"From Fake Boom to Ka-Boom!"

"From Fake Boom to Ka-Boom!"

by Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE – "Whew… We were distracted last week by the collapse of the elite’s 20-year fraud in Afghanistan. Alert readers noticed that it caused us to amend our outlook… our forecast for coming events. Let’s take a look at it, so we’re all on the same page.

Here it is in shorthand: (Fake) Boom… Bust… Re-Boom… Ka-Boom… Kabul!

Fake Boom: Yes, we’re only in the boom stage now… But it’s a fake boom… like the fake “stability” in Afghanistan that disappeared in a matter of hours last weekend. The Washington Post reported on Friday that: "With prices creeping up, more Americans are turning to dollar stores." What kind of boom forces people to cut corners?

A fake one. One where only some people profit and most people struggle. One that skews wealth towards the rich. The Institute for Policy Studies elaborates: "The world’s billionaires have seen their wealth surge by over $5.5 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, a gain of over 68 percent. The world’s 2,690 global billionaires saw their combined wealth rise from $8 trillion on March 18, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021, drawing on data from Forbes.

Global billionaire total wealth has increased more over the past 17 months of the pandemic than it did in the 15 years prior to the pandemic. Between 2006 and 2020, global billionaire wealth increased from $2.65 trillion to $8 trillion, a gain of $5.35 trillion."

Billionaires have reaped an unseemly windfall at a time when millions have lost their lives and livelihoods. The pandemic has supercharged existing global inequalities, with the wealthy profiteering from the shuttering of the main street economies around the world. The boom is phony. It doesn’t make things better; it makes them worse – more bad investments… more inequality… more zombies… bigger deficits… more debt… more lies…

Two Choices: What next? Choose one of two possibilities:

1) The economy strengthens and the Federal Reserve thinks it’s safe to stop printing money…

or…

2) The economy weakens and the Federal Reserve keeps the presses rolling.

In either case, the stock market’s reaction is probably the same: a selloff or a crash. In the first scenario, it sells off in anticipation of tighter credit. In the second, it sells off because the last round of easy credit clearly didn’t work. But you never know what will set it off. Or when. It doesn’t have to be a direct financial crisis. It could be something that demoralizes investors for other reasons. The fall of Kabul, for example.

Spreading Rot: It is now clear to everyone that the U.S. Empire is not what it used to be. By every measure – money, power, prestige, life expectancy, you name it – America has declined since 1999. And trusting America’s elite is clearly not always a prudent move. Donald Trump promised to reverse the slide with his “Make America Great Again” slogan. That failed spectacularly. Then, Biden offered another slogan: “America Is Back.” But, like gangrene working its way up an infected leg, the rot continues to spread.

The next crisis point comes when the stock market falls. Then comes the bust. Left alone, it would do what all busts do – eliminate the bad debt… wipe out the zombies… correct mistakes and separate fools from their money. The nation would normally enter a bad recession/depression… and then get back on its feet, on firmer, more solid ground.

One Final Fling: But that won’t happen. Instead, the next financial crisis will bring on the same flimflam response as the last three – a new “surge” of spending, stimmy, and debt… Fools and their money will get a chance for a final fling together.

Yes… that’s the re-boom ahead. Prices will rise… The stock market may hit more new highs as the feds promise huge budget deficits and boondoggles for everybody. But rising prices will not be confined to capital markets. They’ll rise in the dollar stores, too. People will have more money to spend… but prices will rise faster than incomes. This new souped-up “stimulus” program will have no better success than the previous ones. More zombified than ever, by fake money and real debt, the economy will slow. And this “stagflation” will bring more discontent… more spending… and more inflation.

Ka-Boom! Now, we will be ready for the climax – Ka-Boom!… a mess of rising prices, crashes, bankruptcies, taxes, strikes, and crime… Think Venezuela. The feds will try desperately to hold their fake economy together. But they will not dare to do the one thing that might reestablish its integrity – stop the money-printing.

By then, everything will depend on more money. Prices will be rising fast; people will need more and more cash to keep up with them. ATMs will run out. Clerks will have to mark up prices every month… then every week. Stock prices will gyrate wildly; but they, too, will have a hard time keeping up with the declining value of the dollar. Bonds will be wiped out.

Politicians will promise more bailouts… more solutions… more scapegoats… as civil society gets the heebie jeebies. Extremists, left and right, will come up with “solutions” – and gain big followings. By then, everybody will see the problem… but nobody will be able to stop it.

Final Stage: The elite said we could spend, spend, spend until inflation showed up. But then, it will be too late to change course. The police and the soldiers will need to be paid. Businesses will need to be subsidized. Old people will need pensions, poor people will need food, and sick people will need medicines. What kind of hard-hearted sourpuss could turn off the printing presses, when so many people need more money?

Waiting for consumer prices to rise sharply is like counting on the fire alarm to tell you when dinner is ready. By the time you turn off the printing press, the economy is burnt to a cinder.

Chaos. Corruption. Crime. In the final stage, we reach – Kabul! And those who trusted the U.S. government for their safety and prosperity will be ruined."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

Jim Kunstler, "Throwdowns and Showdowns"

"Throwdowns and Showdowns"

by Jim Kunstler

"Notice, there are two sets of hostages in this phase of what looks like an engineered US collapse: the thousands of stranded Americans who can’t get out of Afghanistan thanks to the history-rockin’ ineptitude of “Joe Biden,” Tony Blinken, and General Mark Milley, and the millions of We-the-People back home whose minds are hostage to the narratives concocted in a shadowland of sinister governance. Welcome to a week of throwdowns and showdowns, a force majeure of mind change.

A strange paralysis in the Pentagon has prevented the use of US power to clear an escape corridor to Kabul’s airport and establish order in the facility - this, after the tactically mystifying decision to abandon the US Bagram military airfield, a good twenty miles outside of festering Kabul, and surrounded by more easily-securable empty desert. Britain and France managed to get their nationals out last week, only to be rebuked by American brass for “making us look bad.” That helped, I’m sure.

And then how long can the stranded Americans even stay hidden and alive? They have to eat. Either they come out of their hidey-holes and get to some market, or they would (theoretically) have to send some Afghani servants to fetch them supplies, But, what Afghani in his right mind would want to be caught in service to the Americans by the Taliban? That quandary must have a pretty short time-horizon on it. Standing by to see how it works out…

Next in this week’s throwdown parade is the FDA’s imminent approval of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, without any of the usual extensive trials. How does that even happen, with an efficacy rate of 39 percent maximum and a runaway train of vicious side effects ranging from brain and heart damage to infertility? The so-called mRNA “vaccines” are also implicated in the ongoing mutation of the disease, producing a cavalcade of variants. Is that, perhaps, on-purpose, to keep the pandemic going, preventing it from burning-out?

Covid-19 is an expedient device for exercising the most severe control over the daily life of Americans, and it is being used liberally once again in the “blue” cities to make ordinary business as difficult as possible even unto shut-down and ruin. FDA approval will further enable the mandatory “vaccination” of school-children, government workers, and corporate employees. About half the country still refuses to get jabbed. You are about to see them go hard-core when the FDA makes its move.

The shadow cabal behind “Joe Biden” will, accordingly, destroy what is left of public education as millions of parents withdraw their kids from the system. You will then see the rapid assembly of home-schooling networks that aggregate informally into small private academies - and, of course, the biggest losers will be the minorities who lack the cultural mojo to home-school. Well done, “Joe Biden” and the FDA! While you’re at, why not destroy Higher Ed, too? (That sound you’ll hear is plywood getting nailed up on the windows of countless insolvent small colleges.)

The school revolt will only be one part of a greater uproar against the confabulated hysteria of Covid-19. Throwdown will lead to showdown as the alienation of We-the-People from a tyrannical rogue government bangs the crisis gong. Next up: the release of the Arizona election audit’s preliminary findings. Rumor is that they show the grossest possible, and probably criminal, mismanagement of the balloting, pointing to a conclusion that “Joe Biden” did not win that state’s election. Additional rumor has it that the ballots carried hidden, traceable serial numbers, or something like that, showing conclusively how the paper vote was rigged. Rachel Mddow’s nightmare - “They have the ballots!!!” - comes true… a wake-up for the Woked-up.

As predicted here, John Durham is back in the news. The captive news media - that is, the mainstream orgs owned by the Intel Community - put stories out last week that the RussiaGate special prosecutor has actually made some trips to the grand jury. That implies some kind of criminal prosecution. Their spin was that he had only netted a few small-fry, characters mostly outside government such as Igor Danchenko of the Brookings Institution, said to be the chief source for Christopher Steele’s nefarious “dossier.” Don’t believe it. Durham is going for the sharks and whales: Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, John Brennan, Bruce and Nellie Ohr… and, really, how can James Comey be excluded from that gang, since he was running it?

This week marks the beginning of the Deep State’s hard time. Its narratives are shredding. Its mind-control measures are slip-sliding away. Half the country has been onto their game for years, and the other half is about to feel their heads explode as a corrective reality elbows into the scene. That is, the real-and-only reality, not the one confabulated backstage for you by skulking quislings. See how you’ve been played? They have taken your country. Maybe you should start caring about that."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 8/23/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 8/23/21"

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

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

- John Maynard Keynes

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

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

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

August 22nd to 24th, Updated Daily

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Financial Stress Index

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

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

○

Oh yeah...

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/23/21"

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/23/21:

"Critical, Must Know Now Updates"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/23/21:

“Bank If America And Morgan Stanley Warn 

On The Stock Market And Economy”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"What Downtown Portland Looks Like in 2021"

Full screen recommended.

"What Downtown Portland Looks Like in 2021"

by Travelwithchris

"Downtown Portland looks very different in 2021! Today we will be exploring the city of Portland, Oregon! A city located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. This city like many other major cities in the United States is facing a huge homeless problem and quite frankly it is getting out of hand! The streets of Downtown Portland are starting to look like Skid Row in Los Angeles, California and that is extremely sad to see! In this video you will see first hand what I’m talking about! I hope you guys enjoy this video!"

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter"

"The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later 

This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter"

by Michael Snyder

"Have you noticed that it is a lot harder to get certain things these days? Just recently, someone in my local area was surprised when her appointment to get the windshield on her vehicle fixed was canceled because it wasn’t possible to get a replacement windshield. This was a windshield for a very common vehicle, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem at all. But these are not normal times. Thanks to several factors that I will detail in this article, global supply chains are now under more strain than we have ever seen in the post-World War II era, and unfortunately it appears that things are going to get even worse as we approach the holiday season.

I know that most of you probably don’t want to hear that the shortages that we are experiencing now are going to get worse. So you may be tempted to stop reading this article now because you don’t want to see the bad news. But it is imperative that you understand what is ahead, and so I urge you to keep reading.

Let’s take this one step at a time. Right now, local news outlets all over the country are doing stories about the shortages in their local areas. Here is one example… "Have you recently gone to the grocery store and found some of the shelves empty? If so, you aren’t alone. Many people can’t find some of their favorite and essential items since the pandemic started."

As that article points out, the stores are trying to order the products that they need. They just can’t get them.  This is happening all across the United States, and as a result the inventory to sales ratio for U.S. retailers has been pushed to the lowest level on record… "In April, May, and June, the inventory-sales ratio of around 1.08 – or about 33 days’ supply – was at the lowest point in the data going back to 1992. In the years before the pandemic, the overall ratio was around 1.5, providing 45 days of supply."

So why is this happening? Well, the truth is that there are several contributing factors, and one of them is fear of COVID. When a single worker recently tested positive for COVID, China shut down one of the busiest port terminals in the entire world “indefinitely”…"One of the world’s busiest ports partially closed this week after an employee tested positive for Covid-19. The closure raises fears of new disruptions to world trade that could slow the global economy’s recovery. Meishan, a key terminal at China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan port, closed indefinitely Wednesday after a 34-year old worker tested positive for Covid-19. A member of the board of the Ningbo Port Group Company- which operates the port- also resigned Wednesday, citing personal reasons, reported China’s Securities Daily."

This wouldn’t be such a problem if we had not become so dependent on goods from China. Other nations are severely overreacting to outbreaks of COVID as well, and this is making it harder and harder to move goods around the world on an efficient basis.

Another major factor that we are dealing with is a historic global shipping container shortage. The demand for shipping containers greatly exceeds the supply, and this has pushed global shipping container rates to levels we have never seen before. And once shipping containers are delivered to U.S. ports, there isn’t enough port workers to unload them all. It can now literally take months for products that are made in China to get to the U.S. retailers that originally ordered them.

Of course if those products contain computer chips, they may never arrive at all. The global shortage of computer chips is deeply affecting thousands of other industries. For instance, it is being estimated that the global auto industry will produce 7.1 million fewer vehicles this year because of the chip shortage… "VW’s main plant in Wolfsburg is only going to be running on its early shift after summer break due to the lack of supply, Bloomberg reported this morning.

Its plant in Wolfsburg is the “world’s biggest car plant” and employs about 60,000 people. Audi is also pausing production temporarily, extending its summer break by one week, the report notes. Global shortages of semiconductors could wind up cutting worldwide production of autos this year by about 7.1 million vehicles, Bloomberg predicted this morning."

Now we are moving into the holiday season, and many in the retail industry are anticipating a complete and utter disaster… "Reuters surveyed nearly a dozen suppliers and retailers of everything from toys to computer equipment in the United States and Europe. All expect weeks-long delays in holiday inventory due to shipping bottlenecks, including a global container shortage and the recent COVID-related closure of the southern Chinese port of Yantian, which serves manufacturers near Shenzhen.

One executive that was interviewed by Reuters said that we are heading for “a major, major mess”… “It’s going to be a major, major mess,” said Isaac Larian, chief executive of Los Angeles-based MGA Entertainment Inc, which sells LOL Surprise, Bratz, Little Tikes and other toy brands to Amazon, Walmart and Target."

And another executive openly admitted that it is “too late” to save Christmas… “It’s too late for Christmas,” said Thompson, founder of Washington-based Plugable Technologies."

This is what the immediate future of the U.S. economy looks like even if nothing else goes wrong. So what is going to happen if another major crisis suddenly erupts in the middle of all this?

As inventories get tighter and tighter, prices are rising to compensate. One area that I am particularly interested in is the price of food. According to the FAO, the global price of food is 31 percent higher than it was a year ago… "Whether at supermarkets, corner stores, or open-air markets, prices for food have been surging in much of the world, forcing families to make tough decisions about their diets. Meat is often the first to go, ceding space to less expensive proteins such as dairy, eggs, or beans. In some households, a glass of milk has become a luxury reserved only for children; fresh fruit, once deemed a necessity, is now a treat."

Food prices in July were up 31% from the same month last year, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Have global paychecks risen 31 percent over the past year to keep up? No way. As a result, many are having a much harder time buying the food that they need and more people are going hungry. Needless to say, this is setting the stage for the sort of global crisis that I have been warning about.

There was so much optimism during the first half of 2021, but now everyone is starting to realize which way all the needles are pointing. Very choppy seas are ahead, and those at the helm do not seem to know what they are doing."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"America's Central Banks Are Bracing For An Apocalyptic Endgame As The Everything Bubble Bursts"

Full screen recommended.

"America's Central Banks Are Bracing For An 

Apocalyptic Endgame As The Everything Bubble Bursts"

by Epic Economist

"The US central bank is leading us to the greatest financial disaster in the history of the world, but most people don't even imagine how devastating will be the future that awaits us. In a recent article, the financial expert and founder of Matterhorn Asset Management and Gold Switzerland, Egon von Greyerz, has described how the Federal Reserve has cursed the United States of America by debasing the value of our currency. The downfall of our Republic has started exactly 50 years ago, when central bankers and Nixon decided to turn all real assets, including gold, into worthless paper, creating the perfect setup for an irreversible financial catastrophe. That decision came at a cost that Nixon probably wasn't anticipating: since 1971, after hundreds of trillions of artificial dollars started to be injected into the economy and financial markets, the dollar has seen its value collapse by 98 percent. Many other leaders throughout history have done what Nixon did, and if he'd known this before, he would have realized that no currency has ever survived to this sort of monetary policy.

When will they ever learn? Apparently, the answer is never. History can only teach lessons for those who are willing to listen. The story repeats itself because our leaders insist to make the same mistakes. Under these policies, every single currency throughout history has been debased until it has reached zero value, as von Greyerz outlines. The fact that since the 1960s the US government has increased the federal debt by the trillions every year is a clear sign of chronic disease and that something is terminally broken in our system. The big problem is that as opposed to other countries who faced a similar decay, because of the size of the US economy and the reserve currency status of the dollar, the consequences are remarkably deeper and much more threatening. We are now witnessing the growth of the most splendid financial bubble ever recorded. But at this point, it is not just central banks blowing bubbles, the whole world has become a bubble.

As the derivatives bubble explodes, or rather implodes, in the next few years, more and more money will be printed by central banks in a futile attempt to save the financial system. What they fail to realize is that the more they add money into the system, the bigger the imbalances get. Against this backdrop, it becomes impossible to fight the growth of asset bubbles and inflation. We're faded to a never-ending cycle of debt, booms, and busts. According to von Greyerz, our current monetary system will collapse at some point between 2025 and 2030, marking the end of a major economic era. When a hyperinflationary central bank endgame starts -- which will be followed by a depressionary implosion -- the deterioration will happen very quickly. Investors won't have time to run for the exits, and American workers will see their life savings gone with the wind. That's why wealth protection should be a top priority for anyone living in these troubled times.

In several of our previous videos, we have been reporting the warnings of several economists, market watchers, financial analysts, and veteran investors who have been telling us that we're in the middle of the biggest financial bubble in all history. And it's time to learn with History that such speculative bubbles always pop – there is no exception. Every speculative bubble mania regardless of its alleged "uniqueness" ends up bursting. Investors try to convince themselves that "it's different this time," but no bubble has ever "reached a permanently high plateau" and then remained on the plateau for years. And what is our central bank doing right now? It is adding more fuel to a range of already overly-inflated bubbles, including housing, stocks, and bonds.

The situation has gotten so out of hand that, according to updated estimates, the US government spends $875 million every hour in 2021 and, up until now, a staggering number of $1.7 billion were spent between central banks and the US government to prevent a stock market crash and an economic disaster. But things are getting increasingly unsustainable and one single systemic failure can lead to the simultaneous explosion of all asset bubbles. It's time to face the truth: This time will not be different. And central banks are about to trigger an apocalyptic endgame that will mark the end of an era."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Relaxation Ambient Music, "Space Ambient Music for Stress Relief, Dreaming"

Full screen recommended.

Relaxation Ambient Music,

"Space Ambient Music for Stress Relief, Dreaming"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars and faint dust nebulae of the Milky Way at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331.

A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. The disturbed looking group of galaxies at the lower left is well-known as Stephan's Quintet. About 300 million light-years distant, the quintet dramatically illustrates a multiple galaxy collision, its powerful, ongoing interactions posed for a brief cosmic snapshot. On the sky, the quintet and NGC 7331 are separated by about half a degree."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141023.html

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/22/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead - Keeping You Way Ahead Of The Curve"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/22/21:

"Markets, A Look Ahead -

 Keeping You Way Ahead Of The Curve"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Be The Person..."

"We are fast moving into something, we are fast flung into something like asteroids cast into space by the death of a planet, we the people of earth are cast into space like burning asteroids and if we wish not to disintegrate into nothingness we must begin to now hold onto only the things that matter while letting go of all that doesn't. For when all of our dust and ice deteriorates into the cosmos we will be left only with ourselves and nothing else. So if you want to be there in the end, today is the day to start holding onto your children, holding onto your loved ones; onto those who share your soul. Harbor and anchor into your heart justice, truth, courage, bravery, belief, a firm vision, a steadfast and sound mind. Be the person of meaningful and valuable thoughts. Don't look to the left, don't look to the right; we simply don't have the time. Never be afraid of fear."

- C. JoyBell C.

The Daily "Near You?"

Martinez, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Self-congratulatory Delusion..."

"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."

- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"

"The Trick..."

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,

or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

- Carlos Castaneda

"Are There Any Questions?"

"Are There Any Questions?"

by Robert Fulghum

"Are there any questions?" An offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings. Said when an audience is not only overdosed with information, but when there is no time left anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like, "Can we leave now?" and "What the hell was this meeting for?" and "Where can I get a drink?"

The gesture is supposed to indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do ask a question, both the speaker and the audience will give you drop-dead looks. And some fool - some earnest idiot - always asks. And the speaker always answers. By repeating most of what he has already said. But if there is a little time left and there is a little silence left in response to the invitation, I usually ask the most important question of all: "What is the Meaning of Life?" You never know, somebody may have the answer, and I'd really hate to miss it because I was too socially inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it is usually taken as a kind of absurdist move - people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is dismissed on that ridiculous note. Once, and only once, I asked that question and got a serious answer…

Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out… he turned. And made the ritual gesture: "Are there any questions?" Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence.

"No questions?" Papaderos swept the room with his eyes.

So. I asked.

"Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?"

The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go. Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was.

"I will answer your question."

Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this: "When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine - in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light - truth, understanding, knowledge - is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it. I am a fragment of a mirror whose design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life."

And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on the desk."

- Robert Fulghum,

"It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Why the Wheels Are Coming Off"

"Why the Wheels Are Coming Off"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Why are the wheels coming off the American Project? Afghanistan is front and center in the news flow for obvious reasons, but since I have no expertise on that nation or America's role there, I am stipulating these are general comments from a systemic perspective.

By the American Project I mean 1) global hegemony in both hard and soft power and 2) American Exceptionalism, the belief that America is not just uniquely strong but uniquely right in terms of holding the high moral ground.



1. If you don't understand the problem, you can't possibly arrive at a solution. It's long been painfully obvious that U.S. presidents would be best served by their closest advisors being anthropologists with long in-country experience in whatever nation the U.S. is engaging.

Any anthropologist with experience in Vietnam would have dismissed the idea of an American "victory" by any means as a possibility. The same can be said of Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, American presidents don't listen to anthropologists, they listen to advisors with no real understanding of the nation and people the U.S. is engaging. Lacking a grasp of the situation, every characterization of the "problem" will necessarily be completely misguided and the proposed "solutions" cannot but fail miserably.



Rather than seek a deep understanding the nation and its people, U.S. presidents and their advisors see everything through the distorting lens of great-power rivalries, geopolitical juggling, American prestige and power and a profoundly parochial, provincial view of other cultures and societies. The resulting ignorance of U.S. policy is stupefying.

Willful ignorance and blind ambition are fatal siblings.



2. Since the U.S. can conjure trillions of dollars out of thin air at will, money is squandered freely without any accountability or care. From a systemic perspective, the primary role of the Federal Reserve is to conjure as many trillions of dollars as needed to supply the American Project with money to squander--as long as a healthy slice of the squandered trillions butters the bread of private interests in the U.S.



3. There was a weary-sounding saying in the Vietnam years: "It's the only war we got." Indeed. Historians of Imperial Projects may well note approvingly that America is a war-like nation. This is not uncommon in history, rather it is the rule. Being war-like is unexceptional.

America's 

Founding Fathers were extremely wary of foreign entanglements and wars because America was extremely weak in its initial decades, lacking a Navy for defense and power projection. Nonetheless, war was viewed as unavoidable within a decade following the final ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the Barbary War in 1801) and a full-blown war with Great Britain followed 11 years later (1812). Two wars in 21 years more or less set the pattern.



As many have noted, war is an extremely profitable business if one manages to keep the conflict out of the home country. War profiteering has as long a history as war itself, and it took extraordinary efforts to put any sort of limits on war profiteering in the "good war," World War II.



If a nation becomes politically and economically dependent on a vast, politically powerful and politically sacrosanct industry, then that industry will continue to do what it does, regardless of conditions. If that industry is construction, then when useful construction projects dwindle, the industry will soak up billions building bridges to nowhere, fully supported by the political and financial classes.



If the industry is warfighting, then wars will manifest, with "victory" being the stated goal but utilization and expansion of assets being the actual purpose. Wars that cannot possibly be "won" in any conventional sense are the ideal means to maximize profits and the utilization of assets. 

It's nothing personal, it's just the way things work: "It's the only war we got." Provide a better war and the make-work one drops away.



The war-fighting cartel is not unique. America is little more than a putrid porridge of politically powerful and politically sacrosanct cartels: Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Banks, Higher Education, Sickcare, Bread and Circuses and so on. The only constants are infinite greed and near-infinite corruption and incompetence.



4. Sunk costs. When the costs of some misadventure/poorly executed investment reaches a threshold, stakeholders can't stomach the loss to their pride and prestige, never mind the financial losses. And so they continue doing more of what's failed spectacularly.

The sunk costs of America's misadventures are piled to the rafters but losses aren't allowed, so prevailing policy is to pile the losses and risks ever higher, hoping nobody will connect the dots when the whole rotten construct collapses in a heap of magical thinking and corruption.



5. The hubris of endlessly printed trillions. Since the Federal Reserve has gotten away with printing trillions out of thin air to buy the U.S. Treasury bonds that have conjured trillions out of thin air for the government to squander, American Exceptionalism now includes the eventually-fatal hubris that we can always buy our way out of trouble by conjuring another trillion or three out of thin air.



Since there's no limit on how many trillions we can conjure out of thin air, there's no limits on how many trillions we can squander and therefore there are no limits on American Exceptionalism or the American Project.

Since everything is for sale, and we can conjure endless trillions, then we can buy whatever is needed to keep the wagon rolling forever. 

Until the wheels fall off, of course. And when that happens, then we can always deploy the last refuge of failing enterprises:



6. Managing narratives has replaced actually solving pressing problems. It's now impossible in America to actually address pressing problems without stepping on the toes of one politically powerful and politically sacrosanct cartel or another, and so problems fester and multiply to the point they cannot be solved within the status quo, regardless of how many trillions are conjured and squandered.



To mask the coming collapse, narratives must be tightly controlled. Since collapse can't be forestalled without making powerful enemies, the only politically expedient option left is to eliminate any dissent that questions the officially sanctioned happy-stories.



When a society and a state give up the search for solutions because real solutions will negatively impact politically powerful cartels, collapse is only one step away. It's all fun and games in the unwinnable wars and simulacra reforms stage, but managing narratives isn't the same as managing the real world, and the real world eventually crushes the happy-story narratives and those who actually believed them.

Is that the scent of smoke? What's that red glare? Must be nothing. The wheels are coming off, but never mind, here's a happy story to tide you over until the banquet of consequences is served."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

Dr. Joseph Mercola, "Corona Unmasked: New Facts and Figures; A Special Interview With Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi"

"Corona Unmasked: New Facts and Figures;

A Special Interview With Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi"

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

"Microbiologist Explains COVID Jab Effects"

Please view the video here:

- https://articles.mercola.com/

Download the transcript here:

- https://mercola.fileburst.com/PDF/

Must Watch! “Where Is The Money? Chicago Has Imploded; Pension Collapse Imminent; States Are Broke”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/21/21:

“Where Is The Money? Chicago Has Imploded; 

Pension Collapse Imminent; States Are Broke”

Covid Hoax: "Dr. Shaun Brooks Speaks To Ohio School Board"

"Dr. Shaun Brooks Speaks To Ohio School Board"

"Sends a chilling warning about the experimental vax-zine, 

how many more specialists will be ignored? Share far and wide!"

○

Related, essential:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

"Who REALLY Runs The World and How to Protect Yourself"

Gerald Celente & Jay Martin,

"Who REALLY Runs The World and How to Protect Yourself"

Gerald Celente, Founder of the Trends Institute, delivers a scathing criticism of big banks, pharma, tech, politicians, and the military industrial complex - along with his rules to prepare and protect yourself from the powerful. Gerald talks about the death of ingenuity in the US and the rise of China through the rest of this century stating; "the business of America is war, the business of China is business."

With a 40-year track record of identifying, tracking, and forecasting trends, Celente is world-renowned as today’s #1 Trend Forecaster. Celente has earned the reputation as a trusted name in trends for his many accurate forecasts; among them the 1987 Stock Market crash, Dot com bust, “Gold Bull Run,” the “Panic of ‘08,” the rise of organic foods, and the popularity of gourmet coffee long before Starbucks was a household name.

Celente, who developed the Globalnomic methodology to identify, track, forecast, and manage trends, is a political atheist. Unencumbered by political dogma, rigid ideology, or conventional wisdom, Celente, whose motto is “Think for Yourself,” observes and analyzes current events forming future trends for what they are – not for how he wants them to be."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

Musical Interlude: John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar. Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured here, was captured in spectacular detail in an image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long bright bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that likely houses a supermassive black hole.

Light takes about 60 million years to reach us from NGC 1672, which spans about 75,000 light years across. NGC 1672, which appears toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), has been studied to find out how a spiral bar contributes to star formation in a galaxy's central regions."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200406.html

"A Companion..."

"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, that reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we live it. After all, Number One, we're only mortal."

- Captain Jean-Luc Picard

"Do You Believe..."

"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?" 

"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?"

- Voltaire

"The Great Unraveling"

"The Great Unraveling"

by Jim Kunstler

"I guess we had to find out the hard way that Afghanistan is not like Nebraska. Let others be cruel about it (and there’s plenty of that right now, elsewhere).

The last ostensible hegemon who tried occupying the place before us was the Soviet Union, which discovered painfully that Afghanistan was not much like its Kemerovo Oblast, either, and shortly after it withdrew its troops in 1989, the Soviet Union commenced to collapse - which prompts one to wonder: How much is the USA of 2021 like the Soviet Union of those years? There are clearly differences, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. But there are also similarities.

We’ve become an ossified, administrative nomenklatura of Deep State flunkies as the Soviets were, and lately we’re just as lawless as they used to be, constitution-wise - e.g., the abolition of property rights via the CDC’s rent moratorium… the prolonged jailing in solitary confinement of January 6 political prisoners… the introduction of internal “passports.”

Economically, the Soviets were running on fumes. The U.S. may not be on fumes just yet, but the tank is getting pretty darn low. And our dominant party leadership has aged into an embarrassing gerontocracy, rule by the geriatrics. Is it our turn to collapse?

Rough Days Ahead: Kind of looks like it. The days ahead are liable to be a rough ride. Surely China has taken the measure of our Woke military and is weighing the seizure of Taiwan in our moment of weakness. No more computer chips for you, Uncle Sam! Do we come to Taiwan’s defense with guns blazing, or perhaps nukes? And what if that doesn’t work out so well?

I’ll tell you what: a major geopolitical reordering of things, leaving us… where? Unable to enforce our will around the world as has been the case for eighty years. Floundering. Friendless. Broke. Broken. But Woke!

Of course, the domestic situation in our land has not been so fraught and overwrought since 1861. Everything is politicized, which is to say: used as a club to beat-up adversaries and, let’s face it, mostly in the sense of Left against Right. This is especially true for the Covid-19 soap opera, which more and more pits the sanctimoniously vaccinated “progressives” against the recalcitrant conservative no-vax free-choicers - that is, coercive government trying to force supposedly free citizens to accept a pretty dubious experimental medical treatment.

Not for nothing, but since when did the American Left become so pro-tyranny, and how’d that even happen?

What Ever Happened to Questioning Authority? I have friends and relatives - you may, too - who knocked themselves out in the 1960s protesting against the war, the government, the FBI, and the CIA… who fought in the streets for free speech and raged against official propaganda. “Question authority,” they’d say - but today they can’t get enough of coercing, punishing, brain-washing, and cancelling their fellow citizens.

Maybe because they are the authority now? Let’s face it, every major institution of society, from the media to the entertainment industry, to corporations, to education, to government bureaucracies, has been captured by the political Left. They’re going so far now as to engineer their vicious narrative to brand their opponents as “domestic terrorists.” Think that’s going to work? I doubt it.

And the fall of Afghanistan is sure to spark a resentful reaction among the many ex-soldiers who paid a heavy price pulling tours of duty in that hapless venture over twenty years. There’s a lot of them out there in Red America, and they were already angry about the pernicious nonsense being jammed down their throats by the minions of Wokesterism:

The race-and-gender hustles, the off-the-charts rise of violent crime, the wide-open border, the off-shoring of jobs, the Covid lockdowns and wrecking of small business, the MMT experiment launching inflation, and the new politicization of the armed forces they served and suffered in.

They’ve laid rather low through years of this, just watching the scene in wonder and nausea, but you may see them turn more active now. And consider, they’ve been well-trained in weaponry and tactics.

Scandalous Revelations Ahead? Unsettling discoveries are in the offing going forward. The Wall Street Journal lately detected signs of life in the John Durham investigation, reporting that matters have gone to a grand jury. That means crimes are being prosecuted. We may soon become reacquainted with names that almost slipped down the memory-hole - the likes of Bruce Ohr, Glenn Simpson, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Pete Strzok… who else…?

This may also lead to a catastrophic discrediting of the mainstream news media - who were fully in on the RussiaGate con - to the degree that some companies end up utterly wrecked and with many careers washed up.

Hard information about what actually went down in the 2020 election is also coming out, and not necessarily to the credit of the ruling regime that supposedly triumphed in that contest. Some of that info may concern the issue of China’s involvement in our affairs, and beyond mere election meddling to the wholesale buying-off of the U.S. political class. The pathetic thing is we already know several very prominent figures on-the-take from China, including Eric Swalwell, Dianne Feinstein, and most conspicuously, Hunter Biden (and family), but the ranks of the known-to-be bought-off could swell dramatically. We’ll see.

Sometimes Years Happen in Weeks: Finally, there’s the fate of President “Joe Biden.” As Kabul fell, he remained in his Camp David gopher hole. Observers conjecture that he’s had a few “bad days” lately, meaning he is not presentable. Not to be overly dramatic, but it could potentially be curtains for Ol’ Joe… resignation-time. Never before has a U.S. president faced such a daunting loss of legitimacy, and hardly just on account of Afghanistan. And then consider who’s next-in-line for that position. (Did you shudder?)

Sometimes, Vlad Lenin observed, events take decades, and sometimes years happen in weeks. This looks like one of those times for the USA. Heads will soon be spinning like the little girl’s in The Exorcist, releasing a pea-soup spewage of shocking revelation. The old narratives will fall apart before our eyes. Minds will have to get right. Prepare for a whole lot of strange days rolling out."

- dailyreckoning.com.

The Daily "Near You?"

Carson City, Nevada, USA. Thanks for stopping by!