Thursday, September 23, 2021

"We Just Witnessed The Largest One Year Increase In Murder In The History Of The United States"

"We Just Witnessed The Largest One Year Increase 
In Murder In The History Of The United States"
by Michael Snyder

"Our violent, blood-soaked culture has produced a violent, blood-soaked reality in our streets. The final numbers for 2020 have finally been released by the FBI, and they are stunning. Prior to last year, the largest one year increase in the murder rate in the United States was 12.7 percent, and that came all the way back in 1968. Needless to say, many of you that are reading this article were not even alive in 1968. Well, we didn’t just break the old record last year. We more than doubled it. According to the FBI’s annual report on crime, the nationwide murder rate was up about 29 percent in 2020

"The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murder since the start of national record-keeping in 1960, according to data gathered by the FBI for its annual report on crime. The Uniform Crime Report will stand as the official word on an unusually grim year, detailing a rise in murder of around 29%. The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7% increase in 1968."

Let that sink in for a minute. Never before in U.S. history has the murder rate shot up so rapidly. And guess what? The murder rate is even higher this year than it was last year. According to the New York Times, so far in 2021 the murder rate in our largest cities is almost 10 percent higher than it was during the same period in 2020… "The evidence from big cities suggests murder is still up in 2021 relative to 2020, although the increase is not nearly as big. My collection of data from 87 cities with publicly available year-to-date data shows murder up by 9.9 percent relative to comparable points in 2020."

That means that the violence in our inner cities has gotten even worse. So why is this happening? In an editorial for USA Today, a former deputy police commissioner linked the rise in violent crime to a lack of policing… "After the George Floyd protests started in New York City, the New York Police Department logged 45,000 fewer arrests from June to December - a 38% decline while the Big Apple added more than 100 additional homicides (a 58% increase).

From June through the end of this February, Chicago’s police made 31,000 fewer arrests - a 53% decline as murders rose 65%. In Louisville, where massive unrest included the shooting of two police officers during a protest, homicides jumped 87% as the police made 35% fewer vehicle stops since June while arrests plummeted 42% during summer months compared with 2019."

From Los Angeles and Houston to New Orleans and Minneapolis, the political response to the unrest lead to de-policing and the resulting record violence. This trend toward less aggressive policing was a direct result of the George Floyd tragedy and the ensuing protests. Nobody wants to become the next police officer that makes national news, and so police all over the nation have become much more cautious. As a result, violent criminals now have much more freedom to operate, and they are taking advantage of it.

Every day we see more examples of the rising tide of violence. For example, just hours ago a homeless man “with a rope tied around his neck” was found dead in Central Park… "A homeless man was found dead with a rope tied around his neck in Central Park Wednesday morning - and cops are now eyeing homicide, according to police and sources. A woman who was gardening made the disturbing discovery around 8:15 a.m. in the meadow at East 65th Street and East Drive, cops said. The 26-year-old man, who is known to police for frequenting the park, was found lying unconscious with a rope tied around his neck."

In America today, so many people that are pushed into homelessness end up dead. We desperately need to do something about our growing homelessness crisis, because more people are ending up on the streets with each passing month. I greatly applaud all of the private citizens that are taking the initiative to do what they can to help the homeless, but the streets are not safe for them either. In fact, a man named Robert Herron was just killed in Oakland while he was right in the middle of feeding the homeless… “I heard boom, boom, boom. Three to four shots. I turned to look and he’s in the gutter,” said Chavez.

One man who identified himself as ‘Slim’ Hoover said he was among those receiving a meal from the couple. He said Herron suffered several gunshot wounds: “I was basically trying to keep him stable and alive until the paramedics and the police got there.”

You have got to be pretty evil to kill someone while they are giving food to the homeless. But you won’t find our society’s worst killers out in the streets. Instead, you will find them walking the halls of power. When we think of “murderers”, we tend to envision young men with guns running around our decaying urban centers in the middle of the night. But the biggest murderers sit behind big desks in cushy offices.

We like to think that the United States is a light to the rest of the world, but over the years the decisions that our leaders have made have resulted in death, destruction, pain and suffering on a scale that is difficult to put into words. So I don’t want anyone preaching to me about how “good” the United States is. Because the truth is that we are not “good” at all. And if the whole truth about our misdeeds ever gets revealed for the whole planet to see, the rest of the world is going to turn on us with great fury.

So yes, the crime in our streets is really bad, but what our most powerful men and women do behind closed doors is far worse, and eventually our entire nation will be held accountable for what they have done. If you don’t think that those running things are truly that bad, then you definitely have not been paying attention. Sadly, much of the population actually enthusiastically supports what our top national leaders have been doing, and that makes them culpable too."

Gregory Mannarino, "The Big Secret You Are Not Supposed To Know: The US Economy Is Collapsing Faster"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/23/21:
"The Big Secret You Are Not Supposed To Know:
The US Economy Is Collapsing Faster"

"How It Really Is"

Aware and fully informed of current crises by their never-lying 
Government and media, alarmed Americans react accordingly...

"We're so freakin' doomed!"
- The Mogambo Guru

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 9/23/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 9/23/21"

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
September 22nd to 24th, Updated Daily
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts
Commentary, highly recommended:
And now, the End Game...
Oh yeah...

"Before They Were An Inconvenience, But Now The Shortages Are Really Beginning To Sting"

"Before They Were An Inconvenience, 
But Now The Shortages Are Really Beginning To Sting"
by Michael Snyder

"Have you noticed that store shelves are starting to get emptier and emptier? During the panic shopping that was sparked by the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, there were very intense shortages of certain items, but those shortages did not last very long at all. But now there are widespread shortages in just about every sector of our economy, and they are starting to become quite painful. Unfortunately, we are being told to expect the shortages to intensify as we head into the holiday season. That is extremely alarming, because in many areas the shortages are already quite severe.

I had been away from the news for a couple of days, and when I came back there were lots more stories about our ongoing shortages. For example, the following comes from an excellent piece by Matt Stoller…"There are shortages in everything from ocean shipping containers to chlorine tablets to railroad capacity to black pipe (the piping that houses wires inside buildings) to spicy chicken breasts to specialized plastic bags necessary for making vaccines. Moreover, prices for all sorts of items, from housing to food, are changing in weird ways. Beef, for instance, is at near record highs for consumers, but cattle ranchers are getting paid much less than they used to for their cows."

In my entire life, I have never seen anything like this. Even the Federal Reserve is admitting that we have a major problem at this point. In fact, in the latest Beige Book the Fed referred to the shortages a whopping 80 times.

In certain parts of the country, these shortages are really beginning to sting. A reader just emailed me about what is going on in his section of Connecticut, and he said that I could share this with all of you…"I am just a regular guy in Connecticut, who has been watching things very closely, especially from a Biblical perspective. I wanted to quickly share with you an experience my wife and I had about two weeks ago at a medium-size, family run grocery store near Waterbury, CT.

Seemingly overnight, we noticed there were little yellow signs on the shelves, where certain SKUs used to be. Not entire lines, but individual SKUs. For example, a flavor of oatmeal, certain cereals, etc. The signs said something to the effect of: “This item is no longer available due to supply chain constraints”. I would say there were a few hundred signs in total throughout the store. It wasn’t until we got to the juice/water aisle that we noticed the larger problem: there was no Gatorade (?) and no bottled water (gallon jugs).

I have befriended the manager over the years, so I asked him where the water is, and he told me “…they only will give us so many bottles”. I asked who ‘they’ is, and he said the manufacturer: they were being rationed. As he said this, a truck driver happened to walk by and joined in on the conversation. He told us that he just got back from Maine, after a three-day trip- a trip that normally takes him a few hours. He said he, and all of the other truck drivers, sit at the warehouses for days, waiting for their trucks to be filled. To be clear, I asked him how long it normally takes, and he said a few hours at the most.

On our way out, I remembered that we needed dog food, so we went to the pet aisle, and there was no cat litter, and no dog food, save a few little bags of the cheapest stuff. All of the things Steve Quayle has been saying about food and water shortages suddenly became reality. I always believed him, but now I was seeing it, at the very local level. We then decided to go to PetSmart to get the dog food. Empty. The entire dog food shelf was empty except for a few bags!"

Are similar things happening in your part of the country? If so, please feel free to email me and let me know. We need to share intel with one another, because the mainstream media is not telling us the truth.

Of course the shortages would not be as severe if we could actually unload all of the container ships that are backlogged at our ports. Right now, dozens of container ships are sitting along the west coast waiting to be unloaded…"The number of container ships at anchor or drifting in San Pedro Bay off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has blown through all previous records.

The latest peak: There were an all-time-high 73 container ships in the queue in San Pedro Bay on Sunday, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California (the tally inched back to 69 on Tuesday). Of the ships offshore Sunday, 36 were forced to drift because anchorages were full."

Theoretically, the numbers - already surreally high - could go even higher than this. While designated anchorages are limited, the space for ships to safely drift offshore is not. This is the same problem that I talked about the other day.

At one time we had more able-bodied workers than we knew what to do with, but now there is an extreme shortage of workers all over the globe. Sadly, it has gotten to a point where we don’t even have enough people to drive our kids to school…"School districts around the country are struggling to fill thousands of bus driver positions as worker shortages lead to late arrivals and last-minute scrambles to bring retired workers back onto payrolls.

The shortages are so bad in some places that districts are taking extraordinary steps to get kids to school as students return to in-person classes this fall. Philadelphia’s school district will pay families $300 a month, or $3,000 for the year, to opt out of transportation services and get their kids to school on their own. Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia is offering a $2,500 bonus to new drivers - $100 more than the school district in the county seat, Charlottesville, is offering."

This is the worst labor shortage that the U.S. has ever faced, and it just keeps getting worse. So where did all the people go? Without enough able-bodied workers, our economy is experiencing a whole host of difficulties right now. And when you consider everything else that has been going on, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Joe Biden’s approval rating just sunk to a new record low…"Eight months after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, his job approval rating has fallen six percentage points to 43%, the lowest of his presidency. For the first time, a majority, 53%, now disapproves of Biden’s performance.

These findings are from a Sept. 1-17 Gallup poll that was conducted after the U.S. military evacuated more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan. The United States’ exit from the nation’s longest war was marred by the Taliban’s quick takeover of most of the country and a suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul, which killed 13 U.S. service members. Over the same period, COVID-19 infection rates, nationally, were surging, leading to hospital overflows in some regions."

And there are some parts of the nation where his approval rating is absolutely disastrous. Just check out the latest numbers from Iowa…"Just 31% of Iowans approved of how Joe Biden is handling his duties as president while a whopping 62% disapprove. Biden’s disapproval number is below the lowest ever measured by ace pollster J. Ann Selzer for former presidents Donald Trump (35%) and Barack Obama (36%). “This is a bad poll for Joe Biden, and it’s playing out in everything that he touches right now,” Selzer told the Des Moines Register."

Less than a year ago, a lot of Americans were viewing Biden as some sort of a “savior” figure. That didn’t exactly work out, did it? Many of us have been warning that shortages and high levels of inflation were coming for a very long time, but of course most of the population is not interested in such warnings. They just want to be told that everything is going to be okay. But the truth is that everything is not going to be okay, and the pain that we have experienced so far is just the beginning."
Related:
Highly Recommended:

"In Retrospect..."

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” 
– "The Fourth Turning", Strauss & Howe

"The FED Cannot Stop Inflation Or The Coming Depression; Crisis Ignored As The Stock Market Roars Back"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/22/21:
"The FED Cannot Stop Inflation Or The Coming Depression; 
Crisis Ignored As The Stock Market Roars Back"

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Musical Interlude: Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”

Full screen mode recommended.
Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon. 

 
Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

Edward Abbey, "Benedicto"

"Benedicto"
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”
- Edward Abbey

"Shipping Crisis Gets Crazy – 65 Container Ships Get Stuck At California Ports And Shortages Soar"

Full screen recommended.
"Shipping Crisis Gets Crazy – 65 Container 
Ships Get Stuck At California Ports And Shortages Soar"
by Epic Economist

"Supply chains are still in total chaos all across the U.S., and now American consumers are being warned about coming shortages ahead of the busy holiday season. Several business owners, big retailers, and even the Vice-President of the United States have been alerting that store shelves may soon be empty as the global shipping crisis aggravates. They have been asking people to prepare for further supply chain disruptions and start placing their Christmas orders as soon as possible if they want to get them in time.

In short, we're about to witness another turbulent shopping season as the supply chain crisis rapidly spirals out of control. A wide range of factors, including a shortage of shipping containers, record-high consumer demand, port congestion, and soaring freight costs have all conspired against global supply chains and businesses that have been waiting for their orders to arrive for months. There's a record-breaking number of cargo ships currently stuck at California ports. About a month ago, 44 ships were stuck outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and up until that point, that had been the highest number of ships waiting to unload on California docks. But things have escalated VERY quickly. And now 65 ships are queueing outside the two biggest ports in America, a signal of how severe port congestion has become across the U.S. ports.

Now that consumers are aware of the imminent shortages and retailers and manufacturers have been rushing to place orders to restock their inventories before the holiday season, the global shipping system is struggling to keep up. The LA and Long Beach ports are the main seaborne gateway to the country, especially for imports coming from China. Over the weekend, a record 73 ships were waiting for a berth - nearly twice as many as at the same time in August. Many cargo ships have been diverted to other ports because of the unprecedented backlog. However, the situation has only gotten worse since most nearby ports don't have enough capacity to deal with the volume of trade, which is preventing thousands of containers from being unloaded.

According to a recent Sea-Intelligence research, several industries across the country are actually dangerously low on inventory. And one of the main determinants exacerbating supply chain woes is the very real shortage of truck drivers, who collect goods from those warehouses to deliver to the stores and the consumers. In essence, shipping companies are aware ports cannot handle the immense cargo volume sent every day. But they have been inciting shippers to order far more than they need to restock their inventories. That, in turn, elevates the demand for cargo shipping, and of course, pushes the profit margins of those shipping companies to sky-highs as shipping costs go through the roof.

However, skyrocketing shipping and freight prices are preventing small-and-medium-sized businesses to actually restock their shelves and offer their products. As the holiday season approaches, the US Toy Association, which represents 950 toy firms with a US presence, has warned about looming shortages, given that their products have been sent to the end of the shipping priority list. While large companies have decades-long relationships with shipping companies, smaller businesses cannot afford to pay a premium for in-time deliveries. If you ever tried to cook a complex dish and realized in the middle of the process that an essential ingredient was missing then you can understand what manufacturers are wrestling with for the past year and a half. Many are being forced to shut down operations as they wait for key parts to arrive.

Sadly, this crisis is far from over. Industry specialists are warning that prices of several supplies will rise exponentially because of port logjams, and the situation is getting so dire that it is expected to last until 2023.According to Jackson Meyer, the chief executive of freight forwarding firm Verus Global, as retailers run to stock up on best-selling items, supply snags, transportation chaos, and inflated prices are about to take this crisis to a whole new level.

To make things even worse, the U.S. overall retail supply level has remained at record lows for four months in a row. And now that stores shelves are being wiped out at record speed, those who are planning to buy certain Christmas presents have probably already missed their chance to get them under the tree. According to Mr. Meyer, "it's probably too late by now, particularly for items such as furniture, beds, TVs, or anything that has to be imported." At this point, we can only hope that a repeat of last year's panic-buying frenzy doesn't occur during the holiday season. But it is safe to say that much more chaos will arise as shortages intensify."

"Our Economy is a House of Cards That is About to Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 9/22/21:
"Our Economy is a House of Cards That is About to Collapse"
"You can only kick the can down the road for so long. Our Economy is a precarious House of Cards. It is about to be flattened and we are going to be left to pay for everything. Today I'm at Rock Pile Beach in Laguna Beach, CA."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/22/21: "Fed. Taper? HOW ABOUT NO... It's Just A "Coincidence" That Fed. Officials Are Insider Trading"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/22/21:
"Fed. Taper? HOW ABOUT NO... It's Just A 
"Coincidence" That Fed. Officials Are Insider Trading"

The Daily "Near You?"

Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"America’s Evergrande Economy"

"America’s Evergrande Economy"
By Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Evergrande it ain’t. What we are wondering today is what’s ahead for the U.S. economy – inflation or deflation? Maybe the Evergrande story will give us a clue. To fully understand the Evergrande story, you almost have to understand the whole story…of how, in 1971, the U.S. switched to a “flexible” dollar that it could print at will…and how the switch created a boom in China… and a bust in U.S. manufacturing (it’s easier to “print” money than to make refrigerators). In an honest economy, pre-1971, the U.S. had to repatriate its dollars by offering equivalent quantities of goods and services to the Chinese…or risk having to settle up in gold.

Concrete River: But with the new system… it could just print up more dollars… which the Chinese, bless their hearts, used to buy U.S. bonds…All this money created a boom in China… which quickly got out its cement trucks. The concrete flowed like the Yangtze. We saw the construction boom on our trip to China in 2014 – a breathtaking display of human industry and material progress. The highways were new. The buildings were new. The trains… docks… factories – all new. You could scarcely find a house more than 18 months old.

Never in the history of the world had so many people gone from being so poor to so rich in so short a time. Per capita income rose from $318 in 1990 to $10,500 in 2020. And never in history had so much money been borrowed to make it happen. From $1.7 trillion of total debt in 2000, China now owes nearly $50 trillion. Its debt-to-GDP ratio now stands at 335%.

More Evergrandes: China’s economy grew by leaps and bounds. People were working harder than ever… and earning more and more money. Surely, they would want to buy places to rest their weary heads?

Property developer Evergrande saw the demand coming, and borrowed heavily to meet it. In this regard, it was particularly resourceful. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine reports: "Evergrande owes money to Chinese banks. It owes money to foreign hedge funds, and foreign investors own its stock. It owes money to suppliers, and to Chinese retail investors in those wealth management products. And it owes apartments to buyers. And the retail investors who bought Evergrande wealth management products were often also Evergrande homeowners, because the products were sold at Evergrande buildings".

Yes, the company advertised its own debt to its employees and customers, as suitable for “conservative investors seeking steady returns” – promising 11% per year. And now, it owes some $300 billion… with no way to pay it. The Financial Times reports on the fallout: "China’s property slowdown sends chill through the economy." And so we wonder: What other Evergrandes are waiting to be discovered? What other excesses are waiting to be reckoned with?

Senseless Debt: The whole debt-drenched U.S. economy, perhaps? U.S. government debt has gone from under $1 trillion in 1980 to over $28 trillion today, a 28 times increase. That would have been fine if the economy had kept up. But it didn’t. U.S. GDP in 1980 was $2.8 trillion. Now, it is almost $23 trillion, an eight times increase.

As Evergrande has discovered, debt only makes sense when the rate of return on the investment is greater than the cost of the debt. That’s hard enough to do for a private company, with a keen sense of business… and owners with skin in the game. For the U.S. government, it’s been impossible. As we showed earlier this month, all of its major investments over the last 50 years have been losers.

Nowhere to Fall: But there’s a big difference between the debt bubble in the U.S. and the debt bubble in China. Evergrande built houses. And malls. And commercial buildings. And now that the supply for these things is greater than the demand, prices will fall.

What did America produce? What prices will fall in the U.S.? Factories? Nope. U.S. manufacturing has been in a decline the entire 40-year period. Housing? Nope again. In the 1950s, America built 21 million new houses. But in the decade from 2010 to 2019, fewer than 6 million were built. Autos? Nah, the U.S. produced around 9 million vehicles last year… almost no increase from the figure 10 years ago.

Meme Wealth: What has the U.S. produced in abundance? Speculative investments! Techs. Cryptos. Meme stocks. Stonks. NFTs . High-yield bonds with negative real yields. During that same 40-year period, in which real output rose eight times, the Dow rose 33 times. The Nasdaq line was so close to the zero line in 1980, you couldn’t squeeze a greased penny between them. Now, it is nearly 15,000.

In 1980, household wealth (stocks, bonds, real estate) measured about 350% of GDP. Today, the ratio is over 600%. And, of course, in the Evergrande scheme of things, the excess was financed by debt. Total U.S. debt (including households, government and business debt) stood at 1.65 times GDP in 1980. Now, it is 3.78 times as great. There, then, is the excess. And there is the bubble that is about to burst. Tomorrow, we will look at what happens next."
Related:

"Madness..."

“When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; 
since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the
 madness on which the whole world happens to agree.”
- George Bernard Shaw

Greg Hunter, "Without Trust Markets Will Tank – John Rubino"

"Without Trust Markets Will Tank – John Rubino"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"It looks like we are on track for yet another global financial meltdown. This time it is coming out of China in the form of a failed property development company called Evergrande. It’s five times bigger than Lehman Brothers, whose failure cratered the global economy in 2008. Will central banks, including the Fed, just let it all fail or will they print massive amounts of money trying to stop the fall? If history is a guide, we should get ready for the most money creation ever. In May, financial writer John Rubino said, “This is beyond the ability of any individual to fix. We can’t save the system.” We sure can print a lot of money to try though.

Massive global money printing is what is coming, and it will come with huge consequences for all fiat currencies. Rubino explains, “Stocks are tanking, cryptos are tanking, currencies of the world are getting volatile, politics are volatile and gold is going up while all this is happening, which it is supposed to do. Gold is supposed to be the safe haven where you hide out when nothing else seems trustworthy. That hasn’t been the case in prior bear markets. When stocks tanked, they pulled down gold and silver. It’s a good sign when markets start to behave rationally again. When high risk assets don’t seem worth it anymore, capital flows into real assets that hold their value no matter what the government is doing to the currency. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, and that is the way it is working. 

Trust is probably the key word in this whole discussion. Fiat only exists because we trust the people who are managing them to maintain their value. You take the trust away and there is nothing there. A fiat currency is not a real thing. It doesn’t actually exist other than little pieces of paper that have no intrinsic value or computer code, which also has no intrinsic value. So, you take away the trust that we had in the Fed, Treasury, Congress and the President to do the right thing, and be honest, when it comes to the financial markets, you take that away and there really isn’t anything there. Nobody would want to hold a currency managed by people they can’t trust. Pay attention to that because the less we trust the guys in charge, the less we trust the currency. The less we trust the currency, the less we trust the financial markets and the less valuable these financial assets are. So, it all ties together, and it all depends on that one word—Trust.”

What’s Rubino’s biggest fear? Rubino warns, “My biggest fear is that we screw up our finances, we screw up geopolitics, and we get into a big war because we are close to that now. The U.S., Russia and China are bumping up against each other, and we are like scorpions in a bottle on this little planet with all these high tech weapons. My biggest fear is we take it well beyond the world of finance to no holds barred military action. There’s no way to predict anything when you start doing something like that. The worst case scenario is too horrible to even think about.”

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with John Rubio, 
founder of the popular website DollarCollapse.com.

"Conquered by a Fake Pandemic, We Can Kiss America Good-bye"

"Conquered by a Fake Pandemic,
 We Can Kiss America Good-bye"
by Paul Craig Roberts

"How obvious does it have to be before even insouciant Americans realize that there is something seriously wrong about the Covid vaccination program? One would think we are already past that point even for the mentally-challenged. Consider the many things we now know that make it clear that the vaccination program is a horrendous mistake.

We know that the vaccine does not protect. Dr. Fauci himself, a leading proponent of the vaccination program and Chief Shill for Big Pharma, admits this. This is why he says the double-vaccinated should wear masks and should have booster shots. If the vaccine protects a person from Covid, why do vaccinated people need to wear masks and have more vaccine shots? In Israel the Health Minister is already advocating a second booster shot which makes four jabs of the Pfizer “vaccine,” and the alleged “pandemic” is 3 months short of being 2 years old. Pfizer itself now admits that its vaccine looses its effectiveness over time. According to Fauci it is only good for 8 months, and you can expect to see that period grow smaller.

From the under-reported databases in the US, UK, and EU of adverse vaccine reactions to the mRNA “vaccines,” we know that there have been tens of thousands of deaths and millions of injuries associated with the vaccine. The databases are official data, and medical personnel are fully aware that hospitals and doctors seldom, if ever, report adverse reactions to the Covid Vaccine, instead attributing the deaths and illnesses from the “vaccine” to Covid itself. It is only some individuals who report the adverse reactions. This is why experts have concluded that only between 1% and 10% of adverse vaccine reactions are reported. For some age groups—especially children and the young— the mRNA “vaccine” has proven to be more dangerous than Covid.

We also know that distinguished scientists and medical practitioners have concluded that the mRNA “vaccine” interacts with the Covid virus in a way that enables it to escape the immune response. The consequence is new variants.

We also know from the official statistics of highly vaccinated places, such as Israel (84%), Iceland (95)%, and Gibraltar (99%), that the mRNA “vaccine” makes the vaccinated more likely to catch Covid and become seriously ill than the unvaccinated. The hospitals in these places are full of vaccinated patients. Yet we continue to hear the propaganda broadcast of the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” And evidence is mounting that the vaccinated can infect the unvaccinated.

On this website I have reported more than once these conclusions and provided links to the evidence. This powerful evidence from top-ranking scientists is kept out of the presstitute media. The CDC, NIH, FDA, AMA, WHO, hospital administrators and executives of large health care organizations, university and public school administrators, Democrat politicians, and employers all pretend not to know about the evidence that indicts the vaccination program and would easily convict the program of intentional murder if the case could be brought to court.

Instead hospitals are losing large chunks of their medical staffs who resign or are fired for refusing the vaccine. These are the nurses who have seen what the vaccine does to patients. Being up-close-informed, they prefer unemployment to vaccination. That should tell the hospital administrators and the dumbshit public something, but it doesn’t. The media shoos away the protesting nurses as people who won’t do their duty to protect their patients and the public by getting vaccinated. Liberals especially get on their high horse about “refractory nurses” who refuse to protect their patients.

The scientists and medical practitioners who are raising alarms are so well-known that it is impossible that the CDC, FDA, NIH, AMA, and hospital and university administrators do not know of them. Not content to ignore the evidence, they intentionally lie to us. They lie that children are so in danger of Covid that they need to be forcefully vaccinated. They lie that unvaccinated people and people who have recovered from Covid and have natural immunity are dangerous to everyone else and must be excluded from school, work, restaurants, sports events, concerts, public transportation, travel to other countries, all to be enforced by Covid Passports. The passport itself is a lunatic idea considering the 8 months protection Dr. Fauci assigns to the “vaccine.” A passport that has to be renewed every 8 months is a bureaucratic nightmare.

They lie that children are so in danger that they must wear masks in school even though it is a known fact that the masks they wear are totally ineffectual in preventing transmission of the virus. The only mask that is effectual is the N95, and it is impossible for anyone, much less a school child, to wear a N95 mask all day. In some parts of the US laws have been passed that subject school teachers and administrators to prison sentences for not enforcing the mask mandate for school children. These draconian laws might also apply to parents who allow a child to go to school without a mask. 

In other words, total counterfactual insanity is the American Covid Policy. No one can respect public institutions that are so totally irresponsible that they ignore facts and base health policies on lies. In the United States “responsible public health agency” is an oxymoron.

From day one the Covid “pandemic” was totally orchestrated. China, faced with an outbreak of an unknown virus of unknown mortality and no known cure, resorted to draconian measures and locked down entire cities and areas. Scare stories proliferated and the presstitutes in the US ratcheted up the fear index. Dire predictions were made based on very few cases outside China. “Public health agencies” went to work to make the predictions come true. They achieved this with the PCR test which they intentionally ran at such high cycles that it produced 97% false positives. This is how the scary number of cases was orchestrated that struck fear into the population.

We were all going to die. This fear enabled the highly destructive lockdowns and mask requirements that accustomed people to the view that civil liberty was expendable in a time of “health crisis.” Most of the people who did die were people with co-morbidities. Some of them died from their co-morbidities; others died because they were not treated.

Even today 19 months later, hospitals still withhold effective treatment from Covid patients. There have been effective treatments available the entire time, but to acknowledge the fact would have foreclosed the mRNA “vaccine.” Normally it takes many years to get a vaccine approved. It has to go through many tests and steps. The mRNA “vaccines” were rushed into use under the provision for emergency use authorization. That authorization requires that there are no known cures.

Thus CDC, NIH, FDA, and WHO, allied as they are with Big Pharma, refused to acknowledge two safe and long-used drugs that are so safe that they are available for over-the-counter purchase in most countries - HCQ and Ivermectin - which are both Covid cures and Covid prevention. The Tokyo Medical Association has authorized all Japanese doctors to use Ivermectin as a Covid cure. In India Ivermectin was used in most provinces to stop Covid in its tracks. In African countries impacted by malaria HCQ is taken weekly as a preventative, and Covid cases are few. In African countries where River Blindness is a problem, Ivermectin is taken weekly or bi-weekly, and there are few Covid cases. This information has been withheld from the American and Western publics by the presstitue media. Both cures have been demonized by the American medical establishment and the scum presstitutes. Even today hospitals refuse to treat dying patients with these sure-fire cures. Moreover, either taken weekly would provide a hundred times more protection from Covid than the dangerous and ineffective mRNA “vaccines” and cost a small fraction of the amount spent on the Pfizer and other “vaccines.”

Clearly without any doubt one agenda served by the orchestrated “pandemic” and controlled narrative is the profits of Big Pharma, especially Pfizer.

Clearly without any doubt another agenda served by the orchestrated “pandemic” is authoritarian control over populations in democratic countries. Today Western peoples have lost the right to hold government accountable and instead are held accountable by government for not being vaccinated and wearing masks. The civil liberties achieved over centuries of struggle have been lost to an orchestrated pandemic.

The profit agenda and the control agenda are completely obvious. The question before us is: Is there a darker agenda? Are the conspiracy theories real? When you consider the intentional orchestration of a fearful pandemic, the intentional withholding of cures, the intentional vaccination with a substance that does not protect but does produce serious side effects and release new variants, it is reasonable to suspect that something is afoot beyond profit and control.

Bill Gates whose extraordinary fortune allows him entry anywhere has been going on for years about population control. It is highly suspected by top-ranked scientists that the spike protein in the mRNA “vaccine” accumulates in the ovaries and results in infertility. We now have several thousand cases of pregnant women losing babies to the “vaccine.”

We have the Nazi Klaus Schwab, creator and director of the World Economic Forum and author of The Great Reset who has been organizing, cultivating, and indoctrinating Western elites for decades that the New World Order should consist of elite rule, not democracy and constitutions that protect individuals. I was once invited to a Davos meeting, but they saw that they could not recruit me, and I have never been invited back.

Think how easily civil liberty, one of mankind’s greatest achievements, can be erased by creating a prestigious forum to which only the elite and their obedient intellectual servants are invited where they are told that they are the natural rulers and all they need in order to take power is a world crisis, or at least a Western crisis.

As a person who for my readers’ sake watches all I can closely, I can say that the glory of the Western world, the idea that merit, not birth, or any other accidental quality such as skin color or gender, is the basis of success is a dead idea. Today in the US, and as far as I can see throughout the Western world, merit is considered a white racist concept that justifies “white supremacy.” In the US, and I suspect everywhere in the Western world, merit systems have and are being replaced by other criteria for success, such as non-white skin color, non-straight sexual preference, new invented genders.

The United States of America now has a presidency that was stolen. It has an administration chosen on the basis of anti-white racial, anti-heterosexual sexual, and anti-male/female gender preferences. The Biden Regime is a government that in my grandparents day would have caused Americans to march on Washington, burn the city down, and kill everyone in it.

In America today the only few leaders are at the state level, and the illegitimate Biden regime has them in its sights. Republican Governor DeSantis of Florida was the first to rebel at the hospitals’ murder of Covid patients. DeSantis established clinics all over Florida to give patients monoclonal antibodies. DeSantis’ sensible approach spread to Texas and Alabama.

The Republican governors’ reward for saving lives was to have their supply of monoclonal antibodies cut 50% by the illegitimate, criminal, murderous Biden Regime. The Democrat regime cut the allocation of the cure to Republican governors. The utterly corrupt Biden regime justified the cut to Florida on Florida’s lack of a vaccination mandate. The White House claims that Florida is using too much of “limited supplies” of monoclonal antibodies because it doesn’t have a vaccine mandate. 

Why is the cure limited but not the ineffectual and dangerous “vaccine?” Governor DeSantis has appealed to GlaxoSmithKline to sell the state the Covid cure so that Florida can prevent the dangerous vaccine from destroying the Florida population and terminating civil liberty in Florida, which seems to be the intent of the corrupt and illegitimate Biden regime. 

The monoclonal antibodies were used to treat President Trump and cannot be prohibited by hospital protocols. DeSantis can give the OK to Ivermectin and HCQ but apparently has yet to find a way to impose this successful, safe treatment on hospitals which operate according to Big Pharma’s protocol which is backed up by CDC, NIH, and FDA.

DeSantis is also under attack for not permitting in Florida the mask mandates that are mandatory in Democrat states that have gone totally totalitarian. For now a Federal Court has ruled in DeSantis’ favor. But the Democrats who brought the case against Florida’s ban against mask mandates are hoping Biden will overrule Florida’s laws with a Federal edict or contrived court case. In other words, the Biden regime is determined and will use every power it can find or invent in order to prevent governors from protecting their state populations from Covid, from the dangerous mRNA vaccine, and from the tyranny of authoritarianism.

How much more proof do you need to comprehend that the Biden regime intends to destroy our health and our freedom? Are Americans capable of understanding the situation they are in? At least in Australia, Europe, and England they are in the streets protesting. In America the dumbsh*t sheeple are lining up for the Death Shot."
Related, must read!


Musical Interlude: Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

"How It Really Is"

 

Must Watch! “Banks Could Seize Your Money Today; Major Entities Holding Evergrande Debt; FED Must Keep Buying”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/21/21:
“Banks Could Seize Your Money Today; Major Entities 
Holding Evergrande Debt; FED Must Keep Buying”

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

"Chaos And Panic At Chinese Stocks As Markets Finally Freak Out About Evergrande Default Contagion"

Full screen recommended.
"Chaos And Panic At Chinese Stocks As Markets 
Finally Freak Out About Evergrande Default Contagion"
by Epic Economist

"It has begun: The greatest financial meltdown in history is now underway. The collapse of one of China's biggest property developers, Evergrande, has triggered a stock market crash in Hong Kong and it is still threatening to spark a major default crisis that can derail the Chinese economy and spill over global markets, creating a cascade of systemic failures that will result in nothing less than a financial disaster of epic proportions. Chinese traders are getting out of the market while they still can. A major sell-off has started as investors grew increasingly more worried that Evergrande would default its gigantic loan debt. Just yesterday, the Hong Kong stock market crashed by another 13 percent and it is now on track to close at its lowest market cap ever, given that a bankruptcy of this proportion can wipe out hundreds of billions in equity.

Even worse, it can spark a default contagion that would put millions of Chinese companies at risk of bankruptcy just as well. And as more and more traders panic about the rapidly spreading contagion, other sectors that were normally immune to China's property woes are also facing significant drops. Financial analysts are alarmed that its default crisis will soon spread to the rest of the world. Last week, Chinese officials announced that major lenders should not expect repayment. That was already a sign that the company would start its default process. And today's silence has given further proof.

In a recent note, Goldman estimated that the potential impact of the residential and commercial real estate collapse in China's growth could be devastating not only for China but for the entire world. It could result in the sharpest GDP drop in decades. Goldman warned that if a default "occurred without clear ring-fencing of the spillovers to other parts of the economy", then the outcome would be much more threatening, with the Chinese GDP collapsing as much as 4.1 percent while housing activity plunges and financial conditions tighten.

Right now, the worsening of the crisis is depending on the acceleration of the current selloff while investors expect the government to unleash a trillion-dollar liquidity injection to ease the downfall. Moreover, while investors get more and more nervous about the financial strains of the Chinese real estate market, they also set off a crash on the cryptocurrency market, with bitcoin tumbling by more than 7 percent on Monday. As a huge wave of fear over a weaker Chinese economic growth sweeps through global markets, with investors just realizing how big are the consequences for its domestic peers and international commodity prices, contagion has begun to move beyond stocks and sent US equity futures below 4380.

Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 614 points, or 1.8%, recording its worst day of trading since July. Furthermore, Caterpillar and Goldman Sachs were the benchmark's biggest losers of the day, as investors closely watched the outlook for the Federal Reserve to start tapering on its bond purchasing program. At its lowest point of the day, the Dow fell 972 points. The Nasdaq also faced a decline and closed down 2.2%. Amongst the top three biggest losers were the Chinese companies Pinduoduo, Baidu, and JD.com. The S&P 500 plunged by 1.7%. It was one of the worst days of trading since May.

The entire financial system is being shaken to the core because what is happening in China right now will ultimately have profound repercussions across all of the world's major economies, including America. Given that global economic growth is directly linked with China's economic strength, and the country was the only major economy to expand last year, the prospect for a global economic rebound from last year's health-crisis-induced recession has been remarkably shrunk. According to the International Monetary Fund, China alone would contribute with over a fifth of the increase in the world's gross domestic product in the five years to 2026.

This means that we're effectively on the verge of the most devastating financial crisis in world history. The one experts have been warning about for months. All events are converging to what may be the simultaneous collapse of the Chinese and the U.S. economy. Needless to say, this will not end well. We're about to witness the biggest collective wealth loss ever recorded. As the Chinese stock market crash has just begun, it's only a matter of time before the monstrous U.S. stock market bubble finally bursts. Beware the risks. The point of no return is just at the corner."

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: We're Losing Our Patience"

Full screen recommended.
STRONG Language Alert!
Gerald Celente,
"Trends Journal: We're Losing Our Patience"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

Musical Interlude: Alan Parsons Project, "Eye In The Sky"

Full screen recommended.
Alan Parsons Project, "Eye In The Sky"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Is this giant orange ball about to roll down that tree-lined hill? No, because the giant orange ball is actually the Sun. Our Solar System's central star was captured rising beyond a hill on Earth twelve days ago complete with a delightfully detailed foreground. The Sun's disk showed five sunspots, quite a lot considering that during the solar minimum in solar activity of the past few years, most days showed no spots. A close look at the hill - Sierra del Cid in Perter, Spain - reveals not only silhouetted pine trees, but silhouetted people - by coincidence three brothers of the photographer. 
Click image for larger size.
The trees and brothers were about 3.5-kilometers away during the morning of the well-planned, single-exposure image. A dark filter muted the usually brilliant Sun and brought up great detail on the lower sunspots. Within a few minutes, the Sun rose far above the hill, while within a week, the sunspots rotated around the Sun, out of view. The captured scene, however, is now frozen in time for all to enjoy."

"And Sometimes..."