"They Can Always Print More Money But We Can't Print More Time"

"They Can Always Print More Money But We Can't Print More Time"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Space I can always recover... but time, never."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"No matter how much money I make, they will always print more. I can't print anymore time." The source of this quote is correspondent T.D., who shared the story of an acquaintance of his who was offered a high-paying and very demanding corporate position that would have left him nominally wealthier in terms of money but much poorer in terms of time and energy remaining after trading away the bulk of his time and energy for the higher pay. The acquaintance turned the position down and cut the number of hours he was working, with this explanation: "No matter how much money I make, they will always print more. I can't print anymore time."

The point here is that central banks and state treasuries can always print more money, a process which reduces the purchasing power of the money they've issued. We can trade more hours for more money, but this extra money buys less. No matter how much more of our time we trade for more of this created-out-of-thin-air currency, we will never be able to overcome their power to create near-infinite currency, which put another way is the power to devalue the money we trade our time for and thus devalue our time. 

This is an asymmetry that should inform our decisions going forward: They Can Always Print More Money But We Can't Print More Time. In other words, they can devalue the money we trade our time for at will but we can't create more time. As catalogued in the monumental history, "Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century," the history of governments' response to crisis is depressingly repetitive: virtually without exception, every government devalues its currency in response to the soaring costs of conflict (and placating elites) and the concurrent plunge in tax revenues.

The common experience seems to be that the government-issued money loses 90% or more of its value. In the era before central banks could create trillions of dollars with a few keystrokes, this was accomplished by recalling silver or gold coins and replacing them with coins with little intrinsic value. In the case of the mighty Ottoman Empire of the 1600s, the empire recalled all copper coins ("small money" used for everyday transactions) and restamped it at a face value triple the old value, in effect wiping out two-thirds of its purchasing power.

Diaries of commoners in every regime not shredded by war record that the 90% devaluation of the money was just as devastating as the floods, droughts, food shortages and soaring taxes that were all part and parcel of the official response to crisis. That money is losing purchasing power faster than we can earn more of it is a fundamental transformation. In the good old days of two generations ago, making 25% more money still added purchasing power to our incomes, even after deducting 5% for inflation (laughingly estimated at 2%) and another 10% in higher taxes paid because the extra income pushed us into a higher tax bracket. We still netted an additional 10% of purchasing power.

But if history is any guide, then we can anticipate 20% inflation (grossly underestimated by authorities to avoid outright revolt) and 20% higher taxes (often hidden in higher "user taxes" and other flim-flam) on our additional earnings, leaving us with less purchasing power even after we traded every available hour for the additional income. Stuck with trading our time for devaluing currency, we will be poorer in what really counts - our time and energy - and poorer in the purchasing power of our income.

This increases the temptation to gamble whatever money one has to outrace the authorities' devaluation, and indeed, 2020's rampant speculative bubbles generated a widespread illusion that the agile gambler could easily outrace the devaluation. For example, take $2,000, gamble it all on the highest-volatility stocks, and turn it into $200,000. Oops, and then run the fortune to zero. That's the problem with relying on a hot hand in the casino to avoid trading time for money: the vast majority of punters lose in the casino, especially when the tide that's been raising all boats ebbs away.

(Governments love gamblers who win, of course; if you live in a high-income tax state, add 9% to the federal tax rate of 32%, and be prepared to "share" 40+% of your casino winnings.)

The other approach is to reduce our need for money to a very low level so we're not forced to trade what we cannot create more of - time - for something that's rapidly losing value.

A second related approach is to trade our time for time-honored forms of money that have intrinsic value. While I have been on record since 2016 as saying positive things about cryptocurrencies, including my own proposal for a labor-backed cryptocurrency ("A Radically Beneficial World"), the historic stalwarts in the intrinsic value camp are gold and silver. But anything with intrinsic value will do: grain, tools, nails, shelter, etc.

Having the skills to generate goods and services of intrinsic value is very much like "printing money with our time" because our skills make our time valuable, not in terms of what government currency is worth but in terms of the value others find in the goods and services we generate with our skills and time.

History informs us that governments inevitably respond to crisis by devaluing their currency and by raising taxes. In the current era, the more money commoners earn, the more taxes they pay, as taxes are progressive. The less we earn, the less taxes we pay. Politically, this cannot change much, for as people become poorer, their ability to pay taxes diminishes. So taxes will rise on high earners, not on those earning relatively little. It may well be that every dollar of nominal gain in income will simply pay higher taxes. Is that really what you want to spend your time doing, paying higher taxes?

So what do we spend our precious time doing? Running the Red Queen's Race with devaluing currencies, or lessening our exposure to the theft of our time by currency devaluation and taxes? It's not an asymmetry we will have to address tomorrow, but the time will come when it presses on us like gravity itself."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "The Far Field"

"The Far Field"

I

"I dream of journeys repeatedly:

Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel

Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,

The road lined with snow-laden second growth,

A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,

Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,

And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,

The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,

Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,

Where the car stalls,

Churning in a snowdrift

Until the headlights darken.

II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,

Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,

Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,

Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,

Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery,-

One learned of the eternal;

And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles

(I found it lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)

And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,

Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,

Blasted to death by the night watchman.

I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,

My grief was not excessive.

For to come upon warblers in early May

Was to forget time and death:

How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,

And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes,- 

Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean,- 

Moving, elusive as fish, fearless, 

Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,

Still for a moment,

Then pitching away in half-flight,

Lighter than finches,

While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,

And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

Or to lie naked in sand,

In the silted shallows of a slow river,

Fingering a shell,

Thinking:

Once I was something like this, mindless,

Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;

Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;

Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,

Believing:

I'll return again,

As a snake or a raucous bird,

Or, with luck, as a lion.

I learned not to fear infinity,

The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,

The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,

The wheel turning away from itself,

The sprawl of the wave,

The on-coming water.

III

The river turns on itself,

The tree retreats into its own shadow.

I feel a weightless change, a moving forward

As of water quickening before a narrowing channel

When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;

Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent

And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland,- 

At first a swift rippling between rocks,

Then a long running over flat stones

Before descending to the alluvial plane,

To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.

The slightly trembling water

Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;

And the crabs bask near the edge,

The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers,- 

I have come to a still, but not a deep center,

A point outside the glittering current;

My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,

At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,

My mind moves in more than one place,

In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,

The dry scent of a dying garden in September,

The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.

What I love is near at hand,

Always, in earth and air.

IV

The lost self changes,

Turning toward the sea,

A sea-shape turning around,- 

An old man with his feet before the fire,

In robes of green, in garments of adieu.

A man faced with his own immensity

Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.

The murmur of the absolute, the why

Of being born falls on his naked ears.

His spirit moves like monumental wind

That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.

He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude: 

The mountain with its singular bright shade

Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, 

The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;

Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,

A scent beloved of bees;

Silence of water above a sunken tree: 

The pure serene of memory in one man,-

A ripple widening from a single stone

Winding around the waters of the world."

- Theodore Roethke

Musical Interlude: Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"

Full screen recommended.

Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"

"How It Really Is"

 

"If I Try My Best..."

- Steve Jobs

"Try? What is try? Do or do not do."

- Yoda

"Upbeat Study Music - Deep Focus for Complex Tasks"

Jason Lewis - Mind Amend, 

"Upbeat Study Music - Deep Focus for Complex Tasks"

"Deep focus for complex tasks, upbeat study music mix with isochronic tones. Uses beta wave tones to help you reach and maintain a high focus mental state. Use when working on advanced and complicated topics like mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any complex mental activity. Isochronic tones produce a stronger and more powerful brainwave entrainment effect, compared to binaural beats study music tracks or standard music."

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/27/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/27/21"

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

SATURDAY, FEB 27, 2021 - 10:44: 

"These 7 States Are On The Verge Of Herd Immunity"

by Tyler Durden

"Nothing seems to scare the establishment more than a return to 'normal'. And by 'normal', we mean a return to an environment outside of the tyrannical control of career politicians and bureaucrats who have got a taste for this 'being king' stuff and know that anyone who questions their edicts will be 'canceled' by their Covidian cultists.

So, a week after Johns Hopkins surgeon, Dr. Marty Makary, penned an Op-ed in the WSJ saying that we will have herd immunity by April... and was instantly disavowed as 'dangerous', some awkward 'facts' and 'science' have been dropped by none other than FundStrat's Tom Lee. "...cumulatively and slowly, the US is seeing more states reach that combined level of vaccinations + infections approach what is seen as herd immunity.”

Source

So far, South Dakota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, and Tennessee are the nearest.

Lee's "math" - which we also know is racist - appears to fit with Makary's arguments for why the recent plunge in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths is not policy-related (no matter how much the politicians and their media lackeys push that narrative): "...the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don’t explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in."

"Experts should level with the public about the good news..." exclaims Makary, and this data on imminent herd immunity puts more pressure on Fauci and Biden to come clean... despite their variant-fearmongering and "no return to normal until Christmas or beyond" predictions.

But of course, this reality may never be allowed in the national narrative, as Makary previously concluded: "Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn’t try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth. As we encourage everyone to get a vaccine, we also need to reopen schools and society to limit the damage of closures and "Experts should level with the public about the good news..." exclaims Makary, and this data on imminent herd immunity puts more pressure on Fauci and Biden to come clean... despite their variant-fearmongering and "no return to normal until Christmas or beyond" predictions. Contingency planning for an open economy by April can deliver hope to those in despair and to those who have made large personal sacrifices." But, but, the science!?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Feb 27, 2021 12:36 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 113,386,600 

people, according to official counts, including 28,509,327 Americans.

Globally at least 2,516,200 have died.

  Feb. 27, 2021 12:36 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/

○

Coronavirus World Map: Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak

February 27, 2021 8:40 AM ET

○

Where I Live:

"Tracking Coronavirus in Pinal County, Ariz."

2/27/2021: "Cases are very high but have decreased over the past two weeks. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Pinal County area have also fallen. The test positivity rate in Pinal County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted. We’ve recommended additional precautions below."

 7:38 AM MST on February 27, 2021 (GMT -7):

"The Beatings Will Continue"

"The Beatings Will Continue"

by Brian Maher

"The beatings will continue until morale improves. The Hon. Jerome H. Mr. Powell, in statements: "There is a long way to go to maximum employment… We live in a time where there is significant disinflationary pressures around the world and where essentially all major advanced economy’s central banks have struggled to get to 2% (inflation). We believe we can do it, we believe we will do it. It may take more than three years…"

Here Mr. Powell’s understrapper - Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard - grabs the knout: "The economy remains far from our goals in terms of both employment and inflation, and it will take some time to achieve substantial further progress." That is, you can expect additional years of suppressed interest rates… of monetary delirium… of skyshooting debt. That is, you can expect years of ongoing beatings. Haven’t the brutalities endured long enough - without an appreciable uplift in morale? Set aside the stock market and its jubilations. Take the Federal Reserve on its own terms… and look at inflation...

Years and Years of Futility: For 12 years running, the Federal Reserve has gone at inflation hammer and tong. Its savageries defy all standards of civilized decency. Yet the men remain dispirited… and demoralized… despite the beatings. A sustained 2% (official) inflation rate remains as elusive as the holy grail itself. Why would more bludgeonings yield the prize? There is an excellent reason to believe they will not.

Debt turns deflationary come a certain point… as benign substances turn toxic come a certain point. As Mr. Lance Roberts of Real Investment Advice recently noted in these pages: “Monetary policy is ‘deflationary’ when ‘debt’ is required to fund it.” More: "Beginning in 2000, the “money supply” as a percentage of GDP has exploded higher without a resulting rise in inflation or economic growth... With each monetary policy intervention, the velocity of money has slowed along with the breadth and strength of economic activity. Despite perennial hopes that economic growth and inflation would arise from lower rates, more government spending, and increased “accommodative policies,” each iteration led to weaker outcomes.

In an economy saddled by $82 Trillion in debt, the debt is no longer productive as more debt is issued to cover ongoing spending needs. Decades of (the Fed’s) monetary experiment have succeeded only in reducing economic growth and inflation and increasing economic inequality."

Insanity: Yet the Federal Reserve does not reconsider its enforcement mechanisms. It concludes - rather - that its pummelings have lacked the requisite oomph. The victim requires greater bruising. And so the brass knuckles are out. The battering may run three years yet by Mr. Powell’s own estimate. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again,” runs the old saw, “and expecting different results.”

Our esteem for the monetary authority is mighty. We would never in one million years insinuate it is in insanity’s grip. A cheekier fellow might. But we refrain in decency, likely misplaced decency. Yet what is this? The Federal Reserve is acquiring additional muscle?

The Fed Tag-Teams With the Treasury: Monetary policy - quantitative easing and zero interest rates - has failed to lift morale. It has largely inflated assets. But not the consumer price index. The money simply has not oozed over into the broad economy. The beatings must therefore continue. Harsher beatings. And so another goon is ganging in… a roughneck with years of hard experience cracking skulls... and breaking legs.

The name is Janet Yellen. She is the latest Treasury Secretary. And she has a good hard clubbing in mind. She is adding her fiscal muscle to the Federal Reserve’s monetary punch. Each lacks knockout wallop. But together?

The “One-Two” Combination: Crackerjack analyst Lyn Alden Schwartzer, author of Stock Waves: "The Federal Reserve can create base money out of thin air in a process they call "quantitative easing" or QE for short, but has very limited methods to inject it into the broad money supply. They can only buy bonds and certain other assets with it. They have no way to send money to real people and businesses in the economy, outside of financial markets.

The Treasury Department, on behalf of Congress and the President, can send money out to people and businesses, but needs to issue bonds associated with that spending, which just moves money around. The bonds pull capital out from one place (the lenders) and puts it in another place (where it is spent). Therefore, the government also doesn't have many ways to directly increase the broad money supply within the context of the existing legal structure."

But together the Federal Reserve and the Department of Treasury may deliver the one-two combination... A straight cross of monetary policy… succeeded by an upper cut of fiscal policy: "However, the combination of the Treasury Department and the Fed working together, with the Treasury Department sending checks out into the broad money supply and the Fed creating new base money to buy the bonds associated with that spending (rather than extracting that money from real lenders buying the bonds with existing money), outright increases the broad money supply."

Exploding Money Supply: Deficit spending has expanded to dimensions truly extravagant. Treasury debt jumped $5 trillion this past year... from $23 trillion to nearly $28 trillion. Observe the increase in M2 money supply - the broad money supply - then lift your jaw from the floor:

The M2 money supply has swollen some 25% within the space of one year. Yearly M2 expansion had never exceeded 15% prior to 2020. Meantime, a $1.9 trillion bill is on the stocks, awaiting passage. Mr. Biden plans to expend an additional $4 trillion later this year. Will the twin bombardments of the Federal Reserve... and the Treasury... finally yield the grail of 2% inflation, sustained? It is a ferocious assault. What if it meets - or exceeds expectations? What if inflation finds its roar?

Interest Rates and Debt Approaching Collision: Long-term interest rates would jump. 10-year Treasury yields are already bubbling on “reflationary” expectations. At 1.5%, they remain historically low. But note the trend - it is up. Last August 3, yields hovered at 0.56%. This economy and this stock market cannot withstand a substantial interest rate increase. They depend too heavily upon cheap debt… as a corner sot depends on cheap liquor. As the drunk cannot afford pricier drink, these tosspots cannot afford pricier debt.

The question then arises: What interest rate would break them? The aforesaid Lance Roberts: "The limit of that increase in rates is between 1.56% and 2.19%. At these points, rates will collide with the outstanding debt."

No-Win Situation: In this telling, interest rates and outstanding debt are locked on a colliding course. A wreck is not imminent. But opposing masses are in violent motion. Thus the Federal Reserve is hung upon the hooks of a dilemma. Concludes Roberts: "The surge in inflation will limit their ability to continue "unlimited QE" without further exacerbating the inflation problem. However, if they don't "monetize" the deficit through their "QE" program, interest rates will surge, leading to an economic recession."

It's a no-win situation for the Fed. The fellow draws the scene in dark colors. A no-win situation is an all-lose situation. Yet we advise you to keep heart. After all… Our collective fate is in the infinitely capable hands of Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen..."

- dailyreckoning.com

"We're so freakin' doomed!"

- The Mogambo Guru

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“How far do magnetic fields extend up and out of spiral galaxies? For decades astronomers knew only that some spiral galaxies had magnetic fields. However, after NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope (popularized in the movie Contact) was upgraded in 2011, it was unexpectedly discovered that these fields could extend vertically away from the disk by several thousand light-years. The featured image of edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5775, observed in the CHANG-ES (Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies) survey, also reveals spurs of magnetic field lines that may be common in spirals. 

Analogous to iron filings around a bar magnet, radiation from electrons trace galactic magnetic field lines by spiraling around these lines at almost the speed of light. The filaments in this image are constructed from those tracks in VLA data. The visible light image, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope data, shows pink gaseous regions where stars are born. It seems that winds from these regions help form the magnificently extended galactic magnetic fields.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210127.html

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field”

“White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field”

“Coming down out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,

it was beautiful, and accurate,

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings - five feet apart -

and the grabbing thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys of the snow -

and then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes

to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,

in the blue shadows -

so I thought:

maybe death isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light wrapping itself around us -

as soft as feathers -

that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,

and shut our eyes, not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,

that is nothing but light - scalding, aortal light -

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones.”

- Mary Oliver

○

“The Farewell”

“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”

- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”

The Daily "Near You?"

San Bernardino, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Our Dilemma..."

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; 

what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. "

- Sydney J. Harris

"The Narrative Void"

"The Narrative Void"

by The Zman

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality” is a line from a T.S. Eliot poem that has always been popular on the Right. While the Left does not have a monopoly on utopian thinking, it has never embraced realism. The Right, on the other hand, has always had an element that accepts the reality of the human condition. Not everyone on the Right or even a majority. One reality of the human condition is that most people, even the sober minded, prefer the escapism of fantasy to reality.

The fantasy view of politics is most obvious on the Left, of course. Much of what constitutes our current politics would best be described as a paranoid delusion or maybe even a psychotic break. Six weeks on and official Washington is still playing the game of make-believe over the January protests. For five years they were convinced that invisible Russians using mind control rigged the 2016 election. Left-wing politics, which means mainstream politics, is just a long conspiracy theory.

Another thing that is made obvious with left-wing reality avoidance is that it is deliberate, something of a cottage industry. There are people who invest all of their time patching up the fantasies and inventing new ones. Here’s an example from the conspiracy site Vox, about how Progressives are trying to “catch-up” to right-wing media. The absurdity of the post is not rare. These fantasies are churned out like shark’s teeth in order to have a steady supply of new fantasies for the Left.

This is something most on this side of the great divide get about the Left. They need a devil to oppose in order to have a rallying point. The absurdity of claiming Trump was a secret Nazi was never noticed, because they needed him to be their devil. Since their devils are always imaginary to begin with, they need to be churning out new ones, because eventually the imaginary ones are no longer useful. Progressives have been plotting the final showdown with the Devil since the Mayflower.

The American Left is really just escapism. It always has been, but in a post scarcity world where even the poorest people are materially safe, the escapism has had to conjure increasingly bizarre rationales. Whether it is invisible Russians, invisible Nazis, invisible Klansman and now invisible insurrectionists, the fantasy requires a villain, so they will conjure one when one does not exist. The Left is Dungeon’s and Dragons for mentally unstable, upper-middle-class white people.

Escapism is not just the domain of the Left. Libertarianism is the most obvious form of it outside the Left. In fact, the escapism is so strong it is possible to place libertarians on the Left, next to the orcs and wizards of Progressivism. The political spectrum would then be realism at one pole and escapism at the other. The libertarians generally accept the reality of math, so they would be somewhere between the midpoint and the end point where we find the modern American Left.

In case it is not obvious, the escapism of libertarianism lies in the fact that you can never have a libertarian society. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has explained at length how it is impossible to go from a modern society to a libertarian one. Even if you sort that puzzle, there is no way to maintain the libertarian society within libertarian theory. Put another way, the libertarian society is like any other fantasy world. Its appeal is in its impossibility, not in its plausibility. It is escapism.

For at least half a century, the Republican Party has been built on the escapism of what we now call civic nationalism. Evangelicals, for example, unhappy with left-wing social changes, organized to get their people elected. They finally got one of their guys in the White House and he did nothing for them. The reaction to this burst of reality was the Tea Party movement, which was really just a civic nationalist reaction to the failures of the Bush administration. It too crashed on the rocks of reality.

Donald Trump was the ultimate civic nationalist and he got nothing done. Part of the anger at Trump and his voters is that they accidentally proved that civic nationalism was always a big lie. The fake anger of the Left was always about their escapism, not anything Trump actually did in office. The real venom comes from the GOP, who sense he ruined the game for them. The Trump phenomenon ruined the fantasy of civic nationalism, removing that form of escapism from the system.

This is a truth that the core of the dissident right has always grasped, but never found a way to exploit. Most people, especially people in politics or cultural movements, are not interested in reality. They want a story, a narrative, that makes them the good guy fighting the selfless fight against the bad guy. Politics in general is not about reasoning from fact to some new facts or truths. It is not about making broad generalizations based on observable truths. Politics is about storytelling.

This is the great lesson of the interwar years. The people on the winning side knew the war was a horrible blunder committed by their rulers. Because they were on the winning side, they had an easy story to explain it. The bad guys were to blame, even if their own rulers were reckless and stupid. Ultimately, the fault lay with the losers and they would be made to pay for their crimes. The losers, in contrast, had no story to explain why their rulers lied to them and “stabbed them in the back.”

Into the void raced liberalism, communism, and fascism. Liberalism could blame the old rulers, but it suffered from being a story told by the winners. Communism told a story that failed to include the facts of the war. Communism was always a story about the future, not the past. Fascism, in contrast, offered a story that included the past, the present and a future. To the modern ear, Hitler sounds like a raving lunatic, but in his time, he was a master storyteller. He made fascism a pleasant fantasy.

This is why our present is full of bizarre conspiracies and fantasies. The Left has total control of the institutions, but they keep churning out new fantasies, because they cannot square the circle of who they are. How can the underdog also possess the high ground of society? How can they have control of the institutions, yet the system still suffers from institutional unfairness? The Left is spiraling into madness because its plot has an unreconcilable contradiction at the heart of it.

We are living in an interregnum of narrative collapse. The various right-wing fantasies, like libertarianism, conservatism and civic nationalism have collapsed. Those stories no longer make any sense. Only old people cling to them. The Progressive story is in the process of narrative collapse. The explosion of conspiracy theories and subcultures is due to the hole at the middle of a politics. The future will belong to those who create a new story that adequately explains the past, present and the future."

- https://beforeitsnews.com/

"How It Really Is"

"Shadowland"

"Shadowland"

by Jim Kunstler

"The State of the Union speech is a somewhat squishy national ritual. Since Franklin Roosevelt, presidents have delivered it early each year in-person to a joint session of congress, with every other dignitary in government on hand - except for one cabinet officer designated the “lone survivior,” who sits it out elsewhere in case, say, the Capitol gets blown up. Before Woodrow Wilson, presidents customarily sent over a written message. Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the constitution only stipulates that a president “from time to time” shall report to Congress on how the nation is doing.

Lately, it’s mostly just a made-for-TV special, like the Oscars, allowing a lot of familiar faces to preen before the cameras for the home-folks. Ronald Reagan introduced the gimmick of showboating heroes or victims of this-and-that seated up in the galleries, which has naturally devolved into a maudlin, cringeworthy feature of the show. But often presidents use the occasion to drop a ripe phrase on the big audience that captures the spirit of the moment: “The era of big government is over” (Bill Clinton); “the axis of evil” (G. W. Bush); FDR’s “four freedoms.” In 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced an instant op-ed closer feature to the proceedings, ripping up Mr. Trump’s speech behind his back in a striking display of pique, much applauded by the avatars of rising Wokesterdom, who had only days earlier seen their half-assed impeachment attempt flop.

Kinda looks like our current president, Joe Biden, will skip the grand show this year. Too busy playing “Mario Kart” with the grandkids, or something like that. The Washington press corps has given him a pass on it, apparently. There’s no chatter, no buzz on the cable channels or in The New York Times, though a few newsies have begun to whine about Mr. Biden’s general unwillingness to hold a routine press conference with freely-pitched questions - not hand-picked, vetted ones, as the president’s handlers have insisted.

How long will it be before the public realizes that Mr. Biden is being strictly concealed from view by his managers? And how long can they keep it up? A few more weeks, maybe, I’d guess. What did they think they were doing when they engineered the election of this empty suit, this blank cartridge, this political mannequin, this man-who-isn’t-there? Of all the hundred-million-odd adults over 35-years-of-age in this country, they picked this empty vessel to lead in a year of obvious crisis?

Apparently so - an act so collectively insane it makes you shudder to think about it. Like, the Democratic Party really thought this was a good idea? And who’s calling the shots behind this false front? Some committee chaired by Susan Rice? With directives coming into the Oval Office by messenger from Barack Obama’s Kalorama fortress, with, say, Eric Holder, Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, John Brennan, and a few others charting the daily play-by-play?

So, you suspect that something weird like that is going on? I sure do. And I also suspect that when the truth comes out, the Democratic Party will have to face some pretty harsh music. Just the other day the public learned that 30 House Democrats are seeking to limit Mr. Biden’s sole authority over the launch codes for our nuclear missile arsenal. That doesn’t sound like a vote of confidence. Does White House Press Secretary look like a cornered animal going about her daily briefings? The ongoing spectacle of the missing head-of-state is inching beyond embarrassing.

And then, what do the people of this country think when it becomes necessary to throw the switch on the 25th Amendment and remove poor Ol’ Joe from office on account of being simply unfit to continue serving? I’ll tell you what they’ll think: that the Democrats knowingly put an unfit man in high office. They’ll understand that they got played, scammed, hustled. They’ll be mighty pissed off. They may seek to learn a bit more about exactly how this happened, especially the sketchy mechanics of the November 3rd vote that put Ol’ Joe in the White House. Even some Democrats may demand answers. Of course, the cruelest scene in this scenario will be the big manufactured hoo-hah celebrating Kamala Harris as the first female president - which in itself may be difficult to pull off, since so many Democrats have declared there’s no such thing as two sexes.

Meanwhile, you better pray for the bond market and, in turn, the equities markets, and, in turn, the whole shootin’ match of the economy (whatever remains of it, that is). Yesterday the benchmark ten-year US Treasury peeked above the dangerous 1.5 percent mark. What this tells you is that world is expecting the dollar to go down substantially and with that, the value of US Bonds, which foreign holders will seek to dump on a market not eager to buy them up, meaning the Federal Reserve will have to step in and buy them, meaning they will have to create a shitload of new dollars out of thin air to do that, which will drive down the purchasing power of each dollar, which will further inflame the world’s urge to dump devaluing US bonds - a vicious feedback that could crash the banking system just as Covid 19 begins fading away to nothing.

Oh, and note: rising interest rates on US Treasuries will force the government to pay much more to service our massive debts. That will negate any of the fiscal ambitions of Kamala Harris’s shadow government - unless the committee running America decides to utterly destroy the US Dollar. The bait-and-switch game playing out in the White House is just an overture to all that."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

“Skid Row Los Angeles Hell On Earth; California Poverty; US Economy Getting Worse By The Day”

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe,

“Skid Row Los Angeles Hell On Earth; California Poverty; 

US Economy Getting Worse By The Day”

Gregory Mannarino, "Hyperinflating! The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Has Now Gone Super-Parabolic"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/26/20:

"Hyperinflating! The Federal Reserve 

Balance Sheet Has Now Gone Super-Parabolic"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Gerald Celente, "Market Crash? Covid War = Eat More Crap"

Gerald Celente, 

"Market Crash? Covid War = Eat More Crap""

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead."

“Next Market Crash Will Be Brutal; Big Trouble Coming; Bond Market Warning; Interest Rates Rising”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Next Market Crash Will Be Brutal; Big Trouble Coming; 

Bond Market Warning; Interest Rates Rising”

"So, My Friends..."; "Ex Obscurum

I'm writing this from a room at the major hospital in this area, where several hours ago I underwent a cardiac catheterization to determine if a similar proceedure done 15 months ago to repair a crushed heart valve (from November 2013's massive heart arrack and quadruple bypass) was as successful. It was, totally. My apologies for the sudden disappearance on Monday, but circumstances provided little time to act, as Life often does to us. And we survive, or we don't. Long time readers know well that this blog was never, ever about me in any way, I never needed any emotional ego stroking and don't care if you like my dog or not, I merely tried always to provide the very best version of "truth" available, then share better-angels-of our-nature examples like poetry, music, quotes, encouraging stories, etc. 

Things have to change though. Doing this blog has always given me a much loved higher sense of purpose, and that will continue as we move along. Yes, the global economy's collapsing, true Hell on earth has arrived for millions, and all that will get it's fair share too, but less frantically, and my next birthday says 70, not 30, lol, and we don't need the stress, right? So let's just relax a little, and savor our time together here while we can, considering it's obvious there's not a damned thing we can about about any of it anyway. So, my friends, please, slow down, and don't take it so deadly seriously, ok? Don't take it all so seriously that the stress gives you a heart attack, OK? Only a fool would allow that, right?

- CP

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"Ex Obscurum, Adagio for Strings, Op. 11"

From emotional turmoil, hatred, and addiction the miracle of recovery begins in this Spadecaller Video entitled "Ex Obscurum" (From Darkness). Featuring original poetry narrated by the author and visual artist, Matthew Schwartz. Composer Samuel Barber's powerful musical score, adopted for the movie "Platoon", (Adagio for Strings) sets the background for this spiritual exodus "From Darkness."

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsMp_8Z6Ih4