"It Gets Ugly: Dollar’s Purchasing Power Plunged at Fastest Pace Since 1982 And It Won’t Bounce Back"

Full screen recommended.

"It Gets Ugly: Dollar’s Purchasing Power Plunged 

at Fastest Pace Since 1982 And It Won’t Bounce Back"

by Epic Economist

"The purchasing power of every dollar in circulation is sharply collapsing right now, and experts are warning that lost value won't bounce back even if economic conditions improve. The decay of our currency is actually a lot more acute than it appears. Americans are already realizing their dollars don't buy nearly as much as they did in the past. And to make things worse, the price of everything is skyrocketing. All of this is happening because by attempting to increase consumer price inflation, the Federal Reserve is decreasing the buying power of the consumer dollar, so consumers end up paying more for the same products. In that way, the Fed is actually decreasing the purchasing power of labor paid in those dollars, which means, the value of your labor is being suppressed in the name of higher inflation. Therefore, every hour you dedicate to your work just to afford to have a nice and comfortable lifestyle - and oftentimes, having to spend time away from your family and your loved ones - is sadly worthing less than ever before.

That's what Wolf Richter exposed in a recent article published on his website Wolf Street. Richter explained that, in essence, what the Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks is the “loss of purchasing power of the consumer dollar,” and thereby the loss of purchasing power of labor denominated in dollars. And new data shows that the purchasing power of the consumer dollar has plunged to a new all-time low. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index jumped 0.6% in May, after having jumped 0.8% in April, and 0.6% in March – all three the steepest month-to-month increases in almost 12 years. For the three months combined, CPI has jumped by 2.0%, or by an annualized rate of 8.1%. That is to say, in a three months span, the purchasing power of U.S. consumers collapsed by 8.1% compared to the same period one year ago.

However, by adjusting those rates on an annualized basis, the numbers are even worse. Recent data divulged by the BLS suggests that this month, the purchasing power of the consumer dollar - which includes everything denominated in dollars for consumers, even their labor - has dropped by 0.8%, and over the past three months it fell 2.4%, marking the biggest three-month plunge in purchasing power since 1982, amounting to a drop of 9.5%. Even more worrying is the fact that the current plunge in purchasing power is permanent, and the purchasing power loss we will experience in the future will also be permanent. Richter outlines that the only factor that might make it seem like a "temporary" loss is a period of consumer price deflation. The same has happened in 2008 after the economy faced the most severe recession since the 1930s. "The rest of the time, we’ve had lots of decline in purchasing power. And that has proven to be rock-solid “permanent,” and we never got that lost purchasing power back," he said.

Bearing in mind that a 10 percent drop in the value of the dollar represents a 10 percent loss of buying power, this means that not only the products we buy are getting more and more expensive, our money is also becoming gradually worthless. The current monetary policies are actively destroying our currency, suppressing our purchasing power, and downgrading our living standards. In one recent article published by FXStreet, the financial analyst Chuck Butler alerted that inflation can be shown in dollar weakness, and a weak dollar invites inflation to be imported into the country from other countries. So with inflation soaring right now, and the dollar losing purchasing power, our economy is already facing a double whammy, and things are about to get a whole lot worse as the weak dollar trend has just started to show its early effects. We're going to witness a widespread loss of wealth as our money turns into valueless paper, and the financial hardships faced by most Americans will only intensify while our living conditions deteriorate."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, “Elastic Heart/Not The Only One”

Full screen recommended.

Ludovico Einaudi, “Elastic Heart/Not The Only One”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.

Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121211.html

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Lead"

"Lead"

"Here is a story to break your heart.

Are you willing?

This winter the loons came to our harbor and died,

one by one, of nothing we could see.

A friend told me of one on the shore

that lifted its head and opened

the elegant beak and cried out

in the long, sweet savoring of its life

which, if you have heard it,

you know is a sacred thing,

and for which, if you have not heard it,

you had better hurry to where they still sing.

And, believe me, tell no one just where that is.

The next morning this loon, speckled

and iridescent and with a plan

to fly home to some hidden lake,

was dead on the shore.

I tell you this to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open and never close again

to the rest of the world."

- Mary Oliver

"You Know..."

“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”

- Maria Popova

"So We Never Live..."

"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."

- Blaise Pascal

○

The Marmalade, "Reflections Of My Life"

Chet Raymo, “Thinking About Thinking”

“Thinking About Thinking”

by Chet Raymo

“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living," wrote the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch. And, of course, he was right. Our brains are separated from the world by a permeable membrane. Attention flows outwards. Sense impressions flow inwards. Of this two-way traffic - this awareness - we create a soul.

At this moment, as I sit at my desk on a hillside in the west of Ireland, I try to be aware. Sunlight streams across my computer keyboard; eight minutes ago these photons were on the surface of the sun. A Pholcus phalangioides spider spins its web under the shelf above the desk; I touch the web with a pencil point and the spider does a dervish dance. Outside the window, clouds scud in from the Atlantic; there will be rain in the afternoon.

Continuous awareness: It can be exhausting. Which is why, I suppose, we sometimes wish for the mind to go blank, for the windows of the soul to close, for darkness to fall.

Fortunately, the one thing we don't have to attend to is awareness itself. The brain does its thing without the least bit of conscious control on our part. And a good thing, too; if we had to attend to what is going on in the brain when we attend to the world, we'd... We'd go nuts.

Nothing we know about in the universe approaches the complexity of the human brain. What is it? A vast spider web of neurons, cells with a thousand octopuslike arms, called dendrites. The dendrites reach out and make contact at their tips with the dendrites of other cells, at junctions called synapses. A hundred billion neurons in the human brain, with an average of 1,000 dendrites each. A hundred trillion octopus arms touching like fingertips, and each synapse exquisitely controlled by the cells themselves, strengthening or weakening the contact, building webs of interlinked cells that are knowledge, memory, consciousness- self.

A hundred billion neurons. That's more brain cells than there are grains of salt in 1,000 one-pound boxes of salt. A roomful of salt grains, floor to ceiling. Each in contact with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of others. The contacts flickering with variable strength. Continuously. Unconsciously. Never ceasing. Remembering. Forgetting. Feeling joy. Feeling pain. Thinking. Speaking. Lifting a foot, moving it forward, putting it down again. Flickering. A hundred trillion flickering synapses. Just thinking about it is exhausting.

Neuroscientists are busy trying to figure it all out. Some folks would say that bringing the scrutiny of science to bear upon the human soul is the height of presumption. Others would say that the more we learn about what makes our brains tick, the more we stand in awe at the mystery of soul.

The sheer complexity of the human brain makes any adequate description a daunting task. Which is why some neuroscientists choose to work with simpler organisms- sea snails, for example- to get a grip on the basic structure and chemistry. In recent years, new scanning technologies enable neuroscientists to watch live human brains at work. Active neural regions flicker on the screens of computer monitors as subjects think, speak, recite poems, do math. Continuous awareness, displayed on the screen of a scanning monitor, can look like a grass fire exploding across a prairie.

Still other scientists attempt to model the brain in silicon, building electronic circuits called neural networks that mimic the activity of the brain as it creates constantly changing webs of neurons. So far, no electronic network begins to approach the complexity of the human brain, but the time is not far off when silicon brains will rival brains of flesh and blood. Just trying to make it happen teaches us a lot about how human brains work.

Perhaps the most exciting research is that of the scientists who study the biochemistry of neurons: How do the cells regulate synaptic connections to build new neural webs? One big surprise is just how much of the "thinking" of neurons is done by the dendrites, those hundreds of spidery arms that connect neurons to one another. DNA in a neuron's nucleus sends messenger RNA down along the dendrites to active synapses, where they are translated into proteins that regulate the strength of synaptic connections. Tiny protein factories in the dendrites are apparently key to learning and memory. Once the regulation of these protein factories is understood, drugs that ameliorate some kinds of hereditary mental retardation might be possible. As will drugs that help all of us to learn and remember. Are we ready for "smart" pills? Memory pills?

What all this amounts to is awareness of awareness. For the first time in the history of consciousness, the machinery of awareness has been turned upon itself. As neuroscientists have discovered, thinking about thinking is not easy. Thank goodness we don't have to think about thinking to think.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Remember..."

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort – to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires – and expires, too soon, too soon – before life itself."

- Joseph Conrad, 

1857-1924, English writer, "Youth"

Gregory Mannarino, 6/14/21: "Alert! We Are In An Inflationary Crisis Which Is About To Get Much Worse"

Gregory Mannarino, 6/14/21:

"Alert! We Are In An Inflationary Crisis 

Which Is About To Get Much Worse"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"The Three-way Squeeze"

"The Three-way Squeeze"

by Jim Kunstler

"Here is why the “Joe Biden” regime only has a few months to live: it is caught in a squeeze between some of the greatest lies in world history, and they’re all unraveling now. Anyway, “Joe Biden” is not really functioning as president of the US; he’s just the doddering, photo-op front-man for a kind of politburo centered around Barack Obama, and that group lives in terror of being found-out, which it will be, despite its capture of the traditional news and social media.

Big Lie No. 1 is actually a whole bundle of lies surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. The chief national health official, Dr. Anthony Fauci (a.k.a. “The Science”) can’t get his story straight about whether or not he funneled US taxpayer money to a lab associated with China’s People’s Liberation Army, to engineer a virus that was turned loose on the rest of the world. An email train of evidence shows that he did.

That was bad enough. Then Dr. Fauci (and most of the nation’s medical bureaucracy) worked hard to suppress cheap and effective treatments that defeated the virus and cured patients if used in the early stages of infection, namely, Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, and Fluoxetine. (Fluoxetine, or Prozac, used “off-label,” modulates brain inflammation.) The suppression actively continues to this day. Dr. Fauci & Company promoted the use of a PCR viral testing system run at excessive cycle thresholds that flooded the medical system with false positive tests. The test’s inventor, (Nobel Prize winner) the late Dr. Kerry Mullis said the test was never meant to be used as a diagnostic tool.

Dr. Fauci and the medical bureaucracy are promoting an experimental “gene therapy” as “vaccines,” or so says the man who invented the mRNA vaccine procedure, Dr. Robert Malone — and you can hear him say that in this three-hour-plus roundtable discussion on Bret Weinstein’s Dark Horse YouTube podcast (if it hasn’t been taken down by the time you read this, because to-date YouTube suppresses all mention of Ivermectin, etc.). You will learn in this detailed discussion that the three vaccines being used have produced more deaths and “adverse events” in aggregate than all the other vaccines medicine has developed over the past thirty years. Let that sink in. You will also hear Dr. Malone describe the spike protein, which is the chief mechanism activated by the vaccines, as a “toxic” agent.

This cannot be good news for the millions who gave their consent to be vaccinated. We have no idea what the long-term effects will be, but it’s apparently the case that the toxic spike protein does not behave the way it was supposed to. That is, it does not remain in the intramuscular vaccination site, but rather migrates all through the body, with a special affinity for causing cardiovascular mischief, neuromuscular disorders, and damage to reproductive organs. Stand by on how all this works out. And beware of fresh attempts by your government to coerce you into a vaccination, or a series of them.

This is a fast-developing story, obviously with many sub-plots, but the net effect for “Joe Biden” will be to badly erode whatever shreds of legitimacy still hang on him. News about vaccine deaths and “adverse events” has also been suppressed, but that effort appears to be falling apart now, even as the government ratchets-up pressure to jab the substantial number of the “vaccine hesitant.” (Count me as “vaccine fuggeddabowdit” on this one.) Okay, that’s Big Lie No. 1.

Big Lie No. 2 is that “Joe Biden” won the Nov 3, 2020 presidential election. That colossal scam, which the Democratic party advertised well in advance, and accomplished via blatant mail-in ballot fraud and computer voting machine tweaking, was never properly adjudicated — despite media claims that court cases were dismissed on the basis of evidence, which was not so. The Arizona vote audit underway is the first of probably many efforts among the so-called swing states to interrogate that operation. The “Joe Biden” government tried and failed to shut down the AZ audit early in the game. Then, late last Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland upped the ante, saying that he was about to send a gang of federal attorneys down AZ-way to scotch the darn thing.

Recall that, constitutionally, elections are conducted entirely under the prerogatives of each state, not the national government. The AZ audit was ordered by the Arizona State Senate. State Senator (and former fighter pilot) Wendy Rogers, replied to AG Garland, “You will not touch Arizona ballots or machines unless you want to spend time in an Arizona prison. Maybe you should focus on stopping terrorism.” The next move is Mr. Garland’s. Will he send in federal marshals to seize the ballots and Dominion machines? Or will “Joe Biden” tell AZ Governor Doug Doucy to sic the national guard on his own state senate? If you want to start a real civil war, that would be a good way to kick it off.

Other state legislatures have sent delegations down to Arizona to observe and familiarize themselves with the audit procedure, with the prospect of doing the same thing in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other places where janky outcomes were seen in key counties last November. The Democrats know this is possibly lethal to their control of national affairs. Any way they move now, the result will lead to a desperate loss of legitimacy, especially at the top, where “Joe Biden” dwells.

The third “Big Lie” is that the US economy is “recovering” from the Covid-19 disruptions. The US economy has been a Potemkin village since 2008, held together with the baling wire and duct tape of Federal Reserve money games and, more so lately, US government fiscal recklessness — i.e., spending vast amounts of borrowed money on direct payments to broke citizens, broke businesses, and, apparently an equal number of outright crooks who just gamed the various bailout categories.

For now, many places are supposedly caught up in the exuberant reopening of daily life activities: restaurants, travel-and-leisure businesses, big league sports. Sounds good, maybe, but the frothy feeling is belied by the still-boarded-up shopfronts and the expanding homeless campgrounds of the big cities and by the noises made by big corporations laying off thousands of employees. One narrative says that many service jobs go begging because too many people still receive government handouts that add up to more than such jobs pay. And some businesses, such as restaurants, say they are offering much higher wages than they used to in a desperate effort to keep operating.

Okay… but consider how long you can run a restaurant paying dishwashers $25-an-hour, for example, especially considering how much of the population is too broke now to eat in restaurants that charge a third-again as much for dinner as they did before Covid-19. What you’re actually looking at is a broken business model for much of the service industry. Sometime this summer, that pretty big problem will be acknowledged, and the nation will see that we are not in a recovery at all, but rather a permanent contraction that will be labeled “a depression.”

Actually, it will not be a “depression,” either, exactly, which implies a cyclical dip, even a big one, because the cycle itself is broken — and to understand that, you must delve into the nature of the long emergency: the energy resource and capital scarcity quandary facing techno-industrial societies. The direct implication of this broken cycle will be even more social distress, which is being aggravated by the racial provocations ginned up by the Woke “Joe Biden” regime, and which will blow up in its face if there is another summer of riots, burning, and looting.

So, to conclude this unusually long edition of the CFN blog, you can see the horizon on the “Joe Biden” administration, with sunset probably due this fall. How it will play-out is anybody’s guess. Mine is that, one way or another, some military caretaker administration may have to interrupt the 232-year-long cavalcade of governance led by legitimately-elected presidents. Perhaps we’ll run a re-do of the last election. Or maybe we’re in for a new phase of the American project, a more uncertain and less appetizing one, featuring dictators and despots. Or maybe we’ll get through this very dangerous defile of history and land in a much lower-key but more coherent disposition of things recognizably American. Stay tuned for developments."

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"

"Bad Faith Fauci"

 "Bad Faith Fauci"

by Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity

'SubFauci has destroyed faith in science. The FDA and NIH have diminished faith in medicines and treatments, respectively. This is a terrible direction in which to head - once a society loses its ability to trust its main institutions and authorities bad things follow. We cannot consider this to be accidental any longer. So, now what?"

- https://www.peakprosperity.com/

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, 

when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

- Upton Sinclair

"Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc Treatments Increased Coronavirus Survival Rate by Almost Three Times"

"Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc Treatments 

Increased Coronavirus Survival Rate by Almost Three Times"

by Andrew Mark Miller

"A new study shows that the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine touted by former President Donald Trump increased the survival rate of severely ill coronavirus patients. The observational study, published by medRxiv, found that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, along with zinc, could increase the coronavirus survival rate by as much as nearly 200% if distributed at higher doses to ventilated patients with a severe version of the illness. “We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” the study’s conclusion states.

The study adds, “By using causal analysis and considering of weight-adjusted cumulative dose, we prove the combined therapy, >3 g HCQ and > 1g AZM greatly increases survival in Covid patients on IMV and that HCQ cumulative dose > 80 mg/kg works substantially better. These data do not yet apply to hospitalized patients not on IMV. Since those with higher doses of HCQ had higher doses of AZM, we cannot solely attribute the causal effect to HCQ/AZM combination therapy. However, it is likely AZM does contribute significantly to this increase in survival rate. Since higher dose HCQ/AZM therapy improves survival by nearly 200% in this population, the safety data are moot.” The study was conducted by Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey on 255 patients.

Dating back to last spring, then-president Trump openly touted the effectiveness of the drug and even took it himself. It earned him pushback from medical experts, including his own White House coronavirus team member Dr. Anthony Fauci, and political pundits who dismissed his claims and maintained the drug was ineffective.

Last summer, Twitter restricted the account of Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., after he posted a video of doctors touting the effectiveness of the drug. The social media platform accused him of "spreading misleading and potentially harmful misinformation" related to the coronavirus. In March of this year, the World Health Organization warned against using the drug to prevent the coronavirus, citing data suggesting it was ineffective.

Some conservatives have taken to social media and used the study to defend Trump, including Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called out Fauci for his previous comments about the drug.

“How many people died because Dr. Fauci said trust the science and Hydroxychloroquine isn’t effective?” Greene tweeted. “New study shows: Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin therapy at a higher dose improved survival by nearly 200% in ventilated COVID patients. Trump was right.”

Several other studies released since last year have come to the same conclusion that hydroxychloroquine can be effective in certain situations against the coronavirus, including a December study from the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents showing 84% fewer hospitalizations among patients treated with the drug. Another study, conducted by Hackensack Meridian Health, found encouraging results in patients with mild symptoms who were treated with the drug."

- https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/

Original Location: "Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc Treatments 

Increased Coronavirus Survival Rate by Almost Three Times"

○

Related MUST READ:

"‘We Made a Big Mistake’ - COVID Vaccine Spike Protein

 Travels From Injection Site, Can Cause Organ Damage"

"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"

"The Truth..."

 

"Inflation Is Starting To Get Really Crazy – And It Is Worse Than You Think"

Full screen recommended.

"Inflation Is Starting To Get Really Crazy – 

And It Is Worse Than You Think"

by Epic Economist

"Every day, more news about rising prices are making the headlines, as the effects of inflation are becoming increasingly more evident to U.S. consumers. However, many of these reports are not exposing the true severity of this crisis, and that's happening because official data about the rate of inflation is still in single digits, but what most Americans don't know is that government agencies have dramatically changed the way inflation is calculated over the past few years. In fact, a recent piece by Forbes disclosed that over the past 30 years, the government has changed the way it calculates inflation more than 20 times.

But it doesn't matter how much they try to hide it, the effects of inflation can be observed everywhere, especially in food prices. Americans have been noticing a significant jump in prices at the grocery store. As one CBS affiliate described in a recent article, more and more grocery shoppers are experiencing "sticker shock" every day, as the price of food - especially meat, fruit and vegetables - is going up. If prices were indeed rising at a 5 percent annual rate, consumers wouldn't be feeling such painful impacts just yet. Unfortunately, the reality is much worse than it seems.

According to Jeff Cohen, a deli owner and meat wholesaler, the price of meat is out of control and the actual inflation rate for meat is much higher than what is being reported. “They said on national news it’s 10 percent. But that’s not true. it’s probably closer 20, 30 percent,” Cohen said. For Risa Kumazawa, an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University, this is a clear sign that the economy is overheating and as opposed to what policymakers have been persistently arguing, this is not a temporary blip, inflation will keep on rising and consumers will face even more challenges to keep up with the soaring costs. “When you realize this might be a longer-term issue than what we had thought, it might be too late to combat this problem,” Kumazawa explained. In other words, the more the Federal Reserve overlooks this issue, the bigger are the risks for this to evolve into a major national crisis.

A couple of years ago, an entire shopping cart of food would cost about 25 dollars. Today, if anyone manages to get a full cart of food for less than 200 dollars, that's a great achievement. It's getting harder and harder to take advantage of sales and make each dollar stretch as far as possible. These days, some of the sales prices are actually much more elevated than regular prices. That's occurring because some companies have been finding ways to raise prices without alarming consumers. Food manufacturers and grocers are resorting to "shrinkflation," a practice in which they package food in smaller containers while charging the same amount, and in that way, they manage shoppers' expectations.

Others have been attempting to use language that will not spark widespread alarm. A recent Bloomberg report described that if you ask Pampers maker Procter & Gamble Co., they will say they are not raising prices, they are “taking pricing". "Rival Unilever, known for Dove soap and Axe body spray, says it’s been “very active with pricing.” The prize for creativity - so far at least - has been home-improvement retailer Lowe’s Cos., whose finance chief told investors Wednesday that it was “elevating our pricing ecosystem,” revealed the report.

All of those indirect terms for rising prices illustrate the rhetorical backflips companies perform not to expose what they’re actually doing - responding to skyrocketing inflation on global markets, and protecting their profit margins by making their products increasingly more expensive. At this point, we have monumental piles of dollars chasing very few goods and services, therefore, prices have nowhere else to go but up. Our leaders should be focusing on taking emergency measures to prevent an inflationary collapse, but instead, they have been borrowing and spending massive mountains of money that we do not have, while the Federal Reserve is going to keep pumping mountains of cash into the financial system. So more painful inflation is coming for us, and the standard of living of most Americans will keep spiraling down."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Must Watch! “Brace For Impact - Day Of Doom Imminent; Economy A Ticking Time Bomb; Housing On Borrowed Time”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 6/13/21:

“Brace For Impact - Day Of Doom Imminent; 

Economy A Ticking Time Bomb; Housing On Borrowed Time”

"Retail is Suffering Everywhere - Even in Resort Towns"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, IAllegedly, PM 6/13/21:

"Retail is Suffering Everywhere - Even in Resort Towns"

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "To The One Who Knows; You Only Live Once"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, 

"To The One Who Knows; You Only Live Once"

"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

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Book of Hours II, 16"

"Book of Hours II, 16"

"How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the strongest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing-

each stone, blossom, child-

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The Daily "Near You?"

Beatrice, Nebraska, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

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

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

by Ryan Holiday

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

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

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

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

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

And now? How quaint and stupid does that all seem? Depending on the day you look, years of market gains have now been taken back. 47 million people are projected to be added to the unemployment rolls in the US. The death count from what was dismissed as a mere respiratory flu and the left’s latest hoax is now inching towards 170,000 and there are millions more confirmed cases worldwide. There have been runs on supplies. Hospitals are maxing out ventilators. The global economy has essentially ground to a halt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- https://ryanholiday.net/

"And The Truth Is..."

"There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the government. They promised you order, they promised you peace, they promised you health, and all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent."

- "V For Vendetta", slightly modified.

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/13/21: "Important! Markets, A Look Ahead: What You Must Know Now"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/13/21:

"Important! Markets, A Look Ahead: 

What You Must Know Now"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"One Cannot..."

 

"As Drug Makers Set Sights on Vaccinating 5-Year-Olds, Latest VAERS Data Show Number of Injuries, Deaths Continues to Climb"

"As Drug Makers Set Sights on Vaccinating 5-Year-Olds,

Latest VAERS Data Show Number of Injuries, Deaths Continues to Climb"

By Megan Redshaw

Excerpt: "This week’s number of reported adverse events among all age groups following COVID vaccines surpassed 329,000, according to data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data comes directly from reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

VAERS is the primary government-funded system 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 as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Today’s data show that between Dec. 14, 2020 and June 4, a total of 329,021 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 5,888 deaths — an increase of 723 deaths over the previous week. There were 28,441 serious injury reports, up 3,082 compared with last week.

Among 12- to 17-year-olds, there were 59 reports of heart inflammation and 19 cases of blood clotting disorders.

In the U.S., 299.1 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of June 4. This includes 126 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 162 million doses of Pfizer and 11 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine. Of the 5,888 deaths reported as of June 4, 23% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 16% occurred within 24 hours and 39% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

This week’s data for 12- to 17-year-olds show: 5,367 total adverse events, including 165 rated as serious and four reported deaths among 12 to 17-year-olds. The youngest deaths reported include two 15-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1187918 and 1242573), a 16-year-old (VAERS I.D. 1225942) and one 17-year-old (VAERS I.D. 1199455).

773 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to17-year-olds with 98% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 1.8% to Moderna and 0.5% (or four cases) to J&J.

59 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 58 attributed to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

16 reports of blood clotting disorders, all attributed to Pfizer.

This week’s total VAERS data, from Dec. 14, 2020 to June 4, 2021, for all age groups show:

20% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.

51% of those who died were male, 45% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.

The average age of death was 74.5.

As of June 4, 2,012 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 666 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.

Of the 3,211 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 53% were reported after Pfizer vaccinations, 42% following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine and 253 cases, or 8%, of Bell’s Palsy cases were reported in conjunction with J&J.

310 reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome with 45% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 41% to Moderna and 21% to J&J.

92,929 reports of anaphylaxis with 41% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 50% to Moderna and 9% to J&J.

5,907 reports of blood clotting disorders. Of those, 2,482 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 2,017 reports to Moderna and 1,367 reports to J&J."

Full article here:

- https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

○

Related:

"The prestigious Salk Institute, founded by vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, has authored and published a bombshell scientific article revealing that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is what’s actually causing vascular damage in covid patients and covid vaccine recipients, promoting the strokes, heart attacks, migraines, blood clots and other harmful reactions that have already killed thousands of Americans (source: VAERS.hhs.gov)."

Critically, all four covid vaccine brands currently in widespread use either inject patients with the spike protein or, via mRNA technology, instruct the patient’s own body to manufacture spike proteins and release them into their own blood. This floods the patient’s body with the very spike protein that the Salk Institute has now identified as the smoking gun cause of vascular damage and related events (such as blood clots, which are killing many people who take the vaccines). "Put simply, it means the vaccines were designed to contain the very element that’s killing people."

Full article:

"Bombshell Salk Institute Science Paper Reveals The 

Covid Spike Protein Is What’s Causing Deadly Blood Clots… 

And It’s In All The Covid Vaccines (By Design)"

○

‘We Made a Big Mistake’ — COVID Vaccine 

Spike Protein Travels From Injection Site, Can Cause Organ Damage

"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"

"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

Must Watch! "The Housing Market Is Lying To You; Institutional Money Buying Entire Neighborhoods; Wealth Transfer"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 6/12/21:

"The Housing Market Is Lying To You;

 Institutional Money Buying Entire Neighborhoods; Wealth Transfer"