"America Has Lost the Trade War with China, and the Real Pain Has Yet to Begin"

"America Has Lost the Trade War with China, 

and the Real Pain Has Yet to Begin"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Corporate America sacrificed national interests in service of greed, and so did the U.S. government.

As we all know, the source of Corporate America's unprecedented explosion in profits in the 21st century is the offshoring of manufacturing to China. If you doubt this, please study the chart below of corporate profits. Apologists claim many excuses in an attempt to evade the central role of offshoring production to China, but they all ring hollow: no, it wasn't increasing productivity or automation or Federal Reserve magic, it was shipping production to China and other low-labor-cost nations.

Whether we like to admit it or not - mostly not - the American economy is entirely dependent on manufacturing in China. America's short-sighted obsession with increasing profits to fund buybacks and golden parachutes for corporate insiders and vast fortunes for financiers has led to a dangerous dependency that has handed China tremendous leverage, which China is now starting to make use of. (And why not? Wouldn't the U.S. start using the same leverage if it could?)

A long-time U.S. correspondent who prefers to remain anonymous for obvious reasons recently shared his experiences with parts shortages and price increases from previously reliable suppliers in China. Here is his account of the disruptive shift in the supply chain of essential parts from China to the U.S.

"China is laying siege to the USA by slowing down production and delivery of goods. It doesn't take much to hang up US production, just one missing item can do it. So much stuff is sourced through China they can affect all supply chains. Semiconductors are just the canary - because the chains are so long and complex, and specialized materials are required, etc. But it is happening everywhere.

I have a little manufacturing company and I am seeing this in supply lines. I sent an order to China for printed circuit boards (US prices are astronomical because of various factors). They don't get back for a week, then they quote, then I send money, then they sit on it, then I call and they say they are having problems with some process... etc. But all the suppliers are like this, it is not an isolated incident. They are sandbagging. So just as in laying siege, the attackers have the food outside the castle and wait for the people inside to starve.

As prices rise the Chinese manufacturers take bigger profits so the slowdown effects on that end are mitigated. For products they do not have a monopoly on, like PC boards, they slow down. for things like LCD displays and NFeB magnets, the items become unavailable (try buying magnets on Amazon).

I have to say this is a brilliant idea on China's part, and no one on this side has realized the situation yet. This plan is straight out of Sun-Tzu. implications? inflation and shortages will continue for a long time... maybe forever. The only long-term solution is repatriation of manufacturing to the US. But it is going to cause some serious hurt, vastly more than the sanctioning of Chinese tech companies.

I just sent a request for quote for some radio chips I use to Alibaba. they are $1 each and there are many vendors. I sent notes to 2 vendors i used before and after 4 or 5 days got a ping back that my requests were cancelled. i wound up getting the parts - for 2x the price - from Hong Kong, which at the moment seems to be something of a channel to the mainland. But I expect they will close that leak pretty soon."

I have long made the case that manufacturing, energy and food are all fundamentally national security issues. Those benefiting from "free trade" (there is no such thing, that's just a handy PR cover) have sold the unwary the fraudulent notion that "everyone benefits" from globalization. Nothing could be further from reality. A handful of corporate insiders and financiers have benefited at the expense of everyone else.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost. Essential parts and feedstocks become unavailable for all sorts of flimsy excuses, prices double, triple, then double again, and since we've allowed our entire economy to become dependent on a handful of sources for these essentials because that dependency maximized profits, then there are no alternatives.

America has already lost the trade war, but the pain has yet to begin. Corporate America sacrificed national interests in service of greed, and so did the U.S. government. Now it's too late, and all the good seats at the banquet of consequences have already been taken."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Thomasville, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Where Your Gaze Lingers...”

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.

You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

- Haruki Murakami

“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”

- Richelle E. Goodrich

"Follow the Money"

"Follow the Money"

by Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE – "Another milestone is coming up. On August 31, all U.S. troops are scheduled for removal from Afghanistan… after 20 years of warfare. According to a Brown University study, the war cost about 174,000 lives… and $2.26 trillion, with much of the money lost to corruption and incompetence.

Early Whistleblower: Which reminded us… Long, long ago, we walked into a very ratty office… in a very ratty building… on what was then a very ratty street: East Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. After many summers spent painting towers, hauling trash, cleaning bricks, and building houses… we had our first real job. At $100 a week!

It was there, in the shabby offices of the National Taxpayers’ Union, that we met A. Ernest Fitzgerald. Ernie had worked for the Pentagon as a systems analyst, devising ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In 1970, he was fired on orders from Richard M. Nixon, then-president of the USA, who told his aides to “get rid of that son of a bitch.” “I got fired for committing truth,” Ernie explained in his Alabama accent. The truth Ernie told was about a $2.3 billion cost overrun on the Lockheed C-5A aircraft. And the people he told it to were those on the Joint Economic Committee. Ernie was an early whistleblower. He… and we… believed back then that government could do a better job of spending our money.

Selling Costs: Cynicism… like a fine wine or cancer… takes time to develop. The boy scout can believe that every penny of the Pentagon budget goes to keeping America safe. The old soldier begins to suspect that little of it does. He knows that expensive military adventures overseas probably make us less safe. And he has seen how deep the pockets of the “defense industry” can be. “Maybe 10 cents on the dollar,” he reckons, “are actually well spent.”

But back in 1974, we were new to the wily ways of Washington. We hadn’t yet learned that the real mission of the feds is to spend as much as possible, as badly as possible… so as to provide as much loot as possible to those in a position to get it. Over the years, we lost contact with Ernie. Recently, we learned that he died two years ago. But how it must have galled him… to watch, for half a century, as the waste got worse and worse… to the point where not just a billion here and a billion there were misspent… but where hundreds of billions went AWOL.

He had seen it coming. He explained that the real business of the military suppliers was not to sell weapons… but to “sell costs.” Many operated on cost-plus contracts. The more wars… the more weapons. The more weapons… the more money. The more the wars cost… the more the Pentagon’s suppliers make.

Wasted Millions: As of this writing, U.S. troops have already abandoned their huge Bagram base in Afghanistan, apparently leaving under cover of darkness, without informing their Afghan allies. They’re leaving behind very expensive buildings… very sophisticated helicopters – apparently unusable… and thousands of civilian vehicles, taking the keys with them, as well as hundreds of armored vehicles.

These things alone represent millions of dollars’ worth of spending – all of it now in the “waste” category. But calling it “waste” misses the point. Former Air Force fighter pilot, Col. John Boyd further explained: "People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy. They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is: Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it. Every rusting aircraft and disabled tank added to the flow. They might not have been suitable to the Afghan climate, terrain, or infrastructure or to the Afghans’ operational or maintenance skills… but the suppliers still got their money."

John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, documented how money was wasted on machines that either didn’t work or couldn’t be maintained by the Afghans. Money also just “disappeared.” In all, officials estimate a loss of as much as $100 billion just to waste. But the figure is surely many times that amount. “We wasted a lot of money,” Sopko reported to journalist Andrew Cockburn. “We spent $36 million on a building that was totally built, never used, and has been turned over to the Afghans. As far as we know, it’s empty. It was a disaster ready to happen. And it happened. It wasn’t that people were stupid, and it wasn’t that people didn’t care; it’s just the system almost guarantees failure.”

Grateful Appreciation: And now, the “insurgents” gain ground… reinforced with captured U.S. supplies. “Thanks for the memories,” is the goodbye song sung by the arms industry. Assume a 10% profit margin – either on fixed-cost, cost-plus, incentive, or sole-source/non-competitive bid contracts. That means they made out pretty well – with about a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits from the war.

Naturally, they are very grateful for the business. And they show their thanks by employing retired generals and D.C. insiders, who can help them make more. Retired General Lloyd Austin, for example, now Secretary of Defense, was out of the army for four years before joining the White House team. During that time, he earned a retired general’s pension of about $15,000 per month… But he didn’t just “fade away,” as America’s top commander in the Pacific during World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, recommended.

Instead, he became a director of Raytheon – the defense contractor to which he and his fellow officers had given so much business… and was awarded as much as $1.7 million worth of stock. He also joined private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners, where the door revolves so fast, it must regularly come off its hinges. In addition to Austin, partners include Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the ghastly warmonger, Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Deep State Incarnate: Flournoy is practically the armed wing of the Deep State incarnate. She’s been involved in every busybody group from the Council on Foreign Relations to Booz Allen Hamilton, the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Strategy Group, and the CIA’s External Advisory Board. And while she worked with the Boston Consulting Group, its military contracts went from $1.6 million in 2013 to $32 million three years later.

Along with Blinken, Flournoy founded WestExec Advisors in 2017. Clients include Wall Street giants, tech companies, investment firms, and the big data miner, Palantir Technologies. The following year, the aforementioned Pine Island Capital Partners was set up. In addition to Ms. Flournoy, Blinken, and Austin, its “D.C. partners” include a long list of ex-senators and retired military brass.

And not for nothing are they there. The firm raised more than $200 million last year to fund a SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company). Let us take a wild guess… The SPAC will buy a smallish defense contractor, whose technology the Pentagon will soon find indispensable. And if there is no war underway in which to use it… they will start one!"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Inflation Shock: Are You Ready To Start Paying “$40 Or $50” For A Hamburger?"

"Inflation Shock: Are You Ready To Start 

Paying “$40 Or $50” For A Hamburger?"

by Michael Snyder

"After decades of living in a relatively low inflation environment, it is hard for most Americans to believe that things have gotten so bad so quickly. In fact, even though I write about this stuff almost every day, it is hard for me to believe it. We are watching prices spiral out of control all over the nation, and we know precisely who is to blame. During the pandemic, our politicians in Washington have been borrowing and spending money at an unprecedented rate, and this has pushed our national debt up to 28 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been pumping trillions of fresh dollars into our financial system, and this has resulted in the Fed balance sheet nearly doubling over the course of this pandemic. I have used the term “economic malpractice” to describe what our leaders are doing, but it is actually far worse than that. They are literally in the process of destroying our economy, and even after so many experts have pointed out their colossal errors they still won’t stop. They just keep creating more money, and now we have a horrific inflation crisis on our hands.

Following Joe Biden’s town hall on Wednesday night, the Daily Mail spoke to a restaurant manager in Manhattan named John Stratidis. According to Stratidis, rising costs and rising wages will mean that consumers will have to pay more for their meals. In fact, he is warning that New Yorkers could end up “paying $40 or $50 for a hamburger”… "When minimum wage goes up, who do you think is going to pay for that? The customer. Everything is going to go up just to be able to stay in business. When we give more money, the prices go up and when the prices go up who’s going to pay for that? They’re going to be crying about it, and saying “it’s too expensive”. That’s inflation. You’re going to be walking in somewhere to eat something and paying $40 or $50 for a hamburger."

Obviously, we aren’t at that point yet. But if we stay on the path that we are currently on, we will eventually get there. In some tourist traps, prices for burgers are already completely insane. For example, one Las Vegas restaurant is now selling a burger that costs $100… "Located on the casino floor and a few steps from the poker lounge, Posh Burger offers seven burger choices, ranging from a $12 traditional hamburger to a $23 half-pound “super deluxe” waygyu steak burger, plus the option of a $16 vegetarian Impossible burger. For diners looking to play out their high roller fantasies, an eye-catching $100 menu highlight is dubbed the Posh Royale Burger and created with wagyu beef, truffle, foie gras, gold dust, a garnish of lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and the secret Posh sauce."

That is crazy, but that isn’t even the most expensive burger around. In the Netherlands, one luxury chef is actually selling a burger for $6,000.

I still remember the days when you could get a nice, thick fancy burger with all of the fixings for less than a dollar. Sadly, those days are long gone, and food prices are now rising at a frightening pace all over the country.

The other day, billionaire John Catsimatidis made headlines when he warned that there would be a double digit spike in food prices “by October first”… "Catsimatidis said that he expects a 10 to 14% spike in food prices by October first. FOX Business’ Ashley Webster asked Catsimatidis if he is going to be forced to pass the extra costs onto consumers. “You have to pass it on otherwise you’re not doing your duty to guard your country, your employees and your company,” he responded."

But at least housing is still affordable, right? Actually, CNN is reporting that home prices are 23 percent higher than they were at the same time a year ago… "The median price for an existing home in June hit an all-time high of $363,300, up 23% over last year. That marks 112 straight months of year-over-year gains." 23 percent in one year! Has your paycheck gone up by 23 percent over the past year? If not, you are rapidly losing ground.

Renters are not faring much better. In some of the hottest rental markets around the country, rents have risen by more than 20 percent. The following example comes from the New York Times… "Kaitlin Cindrich is facing a $200 monthly increase in rent this August if she and her husband can renew their apartment lease in Provo, Utah. That 25 percent jump is not something she expected, and the 21-year-old fears she may have to skip doctor appointments for her autoimmune disease to keep up with the payments. Still, she acknowledges there isn’t much choice but to pay more. “We are hoping to stay because everything is so expensive right now that I would be paying the same whether I’m here or somewhere else,” Ms. Cindrich said."

Some markets are seeing more moderate increases, but overall we have seen rental prices increase by 9.2 percent up to this point in 2021… "Data from Apartment List, a listing site, confirms the trend visible in the Zillow numbers: So far in 2021, rental prices nationally have grown 9.2 percent, compared with the 2 to 3 percent that is typical from January to June. According to the most recent data available, prices were higher than economists at Apartment List would have expected had prepandemic trends persisted."

So what will the rest of 2021 look like? Will rental prices have risen by a total of 15 or 20 percent by the time the year is through? The Biden administration continues to insist that inflation is “low”, but hardly anyone believes them. In fact, one recent survey found that 70 percent of Americans are “extremely or very concerned” about inflation… "A new internal poll from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) shows growing concerns about rising inflation in a number of battleground districts ahead of 2022.

Seventy percent of respondents said they were either “extremely or very concerned” about rising prices and the rising costs of living, according to the polling memo released Thursday. Additionally, 60 percent of voters said they disapproved of President Biden‘s handling of rising prices and the higher cost of living. On top of that, the poll found that 42 percent of people polled were more likely to blame Biden and congressional Democrats for rising prices. Ten percent said they were more likely to blame congressional Republicans."

If you are in the 30 percent that is not very concerned about inflation, you should be, because it is going to absolutely suck the life out of your standard of living. Meanwhile, more shortages continue to pop up throughout our economy. Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that a shortage of back-to-school supplies is now being projected… "Back-to-school shopping is always a nightmare. This year, expect it to be even worse.

While parents may be used to encountering shortages of items like sneakers, backpacks and gadgets later in the season - which typically lasts from mid-July through the end of August - products are expected to be in tight supply even earlier. That means shoppers could find themselves picking over the handful of ugly backpacks and bento lunch boxes with missing pieces left at the store as early as this month."

In the new book that I just released, I have an entire chapter about hyperinflation and shortages. Everyone could see this coming from a mile away, but our leaders just couldn’t help themselves. Whenever a major crisis comes along, their only answer is to create, borrow and spend more money. Many are comparing this to the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s, but the truth is that what we are facing is much worse than that. We are literally witnessing our nation commit slow-motion economic suicide, and it is absolutely horrifying to watch."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Big Fail"

"Big Fail"

by Jim Kunstler

"Is it still lying if you’re senile? Ethics experts and other viziers of morality might puzzle that out now that something-like-truth is emerging about Covid-19 and the vaccines that have set-up about 150-million Americans - and many more folks in other countries - for a premature exit from this world by way of thrombotic organ failure.

Hence: did the blunt tip of the “Joe Biden” regime’s spear, Ol’ White “Joe Biden” himself, actually lie Wednesday when he told American’s (and the world) that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe? And to “stay calm and get vaccinated?”

The “Town Hall” format featuring “JB” was like one of those old carnival tent shows where a microcephalic is brought onstage to perform awesome intellectual feats, like counting from one to ten (skipping the number seven) to the delectation of the assembled bumpkins with normally-sized but perhaps lopsided heads. “Joe” dazzled the Ohio crowd with a series of impromptu utterances that were not just word-salad but a whole cold buffet of fugitive thoughts. For instance: "And we must be the leader of the free world. If we don’t do it, nobody good is likely to do it or has the capacity to do it. I really mean it. I genuinely mean it. So, it’s the thing, Don, that is the only time - and by the way, the first time I walked down stairs and they played “Hail to the Chief,” I wondered, “Where is he?”

This does kind of raise the question: how are the other nations of the world going to feel about us when they discover that vaccines developed by American companies under US Government grants have gifted scores of millions of their citizens with thrombotic organ failure? Brace for impact. Oh, and by the way, since our military personnel were first-in-line for the vaxes, how does that bode for our preparedness in the event of some severe geopolitical unpleasantness?

On the other hand, Dr. Tony Fauci (a.k.a. “The Science”) did not appear to be senile in his Senate testimony this week, just desperate, since the full story of how his long and rather secretive campaign to heroically develop the vaccine-to-end-all-vaccines - which seems to have come to grief in this Covid-19 catastrophe - is just busting come out. And the story, as I understand it, is that for over twenty years Dr. Fauci has been pumping gazillions of taxpayer dollars into the creation of bio-weapon-grade coronavirus research, and vaccines against them, while registering patents on all that staff. Also, that there was nothing “novel” about the “novel” coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19). Rather Dr. Fauci and his colleagues, such as Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, had been swapping these coronavirus iterations from one lab to another for years - including the Wuhan, China, Lab - seeking to provide a rational for vaccines that they expected to profit from, if only the government (or many governments) could be induced to deploy them.

In the fall of 2019, around the time Covid-19 came on the scene, they were all set to go. Moderna was already at the head of the development line, patents in place, with its computer simulation vaccine featuring the S1 spike protein as its active agent, with Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson taking up the rear. Exactly where and how the virus got loose remains a mystery, though the Wuhan lab release (accidental or otherwise) is one hypothetical story with legs. A less-known one, because the Pentagon’s DARPA was involved in the same virus research, has to do with a US Army delegation sent to China for some sort of ceremonial exercise in the fall of 2019 with, perhaps, infected soldiers, intended to light up that country with yet another in a long-line of animal-to-human viruses… thus priming the heroic debut of Dr. Fauci’s sponsored world-saving vaxes.

Poor Mr. Trump was hustled into the “Warp Speed” cover story for these shenanigans - which perhaps explains why he never looked entirely comfortable onstage with Dr. Fauci and the rest of the White House “team.” Meanwhile news about the efficacy of the vaccines, and especially any adverse reactions to the vaccines, has been very carefully managed by the government, the captive news media, and the - let’s just say it - the evil social media including Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube.

How much are they squelching the actual numbers of deaths directly related to the vaccines? A savvy correspondent with a medical license writes: "The rate of reporting [adverse reactions] to the VAERS system in the US and Europe is very poor: somewhere between 1 and ten percent of actual events being reported. This obviously means that the actual death rate is likely much higher. So, I would not be surprised if the real number of ‘vax’ induced deaths in the US is in the range of 100,000 or more, much more. This is very reasonable when you take into account the shockingly frequent effects involving myocardial inflammation and blood clotting. Both of these pathologic processes logically stem from inflammation stimulated by massive production of the S1 spike protein by the injected mRNA. The S1 spike protein, as you know, is the inflammation-inducing toxin in Covid infections. There was a major f**k-up by focusing on stimulating the production of S1; they, the PTB researchers, thought that the S1 protein was just a marker for SARs-COV, not the pathogenic toxin. In my opinion, most of the deaths from the mRNA ‘vax’ are going to take much longer via long-term inflammatory damage to the vascular system (including heart tissue, brain blood vessels, etc.). Of course, they will deny that such deaths are related to the ‘vax’ given the time distance from the injection. Too many people, making too much money from the mRNA shot…”

This is where things stand at the apogee of summer. Every day we are learning more about the spike protein time-bombs the vaxed population is walking around with in their veins. And now its coming clear why science has been made such a fetish of lately: because science has failed spectacularly, which is an even greater tragedy because when this stupendous calamity is over, what’s left of the civilized world will, by default, turn to superstition as its logical replacement."

- https://kunstler.com/

•

You may be interested in my podcast interview around 

these issues with David Martin, released Thursday, July 22, here.

•

Related:

"High also talks about the breakdown of society because so many high-skilled people will die from the jabs. High says the “lockdown plan that would have killed many has failed,” because of President Trump. High also contends, “The power elite are committed. They can’t back down now, and they must continue with the idea of trying to kill as many of us as possible, especially now that we have had this great awakening and they have broken the veil of secrecy so to speak. This is why the door to door thing. Inoculation is not a good thing, and the elite are trying to inoculate 95% of humanity out of existence. 

Going back to my data to 2003 and onward, there has always been this area of data that said 1.24 billion people would be dying prematurely. We are at the point right now that a little more than 2 billion people have been inoculated, injected with these mixtures, and if we take the numbers out of various institutes out of London they estimate between 60% and 70% this coming winter will fall ill, and the vast majority of those people will die. This is very close to what my data has predicted since 2003 – 1.24 billion people dying. So, imagine what that is going to do to our social order. At that level, our society will be hovering around breakdown. We won’t have truck drivers, doctors, dentists, and a lot of the healthcare workers inoculated themselves. We won’t have airline pilots, and we may not have pilots for large ships to get them in and out of port. That’s a highly skilled job, and it takes years to train someone.”

High also has data on the massive amounts of bodies that will need to be buried or cremated because of the deaths from the CV19 jabs. It is gruesome."

-  https://coyoteprimeblog2.blogspot.com/

•

"Moderna Rep Admits Everyone Is Part of Huge Experiment"

•

Related, an absolute Must Read:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/23/21: "Where Is Cash Going To Go In A Total Market Meltdown?"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/23/21:

"Where Is Cash Going To Go In A Total Market Meltdown?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/23/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/23/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The propaganda and vax attacks to scare or coerce people to take the so-called “jab” are reaching new levels of lies and threats. Make no mistake, the mainstream propaganda media and government health experts will not even tell you this is, in fact, an experimental human drug trial to test a gene therapy CV19 vaccine. They will not tell you this is so dangerous that the Vax makers have zero liability if people get killed or injured. This mRNA is a new treatment never tried before and is rolling out on a reckless scale never before seen in human history. Why is the government telling you to take this jab? The White House, this week, said this is “becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” This statement is being made while many fully vaccinated White House staff members are fighting new CV19 infections. Of course, this is being downplayed and covered up – bad optic. Also, new data has come out that in one of the most vaccinated countries on the planet, Israel, 84% of the new cases are with fully vaccinated people. There is also no mention of natural immunity which, according to John Hopkins Dr. Marty Makary, now stands at 50%. Natural immunity gives people a near zero percent chance of getting CV19 again, according to a new study from USC’s school of medicine. Lies by omission and outright lies are coming from everywhere to get the public to take the jab. This is not about medicine.

It looks like rock legend Eric Clapton is no longer down with mass vaccinations. Clapton got fully vaxed a few months ago. He got so ill that he thought he would never play his guitar again. Now, Clapton says he will not play any venues where fans are required to be vaccinated. Is this liberals starting to wake up to the fact they have been poisoned and screwed with this “Plandemic”? You might remember that a few weeks ago, Internet data analyst Clif High said on USAW, when people figure out that they have been poisoned by the CV19 vax, they would strike back and be angry. A much higher percentage of liberals, according to Clif High, have fallen for the experimental gene therapy drug trial. He says 19 out of 20 Democrats have taken or will take the jab.

The Fed keeps telling us that inflation is going to be transitory, and things will fall in price and go back to normal soon. Nobody is buying this in the real world where people are watching their dollars fall in value and are paying more for just about everything. In simple terms, the dollar is tanking. Maybe this is why JP Morgan is the first big bank (with many to follow) that is putting high-net-worth clients into crypto currencies. Bo Polny says this is all part of a “Jubilee year which began in September of last year and ends in early September of this year.” Polny says, “Expect to see in the next four to five weeks a fall of the dollar, the world’s reserve currency. This could start as early as next week causing a run into tangible asset that include gold, silver and crypto currencies like Bitcoin. All hell is about to break loose on evil.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 

these stories and more in the "Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/23/21":

- https://rumble.com/

○

Related:

"What Will This New Wave Of Lockdowns Do To The Global Economy?"

"This Economy is Creating Extreme Have's and Extreme Have Nots"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 7/22/21:

"This Economy is Creating Extreme Have's and Extreme Have Nots"

"Welcome to Irvine California. The Fed is trying to change it's tune.

 Inflation may be coming around and it could be problems ahead."

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Beauty and Grace"

Full screen recommended.

 2002, "Beauty and Grace"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. NGC 7814 is centered in the pretty field of view that would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive halos and central bulges cut by a thin disk with thinner dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. 

In this telescopic view from July 17, NGC 7814 is hosting a newly discovered supernova, dominant immediately to the left of the galaxy's core. Cataloged as SN 2021rhu, the stellar explosion has been identified as a Type Ia supernova, useful toward calibrating the distance scale of the universe."

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

"One Needs To Learn The Difference..."

"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."

- Robert Fulghum

"The Apocalyptic Drought In The Western U.S. Is Causing Widespread Crop Failures On A Massive Scale"

Full screen recommended.

"The Apocalyptic Drought In The Western U.S. Is 

Causing Widespread Crop Failures On A Massive Scale"

by Epic Economist

"Food prices have been facing meteoric rises recently, but they are about to go even higher because the U.S. agricultural production is being absolutely devastated by what is being considered the worst drought in all American history. This week, the latest reading of the U.S. Drought Monitor brought some extremely concerning news for us. The state of California is now 100% in state of drought, and given that California produces over 60% of the vegetables, fruits, and nuts Americans consume all across the country, this is a major indicator that we will see food shortages and soaring food prices once again in the next couple of months. Evidently, California isn't the only state facing a nightmarish drought right now. Extremely dry weather conditions are covering more territory in our western states than we have ever seen before.

Even though 2020 was one of the worst years for agricultural production in the US, at this time last year only 20 percent of the West was suffering from "severe drought". Today, that number jumped to a staggering 80 percent. What we're facing here is a historic disaster of unprecedented proportions, and our nation's farmers and ranchers and our food supply chains will be dramatically hard hit by this crisis. In fact, the agricultural production of some supplies is already dwindling at an alarming rate.

The truth is that all organic grains, which tend to be grown in concentrated areas, some of which are located in major drought regions, are in a particularly critical situation at the moment. Many farmers are predicting there will be little to no production to harvest in the coming months. In California, 50 of the state’s 58 counties are under a drought state of emergency. For that reason, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order urging all Californians to "voluntarily reduce water use by 15%". However, for farmers and ranchers reducing water consumption is not as simple as turning off the sprinkler. “While demand for water can be reduced, one thing will not change and that is the public’s demand for food,” explained Jamie Johansson, president of the California Farm Bureau.

Considering California is currently responsible for the production of two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts and one-third of its vegetables, the strains on the water resources needed to grow these crops will be translated into a lower volume of food products going to the stores. At the end of the day, we have to start thinking about what we're going to do if there is simply not enough food to go around because things are going from bad to worse. With the U.S. growing fewer grains, fruits, and vegetables, major food chains are getting increasingly dependent on exports, mostly from Canada. The bad news is that Canada is suffering just as much if not more from extreme dryness. In a recent report, local farmers revealed that a never before seen "heat dome" has literally burned their crops before harvest.

Meanwhile, the corporate media is giving very little coverage about the severity of this crisis. The stories simply don't make justice to what is actually happening and, most importantly, no one is talking about the consequences this will have in all of our lives. It's hard to understand why the federal government isn't taking action to ease the impacts of this disaster. All over the world, several countries are also currently facing the consequences of the climate crisis, but other national governments are actively taking steps to turn things around. Even billionaires in the food industry have been sharing their concerns about the frightening pace of inflation growth. In a recent interview with Fox Businesses, John Catsimatidis, the owner and CEO of Manhattan-based grocery chain Gristedes Foods, said that he expects 10% to 14% food inflation by October and that Americans should brace for higher prices for basic expenses in the coming months.

In other words, what we have witnessed so far was just the very beginning and there will certainly be much more financial and economic pain in 2022 and beyond. That is to say, it's very unlikely food prices will ever be lower than they are right now. So if you can afford to stockpile the supplies you need before prices have gone out of control, just do it while there's still time. Scientists are telling us that this is a multi-year “megadrought”, and what we've seen is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, there seem to be many more chapters to this story and we must get ready for the looming disasters."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"Federal Printing Press Is Overheating; Financial System Is Toxic - Get Out! Job Losses Spike; Real Estate"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/22/21:

"Federal Printing Press Is Overheating;

 Financial System Is Toxic - Get Out! Job Losses Spike; Real Estate"

Gerald Celente, PM 7/22/21: "Trends In The News"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, PM 7/22/21: 

"Trends In The News"

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

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"Brave New World"

"Brave New World"

By Bill Bonner

"The vast majority of the experts, including Wall Street, are suggesting that it’s highly unlikely that long-term inflation is going to get out of hand."

– Joe Biden

NORMANDY, FRANCE – "Aren’t we silly, Dear Reader, fussing over inflation? As if we were threatened by a terrible scourge… As if the Huns were at the gates of the city, ready to rape and pillage all within. Well, we can relax. We have it on the highest authority in the world… America’s Numero Uno… jefe de todos los jefes…the brightest star in the whole firmament of Heaven (at least according to democratic theory)… that inflation is nothing to worry about. It’s not going to “get out of hand,” says POTUS.

Yes, the latest readings are shocking. Here’s MarketWatch: "Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and many economists were surprised by how much inflation has accelerated. May and June prices, as measured by the consumer price index, were up at 8% and 11.4% annual rates over their prior months."

And yes… with a $3 trillion federal deficit to finance… central banks all over the planet “supporting” their economies with more “liquidity”… and the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond sinking (signaling stagflation ahead)…a person with some residual common sense might be alarmed. “Whoa…” he might say. “Time for a rethink.”

Collateral Damage: Fortunately for the authorities, thanks to public schools, Facebook, TV, Republicans, Democrats, and mainstream media… there’s not many people with common sense left. And those remaining who can still think at all can see that the situation is completely hopeless. So there’s no reason to get worked up about it.

Ultimately, inflation is just a very pernicious and corrosive form of taxation. It ruins the economy and corrupts the society; it reduces real economic output and makes people poorer. But these are just collateral damage. The important thing is that it permits the feds to do things the public is unwilling to pay for. And Joe Biden is right; inflation is not “getting out of hand.” Just the opposite. The authorities have a firm grip on it. And they intend to use it… like a sledgehammer on an egg.

Agenda of the Governing Class: Coming into focus, more clearly here in Europe than in the U.S., is the metastasizing agenda of the governing class (GC). Emboldened by its new power (it shut down much of the world’s economy)… enriched by printing new money (an estimated $27 trillion was put into service in the last 18 months)… and enamored with its own list of fantasies…it aims to bring its hammer down hard.

It’s no longer enough just to keep the party going, as we hypothesized yesterday. Nor is it enough to merely shift wealth, power, and status to itself, as every GC does. Nor will it suffice to make a fairer, better, safer world, as it claims to want to do. And certainly not a richer world, either… though that, too, is a pretense for many of its actions.

Nope. Now, the ruling elite intends to use its new power to create a new world. Here’s the quote from European Central Bank head, Christine Lagarde, that we showed you last week: "As the pandemic passes, we need to shift the focus from preserving the economy to transforming it. This will require us to redirect spending by both public and private sectors towards the green and digital sectors of the future."

Brave New World: Ms. Lagarde has no more idea what’s coming down the pike than we do. She doesn’t mean to prepare for the future… but to warp it so it suits her. In a free and honest world, an economy serves the people and adapts as their needs and desires change. How much they want to work… what they want to buy… how much they save… how much they invent – they decide for themselves.

But in this Brave New World, the economy – guided and controlled by central bankers and treasury chiefs – will be brought into service to do, not what the people want, but what the GC wants. That is, it will not respond to the many… but to the few who control its money… and its laws. What this new world will look like exactly, we don’t know. But we don’t think you’re going to like it. More to come…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Truth..."

"In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the

alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted."

- Michael Musto

"Jab Remorse" (Excerpt)

"Jab Remorse" (Excerpt)

By Bill Sardi

"So, now you are vaccinated against COVID-19. 40 trillion packages of RNA have been injected that induce irreversible changes in your blood vessels. Now what?

Depending upon which source of information you believe, your life is in the balance if you make the wrong decision about COVID-19 vaccination. A problem with what I write today is that the information below, which is essential to know to maintain health following COVID-19 vaccination, may induce more fear and anxiety, which is what is driving the pandemic and the misdirected decisions over COVID-19 vaccination. I’ll explain more about this below.

According to Our World Data as of July 20, 2021, 161 million Americans are fully vaccinated out of a population of ~328 million (49.1%). It is difficult to understand why anyone would immunize, not with a vaccine, but a 5-times gain-of-function bioweapon, which is what the COVID-19 RNA/DNA vaccines are. But the news media is running a fright campaign that causes people to make health decisions out of fear.

Trillions of spike protein gene packages released: Immediately following vaccination trillions of gene packages will be released from the deltoid muscle where the vaccine needle entered your arm, and will end up wreaking havoc in your blood vessels.

Canadian cardiologist Dr. Charles Hoffe explains the blood clotting threat these vaccines pose: “The blood clots we hear about which the media claim are very rare are the big blood clots which are the ones that cause strokes and show up on CT scans, MRI, etc. The clots I’m talking about are microscopic and too small to find on any scan. They can thus only be detected using the D-dimer test.”

More than half of Dr. Hoffe’s patients had abnormal D-dimer tests after an COVID-19 RNA shot. A D-dimer test measures the amount of degraded fibrin in the blood, that along with blood platelets, seals wounds. Dr. Hoffe warns these micro-clots harm tissues in the brain, lungs, spinal cord and heart, tissues and organs that cannot not regenerate. Permanent damage results.

Dr. Hoffe (paraphrased): “When the COVID-vaccine is injected into your arm, we now know that only 25% stays in your arm (deltoid muscle) and the other 75% is literally collected by the lymphatic system and fed into the blood circulation. These packages of messenger RNA, in a single dose of Moderna vaccine, for example, there are 40 trillion of these messenger RNA packages injected into your system. These particles absorb into blood capillaries. (Capillaries are the connectors between the red hoses –(arteries) and the blue hoses (veins).

The body detects these gene packages which enter the cells and each gene can generate spike proteins. Your blood vessel system is abnormally turned into a spike protein-making factory. Your body recognizes these spike proteins as foreign and makes antibodies against them. Spike protein then permanently becomes part of the cell wall that lines your blood vessels (called the vascular endothelium).

These spiky proteins stick out, white blood cells (lymphocytes) and antibodies arrive which then attracts blood platelets to form a clot around them. These spike proteins can be revealed by a D—dimer test which will reveal these micro-clots. The D-dimer test only reveals recently-formed micro-clots.

Critics say clots are rare among post-vaccine patients, but those are the large clots that result in strokes and heart attacks. According to Dr. Hoffe, a D-dimer test within 4-7 days of vaccination shows 62% of RNA-vaccine immunized patients have an abnormal D-dimer test. These patients become breathless easily.

Your heart now pumps harder to push blood through these blocked capillaries, says Dr. Hoffe. This induces right-sided heart failure within 3 years. (FYI: The left side of the heart pumps oxygenated blood to the body’s organs and tissues; the right side of the heart accepts de-oxygenated blood and pumps it through the lungs so hemoglobin in red blood cells can attach to oxygen and transport it to the left side of the heart; people with right-sided heart failure typically report symptoms of awakening at night with shortness of breath, shortness of breath when exercising, coughing, wheezing, dizziness, fatigue, lack of concentration, lack of appetite, nausea, sudden weight gain, fluid retention in ankles and legs.)

This is of terrifying concern. The worst is yet to come says Dr. Hoffe. The damage will be cumulative with each shot. Revaccination becomes potentially life threatening.

A noted microbiologist reigns in to educate vaccinated patients: Microbiologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi displays what is happening in a visual online graphic. The RNA injected into your body are going to enter the cells that line blood vessels. He points to spiny spike protein that these cells will generate and protrude outwards to attract blood platelets and form micro-clots. Days after vaccination, white blood cells known as lymphocytes as well as antibodies will begin to mount an attack against these cells. If you dare to repeat this (get the second jab), “God help you” warns Dr. Bhakdi."

Please view this complete article here:

- https://www.lewrockwell.com/

○

An absolute MUST READ:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

○

"The Morlocks Milk Covid® for All Its Worth 

So That They Might Inherit the Earth"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/22/21: "This Economy 'By Design' Free-Fall Is Worsening And Leading To An Epic End!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/22/21:

"This Economy 'By Design' Free-Fall Is 

Worsening And Leading To An Epic End!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"How It Really Is"

 

Greg Hunter, "Reset Means Crash of Epic Proportions - David Stockman"

"Reset Means Crash of Epic Proportions - David Stockman"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Reagan White House Budget Director and best-selling author David Stockman says, “This is not the time to be invested in the markets. A reset is just a pleasant name or a clinical name for a crash of epic proportions, which we will have because the markets are so inflated. There are trillions of dollars that are at risk. To put a dimension on this thing or a way of sizing this, is we have a $60 trillion bubble on the balance sheets of 130 million people in American society, but especially in the top 5% to 10% that own a huge share of the assets. I have no thought about how big the correction will be, but if it were just back to the norm it would be a $60 trillion correction, and that is a pretty big hole in the bucket. If $60 trillion disappears (out of the U.S. economy), it changes everything. It turns the financial system and economic reality upside down.”

How did things get so perilous in the economy? Stockman says look no further than Washington D.C. and the Fed. Stockman explains, “When central banks start to inflate like crazy, you first inflate financial assets. It eventually works its way into goods and services, and that’s where we are now. You get the second stage of inflation as well. There has never been a small group of government officials, unelected at that, who have done more damage, more wanton harm to the economy and to the lives of ordinary people than (Fed Head) Powell and his merry band of mad money printers. This is really an outrage. I say these people are damn near criminally incompetent given what they say about the world, which is totally wrong, given what they’re doing, this massive money printing, which is totally unjustified.”

Stockman thinks there will be a “50% to 75% correction in the financial markets.” Stockman contends, “The only asset that has held its value over time is gold.” Stockman recommends everybody should be holding some gold as insurance against the coming “reset.”

In closing, Stockman warns, “Preserve your assets. This is the last moment in time to be greedy or aggressive or to be overly optimistic about the future. The future is being driven by the policy makers. The whole system is being run by Washington. The Federal Reserve totally dominates the financial markets. The Fed has printed $6.5 billion a day for the past 688 days. They have printed more money in the last 688 days than the Fed did in the first century of its existence.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with 

best-selling author and financial expert David Stockman. 

(There is much more in the 45 minute interview.)

- https://rumble.com/

○

Related:

David Stockman, "America's Twisted Pretzel Economy"

"Panic At Sea: 100,000 Sailors Stuck At Cargo Ships As Global Shipping Crisis Goes From Bad To Worse"

Full screen recommended.

"Panic At Sea: 100,000 Sailors Stuck At Cargo Ships 

As Global Shipping Crisis Goes From Bad To Worse"

by Epic Economist

"The explosion in consumer demand over the past year and a half was the trigger of the ongoing global shipping crisis. There was some hope demand for goods would ease this year, but up until now, it has stayed at record highs. On the other hand, wait times have never been longer and the logistical nightmare faced by global supply chains seems to have no clear end in sight. Experts are now predicting that it will take at least another year before the shipping crisis starts to stabilize. However, the uncontrolled spread of the new virus variant and the slower pace of staff vaccination may jeopardize that forecast. Unfortunately, this means also the worst is yet to come. Supply chains are about to face many more disruptions and consumers will have to deal with extensive shortages from now on.

The backlog at ports is a problem that has only been intensified since March 2020, compounded by a challenge that definitely won’t be solved in the next five to six months: increasingly large container ships, and ports that haven’t been remodeled to accommodate the gigantic vessels. In fact, the Port of Los Angeles just recorded its busiest month in history, with over 1 million shipping containers waiting to get unloaded. To make matters worse, a shortage of port workers and the unprecedented volume of cargo are overwhelming longshoremen and seafarers who are having to work for months beyond their contracted lines.

At this point, the crew change is severely worsening, with thousands of workers trapped at sea for over a year. "I've seen grown men cry," revealed Captain Tejinder Singh, who hasn't set foot on dry land in almost a year and isn't even sure when he'll finally go home. "We are forgotten and taken for granted," he said in an interview with Reuters. At least one hundred thousand workers are stranded at sea as the Delta variant rapidly spreads onshore. The Maritime Labour Convention highlighted that that the maximum continuous period a seafarer should serve on board a vessel without leave is 11 months, but many thousands of crew have now been at sea for over 16 months. “The situation is going from bad to worse. We need more than lip service from governments, we need concrete action that allows crew changes to be carried out in a safe manner,” stressed Stephen Cotton, general secretary, International Transport Workers’ Federation.

With virus outbreaks occurring on ships and endangering the lives of marine workers, further disruptions on trade are expected, according to a new Bloomberg report. On the flip side, another 100,000 are stuck on shore, unable to board the ships they need to earn a living on. Can you even imagine the nightmare of being stuck at sea for over a year? According to the United Nations, the situation is quickly evolving into a major humanitarian crisis. Given that only 2.5% of seafarers have been vaccinated, the vast majority of them are not allowed to go back home.

An imminent labor crunch could halt global shipping indefinitely and threaten the operations of global supply chains for months. Keeping in mind that the global economy is heavily dependent on the world's almost two million seafarers who operate the global fleet of merchant ships, which transport around 90% of the world's trade, the aggravation of this crisis also poses a major threat to the US supply chains. We are extremely reliant on exports to keep our economy up and running. Everything - from oil to iron, to food and electronics - either comes or is processed overseas. According to Insider's Rachel Premack, this also means that American consumers should brace for yet higher prices and shortages of many products.

As chaos sweeps across global supply chains, we might be headed to a holiday season of empty shelves yet again. Right now, the international shipping crisis is deepening the financial pain faced by our producers as U.S. agricultural exports are seeing their shipping times increase dramatically. The imbalances between supply and demand are only intensifying global supply chain woes. And this crisis will only truly ebb when demand does. “The import level we’ve seen in the past year is astronomical and not something that our infrastructure can handle,” as Premack laid out. This is a tumultuous and unprecedented time, and we all should start getting prepared for the imminent chaos while we still can because there are serious threats emerging on the horizon."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Music of the Night: East of The Full Moon"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Music of the Night: East of The Full Moon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110712.html

“This Is Reality - Businesses Ain’t Coming Back; Banks Will Steal Your Home; Don’t Hire Zombies”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/21/21:

“This Is Reality - Businesses Ain’t Coming Back; 

Banks Will Steal Your Home; Don’t Hire Zombies”

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/21/21: "Crude Oil SURGES Higher And The FReAk ShOW Stock Market Gains Again!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/21/21:

"Crude Oil SURGES Higher And 

The FReAk ShOW Stock Market Gains Again!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Time to Grab an Umbrella"

"Time to Grab an Umbrella"

by Brian Maher

"Heavy weather barreled through Wall Street Monday - beneath the weatherman’s detection - and gave investors a savage drenching. Squalling rains washed away 925 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average… before relenting late in the day. High pressure, high skies and high expectations were back yesterday. The Dow Jones reclaimed 536 points. It took back another 286 points today.

Once again… all is peace. Yahoo! Finance: "Stocks opened higher on Wednesday, following a session in which investors... cast aside their fears that a resurgence of COVID-19 cases might derail a red-hot economic recovery, as strong earnings provided a ballast to beaten-down markets." Strong earnings? "A batch of encouraging second-quarter earnings on Wednesday from industry bellwethers Coca-Cola (KO), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Verizon (VZ) gave investors reason to focus on the fundamentals. All three companies topped market expectations, converging with sentiment that drove Tuesday's rally."

Just so. Yet, we are not half so convinced the weather will hold.

Conditions Are Too Good: The barometric pressure has risen to delirious levels, unsustainable levels. The pressure in the gauge cannot sustain. Mr. Robert Shiller’s famous CAPE ratio for the S&P 500 goes at 38.19 - a near-record. 16 is about par.

Stocks were only pricier prior to the hell storm of 2000. Not even the peak roars of the 1920s approached today’s extravagances. CAPE came in at 32.56 before the Crash of ‘29. Again… today the CAPE ratio goes at 38.19. The S&P - argues Mr. Shiller - is presently more expensive than in 96% of all previous quarters, 141 years running. But might today’s valuations outdo even their 2000 records?

Even More Insane Than 2000: Mr. Fred Hickey, editor of The High-Tech Strategist, argues they do. But the Federal Reserve’s false fireworks blind the vision: "This market is insanely overpriced. The price-to-sales ratio for the S&P 500 is at 3x. That’s 30% above the peak of 2000 which was crazy. Market cap-to-GDP is at record highs, too. Basically, every indicator other than the P/E ratio is at a record high. The only reason the P/E ratio is slightly below the 2000 record is because of all the financial engineering that’s done to try to pump up the earnings. As insane as the 2000 bubble was, this is more insane - and it’s broader. It’s a direct result of the Federal Reserve and the other central banks pumping enormous amounts of money into the system."

In addition: "This market has become terribly narrow which is another big risk. The record highs are driven mostly by five stocks: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook. Their combined total valuation is $9 trillion, and people continue to pile into this small group of names. This trend has been accelerated by the movement of passive investing where everybody just piles into the same ETFs.

The market cap of the S&P 500 is $36 trillion, and those five companies are now 25% of the index. So when people put money into the ETFs, they essentially buy more of these big tech stocks. It’s a self-perpetuating phenomenon until it ends - and when it ends, the market is going to collapse because the valuations don’t make sense. Look at Apple: Only a couple of years ago, people were getting excited about Apple hitting $1 trillion. Now its market cap is $2.5 trillion, and the stock trades at 33x peak earnings. That’s absolute insanity!"

Insanity, we must agree, and absolute.

No Problem, Don’t Worry: Yet Wall Street’s drummers insist today’s obscene valuations are justified in full. That is because today’s obscene interest rates - obscenely low interest rates - warrant them. Stripped to bolts and nuts, the argument runs this way: Stock prices merely represent the current value of future cash flows. Lower borrowing costs - lower interest rates - raise earnings. So long as rates remain frozen at low settings, today’s valuations are swell.

Yet analyst Charlie Bilello says have another guess. The theory finds little excuse in the facts… "Mr. Bilello has interrogated the data stretching to 1881. He finds: "If low interest rates were the primary driver of higher valuations, we should see the highest valuations in the lowest interest rate periods. But this is not the case. Instead we find the highest average CAPE ratios [when interest rates were between 4.5% to 6%]. This occurred during the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s."

Meantime, today’s interest rate... paralleling yields on the 10-year Treasury note... pegs along at 1.29%. More, please: "The full data set shows a correlation of -0.24, meaning that there is a slight historical tendency for lower interest rates to be associated with higher valuations (and vice verse). But it’s not nearly as predictive as many suggest.

There have been a number of periods where interest rates and valuations have been low (1934-35, 1938, 1940-1954) and other periods where interest rates and valuations have been high (1995-2000). There is no precise formula that can give you the appropriate valuation at a given interest rate."

This Time Is Always Different: Yet the wish is the father of the thought. Wall Street wishes today’s slim interest rates authorize today’s obese valuations. And so the thought has its father… in the wish. But each stock market delirium runs to different themes, different narratives, all lovely, all logical - and all false. They are all bound together by one common feature: The fool belief that this time is different.

“Stocks have reached a permanently high plateau,” it was argued in 1929. “Markets are perfectly efficient,” it was said in the 1960s. “Earnings do not matter,” it was claimed in 1999. “Low interest rates justify high valuations,” it is blabbed in 2021. Each previous narrative came to grief, wrecked upon reality’s hard rocks. We have every suspicion the present narrative will end upon the identical rocks.

Time to Buy Your Umbrella: We do not know when the great undoing will occur. Nor do we pretend to know. We have forecast too many false tempests, too many false tornadoes, too many false typhoons. Yet we are most alarmed by extended stretches of fair weather. That is when guards come down.

And when guards come down, ours goes up. It is presently up. It is a terrible pity no one purchases an umbrella when it is most available, when blue skies stretch to the horizon. Come the inevitable downpour, most are caught in the open, unprepared. Perhaps this is the time to purchase your umbrella. Many are available. And they are on sale..."

- dailyreckoning.com