Wednesday, September 15, 2021

"Doug Casey on the Next 'Crisis' the Global Elite Have Planned"

"Doug Casey on the Next 'Crisis' 
the Global Elite Have Planned"
by International Man

"International Man: Every year, the international ruling class - the most influential world leaders, CEOs of big corporations, top academics, and even celebrities - come together at Davos. They discuss topics that interest them and prescribe their preferred policies. What’s your take on the Davos crowd and what they are doing?

Doug Casey: The Davos crowd has become the most visible element of the ruling class. Although, they overlap with lots of other groups who are pushing the same agenda -Bilderberg, CFR, and Bohemian Grove among them.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article after I attended the Concordia, which is very similar, with exactly the same people. I don’t plan on going back. It was disturbing and depressing listening to soulless bigshots natter about the best way to rule the plebs. These people are all part of what you might call the "World Deep State." They all know each other. They go to the same conferences, and more often than not, they’ve attended the same universities, belong to the same social clubs, and have kids in the same schools. But most importantly, they share the same worldview. They live in their own little silo, where the rest of 7.9 billion people in the world are outsiders. So it’s only natural that people in such a relatively close-knit - albeit informal - group conspire.

Adam Smith famously observed that whenever two men from the same occupation get together, they always conspire against the interests of the public. It’s a perfectly normal and natural thing. But these people aren’t just merchants contriving to make a few extra shekels. These people are the top dogs in all of the world's governments, NGOs, corporations, universities, and media organizations. They have contempt for the little people, whom they treat as either useful idiots or useless mouths. They’re interested in power more than anything else. As they’ve recently shown in this COVID exercise, they pretty much control the world. They’re very dangerous; I despise them.

International Man: In 2019, well before the first case of COVID was reported, the World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts the annual Davos conferences, held an event to discuss the possibility of a worldwide pandemic. In fact, they ran a simulation exercise for how the scenario could play out and how governments, large corporations, and the media should handle the situation. What do you make of this? Was it a coincidence?

Doug Casey: These people are quite bold. They believe - correctly - that 90% of the public will basically eat whatever they’re fed and accept whatever they’re told. I have no doubt that these people have an informal understanding with each other as to how the world ought to reset to their benefit. It’s not a formal conspiracy, per se, just a natural consequence of what inevitably happens when people of the same class, worldview, and philosophy are in a position of power.

The problem is that worldwide conflagrations over the last century have gotten much more serious each time around. World War 1 was unbelievably nasty. World War 2 was even nastier. We dodged the bullet of a global thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. But that doesn’t mean that World War 3 isn’t going to occur. It’ll just be different than it would have been 40 or 50 years ago.

So, based on the trend in motion, if World War 1 killed 20 million people and World War 2 killed 60 or 80 million people, anything could happen in whatever turns out to be World War 3. Maybe 500 million or a billion. Think big, like the people who put together the Deagel report. As I’ve said before, this war will have little to do with obsolescent junk like Abrams tanks, F-35s, and Ford-class carriers. Those toys serve little purpose beyond bankrupting the US while enriching the Deep State. This will be primarily a cyber and biological war.

I’m just surprised that more people aren’t watching and referring to the movie V for Vendetta, which also revolves around a virus called the St. Mary’s virus. The world desperately needs a real V. There are really a lot of parallels today. I wonder if the "little people" know that the elite have been planning or playing with the idea of a virus for years. Probably not - it’s hard to imagine anyone could be as evil as the Nazis, Soviets, or Chicoms because that was ancient history and human nature has obviously changed. A great virus to smite humanity has been the subject of lots of sci-fi novels and movies over the years. And now, as usual, life is imitating art.

Let’s fantasize for a moment. Perhaps the elite, who mostly masquerade as philanthropists, will rationalize their plan as a way to cleanse the gene pool, reducing the population by 80 or 90%.* I have no doubt these people could justify a viral plague as a way to save Gaia from a human plague. Perhaps the vaccine will actually be the real vector, killing some after a time and sterilizing the rest. Perhaps it will serve as a catalyst for the vaccinated, the obedient 80%, to put the independent unvaccinated 20% in camps. Perhaps the current virus is just the first gambit, and after the Delta and Mu strains a genuinely serious Zeta variant will present itself.

Anything is possible. We’re living in a science-fiction world at this point. Even if things just go along more or less as they are, there are lots of advantages to the COVID-19 virus from their point of view. The collapse of the economy, the Greater Depression, won’t be blamed on central banking, inflation, and the State. They’ll be sold as heroes in the fight against the virus. The depression will be blamed on COVID - a Deus ex machina device - as opposed to the real causes. It’s really quite perverse.

International Man: Earlier this year, the WEF started making a lot of noise about cyberattacks disrupting global supply chains. Klaus Schwab, the WEF founder, has been calling for the internet to be vaccinated preemptively - presumably meaning more controls, regulations, and less freedom and privacy. Are they foreshadowing the next real or manufactured crisis? How could it play out?

Doug Casey: There’s no question in my mind at this point that the US, and in fact many countries, are turning into genuine police states. It’s happening right before our eyes with Australia - the entire country is locked down. People, masked at all times, of course, can’t go more than a couple of miles from their homes without suffering draconian penalties. No one can enter Australia, and - this is really shocking - no one can leave. And it’s not even questioned. If it can happen in Australia, New Zealand, and in parts of Canada, it can happen anywhere.

Apparently, it’s starting to happen here in the US with Biden having laid down not-so-subtly veiled threats against people that don’t get vaccinated. It was ominous to hear the senile old scumbag say that he, and the righteous vaccinated, were starting to "lose patience" with Americans who think they control their own bodies. I have no plans to get vaccinated. At best, the vaccine is unproven - and possibly, we won’t know how risky it is for several years. Which is why in the past, radical new therapies have always had to be tested for years. But that hasn’t happened in this case.

But the vaccine psychosis is just one aspect of this war. As much as the elite want to sell the January 6th event in Washington, DC as the equivalent of the Reichstag fire, I don’t think the average American buys it. Therefore, perhaps something real or imagined will transpire to allow them to designate a whole class of American citizens as domestic terrorists.

We now have genuinely crazy people in control of the apparatus of the state. They’re exactly the same psychological and philosophical profile as the Bolsheviks or the Jacobins. They’re not going to let go of power voluntarily. Anything is possible at this point; we’re still in the early days. As we enter the trailing edge of the Greater Depression, there’s actually something much more serious to consider in looking at the world situation. Things are similar to 1914 or 1939. Who knows exactly what happens next?

International Man: The COVID hysteria worked out exceptionally well for power-hungry politicians around the world. The public has now accepted an unprecedented level of government control over their everyday lives. If there is a so-called "cyber pandemic" as the elites are hinting at, what would the consequences be for personal freedom?

Doug Casey: As I said earlier, World War 3 won’t be about nuclear weapons or conventional armies, but biology and computers. The cyber war aspect will be huge because the entire world now runs on computers. In fact, the world is starting to run on artificial intelligence. I don’t doubt that robotics will come into its own soon. As far as a cyber pandemic and closing down the Internet is concerned, I’d say that’s a near certainty. They definitely want to do that, because the fact of the matter is that you’re only as alive as you can communicate with others.

If you can’t get your thoughts or news of what’s going on out to other people, you might as well be sealed in a tomb. It makes sense that people who want to control other people want to cut down on popular means of communication. They’ll find excuses to keep what they consider to be unsound views off the internet. It’s already happened in regard to the so-called pandemic. Contrary views, no matter how well-reasoned and factual, even from renowned sources, are quashed. Dissent, or even discussion, isn’t tolerated. You’ll find that spread to all other areas of intellectual and political discourse.

We already can’t travel easily; domestic flights are inconvenient, and international flights are down about 85%. Vaccine passports are on the way. In many places, we can’t gather, even in small groups. And of course, the next big thing - the big thing - is a heavily controlled internet. At that point, all you’ll have is what you’re told officially and what you can see in your own little local area. These people are all about quashing communication. It’s a great formula, critical, really, for control. They don’t want people organizing to challenge them.

In Biden’s recent speech, he several times made out the unvaxxed as a potential enemy - a domestic danger. It’s no coincidence that the people who don’t want to take the jab correlate strongly with people with conventional right-wing views, Trump voters, and cultural conservatives. The battle lines are drawn. It’s really turned into a class and ideological war.

They’re playing the health card with this COVID nonsense. They’re playing the race card and domestic terror card. They’re succeeding in delegitimizing American values and history, as well as masculinity in general and white males in particular. Next will be a reemphasis on the Global Warming scam. You plebs won’t be allowed to do anything, and most will go along with it because they’ve been indoctrinated over several generations to believe it’s right. The elite are doing everything in their power to ramp up fear. Fear for your health, fear of domestic terror, fear of the non-compliant, and fear of the climate destroying the planet. As I discussed previously, fear is the most powerful tool that governments have to control the people. That's what governments are all about. They thrive on fear. Fear is the health of the State.

International Man: What can the average person do to protect themselves from these disturbing trends?

Doug Casey: In Solzhenitsyn’s 'Gulag Archipelago', he talks about how, when they're all together in the Gulag under the worst possible conditions, they said, "If we had only known, when they came to round us up as individuals… if we'd only grabbed a frying pan, or a pipe, or a rock and attacked these criminals..." But they were afraid. And they didn't think that things could possibly be as bad as they turned out to be.

It’s understandable that they were hesitant to attack the state apparatchiks when going off to the Gulag, just as the Jews rarely attacked the Gestapo when they were rounding them up to take them off to camps.

You naturally might think, "These people can't be that serious. These people can't be that bad…." And you’d be wrong. It takes a lot of physical courage to even think about these things. Why didn’t any of the nomenklatura around Stalin simply kill him? They all knew the odds were good he was going to kill them eventually. You'd think that any of the rats around him would have cut his throat.

But everybody's afraid to take physical action because we tend to be optimists. We tend to hope for the best, as we do right now. We hope that this will blow over, and maybe it will. But it boils down to what will you do, maybe five minutes from now, when you're confronted one-on-one with an apparatchik from the State who gives you an order.

What will you do? It's too dangerous to take physical action against the guy because it may bring down the whole weight of the State organization on you. So how do you resist? Well, unless you want to be a hero, the only thing I can think of is to have enough assets to insulate yourself from the bad guys or to move yourself physically to a different location.

We're headed into a very rough patch in US history, especially for the next three or four years."
* Related - Must Read!

"We See The World..."

 

Musical Interlude: James Taylor, "You Can Close Your Eyes"

James Taylor, "You Can Close Your Eyes"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Is this one galaxy or two? The jumble of stars, gas, and dust that is NGC 520 is now thought to incorporate the remains of two separate disk galaxies. A defining component of NGC 520 - as seen in great detail in the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope - is its band of intricately interlaced dust running vertically down the spine of the colliding galaxies. A similar looking collision might be expected in a few billion years when our disk Milky Way Galaxy to collides with our large-disk galactic neighbor Andromeda (M31). 
The collision that defines NGC 520 started about 300 million years ago. Also known as Arp 157, NGC 520 lies about 100 million light years distant, spans about 100 thousand light years, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces). Although the speeds of stars in NGC 520 are fast, the distances are so vast that the battling pair will surely not change its shape noticeably during our lifetimes."

Chet Raymo, "Seeing"

"Seeing"
by Chet Raymo

"There was a moment yesterday evening when the elements conspired to evoke these few lines, spoken by Macbeth:

            "Light thickens,
    And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse."
The fading light. The crows gliding down the fields to the trees in Ballybeg:
            "Light thickens,
    And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse."

It's all there, in those few lines- the mysterious power of poetry to infuse the world with meaning, to anoint the world with a transforming grace. One could spend an hour picking those lines apart, syntax and sound, sense and alliteration. The t's of light thickening, tongue against the teeth. The alar w's making wing. The owl eyes of the double o's. The d's nodding into slumber - day, droop, drowse.

The poet Howard Nemerov says of poetry that it "works on the very surface of the eye, that thin, unyielding wall of liquid between mind and world, where somehow, mysteriously, the patterns formed by electrical storms assaulting the retina become things and the thought of things and the names of things and the relations supposed between thing." It works too in the mouth, in the physical act of speech - tongue, teeth, those d's gliding deeper into the darkness of the throat.

I stand in the gloaming garden and the black birds glide, down, down to Ballybeg, and I marvel that with so few syllables Shakespeare can- across the centuries- teach me how to see.”

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”

“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”
by Nicolas Perrin

“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”
~ Mary Catherine Bateson

“It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity. With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.

What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted to entertain these fear-based thoughts like a Hollywood blockbuster, and as you may know, what you focus on expands. Before I knew it, my body was in a state of complete anxiety and fear. I literally felt my cognitive and creative centers shutting down. I felt completely powerless, a hostage to my own mind. My body felt paralyzed, and I felt disconnected from my talents and gifts. I felt separate, isolated, and vulnerable. I became a victim of the fear. In this moment I realized the powerful impact thoughts can have on how we feel, mentally and physically. Here is what unfolded through me, and the lessons I treasured from this experience.

Fear is a closed energy, referred to as inverted faith. Fear exists when we do not trust our connection to the infinite part of who we are and buy into a story about what’s unfolding in our life. The emotions we feel are created from the thoughts that we choose to focus on, consciously or unconsciously. The emotions act as markers to let us know if we are focusing on expansive, empowering thoughts or fearful, limiting thoughts.

If I were to relate this in a story, it may be like a pilot believing he no longer had any guidance or support from the airport control tower in a large storm, and no instruments on board to detect if he was on a collision course with another airplane. If the control tower represents the infinite part of who we are, which always knows what’s best for us, it can be understandable why the pilot with no other guidance except for his own eye sight would be fearful of the situation at hand. An alarm on the plane beeping at the pilot would represent the emotions. The alarm’s purpose is to get the attention of the pilot so he can focus and realize he is off the path. Once our emotions start to take a grip of our physical body, what can we do to move from a state of limitation and fear into an open, tranquil, peaceful state?

1. Come back to the present moment. The first step is to bring your awareness to the present moment. To do this, take three deep breaths through your nose and exhale through your mouth. After the air has filled your lungs and you’ve felt your stomach rise, exhale through your mouth by forcing the air through your teeth, as if you were hissing out loud. This detoxifies your body from the heavy emotions you’re experiencing and brings you back into the present moment. When I do this, I place my awareness into my feet so I am in a feeling space within my body, rather than being in my mind, entertaining the stories that swirl around with vigor, like a dangerous hurricane. Imagine that all your emotions are in a large sludge bucket. This breathing technique will empty the bucket out so you are empty and free.

2. Put things in perspective. Now that you are present, acknowledge the experience and ask yourself this question: “What is the worst case scenario that can happen to me?” Once we can accept this and realize we will be okay if that happens, we are free from the fear. When I realized I’d blown things out of proportion with my fears, I was able to detach from the story and put things into perspective. I like to imagine that in every moment I have two wolves I can feed (per the Native American myth): the fear wolf or the love wolf. The one that gets stronger and wins is the one I feed.

3. Become an observer of your thoughts. What has served me well in moments like this is to say, “I’m not these thoughts. I’m not these emotions. I’m not this body. I’m an infinite being having a human experience.” In saying this, we immediately detach from the story and allow ourselves the choice of suffering or to become the observer. Imagine that your life is represented in a book, and the story you are living out comes from the words on the page. We can change the words of the story at any point in time.

4. Change your experience. The fourth step is to place your awareness and your right hand on the heart center, which is located near the sternum. Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and make the following command: “I am now connected to the infinite part of who I am, which already knows how to be whole and complete. I take full responsibility and accountability for this creation, I recognize how it has served me, and I am now ready to let it go. I command that the fear energy be transmuted into unconditional love now. Thank you. It is now done.” This process is incredibly empowering. We allow ourselves the opportunity to experience being our own inner master and a co-creator of our reality.

5. Prevent your mind from sabotaging you. Visualize a stone being thrown into a pond. Observe the ripples it creates when it enters the water. This is to simply distract your mind and allow the process to unfold without doubt or self-sabotage. It is only our mind that can interfere with our own healing.

6. Be grateful. Express gratitude and appreciation for the integration and healing you have received. The key to happiness is awareness. When we become aware that our mind is wandering, we can gently bring it back to the present moment. It’s only in the present moment that we are empowered and can consciously choose the thoughts we engage with. The thoughts we focus on will determine where our energy flows, and thus what is created in our life. Each thought has a vibration, which is reflected by the feeling we experience in our body. To be able to move from a fear-based experience to an open, peaceful experience we must first take full responsibility and accountability that on some level we created the experience, and nobody else is to blame. The choice is truly ours. Do we choose to experience a fearful, limited life or do we choose a happy joyful life?"
Reduce fear, good. Reduce stress also...
Full screen recommended.
Marconi Union, "Weightless"
"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song 
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"
Think more clearly...
"Cognition Enhancer For Clearer and Faster Thinking - 
Isochronic Tones"
Full screen recommended.
"This session stimulates Beta, SMR and Alpha to train your 
brain for better cognition, such as clearer and faster thinking."

The Daily "Near You?"

Holly Springs, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts Are On 'Indefinite Back Order,' the Machine Grinds to a Halt"

"The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts 
Are On 'Indefinite Back Order,' the Machine Grinds to a Halt"
by Charles Hugh-Smith

"Setting aside the “transitory inflation” parlor game for a moment, let’s look at what happens when critical parts are unavailable for whatever reason, for example, they’re on back order or indefinite back order, i.e. the supplier has no visibility on when the parts will be available. If the part that blew out is 0.1% of the entire machine, and the other 99.9% still works perfectly, the entire machine is still dead in the water without that critical component. That is a pretty good definition of systemic vulnerability and fragility, a fragility that becomes much, much worse if there are two or three components which are on indefinite back order.

This is the problem with shipping much of your supply chain overseas: you create extreme systemic vulnerability and fragility even as you rake in big profits from reducing costs. Speaking of costs, let’s look at the costs of having a large, costly, complex mechanism sitting idle in a non-functioning state due to some broken element for which there is no substitute available. Whatever productive capacity the mechanism, process, etc. had is now stuck at zero.

Buying a new replacement is extremely costly, and that’s not always available for all the same reasons that parts and components aren’t available. Finding someone to fabricate a new component is not easy due to the wholesale transfer of manufacturing moxie and capability overseas.

You might be able to find someone to weld a replacement strut, but try finding someone to fab a new bicycle derailleur or better yet, a multilayer semiconductor chip. What about 3-D fabrication? Doesn’t that solve this problem? If the part can be “printed,” yes, but there are limits on what can be 3-D fabbed. You can’t 3-D fab a complex thermostat or controller, for example. You can’t 3-D fab a rubber gasket, either, or a great many other bits of petrochemical-based manufacturing.

Scarcities are not limited to parts and components; skilled people can be scarce, too. For example, there is a limited supply of ICU doctors and nurses. The training required to work in an ICU is specialized and experiential; throwing someone with minimal training in is not a substitution that’s going to work. You can’t order an ICU staff from China or print one digitally the way the Federal Reserve creates currency out of thin air. It takes many years to train the staff to function at a high level in ICU. A great many such labor scarcities exist for skilled workers who cannot be replaced except by someone with the same training and years of experience. This is one reason ICUs can break down: there is no replacement staff available, and no way to “print more.”

It turns out there’s also a scarcity of people willing to do the dirty-work jobs America needs done for wages that haven’t kept up with inflation. As I have explained here, the $1.65 minimum wage I earned in 1970, if factored for real-world inflation, is around $18 per hour, and arguably closer to $20 per hour. The solution is to raise the pay to levels that attract workers, but then this requires raising prices on the good and services to the point that customers can no longer afford them.

But wait, can’t we automate all work and deliver full-gee-whiz free-money, no-work communism to everyone? I invite everyone who reckons this is in the realm of the do-able to design, program and manufacture an automated robot that can trundle out to the laundry room, pop open a broken clothes dryer, diagnose the problem, manage to find a new controller board, fit it correctly and properly reconnect all the little wiring bits, close it up, test it, lift the dryer back on the washing machine and do all that for the relatively modest cost of a human repairperson. When you accomplish fabricating and programming that robot to do all the work without instruction or oversight, by all means let us all know how much it cost to design, program and manufacture, what the payback of the development and manufacturing process will cost amortized over the (short) life of the robot and how reliable it is in the real world.

The point is, fantasies are nice but reality is far more demanding. There can also be scarcities of competence. There may be replacements who claim competence, but when reality intrudes on the shuck-and-jive, their competence was illusory, and the net result is the entire institution can be described by President G.W. Bush’s memorable phrase, this sucker’s going down.

There can also be scarcities of institutional infrastructure and capacity. Once the institution, enterprise, state agency, etc. has been stripmined of redundancy, institutional memory and competence, then the first scarcity that cannot be replaced is the first domino that topples all the other dominoes of systemic vulnerability and fragility.

The Federal Reserve can print trillions of dollars and the federal government can borrow and blow trillions of dollars, but neither can print or borrow supply chains, scarce skills, institutional depth or competence. That nice shiny new semiconductor fab you reckon will resolve the chip shortage? You can print the billions of dollars needed in an instant, but the machinery, expertise and time can’t be conjured quite so easily. That fab is years away from completion no matter how many freshly conjured dollars you throw into the air.

When Critical Parts Are On “Indefinite Back Order,” the Machine Grinds to a Halt: that’s the U.S. economy in a nutshell. A great many essential components in America are on indefinite back order, including the lifestyle of endless globally sourced goodies at low, low prices. That lifestyle is out of stock and cannot be replaced with financialization fakery.

Hey, Federal Reserve, can you conjure up a non-corrupt financial system, a domestic supply chain, and an economy of open competition, transparency, accountability and competence? If not, you are even more worthless than we feared."

"Where Did All The People Go?"

"Where Did All The People Go?"
by Michael Snyder

"Why are companies all over the world suddenly desperate for workers? In my entire life I have never seen anything like this. When the labor shortage started in the United States, a lot of people blamed overly generous government handouts, but that doesn’t explain why the exact same thing is happening in nation after nation all over the globe. There aren’t enough factory workers, there aren’t enough truck drivers, there aren’t enough port workers, there aren’t enough employees to properly staff our stores, and the shortage of doctors and nurses is becoming a major crisis in some areas. During normal times, we were always told that the global economy was not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone, but now for the very first time we are facing an enormous worldwide labor shortage. It is almost as if millions upon millions of people suddenly disappeared from the system.

Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that a new survey has discovered that 69 percent of global companies are having a hard time finding enough people to hire…"A survey of nearly 45,000 employers across 43 countries showed 69 percent of employers reported difficulty filling roles, a 15-year high, according to employment-services provider ManpowerGroup Inc. At the same time, 15 countries - focused in Europe and North America - reported their highest hiring intentions since the survey began in 1962."

Just a few years ago, any company that was willing to pay decent wages would be absolutely flooded by job applications. But now everyone can’t stop talking about the “shortage” of workers. So where did all the people go?

Normally, global supply chains run as smooth as butter, but now they are in a complete and utter state of chaos. And the biggest reason why they are in a complete and utter state of chaos is because there simply is not enough workers for them to operate as they usually would. On a very basic level, we need people to make stuff, pack stuff, ship stuff, transport stuff, unload stuff and sell stuff. Every step along the way, shortages of workers are causing major headaches, and now we are being told that this supply chain crisis “will last well into next year”

"A supply chain crunch that was meant to be temporary now looks like it will last well into next year as the surging delta variant upends factory production in Asia and disrupts shipping, posing more shocks to the world economy. Manufacturers reeling from shortages of key components and higher raw material and energy costs are being forced into bidding wars to get space on vessels, pushing freight rates to records and prompting some exporters to raise prices or simply cancel shipments altogether."

But if we had enough people to do all the jobs that needed to be done, this crisis could be resolved very rapidly. So where are they? As inventories get tighter and tighter, that is invariably going to drive up prices.

Earlier this week, one of my readers emailed me about the shortages and price increases that she is seeing in her local area. I asked her if I could share this with all of you, and she said that I could…

"You can’t find frozen turkeys, frozen hens, frozen cornish hens…the supply chain HAS indeed been cut. There was 1, just one box of oatmeal on the shelves of our local food store that are normally stocked through the gills with food. Prices are higher…tomato sauce, in a can: what used to cost $0.99 cents last year now costs $1.50. Chicken drumsticks - we usually throw a bunch in a crockpot with some bbq sauce and put it over rice for our kids, they love it. Chicken drumsticks last year were $0.89/pound, now they are $ 1.39 per pound. We only buy meat that has been reduced. A rump roast, for instance, was marked down from $18 dollars to $7, that’s a huge price cut, so we look for deals like that. But they are hard to find!!! Everything is higher, packaged in smaller boxes and cups and there is not much of it. We all knew this was coming. It’s going to get worse, for lots of people who don’t know what’s happening. We have goats for goat milk and meat if we need, chickens for eggs and we’ve put back lots of produce we found on sale over the summer, in the freezer to booster our garden. It’s shocking how much just is not there. The shelves are empty, moved closer together, and bare spots are everywhere in grocery stores these days."

Unfortunately, what we have experienced so far is just the beginning. Global food supplies are going to continue to get tighter, and that is going to continue to drive up food prices.

Another sector of the economy where the labor shortage is having a big impact is in the healthcare industry. Lately, I have been coming across lots of stories about people dying because they can’t get the care that they need. Just before I started writing this article, I came across a heartbreaking story about a 70-year-old woman in Canada that dropped dead after a six hour wait in a local emergency room…"Bonnie Marie Hall was with her 70-year-old mother - Susan Tasson - when she died early Wednesday in a Kamloops, B.C., hospital emergency waiting room after a six-hour wait for care. Hall says her Ontario-born mother had an infectious laugh and a “warrior” spirit. She had three sons and two daughters, loved her grandchildren and had lived in Kamloops since 1987. “Nobody wants to die in a waiting room. Nobody,” said Hall."

Nobody should ever have to die that way. But it is going to keep happening, because there is an acute shortage of healthcare workers right now. All over the nation, the shortage of nurses has become a really big deal, and new mandates are just making things even worse…"Hospitals are struggling to comply with the state’s nurse staffing requirements as pandemic-induced burnout has exacerbated an already chronic nursing shortage nationwide. But burnout isn’t the only thing compounding California’s nursing shortage: The state’s new vaccine mandate for health care workers is already causing headaches for understaffed hospitals before it is even implemented. Some traveling nurses - who are in high demand nationwide - are turning down California assignments because they don’t want to get vaccinated."

There is a serious shortage of doctors as well, and this is a phenomenon that we are witnessing all over the globe. For example, over in the UK it is being reported that there is a “shortfall of more than 50,000 doctors” right now…"The NHS may be unable to cope this winter because of a “frightening” shortfall of more than 50,000 doctors, the head of the British Medical Association has warned."

Here in the United States, our healthcare system has never been so close to a state of collapse. In fact, one doctor recently wrote an article in which he claimed that it has “already collapsed”…

"As a resident physician who has only trained in an era of COVID- I was asked to consider graduating from school early in April 2020 to help with medical staff shortages - my time as a doctor has been defined by working in a system that has already collapsed. The American health system I work in has featured limited personal protective equipment, oxygen shortages, and the construction of field hospitals in convention centers and parking garages. Last winter, many hospitals across the country instituted crisis standards of care, forced to ration health services based on criteria that few people envisioned would be used outside of a mass casualty event, like a terrorist attack. Today, hospitals are full in much of the country, with patients requiring an ICU being airlifted thousands of miles in search of a staffed bed. These are not features of a health system that is approaching failure. These are features of a health care system that has broken down spectacularly, forcing doctors and patients to climb through the rubble looking for help."

But just like every other industry, if we had enough people to do the jobs that needed to be done, we would be fine. In all the years that I have been writing about the economy, finding enough workers has never been a problem. Yet here we are in the middle of 2021, and all of a sudden there are millions and millions and millions of empty jobs all over the globe.

Once again, there is a question that I must ask. Where did all the people go? This is a question that everyone should be asking, because the people that are currently running things are not telling you the truth."
Related:

"How It Really Is"

"Are the Markets About to Crash? What Will Set Them Off?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 9/15/21:
"Are the Markets About to Crash? What Will Set Them Off?"
"There are so many problems in the economy. From supply chain problems, the real estate bubble to the ever increasing inflation it shows no sign of stopping. What is finally make the markets crash? I am at the Wedge in Newport Beach, CA."

Gregory Mannarino, AM/PM 9/15/21: "The FReaKShoW Is Getting Even fREakiER"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/15/21:
"The FReaKShoW Is Getting Even fREakiER"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/15/21:
"Important Updates"

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

"Disturbing Financial Signs Point To Ominous Times; The Coming Financial End Game; Stockpile Food"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/14/21:
"Disturbing Financial Signs Point To Ominous Times; 
The Coming Financial End Game; Stockpile Food"

Musical Interlude: The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

Full screen recommended.
The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: Welcome to America, Whale Watching, Who's Watching Who?"

Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, PM 9/14/21:
VERY Strong language alert!
"Trends Journal: Welcome to America, 
Whale Watching, Who's Watching Who?"

"If They Force Millions Of Americans Out Of Their Jobs, Our Supply Chain Crisis Will Get Much Worse"

Full screen recommended.
"If They Force Millions Of Americans Out Of Their Jobs, 
Our Supply Chain Crisis Will Get Much Worse"
by Epic Economist

"You probably already noticed that shortages are spreading across a wide range of goods and store shelves are getting increasingly emptier, but things are set to get a whole lot worse as the U.S. government decided that now it's a good time to impose work restrictions. Our supply chains have been facing one disruption after the other, but now that thousands of workers are at risk of being forced to leave their posts, we're about to see widespread chaos taking over this country. The economy has already started to slump again, and there's a 50% chance that we face a double-dip recession by the end of the year.

Considering how things are going, it seems absurd that the federal government of the United States is issuing such a draconian decree - one that threatens to push MILLIONS of workers across several industries out of their jobs, but that's precisely what's happening. They are mandating workers to get the vaccine, but if the population doesn't trust the government, why would they comply with what the government is imposing? How are people supposed to feel confident to get the vaccine if they're being forced to make that decision?

Never in history, we have seen global supply chains so gummed up. And one of the main reasons why this crisis has been aggravating so dramatically is the shortage of workers. Dockworkers, truck drivers, warehouse workers - you name it. Every corner of the US supply chain is understaffed. And while many were expecting things to be coming back to "normal" by now, it seems like this crisis is only intensifying and more shortages continue to emerge all over the nation.

A new poll conducted by the Washington Post revealed that most workers prefer to get fired than get the injection. "The poll found 16 percent of unvaccinated workers would get the shot, 35 percent would ask for a medical or religious exemption and 42 percent would quit their job. When asked what they would do if they weren’t given an exemption to opt-out of the requirement, 18 percent of those surveyed said they would comply and 72 percent said they would quit," says the report.

Due to the threat of unemployment, it is likely that some unvaccinated workers ultimately submit to the injection program, but given that the vast majority is unwilling to accept it, we're about to witness economic chaos being unleashed all around us. In fact, many crazy things are already going on due to the vaccine mandates. Hospitals all over the country are seeing healthcare workers leaving their jobs at a time our health system is completely overwhelmed. Many of them are reporting severe interruptions to basic services. For instance, an upstate New York hospital announced it will pause the delivery of babies because of a series of resignations by maternity unit workers who are objecting to vaccination mandates.

We're in the middle of a major health crisis, and things are getting worse because, amid so much uncertainty, the president has decided that the best approach to ease this crisis is to literally force people to get a vaccine when most still doubt it's even effective. The level of absurdity is simply unprecedented. Sadly, this is just the beginning. When this country sees large numbers of people suddenly leaving the workforce all at once, everything will be turned upside down.

If millions of Americans are pushed out of work by Biden’s mandates in the coming months, we are going to watch our society crumble at breathtaking speed. At this point, all we can do is hope that the courts rule the government's decree unconstitutional, otherwise, we will have an economic collapse and an enormous national crisis on our hands sooner rather than later. If you're amongst those whose job is hanging by a thread due to the vaccine mandate, make the wisest choice and do not leave the workforce voluntarily. Let them fire you. In that way, you'll be able to collect a paycheck for as long as possible, and you'll also be able to apply for unemployment benefits. Plus, you'll have a strong case if you ever decide to take some sort of legal action.

It's truly sad to see America descending into full-blown tyranny. For years, several experts have been warning that our liberties and freedoms were being gradually taken away from us right before our eyes. Now, the nightmare is just starting. Just wait until the government realizes the mess they created. When these mandates effectively break our supply chains, panic and chaos will take over this country. Dark times as approaching us and we should get ready for the very difficult years that are ahead."

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Deep Still Blue”

Full screen recommended.
2002, “Deep Still Blue”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer. 


The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/14/21: "Is Real Estate About To CRATER? Are Markets About To CRASH? Let's Find Out"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/14/21:
"Is Real Estate About To CRATER? 
Are Markets About To CRASH? Let's Find Out"

"Inflation Will Be the Knockout Punch to Our Economy"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 9/14/21:
"Inflation Will Be the Knockout Punch to Our Economy"

I Know Why You Did It..."

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

The Daily "Near You?"

Huntington, Vermont, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Time..."

“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so?
Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.
Before they know it, time runs out.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”
- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”
“The problem is, you believe you have time.”
- Buddha
Full screen  recommended.
Hans Zimmer, "Time"
And I turned 70 today lol...unbelievable. 
- CP

"Another War for the Feds to Lose"

"Another War for the Feds to Lose"
by Bill Bonner

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase
 a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
– Benjamin Franklin

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – “This is not about freedom or personal choice,” said Joe Biden. But that is exactly what the vaccine mandate is about. There are choices to be made: to vax or not to vax. The real question is: Who gets to decide? In a free society, people decide for themselves. In a less free society, somebody else decides. In this case, it’s the Decider-in-Chief who wants to tell others what to do.

A New Battleground: And yes… There’s a new battleground in America. Republican against Democrat, conservative against liberal, vaxxed against unvaxxed. CNBC reports: As many return to the office, tensions flare between the “vaxxed and unvaxxed” Many U.S. companies have introduced vaccine mandates for their employees. “In some workplaces we have seen a significant spike in hostility,” corporate lawyer Philippe Weiss told CNBC.

It is tempting to argue with the “facts” and assumptions that the deciders depend on… Do unvaxxed people really pose a danger to the vaxxed? Or is it the other way around? (According to CNN analysis of CDC data, if you are vaccinated, you are 99.99% protected from a fatal “breakthrough” infection. If you do catch it, it’s more likely that you’ll get a low-grade infection. But you can still pass it on to a vulnerable, unvaxxed person.)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the maladie has carried off 0.19% of the population – more than half of them over 75. Is that such a serious threat that the rest of us should give up our freedom of choice? Is vaccination really the best way for a group to protect itself? (Natural immunity is 13 times better, according to an Israeli study.) Does widespread vaccine use (rather than using it only for those who really need it) backfire? Like the overuse of antibiotics, does it encourage viral innovations and vaccine-resistant strains?

Consequences of Freedom: We don’t know the answers to those questions. But neither does the Decider himself. So, we stick to what we think we know… or at least have strong opinions about. We’ve seen that, based on the Korean experience, you’re about 50 times better off – economically – if you make the choices yourself, rather than letting the political elite make them for you.

We’ve seen, too, based on the American example, that religious freedom – deciding for yourself what god you will worship (rather than letting the Decider tell you) – not only eliminates a major cause of conflict, but seems to benefit religious groups. In the 19th century, America benefited from competition among religious brands. It also benefited from abolishing slave labor; free labor was much more productive.

And how about freedom of the Press? There, too, one of the cardinal values of a free and prosperous society is the ability to say what you think – even if it is idiotic. Here, one of our dear readers, Don M. gives his opinion: "I have no problem with you exercising your freedom of choice when the vaccination comes into play. My only concern is I don’t want to pay your medical bills. Freedom of choice comes with a deterrent. You play, you pay. This coming from a person that strongly believes in the First Amendment."

Reader John N. adds: "Bill, I love your writing and your style, but on your vaccine musings, you are totally wrong. The simple fact is that a reported 2.4 million people have died from this virus. Most of those would not have died had they been vaccinated. That remains a fact, no matter what lipstick you want to put on it. The morons you refer to are exemplified by people like Governor Abbott."

There you have it. It’s so simple. Vax and live. Don’t vax, and you might die. People who don’t see that are just morons. And the unvaxxed are a burden on the vaxxed population. Even strong supporters of the First Amendment do not think that freedom should be allowed to interfere with vaccinations.

The Real Truth: But you see the problem, don’t you, Dear Reader? Who’s the moron? We don’t know. And… excepting perhaps God’s Ultimate, Absolute, and Complete Truth (GUACT)… there is always more to the story.

Do the vaxxed really have to pay the medical bills of the unvaxxed? Maybe not. We are all on the hook for trillions of dollars’ worth of the feds’ unfunded medical and pension obligations. Wouldn’t “our” medical bills go down if more of the unvaxxed got COVID-19 and kicked the bucket? And isn’t that the great usefulness of freedom in all its forms? Like a truce, it allows the rest of the story to come out of hiding.

The elite may think they have the last word on vaccinations. But it was the elite who had the last word on Afghanistan. And being only human, the Truth they tend to see is the Truth they want to see… which happens to be the “Truth” that makes them feel richer, prouder, sexier, and more powerful. After all, they are the Deciders!

Same Outcome: In these pages, we’ve seen that almost all the Great Plans & Projects of the Deciders over the last half-century have been total failures: The War on Poverty. The War on Drugs. The Wars in the Gulf… Iraq… and Afghanistan. Two Wall Street bailouts. And the battle against freely set interest rates, too. As the truth comes out, it becomes clear that since 1980, the feds have run up $27 trillion in new debt, with nothing but bubbles, overcrowded prisons, dead bodies, and McMansions all along the Capital Beltway to show for it. Will the new War Against the Unvaxxed turn out any different? We doubt it."

"Polls Show That The American People Are Extremely Angry – And They Are About To Get Even Angrier"

"Polls Show That The American People Are Extremely Angry – 
And They Are About To Get Even Angrier"
by Michael Snyder

"This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were promised that once Joe Biden was in the White House that the tremendous anger that was building up in our country would start to subside, but that obviously is not happening. In fact, as you will see below, Americans have been getting even angrier. Needless to say, the stunt that Joe Biden pulled last week is certainly not helping matters. When he visited Boise on Monday, enormous crowds of extremely angry protesters were waiting for him. And everywhere I go on social media this week, I am seeing huge explosions of anger. What in the world is our country going to look like if all of this anger continues to grow?

Normally, it is either one side of the political spectrum or the other that is angry at any given time.But here in September 2021, both sides of the political spectrum are very angry. Just check out these stunning numbers from a brand new CNN poll… "A new CNN poll finds that 74% of U.S. adults now say they are “very or somewhat angry” about the way things are going in the U.S. today - that includes 88% of Republicans, 70% of independents and even 67% of Democrats. But wait, there’s more. Another 69% of U.S. adults now say that things are going “pretty or very badly” in the country these days - that includes 91% of Republicans, 72% of independents and 49% of Democrats."

Those numbers are crazy. Just a few months ago, there was so much optimism, but now the mood of the nation has completely shifted. Surprisingly, that same CNN poll asked a question about illegal immigration, and it found that even most Democrats are concerned about “the movement of undocumented immigrants”… "And by the way, illegal immigration is still a concern for many in this nation. The CNN survey also found that 77% of U.S. adults say that it is important that the federal government “stops the movement of undocumented immigrants into the United States.” And the partisan breakdown: 95% of Republicans, 76% of independents and 52% of Democrats agreed."

Ever since Joe Biden entered the White House, giant throngs of people have been surging to our southern border, and this has created an unprecedented immigration crisis. Incredibly, even though Biden has decided to impose vaccine mandates on millions upon millions of American citizens, even the White House Press Secretary is admitting that there will be no such requirement for the illegal immigrants that are being let into this country.

Members of Congress and their staffs are exempt from Biden’s new requirements as well. But the rest of us are apparently fair game. Today, my wife walked into a store where the employees were openly talking about how they might soon lose their jobs because of these new mandates. Biden is dragging us into full-blown tyranny, and lots of American citizens are going to lose good jobs because of this.

Another new poll asked Americans if they think that Biden’s tyrannical decrees are constitutional or not, and the results were absolutely overwhelming… "Asked in a new poll by Convention of States Action, in partnership with The Trafalgar Group, whether Biden has the constitutional authority to impose that demand, 58.6% said no. Only 29.7% said yes. The poll, taken over the weekend of likely general election voters, has a margin of error of 2.96%."

If they get away with this round of mandates, they will undoubtedly try to impose even more. In fact, Dr. Fauci is openly telling us that he is in favor of mandating vaccines for air travel. Fauci does not care about you. The next time that you hear the corporate media heaping praise on him, just remember what he and his organization did to a bunch of beagles. He sees you the same way, and he is going to keep pushing Biden to tighten the screws.

Already, we are seeing officials go door to door in some cities. In Washington D.C., there are times when workers will “go back to a house four or five, six times” until someone finally answers the door… "Patrick Ashley, with D.C. Health, said the city has a significant outreach program going door to door. “And as a reminder, we knock on doors until we actually get someone to talk to us. And so they’ll go back to a house four or five, six times, if necessary, multiple times of the day,” he said."

That should chill you to the core. And what came next in that same article is also extremely chilling… "Ashley also said the District is working with Medicare providers to make sure that they’re providing vaccination education. “But you’re right, it is a choice of theirs to make,” Ashley said. “So we’ll continue to do that education through the -” Silverman interrupted Ashley to say: “The president is saying it’s not a choice any more.”

The good news is that some red state governors are starting to fight back. For example, Ron DeSantis just announced huge fines for any government entity in his state that attempts to mandate vaccines… "Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday fought back against Joe Biden’s unconstitutional vaccine mandates.DeSantis announced cities and counties that force employees to get vaccinated will be fined $5,000 per infraction. “We are here today to make it very clear that we are going to stand for the men and women who are serving. We are going to protect Florida jobs,” DeSantis said during the news conference. “We are not gonna let people be fired because of a vaccine mandate.”

Hopefully more red state governors will step up to the plate, because our politicians in Washington are completely and utterly out of control. Not satisfied with angering millions of Americans with these new vaccine mandates, Democrats have also decided that now is the time to dramatically raise taxes…"Top earners in New York City could face a combined city, state and federal income tax rate of 61.2%, according to plans being proposed by Democrats in the House of Representatives. The plans being proposed include a 3% surtax on taxpayers earning more than $5 million a year. The plans also call for raising the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6% from the current 37%."

How would you feel if 61.2 percent of your income went to paying taxes? Would that make you angry? Of course it would. But our politicians in Washington have to find some way to pay for their insane spending sprees. The federal government ran a 3 trillion dollar budget deficit last fiscal year, and with one month to go they are on track to do it again this fiscal year.

Everywhere you turn, there is more bad news. And everywhere you turn, things are starting to spiral out of control. So many of the things that I have been warning about are happening right in front of our eyes, and the months ahead are looking very bleak. If Americans are this angry while things are still relatively stable, what is the mood of this country going to look like once things really start to fall apart?

As a nation, we are not emotionally equipped to handle any sort of a major societal collapse, but that is where the road that we are on inevitably leads. These are such troubled times, and I have a feeling that really big surprises are just around the corner."

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/14/21: "Inflation Continues To Surge As The Economy Shrinks At Its Faster Pace Ever!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/14/21:
"Inflation Continues To Surge As The Economy 
Shrinks At Its Faster Pace Ever!"

"Economy On Suicide Mission; America Is Entering A Historic Crisis; Apocalyptic Depression Is Next"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/13/21:
"Economy On Suicide Mission; America Is Entering A Historic Crisis; 
Apocalyptic Depression Is Next"