climax… the price of a video game company purveyor, GameStop, traded as high as $370… and then up above $500 in this morning’s pre-market. That’s almost 80 times higher than its price this time last year… and more than 26 times higher than it was at the start of this year.

Every oldtimer on Wall Street knows that you’re supposed to buy low and sell high. But this is no “oldtimers’” market. This is a casino, where gamblers bet against each other… all with chips furnished by the Federal Reserve. What played out in the stock market yesterday was a high-stakes poker game between those betting that GameStop shares would go down – mainly a couple of hedge funds – and those betting that they could force the share price up.

Fake and Foolish: But perhaps readers are in need of some context… as we were. On the banks of the East River, as well as on the banks of the Potomac, almost everything is now fake and foolish. There is no star to steer by… no fixed point of reference… no magnetic North. Fake money has screwed up everything – markets as well as politics.

U.S. stock markets fell yesterday – not enough to make any difference… but enough to make the headlines. MarketWatch has the news: "U.S. stocks book worst daily losses since October as Powell stresses long road to recovery and short squeeze drama plays out.

Stocks closed sharply lower Wednesday, leaving the Dow and S&P 500 index negative for 2021, on mixed earnings reports and after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell underscored the long road to economic recovery ahead, following the central bank’s first policy meeting of 2021. The Dow Jones Industrial Average skid 633.87 points, or 2.1%, to close at 30,303.17, posting its longest losing streak since Friday, February 28, 2020 when the market fell for seven straight trading days."

Gone Bananas: Dear Readers wisely pay little mind to what is happening on Wall Street. The Street has gone bananas. It’s supposed to discover what stocks are worth. Millions of careful investors with sharp pencils and sharper minds are supposed to tote up expected earnings and discount them to “present value,” based on their calculations of risk and interest rates.

But both pencils and minds have gone dull. By almost every measure you choose – comparing share prices to earnings, sales, book value, GDP, clicks, electricity consumption, the nap on wooly caterpillars… you name it – stocks are overpriced. It’s not hard to see why. Interest rates are phony. And at negative real yields (adjusted for price inflation), any stream of earnings is an Amazon of liquidity and value. So young traders can think anything they want. And tuning into chat rooms such as WallStreetBets, they can make a sport of it.

Like a Rocket: In the case at hand, a pair of hedge funds saw that GameStop was overbought. Headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, it had respectable sales of $5.2 billion in its last full financial year, ending October 31, 2020. But it lost $275 million during that period. A company that loses $275 million per year is not a moneymaker; it’s a money destroyer.

And yet, at its peak, the company was priced as if it had discovered the Holy Grail. Or developed an eternal youth drug. Or inked a contract to sell Donald Trump’s new autobiography, “How I Made America Great Again. LOL!” Of course, it had not. And that’s the point, as Bloomberg’s Matt Levine pointed out. You don’t need to do all that math and research anymore. You just buy a company with a rocket emoji next to its name. The rocket 🚀 is all you need. (The insiders must be selling stocks like crooks unloading stolen money from the getaway car.)

Earlier this year, the hedge funds sold the shares of GameStop short. That is, they sold shares in the company that they didn’t own… betting that the stock would be a lot cheaper when they had to cover their bets. This may be a rocket, they said to themselves, but it is soon going to explode in mid-air and fall to the ground.

YOLO: On the other side were the proto-momo (momentum) players. Every market has its buyers and sellers, its winners and losers. And it’s the momo guys who are setting the pace in this one. The spirit of it was further revealed in a comic video making its way around the World Wide Web. In it, The Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix, explains to his interviewer host, played by Robert De Niro, that the baby boomers have essentially destroyed the economy.

Millennials have no chance, says The Joker, of ever enjoying the financial success of their parents and grandparents. They might as well take their pittance – from unemployment or stimmy checks – and roll the dice.

In the case of GameStop, the momo delinquents (the “longs”) expected to cash in on the new name recognition and dumb luck. After all, everything goes up, doesn’t it? And there was so much “short interest” on the other side, they saw an opportunity to squeeze the shorts, adding to the excitement, the drama, and the profits. If the longs could bid up the price, the shorts would be forced to “cover” – buy the shares at a higher price… and thus push the price even higher.

As it turned out, they pushed up the price so high – with the help of “short covering” – that the hedge funds had to retire from the field, leaving their horses dead on the field – with 100% losses. Between them, buyers and sellers, GameStop was the most traded stock in the world this week. And it’s all good, pointless fun. YOLO. (You only live once)."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

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Related:

"Investors Launch Class Action Against Robinhood,  AOC Blasts Market Manipulation" "THIS IS A F**KING CRIME!!!"

JAN 28, AT 9:17 AM: "Gamestop Shares Are Collapsing, Pelosi Says 'Will Be Reviewing Issue'" "Raising margins, restricting access, blocking position-building, and widespread condemnation appears to have done the trick... for now."

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/28/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/28/21"

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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/28/21:

"Twisted! The Economic FREE-FALL Worsens, 

And This Is Bullish For Stocks"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

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

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Jan 28th, Updated Daily 

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

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Oh yeah...

"How It Really Is"

"Life Comes at You Fast, So You Better Be Ready"

"Life Comes at You Fast, So You Better Be Ready"

by Ryan Holiday

"In 1880, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his brother, “My happiness is so great that it makes me almost afraid.” In October of that year, life got even better. As he wrote in his diary the night of his wedding to Alice Hathaway Lee, “Our intense happiness is too sacred to be written about.” He would consider it to be one of the best years of his life: he got married, wrote a book, attended law school, and won his first election for public office.

The streak continued. In 1883, he wrote “I can imagine nothing more happy in life than an evening spent in the cozy little sitting room, before a bright fire of soft coal, my books all around me, and playing backgammon with my own dainty mistress.” And that’s how he and Alice spent that cold winter as it crawled into the new year. He wrote in late January that he felt he was fully coming into his own. “I feel now as though I have the reins in my hand.” On February 12th, 1884 his first daughter was born.

Two days later, his wife would be dead of Bright’s disease (now known as kidney failure). His mother had died only hours earlier in the same house, of typhoid fever. Roosevelt marked the day in his diary with a large “X.” Next to it, he wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”

As they say, life comes at you fast. Have the last 12 months not been an example of that? In December of 2019, the Dow was at 28,701.66. Things were good enough that people were complaining about the “war on Christmas” and debating the skin color of Santa Claus. In January, the Dow was at 29,348.10 and people were outraged about the recent Oscar nominations. In February 2020, when the Dow reached a staggering 29,568.57, Delta Airlines stock fell nearly 25% in less than a week, as people argued intensely over a message from Delta’s CEO about passengers reclining their seats. Even in early March, there were news stories about Wendy’s entering the “breakfast wars” and a free stock-trading app outage that caused people to miss a big market rally.

And that was just in the news. Think about what you busied yourself with at home during that same period. Maybe you and your wife were looking at plans to remodel your kitchen. Maybe you were finally going to pull the trigger on that Tesla Model S for yourself - the $150,000 one, with the ludicrous speed package. Maybe you were fuming that Amazon took an extra day to deliver a package. Maybe you were frustrated that your kid’s room was a mess.

And now? How quaint and stupid does that all seem? As of January 27, 2021 77 million people have been added to the unemployment rolls in the US. The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 100,579,200 people, according to official counts, including 25,564,952 Americans. Globally at least 2,165,600 have died. There have been runs on supplies. Hospitals are maxing out ventilators. The global economy has essentially ground to a halt.

Life comes at us fast, don’t it? It can change in an instant. Everything you built, everyone you hold dear, can be taken from you. For absolutely no reason. Just as easily, you can be taken from them. This is why the Stoics say we need to be prepared, constantly, for the twists and turns of Fortune. It’s why Seneca said that nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his expectation, because the wise man has considered every possibility-even the cruel and heartbreaking ones.

And yet even Seneca was blindsided by a health scare in his early twenties that forced him to spend nearly a decade in Egypt to recover. He lost his father less than a year before he lost his first-born son, and twenty days after burying his son he was exiled by the emperor Caligula. He lived through the destruction of one city by a fire and another by an earthquake, before being exiled two more times.

One needs only to read his letters and essays, written on a rock off the coast of Italy, to get a sense that even a philosopher can get knocked on their ass and feel sorry for themselves from time to time.

What do we do? Well, first, knowing that life comes at us fast, we should be always prepared. Seneca wrote that the fighter who has “seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist… who has been downed in body but not in spirit…” - only they can go into the ring confident of their chances of winning. They know they can take getting bloodied and bruised. They know what the darkness before the proverbial dawn feels like. They have a true and accurate sense for the rhythms of a fight and what winning requires. That sense only comes from getting knocked around. That sense is only possible because of their training.

In his own life, Seneca bloodied and bruised himself through a practice called premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils”). Rehearsing his plans, say to take a trip, he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent the trip from happening - a storm could spring up, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates, he could be banished to the island of Corsica the morning of the trip. By doing what he called a premeditatio malorum, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. He stepped into the ring confident he could take any blow. Nothing happened contrary to his expectations.

Second, we should always be careful not to tempt fate. In 2016 General Michael Flynn stood on the stage at the Republican National Convention and led some 20,000 people (and a good many more at home) in an impromptu chant of “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!” about his enemy Hillary Clinton. When Trump won, he was swept into office in a whirlwind of success and power. Then, just 24 days into his new job, Flynn was fired for lying to the Vice President about conversations he’d had with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. He would be brought up on charges and convicted of lying to the FBI, and eventually pardoned by President Trump.

Life comes at us fast… but that doesn’t mean we should be stupid. We also shouldn’t be arrogant.

Third, we have to hang on. Remember, that in the depths of both of Seneca’s darkest moments, he was unexpectedly saved. From exile, he was suddenly recalled to be the emperor’s tutor. In the words of the historian Richard M. Gummere, “Fortune, whom Seneca as a Stoic often ridicules, came to his rescue.” But Churchill, as always, put it better: “Sometimes when Fortune scowls most spitefully, she is preparing her most dazzling gifts.”

Life is like this. It gives us bad breaks - heartbreakingly bad breaks - and it also gives us incredible lucky breaks. Sometimes the ball that should have gone in, bounces out. Sometimes the ball that had no business going in surprises both the athlete and the crowd when it eventually, after several bounces, somehow manages to pass through the net.

When we’re going through a bad break, we should never forget Fortune’s power to redeem us. When we’re walking through the roses, we should never forget how easily the thorns can tear us upon, how quickly we can be humbled. Sometimes life goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.

This is what Theodore Roosevelt learned, too. Despite what he wrote in his diary that day in 1884, the light did not completely go out of Roosevelt’s life. Sure, it flickered. It looked like the flame might have been cruelly extinguished. But with time and incredible energy and force of will, he came back from those tragedies. He became a great father, a great husband, and a great leader. He came back and the world was better for it. He was better for it.

Life comes at us fast. Today. Tomorrow. When we least expect it. Be ready. Be strong. Don’t let your light be snuffed out.

- https://ryanholiday.net/

"If Only..."

“How do the geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us; there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”

- Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross

"Be Ready For Retail Apocalypse, Massive Store Closures And Bankruptcies In 2021"

Epic Economist,

"Be Ready For Retail Apocalypse, 

Massive Store Closures And Bankruptcies In 2021"

"The Coming Revolt of the Middle Class"

"The Coming Revolt of the Middle Class"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The Great American Middle Class has stood meekly by while the New Nobility strip-mined $50 trillion from the middle and working classes. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor and the lower 90% of the workforce to the New Nobility and their technocrat lackeys who own the vast majority of the capital: "Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018."

Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech/ monopolies/cartels /financiers? The basic answer is the New Nobility's PR has been so persuasive and ubiquitous: soaring inequality and Neofeudalism has nothing to do with us, it's just the natural result of technology and globalization - forces nobody can resist. Sorry about your debt-serfdom, but hey, your student loan payment is overdue, so it's the rack for you.

The recent Foreign Affairs article referenced here last week "Monopoly Versus Democracy"(paywalled) describes the net result of the economic propaganda that the strip-mining of the working and middle classes was ordained and irresistible: Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. That's how far we've fallen:

"As the journalist Barry Lynn points out in his book "Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People," the robber barons shared with today's high-tech monopolists a strategy of encouraging people to see immense inequality as a tragic but unavoidable consequence of capitalism and technological change. But as Lynn shows, one of the main differences between then and now is that, compared to today, fewer Americans accepted such rationalizations during the Gilded Age. Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. Back then, a critical mass of Americans refused to do so, and they waged a decades-long fight for a fair and democratic society." (emphasis added)

The bottom 90% of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized: debt has been substituted for capital. Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier, which owns and profits from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the bottom 90% afloat for the past 20 years.

As I've often observed here, globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests. Everyone else has been been reduced to debt-serfs and peasants who now rely on lotteries and luck to get ahead: playing the stock market casino or hoping their mortgaged house in an urban sprawl on the Left or Right coasts doubles in value, even as the entire value proposition for living in a congested urban sprawl vanishes.

America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide of Neofeudal Pillage. Our leadership's "plan" is benign neglect: just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses (the technocrat term is Universal Basic Income UBI) to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the New Nobility's pillaging of America and the planet.

There's a lot of bright and shiny PR about rebuilding infrastructure and the Green New Deal, but our first question must always be: cui bono, to whose benefit? How much of the spending will actually be devoted to changing the rising imbalances between the haves and the have-nots, the ever-richer who profit from rising debt and the ever more decapitalized debt-serfs who are further impoverished by rising debt?

As I explain in my book "A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet", people don't want to just get by on UBI, they want an opportunity to acquire capital in all its forms, an opportunity to contribute to their communities, to make a difference, to earn respect and pride.

That our "leadership" reckons bread and circuses is what the strip-mined bottom 90% want is beyond pathetic. The middle class has meekly accepted the self-serving claim of the New Nobility that the $50 trillion transfer of wealth was inevitable and beyond human intervention. But once the stock market and housing casinos collapse, the last bridge to getting ahead-high -risk gambling - will fall into the abyss, and the middle class will have to face their servitude and powerlessness.

That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally revolt and start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Is This It? BIG STOCK MARKET CRASH?"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Is This It? BIG STOCK MARKET CRASH?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Related:

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/27/21"

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"

Gnomusy (David Caballero), 

"Footprints On The Sea"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. 

About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120924.html

"Focus on the Good: Raise Your Vibration"

"Focus on the Good: Raise Your Vibration"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOm

"There are many ways to raise your vibration including thinking positive and uplifting thoughts. Everything in the universe is made of energy. What differentiates one form of energy from another is the speed at which it vibrates. For example, light vibrates at a very high frequency, and something like a rock vibrates at a lower frequency but a frequency nonetheless. Human beings also vibrate at different frequencies. Our thoughts and feelings can determine the frequency at which we vibrate, and our vibration goes out into the world and attracts to us energy moving at a similar frequency. This is one of the ways that we create our own reality, which is why we can cause a positive shift in our lives by raising our vibration.

We all know someone we think of as vibrant. Vibrant literally means “vibrating very rapidly.” The people who strike us as vibrant are vibrating at a high frequency, and they can inspire us as we work to raise our vibration. On the other hand, we all know people that are very negative or cynical. These people are vibrating at a lower frequency. They can also be an inspiration because they can show us where we don’t want to be vibrating and why. To discover where you are in terms of vibrancy, consider where you fall on a scale between the most pessimistic person you know and the most vibrant. This is not in order to pass judgment, but rather it is important to know where you are as you begin working to raise your frequency so that you can notice and appreciate your progress.

There are many ways to raise your vibration, from working with affirmations to visualizing enlightened entities during meditation. One of the most practical ways to raise your vibration is to consciously choose where you focus your attention. To understand how powerful this is, take five minutes to describe something you love unreservedly—a person, a movie, an experience. When your five minutes are up, you will noticeably feel more positive and even lighter. If you want to keep raising your vibration, you might want to commit to spending five minutes every day focusing on the good in your life. As you do this, you will train yourself to be more awake and alive. Over time, you will experience a permanent shift in your vibrancy."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

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Greenred Productions: "Happiness Frequency"

"Happiness frequency music with binaural beats alpha waves. 

Alpha waves will help to release serotonin, 

dopamine and endorphins during your relaxation session."

"In Ordinary Times..."

"In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is. If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its way into our minds, there are plenty of things we can do to drive the intruder away. We can get the car out or go to a party or to the cinema or read a detective story or have a row with a district council or write a letter to the papers about the habits of the nightjar or Shakespeare's use of nautical metaphor. Thus we build up a defense mechanism against self-questioning because, to tell the truth, we are very much afraid of ourselves."

- Dorothy L. Sayers

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"The world is a comedy to those that think,

 a tragedy to those who feel. " 

- Horace Walpole, In a Letter, 1770

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

"I Asked Life..."

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/27/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/27/21"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

JAN 27, AT 9:18 AM: "Japan, EU Desperate For More COVID Jabs As Global Cases Top 100MM: Live Updates"

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Jan. 27, 2021 2:15 PM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 100,579,200 

people, according to official counts, including 25,564,952 Americans.

Globally at least 2,165,600 have died.

  Jan. 27, 2021 2:15 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/
○

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

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Coronavirus World Map: Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak

January 27, 2021 8:42 AM ET

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Where I Live:

- CP

"Sic Transit Gloria Trumpi, Part II"

"Sic Transit Gloria Trumpi, Part II"

by Bill Bonner

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Dear Donald… So sorry to hear how it turned out – the whole MAGA thing…People have no sense of gratitude, do they? We heard that when you got back to Mar-a-Lago in Florida last week… you were greeted by signs towed behind an airplane. “TRUMP WORST PRESIDENT EVER,” one banner read… While another said, “TRUMP YOU PATHETIC LOSER GO BACK TO MOSCOW.” What kind of way is that to treat an aging patriot? Must be depressing, huh?

Fake News: Word on the street is that the staff has locked up the guns and put all sharp objects out of reach. Probably fake news. Also probably fake news is this from Newsweek: "Donald Trump May Struggle to Pay Back His Empire’s Spiraling Debt". "Experts say that former U.S. President Donald Trump may find it difficult to pay back the mountain of debt his empire owes over the next four years, with revenues of some of his key businesses plunging amid the coronavirus pandemic and his reputation bruised by two impeachments."

And here’s The Washington Post piling on: "Donald Trump returns to his company this week as it faces a deepening crisis, with key properties bleeding revenue and its bankers, lawyers and customers fleeing the company. Financial disclosure forms, filed by the former president as he left office, revealed that his hotels, resorts and other properties had lost more than $120 million in revenue last year, as the pandemic forced long-term closures and kept customers home.

Those losses were worst in the places where Trump could least afford it: His Washington hotel, which has a $170 million loan outstanding, saw revenue drop more than 60 percent. His Doral resort in Miami – also carrying a huge debt load – saw a 44 percent drop.

On Thursday, the company’s troubles grew: One of its banks and one of its law firms said they would cut their ties with the Trump Organization. They are the latest in a string of vendors and customers who severed their relationships with the company after Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol directly after he addressed them at a rally."

It must be tough being a pariah.

Count on Us: The fake news media is accusing you of all kinds of things now. But you can count on us; we’re not falling for it. We’ve heard you say a lot of dumb things over the years, but we never heard anything that sounded like you were a “white supremacist.” And we don’t hold you responsible for the COVID-19 death toll. What do they think you are, a miracle worker? Besides, the United Kingdom has even more coronavirus victims per million. Why aren’t they talking about that?

As for the folks breaking into the Capitol… well… how were you supposed to know your audience was full of half-wits? And now, they’re on your case about that, too…

Nationwide Manhunt: Yes, a nationwide dragnet is underway… for your biggest supporters. From The Wall Street Journal… "FBI field offices from Arizona to New York have fanned out to make arrests, search homes and interview witnesses, family members and associates. Homeland security agents and local law enforcement have also taken part in the investigation, according to the filings and people involved. “The scope and scale of this investigation and these cases are unprecedented not only in FBI history, but probably DOJ history,” said Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which is overseeing the prosecutions."

Prosecutors will also be looking for people who want to cooperate.  Driving into Baltimore yesterday, we passed three – 3! – billboards urging us to snitch on our friends and neighbors. “Seeking Information” they said… “Call 1-800-CALL-FBI.” It looks like this “domestic terrorism” hustle is going forward. They are trying to enroll the whole population into an army of tattletales.

And according to ABC News, the shock-and-awe campaign is working: "Teen speaks out after alerting FBI about father’s alleged role in US Capitol siege. A Texas teenager who alerted federal authorities about his father’s alleged role in the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol says he wants others to know that “it’s OK to come forward.”

Ok? It’s better than okay. To hear the press tell it, turning in your own father is a heroic act of patriotism… like the FBI agents who encouraged Muslims to commit acts of “terrorism” so they could arrest them… or the Soviet school children who were urged to report their parents for “counter-revolutionary views.” And, Donald, we hope you’re not hiding any of these desperadoes in your attic.

Fake Conservatism: But we just wanted to write to say that the only thing we blame you for is that you ran for president as a “conservative” Republican and not a liberal Democrat. You were a Democrat for most of your life. And your programs were more in line with the liberal Democrat agenda. After all, you’ve always been a Big Government kind of guy. You promised to balance the budget and drain the Swamp. But then you ran the biggest deficits in history… added debt faster than anyone ever had… and “printed” beaucoup dollars to cover it.

And where did you think all that new money would go? Into the Swamp, of course. Not only did you stab real conservatives in the back with your fake conservativism, you also gave Big Government Democrats a whole new way to exterminate them. If you’d called yourself what you really are – a big-government, big-spending, big-jackass Democrat – it might be the Democrats who were hiding in attics.

Instead, thanks to you, they control both houses of Congress and the White House, too. And when they want to show the world how awful conservatives are, all they have to do is hold up your photo… along with a photo of that goofy guy in horns. And if they get any pushback from a few conservative survivors, their “war on domestic terrorism” should finish them off.

End Result: And now, with no meaningful opposition, the government-as-the-solution-to-every-problem crowd is running wild… Joe Biden signed 30 “executive orders” in his first three days in office. Spending proposals are “off the charts.” They think they can run up trillions in new debt… forgive student debt… delay rent payments… and pass out stimmy checks every month. You know where this leads. Well… maybe you don’t. But we do. It’s sure to result in bigger government, a deeper Swamp, less freedom to do what you want or say what you think…and eventually, in a full-blown national disaster. Donald, you really messed up."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"Believe Them..."

"When someone shows you who they are,

 believe them the first time."

- Maya Angelou

"That's All Folks!"

"That's All Folks!"

by CJ Hopkins

"Literal Russian-Asset Hitler, the Latest Greatest Threat to Western Democracy, the Monster of Mar-a-Lago, Trumpzilla, Trumpenstein, the Ayatollah of Orange Shinola, has finally been humiliated and given the bum-rush out of Washington by the heroic forces of the GloboCap “Resistance,” with a little help from the US military. The whole thing went exactly to script.

Well … OK, not quite exactly to script. Despite four years of dire warnings by the corporate media, the Intelligence Community, Hollywood celebrities, the Democratic Party, faux anti-fascists, fake-Left pundits, and pretty much every utterly deluded, Trump-obsessed liberal with an Internet connection, there was no Hitlerian “Reichstag Fire,” no Boogaloo, no Civil War II, no coup, no white-supremacist uprising.

Nothing. The man simply got on a chopper and was flown away to his Florida resort. I know, you’re probably thinking … “Wow, how embarrassing for the GloboCap ‘Resistance,’ being exposed as a bunch of utterly shameless, neo-Goebbelsian propagandists, and liars, and hysterical idiots, and such!” And, in any other version of reality, you’d have a point … but not in this one. No, in this reality, “Democracy Has Prevailed!”

Yes, it was touch and go there for a while, as there was no guarantee that the Intelligence Community, the military-industrial complex, Western governments, the corporate media, supranational corporations, Internet oligarchs, and virtually every other component of the global-capitalist empire could keep one former game show host with no real political power whatsoever from taking over the entire world.

Still, Trump’s failure to go full-Hitler, or even half-Hitler, was somewhat awkward. I mean, you can’t whip millions of people into a four-year frenzy of fear and hatred of a clearly powerless ass-clown president, and portray him as a Russian Intelligence asset, and the Son of Hitler, and all the rest of it, and then just drop the act cold and laugh in their faces. That would leave them feeling like total morons who had just spent the last four years of their lives being lied to and emotionally manipulated, or like members of a cult, or something.

Fortunately, for GloboCap, this was not a major problem. All they had to do was produce a cheap simulation of “Trump going full-Hitler.” It didn’t even have to be convincing. They just needed a semi-dramatic event to plug into the official narrative, something they could call “an attempted coup,” “an insurrection,” “an attack,” and so on, and which millions of credulous liberals could hysterically shriek about on the Internet. The “Storming of the Capitol” did the trick.

They held a dress rehearsal in Berlin last August, and then gave the real performance in the Capitol Building (this time it was for all the money, so they went ahead and got a couple people killed). It wasn’t very hard to pull off. All they actually had to do, in both Berlin and DC, was allow a small fringe group of angry protesters to gain access to the building, film it, and then pump out the “attempted coup” narrative. It made no difference whatsoever that the “domestic terrorists” (in both Berlin and Washington) were a completely unorganized, unarmed mob that posed absolutely zero threat of “staging a coup” and “overthrowing the government.” It also made not the slightest difference that Trump didn’t actually “incite” the mob (yes, I put myself through the agony of reading every word of his speech, which was the usual word salad from start to finish). We’re talking propaganda here, not reality.

The so-called “Violent Storming of the Capitol” set the stage for the main event, which was the show of force we have all just witnessed. Someone (I’m not entirely clear who) ordered in the troops, tens of thousands of them, locked down Washington, erected fences, set up road blocks and military check points, and otherwise occupied the government district. It looked like any other US-military post-“regime-change” occupation, because that’s what it was, which was precisely the point. As I have been repeating for… well, for over four years now, it was always going to end this way, with GloboCap making an example of Trump and reminding everyone who is really in charge.

Look, let’s be clear about these last four years, because there are all kinds of crazy theories going around (not to mention the official GloboCap narrative), but what actually happened is pretty simple. Here’s the whole story, as concise as I can make it.

Back in 2016, the American people, sick to the gills of global capitalism and its increasingly oppressive woke ideology, elected an unauthorized, narcissistic ass-clown to the highest office in the land. They did this for a variety of reasons, but mostly it was just a big “f*ck you” to the establishment. It was an act of rebellion against a government which they know is owned by unaccountable, supranational corporations and oligarchs who openly detest them.

It was an act of rebellion against a system of government they know they have no influence over, and are not going to have any influence over. It was an act of rebellion against global capitalism, the unopposed, global-hegemonic system which has dominated the world for the last thirty years … whether they realized what they were rebelling against or not.

This act of rebellion happened on the heels of Brexit (another such act of rebellion) and in the context of the rise of assorted “populist” movements all throughout the world. When Trump actually won in 2016, the global capitalist ruling classes realized they had a serious problem … a “populist” rebellion in the heart of the empire. So they suspended the Global War on Terror and launched the War on Populism.

The ultimate objective of the War on Populism was to neutralize this “populist” rebellion and remind the public who is actually running things. Think of the Trump era as a prison riot. In any maximum security prison, the prisoners know they can’t escape, but they can definitely raise a little hell now and then, which they tend to do when they get really tired of being abused and neglected by the prison guards.

Most prison riots run out of steam on their own, but if they go on too long or get too ugly, the penal authorities typically respond by shooting a few prisoners (usually the ringleaders), and reminding the inmates that they are in a prison, and that the owners of the prison have guns, whereas they have shivs made out of spoons and toothbrushes. This, basically, is what we’ve just experienced.

The global capitalist ruling classes have just reminded us who is really in charge, who the US military answers to, and how quickly they can strip away the facade of democracy and the rule of law. They have reminded us of this for the last ten months, by putting us under house arrest, beating and arresting us for not following orders, for not wearing masks, for taking walks without permission, for having the audacity to protest their decrees, for challenging their official propaganda, about the virus, the election results, etc. They are reminding us currently by censoring dissent, and deplatforming anyone they deem a threat to their official narratives and ideology.

In other words, GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except for a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a “field of flags” symbolizing “unity.” They even did the Nazi “Lichtdom” thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a “Mockingjay” brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.

And the lesson isn’t quite over yet… it won’t be over for a while. The “War on Populism” will simply morph into the “New Normal War on Domestic Terror,” which will become one more theater in the “Global War on Terror,” which has been on hiatus, and which will now resume. As I have pointed out repeatedly over the past four years, we appear to be headed toward a dystopian future in which there will essentially be two classes of people: (a) “normals” (i.e., those who conform to global-capitalist ideology and decrees); and (b) the “extremists” (i.e., those who don’t).

It will make no difference whatsoever what type of “extremists” these “extremists” are… religious-fundamentalist extremists, Islamic extremists, Christian extremists, right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, white-supremacist or Black-nationalist extremists, virus deniers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, anti-maskers, recalcitrant transphobians, anti-transhumanists, pronoun resisters, defiant oppositionalists, or whatever … the names don’t really matter. The point is, conform or be labelled an “extremist,” a “domestic terrorist,” or some other type of “antisocial person” or “social deviant,” or “potential threat to public health.”

I don’t claim to know every detail, but one thing seems abundantly clear. We are not going back to the way things were. GloboCap has been explaining this to us, over and over, for almost a year. They couldn’t have made it any more explicit. When they warned us to get ready because a “New Normal” was coming, they meant it. And now… well… here it is..."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/political/thats-all-folks