"Food Prices Are Rising Aggressively, And Even The
Corporate Media Is Admitting That It Is Only Going To Get Worse"
by Michael Snyder
"Food prices are outrageous now, but they are only going to go higher. Earlier today, I came across an NBC News article entitled “Get ready for higher grocery bills for the rest of the year”. I thought that it was strange that a piece put out by the corporate media sounded like it could have come straight from my website, because I have been sounding the alarm about higher food prices for quite some time. Surprisingly, the NBC News article was generally right on point. Thanks to a variety of factors, food prices have been rising aggressively, and that is going to continue for the foreseeable future.
According to the Labor Department, consumer prices overall were up 0.6 percent from February to March: "Consumer prices shot higher in March, given a boost by a strong economic recovery and year-over-year comparisons to a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was about to throttle the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The consumer price index rose 0.6% from the previous month but 2.6% from the same period a year ago. The year-over-year gain is the highest since August 2018 and was well above the 1.7% recorded in February."
0.6 percent may not sound like that much, but if you multiply that figure by 12 months you get an annualized rate of 7.2 percent. Of course the government has changed the way the inflation rate is calculated dozens of times over the years, and at this point everyone knows that the official number greatly understates what is really happening in the economy. In fact, John Williams of shadowstats.com says that if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be over 10 percent right now. In other words, we have now reached Jimmy Carter levels of inflation.
One of the places where we are really starting to see inflation show up is in food prices. Here are just a few examples: "Before the pandemic began, the national average for a pound of bacon in January 2020 was $4.72. By last month, that price had soared to $5.11, according to exclusive supermarket point of sale data from NielsenIQ. Ground beef is up $5.26 a pound from $5.02. Bread is up $2.66 a loaf from $2.44."
So why are food prices increasing like this? Yahoo News recently posted an article that listed four explanations:
1. Plummeting food production.
2. Transportation tumult.
3. More eating at home.
4. Wild weather.
Moving forward, the pandemic will continue to suppress global food production, commodity prices will likely keep climbing, and increasingly wild weather patterns will certainly cause even more damage to crops. All of these factors are making it more expensive for food companies to operate, and as NBC News has noted, food companies are starting to pass along those costs to consumers: "Issues like higher gas prices, increasing transport costs that get passed on to consumers, especially for items like bread, are only going up as driving increases faster than oil production. So grocery prices are likely to remain on the higher end of estimates for at least the rest of the year, Olvera said. Producers may eventually increase their output in order to capture the heightened demand, but that won’t happen until toward the end of this year, Olvera said."
Of course it isn’t just the United States that is wrestling with these problems. Food prices are actually rising far more rapidly in much of the rest of the world, and we recently learned that global food prices spiked for a tenth month in a row during March: "Global food commodity prices rose in March, marking their tenth consecutive monthly increase, with quotations for vegetable oils and dairy products leading the rise, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported today.
The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly-traded food commodities, averaged 118.5 points in March, 2.1 percent higher than in February and reaching its highest level since June 2014."
Those at the very bottom of the economic food chain are being hurt the most by rising food prices. We have already started to see food riots in some areas, and one relief organization is warning that millions of people in East Africa are now on the verge of starvation: "Over 7 million people across six East African countries are at the cusp of starvation as communities have faced existential threats from violence, flooding, the pandemic and locust infestation, the evangelical humanitarian organization World Vision has warned."
Even during the best of years, we really struggle to feed the entire planet, and 2021 is definitely not going to be a great year for global food production. The good news is that there is still plenty of food in our supermarkets right now, and that means that we have a window of opportunity.
I know that food prices may seem ridiculous, but they aren’t ever going to be any lower than they are right now. I would encourage you to use this window of opportunity to stock up at these relatively low prices, because the price increases are only going to become even more painful as our leaders continue to flood the system with more cash."
"America’s first animatronic president outside of Disney World routinely does a disappearing act every weekend. Where does he go? Does his management team plug him into a recharging station? Does he rest on a catafalque in some sub-basement of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like one of the fabled undead from the Hollywood crypt classics? Or do they just stuff him into a closet where the rolling podiums and teleprompters are stored?
It’s unclear exactly what his duties were in eight years as vice-president, besides running interference for his busy son, Hunter, who followed the Veep around the world like a Roomba vacuum cleaner picking up nickels and dimes, but Joe did have to answer to the then-Bigger Guy, Barack Obama, and one wonders if that is not still the case. Does he actually meet regularly with go-between Susan Rice, or just wait for instructions, go where he is told to go, and read what has been prepared for him to read?
The executive regime, whatever it actually consists of, has rolled out an impressive first hundred days agenda of orders and acts designed to obliterate whatever remains of an American common culture and a US economy based on the transactions of free individuals. The easiest, and most readily damaging, was to simply reverse the previous administration’s policy of controlling our border with Mexico. All you had to do was order the border agents to do nothing - and let the restless folk to the south hear that the welcome mat was laid out. Voila! An out-of-control border! Just what you want!
It worked so well, it almost became an embarrassment, except that news media which used to function as the nation’s conscience, has turned sociopathic and is incapable of embarrassment or shame as it bombards the confounded public with narratives that, in any other era, would be easily recognized as rank propaganda. For instance, the apparent fib that Veep Kamala Harris has been placed in charge of managing the situation on the border. In the month since her assignment, she has been seen nowhere near the US-Mexican border, and somehow not a single reporter has asked her to account for that.
The other part of that deal, of course, is to make sure that the newcomers here illegally become Democratic Party voters by demolishing any process that would require proof of citizenship for filing a ballot. That is HR 1, the deviously styled “For the People Act,” wending its wicked way through Congress. The proposed law would attempt to abrogate the constitutional prerogative of the fifty states to craft their own election rules. It couldn’t possibly stand up to a Supreme Court review, and may not even survive its journey through the federal legislature. 75 percent of actual Americans polled favor voter ID, probably for the excellent reason that not requiring ID would be insane.
Is the Democratic Party determined to drive the nation insane? Kind of looks like that. They certainly seem bent on fomenting a race war. That would be insane, but the Democratic Party’s will to punish the nation eclipses all its other hopes, dreams, and aims - and such a degree of sadism tends to indicate a mental health problem. Prior to 2020, they had already destroyed at least a dozen US cities via sheer mal-administration, and the George Floyd riots across the country successfully wrecked much of what bad governance plus the Coronavirus lockdowns had left behind.
Wouldn’t you think that things are already bad enough, for instance, in Minneapolis, what with the Derek Chauvin trial about to entertain the defense’s case, and the courthouse secured like Fort Apache? And so, a fresh incident occurred on Sunday involving one Daunte Wright, 20, shot during a traffic stop. Apparently, there was a warrant out for Mr. Wright, meaning he was a suspect in a crime. When the police tried to detain him, he got back into his car against their clear instructions, raising the possible inference that he might be going for a gun. The officer shot him. A riot ensued, of course. In the chaos, some looting occurred. Black Lives Matter turned out in a matter of minutes, along with members of Daunte Wright’s family. Is another martyr being manufactured?
What message do you suppose the Minneapolis city council sent last month when it settled $27-million on the family of George Floyd - before the trial in the matter even began? It looks more and more like a high stakes hustle: Whatever the truth is about an incident that involves the police, the city will burn and large cash settlements await. Calling personal injury attorney Ben Crump….
And so, the riot season has arrived, as if right on schedule. If Minneapolis and other cities start burning again, will Mr. Biden be positioned to ignore it as he’s ignored the now-lawless situation at the border? Will his managers wind him up to inveigh against “white supremacy?” Or have they set a dynamic feedback loop in motion that is fast running beyond their control - making it clear that perhaps nobody is in charge?
Update 2:pm Monday: Minneapolis police release body-cam video of the Daunte Wright traffic stop. Mr. Wright, standing outside his car, disobeys instructions to be taken into custody on outstanding warrant, then slips away from attempt to handcuff him and back into the driver’s seat. Officer on the driver’s side declares intent to use taser, but grabs handgun instead and fires. A lot to sort out there - except the fact that Duante Wright resisted arrest and attempted to escape the scene."
"Clear focus space voyager mix study music with a space style theme. Play during long study sessions, especially if you're feeling stressed or under pressure. Helps to clear your mind of distraction and keep you in a relaxed focused mental state. Includes low-intensity beta and alpha wave isochronic tones plus amplitude entrainment effects embedded into the music.
How does it work? This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. This brainwave entrainment session cycles through a frequency range of between 10Hz in Alpha, (which can help with memorization and learning), and up to 14Hz in the Beta range, (which will help with increasing focus and concentration)."
"Will a vaccine to SARS-CoV-2 actually make the problem worse? Although not a certainty, all of the current data says that this prospect is a real possibility that needs to be paid careful attention to. If you stay with me, I’ll explain why.
First, let’s set aside the debate surrounding the topic of whether vaccines work and the negative health consequences due to the components of the vaccine. No matter where you stand on the vaccine issue, I’m not asking anyone to capitulate on this point. I’m just asking that this issue be set aside, because in this instance this argument is completely irrelevant. Even without bringing any other issue into the vaccine debate, a coronavirus vaccine is a highly dangerous undertaking due to a peculiar trojan horse mechanism known as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). Regardless of someone’s conviction about vaccines, this point needs to be acknowledged. In the remaining portion of this article, I’m going to explain how ADE works and the future perils it may bring.
For a vaccine to work, our immune system needs to be stimulated to produce a neutralizing antibody, as opposed to a non-neutralizing antibody. A neutralizing antibody is one that can recognize and bind to some region (‘epitope’) of the virus, and that subsequently results in the virus either not entering or replicating in your cells.
A non-neutralizing antibody is one that can bind to the virus, but for some reason, the antibody fails to neutralize the infectivity of the virus. This can occur, for example, if the antibody doesn’t bind tightly enough to the virus, or the percentage of the surface area of the virus covered by the antibody is too low, or the concentration of the antibody is not high enough. Basically, there is some type of generic binding of the antibody to the virus, but it fails to neutralize the virus.
In some viruses, if a person harbors a non-neutralizing antibody to the virus, a subsequent infection by the virus can cause that person to elicit a more severe reaction to the virus due to the presence of the non-neutralizing antibody. This is not true for all viruses, only particular ones. This is called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), and is a common problem with Dengue Virus, Ebola Virus, HIV, RSV, and the family of coronaviruses. In fact, this problem of ADE is a major reason why many previous vaccine trials for other coronaviruses failed. Major safety concerns were observed in animal models. If ADE occurs in an individual, their response to the virus can be worse than their response if they had never developed an antibody in the first place.
An antibody can be rendered a non-neutralizing antibody simply because it doesn’t bind to the right portion of the virus to neutralize it, or the antibody binds too weakly to the virus. This can also occur if a neutralizing antibody’s concentration falls over time and is now no longer of sufficient concentration to cause neutralization of the virus. In addition, a neutralizing antibody can subsequently transition to non-neutralizing antibody when encountering a different strain of the virus.
What does ADE entail? The exact mechanism of ADE in SARS is not known, but the leading theory is described as follows: In certain viruses, the binding of a non-neutralizing antibody to the virus can direct the virus to enter and infect your immune cells. This occurs through a receptor called FcγRII. FcγRII is expressed on the outside of many tissues of our body, and in particular, in monocyte derived macrophages, which are a type of white blood cell. In other words, the presence of the non-neutralizing antibody now directs the virus to infect cells of your immune system, and these viruses are then able to replicate in these cells and wreak havoc on your immune response. One end of the antibody grabs onto the virus, and the other end of the antibody grabs onto an immune cell. Essentially, the non-neutralizing antibody enables the virus to hitch a ride to infect immune cells. You can see this in the picture above.
This can cause a hyperinflammatory response, a cytokine storm, and a generally dysregulation of the immune system that allows the virus to cause more damage to our lungs and other organs of our body. In addition, new cell types throughout our body are now susceptible to viral infection due to the additional viral entry pathway facilitated by the FcγRII receptor, which is expressed on many different cell types.
What this means is that you can be given a vaccine, which causes your immune system to produce an antibody to the vaccine, and then when your body is actually challenged with the real pathogen, the infection is much worse than if you had not been vaccinated.
Again, this is not seen in all viruses, or even in all strains of a given virus, and there is a great deal that scientists don’t understand about the complete set of factors that dictate when and if ADE may occur. It’s quite likely that genetic factors as well as the health status of the individual may play a role on modulating this response. That being said, there are many studies (in the reference section below) that demonstrate that ADE is a persistent problem with coronaviruses in general, and in particular, with SARS-related viruses. Less is known, of course, with respect to SARS-CoV-2, but the genetic and structural similarities between the SARS-CoV-2 and the other coronaviruses strongly suggests that this risk is real.
ADE has proven to be a serious challenge with coronavirus vaccines, and this is the primary reason many have failed in early in-vitro or animal trials. For example, rhesus macaques who were vaccinated with the Spike protein of the SARS-CoV virus demonstrated severe acute lung injury when challenged with SARS-CoV, while monkeys who were not vaccinated did not. Similarly, mice who were immunized with one of four different SARS-CoV vaccines showed histopathological changes in the lungs with eosinophil infiltration after being challenged with SARS-CoV virus. This did not occur in the controls that had not been vaccinated. A similar problem occurred in the development of a vaccine for FIPV, which is a feline coronavirus.
For a vaccine to work, vaccine developers will need to find a way to circumvent the ADE problem. This will require a very novel solution, and it may not be achievable, or at the very least, predictable. In addition, the vaccine must not induce ADE in subsequent strains of SARS-CoV-2 that emerge over time, or to other endemic coronaviruses that circulate every year and cause the common cold.
A major trigger for ADE is viral mutation. Changes to the amino acid sequence of the Spike Protein (which is the protein on the virus that facilitates entry into our cells via the ACE2 receptor) can cause antigenic drift. What this means is that an antibody that was once neutralizing can become a non-neutralizing antibody because the antigen has slightly changed. Therefore, mutations in the Spike protein that naturally occur with coronaviruses could presumably result in ADE. Since these future strains are not predictable, it is impossible to predict if ADE will become a problem at a future date.
This inherent unpredictability problem is highlighted in the following scenario: A coronavirus vaccine may not be dangerous initially. If the initial testing looks positive, mass vaccination efforts would presumably be administered to a large portion of the population. In the first year or two, it may appear that there is no real safety issue, and over time, a greater percentage of the world population will be vaccinated due to this perceived “safety”. During this interim period, the virus is busy mutating. Eventually, the antibodies that vaccinated individuals have floating around in their bloodstream are now rendered non-neutralizing because they fail to bind to the virus with the same affinity due to the structural change resulting from the mutation. Declining concentrations of the antibody over time would also contribute to this shift towards non-neutralization. When these previously vaccinate people are infected with this different strain of SARS-CoV-2, they could experience a much more severe reaction to the virus.
Ironically, in this scenario, this vaccine made the virus more pathogenic rather than less pathogenic. This is not something that vaccine producers would be able predict or test for with any level of real confidence at the outset, and it would only become evident at a later time.
If and when this does occur, who will be liable? Does this vaccine industry know about this problem? The answer is yes, they do. Quoting a Nature Biotechnology news article published on June 5th, 2020: ““It’s important to talk about it [ADE],” says Gregory Glenn, president of R&D at Novavax, which launched its COVID-19 vaccine trial in May. But “we can’t be overly cautious. People are dying. So we need to be aggressive here.””
And from the same article: “ADE “is a genuine concern,” says virologist Kevin Gilligan, a senior consultant with Biologics Consulting, who advises thorough safety studies. “Because if the gun is jumped, and a vaccine is widely distributed that is disease enhancing, that would be worse than actually not doing any vaccination at all.””
The vaccine industry is aware of this problem. The degree to which they are taking it seriously, is another question. While many vaccine developers are aware of the problem, some of them are approaching the problem with more Laissez-faire attitude. They see this problem as “theoretical,” and not guaranteed, with the idea that animal trials should rule out the potential of ADE in humans.
As a side note, it is not ethical to conduct “challenge” studies in humans. However, challenge studies are conducted in animals. In other words, a clinical trial for a vaccine does not include administering the vaccine to a person, and then exposing this person to the virus post-vaccination to monitor their reaction. In clinical trials, humans are only given the vaccine, they are not “challenged” with the virus afterward. In animal studies, they do conduct a challenge test to observe how the animals respond to being infected with the actual virus after being vaccinated.
Will conducting animal studies solve the issue and remove the risk? Not at all. Anne De Groot, CEO of EpiVax argues that testing for vaccine safety in primates does not guarantee safety in humans, mainly because primates express different major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, which alters epitope presentation and the immune response. Animals and humans are similar, but they are also very different. In addition, as pointed out above, the development of different viral strains in subsequent years could present a major problem not noticeable during the initial safety trials in either humans or animals.
What about unvaccinated people who are naturally infected with the virus and develop antibodies? Could these people experience ADE to a future strain of SARS-CoV-2? The ADE response is actually much more complicated than the picture I outlined above. There are other competing and non-competing factors in our immune system that contribute to the ADE response, many of which are not fully understood. Part of that equation is a variety of different types of T-cells that modulate this response, and these T-Cells respond to other portions (epitopes) of the virus. In a vaccine, our body is normally presented with a small part of the virus (like the Spike protein), or a modified (attenuated or dead) virus which is more benign. A vaccine does not expose the entirety of our immune system to the actual virus.
These types of vaccines will only elicit antibodies that recognize the portion of the virus which is present in the vaccine. The other portions of the virus are not represented in the antibody pool. In this scenario, it is much more likely that the vaccine-induced antibodies can be rendered as non-neutralizing antibodies, because the entire virus is not coated in antibodies, only the portion that was used to develop the vaccine.
In a real infection, our immune system is exposed to every nook and cranny of the entire virus, and as such, our immune system develops a panacea of antibodies that recognize different portions of the virus and, therefore, coat more of the virus and neutralize it. In addition, our immune system develops T-Cell responses to hundreds of different peptide epitopes across the virus; whereas in the vaccine the plethora of these T-Cell responses are absent. Researchers are already aware that the T-Cell response plays a cooperative role in either the development of, or absence of, the ADE response.
Based on these differences and the skewed immunological response which is inherent with vaccines, I believe that the risk of ADE is an order of magnitude greater in a vaccine-primed immune system rather than a virus-primed immune system. This will certainly become more apparent as COVID-19 progresses over the years, but the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the vaccine industry to demonstrate that ADE will not rear its ugly head in the near term or the far term. Once a vaccine is administered and people develop antibodies to some misrepresentation of the virus, it cannot be reversed. Again, this is a problem that could manifest itself at a later date.
Although this article focused on the problem of ADE, it is not the only pathway or mechanism that could present a problem for people being infected after vaccination. Another pathway is governed by Th2 immunopathology, in which a defective T-cell response initiates an allergic inflammation reaction. A second pathway is based on the development of faulty antibodies that form immune complexes, which then activate the complement system a consequently damage the airways. These pathways are also potential risks for SARS-CoV-2.
Right now, the fatality rate of the virus is estimated to be approximately 0.26%, and this number seems to be dropping as the virus is naturally attenuating itself through the population. It would be a great shame to vaccinate the entire population against a virus with this low of a fatality rate, especially considering the considerable risk presented by ADE. I believe this risk of developing ADE in a vaccinated individual will be much greater than 0.26%, and, therefore, the vaccine stands to make the problem worse, not better. It would be the biggest blunder of the century to see the fatality rate of this virus increase in the years to come because of our sloppy, haphazard, rushed efforts to develop a vaccine with such a low threshold of safety testing and the prospect of ADE lurking in the shadows. I would hope (and this is a big hope), that this vaccine WILL NOT BE MANDATORY.
Hopefully, you now know a little more about the topic of Antibody Dependent Enhancement, and the real, unpredictable dangers of a coronavirus vaccine. In the end, your health should be your decision, not some bureaucrat’s that doesn’t know the first thing about molecular biology."
"The housing market madness is currently marking a clear shift in buyers' mood and sentiment as the health crisis drags on. Whereas the Fed plunged mortgage rates to record lows and the federal government delayed the foreclosure wave via forbearances, a mass exodus from major metro areas due to the growing socio-economic chaos resulted in an unprecedented demand for new homes and a fierce bidding war. According to several housing experts, homes are being snatched up right after being listed, and buyers' euphoria is quickly draining the market's supply and plunging inventory to ultra-low levels. A recent study shows the U.S. housing market is months away from completely running out of supply. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve policies continue to take the market towards another enormous housing bubble as prices explode all across the nation. However, the threat of rising mortgage rates, inflationary spikes, and a complex affordability crisis can lead to a catastrophic housing market crash that would sharply collapse property values just as seen during the mid-2000s bubble burst. And that's what we're going to expose in this video.
The equation of low inventory plus low mortgage rates has resulted in skyrocketing home prices, making it increasingly harder for Americans to afford a home. Now, first-time buyers are facing extra pressure to enter the market, as the cited factors have set the stage for a speculative and extremely competitive market. Bidding wars are being reported all across the country, oftentimes with buyers making all-cash offers with no contingencies whatsoever. Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist, noted "new listings are getting snatched up right away," adding that nearly 50% of US homes are selling within a week of hitting the market.
In a fresh CNN Business report, a 40-year veteran of the real estate industry and the CEO of KB Home, Jeffrey Mezger, said homebuyers should be careful as this is the most highly leveraged housing market he has ever seen. "It's crazy. There is no inventory," exclaimed Mezger, noting that the rapid pace of home price appreciation is a clear evidence the housing bubble is nearing a dangerous bust. The same report features the story of Ellen Coleman, a real estate agent who works for RE/MAX Realty Centre. She recently listed a fixer-upper in suburban Washington, DC for $275,000, and within three days, she had 88 offers.
The 1,800 square-foot home was sold for $460,000, roughly a 70% surge from the asking price. As housing becomes unaffordable for larger swaths of the population and the market seems to be overheating, Redfin's chief economist Fairweather remembers that this scenario is something "we've seen before, and it never ends well". In essence, the US housing market is facing a tricky dilemma. Either home prices will hit a wall and drop from there, or demand will start waning and, as a result, it will deflate the housing bubble. In any of both cases, it means that a correction has to occur as the current valuations are out of the reality of most consumers. That's why experts say all signs are pointing to a fast-approaching housing market crash.
Every day it goes by, the inventory crisis worsens and, with builders unable to build fast enough while more and more potential homebuyers battle over a smaller share of listed homes, a new JPMorgan study suggested that it could take about two months to exhaust the entire supply of existing single-family homes and approximately five months of new single-family-homes at the current sales pace. According to a National Association of Home Builders survey, 96% of builders surveyed reported building materials as the top challenge in 2021, up from just 66% in 2020. The main culprit is lumber. The material has been so scarce, prices have soared almost 200%, adding over $25,000 to the cost of a new home.
At this point, there is no doubt current housing valuations are based on misconceptions that distort reality. The truth is that all asset bubbles artificially inflated by the Federal Reserve throughout the past year won't resist a sudden increase in interest rates. In other words, it will not only trigger a devastating housing market crash, and lead property values to experience a sharp drop, but create big risks to the economy too, as homeowners become delinquent while watching their main asset collapse."
“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the below gorgeously detailed image was taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch.
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on."
"My wisdom is simple," begins Gustav Adolph Ekdahl, at the final celebratory family gathering of Ingmar Bergman's crowning epic “Fanny and Alexander.” I saw the movie in the early 1980s when it had its U.S. theater release. Now I have just watched the five-hour-long original version made for Swedish television. Whew!
But back to that speech by the gaily philandering Gustav, now the patriarch of the Ekdahl clan and uncle to Fanny and Alexander. The family has gathered for the double christening of Fanny and Alexander's new half-sister and Gustav's child by his mistress Maj. A dark chapter of family history has come to an end, involving a clash between two world views, one- the Ekdahl's- focussed on the pleasures of the here and now, and the other- that of Lutheran Bishop Edvard Vergerus, Fanny and Alexander's stepfather- a stern and joyless anticipation of the hereafter. It is not the habit of Ekdahls to concern themselves with matters of grand consequence, Gustav tells the assembled guests. "We must live in the little world. We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it."
The little world. I love that phrase. This world, here, now. This world of family and friends and newborn infants and trees and flowers and rainstorms and- oh yes, cognac and stolen kisses and tumbles in the hay. The Ekdahl's are a theatrical family; we will leave it to the actors and actresses to give us our supernatural shivers, says Gustav. "So it shall be," he says. "Let us be kind, and generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world."
"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."
"The 'Helicopter Parent' Fed and the Fatal Crash of Risk"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The Federal Reserve is the nation's Helicopter Parent, saving everyone from the consequences of their actions. We all know what happens when over-protective Helicopter Parents save their precious offspring from any opportunity to learn from mistakes and failures: they cripple their child's ability to assess risk and learn from failure, guaranteeing fragility and catastrophically blind-to-risk decisions later in life.
Helicopter Parents generate a perfection of moral hazard, defined as there is no incentive to hedge risk because one is protected from its consequences. Moral hazard perversely increases the incentives to take on more risk because Mommy and Daddy (the Fed) will always save me/bail me out.
For example, when Mommy and Daddy make their reckless teen's DUI charge go away, the teen's already potent sense of godlike liberation from real-world consequences floats even higher. So next time the teen gets into his car drunk and takes his friends on a high-speed spin down Mulholland Drive, he loses control and kills everyone in the car - not just himself but those who trusted his warped sense of risk.
The Fed is the ultimate Helicopter Parent, protecting all the power players in our economy and society from the consequences of their risky actions. By crushing interest rates to near-zero, the Fed has perversely incentivized increasingly risky expansion of credit, and given the green light to there's no limit, spend as much as you want government borrowing.
The Fed's implicit promise to never let the stock market drop for more than a few days - the Fed Put - has incentivized every punter from billionaires to corporations to unemployed people with stimmy checks to max out their credit (or margin accounts) to increase their bets in the market casino.
The Fed has implicitly informed the bigger players that they can bet as big as they want because the Fed will always bail them out, transferring private losses to the public via Fed bailouts, lines of credit, backstops, etc. The Fed has also signaled it will change the rules as needed to save its Players from loss. Mark-to-Market reveals the insolvency of the Players? Well, we'll just get rid of that. All fixed! (heh)
Once the path of moral hazard has been taken, a fatal feedback loop takes hold: as reckless punters take on more risk to boost their gains, the fragility and brittleness of their positions increases geometrically. This soon endangers not just their own bets but the entire financial system, as it's not just one punter who responds to the Fed's Helicopter Parenting promise of no consequences for taking on more risk - every punter gets the green light to take on more risk because the Fed has our back.
Indeed, now that the Fed Put has been established as unbreakable, it would be irrational not to max out margin to increase one's exposure to risky bets. And voila, margin debt has soared as the Fed has signaled its commitment to bail out every risky bet in the market casino.
Now that every punter has maxed out their margin account to increase their bets on markets lofting ever higher, the Fed has no choice but to increase the system's moral hazard: as punters respond to the Fed's incentives to take on more risk, the Fed has to expand its protection of punters from the consequences of their recklessness, which then increases their recklessness.
Nobody's ever had a more generous and godlike Helicopter Parent than the Fed. But alas, just as actions have consequences (first-order effects), those consequences have consequences (second-order effects): in the case of the Fed, credit and markets, the second-order effects are as catastrophic as the drunken teen's there's no risk I can't handle last race down Mulholland: all the risk that the Fed has supposedly dissipated into nothingness has been transferred to the entire financial system.
All the risks generated by gambling with trillions of borrowed and leveraged dollars didn't actually vanish; they were transferred by the Fed to the entire system, which is itself now too fragile and brittle to withstand even the slightest intrusion of consequence. The entire financial system is now careening down a treacherous stretch of curves and blind spots, absolutely confident that being dead-drunk on the Fed's promise of never-ending gains in the market poses no risk whatsoever because the Fed has our back.
Unfortunately for the drunken teen, Mommy and Daddy could make the DUI go away but they can't bring the lifeless bodies of those who reckoned their distorted view of risk was actually accurate back to life. Once the fragile, brittle, disconnected-from-reality system the Fed has created crashes, the Fed will be as powerless as all the other grief-stricken Helicopter Parents to reverse the irreversible consequences of their meddling with moral hazard."
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "How does the empire die? With a whimper… and then a bang. Today, we will look at the whimper. It comes from millions of voices… distracted… confused… insipid. Headlines that make no sense. News stories that are almost completely fake. Hysteria. Hallucinations. Bombast and bunkum. We have it on the authority of Yahoo! that model Paulina Porizkova is “rediscovering dating and sex in her 50s.” We’re so relieved. And former House Speaker John Boehner says Senator Ted Cruz is a “reckless a**hole.”
Whimper and Whine: Meanwhile, people worry about whether they are using the right personal pronoun… or committing a micro-aggression by telling the truth. We’re not supposed to read Dr. Seuss, either – there’s a stereotype of a “Chinaman” in there… And put down that "Gone With the Wind". Don’t you know that Scarlett O’Hara was a white supremacist?! Oh, and are you still the same gender you were assigned at birth? Boring! And don’t forget to play your part in the war against COVID-19. Remember, no one is safe until we are all safe. Or something like that.
We’re a racist society. We’re killing the planet. See something, say something. The patriarchy is unfair to women and minorities. Smoking is bad; recycling is good… Oil is bad; solar is good… Stimulus is good; austerity is bad… Democracy… Equality… Diversity… Sobriety… Blah, blah, blah.
Two percent inflation… excellent! Zero percent inflation… bummer. (Just yesterday, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said he wasn’t budging from his ultra-low interest rates… no way… no how… until inflation is securely at 2% or more.) NFTs… SPACs… TESLA… GameStop… bitcoin... MicroStrategy… Michael Jackson lactating? Sure… they’re investments, right?
Banished Gaucho: And here’s poor Saddleback College… From the LA Times: "After years of turmoil and heated debate, Saddleback College announced this week that it’s getting rid of its mascot, one that many see as a racist caricature. Saddleback President Elliot Stern made the decision to retire the school’s gaucho mascot following a petition signed by hundreds, several community forums and recommendations from the school’s three governing bodies. “It became our college’s Confederate flag,” Stern said over the phone, alluding to the controversial banner seen by many as a symbol of racism and slavery.
The Gaucho mascot, depicting an angry Mexican man riding a horse, has long drawn comparisons with the Frito Bandito, considered one of the more racist brand logos. A gaucho is an Argentinian cowboy.
Blackest Blemish: Gone, too, is the statue of John O’Donnell from Baltimore. O’Donnell was born in Ireland… and emigrated to the U.S. in the 18th century. But he “owned dozens of slaves.” That was enough for the city, now under the enlightened eye of Mayor Brandon Scott. It doesn’t want any reminders of its past… or at least that part of it.
The world’s blackest blemish – America’s slave past – is cast as such a monumental evil that beside it, all else shrinks into good. But when John O’Donnell left Ireland, the country had been through two centuries of conquests, rebellions, famine, and ethnic cleansing. In some places, a quarter to a half the population had been exterminated by English invaders.
Edmund Spenser, an English officer (and later, author of The Faerie Queene), described what he saw... “notwithstanding that [Ireland] was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet eare one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same.
Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spoke like ghosts, crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions [corpses], happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, their they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast.”
But after so many tears shed for America’s unfortunates, who has any left? Certain groups are approved for whimpers; others are met with a stony heart. Many Irish fled to France… Spain… Argentina… America. In the 19th century, so many Irish immigrants had come to America, that Irish labor was cheaper than slave labor. The Irish were put to work on the most dangerous jobs – such as digging the Pontchartrain Canal in New Orleans. Yellow fever and cholera were endemic in the lowland canal area; slave owners didn’t want to lose their valuable property. Back then, who cared if the Irish died?
All That Matters: And who cares now? John O’Donnell owned slaves; that’s all that matters. John O’Donnell ran away from home – in Limerick, Ireland – at age 10. He rocked up as a young man in India, where he seems to have stolen money from the East India Company. Later, he went into privateering and was charged with murder. And the fortune he brought to Baltimore, at least by some accounts, was made by selling the most lucrative trade item in Asia – opium.
But no one wanted to take down John O’Donnell’s statue because he might have been a thief or a drug dealer. Or a murderer. We no longer ache for any sin committed earlier than the founding of America… and none against anyone outside of its borders. And so keen are we to appear to right the wrongs of the past (we cannot undo the past… we can only be smug and superior about it)…that we can spare no indignation for the crime going on right now… nor any alarm for the catastrophe that follows…to which – the big bang – we return tomorrow."
