Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"

by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":

"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."

Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of "The Poems" this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.

Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"In Ordinary Times..."

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

- Dorothy L. Sayers

"God Grant Me The Courage..."

“God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right,

even though I think it is hopeless.”

- Adm. Chester W. Nimitz

"We said together, wistfully, 'Life, eh?' It says everything without having to say anything: that we all experience moments of joyful or painful reflection, sometimes alone, sometimes sharing laughs and tears with others; that we all know and appreciate that however wonderful and precious life is, it can equally be a terribly confusing and mysterious beast. 'Life, eh?"

- Miranda Hart

"How to Spot Your Own Self-Delusion"

"How to Spot Your Own Self-Delusion"

by Pamela Meyer

"What if deception is in the eye of the beholder? And what if lies can help us tell the truth? The biggest lies are the lies we tell ourselves. S.E. Hinton wrote in "The Outsiders", "I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me." Maybe she was onto something. We've trained ourselves to accept certain truths about where we find fulfillment, where we find joy, and where we find success. But should we challenge that conventional wisdom? Recent studies show that much of what we know about leading a rewarding life is wrong. Some of it is delusional, and some of those delusions are self-inflicted. Here are 5 lies we tell ourselves that we should cleanse from our brains.

Lie #1: Idle Hands are the Devil's Workshop: A hard day's work is great. Mindless busy work is not. The greatest threat to success isn't an hour lunch break or a seven-hour day. Everyone's had a boss that believes working hard is the same as working smart. Take this 2013 study from the New Zealand Productivity Commission (yes, that's a thing). In it, experts draw a sharp contrast between work and productivity. The two are not interchangeable. Productivity, notes the study, is the efficient use of both labor and capital. You shouldn't waste labor, just like you shouldn't waste money. We're hardwired to equate quantity of work with quality of work. So we admire and promote the co-worker who puts in the longest hours, when we should be rewarding the co-worker who puts out the best work. We trick ourselves into emphasizing inputs instead of outputs.

Lie #2: "Winners never quit, and quitters never win." Vince Lombardi immortalized that can-do spirit, and has the creds to back it up. Today, we accept his cliché blindly. But quitters can win, and win big. Einstein was a patent clerk in his first gig. Lombardi's wisdom would've had Einstein working to be the best darn patent clerk in Germany. He quit, and traded a fulfilling civil service career for the theory of relativity. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard, Steve Jobs quit Reed College - how significantly has our world changed thanks to their quitting spirit?

Winning strategies don't come from the senseless pursuit of bad ideas. To wit, that's precisely what this fascinating psychological report concludes. In an exhaustive study of 12,000 young people's progress over their lifetime, the University of Florida's Timothy Judge found a beguiling little demographic of successful individuals. Their success didn't come from their backgrounds, but from their ability to collective, analyze, and reject -quit, if you will--certain paths in front of them. Not only did they succeed, they succeeded at higher levels than peers who had greater advantages in pedigree and education.

Lie #3: "Money for Nothing": There's no such thing as a free lunch. This data from The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), read: a bunch of rich countries, found that working hours have gone down since 1991 while wages have gone up. Along with that trend comes the perception that success comes easy and money comes quick.We live in a world of miracle weight loss, fast cash and no-hassle loans. This is an era where people actually believe a Nigerian Prince is willing to pay them millions in exchange for a social security number. The reality is that if you want to make it, you need to get gritty and you need to get dirty. There's no quick, clean fix, there's rarely an easy set path, and there are no free rides. Richard Branson had a little record shop before he started signing bands like The Sex Pistols and founding Virgin Airways (no, not that kind of dirty.) He said: "You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."

Re: the grit and dirt part, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is a good place to find both. Two West Point professors, along with two of their colleagues, confirm the bad news: "grit" and determination towards achieving a goal is just as important as your individual talent.

Lie #4 "I will win at all costs. I can do it." That philosophy worked so well for Lance Armstrong... But losing isn't just an option; it's the breeding ground for resiliency. And we shouldn't fear it. Harvard's Rosabeth Moss notes "the difference between winners and losers is how they handle losing." Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper gig for lacking "imagination" and "original ideas." Michael Jordan was cut from his High School basketball team. Oprah was demoted from her news gig because she "wasn't fit for television." Losing, writes Kanter in her book, is the building block of confidence. As the self-esteem generation rises -with its noted intolerance for criticism and defeat- the biggest winners will be the best losers.

Lie #5: Note to self: "You are my best friend: You are special": It sounded so good when Mr. Rogers said it. But we're not all special. Not until we do something to prove it. Psychologist Jean Twenge has studied what she calls the "Narcissism Epidemic" that courses through our society. It's a look at how an infatuation with ourselves is chipping away at the foundations of success and mental health. This self-deception, says John Reynolds of Florida State University, has engendered inflated ambitions and expectations, which -surprise!- leads to depression and feelings of failure.

So what's the antidote for all the special snowflakes out there? In "The Pyschology of Success", Carol Dweck speaks to the importance of having a "growth mindset" rather than a "fixed mindset." Put plainly, you can be special and you can be talented. But it isn't divinely appointed. Act mediocre, lead a mediocre life, and you'll be as special as a glass of lukewarm milk. Per Dweck, you either grow personally and professionally to fulfill your aspirations, or your stubbornly expect your aspirations to come to you.

All of this, of course, is easier said than done. The logistician Ludwig Wittgenstein said "nothing's so difficult as not deceiving ourselves." Clear heads are hard to come by, common sense is rarely common, and perception isn't always reality. True honesty isn't limited to the way you talk to your neighbors. It can also come from the way your heart talks to your brain.”

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/9/21: "Central Banks Gone Wild! Expect A Tsunami Of Inflation To Hit"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/9/21:

"Central Banks Gone Wild! Expect A Tsunami Of Inflation To Hit"

- https://traderschoice.net/

The Daily "Near You?"

Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Ironic, The Tragic Thing..."

“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”

- Henry Miller

“Sheeple”

“Sheeple”

by CCRider

“I get so disgusted with people at times I can barely control my emotions. Standing in line at a grocery store earlier today there was a young mother and her daughter I would guess to be about three years old, both (of course) wearing masks. I have no doubt the mother was of normal intelligence and cared deeply for her child. I pitied them both. In front of her was a lady in a powered shopping cart who was morbidly obese. Her cart was loaded with processed foods, high-fructose corn syrup soda and other poisons. She was wearing a mask and surgical gloves.

How often have you wondered how people will so instinctively follow absurd and self-destructive dictates? Why does propaganda work so well? It can’t be stupidity. Hitler led Germany to slaughter and dismemberment and the Germans are among the smartest people in the world. It boggles the mind and depresses the spirit. It’s not enough to simply call them sheeple. That doesn’t satisfy the intellect. There has to be a reason. It turns out there is a good reason and it’s uncomplicated and the answer has been available for hundreds of years.

Only Murray Rothbard could have found an obscure original thinker five hundred years earlier who explains in the simplest terms why people can be made to so slavishly adhere to the ridiculous and dangerous dictates of a single ‘authority’ figure. Frenchman E’tienne de La Boe’tie wrote a book that explains this phenomenon. Its title is ‘Discourse on Voluntary Servitude”. I came across it when I was first enthralled by Rothbard’s writings 40 years ago. It played a major role in my hatred of government ever since.

The following interview gets into the details of this book. Like Rothbard himself, James Corbett has the ability to fix laser-like on the most logical path to understanding. Here he is interviewed by Keith Knight on the subject. Knight is a wonderful interviewer who did his homework. It’s 45 minutes long but if you listen to the first 6 minutes I think you will be hooked.

Keith Knight of “Don’t Tread on Anyone” interviews James Corbett about “The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude”, the 16th century treatise on tyranny and obedience by Étienne de La Boétie. James and Keith highlight some of the book’s key insights and detail how they apply every much to our situation today as they did when they were written.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

Freely download “The Politics of Obedience:

The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude”, by Étienne de la Boétie, here:

- https://mises.org/library/

"Time to Get Out of Dodge?"

"Time to Get Out of Dodge?"

By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "A German movie, title long forgotten, showed a group of children whose parents were killed near the end of World War II. The four children were orphaned into chaos, ruins, and hunger. With no family nearby, no functioning government, no communications or social services available, and neither law nor order to protect them, what could they do? The children set off, making their way across Germany in 1945 – amid scenes of desperation, violence, and depravity.

The redeeming thing was not only that the children were resourceful and intrepid, and succeeded in reaching their grandmother’s house… but that when they got there, they found it just as they remembered it – an oasis of tranquility… untouched by five years of brutal warfare. When things fall apart, in other words, is a good time to be where they don’t fall apart.

On the Move: Suppose you were in Russia in 1917… or in Germany in 1933… or in Venezuela in 2010. If you were clever or lucky, you might have found a way to prosper safely. But the better strategy was to get out when the going was still good.

Two million Russians emigrated during the Civil War, 1917-1922. 130,000 Jews fled Germany between 1933-1937. And more than four million people have left Venezuela in the last 10 years. And now… partly in response and partly in anticipation… Americans seem to be on the move, too. Some are fed up with politics… with their neighbors… or just with the weather. Others, like animals moving to higher ground before a tsunami, may be sensing danger. “Zoom Towns” are booming. And prices in some areas are soaring.

Curiously, if masking up, closing down, and staying away help reduce death rates from COVID-19…Americans must not fear death. Because last year, they moved from places with fairly strict control measures to places without them.

This remark should not be confused with “the science.” It’s just an observation passed along by a French colleague, Simone Wapler. She reports that 16 million Americans packed up last year, and sent us the latest figures compiled by moving company, United Van Lines. They show, on the left, the states people abandoned… and on the right, where they went.

Writes Simone: "People left the towns where local taxes were high, and states where people were locked down – such as California, New York, and Illinois. They found more moderate taxation and less confinement in states such as Florida, Idaho, and Tennessee."

Getting Out: Others seem to be moving out of the U.S. completely. Yesterday, we talked with a colleague, Ronan McMahon, an expert on real estate in the resort communities of Central America. “Most of the buyers used to be older people,” Ronan explained. “American retirees.” “I’m in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Here in my building, it used to be very quiet, with a couple of common rooms for meetings and cocktail parties. Now, the place is full of families – some with young children. And the meeting rooms have been turned into digital workstations. And over on the East Coast of Mexico, I’ve never seen so much activity. Restaurants are full. Beaches are crowded. Americans are buying places sight unseen. They seem almost desperate to get out of the U.S.”

Trouble Ahead: The U.S. is clearly headed for trouble. Deeply in debt already, it proposes to solve its problems – real and imagined – by borrowing (and printing) more money. Eventually, the whole money system will blow up. Most likely, the supermarket shelves will empty… and the headlines will fill up with reports of violence, corruption, and jackassery.

How bad will it get? We have no way of knowing. Maybe we will muddle through with only financial losses. Or maybe millions will die in a coming “Dark Age” of starvation and civil war. When will things get rough? We don’t know that, either. Typically, disasters take much longer to begin than you expect. Then, they happen faster than you expect. And finally, they get worse than you ever imagined. Whatever happens, some places are less likely to fall apart than others.

Find Your Bolthole: In the meantime, we are “locked down” in our own little bolthole in Ireland… waiting for the country to open up again… and for the birth of a grandchild. (Any day now!) But you don’t have to leave the U.S. to find relative safety. America’s small towns still provide some of the easiest and most agreeable living opportunities in the world.

Colleague Dan Denning has prepared a “bolthole” report for our Bonner-Denning Letter subscribers. You may want to take a look at it. [Paid-up subscribers can download the report here. To subscribe, click here.]

Or you could sign up for colleague Tom Dyson’s Postcards From the Fringe free e-letter. Tom and his family are “hobos,” with no fixed home address. In his Postcards, he explores the places he visits – his current residence is in Driggs, Idaho – and describes the transient life he leads. [Go here to sign up.]

Until next week…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

"The only difference between the Republican and Democratic 

parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when

 corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference."

- Ralph Nader

"Number of COVID Vaccine Injuries Reported to VAERS Surpasses 50,000, CDC Data Show"

"Number of COVID Vaccine Injuries Reported to 

VAERS Surpasses 50,000, CDC Data Show"

By Megan Redshaw 

“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

"Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines revealed steadily rising numbers, but no new trends. VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received to the system as of Friday of the previous week. Today’s data show that between Dec. 14, 2020, and March 26, a total of 50,861 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 2,249 deaths - an increase of 199 over the previous seven days - and 7,726 serious injuries, up 631 over the same time period.

Of the 2,249 deaths reported as of March 26, 28% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 19% occurred within 24 hours and 43% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated. In the U.S., 136.7 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of March 26.

This week’s VAERS data show:

• 19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.

• 45% of those who died were male, 43% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.

• The average age of those who died was 77.7 and the youngest death was an 18-year-old.

• As of March 26, 341 pregnant women had reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 104 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.

• Of the 578 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 63% of cases were reported after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations - almost twice as many as reported (36%) following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine. Seven cases of Bell’s Palsy were reported with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine (1%).

• There were 2,578 reports of anaphylaxis, with 53% of cases attributed to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 44% to Moderna and 3% to J&J vaccine, which was rolled out in the U.S. on March 2.

• Using a broadened search for any reference to anaphylaxis in chart notes resulted in 15,193 reports, with 52% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, 45% to Moderna and 3% to J&J. With each vaccine, nearly 42% of anaphylactic reports occurred in people aged 17-44.

According to the CDC’s website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.” To date, the only information the CDC has published related to the investigation of COVID vaccine-related deaths and how those investigations were conducted is a COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Update via the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, published Jan. 27.

An interview in MedPage Today highlighted the shortfalls of the post-marketing surveillance of the COVID vaccine. Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said we are seeing a lot of spontaneous reporting, a lack of formal post-approval studies because vaccines have only received Emergency Use Authorization and vaccines being given outside the healthcare systems - interfering with the ability to rigorously collect observational data.

Although the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have various systems in place to monitor the safety of vaccines, they are not “up and running” and do not have adequate resources behind them, Kesselheim said. According to Kesselheim, there’s essentially nobody keeping track of COVID adverse reactions in the U.S. and no long-term safety data, but emphasized that this new mRNA technology is “extremely effective and extremely safe.”

On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions about how the CDC conducts investigations into reported deaths, the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done and the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine. We also inquired about whether healthcare providers are reporting all injuries and deaths that might be connected to the COVID vaccine, and what education initiatives are in place to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting.

It took the CDC 22 days to respond to our repeated inquiries. When someone did, the person told us the agency had never received the questions - even though the employees we talked to several times said their press officers were working through the list of questions and were reviewing the email we sent. We provided the questions again yesterday, and requested a response by April 7.

Breakthrough cases: On March 31, The Defender reported on the increasing number of “breakthrough cases” of COVID in fully vaccinated people. Washington, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Minnesota have all reported breakthrough cases of COVID, some of which have resulted in hospitalization and death. Investigations are underway to determine if there were problems with the vaccines or if people had been infected with a variant. When asked about the increasing number of breakthrough cases during a White House press conference, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, said it is something they will take seriously and follow closely, but breakthrough infections happen with any vaccination.

CDC issues new travel guidance, vaccine passports stir controversy. The CDC today issued new travel guidance stating that fully vaccinated Americans traveling within the U.S. do not have to get tested for COVID before or after their trip, and do not need to self-quarantine when they return home.

On March 29, The Defender reported that the Biden administration and private companies are working to develop vaccine passports that would require Americans to prove they’ve been vaccinated against COVID as the country opens. Dr. Naomi Wolf, founder and CEO of Daily Clout, said the passport system really isn’t about the vaccine. It’s about your data, and “once this rolls out you don’t have a choice about being part of the system.”

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said that vaccine credentials are a complete government overstep that will undermine public trust and substantially limit normal day-to-day essential activities. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said “vaccine passports are unconstitutional. Period.”

On March 26, New York launched a digital vaccine passport system known as Excelsior Pass that residents can use to prove they’ve been vaccinated or recently tested negative for infection. The New York system, built on IBM’s digital health pass platform, will be used at dozens of events, including arts and entertainment venues.

J&J makes headlines with manufacturing mix-up, report of severe allergic reaction: As The Defender reported April 1, 15 million doses of J&J’s vaccine failed quality control after workers at a Baltimore manufacturing plant negligently put an AstraZeneca ingredient in J&J’s COVID vaccine. The mix-up forced regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines and prompted an investigation by the FDA.

On March 31, Business Insider reported that a 74-year-old Virginia man suffered a rare reaction to J&J’s vaccine that caused a painful rash to spread across his entire body and skin to peel off. Richard Terrell told local news station WRIC he began suffering strange symptoms four days after receiving the vaccine. “I began to feel a little discomfort in my armpit and then a few days later I began to get an itchy rash, and then after that I began to swell and my skin turned red,” Terrell said. The rash spread to his entire body and his skin peeled off. He went to the emergency room, where doctors determined that he had experienced an adverse reaction to the COVID vaccine.

AstraZeneca suspended in Germany and Canada: On March 31, The Defender reported that Germany indefinitely suspended use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine for anyone under 60 following advice from STIKO, the country’s independent vaccine committee and external experts. The committee investigated reports of blood clots, some fatal, in people who received the vaccine and decided to give the vaccine only to people 60 or older unless they belong to a high-risk category where the benefits outweigh the risk of a serious side-effect.

As The Defender reported on March 30, several regions of Germany, including Berlin and Munich, had temporarily paused the vaccine for people under 60 after Germany’s vaccine regulator disclosed 31 cases of a rare brain blood clot, nine of which resulted in deaths. The decision was made as a precaution ahead of a meeting with national medical regulators scheduled for later in the day where it was decided to indefinitely suspend the vaccine.

On March 30, Canada announced it was suspending AstraZeneca’s vaccine for people under age 55 following concerns it might be linked to rare blood clots, The Defender reported. Health Canada demanded AstraZeneca conduct a detailed study on the risks and benefits of its COVID vaccine across multiple age groups, and suspended the vaccine for younger groups pending the outcome of that review. On March 24, Health Canada updated the product information for AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccines to warn of the risk of rare blood clots associated with low levels of blood platelets following vaccinations - a stark reversal from Canada’s former position.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

- https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

○

Related:

• "The Vaccines Aren’t Actually Vaccines"

• "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"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 4/9/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 4/9/21"

○

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

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

- John Maynard Keynes

○

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/9/21:

"The FReaKShoW Continues! 

(But You Are Not Supposed To Know About It)"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

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

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

April 7th to 9th, Updated Daily 

○

Financial Stress Index

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

○

Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○
Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

○

Oh yeah...

"This Economic Depression Has Left Very Deep Economic Scars All Over America"

Full screen recommended.

"This Economic Depression Has Left 

Very Deep Economic Scars All Over America"

by Epic Economist

"The extreme events we have witnessed over the past twelve months have pushed America to an economic depression that opened very deep economic scars in several groups all across the nation. However, the promise of a successful reopening and a rapid economic rebound seems to be disguising just how deep such scars actually go. Even though our leaders insist everything will be fine, evidences point to a very different outlook. The reopening doesn’t mean that things will come back to where they were before the health crisis and government-mandated shutdowns ravaged our economy. In fact, we’re about to see a completely changed environment, as over 4 million businesses were completely wiped out throughout the downturn, and workers have been facing increased challenges to get back to the labor market. Recently graduated and first-time workers will have to deal with an even gloomier reality - they will become part of a generation of unemployed who will inevitably fall behind in making important life decisions, such as starting a career, leaving their parents home, and building their own wealth. The future doesn’t look as promising as it once did for most Americans. And a loopsided reopening is about to increase economic vulnerabilities, widen the inequality gap and compromise the growth of entire generations, putting us in a dark age of continuous recessions and steep financial setbacks. That’s what we’re going to in this video.

The past year has been incredibly distressful for the United States. Never in history we have seen so many businesses disappearing in such a short span. From the bust of the crisis up until now, we have lost 4 million businesses. As a result, we have watched a tsunami of unemployment crash our economy, with more than 70 million claims for unemployment benefits being filed during the early months of the collapse. To this day, the number of weekly claims continues at alarming levels that are about three times as high as those registered during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although the reopening of the economy is scheduled to occur all across the country until June, that doesn’t mean a real recovery will actually follow, especially considering some groups will be completely left out of the rebound. The Economic Policy Institute recently informed that approximately “25 million American workers are either unemployed, underemployed or have pulled out of the workforce entirely”.

The current economic depression has pushed millions of formerly middle-class workers straight into poverty, and for many of them, life will never be the same. All groups that were already struggling with financial strains before the downturn were hit particularly hard when the jobs vanished. In the short-term, federal stimulus money provided a safety net for many households and small businesses, but now, even with extended benefits, several families don’t qualify to collect them anymore. Some ascribe the exponentially higher unemployment rates among city residents and low-and-middle-income residents to the collapse of the retail and hospitality industry. Those jobs were once fueled by customers who are now working from their suburban homes, and given the staggering number of permanent store closures and business bankruptcy filings, they might never come back. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a whopping 2.4 million Americans have been unemployed for 52 weeks or longer, which represents 24% of all unemployed.

We’re now at a dangerous period for households from a financial perspective. For first-time workers and college graduates, this period will also be particularly distressing. The job opportunities that they were promised will not be materialized in the foreseeable future. The unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 is even higher than the national rate, at 11.1% in March. Pew Research Center analysis has disclosed that the share of 18-to-29-year-olds living with a parent has hit its highest level since the Great Depression. By the end of 2020, the share of young adults living at home stood at 52%.

Failing to land that dream first job, whether in high school or college, can end up derailing a lifetime's worth of career experience, economist Gould says. The next generation will, unfortunately, stay unemployed for much longer than anyone could have imagined, and that will compromise the growth and the future of this group, because it will take much longer for them to pay off student loans, to start a family, to invest and buy a house. But even in face of all that, our leaders insist that "we're headed to an economic recovery". In reality, it seems that we're approaching even more troubled times, and our long economic nightmare is just beginning."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"4th Stimulus Check and Social Security Stimulus Check Update"

Ron Yates, PM 4/8/21:

"4th stimulus check and Social Security Stimulus Check Update, plus the $2000 4th stimulus check and $1000 monthly stimulus checks, Biden’s $15000 advanceable tax credit for first time home buyers, Amazon Jeff Bezos supports the corporate tax increase and the Facebook hack. All this and a whole lot more in today’s video."

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Dolmen Ridge"

Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Dolmen Ridge"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Connecting the Pipe Nebula to the colorful region near bright star Antares is a dark cloud dubbed the Dark River, flowing from the picture's left edge. Murky looking, the Dark River's appearance is caused by dust obscuring background starlight, although the dark nebula contains mostly hydrogen and molecular gas.

Surrounded by dust, Antares, a red supergiant star, creates an unusual bright yellowish reflection nebula. Above it, bright blue double star Rho Ophiuchi is embedded in one of the more typical bluish reflection nebulae, while red emission nebulae are also scattered around the region. Globular star cluster M4 is just seen above and right of Antares, though it lies far behind the colorful clouds, at a distance of some 7,000 light-years. The Dark River itself is about 500 light years away. The colorful skyscape is a mosaic of telescopic images spanning nearly 10 degrees (20 Full Moons) across the sky in the constellation Scorpius.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090708.html

"What Can We Know?"

"What can we know? What are we all?

Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,

with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Forgiveness..."

"It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."

- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"

•

"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"

"If I have harmed anyone in any way

either knowingly or unknowingly

through my own confusions

I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way

either knowingly or unknowingly

through their own confusions

I forgive them.

And if there is a situation

I am not yet ready to forgive

I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm myself,

negate, doubt, belittle myself,

judge or be unkind to myself

through my own confusions

I forgive myself."