The Poet: James Baldwin, "Amen"

"Amen"

 "No, I don't feel death coming.

I feel death going:

having thrown up his hands,

for the moment.

I feel like I know him

better than I did.

Those arms held me,

for a while,

and, when we meet again,

there will be that secret knowledge

between us."

- James Baldwin

“There Was A Tale He Had Read Once..."

“There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.”

- Neil Gaiman

"They Are Saying..."

"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.”

– Michael Lewis, “Boomerang”

“Bank Accounts Disappear As People Panic; Auto Sales Crash, New York Paralyzed, Are You Prepared?”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/3/21:

“Bank Accounts Disappear As People Panic; 

Auto Sales Crash; New York Paralyzed; Are You Prepared?”

The Daily "Near You?"

Port-of-spain, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

Thanks for stopping by!

"Feeling Fed Up with Humanity, In the World and in Ourselves"

"Feeling Fed Up with Humanity,

 In the World and in Ourselves"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer and knowing this allows us to find compassion. From time to time, we may all feel fed up with humanity, whether it’s from learning about what’s going on around the world, or what’s going on next door. There are always situations that leave us feeling as if people are simply not capable of behaving in a way that is coming from a place of awareness. Often it seems as if people are actually geared to handle things in the worst possible way, repeatedly. At the same time, none of us wants to linger in a judgmental mood about our own species. As a result, we might tend to repress the feelings coming up as we take in the news from the world and the neighborhood.

It is natural to feel let down and disappointed when we see our fellow humans behaving in ways that are greedy, selfish, violent, or uncaring, but there are also ways to process that disappointment without sinking into despondency. As with any emotional response, we honor our feelings by feeling them fully, without judging or acting on them. Once we’ve done that—and we may need to do it every day, as part of our daily self-care—we can begin to consider ways that we might help the situation in which humanity finds itself.

As always, we start with ourselves, utilizing our awareness of the failings of others to renew our own commitment to be more conscious human beings. We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, and remembering this keeps us in check, as well as allowing us to find compassion for others. We may find ourselves feeling compelled to serve people who are suffering injustices at the hands of other people, or we may begin to speak out when we see something that we don’t think is right. Whatever the case, the only thing we can do is pledge to serve the best, rather than the worst, of what humanity has to offer, both in the world, and in ourselves."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

○

"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"And Then What?"

"7.5 Million People Are Projected To Lose

Their Unemployment Benefits on September 6th."

"Pandemic unemployment benefits end in September and states aren’t extending them. Around 7.5 million people are poised to lose *all federal unemployment benefits* in a week. They’re going to $0 in jobless aid as delta cases + hospitalizations surge. The looming UI cliff is 3x larger than previous biggest one in 2013, so it’s not really close"

○

"At Least 12 Million Households Face Eviction As Moratorium Ends"

And then what, indeed...

"This Is Definitely Going To Be “Not A Normal September” For The Rapidly Imploding U.S. Economy"

"This Is Definitely Going To Be “Not A Normal September”

 For The Rapidly Imploding U.S. Economy"

by Michael Snyder

The “good times” were supposed to be rolling by now, but instead the wheels are starting to come off, and the economic outlook for the rest of the year is not good at all. Just yesterday, I warned my readers that things were about to get worse, and it only took exactly a single day for that to actually happen. As you will see below, major factory shutdowns were just announced, and that is going to make shortages even worse. Fear of COVID is restricting production all over the globe, and meanwhile national governments and central banks have been absolutely flooding their systems with fresh cash. As a result, we now have way too much money chasing way too few goods and services, and anyone that has taken ECON 101 will tell you that will inevitably result in higher prices and shortages.

As I discussed yesterday, if there is something that you need to buy, run out and get it now because the shortages are only going to get worse in the coming months.

On Thursday, General Motors shocked the entire nation when it announced that it is going to be closing down almost all of its manufacturing facilities due to our ongoing shortage of computer chips… "General Motors will idle nearly all its assembly plants in North America starting Monday as the COVID-19 pandemic affects production of semiconductor chips overseas. GM said its Arlington Assembly in Texas, where it makes its highly profitable full-size SUVs, will run regular production next week, along with Flint Assembly in Michigan, where it makes its heavy-duty pickups, Bowling Green Assembly in Kentucky, where it makes its Corvette, and a portion of Lansing Grand River Assembly in Michigan, where it will make some Chevrolet Camaro and Cadillac Blackwing cars."

I knew that things were bad, but I didn’t know that they had gotten this bad. Ford also announced that it will be slashing production due to a lack of chips… "Ford Motor is once again cutting production of its F-150 pickup truck and other highly profitable vehicles due to the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips. The automaker informed employees Wednesday of the cuts, which also impact production of its larger Super Duty pickups and Expedition SUV."

This was supposed to be a time when vehicle sales were soaring to all-time highs, but thanks to a lack of chips the number of new Ford vehicles that were sold last month was down by a whopping 33 percent compared to a year ago… "U.S. sales of Ford Motor’s new vehicles last month declined by 33.1% from a year earlier due to an ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips that’s wreaking havoc on the automotive industry, the company said Thursday. The Detroit automaker’s sales capped off a dismal month of U.S. auto sales in August, which plummeted to an adjusted selling rate of 13.09 million vehicles. That’s the worst pace since June 2020 and down from this year’s peak of 18.5 million in April, according to auto data firm Motor Intelligence."

Demand is not the problem. There is simply not enough Ford vehicles to go around right now, and this has pushed dealer inventories to frighteningly low levels… Dealers only have about 942,000 vehicles in inventory for retail sale, compared with roughly 3 million before the coronavirus pandemic two years ago, according to Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power.

Of course it isn’t just the auto industry that is dealing with these sorts of problems. Supply chains all over the globe are in a state of complete and utter chaos, and it just seems to keep getting worse with each passing day. I really like how Wolf Richter has described the current state of affairs… "Yesterday, just outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a record 44 container ships were anchored, waiting. And there are hundreds of these ships hung up somewhere globally, trying to get into a port, or they’re being rerouted to different ports. And all this takes time.

And containers are stuck in ports because railroads are backlogged, trucking companies are troubled by driver shortages, and containers are hung up in railyards and clog them up to where some railroads have stopped routing trains to those particular railyards until the backlog is cleared, thereby further contributing to the pileup of containers at ports. And each extra day that a loaded container doesn’t get to its destination is a day that it cannot be unloaded and returned to the flow of containers, and cannot be sent to a manufacturer that has goods ready to ship but cannot ship them because they cannot get empty containers."

In my last article, I discussed the fact that experts are already warning that Christmas has been ruined because of all the mayhem. And now fear of Delta and other variants threatens to gum up the works even more. Most Americans had assumed that we would be “returning to normal” by now, but instead we seem to be going in reverse in a lot of ways…

"The delta variant of the coronavirus is preventing a return to normal and pumping the brakes on the economic recovery. Major corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Ford have pushed back their return-to-office dates from September to January. Schools are reinstating mask mandates and, in some cases, dealing with virus outbreaks, sending students home to quarantine. Restaurants and retailers are scaling back hours, as workers remain hesitant to return to lower-paying service jobs in which they are also more exposed to the virus. Meanwhile, brands including Nike and Gap are warning that factories in Vietnam and elsewhere aren’t operating at full capacity and that some items may not be available as the coronavirus surges around the world."

Authorities thought that they would be able to have the pandemic under control by now, but they have dramatically failed. As long as these variants are sweeping across the globe like wildfire, there definitely will not be a return to “normal” any time soon.

The machinery of our economy is being shaken at a very basic level, and many believe that this is just the beginning. For many years there have been warning signs, but our leaders have somehow been able to hold the U.S. economy together. But now inflation is out of control, shortages are becoming exceedingly painful and confidence in our national leaders has plummeted to extremely low levels. We haven’t even reached the official end of summer yet, and things are already starting to become very, very interesting."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"Kicking the Common Man"

"Kicking the Common Man"

by Bill Bonner

"Let’s drink to the hard-working people,

Let’s think of the lowly of birth,

Spare a thought for the rag taggy people,

Let’s drink to the salt of the Earth."

- "Salt of the Earth", The Rolling Stones

“You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've

 been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.”

- Gore Vidal

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Yes, today, we say an Ave Maria for the salt of the Earth. The poor folks are going to get whacked. By whom? Jagger and Richards, of The Rolling Stones, had that figured out, too:

"Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter,

His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows.

And a parade of the gray-suited grafters

A choice of cancer or polio."

Yes, the masses need leading… but they get gamblers… jokers… and gray-suited grafters instead. The deathly cancer of Trump… or the crippling polio of Biden. Take your pick. And this just in… Breitbart on the War on Terror: "Brown University’s Costs of War project reveals the cost since September 11, 2001 exceeds $8 trillion and that wars have directly killed an estimated 897,000 to 929,000 people."

One of the questions surrounding America’s appalling retreat from Afghanistan is: Seeing how easily the Taliban took over the country last month, why didn’t they do it sooner? That question was answered by Matthew Hoh, former U.S. Marine Corps captain. The U.S. was spending millions of dollars every day on the war in Afghanistan. Much of it was going to – well, the Taliban. We’re talking about a fountain of money that the Taliban were happy to take. Whether they took it directly or it was the Taliban commander’s cousin that was the contractor, it doesn’t matter. The absurdity of all this – and everyone knew it was going on!

No Ticker Tape Parade: Our Diary is longer than usual today. We’re trying to understand more clearly how America’s “hard-working people” get ripped off. Every society has its elite. The common people depend on it. After all, who has time to understand how a nuclear reactor really works? But we still live with atomic power. And who knows which of the Afghan tribes are friends and which are enemies? We have experts to keep them straight, right?

And which King of Queens or Family Guy really understands what the Federal Reserve is up to? We expect those with PhDs in finance and economics to make sure it is doing the right thing. But did the common foot soldier gain anything from the elite’s $27 trillion forever wars? Do you remember the ticker tape parade when our troops marched through the center of Manhattan, celebrating their victory in the wars against poverty and drugs? How about the war against COVID-19?

Elites Versus the Common Man: A hunter-gatherer tribe might not need an elite. Everybody knows approximately the same thing. But the more advanced a society becomes, the more it depends on the few people who know how things work – its politics, as well as its nuclear submarines. Then, as an empire ages and expands, the elite becomes further and further removed from the people it is meant to serve.

The rich and powerful live in special zip codes – especially those around the Capital Beltway. They shop at Saks, not dollar stores. They drink pinot grigio, not Old Milwaukee. And they insist on remaking the whole world in their own grotesque image.

Worse, they cheat the common man in order to take more money for themselves. They stab him in the back with their Wall Street bailouts (three so far this century!). And they despise him for his beliefs… and his naivete. Didn’t he invade the Capitol to hijack “our” democracy? Doesn’t he refuse to believe “the science?” Doesn’t he drive a carbon-spewing pickup? But now, it is getting late in the cycle. The elite has become incompetent and degenerate. It loses its wars. Its “investments” all go bad. And it’s desperate to keep its privileges.

Who Pays? But who will pay for its mistakes… its lies… and its larcenies? “Hey… all this money-printing,” Fed chief Jay Powell might admit, “it was just to enrich Wall Street, Washington, and the elite. But now, we’re getting rising inflation… so we’re going to have to stop.”

Honesty would be easy, but expensive. The elite would have to give back much of its ill-gotten gains. Stocks would crash. Government spending would be slashed. The goofy boondoggles – along with the contracts and jobs that go with them – would have to end.

So would the preposterous “wars” that benefit only the insiders. Forget the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill. Forget the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” budget. Forget the “pivot” to Asia; it would be time to mind our own business. In other words, the costs would fall primarily on those who deserved to pay – the elite.

Social Insecurity: But they are the deciders. And they will never decide to do that. Truth will have to wait, while the costs of three decades’ worth of foolish “investments” get passed on to… can you guess? The rich have their portfolios. The professors have their tenure. The politicians and bureaucrats have their fat pensions. What does the common man have?

Social Security. He trusts the elite to make sure it is solvent… so he will get what is coming to him. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports: "The Social Security and Medicare Trustees released their annual reports on the long-term financial state of those programs. The Medicare Trustees’ report shows that the Part A Hospital Insurance trust fund will be insolvent in just five years, the trust fund faces a shortfall of 0.77 to 1.61 percent of payroll, and Medicare spending will grow significantly over the next few decades. […]"

Along with the two Social Security trust funds and the Highway Trust Fund, all four major trust funds are headed for insolvency in the next 13 years. Of course, even those gloomy projections are based on a remarkable premise: that nothing goes wrong.

How It Goes Wrong: But something will go wrong. And the results will be worse than expected. The feds will continue “printing” money. And inflation will run riot through the economy. Social Security payments are pegged to inflation… but only as the feds compute it. Inevitably, the “adjustments” will lag.

Already, the official U.S. inflation rate is 5.4%. But as we saw yesterday, housing is going up at an 18% annual rate. Used auto prices have gone up by more than 40% the last year. And global producer prices for food, according to the IMF, are rising at a 25% rate. There is no way the $28 trillion in national debt… not to mention the other $57 trillion in corporate, household, and other debt… will ever be repaid. Not in honest money.

Bad Solution: The only “solution” is inflation. The elite must “print” more money to keep the jig going. Social Security payments will be reduced – by inflation. Medicare support will be another victim. Prices for housing, transportation, food, and just about everything else, will keep going up. And standards of living for most people – the uncounted masses… the wavering millions… the faceless crowd – will go down.

Trusting Soul: So, this Labor Day weekend… say a prayer for the laboring masses… the salt of the Earth. The common man is a trusting soul… long suffering… and loyal. Most of the time, the chain around his neck rests lightly. No matter how he is mistreated, he still licks his master’s hand. His sons and daughters still answer the call… and put on uniforms, ready to attack whatever poor, helpless third world nation the elite targets. And he goes to the voting stations in the belief that his ballot will change things.

Even when he is kicked, he still wags his tail. But watch out… Kicked too many times, he may show his teeth."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Our Economy is in Complete La La Land - Bad News Continues to Shine"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, AM 9/3/21:

"Our Economy is in Complete La La Land -

 Bad News Continues to Shine"

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"

by Chris Floyd

"I think we are living in a world of lies: lies that don't even know they are lies, because they are the children and grandchildren of lies. One of the hardest things to accept is that the reality of our world is buried under so many layers of official deception and well-cultivated public ignorance about our history and our political system. Even if you break through somehow, momentarily, and hold up a fragment of the truth, most people have no context for dealing with it. It's like a bolt from the blue, they can't process the information. And so the sea of lies closes over us again, and again, and again. And yet the reality of our future is now upon us, denial be damned, an irresistible tsunami of destruction, changing all our lives forever.

These are the facts, and they can't be altered. But how to respond to this catastrophe? Shall we weep, moan, rend our garments, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ashes? Shall we sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of republics? Shall we cower in the shadows and sing glamorous dirges for the Lost Cause, for vanished glories and broken dreams?

Or shall we come out fighting, unbowed, heads high, laughing fools to scorn, rejecting at every turn the moral authority of murderers and thieves to rule our lives, determine our reality, act in our name? Let's dispense with lamentation - give not a single moment to that emotional indulgence - and get right back to work, more determined than ever to bear down harder, dig deeper and excavate the radioactive nuggets of truth still glowing beneath the slag-heap of ruin.

Let's fight, let's reject, let's resist - without violence, the weapon of the stupid, the hormonal secretion of evolutionary backsliders in thrall to the chemical soup in their heads, dull primitives dressing up their ape-lust for power with scraps of religion, philosophy and cant. Let's fight these pathetic, malfunctioning wretches who lay their hands on our world and rape it like beasts in a mindless rut. Fight them with the truths we find, exposing their crimes and deadly hypocrisies to the people they've suckered, perverted and betrayed.

This is not an insurmountable task, no matter how impervious the Machine - that monstrous conglomeration of judicial bagmen, Congressional rubber stamps, psychopathic media moguls, dopehead radio ranters, sex-crazed theocrats, war profiteers, think-tank bleaters, Wall Street sharks, oilmen, Moonies, and woman and man haters - might appear at the moment.

I don't know what else we can do, except to keep on telling as much of the truth as we can find, to anyone who will listen: reclaiming reality, fragment by fragment, one person at a time. It's an endless task - maybe a hopeless task - but the alternative is a surrender to the worst elements in our society - and in ourselves. It's worth the fight. Let's take it on. In the words of the old spiritual, let us be in no ways tired. The road back to sanity starts now."

- http://chris-floyd.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Coiling and Rattling"

"Coiling and Rattling"

by Jim Kunstler

"Actually, Progressive-Liberal abortion policy never went far enough. If only abortion were retroactive! We could send “Joe Biden” (and maybe all of Wokedom) back to the pre-embryonic cosmic darkness preceding conception? Otherwise, we’ll have to run him out of the Oval Office like some short-timer Guatemalan generalissimo, since he has completed the transition of the USA into a Third World backwater… and thus, served his purpose.

Was that it, by the way? Was “Joe Biden” a kind of suicide bomber sent into the White House overtly by dimly-perceived parties to blow up the ragged remnants of a once-dignified republic? There’s a cohort of observers, including many sage commenters on this blog, who would say so. One way or another, Ol’ White Joe’s days at the helm are numbered now. Even the claque of quasi-literate brown-nosers in the news media are turning on him since he glanced at his watch too many times while the dead Marines’ bodies were rolled out before him at Dover AFB. At least he didn’t yawn or light a cigarette, too.

These cool and lovely, pre-Fall nights, Kamala Harris must be chugging Gray Goose by the liter, chasing her Xanax, up at the Veep’s mansion, the old Naval Observatory, probably the nicest house she’ll ever live in because she’s not ever moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., nosiree. The parties dimly-perceived behind all this… this meshugas… got it so wrong with her. She was supposed to be an insurance policy against removing “JB,” while he acted as an automatic legislation signing machine.

But it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time now for the power players in our nation’s capital, and I’m thinking that Kamala’s thinking that they’re thinking that maybe Kamala has to go, too… and maybe not in a pretty way… like maybe something goes wrong on Air Force Two a hundred miles east of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic en route to Botswana… and the long-awaited official meet-and-greet with President Mokgweetsi Masisi… which never happens… Wake up Kammie!!!! Oh no, it’s even worse than a bad dream, she’s thinking. It’s reality!

Those parties dimly perceived surely think they can get away with anything now. There is no accountability, nor any memory of what it used to mean. Things just happen and unhappen, like in some raw, pre-conscious nasty-and-brutish animal kingdom, which is exactly what our country has become when you factor-in mass Woke lobotomization, meth and fentanyl addiction, social media mind-f**kery, and Covid hysteria. Klaus Schwab, you are taking this a little too far now, yes? It’s one thing to own nothing and be happy, but to remember nothing, too? That compliant surviving population of a half-billion serfs you wish to reserve to peel your grapes won’t even be able to carry out the simplest instructions. Something has gone very wrong with your Great Reset… if that’s what this is.

I prefer to label it the long emergency, simply the endgame of the techno-industrial hypertrophic phase of history. You could see it coming from a hundred months away, but now that it’s here, Western Civ has turned from tragedy to farce to psychosis. The pharmaceutical lobbying group known as the American Medical Association called this week for an “immediate end” to the use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19. They forbid member doctors to prescribe it. They follow the CDC and the FDA in condemning the drug, sentencing it to the ducking stool… burning it at the stake! “Use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has been demonstrated to be harmful to patients,” they say.

They lie, of course. And they want all the doctors to lie. How many of them will go along to get along? Do they care if this psychotic nonsense destroys what remains of medical practice just as race-and-gender studies have destroyed higher ed? One not-so-distant day the docs will show up for work, but the overgrown hospitals will be out of business, doors shuttered, and the docs will be back to making house-calls with a little black bag… no more German cars for you… and maybe a chicken in exchange for a little bootleg Ivermectin, if you’re lucky! As it happens, I take the veterinary-grade Ivermectin myself as a prophylactic, because that’s all you can get easily around here. I haven’t felt better in years. Perhaps I had pinworms (Enterobius vermicularis). Anyway, I don’t have Covid. I also take Vitamin D3 and zinc. Anathemize that, you chiseling bastards!

Everybody I consort with has had enough of the whole nauseating game - the lying politicians, the lying media, the lying medical bureaucrats, the lying generals, the lying teachers, the lying celebrities, the lying tech moguls, the entire armature of counter-reality you want to impose on a once-fair land. We will never do your bidding. We will never peel your grapes. There are more of us than you. Go ahead, push just a little bit harder."

- https://kunstler.com/

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/3/21: "It's Really Over - The Central Banks/New World Order Has Won"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/3/21:

"It's Really Over -

 The Central Banks/New World Order Has Won"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/3/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/3/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Anybody thinking what has gone on in Afghanistan is explained away by Biden Administration incompetence is in total denial. This disaster was planned by the people in the background handling Biden and carried out by the military brass. This planned disaster is way too stupid to be stupid, and all the people involved are guilty of treason. Yes, you heard right, TREASON. I can’t prove it, but this has all the earmarks of America hater Barack Obama pulling the strings for his puppet Joe Biden all the way. This is the continuation of the controlled and deliberate destruction of America along with its image worldwide. Russia and Saudi Arabia just signed a military cooperation deal. You think that’s going to have a long term good effect on the U.S. dollar? NO. Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Schaller was patriotic enough to “demand accountability” from his generals and the Biden Administration in Afghanistan. He was abruptly fired. There can be no accountability if you followed orders exactly. Afghanistan debacle is all being done according to plan. As I said, a foreign policy disaster this bad is “too stupid to be stupid.”

The lies continue as the vax narrative unravels. Top social influencer Joe Rogan just came out and said he had Covid and took Ivermectin and a Z-pack (among other things) to get over it in three days. That’s right, three days! Ivermectin is a real cure that has been withheld by the FDA and CDC and trashed by mainstream media (MSM). It is, in fact, a bonafide peer reviewed scientific cure. Now, the MSM is attacking Rogan and Ivermectin as a crazy horse wormer cure that won’t work and is dangerous. It’s a total lie. Ivermectin has been given to humans 3.7 billion times in the past 30 years. It’s totally safe and has been called a “miracle drug.” Its creators won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing it, and the WHO puts it on a list of “must have drugs” for any country. They withheld real scientific cures, and are still offering dangerous and experimental vaccines that now require a booster to keep “working.” The CV19 vax lie is being revealed and will soon be known by all.

Looks like that $3.5 trillion infrastructure deal by the Democrats and the Biden Administration has hit a major snag. In the 50/50 split Senate, Democrat Joe Manchin wants to hit the “pause button.” Why would he be doing that? Manchin says he is afraid of what he calls “runaway inflation.” Yep, the Senate can see what’s coming for the U.S. dollar, and it’s not good. You should plan accordingly. Stock up on everything, and get ready and stay ready. The end of 2021 is going to be rough for the unprepared."

- https://usawatchdog.com

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 

stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 9.3.21:

- https://rumble.com/

Musical Interlude: Mason Williams, “Classical Gas”

Mason Williams, “Classical Gas”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC).

The above image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry by an amateur to win the Hubble's Hidden Treasures competition. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11 has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible around the image.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130211.html

Free Download: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”

“The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. “

"Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb. 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945) was a Protestant Lutheran Pastor, theologian, and active in the German resistance to the policies of Hitler and Nazism. Due to his opposition to the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed at the Flossian concentration camp, during the last month of the war."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”

Download or Read Online here:

- https://booksvooks.com/

The Poet: Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”

“The Peace of Wild Things”

“When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free…”

- Wendell Berry

The Daily "Near You?"

Addis Ababa, Adis Abeba, Ethiopia. Thanks for stopping by!

"Lifes Impermanence..."

"Lifes impermanence, I realized, is what makes every

single day so precious. It's what shapes our time here.

It's what makes it so important that not a single moment be wasted."

- Wes Moore

"Problems?"

 
Problems? "Dig you way out," they said...

"Out On The Streets"

"Out On The Streets"

By Bill Bonner

"When I search the faceless crowd,

A swirling mass of grays and black and white,

They don’t look real to me,

In fact, they look so strange..."

– "Salt of the Earth", The Rolling Stones

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "We saw yesterday that the feds “invested” more than $27 trillion between 1980 and today… in wars, bailouts, and boondoggles. Return on investment = negative. This is not to say that some people didn’t make out very well. Stock market investors (the 10% of the country with substantial stock holdings, in the Dow, for example) saw their wealth increase more than 35 times… even as the economy grew only eight times.

As we showed a few weeks ago, an investment in Raytheon, General Dynamics, and other war suppliers rose 10 times just since 2000, while the economy only doubled. And the “educators” running the public school system in Baltimore never missed a holiday or a paycheck… even while, in one third of the high schools there, not a single student was proficient in math. As for the faceless crowd, it ended up with $28 trillion in debt… and nothing to show for it.

What Equality? Our theme this week: How the masses get the Afghan treatment from their own corrupt elite. How do they cheat thee? Let us count the ways. Schools that don’t teach. Wars that can’t be won. Regulations, rules, standards, licenses, controls, restrictions, punishments. And most important, fake money, that makes the rich richer and everybody else poorer.

Our friend David Stockman tells us that over the last 25 years, federal policies have added $30 trillion to the net wealth of the top 1% – or $23 million per household. That works out at just under $1 million per household per year. The bottom 50%, meanwhile, got a total of $1.5 trillion – $23,000 per household, which works out at less than $1,000 per year… a thousand times less than the rich. Equality is a fraud and a myth. But we’d just like a little honesty. And perhaps, if it is not asking too much, a little integrity.

Out on the Street: Yesterday, the eviction moratorium expired. Some 3.5 million Americans are behind on rent and now face put-outs. Goldman Sachs predicts that 750,000 of them will get tossed onto the streets by the end of the year. Who are these people? The CEOs and consultants… the stockholders… the professors… the reporters? Members of Congress? The rich? Nah… Mostly, they are the uncounted heads, the wavering millions… the people the feds say they are trying to help. Well… LOL and thanks a lot!

Since March 2020, their champions, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, have told them they don’t have to pay their rent. And now, they need to come up with a big check. Rent of $1,000 a month would mean they would need $17,000 to settle up. Do they have that kind of money to apply to back rent? Not likely.

And rents are rising sharply. According to the Yardi Index, monthly payments for renting a house are rising 13% year to year, and apartments are going up at an 8% rate. Who is responsible for that? Did landlords suddenly become greedy? Nope again. Landlords don’t create inflation; they just respond to it. And what about owning a house? Here’s our sidekick, Dan Denning, writing from Laramie, Wyoming: "Home prices, for example, were up 18.6% in June from the same time last year, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller National Home Price Index. That’s the largest annual gain in the history of the data set, going back to 1987. House prices in America are now 41% higher than they were at the top of the housing bubble in 2007."

Whose wages are rising at an 18% rate? Not those of the working class…

Another Fine Mess: And here’s another fine mess the feds have gotten us into. Here’s economics writer Jeffrey Tucker: "Large corporate buys of homes designed to be flipped into rental properties are rocking the financial markets. Two companies – Invitation Homes (INVH) and American Homes 4 Rent (AMH) – are up 38% for the year. In addition, one in five purchases of homes this year have been corporate, with the intention of turning them into rents. Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Investco have committed some $11 billion to the cause. And there is more money pouring into building new properties designed as rentals."

How come the big corporates are paying so much for houses? Oh, Dear Reader, we can’t believe you’re asking us that question. It’s the Fed. Credit ratings agency Moody’s tells us that the yield on an Aaa corporate bond – the highest rating – is about 2.5%… which is only about half the latest inflation reading. Another big payday for the speculators. They can buy a house for $300,000, using money they borrowed at 2.5%. Already, they’re making 2.5% on the financing, after inflation.

If they rent the house out for $2,500 a month… it gives them a gross yield of 10%, plus the 2.5% financing boost. Then, thanks to the Fed’s money-printing and interest rate suppression, house prices are going up at an 18% rate, giving them a total (very gross) return of 30.5%. Of course, prospective homeowners can borrow, too… But the pros can borrow more cheaply… and they have a lot more money to work with.

More tomorrow… In preview: Say a prayer for the “salt of the Earth.” They’re going to need it."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

 

Reportedly 12 million pending evictions, 

30 million (?) people about to be homeless. What then?

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 9/2/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/2/21:

"Must Know Updates"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/2/21:

"Global Food Prices Are Skyrocketing. 

Billionaire Bill Gross Says: 'Cash Is Garbage'"

-  https://traderschoice.net/

"The Media Says 'The Delta Variant Stole Christmas', And Severe Shortages Are Projected To Stretch Long Into 2022"

"The Media Says 'The Delta Variant Stole Christmas', And 

Severe Shortages Are Projected To Stretch Long Into 2022"

by Michael Snyder

"Thanks to extreme disruptions caused by the global response to the pandemic, millions upon millions of Americans are going to have a very disappointing holiday season. Supply chains are in a state of complete and utter chaos all over the world, and now we are being told that it will remain this way for the foreseeable future. And that is actually a best case scenario. If a new variant comes along that causes even more global disruptions, the shortages that we are experiencing right now could become even more dire. We are so vulnerable right now, and any unexpected twists or turns could easily make things a lot worse.

Earlier in 2021, the mainstream media was full of optimistic talk about how wonderful the second half of the year would be. But now reality is setting in. The following comes from a Washington Post article entitled “How the delta variant stole Christmas: Empty shelves, long waits — and yes, higher prices”… “I’m afraid there is simply not enough time to get products on the shelf this year,” said Isaac Larian, chief executive of MGA Entertainment, the toy giant behind Rainbow High and such popular lines as L.O.L. Surprise and Little Tikes. “The holidays are going to be very tough and, frankly, a lot of families are not going to be able to get the toys they want.”

Mounting challenges — including factory shutdowns, computer chip shortages and clogged ports — are rattling the industry as it prepares for the crucial holiday shopping season, an eight-week window that can account for more than half of a retailer’s annual sales. Didn’t Kamala Harris just give us a very similar warning?

If there are toys that you want to buy, you should try to get them as soon as possible, because the supply crunch is only going to intensify. Even the biggest voices in the mainstream media are now admitting that these shortages are not going to be resolved any time soon. The following comes from a New York Times article entitled “The World Is Still Short of Everything. Get Used to It.”… "Pandemic-related product shortages - from computer chips to construction materials - were supposed to be resolved by now. Instead, the world has gained a lesson in the ripple effects of disruption."

The economic optimists assured us that the economy would be “booming” by now, but instead the shortages are worse than ever. Earlier today, I came across a local news story about the painful shortages that small businesses in western Massachusetts are currently dealing with…"This has everything to do with the supply chains. Businesses all over western Massachusetts are scrambling because they can’t get their hands on the most basic items. Silverware, takeaway containers, food items, you name it, and it’s probably in short supply."

Of course many of the largest corporations in the entire world are dealing with the same headaches. According to Elon Musk, Tesla has been experiencing “super crazy supply chain shortages”… Elon Musk said that supply-chain snags have hindered Tesla’s plans in 2021. “2021 has been the year of super crazy supply chain shortages, so it wouldn’t matter if we had 17 new products, as none would ship,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday.

For many companies, one of the biggest sources of pain has been a persistent lack of computer chips. This is a worldwide phenomenon, and it is the reason why game systems like the PS5 and the XBox Series X have been so exceedingly difficult to acquire… "Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for microchips has far exceeded supply, causing problems in every industry that relies on computers. And if you’re a Decoder listener, you know that that is every industry. Right now, major automakers have unfinished cars sitting in parking lots waiting for chips to be installed. Game consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X are impossible to find. And even things like microwaves and refrigerators are impacted, because they contain simple controller chips."

We were promised that things would be getting better by now, but instead this crisis just continues to escalate. In fact, Toyota just announced that they are going to be cutting global production by 40 percent because of the shortage of chips… In the face of an enduring shortage of computer chips, Toyota this month announced that it would slash its global production of cars by 40%. Factories around the world are limiting operations - despite powerful demand for their wares - because they cannot buy metal parts, plastics and other raw materials. Construction companies are paying more for paint, lumber and hardware, while waiting weeks and sometimes months to receive what they need."

As bad as things are now, it looks like they are about to get even worse. One prominent shipping company just declared that they expect this crisis to persist “until the first half of 2022”… "From anchorage stats to forward arrivals, ocean bookings, and inventory-to-sales numbers, all the latest data paints the same picture: The U.S. congestion crisis has never been more severe than it is now - and it’s getting worse. Hope for any relief this year has vanished. French carrier CMA CGM is the latest in a long line of market participants to push back its timeline on normalization. Capacity constraints “are expected to continue until the first half of 2022,” CMA CGM warned on Friday."

Alarmingly, America’s import system - which is already stretched to the limit - looks like it will have to handle even higher volumes next month. The likely outcome: Carriers will be forced to cancel more sailings as terminal berths max out and ships get stuck at anchor, even more cargo will get “rolled” (pushed to a future sailing), and importers will face even longer delays and even less slot availability as they scramble to build inventories for holiday sales.

Others are even more pessimistic. Just check out this quote… “There is no end in sight,” said Alan Holland, chief executive of Keelvar, a company based in Cork, Ireland, that makes software used to manage supply chains. “Everybody should be assuming we are going to have an extended period of disruptions.” “No end in sight”? “An extended period of disruptions”?

And what is going to happen if another variant comes along that creates a lot more fear? Just today, the WHO issued a very ominous warning about a variant that is now known as “Mu”… "The World Health Organization has issued a warning about yet another new COVID-19 variant it fears could potentially evade vaccines. That variant, called Mu, was first detected in Colombia in January, and has been announced just as the Delta variant finally appears to be peaking in the U.S.

This “Mu variant” has already spread to over 40 different nations, and there have already been more than 2,000 confirmed cases in the United States… Over 4,600 cases of the variant, whose scientific name is B.1.621, have been spotted since then, and it has spread to more than 40 countries. Almost 2,000 cases of the variant have been detected in the United States."

So how much worse will our supply chain disruptions become if that variant starts spreading across the country like wildfire? Most people don’t realize that we are so close to the sort of extreme economic chaos that I have been warning about. The second half of this year was supposed to be a time when our lives started to go back to “normal”, but that is obviously now out the window. Instead, the rest of 2021 is looking exceedingly bleak, and at any moment another sudden “surprise” could take our problems to a whole new level."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

“You Have No Idea What’s Coming; 2008 Crisis Was A Warm Up; Social Security Robbed; Pensions Next?”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/1/21:

“You Have No Idea What’s Coming; 2008 Crisis Was A Warm Up;

Social Security Robbed; Pensions Next?”

"It's Chaos Out There – Shipping Crisis Aggravated As 44 Container Ships Stuck Off Coast Of California"

Full screen recommended.

"It's Chaos Out There – Shipping Crisis Aggravated

 As 44 Container Ships Stuck Off Coast Of California"

by Epic Economist

"Port congestion continues to intensify the global supply chain crisis as hundreds of container ships that should be transporting goods around the world are waiting to unload outside key ports for global trade. The situation in the U.S. is particularly worrying because only in California, there are currently 56 cargo ships anchored in the state's two largest ports located in Los Angeles and Long Beach, from which 44 are container ships that have been stock awaiting entry for weeks. That's the highest number recorded since the beginning of the health crisis, it bypasses the infamous record of 40 set in February 2021, according to a report released by the Marine Exchange of Southern California. And the logjam is likely to get much worse as the run-up to the holiday selling season has just begun. Retailers are completely desperate to stock up their inventories before the season starts and before more product shortages emerge. They have been dealing with dwindling inventory levels in many categories, from apparel to electronics to furniture, toys, and food.

The unprecedented backlog is a result of a historic labor shortage, health-crisis-induced disruptions, and higher consumer demand for holiday goods. Port of Los Angeles data reveals that the average wait time for ships rose to 7.6 days. "The normal number of container ships at anchor is between zero and one," explained Kip Louttit, the executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California. Together, Los Angeles and Long Beach ports handle about one-third of all U.S. imports. The California ports operate as a primary source of imports from China and have faced severe congestion throughout the past 12 months.

"Part of the problem is the ships are double or triple the size of the ships we were seeing 10 or 15 years ago. They take longer to unload. You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo," Louttit said. The congestion is worsening the global shipping container shortage, given that container ships are being forced to anchor and wait for days, while companies importing and exporting goods to and from Asia are struggling with additional shipping delays.

The shipping crisis is particularly concerning for the US because it threatens to derail the economic rebound despite the rising consumer demand. Considering that the production of many consumer goods has been outsourced to Asian countries, our supply chains have become extremely dependent on exports so that companies can provide their products to customers. And given that many orders aren't arriving in time - which is leading to local shortages and soaring consumer prices - retail sales have started to back off from recent highs, signaling that they might go further down if the crisis worsens over the next weeks and months.

At the same time, the port congestion on the other side of the globe isn't helping that equation. Even though the container terminal at Ningbo resumed operations this week, the enormous backlog of containers at the port, on vessels, with China’s trucking companies and railways, and the chaos it caused in the shipping world, will continue to disrupt the flow of containers and merchandise possibly for months.

Updates released by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors reveal that right now, the average cost to ship a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles soared to a record of $11,362, over five times the typical pre-outbreak rate of around $2,000. From Shanghai to New York, the average shipping cost climbed to $14,136. Drewry’s composite index, which accounts for world container rates, hit a new record of $9,818 per 40-foot container. The index had been running well below $2,000 before the onset of the health crisis. Meanwhile, long-term contracted ocean freight rates skyrocketed by a shocking 85.5% compared to the same period last year. And as container ship operators started reaping record-breaking profits, there appears to be little sign of relief on the horizon.

It seems that the stranded container crisis is the worst nightmare for anyone involved in global trade. Given that we offshored the production of many goods we consume for years and years, and the fact that our country's domestic production has been challenged by a series of accidents and disasters, the pattern of delivery delays never ceases to repeat. And as we move closer to the holiday season, we should all start to get prepared because much more chaos will arise both in supply chains and at stores."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Susan Ciani, "Anthem"

Full screen recommended.

Susan Ciani, "Anthem"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.

About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous featured image combines both narrowband and broadband images."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150513.html

"I Urge All Of You..."

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”

- Jim Valvano

"A Wise Man Once Said..."

“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”

- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/1/21: "It's Here, New Variant, The 'MU Flu', Deadliest Of Them All!"

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/1/21:

"It's Here, New Variant, The 'MU Flu', Deadliest Of Them All!"

-  https://traderschoice.net/

○

Related:

"The Delta Scam"

The Daily "Near You?"

Sand Springs, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"This Is How Easy It Is..."