"An Old Man in a Hurry"

"An Old Man in a Hurry"

by Brian Maher

"Mr. Biden is an old man in a hurry... There he is… atop his galloping steed, whip in his hand, glory in his eyes - and history on his mind. Axios: "President Biden recently held an undisclosed East Room session with historians that included discussion of how big is too big - and how fast is too fast - to jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America." All assembled agreed. Too big is inadequately big. Too fast is insufficiently fast: "The historians’ views were very much in sync with his own: It is time to go even bigger and faster than anyone expected." Here is what he would jam through: Bigger, faster legislation on climate. On firearms. On elections... to name some.

The Next FDR or LBJ? Here then is a potential Roosevelt, a potential Johnson: "Presidential historian Michael Beschloss told Axios FDR and LBJ may turn out to be the past century's closest analogues for the Biden era, "in terms of transforming the country in important ways in a short time." Beschloss said the parallels include the New Deal economic relief that Franklin Roosevelt brought in 1933, which saved the country from the Depression and chaos. And Biden is on track to leave the country in a different place, as Lyndon Johnson did with his Great Society programs."

A vast literature contests the theory that the New Deal “saved the country from the Depression and chaos.” The New Deal likely extended the Depression. It likely deepened the chaos. The Great Society, meantime, unquestionably left the country “in a different place.” But a better place? American society presently groans beneath a great pile of debt… in large part… because of it. And the poverty it would eradicate remains - in many respects - uneradicated. Have you looked in on Baltimore? Detroit? The Appalachian hills?

What “Getting Things Done” Really Means: A politician on the move sends us on the run. He menaces our happiness. It was our sincere wish that the Republican Party would retain its Senate majority in November’s election. Not because we blow a whistle for the Republican Party - but because we blow a whistle for gridlock.Mr. Biden and his party are out to “get things done.” Yet, we do not want things getting done.

Getting things done generally involves fantastic raids upon our liberties… and our wallets. If anything is to get done… we argue... it is the undoing of previous things. That is, the undoing of previous raids upon our liberties and our wallets. Democrats have a clear field to get things done - for now.

A Race Against the Calendar: But Mr. Biden’s race to get things done - to “jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America” - is a race against the calendar. Midterm elections are under two years distant. Republicans can drag Mr. Biden from his horse if they gain one Senate seat - or 10 House seats. One or the other is likely. Both are possible.

If Mr. Biden must flout the racing rules to beat the calendar… and to race into the history books… then flout the racing rules he will. Again, Axios: "He has full party control of Congress, and a short window to go big… If that means chucking the filibuster and bipartisanship, so be it… People close to Biden tell us he’s feeling bullish on what he can accomplish, and is fully prepared to support the dashing of the Senate’s filibuster rule to allow Democrats to pass voting rights and other trophy legislation for his party… He loves the growing narrative that he’s bolder and bigger-thinking than President Obama."

Mr. Biden must therefore apply a ruthless whip… and seize his spot in presidential history. He is - again - an old man in a hurry. But let us return to Mr. Biden and his pursuit of history…

Biden in 2005: We might call to your attention: Mr. Biden had previously mounted thundering defenses of the filibuster. But we will not call his flim-fambling to your attention. Our respect for the man and the high dignity of the office he holds is too vast. We will, therefore, not remind you that: "In 2005 Senator Biden delivered - in his very words - "one of the most important speeches for historical purposes that I will have given in the 32 years since I have been in the Senate."

Ending the filibuster, Delaware’s senior senator said: "Is not only a bad idea, it upsets the constitutional design and it disservices the country. No longer would the Senate be that “different kind of legislative body” that the Founders intended. No longer would the Senate be the “saucer” to cool the passions of the immediate majority… [Ending the filibuster] would eviscerate the Senate and turn it into the House of Representatives."

But that was before Senator Biden was President Biden... Before he sensed the opportunity to jam through “once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America”...Before the historians wooed and flattered him…In brief, before he seized the whip.

A Moderate? A question springs to mind: Would a man of moderate politics - as the advertising has Mr. Biden - scheme to “jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America?” We are far from convinced that he would. Jamming through implies a resistance. A resistance - that is - to be routed, overcome and conquered.

A man jams a quarter-inch rivet through an eighth-inch hole, for example. He jams a bayonet through an enemy’s ribs. He jams spinach through his shrieking child’s gullet. Are the American people hot for the rivet, for the bayonet, for the spinach? Do they want the country left “in a different place?” We must conclude they do not... Else why the jamming through? Why the secret huddling of conspirators to plot it?

Historians Love Action: We should not be surprised that the history-writers tickled the president’s ear. History smiles upon presidents of action - even of the wrong action. Presidential inaction makes dull history - and idle historians. It is not the Clevelands, the Pierces, the Buchanans or the Tafts that glitter in history. It is rather the Lincolns. It is the Roosevelts - I and II. It is the Johnsons - Lyndon Baines, not Andrew. It is the Obamas. That is, the presidents who seize the most power glitter brightest in history. President Biden wishes to glitter alongside them. He is after history. And he is in a hurry..."

- dailyreckoning.com

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Flying" (Full Album)

Peder B. Helland, "Flying" (Full Album)

"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

"Perhaps..."

Perhaps we are looking at this from a wrong perspective; this search for the truth, the meaning of life, the reason of God. We all have this mindset that the answers are so complex and so vast that it is almost impossible to comprehend. I think, on the contrary, that the answers are so simple; so simple that it is staring us straight in the face, screaming its lungs out, and yet we fail to notice it. We're looking through a telescope, searching the stars for the answer, when the answer is actually a speck of dirt on the telescope lens. 

~ Jason Q.

Chet Raymo, “What Not to Believe”

“What Not to Believe”

by Chet Raymo

“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.

Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."

Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.

And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"If You Have Come..."

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,

then let us work together."

- 1970s Aboriginal activists group, Queensland

"The Hazardous Detour in the Road to "Recovery" Few Foresee"

"The Hazardous Detour in the Road to "Recovery" Few Foresee"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Without exception, every single board member I ever came

 into contact with was a sociopath that would murder their own 

grandmother with an ice-pick if they thought it would make them a penny.

These are some heartless, terrifying individuals."

- Nicklethrower

"You know the plot point in the horror film where the highway is blocked and a detour sign directs the car full of naive teens off onto a rutted track into the wilderness? We're right there in the narrative of "the road to recovery": the highway that everyone expected would be smooth and wide open is about to be detoured into a rutted track that peters out in a wilderness without any lights or signage.

Oops - no cell coverage out here either. Is that the road over there? Guess not - we just careened into a canyon alive with the roar of a raging river. Our vehicle keeps sliding downhill, even with the brakes locked... this trip to "recovery" was supposed to be so quick and easy, and now there's no way out... what's that noise?

You know the rest: the naive, trusting teens are picked off one by one in the most horrific fashion. Substitute naive punters in the stock market and you have the script for what lies ahead. The "recovery" has an unfortunate but all-too accurate connotation: recovery from addiction. The "recovery" we've been told is already accelerating at a wondrous pace does not include any treatment of the market's addiction to Federal Reserve free money for financiers; rather, the "recovery" is entirely dependent on a never-ending speedball of Fed smack and crack and a booster of Fed financial meth.

The addiction to Fed speedballs had already turned the entire financial sector into a casino of lunatic junkies who delusionally believe they're all geniuses. Beneath the illusory stability of the god-like Fed has our back, the addiction to free money has completely destabilized America's social, political and economic orders by boosting wealth and income inequality to unprecedented extremes.

While it's convenient to blame the carnage on the response to the Covid pandemic, the damage to the speedball-addicted financial system had already reached extremes before the pandemic: the addiction began decades ago, but like all addictions, the amount of stimulus needed to maintain the high keeps expanding, and eventually the need can't be met without toxic doses: then the junkie/addicted system collapses.

The ever-greater doses of Fed speedballs have unleashed both deflation (smack) and inflation (crack): real returns on ordinary savings have been crushed to zero (deflation of ordinary income), and as the cost of capital/credit have been dropped to near-zero, then the purchasing power of wages has deflated while the speculative gains of those who own assets have soared (asset inflation).

By lowering the cost of capital to zero, the Fed has generated fatally perverse incentives. With the cost of capital at zero, it makes sense to buy labor-saving technologies to replace costly labor - labor that is costly to employers because of America's perverse sickcare system, which burdens employers with ever-higher costs.

Not only have the Fed's free-money speedballs made it essentially free for financiers to speculate in the stock market casino, the Fed has rigged the game and bailed out its cronies whenever their bets soured. This has fueled infinite moral hazard: Go ahead and gamble with free money from the Fed, and go ahead and leverage it up 10-to-1 because the Fed will bail you out if you lose, but if you win, the stupendous gains are yours to keep.

The problem with addiction is you're dependent on the high, no matter what the eventual consequences may be. Long-term consequences are ignored because all that matters to the addict is to get the next Fed speedball and throw it on the gambling table to keep the high going.

Our entire economy is now dependent on ever-expanding speculative gains. Should the casino winnings falter, our economy will crash, and given the primacy of money and consumption in our society and political system, the financial collapse of the Fed's casino lunacy will sweep those systems over the falls.

As the level of Fed smack and crack needed to maintain the high increases, system fragility increases geometrically. The irony of addiction is that when the crack/meth kicks in, the addict feels god-like, in control, invulnerable. This artificial confidence is entirely illusory, a deadly combination of delusion and hubris.

In this delusional state of supreme confidence, the addict loses touch with reality, i.e. the fatal consequences of the addiction. That's the detour we've taken in becoming addicted to the Fed's free-money speedballs. Now the rutted road has ended in a trackless wilderness. There is no way back and no way forward. The addict's addled confidence will push them into the ice-cold river, and as they're swept over the falls, the realization that it was all a drug-induced delusion will come too late to make a difference."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"No Special Hurry..."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry."

- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell To Arms"

"Here Comes the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo"

"Here Comes the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo"

by Jeff Thomas

"Since the announcement of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, many people have become increasing aware of and/or increasingly concerned over the prospect of a New World Order. Although it’s been in the works for over a century, in recent decades, preparations for the actual implementation have become increasingly apparent, and now that the rollout has begun, the reality of its tyrannical intent is coming home more than ever before.

Interestingly, most all people who comment on the coming of a New World Order seem to treat it as a foregone conclusion. Not only that, they tend to assume that it’s certain to live up to its title: a dominant oligarchy that will blanket the globe. But is that dark prediction a certainty? Let’s back up a bit here and look at this from above the treeline of all the hoopla and see it as it really is.

First, where did the concept come from? Certainly, sociopaths have always existed, and they tend to wish to be omnipotent. And we know from history that there are no lengths that they will not go to, to achieve their power.

Possibly the first such individual who was clever enough to attempt it on an economic basis was Mayer Rothschild in the eighteenth century. He succeeded in dominating Germany monetarily, then sent out his five sons to similarly dominate the most powerful countries in Europe. The Rothschild family also had boots on the ground in the early decades of the US, forming the central bank, and although the success of that venture was not fully realized until 1913, they and their co-conspirators have never let up in their quest for world economic dominance. But the effort really hit its stride in 1944.

In the early years of World War II, the US had supplied the allies with most everything: helmets, cannons, planes, even toothbrushes. They charged high prices for it all and insisted on being paid in gold. Not surprisingly, then, that toward the end of the war, when factories all over Europe had been bombed, the US had large, new factories – all paid for by Europe – plus millions of returning servicemen, ready to create all the goods needed by the entire Western World after the war. But they also, at that point, held more than 60% of the world’s gold.

A total of forty-four countries attended the Bretton Woods Conference, which was ostensibly held to discuss the best way forward to create the post-war economy, but truth be told, it was really a politely veiled announcement that the US would now be the undisputed economic boss and the other nations would be allowed to hitch onto the coattails of the US boom if they behaved themselves.

It was clear that the US had a fait accompli and quite a few nations decided to hitch their coaches onto the US post-war prosperity train. Those countries that were most closely hitched profited most during the next decades, whilst those who made a lesser connection tended to become less prosperous. Part of the deal was that the dollar would be the world’s default currency, and along the way, the petrodollar became the currency for most all settlements for oil purchases.

The US was riding high, and the other nations – most notably Canada, the UK, much of Western Europe, Japan and Australia – were along for the ride. But in 1971, the US surprised the world by decoupling the dollar from gold. Essentially, the message was, "We’re reneging on our part of the deal – payment in gold – but we’ll still expect you to keep up your end of the agreement and defer to us as the leader."

The US then increasingly turned to debt creation as its new currency, and although it would – long term – be extremely unwise, the other countries remained hitched to the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo. Like all parties, this one couldn’t last forever, and today the train is no longer running on real prosperity (the provision of goods and services). It now runs almost entirely on debt, and to keep the train going, trillions of dollars are now being created to shovel into the firebox to keep the engine going.

We’re now at the tipping point: The train is headed into the terminal at breakneck speed. And just like a speeding train, the greatest damage will be to the engine itself, at the moment of the crash. After that, the coaches that are hitched to it will be damaged in keeping with how close to the engine they are. That is, the nations that are most closely tied to the US economically will be those most affected. They will also go off the rails. But for those further to the rear (those less linked through trade), the damage will be less.

Most readers will be located either in the US or another First World country. That means that they will be aware that the crash is going to impact their lives dramatically. But interestingly, the great majority of them assume that the entire world will be equally affected by the train wreck. This is not so.

Those that, back in the post-war years, were not so tied to the US, were considered Second- and Third-World countries – "lesser" countries by First-Worlders. But soon, we shall witness a reversal of fortunes. Those same countries will be far less impacted and will be more capable of recovering than the First World countries.

And what of those countries that, until now, had almost no connection to the train – those countries that imported and exported little or nothing to the First World? Well, we may find that the crash will hardly impact their economies at all. Those who live in such countries may well watch the crash from afar, shake their heads and continue to live their lives just as they had before. And if we picture the First World countries, apart from all other countries, we gain a visual understanding of just how few will be crashing into the terminal. Many of the other countries will be minimally impacted. And some will thrive.

Now that the Great Unravelling is underway, we shall increasingly see a divergence between the Second and Third World countries and the First World countries that have been connected to the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo since 1944.

Today, the United States is still the dominant power in the world. But, US dominance and the dollar hegemony isn't guaranteed in the months and years ahead. In fact, the US government has quietly launched the most dangerous economic experiment since communism, and it's taking place right before our eyes.

Just as, historically, a dying empire gives way to the emergence of those countries that had previously been in its shadow, the productivity, technical advances and freedoms that will be their by-product will be seen in those countries that were once regarded as "lesser" players. It will be up to us as individuals whether we choose to remain within the First World as it slides away or choose to hitch our star to the emerging world."

-internationalman.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Wasilla, Alaska, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Thomas Centolella, "Splendor"

"Splendor"

"One day it's the clouds,

one day the mountains.

One day the latest bloom of roses-

the pure monochromes, the dazzling hybrids-

inspiration for the cathedral's round windows.

Every now and then there's the splendor of thought:

the singular idea and its brilliant retinue-

words, cadence, point of view,

little gold arrows flitting between the lines.

And too the splendor of no thought at all:

hands lying calmly in the lap,

or swinging a six iron with effortless tempo.

More often than not splendor is the star we orbit

without a second thought,

especially as it arrives and departs.

One day it's the blue glassy bay,

one day the night and its array of jewels,

visible and invisible.

Sometimes it's the warm clarity

of a face that finds your face

and doesn't turn away.

Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,

that will radiate farther than you might imagine.

One day it's the entire day itself,

each hour foregoing its number and name,

its cumbersome clothes,

a day that says come as you are,

large enough for fear and doubt,

with room to spare: the most secret

wish, the deepest, the darkest,

turned inside out."

- Thomas Centolella

"Civilization Walks Backward"

"Civilization Walks Backward"

By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "At our ranch in Argentina, we explore on horseback. Here in Ireland, we explore on foot. And what we explored this weekend was the collapse of civilization. The Suez Canal is unstuck this morning. So trade can return to normal. The exchange of goods and services – along with increasing specialization and sophistication – is what makes a modern economy possible. But sometimes, trade goes into reverse… and a “dark age” results. When? Why? How? Let us attack the subject this week in our usual way – that is, by taking a rambling, circuitous route. Then, we will sneak up from behind and catch it unawares.

White Supremacist Math: We begin by tossing out a bread crumb. A dear reader recently wrote to tell us that even arithmetic has become a subject for “woke” complainers. And now, WND News has the latest: "In New York City, math education Professor Laurie Rubel claims the whole notion that “2+2=4” is one that “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.” How is that remotely possible? As the Brooklyn College prof explained in a tweet: “The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. … Along with the ‘Of course math is neutral because 2+2=4’ trope are the related (and creepy) ‘Math is pure’ and ‘Protect math.’ Reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”

Perhaps it is a joke? But let’s come back to that tomorrow…

Irish Originarios: We have been in Ireland now for a month. It was cold and rainy when we arrived. It is still cold and rainy. This weekend was especially windy and wet, with the west wind blowing a fine rain almost horizontally… punctuated by a few snowflakes. But occasionally, the sun came out, for a few minutes, before clouds came over again.

Ireland is a beautiful place, but the opposite of our ranch in Argentina in many ways. Here, there is water – plenty of it. And grass. There are no brutal droughts. No cattle lying dead on the ground. No bitter cold. No dust storms. The government, too, appears to be stable… along with the local currency – the euro. The economy is orderly. There are no originarios… and no land grabs.

Of course, Ireland had its own originarios – organized as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – whose goals were similar to those of the “indigenous peoples” of the Andes. Irish Catholics felt the country had been stolen from them by the English. In the early 20th century, they aimed to get it back – by forcing the English Protestants out. To this end, they burnt many of the “big houses” of the Anglo-Irish gentry. And made life uncomfortable for others.

New Ireland: But now, the old wounds have largely healed. The Irish have their own country – the Republic – which is more prosperous than British-controlled Northern Ireland. The old privileges have been abolished. In certain areas, including one near our house, the old Irish Gaelic is still spoken. In these “gaeltacht” areas, you have to agree to learn the language if you move in. We made an attempt to learn “Irish” when we were last here. We’d still like to speak the language, but life may not be long enough to learn it.

The Irish “originarios” got much of what they wanted. And today, Ireland seems very safe and peaceful, a European country… but with deep Celtic roots and grievances that still stir people up from time to time. The Anglo-Irish – descendants of the conquerors – are still here. But some are moving away. “There’s nothing left for us here,” says one of our acquaintances.

But most – along with thousands of new immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East… and a smattering of Americans who have come back to their homeland – are merely part of the new Ireland.

The Irish Project: We bought this property because we’d always wanted to live in Ireland. And now, one of our sons lives in Dublin. He and his wife are expecting a baby. We are here, only a couple hours away, waiting to be called to action. “Any day now,” says our daughter-in-law. Our property was attractive because it had an old house that could be restored and modernized, in a charming, rural setting.

The numerous stone walls… many of them tumbled down… would provide us with plenty to do on the weekends. And an old lodge, at the abandoned entrance to the property, could be made into a fine office – a project that is now underway.

Into the Woods: Between the lodge and the house was a deep, forested area, flanked by open pastures rented to a local dairy farmer. We had no idea what was in the woods. From the lodge itself, an overgrown path led up the hill. But after a hundred meters or so, the underbrush was so thick, we couldn’t continue.

Peter Sell and Gina Murrell, in their opus Flora of Great Britain and Ireland, list hundreds of brambles, from the curved-tooth bramble (R. curvidens) to retrorse-toothed bramble (R. dasyphyllus). Every one of them must have found a home on this abandoned lane.

Briars… wild blackberries… and nettles fill the open spaces. Moss-covered laurels, oak, ash, “maple-sycamores,” and holly trees – many of them so overgrown with vines, that it was hard to tell what they are – line both sides.

Iron rail embedded in tree.

There are four different varieties of Laurus Nobilis. We don’t know which one we have here. But it is very hardy and invasive. The plant once covered much of the Mediterranean Basin. But either because the area dried out… or humans cut down the laurels… the species retreated to cooler, moister climates. Ireland – along with Scotland – seems like the perfect place for it, as well as rhododendrons and azaleas. The path led to an ancient stone bridge, crossing a small stream… And then, the path disappeared altogether, lost in a maze of brambles, bushes, and laurels.

Old stone bridge.

Signs of Life: Stumbling through the thicket, we found further signs of antique life. Up from the bridge, a stone wall curved around the side of the hill. It was a retaining wall, holding the dirt against the hillside to form what must have been a roadway.

And it’s on the map. Back in the 19th century, Britain – which ruled Ireland at the time – sent forth teams of surveyors to map the entire country. The 1837 Ordnance Survey map is still available. It shows a different country. The basic layout of the property – the main house… two cottages… stone walls… stout oaks… the barn and farmyard complex – is the same. There is a walled garden, too – whose walls are still mostly intact.

But then, it was much more orderly and developed than it is now. Today, you can barely find many of the features so clearly marked on the map. The walls are overgrown. The cottage roofs have caved in. The roadways – which must have been trod for centuries – have disappeared. Where is the carefully structured, apparently well-maintained, farm from 1837? We see only traces of it. But surely, it was more elegant… and more refined.

Back then, people must have thought it was permanent – those sturdy stone walls… the stone pillars, with their gates of oak and iron… cottages… stables… piggeries… an ice house. Roads laid out, firm and true. And then, local society must have seemed well organized, too. The Anglo-Irish owners in their country mansions, with their farm managers and gamekeepers… the clergy in their churches and glebes… the peasants in their cabins…

People must have thought that that was the way it ought to be… and the way it always would be.But it is no more. What happened to it?"

Where civilization ends.

Stay tuned…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"We Like To Think..."

"We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths."

- "Grey's Anatomy"

"Do You Believe in Magic?"

"Do You Believe in Magic?"

by Jim Kunstler

"The people pretending to run the world’s financial affairs do. The more layers of abstract game-playing they add to the existing armatures of unreality they’ve already constructed, the more certain it becomes that they will blow up all the support systems of a sunsetting hyper-tech economy that now has no safe lane to continue running in.

Virtually all the big nations are doing this now in desperation because they don’t understand that the hyper-tech economy is hostage to the deteriorating economics of energy, basically fossil fuels, and oil especially. The macro mega-system can’t grow anymore. We’re now in the de-growth phase of a dynamic that pulsates through history, as everything in the universe pulsates. We attempted to compensate for de-growth with debt, borrowing from the future.

But debt only works in the youthful growth phases of economic pulsation, when the prospect of being paid back is statistically favorable. Now in the elder de-growth phase, the prospect of paying back debts, or even servicing the interest, is statistically dismal. The amount of racked-up debt worldwide has entered the realm of the laughable. So, the roughly twenty-year experiment in Central Bank credit magic, as a replacement for true capital formation, has come to its grievous end.

Hence, America under the pretend leadership of Joe Biden ventures into the final act of this melodrama, which will end badly and probably pretty quickly. They are about to call in the financial four horsemen of apocalypse: 1) Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), 2) a command economy, 3) Universal Basic Income (UBI, “helicopter” money for the people), and 4) the “Build Back Better” infrastructure scheme.

MMT is the idea that a nation which claims a monopoly on issuing money can “create” new money ad infinitum with no negative consequences. That is, we can “lend” ourselves money (borrow it into existence) without having to worry about paying it back. The theory caught on only because that’s what we’ve done for two decades and, so far, it hasn’t destroyed the banking system - though debt turned exponential, which is to say ruinous, only recently - so we won’t have to stand by long to see how this experiment works out. Note this too: MMT completes the divorce between productive activity and capital formation, that is, prosperity without wealth.

A command economy means that government increasingly attempts to takes over economic enterprise, to replace x-million individual economic choices of freely-acting people in a society with bureaucratic central planning. (Have you already said ha-ha-ha, knowing how that has worked out through history?)

UBI is the primary feature of that because, in a command economy, production is mostly pretend, so you just have to give people money (for nothing). Remember the old basic operating system of the Soviet Union, stated succinctly as: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Got that?

The idea behind “Build Back Better” is to renovate the infrastructure of a hyper-tech economy that actually no longer exists because we are in the contraction phase of an historic pulsation or cycle, leaving us with lots of tech and less production, tending toward zero. Nobody flogging this slogan actually knows what it ought to mean under the circumstances, which is to go with the flow of the reality of this contraction: to downsize, downscale, and re-localize all our activities to bring them back into sync with actual productivity - that is, raising food, making real stuff, and trading it. Again, it’s the energy dynamic, stupid.

To get to that point, we’re going to shed the massive over-burden of financial game-playing that has pretended to represent our economy. That means stock valuations and bond prices will vaporize along with the derivative activities concocted for trading gainfully in these now-phantom representations of capital. If that happens sooner rather than later, we won’t even be able to pretend to Build Back Better the interstate highways, the electric grid, airports, and all the other stuff in the “infrastructure” folder.

Indeed, a lot of that would be malinvestment folly now because we’re nearing the end of mass motoring and commercial aviation as we’ve known them. If we even have electricity twenty-five years from now, it will come from much-reduced grids on a much more regional basis. The bottom line for all this is that pretty soon every corner of the country will be on its own amid quite a bit of social disorder and financial wreckage. So, whatever energy you actually can marshal to Build Back Better, save it for your town or your local community. And remember, all of the attempts by a national government to control these events, and coerce its citizens in the service of that, will only lead to a more ineffectual and impotent national government that nobody has faith in, confirming the fact that you are on your own."

- https://kunstler.com/

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

Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"

"The Vaccines Aren’t Actually Vaccines"

"The Vaccines Aren’t Actually Vaccines"

by Jim Rickards

"Is the world on the brink of a fourth wave of increasing coronavirus infections and deaths? Based on the latest data, that’s a possibility that cannot be ruled out right now. Here’s why... After the virus broke out in Wuhan, China, it spread rapidly to Milan, Italy, where a new strain called the Italian Strain became much more contagious. The Italian Strain spread through Europe and then to New York and surrounding states. This was the first wave that lasted through March and April 2020.

There was a reduction of new caseloads in May and June before a second wave began in July. The second wave receded in September and leveled off in October 2020. The third wave exploded in November 2020 and peaked on January 8, 2021. At its worst, the third wave showed an increase in daily cases that was nine times the first wave and daily fatalities that were double the first wave. Since January 8, both the caseload and fatalities have trailed off sharply.

Today, the increases in new cases and fatalities are about where they were at the height of the second wave, but down sharply from the height of the third wave. The combination of declining caseloads, expanding vaccinations and simple herd immunity has given many people hope that the spread of the virus can be contained, if not completely eliminated, by this summer and that life can begin to get back to something like normal.

“Mutation Escape”: However, there’s no assurance of that. There are concerns that a new fourth wave may be emerging. There are many reasons this could be the case. Even as vaccine programs expand, the virus continues to mutate in ways designed to decrease the efficacy of the vaccine, something called “mutation escape.”

At the same time, many individuals are not taking the vaccines because they are concerned that the vaccine’s experimental genetic modification therapy could have possible, unforeseen side effects (see below). And, some regions do not have ready access to the vaccines, regardless of their efficacy. It would be great to finally put the pandemic behind us, but it may be too soon to declare victory. Each wave lasts about eight weeks, so if a new wave emerges now, it may result in increased caseloads and fatalities at least until June.

Let’s hope the fears of a fourth wave are a false alarm. Still, everyone needs to keep an eye on this possibility before sounding the all clear. Many economists are projecting a strong rebound as more Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19. But the vaccines themselves raise some potentially serious problems…

No Serious Medical Consequences? A recent article in The Hill argues, “... the barriers to a return to normal remain in the form of vaccine hesitancy, as millions voice skepticism over shots that have shown no serious medical consequences.”

Well, it’s not entirely true that these vaccines have shown no serious medical consequences. A few people have died, and others have developed severe side effects immediately after receiving the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine (which isn’t being used in the U.S). As a result, Austria has suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine while investigations are underway. Meanwhile, an otherwise healthy 39-year old Utah woman recently died four days after taking her second shot of the Moderna vaccine. Her liver stopped functioning, according to doctors.

To be clear, side effects and even death are not unusual among those receiving vaccines. Most people don’t have serious problems, but no approach is 100% perfect. Pharmaceutical companies and clinicians try to minimize such events in the development and testing of vaccines. Public health policy is based on balancing potential harm from the vaccine against the benefits of the vaccine in terms of lives saved. This information should be provided to patients so they can make an informed consent.

The risks may be low, but they do exist and a small number of people may experience serious side effects or even death. But, here’s what’s not widely known (and is available from drug manufacturers’ own clinical tests of the vaccines)...

The Vaccines Aren’t Really Vaccines: First, these so-called vaccines are not really vaccines in the widely understood sense. A traditional vaccine involves an injection either with a weakened form of the virus you are protecting against or a similar virus. Either one can produce antibodies that remain in the system and fight the actual disease if you get it. These new vaccines are entirely different.

I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here, but these treatments use experimental genetic modification to inject you with mRNA, which is a partial strand of genetic code. That mRNA then enters your cells and orders the cells to construct a spike protein similar to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID). This spike protein then precipitates antibodies that can reduce your reaction to SARS-CoV-2 if you get it. But the “vaccine” does not prevent you from getting COVID, and it does not prevent you from spreading it to others.

The spike protein remains with you indefinitely. In effect, you have modified your own genetic make-up to fight COVID without actually gaining immunity and without reducing transmissibility. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if you’re immune to a disease, “you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.” But these vaccines do not prevent you from being infected or spreading it to others. Some have likened them to chemotherapy for a cancer you don’t have.

Brave New World: Vaccines of this type with respect to viruses are entirely new in humans. Studies have not gone on long enough to evaluate long-term side effects. These drugs are not FDA approved; they are being distributed under an emergency waiver to avoid the normal approval process. It’s almost like we’re being used as guinea pigs. It is likely that most people receiving the drugs are unaware of these important differences between the new drugs and traditional vaccines, which raises questions about whether their “consent” is fully informed.

There could be very good reasons for vulnerable individuals to take these drugs, but they should not be mistaken for the kind of smallpox, polio and flu vaccinations with which we are familiar. As far as vaccines go, mRNA genetic therapy is a brave new world - one that is not well understood."

- dailyreckoning.com

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Related:

• "Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines"

• "Operation Vaxx-All Deplorables: Codename 'Satan's Poker'"

• "Vaccine Diabolus and the Impending Wave

 of Rare Neurodegenerative Disorders"

"Relax..."

"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to

TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing."

- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child

"Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Figure"

"Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Figure"

by Jeff Thomas

"It’s an old saying, but never truer than today, when profoundly false figures are being used to fuel the COVID hysteria. In less than one year, the rulers of the US and many other countries have successfully closed down businesses, decimated social interaction, shut down those who sought to seek group solace in their faith, trashed economies and forcibly seized power, replacing democratic structure with executive edict.

This has been achieved solely through the creation of fear over a flu virus. Mother Jones has stated, "The staggering death toll was both preventable and entirely predictable. Even aside from his vast personal incompetence… Trump blithely put into practice cherished conservative principles that are incompatible with a decent pandemic response. Castigating and de-legitimizing government institutions, demonizing minority communities, and playing into white grievances may help Republicans win elections, but when it comes to beating back a massive public health catastrophe, what’s paramount is robust public agencies, a strong health care system, and special attention to the vulnerable. In many ways, we were doomed from the start."

Pretty scathing. As we can see, the media are not just commenting, but handing out pitchforks to the villagers. As in all irrational calls to arms, the former president has already been convicted of genocide in the court of public opinion. By comparison, Dr. Fauci, who has served as the government’s expert physician has been left off the hook entirely; yet no eyebrow is raised.

Some people in the US will swear by the above statements, whilst others will say that they are exaggerations and misinterpretations. Interestingly, however, most all Americans seem quite willing to accept the 400,000 death count as being accurate. And yet we can obtain the A.M.A. and/or CDC/NCHS annual All-Cause death statistics and both sources offer up a very different picture. Let’s have a look:

We can see that the death count seems to increase by about 1% each year – predictably, as the population also increases. Therefore, if there had been no coronavirus, we might have expected an all-cause death count of about 2,883,386, but the actual count for 2020 was 2,916,492, or an increase from the norm of 33,106, not 400,000. Based upon a total population of 330,849,169, if every single one of these additional deaths was due to covid-19, this would mean a death rate of .01%.

This death rate is clearly not in keeping with a pandemic. But it is, in fact, very much in keeping with a standard flu season rate. The only way that the coronavirus could be responsible for 400,000 deaths in the US in 2020 would be if at least 367,000 people conveniently ceased dying of other causes, such as heart failure, car crashes and cancer.

Researcher Thomas Di Ferdinando, in reviewing the extraordinary increase in claimed death count, has commented, "Without those added deaths, there would be no evidence of a Covid pandemic. This triangulation of facts: essentially no excess deaths beyond the normal annual background count; absolutely NO relationship between Covid "confirmed" cases and Covid "confirmed" deaths; and the mysterious, last-minute dump of 268,259 all-cause deaths into the 2020 end-of-year all-cause death totals; completely demolish any pretext of their having been a 2020 viral pandemic, whether caused by a novel coronavirus or by anything else and that therefore there is no rational reason to be putting masks on children, isolating elders, destroying businesses, locking down populations and shattering the public trust."

Quite so. I couldn’t have phrased it better. But if all the misery that has occurred in the past year has been unnecessary – that is, if this was just another in the series of coronaviruses that have caused a periodic nuisance for over sixty-five years – why have all the lockdowns, loss of jobs, loss of personal liberties, etc., been forced upon people?

Well, in fact, that question may be easily answered. All we really need do is to ask ourselves what a government would accomplish by imposing such draconian requirements. What we see all around us is a people who have been subjugated. "Inalienable" rights that we are supposed to enjoy have been removed. In their place is a state of tyrannical rule. Any demands that have been made by the government, no matter how irrational, have been instituted through force and the populace have caved in to it all.

What might otherwise have taken decades of incremental depreciation of rights has been accomplished in a very short time. And just in time, too. For dramatic changes are in store in the form of rule that the country will live under very soon. A litany of new plans has been put forward that will effectively eliminate freedoms of every type.

In the place of the old system will be a state of totalitarian collectivist rule. Out of a job? The state will provide universal basic income. Can’t afford your education? The state will forgive all student debt. Can’t afford your health plan? The state will provide universal health care. I doubt that it would be a rash prediction to make, that an all-encompassing collectivist plan will be unfolding very soon. And that the fear that has been manufactured will be maintained until the plan is well under way."

- internationalman.com

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Related:

"The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”.

 Vaccination as a Platform for “Digital Identity”

"The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered

 Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 3/29/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 3/29/21"

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“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have

 the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call." 

- Dr. Anthony Fauci, 3/11/21

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 March 29, 2021 12:36 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 127,104,000 

people, according to official counts, including 30,285,447 Americans.

Globally at least 2,783,-00 have died.

  March 29, 2021 12:36 AM 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/

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Editor's Note: This excerpt was originally published in the article “Sleepy Joe's Next $3 Trillion Boondoggle” at David Stockman's ContraCorner.

"The lone political ranger in Washington who has articulately and forcefully confronted Fed Chairmen, Dr. Fauci and the Deep State peddlers of the RussiaGate Hoax specifically and the Forever Wars generally is Senator Rand Paul. Most of his so-called conservative GOP colleagues have either been AWOL completely on these deeply symptomatic matters or joined the fray after it was way too late or had become a matter of Trumpian loyalty-signaling.

Where were they last year at this time when the Donald disastrously anointed a 52-year Federal apparatchik, publicity-hound and scientific lightweight to be the Covid-czar? And then, they permitted him to host his own daily reality TV show which sparked the calamity of Lockdown Nation and impregnated the national psyche with unhinged hysteria about a respiratory virus that was not appreciably more virulent than many which had come before.

There were plenty of scientific voices at the time who said this was a giant folly, but even a brief acquaintance with the history of respiratory diseases and the principles of constitutional government was all that was required to deliver a loud, no!

Senator Rand Paul was one of the few who did from the very beginning, and now that the data is in and the visible pandemic is fast fading, he has been fully vindicated. Indeed, we have rarely seen anything which more powerfully discredits the Covid-as-Black Plague Myth and the resulting depredations of the Virus Patrol than the chart below.

Click image for larger size.

It shows the age-adjusted death rate from all causes for the 120 year span since 1900. As such, it takes all the noise and misdirection out of the daily Covid counts blared across the screen by the cable TV chyrons, and actually embeds the matter in real science.

That is to say, it’s age-adjusted so that the rapidly increasing population of the very elderly with inherently high mortality rates does not bias the picture. Nor do the squirrely death certificate coding conventions promulgated by the CDC last March distort the metric. That’s because it includes deaths from all causes - including the hundreds of thousands where the deceased succumbed to multitudinous causes and co-morbidities but also tested positive under the radically flawed PCR test for Covid.

Needless to say, when the age-adjusted mortality rate from all causes oscillated at about 7 per 1,000 population in recent years and then blipped up to about 8 per 1,000 in 2020 (green bar), you do not have a Black Plague or even a deathly pandemic.

What you have is a bad flu season that unfortunately resulted in a modest excess death rate -and one overwhelmingly centered in the nursing homes and the very elderly population beset with weak immune systems. Also, you have an all-causes death rate that was actually no higher than what was taken as a standard outcome as recently as 2004–2006.

The point is, the chart tells you that there should never have been a Covid hysteria or a lockdown, which caused previously unthinkable economic repercussions such as 70 million newly filed unemployment claims. That’s to say nothing of the crash of whole industries such as air travel and restaurants, the loss of lifetime investments by several millions of small businessmen and entrepreneurs, and the calamity of $6 trillion of Everything Bailouts that were recklessly stood up to compensate for the lockdown carnage.

A few decades from now, the blip represented by the green bar will hardly be visible with even a magnifying glass. That’s because several subsequent years will show a small dip in the annual mortality rates owing to the fact that the Grim Reaper came a few months early when medical treatments and therapeutic protocols failed to become available to the most vulnerable in the initial months of the pandemic.

More importantly, the reason for the sweeping folly of 2020 will become readily apparent. It wasn’t "the science." On the contrary, it was the result of an old-fashioned power grab by a camarilla of public health bureaucrats, their overlords in the pharma industry and the state and local officials who suddenly had a chance to wield dictatorial powers over the daily lives of their constituents.

No rational government in a free society with a healthy opposition party would have wreaked the havoc brought upon America during the last year owing to the tiny blip reflected in the green bar below.

Senator Rand Paul and a few intrepid colleagues - plus an occasional on-point anchor on Fox News like Tucker Carlson - tried as they might, but they simply could not thwart the ceaseless aggrandizement of an Imperial City that has become the living embodiment of Leviathan.

The chart above puts us in mind of our own youth on a rural Michigan farm. At our one-room school, we all wanted to get measles, mumps and chickenpox so that we would have the natural immunities going forward; and when it came along, we wanted to get Dr. Salk’s vaccine because we didn’t wish to get polio. But either way, no one thought we were living in a world beset by deathly plagues and medical pestilence; this includes the virulent Asian flu that came along in 1957, which resulted in 116,000 deaths among a population half today’s size.

Still, the age-adjusted death rate from all causes in 1957 was about 14 per 1,000 or double the rate recorded for the Year-of-the-Covid in 2020. The fact that US economic and social life has been monkey-hammered by unhinged government interventions is evidence that there is not much left in Washington to thwart the on-going metastasis."

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Related:

• "Basic Arithmetic For Leftist Losers"

• "Shot in the Dark: 

Medical Doctor Exposes Deadly Dangers of Covid-19 Vaccines"

• "The COVID Fraud Will Not Stay Hidden Forever"

• "Straight Talk On Covid"

• "Redefining Death"