"The Old 'Rug Pull' Trick"

"The Old 'Rug Pull' Trick"

by Bill Bonner

"There is growing evidence that this project has rugged.

 Please do your own due diligence and exercise extreme caution."

– CoinMarketCap website, referring to Squid Coin

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – First, just for our own amusement, let’s look at more of the nuttiness caused by the Federal Reserve’s fake money and fake interest rates. Then, we’ll take up the question posed yesterday: Will the Fed bring an end to the madness? It’s this question that is most important to investors. If the answer is “yes,” then it’s time to go into the safe room, with a stock of food, water, and ammunition. If the answer is “no”… then… well… you can hold out a while longer.

Rug Pull: Last week, another new crypto appeared on the metaverse radar. This was not particularly interesting, in itself; there were more than 13,000 of them already. But this one had a very catchy name – the Squid Coin, which sounded for all the world as though it was related to the Netflix hit, Squid Game. It also suggested some kind of game playing, which sounded as though it might be fun… maybe even profitable. Plus, it advertised a glowing recommendation from Elon Musk, who said – according to the Squid Coin website, at least – that he thought this one was going to the moooon.

One other feature is worth mentioning: Squid Coin welcomed buying with open arms… but it treated selling like a visit from a parole officer. Whoever heard of a currency that you couldn’t freely spend or trade? The whole thing was puzzling… and preposterous. Nevertheless, propelled upwards by these booster rockets, Squid Coin quickly launched into space. It rose from pennies to $2,860 per coin in a matter of days… and made the early adopters millions richer. For a moment. On paper.

Vanishing Wealth: None of this would have been very surprising. The crypto world is lousy with goofy coins… and millionaires. But as we described yesterday, when the money goes… everything goes, including all sense of what anything is really worth. And sometimes, they’re not worth anything at all, which is just what the Squid Coin “investors” found out at the start of this week. According to the press reports, the coin’s anonymous creators had done the old “rug pull” scam on them.

One investor lost his entire life savings in the Squid Coin scam. And some investors are blaming the media for fueling the coin’s meteoric rise. But the Squid Coin had no relationship to the popular Squid Game TV show. It had, therefore, no right to use the name and trade off the popularity of the series. Nor had Elon Musk ever heard of Squid Coin… until it appeared bearing his endorsement like a papal seal.

And then, as quickly as the coin and its creators rocketed up into the thin atmosphere of great wealth – they disappeared, apparently absconding with their ill-gotten gains. The coin then plummeted back to Earth. Pity the poor “investors” who expected to buy new houses in Santa Monica with their Squid Coin winnings.

Wacky World: They should have taken a flier on DWAC, instead. Digital World Acquisition Corp. is a SPAC… a special-purpose acquisition company. In this case, its special purpose was buying Donald Trump’s new company – Trump Media & Technology Group. And when word of the purchase got out, DWAC shot up bigly. Shares rose from $10 to $175.

As a general rule (in our rulebook, at least), all SPAC deals are bad deals. But who knows? There was no trace of it in the documents made available to the public, but DWAC might even eventually come up with a way to make money. And in this wacky world, you don’t need to make money to get money. What money do the cryptos make? What money do the NFTs make? What money has Elon Musk made? What money did Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell make? Between the two of them, they gained $105 million in new wealth since 2004. Where did it come from?

Invisible Debt: You either make it or you take it. And the Fed is helping people take it on a scale never before seen in America. In August 2019, the Fed had total assets (a rough measure of how much money it has “printed”) of $3.7 trillion. Now, it has $8.5 trillion. The difference, nearly $5 trillion, was added in just 25 months.

Not a penny of that money was earned… made… or saved. Instead, it is taken from the public… embezzled, in the form of future inflation. And today, think of all the fortunes that depend on it – all the dopey business models… all the SPACs… all the cryptos… all the debt refinancing… all the federales’ boondoggles.

During that same 25-month period, U.S. debt increased about $6 trillion, too. Putting 2 and 2 together, we see that almost every penny of deficit spending by the U.S. government was financed by the Fed’s money-printing. That is why there is so little opposition to today’s $3 trillion deficit – nobody thinks he has to pay for it.

A Great Scam: What a marvelous flim-flam. The gist of the “rug pull” scam is making people think they have something they don’t really have… wealth that doesn’t exist, for example. It’s the game of choice for today’s crypto-grifters… and for the Fed, too. They “print” money – crypto or paper – and pass it out as though it were the real thing. And then the public gets the rug pulled out from under them."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"This Can’t Be Contained"

The Money GPS, "This Can’t Be Contained"

- http://themoneygps.com

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Related:

"China Has Already Crashed, You Just Don't Know It Yet

"I Am An American!"

 

Loza Alexander, "Let's Go Brandon"

"I Know Why You Did It..."

“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. ”

- Alan Moore, "V for Vendetta"

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 11/5/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/5/21:

"Collapse: The Economy Continues To Crater Faster, 

Inflation Out Of Control"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/5/21:

"Epic! This Market Is About To Do Something Extraordinary!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/5/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/5/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Some big off year political elections were held this week, and the biggest newsmaker was the GOP win in Virginia. Remember, Virginia was called for Biden right after the polls closed on Election Night 2020 even though Trump was ahead. The problem was never investigated, but through the magic of what appears to be election fraud, Biden won the state in the wee hours of the morning the next day when votes magically appeared. All that to say, you know the Dems cheated, and they have cheated again in 2021. It’s what they have to do because their policies are hated by everyone including Democrats. It looks like the cheating was overwhelmed by Dem voters switching sides, and that gave the Governor’s office and the state legislature to Glenn Youngkin and the GOP. The big problem for the Dems now is the 2020 election fraud can and will be investigated—no doubt.

Joe Biden and crew are offering up another vax coercion for 84 million workers. OSHA is going to require total submission to unscientific policies and an experimental CV19 vax. If not, there will be endless testing, job losses and fines. There is no appreciation for science or the 100 million people who have natural immunity because they were infected with CV19 and got well. This sounds like a desperate move in pushing this unscientific and coercive policy. Maybe it’s because the narrative continues to unravel in an embarrassing and criminal way for the Biden Administration. Oh, by the way, Press Secretary Jen Psaki just tested positive for Covid even though she was “fully vaxed.”

The Federal Reserve has done a great job enriching the 1%. For the rest of “We the People,” inflation is ravaging families, and it’s just getting started. Great job, Chairman Powell. Responsibilities should be taken away from the feckless Fed. Just the opposite may happen because there is a professor of law, Saule Omarova, nominated for comptroller of the currency. Omarova wants the Fed to have the power over all of us, including turning on and off our bank accounts. Heaven help us if she gets past the Senate confirmation."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these

stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/05/21.

- https://rumble.com/

"We Can All Be Uber Drivers As Economy Implodes; Working To Survive; People In The Matrix"

Jeremiah Babe PM 11/4/21:

"We Can All Be Uber Drivers As Economy Implodes;

 Working To Survive; People In The Matrix"

"Something Really Strange Is Happening At Hospitals All Over America"

Full screen recommended.

"Something Really Strange Is Happening 

At Hospitals All Over America"

by Epic Economist

"Something really odd is happening at hospitals all over the country, but no one seems to be talking about it. In one of the strangest years we've had in modern times, there's an alarming mystery surrounding the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. Right now, emergency rooms are absolutely crowded, and with each passing day, they continue to overflow with severely ill patients, but no one can actually explain why this is suddenly happening.

Even though the number of new virus cases in the United States is now less than half of what it was just a couple of months ago, hospitals are still completely packed. As opposed to what many people were anticipating, a decline in the number of confirmed virus cases isn't easing the healthcare crisis we've been facing over the past 18 months.

In every corner of the country, ERs are full. In many cases, seriously ill patients are having to be cared for in the hallways because emergency rooms are unavailable due to the staggering number of patients in critical conditions. We're seeing in our hospitals the type of scene we would typically see in third-world countries in times of crisis. The level of chaos going on right now is absolutely shocking. But the weirdest thing about this is that nobody knows why so many people a suddenly falling sick.

In an article entitled “ERs Are Swamped With Seriously Ill Patients, Although Many Don’t Have [The Virus]," health care workers of the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, described the crisis they are facing every day. Their staff members are struggling to care for patients showing up much sicker than they’ve ever seen.

The ER’s nursing director, Tiffani Dusang, is experiencing severe anxiety for having to watch patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the walls of the hospital hallways. “It’s hard to watch,” she says. All of the ER’s 72 rooms are already filled. If the rate of confirmed virus cases was starting to move upwards again, it would make sense for emergency rooms to be so packed. But that's not the case.

The situation is getting so complicated that even people who arrive by ambulance are not guaranteed a room. The head nurse has to run triage and screen those who absolutely need a bed and those who can wait or get treatment on the hospital's hallways. Months of treatment delays have aggravated chronic conditions and exacerbated symptoms. According to the hospital's doctors and nurses, "the severity of illness ranges widely and includes abdominal pain, respiratory problems, blood clots, heart conditions, among other diseases".

Heart conditions are, in fact, one of the most commonly mentioned health diseases in the past few weeks. Several cases involving young healthy people have made the headlines recently. For instance, a report published a couple of days ago told the story of a healthy high school soccer manager, who greatly enjoyed his team’s championship victory Saturday, and later that evening, he faced a sudden and fatal cardiac arrest.

In a nearby city in the same state, a healthy 12-year-old boy's life was taken too soon because of an issue with his coronary artery. He suffered from a congestive heart failure involving his coronary artery, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. We commonly see heart problems affecting adults and elderly people with other underçying diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels. The fact that this is happening to healthy young people is not only odd but extremely worrying.

Even athletes with perfect health records are suffering from heart attacks these days. Over the weekend, Barcelona striker Sergio Aguero suddenly collapsed on the pitch during a match against Alaves. The Argentinian was examined by medical staff at the stadium and then he was taken to a nearby hospital to undergo further examination. Aguero has been diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia, a condition in which the heart's beats don't work properly, causing the heart to beat too fast, too slow, or irregularly.

Unfortunately, cases of young, healthy people suffering from heart complications are becoming all too common. Icelandic midfielder Emil Pálsson suffered from tachycardia during a match in Norway’s second division. "The 28-year-old Sogndal player suffered the attack as the game against Stjordals-Blink entered the 12th minute," his club said in a statement. So many similar cases are being reported on a daily basis. And yet no one knows the cause behind such tragic incidents. Why are so many young people suddenly having such serious heart problems? Is there something the media isn't telling us? Does anyone out there know what is truly going on? There's something really odd going on, and once again, they are not telling us the whole truth."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

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Yes, there's an explanation, and here it is:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

"CV19 Injections Will Cause Massive Deaths"

"It All Makes Sense Once You Realize They Want to Kill Us"

Musical Interlude: Mecano, "Hijo de la Luna"

Mecano, "Hijo de la Luna"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. 

Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."

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

Chet Raymo, “Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”

“Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”

by Chet Raymo

“If there is one word that should not be uttered, it is the name of – no, I will not say it. Any name diminishes. In the face of whatever it is that is most mysterious, most holy, we are properly silent. It is appropriate, I think, to praise the creation, to make a joyful noise of thanksgiving for the sensate world. But praising the Creator is another thing altogether. When we make a big racket on His behalf we are more than likely addressing an idol in our own image. What was it that Pico Iyer said? “Silence is the tribute that we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred place, just as we slip off shoes.” The God of the mystics whispers sweet nothings, as lovers do.

In a diary entry for “M.”, near the end of his too-short life, Thomas Merton wrote: “I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough.” The natural world was for Merton the primary revelation. He listened. He felt a presence in his heart, an awareness of the ineffable Mystery that permeates creation. It was this that drew him to the mystical tradition of Christianity, especially to the Celtic tradition of creation spirituality. It was this that attracted him to Zen.

There come now and then, perhaps more frequently in late life than previously, those moments of being (as Virginia Woolf called them) when creation grabs us by the shoulders and gives us such a shake that it rattles our teeth, when love for the world simply knocks us flat. At those moments everything we have learned about the world – the invaluable and reliable knowledge of science- seems a pale intimation of what is. In Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves”, the elderly Bernard says: “How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground! Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”

In moments of soul-stirring epiphany, it is reassuring to feel beneath our feet a floor of reliable knowledge, the safe and sure edifice of empirical learning so painstakingly constructed by the likes of Aristarchus, Galileo, Darwin and Schrodinger. But at the same time we are humbled by our ignorance, and more ready than ever to say “I don’t know,” to enter at last the great silence. Erwin Chargaff, who contributed mightily to our understanding of DNA, wrote: “It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly. If the scientist has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.”

The whole thrust of the mystical tradition, the whole thrust of science, is toward the great silence- an awareness of our ignorance and a willingness to say “I don’t know.” A lifetime of learning brings one at last to the face of mystery. We live in a universe of more than 2 trillion galaxies. Perhaps the number of galaxies is infinite. And the universe is silent. Achingly, terrifyingly silent. Or, rather, the universe speaks a little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, “From the Shore”

“From the Shore"

“A lone gray bird,

Dim-dipping, far-flying,

Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults

Of night and the sea

And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,

Out into the gloom it swings and batters,

Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,

Out into the pit of a great black world,

Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,

Love of mist and rapture of flight,

Glories of chance and hazards of death

On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,

Beyond the long borders where foam and drift

Of the sundering waves are lost and gone

On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.”

- Carl Sandburg

"What Foolish Forgetfulness..."

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”

- Denis Diderot

“Three Hard Truths About American Collapse”

“Three Hard Truths About American Collapse”

by Umair Haque

“I’m going to keep this short and bittersweet. America’s probably not going to recover in our lifetimes, if ever. Let me start with some alarming and necessary factoids. America’s a country whose three main indicators are all blinking nine-alarm red  –  they’re what “collapse” really means. Life expectancy’s falling. Real incomes are shrinking. And 80% of people live paycheck to paycheck. By all means  –  elect anyone you want to. An electoral change might mitigate those, but it’s not going to magically alter the downwards trajectory. The American future is a grim choice between a return to yesterday’s slow collapse and the continuation of today’s light-speed implosion  –  probably not anything remotely like Europe or Canada’s gentle, hopeful upwards trend in quality of life.

That’s because these megatrends of collapse are the culmination of decades of self-destructive choices, trickle-down economics, neoliberalism, market fundamentalism, a total lack of investment in people, a culture of cruelty, a modern day caste society, Walmart capitalism, all of which added up to Weimar republic style ruin  –  letting middle classes implode, leaving the poor to die in the streets, because a predatory elite was allowed to capture more than 100% of society’s gains, and worse still, Americans were told to believe, by wise men, that all that was noble, righteous, and true: only the strong should survive. So these megatrends, because they took decades to gather momentum, and carry great inertia, are not going to be undone overnight, or even in a year, or even in a decade. Reversing them is the work of a generation, at the very least. Why?

America doesn’t have any functioning institutions whatsoever  –  and it’s not going to anytime soon. Government, media, corporations, judiciary, “jobs”, healthcare, transportation, finance, banking, pensions, retirement, education  -  go down the list. Do any of these function as they should  –  even remotely, in a healthy society? Its media is still fawningly profiling Nazis. Its opposition party is the most craven thing since Neville Longbottom. It has no agenda whatsoever. Its “best” educational institutions turn out little soulless predators aspiring to be hedge fund managers –  hardly statesmen, intellectuals, and decent human beings. And so on.

For these three megatrends of collapse to be reversed, America’s going to have to be remade whole  – first institutionally, and then via a new social contract. Think of Britain’s NHS or BBC, the German idea that unions sit on company boards, the French national pension system, Scandinavian social democracy as a whole. Institutions that make up a better social contract. But every single one of America’s institutions is broken. The question isn’t so much reforming dysfunctional ones as building functional ones. But the idea that America should have an NHS or BBC or debt-free education or a Public Retirement System is science fiction, and it always has been. Not only does neither party support it  –  though maybe the “democratic socialists” come mildly close  –  but nobody in any position of power in society seems aware that such a problem of broken institutions even exists. So who’s going to build them?

America doesn’t have the values to prosper without self-destructing  –  and it probably never did – because its prosperity has always been predatory. America doesn’t have working institutions because Americans, quite frankly, don’t care about each other. American prosperity has been based more on predation, people keeping others down, than it has on people lifting each other up. But that approach can only end in collapse. I know you’ll find that harsh.

And yet, the logic is very simple. America never developed what we might call the values of a genuinely civilized society. Empathy, compassion, truth, wisdom, benevolence, humanity. Fundamentally, that if everyone’s only out for themselves, then there is nothing that everyone in a society can enjoy as a basic human right. But if that’s the case, quite obviously, people will go without decent healthcare, education, finance, media, and so on. Worse, if everyone’s trying to compete for those things, punching everyone else down, by definition, those very things will always be absent in society  –  even when they can and should be available to all.

Public institutions provide social goods for all people to enjoy. America is the only  –  the only  –  rich society in the world that never built them. Why? Well, the premise of America until 1971 or so was segregation  –  and before that, slavery. But you can’t build public institutions that work for everyone if the point of your society is to discriminate, subjugate, and repress.

And yet, even after 1971, every single time the issue of working public institutions was raised, American whites, especially elites, flatly, absolutely refused them. They didn’t want anything that belonged to everyone in society, not healthcare, not education, not income, not retirement  –  their attitude was more or less, “As long as I get mine, why should I care about those dirty blacks, immigrants, Mexicans, gays, Jews, Muslims? They don’t deserve anything!” And that attitude still what prevails. It’s what kept America from building the working institutions of a functioning society, which might have provided good lives for everyone. But without those institutions, America was only getting rich by preying on itself  –  and that game had to run out sometime. That time is now, when 80% of Americans are broke. Bang! Prosperity based on predation leads to collapse.

Do you see the irony? Americans just don’t value one another as human beings, really –  and they never have. Only some people  –  whites value whites, elites value elites, and so on. Hence, Americans would rather keep the basics of life from one another, in order to preserve superiority and dominance over others, than grant them to everyone, and live better lives. They have always thought this way  –  and nothing has ever changed that underlying logic. But that logic is not only immoral  –  it’s also self-destructive. Because there comes a point when the price of dominance is self-destruction. If I’m denying you healthcare, so that I keep you down, and retain a higher social status, stratum and income, but it costs me and my kids and our very own healthcare, sanity, and life expectancy, too  –  then what’s the purpose of the game I’m playing, except spiteful ruin? And yet, that’s what America is, and what it always has been.

The irony of America, if you ask me, is that it never understood this most basic lesson of history. The problem with a Promised Land is that it tempts people to believe that its abundance must belong only to them, and to them alone. In that way, a Promised Land can never be a place for everyone. It will be a bitter, bruising war for conquest, possession, and domination, forever  –  instead of being something like a healthy, sane, caring society. And yet a war against itself is what America has always been  –  and what, if you ask me, it will go on being. Unless, improbably, it grows up, and recognizes the dignity and possibility in every life is worth more than any Promised Land will ever be.

America probably isn’t going to make it. If you are, though, I think that a life worth living begins there.”

- https://eand.co/

"As Covid Lockdowns Increase Economic Growth Will Decrease"

Gerald Celente, 11/4/21:

"As Covid Lockdowns Increase Economic Growth Will Decrease"

"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."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

West Greenwich, Rhode Island, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It Just Means..."

 

"Fed to Stop Diddling the Accounts?"

"Fed to Stop Diddling the Accounts?"

by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Hot off the presses comes this story from Politico: "Fed set to begin pulling plug on massive aid to economy. The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it will begin to slow its massive bond purchases later this month, the first step in removing its extraordinary pandemic-era support for the economy.

The long-awaited move signals both optimism about the pace of job growth and wariness about price surges that have pushed inflation up to its highest level in decades. The central bank has been buying $120 billion a month in U.S. government debt and mortgage-backed securities, a process designed to supercharge its efforts to keep borrowing costs low for households and businesses."

Fed chief Jerome Powell (our fellow student at Georgetown Law Center) insists that the Fed’s money-printing was an emergency program. If the Fed had not taken control of the economy in 2008… and again in 2020… it would be in a shambles, he believes. And by June 2022, the emergency will be over, says he.

Bubble, Bubble… But what really happens when the Federal Reserve gooses the economy with printing-press money and artificially low lending rates? Tesla (TSLA) has been around for nearly 20 years; cumulatively, it hasn’t made a dime of profits from selling cars (it gets billions in government-ordered subsidies). Yet, its share price went up 1,270% since the beginning of Jan 2020.

Shiba Inu (SHIB), a comic coin, gained 84 million percent in the last year. It’s now worth more than Japanese auto manufacturer Nissan (NSANY).

A non-fungible token (NFT) from a “digital artist” named Beeple sold for $69 million at British auction house Christie’s. For reference, Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers masterpiece sold for $96 million (in today’s money) back in 1987.

Stocks soar, while the economy that supports them limps along. Members of Congress, Fed chiefs, Wall Street honchos, and insiders get rich… while the public struggles to get by.

Political Control: The Fed’s key lending rate has been below zero, inflation-adjusted, for almost all of the last 12 years. And now, core consumer prices – measured by the Fed’s “trimmed mean” gauge – are rising faster than at any time in the last 31 years. Here’s the Breitbart report: "A measure of underlying inflationary pressure on the economy rose to its highest level since 1990 in September. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calculates that so-called Trimmed Mean Inflation rose at an annual rate of 5.1 percent in September, the fastest monthly pace of price acceleration in 31 years."

Just what you’d expect, in other words. But some not-so-obvious things happen, too. Politics – whether it concerns forced vaccinations, teaching Critical Race Theory to children, or trillion-dollar boondoggles – has never been so vicious and divisive. Why? Because, when the government controls who gets what, it becomes more important to control the controller. More money is spent on political campaigns. And the other side is demonized, not as merely “wrong” or “misguided,” but as a mortal enemy…

Braiding the Yarn: It’s tempting to dismiss today’s nuttiness with a simple explanation: People go crazy from time to time. In St. Petersburg, Russia in 1917… in Berlin in 1936… in Peking in 1948 – it didn’t matter who you were, what you thought, or who you voted for… it was not likely to end well for you. But there’s more to it than that.

Human society is an intricate weave of “usual understandings,” as Russian president Vladimir Putin put it. Pull on one single thread… and the whole fabric comes apart. We’ve been tracing the yarn every day now for the last 22 years. And what we notice is that things that seem unconnected… or mere “acts of God”… are often woven together in braids of raw self-interest.

Yesterday, we looked at how the SCD (Supply Chain Disruptions) the media is hysterical about were the result of the feds’ central planning. An honest economy depends on millions of fast-moving “measures” – most important, how much someone wants a product and how much he is prepared to pay for it – that the feds can’t possibly know. The more control they exert, the less well it works.

And on Monday, we saw how civil society becomes uncivil. There, the links are harder to see. But when you can no longer trust the money… or the government… the “usual understandings” in the rest of the society seem to give way, too.

Shortages of Everything: In Russia, the Tsarist government multiplied the money supply by about 5 times (no one is sure) to pay for World War I. The ruble lost value. And war created severe supply chain disruptions, which led to shortages of food, especially in St. Petersburg. By 1917, thousands of people were in the streets raising a ruckus. The Bolshevik Revolution followed.

In Germany, the hyperinflation of the early 1920s… along with supply chain disruptions caused by war, reparations, and the loss of the very productive Ruhr Valley… left Germans in a sour mood… easily exploited by left and right, with Hitler and his Nazis as the victors.

In 1937, a dollar would buy you 3.4 Chinese yuan. By the time Mao Tse-tung took over in 1949, it would buy 23 million yuan. Naturally, prices were all over the place during those years… with supply chain disruptions – caused by money printing and war – leading to shortages of just about everything. So chaotic was the economic situation in China that most Chinese probably welcomed the Communist victory.

Everything Goes: When the money goes, in other words, everything goes. Because money determines not just your wealth, but your place in the world… your status… your power… whether you owe or are owed… whether you sell your time or buy others’ time…whether you are a have… or a have-not. But as we showed yesterday, the amount hardly matters. What counts is how it is gotten. And the more the elite controls the distribution of money… the more of it ends up in the hands of the undeserving elite.

But wait… The Fed says it is going to back off. Jerome Powell says he is going to stop diddling the accounts that made him and the rest of the elite so wealthy. Is that really going to happen? Are we going back to a less political world? Stay tuned…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Beware of Bank Closures and Credit Cards Getting Cut Off"

Full screen recommended,

Dan, iAllegedly 11/4/21:

"Beware of Bank Closures and Credit Cards Getting Cut Off"

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 11/4/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/4/21:

"Total Economic Freefall, 

With Inflation About To Surge Higher"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/4/21:

"Must Watch, Critical Updates: 

A Global Currency Freefall Is Here, By Design"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"How It Really Is"

"Consider a turkey that is fed every day, every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief."

- Nassim Taleb

"Relax..."

"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to

TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing."

- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"

○

A must view!

"CV19 Injections Will Cause Massive Deaths" 

by Greg Hunter, USAWatchdog.com

"Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks to 25 year veteran Dr. Elizabeth Eads, DO, exposing the lies that Big Pharma, CDC, FDA and NIH are telling the public. Dr. Eads will highlight the real unreported effects of the CV19 injections/jabs and how it’s all gone completely out of control in hospitals across the country."

- https://rumble.com/

"Get Ready For Food Rationing"

"Get Ready For Food Rationing"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"It was a very strange moment when this week the spokesperson for the president defended inflation as a high-class problem. She explained that higher prices are merely a sign that economic activity is picking up. People are buying things and that’s good. Of course that pushes up prices, she said. Just deal with it.

At this point, the White House will say anything. Truth, facts, morality - these things matter less and less in current-day America. Your misery is an illusion. Losing your job because you don’t want the jab? Hey, that is the price you pay for noncompliance. Expect no sympathy from anyone in charge.

The Great Rationing: It must have been this flippant dismissal that caused me to go over the top. I wrote that hyperinflation could lead not only to implicit price controls, but also to rationing. Eventually, we could see the government issuing food tickets into bank accounts that allow us only a certain amount of food for the week. One chicken. One pound of hamburger heat. Five rolls of toilet paper.

I wrote that with a worry that I might be going too far here with speculation. This is America, after all, and we don’t do things this way. And yet in the old America we didn’t close churches for Easter, or skip Christmas for fear of a virus. And so on. Yet we know now that in fact we do these things, and easily. Fear makes anything possible.

And so right on cue — things are moving very fast these days — The Washington Post has published an article by one of its regular contributors (Micheline Maynard) with one message: "GET USED TO IT!"

She says that we have come to expect too much for the economy. Ever since 1911, she says, we’ve been obsessed with getting stuff and getting it fast. That’s dumb, she says. Deprivation is not only the new normal; it’s the way things should be. “Across the country, Americans’ expectations of speedy service and easy access to consumer products have been crushed like a Styrofoam container in a trash compactor,” she writes. “Time for some new, more realistic expectations.”

For example, she writes of the candy shortage. The milk shortage. The everything shortage. Then she concludes: “Rather than living constantly on the verge of throwing a fit, and risking taking it out on overwhelmed servers, struggling shop owners or late-arriving delivery people, we’d do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations.”

How bad can it get? She saves the best for the very end: “American consumers might have been spoiled, but generations of them have also dealt with shortages of some kind - gasoline in the 1970s, food rationing in the 1940s, housing in the 1920s, when cities such as Detroit were booming. Now it’s our turn to make adjustments.”

You might read that again. She is defending gas lines. More astonishingly, she is going on about the glorious suffering of wartime, when food was rationed with rationing tickets! You cannot make this stuff up. What’s worse, that The Washington Post published it reveals something about what they imagine could be our future. And by future I don’t mean distant future. I mean next year.

No One Is Safe: You will notice the growing tribalization of everything and everyone in the last 20 months. People are retreating to what is safe and known, their own kind. Their neighborhood. Their closest friends. Their families. Even those are strained, but that is all we have. The old world of integration and heterogeneity is shattered, commercial culture is dead in large parts of the country and fear and depression are taking over as the dominant emotions.

I write that and my friends in Texas, Florida and South Dakota say: “I have no idea what you are talking about. Life around here is normal. Concerts are packed. Restaurants are busy. No one is wearing masks. We are so over this!” I’m happy for them. Truly. But there’s a problem. Many problems. We all share the same monetary unit. Supply chains are connected all over the country, and the world. Every state relies on goods from every other state. We are long past autarky. We can feel like we are safe, but we are not.

Hyperinflation will affect everyone without exception. If North Carolina can’t get milk and chicken, neither can Florida and New Mexico. The deprivation will be shared. A good example is the car shortage. Texas was not spared simply because the state has a relatively halfway decent governor who finally got wise, too late, but he finally got there. Still the car lots are empty.

It’s the same with many things. We all use the same dollar. Its destruction will hit South Dakota the same as it hits California. There will be no safe space. Many people moved to get away from despotism during this last year. They thought they were safe. They are not. Yes, life for now is better in Miami than Chicago but when the crisis hits, it will not spare red states with reasonable governors just because the people there have not been part of the insanity for a long time. They will still pay the price.

The Great Deprivation: In the past when things went wrong, at least our leaders admitted that things were not going so well. They tried to fix the problem. It’s not clear that our current leadership in Washington even believes it is a problem. The response toward existing inflation is telling. They think it’s all fine. Gas lines? Fine: Just switch to electric. No heating oil or it is unaffordable? That’s all the better for solving climate change. No bags in the stores? Just bring your own. No meat? Eat veggie burgers. And so on.

These people are part of a cult. They do not oppose poverty. They think it’s about time we experienced it. Poverty is good for us. Deprivation is plenty. Inflation is prosperity. Empty shelves are a reset to the way things should be. These are people for whom socialism was not a failure but a triumph in which people learned to become a new form of community through suffering. In fact, they are pro-suffering. It’s a new form of leftist ideology that has gained steam for decades. Now they are in charge. They get perverse pleasure out of the whole scene.

It doesn’t matter how bad it gets. Our leaders will never admit failure. They will look at the disaster they are creating and call it success. This is what is truly chilling about the unfolding crisis: They do not believe it is a crisis. They think this is a reset to the way things should work."

-https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Related:

"Civil Unrest and the Chaos of Hyperinflation"

"A Panic Buying Frenzy Has Begun As Fears Of A Dark Winter Continue To Rise"

Full screen recommended.

"A Panic Buying Frenzy Has Begun As Fears 

Of A Dark Winter Continue To Rise"

by Epic Economist

"A new wave of panic buying has started amid growing fears of food shortages during the coming winter. Due to extreme weather, widespread crop failures, rising commodity prices, and an energy crisis that has been shutting down factories all over the world, global food supplies are getting tighter and tighter. Even in the best of times, we struggle to feed everyone on the planet. And considering the unprecedented chaos we have been facing over the past two years, those have definitely not been the best of times. To make things worse, since the beginning of the health crisis our supply chains have been hanging by a thread. As a consequence, food prices have been absolutely skyrocketing. According to the latest read of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization Price Index has shown that global food prices shot up by a staggering 40 percent from a year ago.

Those significantly higher food prices combined with a historic increase in the prices of many other commodities are contributing to a global inflationary spike that is putting millions of households at risk of facing food insecurity. In fact, the report says this was the largest increase since 2010-11, when geopolitical events and soaring food prices triggered the so-called Arab Spring that led to a societal collapse in Egypt and massive upheaval elsewhere. Moreover, if food prices continue to escalate that quickly, we will inevitably see social uprisings, food riots, and much more turbulence erupt all around the planet in the months ahead. Now, even the Chinese government is telling people to start preparing for the worst-case scenarios. The country is struggling with a 50 percent price spike across several products, including vegetables and fresh produce.

On Monday, Beijing warned citizens to start stockpiling food for the coming months, and the directive has put many people on edge. Bloomberg reported that the country’s Ministry of Commerce late Monday issued a notice advising local governments to encourage the population to stockpile “daily necessities,” including vegetables, oils and poultry, in order to “meet the needs of daily life and emergencies.”The Chinese government tends to issue warnings like this exclusively to local authorities. The fact that this time the warning was directed to the public as well is sparking major worries about what might be coming next for the nation. The unexpected warning sent shock waves across the economy. On Tuesday, citizens were describing on Chinese social media that a panic buying frenzy had started one more time in local supermarkets. Some started speculating that authorities were reminding people that they "might not be able to afford vegetables this winter". “As soon as this news came out, all the people near me went crazy panic buying in the supermarket,” one of them wrote on Weibo.

When centralized governments like China issues directives such as this one, and people engage in a massive panic buying frenzy, the price of goods goes through the roof. That's why, according to a state TV report, local authorities must hold on to food inventories and only release reserves "at an appropriate time" to prevent soaring food inflation and shortages. The measure sparked even more suspicion about the reason and timing the government issued the stockpiling directive. Local sources say that Chinese officials want people to get ready for a possible conflict with Taiwan. Even though it's too early to tell if that's the real motive behind the order, tensions continue to rise between the two countries. Meanwhile, here in the US, we are definitely not ready for a confrontation with China over Taiwan, especially now that we have begun the process of expelling large numbers of officials out of their troops. Mass lay-offs are happening in major industries across the country at this point. Just imagine what our country is going to look like when this mandate hits our already short-staffed supply chains.

And while governments continue to create, borrow and spend artificially created money at breakneck speed, food prices will continue to hit new highs and the people will ultimately have to pay for the crisis our leaders created. We cannot forget that a global energy crisis is also fast spreading around the world, and if things are bad now, just wait until food processing plants around the world start to be shut down for extended periods. Then we will see real chaos taking over. On top of everything, a series of other unpredictable factors will combine to continue to suppress agricultural production all over the planet. That means that this time we actually have to agree with the Chinese government: Stock up while you still can because things are starting to rapidly spiral out of control."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

“FED In Fantasyland, Creating Bigger Bubbles, More Debt; Home Flipping Done; Shortages Increase”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/3/21:

“FED In Fantasyland, Creating Bigger Bubbles, More Debt;

 Home Flipping Done; Shortages Increase”

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula. 

Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula's orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust. Two prominent reflection nebulas are visible: round IC 432 on the far left, and blue NGC 2023 just to the lower left of the Horsehead nebula. Each glows primarily by reflecting the light of their central star.

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

"A Cherokee Proverb"

"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

"A Cherokee Proverb"

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “The Journey”

“The Journey”

“One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice -

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do -

determined to save

the only life you could save.”

- Mary Oliver

The Daily "Near You?"

Spokane, Washington, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Revenge of the Real World"

"Revenge of the Real World"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Rather than stare at empty shelves, you have two options for distraction: you can don a virtual-reality headset and cavort with dolphins in the metaverse, or you can trade various forms of phantom wealth that always go up (happy happy!) because the Fed. Neither distraction actually solves any real-world problems, a reality we can call the Revenge of the Real World We've entered a peculiar phase in American history in which illusions of wealth and control are the favored distractions from the unraveling of the real world economy and social order.

Printing trillions of currency units can't restore the global supply chain or social cohesion, Rather, jacking phantom wealth to the moon is only accelerating the collapse of the social order and the economy even as it accomplishes absolutely nothing in terms of solving real-world problems. Let's start with the core economic realities of the 21st century:

1. The number of high-consumption ("middle class") people doubled from 1 billion to 2 billion. The human populace has expanded to 7.9 billion individuals, but poor people who don't have enough money to consume large quantities of energy, goods and services delivered by the global supply chain don't have much of an impact on global consumption of energy and resources. It's the number of people jetting around the world playing their part in the landfill economy (toss the old one, buy a new one) who drive "growth" (i.e. waste is growth).

Strangely enough, there are actual physical limits to resources being transformed into junk being dumped in the landfills. Humanity's rapacious appetite for stuff has extracted all the cheap-to-extract resources and now all that's left are the increasingly expensive-to-extract resources.

2. Corporate America offshored most of the production of essentials to exploit the low labor and energy costs, minimal environmental standards and currency arbitrage of overseas production. The net result has been an astounding increase in corporate profits.(see chart) But a funny thing happened on the way to Corporate Profit Nirvana: America became dependent on foreign supply chains. In essence we traded national security for corporate profits. Now the real-world costs of that myopic greed are becoming apparent.

3. Global supply chains have been optimized for cheap energy and cheap credit. This optimization stripped away all the buffers as a means of maximizing profits. Once the system veered outside the narrow band of optimization, the entire system lost coherence and unraveled.

Now that the entire global supply chain has been optimized to maximize profits as the expense of buffers, the buffers are too thin to save the system from collapse. (see chart) The entire dependency chain depends on cheap energy (all those cheap seats on wide-body aircraft were subsidizing the air cargo beneath the passengers' feet) and cheap credit, as consumers can't buy enough with earnings to keep the machine well-oiled. And firms in the dependency chain need ample cheap credit to function, as many have receivables that stretch out over 90 days. Without cheap credit, these firms would have to close down.

The status quo response would be amusing if the consequences weren't so dire: we don't need no stinking buffers! The supply chain for the landfill economy will be back up to full speed any day now, or maybe next year, but don't you worry, the conveyor belt from China to big-box store to the landfill will be fully restored.

In the meantime, cavort with dolphins in the metaverse and trade tokens of phantom wealth to amuse yourself. We're counting on magic to put it all right, and if that doesn't work, then the real world's revenge will be something to behold."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Broken Chains"

"Broken Chains"

by Bill Bonner

"No sugar tonight in my coffee,

No sugar tonight in my tea..."

– "No Sugar Tonight," by The Guess Who

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Yes, Dear Reader, as if rising sea levels and falling vaccine protection weren’t enough, here’s something else to worry about… Supply Chain Disruptions. SCD. Time Magazine: "Biden Announces New Steps to Address Supply-Chain Disruption. Don’t wait! What holiday items you should buy now because of supply chain issues

CNBC: "Chinese EV maker Nio sees drop in October deliveries due to manufacturing and supply chain disruptions. Is your favorite cereal missing from the shelf? SCD. Is your dealer unable to get the model of car you want? SCD. Is the price of a gallon of milk now at $6.99? SCD."

Until this year, we had never heard of SCD. For more than 2,000 years, SCDs were scarcely mentioned. And now, it’s on every pair of lips. Ships are backing up at Long Beach, California… as the Chinese valiantly try to overcome SCD by stuffing the supply channel to the U.S. And the whole nation sits on the edge of its seat, wondering if SCD will ruin Thanksgiving… Christmas… and the American Way of Life…

Why Now? But why, after so many years with no SCD… is the world suddenly full of it? How come? Can you guess whose fault it is? Moral philosopher Adam Smith illustrated the complexity of the division of labor in 18th century England by describing a pin factory: "One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands."

More than 200 years later, the world economy is far more complicated. One group mines and refines the silicon. Another group – which includes chemists, engineers, metallurgists, machinists, mathematicians, electricians, cleaners, security officers, and God-knows-who-else – transforms it into “chips.” These are then shipped across the widest ocean in the world, to be used in thousands of different “applications”…where they are plugged into everything from toaster ovens to air pressure sensors…assembled by other teams, drawing on specialists, scientists, and assembly line workers from all over the world…using parts that come from Europe, Asia, North and South America…and made from almost all the 118 elements in the periodic table, put together into millions of different parts and pieces…for millions of other finished products.

Whew!

Accurate Measures: As the complexity grows, so does the need for accurate, honest measures. It doesn’t really matter if they are high or low… but they must be true. Down to microns, microradians, and Planck lengths… one group has to shape its components to the precise size that will fit in another group’s templates. And it must know precisely how much it can afford to spend to make it… and when, precisely, and where, precisely, it is meant to be delivered. A tiny part… off by a fraction of an inch… with the wrong specifications… delivered to the wrong town… on the wrong day… at the wrong cost – what a disaster!

Just in Time: One of the innovations that made the modern economy possible was money. You didn’t have to know the fellow you were buying from… or even speak his language. You just had to know what he delivered… and at what price. A more recent innovation was “just in time” inventory systems. Rather than keeping things on hand, it was cheaper to have them delivered when they were needed. This made the process cheaper and more fluid… but also more fragile. It was amazing that it worked so well. But, in general, people could trust each other to make the components to their specifications… and deliver them on time.

Fed Meddling: And then came the feds. First, they fudged the money. It has already lost 98% of its value over the last 100 years… And inflation is picking up. As the dollar weakens, it’s harder and harder to make long-term projections. Then, they queered the interest rate. World commerce operates on credits and debits, to be satisfied later. But you don’t know what either is worth unless you have an accurate interest rate. At negative real rates (adjusted for inflation)… which we’ve had for almost all of the last 12 years… any calculation is just a fruit salad of guesswork.

And then there were the feds’ tariffs, trade restrictions, and sanctions… further complicating the situation. These were followed by lockdowns, shutdowns, border closings, mask mandates, and social distancing. Factories closed. Workers stayed home. And then… Without the nail, the horse is lost. Without the horse, the rider is lost. Without the rider, the battle is lost. And without the battle… the whole supply chain is, well, FUBAR.

Last Straw: And then, as if that weren’t enough… the feds stimulated demand by handing out fake money. Drawing on the feds’ stimmy checks and unemployment toppers…all of a sudden, in came the orders… and retail sales went up. But existing inventories couldn’t meet them. Suppliers couldn’t fill them… And transport companies couldn’t deliver them…The supply chain broke apart. Thank God the feds are on the case!"

- www.rogueeconomics.com