"America is Very Unstable – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts"

"America is Very Unstable – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"International award-winning journalist and former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (PCR) says data shows between CV19 policies and the policies surrounding Russia that “America is very unstable.” Let’s start with the NATO talks with Russia over Ukraine that broke down in a diplomatic disaster last week. There is the real possibility of nuclear war with Russia. Dr. PCR explains, “The West is continually antagonizing Russia (PCR is referring primarily to Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan). This will eventually lead to some kind of conflict. If it is a conventional war, the West does not have a chance—no chance whatsoever. So, what would Washington do when it’s faced with a massive defeat? It would save face by resorting to nukes. That’s the way Washington is. So, it’s very dangerous. 

It’s extremely dangerous to make the Russians feel threatened, and when they tell you (Washington D.C) that, you ignore it. You don’t hear, and you make them feel more threatened. This is just madness, and it opens up the prospects of military confrontation. I guarantee you that the Russians are not going to allow NATO to take in Ukraine and Georgia. They simply will not, and it cannot be done. We are not prepared for military confrontation with Russia and much less with Russia and China.” Last week, the Russian government publicly said it thought the Biden Administration was having a “nervous breakdown,” which was intended as a huge insult.

The other huge problem is the CV19 policies with shutdowns and coerced experimental injections. Dr. PCR says, “The whole Covid thing is a hoax. It’s all been for nothing, and it’s unnecessary, but they are sticking with it. They are sticking with it despite the fact that it is now conclusively proven that what the vaccine does is turn your own immune system into a weapon against your own body. The vaccine causes your immune system to attack your own vital organs. That’s why you have these vaccine injuries and deaths, and it does not protect you from Covid. Yet, they still want to continue it. It’s another form of insanity.”

The biggest driver of a troubled economy and spiking inflation is none other than the Covid policies. Dr. PCR points out, “The inflation is really reflecting the lockdowns and cessation of supply. All of a sudden you have got shortages everywhere. How do people get things? You bid for it. You have to outbid. You can see the whole Covid policy is shrinking the ability of the economy to produce. That’s the problem.”

Dr. PCR sees a “collapse of society” because the data is showing many will get sick or die because of the dangerous injections.

Dr. PCR also says countries are turning away from the U.S. dollar and buying gold. That is very dollar negative, and it is not going to tame inflation - just the opposite.

What does Dr. PCR see in the political future for the Democrats and the Biden Administration? Dr. PCR says, “The Democrats have blown it, but if they can get away with blaming the unvaccinated for all the problems they may be shielded. Democrats may also be shielded if they can force Russia to take some sort of decisive action. Then everybody has to rally around the President. It’s very, very unstable, and there are reasons to leave the dollar if inflation is high.”

-https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with award-winning journalist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. (There is much more in the 46 min. interview.)

- https://rumble.com/

Gerald Celente, "Happy Days Are Here Again?"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal"

"Happy Days Are Here Again?"

"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/

"California Wants To Double My Taxes; Los Angeles the Wild West - Beware; Mortgage Crisis Next"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/18/22:

"California Wants To Double My Taxes; 

Los Angeles the Wild West - Beware; Mortgage Crisis Next"

"Bad News, I’m Afraid"

"Bad News, I’m Afraid"

by Jim Rickards

"The breakdown of global supply chains is well-known by now. Whether it’s finding groceries in your supermarket, buying a new car or buying appliances like dishwashers and refrigerators, goods are scarce. Also, deliveries take forever and choices are limited.

Many people wonder why the problem isn’t going away. Here’s the answer: The supply chain is a complex dynamic system. When any complex system collapses, you can look for specific causes but that’s usually a waste of time. Systems collapse internally because they are too large and too interconnected and require too many energy inputs to keep going. Any specific cause is more likely to be a symptom than a true cause. It’s frustrating, but that’s the answer.

Most Americans’ first encounter with the supply chain meltdown was in the spring of 2020 during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Shoppers noticed that items like hand sanitizer and paper goods at Costco and other big-box stores were cleaned out. It seemed that Americans who were locked down and quarantined at the time were hoarding these products because they had no idea when they would be allowed to venture out again. The shortages were real, but were limited to specific products. The other aisles at Costco were stocked and so were all the other stores around (at least those that were allowed to remain open).

Now It’s Everything: But it’s not just Costco this time. It’s every supermarket, convenience store and other retail outlet from coast to coast. And it’s not just cleaning products and paper goods. Your local supermarket might have bare shelves for eggs, peanut butter, milk and other staples. It’s not a case of being stocked out of all goods all the time. Your store is like a box of Cracker Jack – you never know what’s inside. Many items are available, but many are not. It’s a case of stockouts of certain goods from time to time. But you can be sure that something will be missing and some of the shelves will be bare.

Still, there’s a narrative around that the crisis is temporary, that steps are being taken to alleviate shortages and backlogs and things will soon be back to normal. The narrative blames the shortages on the pandemic and the number of workers home with COVID. It says that things will clear up when the virus is under control. That’s the narrative, but it’s not the reality. The evidence is that the supply chain crisis is just getting started. It’ll be with us for years and have huge negative economic effects.

All Connected and All Collapsing at Once: No one doubts that the pandemic, especially the Omicron variant, has had a major impact and has caused millions to fall ill and miss work. It’s also likely that the missing employees due to illness are part of the reason shelves are not fully stocked. But they are not a prime cause of the supply chain chaos.

Even if stores were fully staffed, there would still be shortages and delays due to everything from a shortage of truck drivers, late container cargo shipments from Asia, manufacturing delays due to lack of inputs, energy shortages and many other impediments. That’s the point.

The supply chain is collapsing at every stage due to bottlenecks at every other stage. Commodity inputs are scarce, partly due to energy shortages at mines. Manufacturing is behind due to lack of commodity inputs. Deliveries are behind due to manufacturing delays. And finally, shelves are bare due to nondelivery of orders and a worker shortage. It’s all connected and it’s all collapsing at once. So don’t believe the happy talk about a “temporary” supply chain crisis. I’ll say it again: The crisis will last for years with predictable negative effects on economic growth.

The “Factory to the World” Is Closing Down: One major concern is China. China is currently pursuing a COVID Zero policy. This means that China has zero tolerance for even a single case of COVID. If COVID appears, China will isolate the individual, do a massive track-and-trace operation and then forcibly remove entire neighborhoods to quarantine camps outside the city limits for mandatory lockdowns of 14 days or more.

If more than a few cases are detected, China will follow the same procedure but on a much larger scale. They will relocate hundreds of thousands of people if needed and shut down entire cities. This has already happened in Xi’an, a city of 1.5 million people and a major manufacturing center. A new lockdown just arose in Henan province, which is the center of Chinese electronics production. China has also locked down the port of Ningbo, which is the second largest port in China after Shanghai, and one of the largest in the world.

China has also required that crews on arriving vessels must be confined to the vessel and are not allowed onshore for normal rest and recreation. Since these crews often spend six months or more at sea, vessel operators are starting to schedule trips that avoid China. That means that even when goods are produced, they cannot necessarily be shipped because of a shortage of vessels and crews. The situation is getting worse, not better, and will deteriorate even more as we move toward the Beijing Olympics and the Lunar New Year holidays in China.

In effect, the “factory to the world” has decided to shut down the factory, or at least large parts of it for months to come. This will continue to impact the U.S., which Americans are not accustomed to or prepared for.

Forced Labor: Americans associate bare shelves with Third World countries or perhaps East Germany during the Cold War. That last time Americans have had to deal with shortages on this scale were the gas crises of the 1970s and rationing during World War II.

Importantly, the phenomenon is not limited to the United States – it’s a global event. And it’s leading to extreme government measures. Take a look at Australia. As in the U.S., Australia has large numbers of unemployed workers. They receive benefit payments similar to welfare and unemployment from an agency called Centrelink. Well, the government has now declared that unemployed benefit recipients must work several hours per week to restock supermarket shelves in order to keep their Centrelink benefits. So, social benefits are being used to draft forced labor to deal with a supply chain problem.

Australia has become a kind of prison camp based on government dictates concerning the virus. It’s a good example of how COVID has empowered governments to dictate every aspect of citizens’ lives. This won’t be the last government mandate in Australia or here. And there’s a powerful lesson to be learned here: Once governments get a taste of neo-fascism, they always want more. That’s true even in a liberal democracy like Australia. We’re seeing similar phenomena play out in western European democracies as well.

A Race Against Time: The other thing we can be sure of is that these mandates will slow the economy and destroy wealth. The bad news for investors, again, is that this situation will persist for years. It’s not easy to correct and definitely not something that can be corrected quickly. In markets, this will play out as higher costs, lower earnings and ultimately lower stock prices. With markets still close to all-time highs, this could be a good time to lighten up on stocks before the supply chain reality catches up with the stock market bubble. When it does, it won’t be pretty."

- dailyreckoning.com

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Related:

"Bill Simon: Supply Chain Crisis

 Is A ‘Shocking And Unmitigated’ Disaster"

"Experts Are Warning That Empty Shelves & Food Shortages Are Going To Continue For Many Weeks To Come"

Full screen recommended.

"Experts Are Warning That Empty Shelves & 

Food Shortages Are Going To Continue For Many Weeks To Come"

by Epic Economist

"The talking heads on the mainstream media have been throwing around the term “return to normal” quite a lot these days, but industry experts are telling us that our current problems are likely to persist for a long time. When we really stop to think about it, is it truly possible for things to ever return to the way that they were before the health crisis came along?

From an economic standpoint, an unprecedented amount of damage has been done over the past two years, and the consequences of that are going to stay with us for at least a few more years in the best-case scenario. We actually have an endless list of major problems plaguing our supply chains and making thousands of critical operations a whole lot worse. Our system is in a state of utter chaos, and this is causing some very painful shortages.

For a long time, the media has been insisting that shortages and supply chain problems would soon be gone, but now they’re being forced to admit the truth. Even NPR has recently published a major story about the widespread shortages sweeping across this country. The article says that “grocery store shelves are bare again, conjuring bad memories of spring 2020 for many”. What’s even more concerning is the impact of the new surge of infections on our food supply chain. The highly contagious new variant is undoubtedly one of the biggest stressors on the food industry today.

Across the West Coast, growers of perishable produce are paying almost triple pre-outbreak trucking rates to ship things like lettuce and fruit before they spoil, said Shay Myers, CEO of Owyhee Produce, which grows a wide range of produce, including onions, watermelons, and asparagus along the border of Idaho and Oregon. He revealed that he has been holding off shipping some items to retail distributors until trucking prices go down. On top of that, recent snow and ice storms that snarled traffic for hours also delayed food deliveries destined for grocery stores and distribution hubs. Unfortunately, the problems interrupting the industry’s operations are not going to be cleared up any time soon. One supermarket CEO is warning that supply chain disruptions will continue to be a major headache for his company for at least the next month.

That’s to say when consumers are lucky enough to find the items they need, the prices are simply absurd. Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices already jumped by 7 percent, the biggest increase since 1982 - with the price of cereal up 6 percent, bacon up 19 percent, steak up 21 percent, and eggs up 11 percent.

This means that if our supply chain problems persist for many months to come, prices will go even higher. Analysts at Deutsche Bank are now projecting bottlenecks to last until the end of the second quarter. “For 2022, we expect supply pressures to likely linger for longer, until the second half of next year before gradually unwinding,” they wrote in a note last Tuesday. But they also seem to be assuming that conditions will “return to normal” eventually.

It would be great if that did happen, but as Wolf Richter highlighted, the industry has desperately been trying to “return to normal” for quite a long time: “Grocery stores have been trying to stock up for 22 months now, to fill the holes and catch up with this historic surge in demand, but every time they make a little headway, new constraints and problems emerge, and they still don’t have enough inventory on hand to get over the hump, and they temporarily and sporadically run out of some items,” he wrote.

What no one is really willing to admit is that our supply chains will never fully return to the way they were in 2019. Many things have changed and this crisis may take decades to be solved. In fact, decades of incredibly foolish decisions have led us to this point, and the utter incompetence of our leaders in Washington is a major indicator that things won’t turn around any time soon. The coming months are not going to be pretty, and we should start to prepare accordingly because no one is coming to save us from this mess."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"Hold Up Your Head!"

“Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country – hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

- Mark Twain

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/18/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/18/22"

Updated as available.

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"The more I see of the moneyed classes,

the more I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

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CNN Market Data:

- http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

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

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Latest Market Analysis, Updated 1/6/22

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

Jan 14th to 19th 2022

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Financial Stress Index

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

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Unity"

 

Liquid Mind, "Unity"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.

Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130825.html

Chet Raymo, “Angling For Happiness”

“Angling For Happiness”

by Chet Raymo

“There is a concept in physics called angle of repose. Set an object, a book say, on a plank. Now slowly tip up one end of the plank until the moment when the book just starts to slide. The angle between the plank and the horizontal is the angle of repose, where the component of the gravitational force down the plank becomes greater than the maximum friction force holding the book at rest. Or, in more evocative terms - as I write I am lying on the couch with the laptop in my lap, in perfect repose. If you started tipping up the couch, at some point I'd go sliding into a heap at the bottom. That's the angle of repose, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the angle of the end of repose.

This comes to mind because I just spent fifteen minutes on my knees in the yard watching ants excavate a nest in the ground. One by one they scurry out of the hole carrying a tiny grain of sand, which they dump in a ring around the hole. A circular pile. Now if the ants just dumped their burdens at the mouth of the hole, pretty soon the pile would get so steep that the sand grains would slide back into the hole. Instead, the circular ring gets higher and wider, with a slope that never exceeds the angle at which the grains will slip - the angle of repose. Now here's the thing: the ants almost invariably carry their grain to just beyond the top of the pile. If the grain slips, it will slide away from the hole. These tiny ants, hardly bigger than sand grains themselves, understand a little physics in their mysterious instinctive way.

Wallace Stegner has a novel titled "Angle of Repose." It is indeed an evocative phrase. In a job, in a relationship, in life itself, many of us instinctively seek that maximum degree of individual gratification that will satisfy emotional needs without doing violence to our essential repose, and that of those around us - the art of walking close to the edge, the thrill without the spill. Every day in the news we hear of folks - politicians or celebrities - who tipped the plank too far, whose lives went sliding into self-destruction, who failed to grasp, metaphorically speaking, something that a tiny ant instinctively understands.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Oh No! The Stock Market Falls, So What Should You Do Now?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/18/22:

"Oh No! The Stock Market Falls, 

So What Should You Do Now?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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- Market Data Center

"At Last..."

“At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.”

- Richard Bach, “Nothing by Chance”

"A Message To Anyone Who Feels Like 'Winston' In Orwell's '1984'"

"A Message To Anyone Who Feels Like

'Winston' In Orwell's '1984'"

by Simon Black

“The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering... all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face.” That was a quote from George Orwell’s seminal work "1984" - a masterpiece that describes life in a totalitarian state that demands blind obedience.

The ‘Party’ controlled everything - the economy, daily life, and even the truth. In Orwell’s "1984", “the heresy of heresies was common sense.” “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

If you were ever caught committing a thoughtcrime - dissenting from the Party for even an instant - then “your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten.”

Now, our world obviously hasn’t become quite as extreme as Orwell’s dystopian vision. But Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government certainly seem to be giving it their best effort. 70,000 thought criminals have already been purged from Twitter. Facebook and Reddit are feverishly removing user content. Apple, Google, and Amazon have banned entire apps and platforms.

Undoubtedly there is plenty of wacky content all over the Internet - misinformation, ignorance, rage, hate, violence, and just plain stupidity. But these moves by the Big Tech companies aren’t about violence. If they were, they would have deleted tens of thousands of accounts over the last few years– like the mostly peaceful BLM activist who Tweeted “white people may have to die”. Or the countless others who have advocated for violent uprisings against the police Then, of course, there’s the #assassinatetrump and #killtrump hashtags that has Twitter has allowed since at least 2016. Or the #killallmen hashtag that’s allowed on Twitter and Instagram.

This is not about violence. It’s about ideology. If you hold different beliefs than the ‘Party’, then you risk being canceled or ‘de-platformed’ by Big Tech. Icons like Ron Paul - who spent years criticizing the current administration’s monetary and national defense policies, and had nothing to do with the Capitol, have been suspended or locked out of their Facebook pages.

The hammer has dropped, and it is now obvious, beyond any doubt, that you better watch what you say - your livelihood, your social life, and your safety may just depend on it. Or else, you will be purged, canceled, deleted from the Internet, denied payment processing by Visa, PayPal, and Stripe, and expelled from domain registrars like GoDaddy.

The message is clear: behave and think exactly as we tell you, or you will lose everything you have worked for, in the blink of an eye. Sure, the ‘Party’ may give lip service to tolerance and unity. As long as you fall in line. Otherwise it’s more rage and ridicule. They act like you’re a crazy person because you have completely legitimate questions and concerns - whether about Covid lockdowns, censorship, media misinformation, etc.

It’s extraordinary that after so much deliberate misinformation and bias, the media still expects people to take them seriously. CNN seems to believe that think anyone who doubts their credibility is a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ All of these trends are probably making a lot of people very nervous. Even scared. Despair has undoubtedly set in, much like in Winston Smith, the main character in Orwell’s "1984."

So, for all the Winstons out there, the most important thing right now is to remain rational. As human beings we tend to make terrible decisions when we’re scared, sad, or angry. Have confidence in knowing that you have MUCH more control over your own life, livelihood, and future than they want to you believe. But you absolutely will have to make some deliberate, potentially difficult decisions.

For example, if you’re fed up with Big Tech, you can de-Google your life. No one is holding a gun to your head to have a Facebook account or use gmail. There are plenty of other options out there that we’ll discuss in future letters.

More importantly, you might find that your hometown isn’t safe anymore - especially if you live in a big city controlled by politicians intoxicated on their Covid powers. It’s really time to consider your immediate environment - if the local schools are brainwashing your kids, the dictatorial health officials shutting down your business, or nosy neighbors ready to turn you into the Gestapo for having family over for the holidays, then you might think about moving. That might simply mean moving a few miles to a new county. Or a new state/province. Or potentially overseas. 

It might also be time to reconsider some of your business infrastructure - to have backup web servers and payment processors, for example, if you have an online business. It might be time to consider some new financial options as well, lest the banks jump on the band wagon and start ‘canceling’ accounts for heretics.

But that’s the silver lining: we’ve never had more alternatives than now. Everything - technology platforms, financial institutions, and even our personal residence - it’s all replaceable. All of it. We have never had more control over our own privacy, data, livelihood, and environment… as long as you have the willingness to take action."

- https://www.sovereignman.com/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Freely download "1984", by George Orwell, here:

- https://freeditorial.com/en/books/1984-by-george-orwell

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Love Of Strings"

Full screen recommended.

Moby, "Love Of Strings"

Life, magnificent Life...

The Daily "Near You?"

San José, San Jose, Costa Rica. Thanks for stopping by!

“Life, Explained To You”

“Life, Explained To You”

Author Unknown

“On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten.” So God agreed. 

On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks and make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed. 

On the third day God created the cow. “You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed again. 

On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty the cow gave back, and the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.” 

So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy ourselves; the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren; and the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”

“Life has now been explained to you.”

"I Wish..."

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf "and so do all who live to see such times.

But that is not for them to decide.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

- J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"

The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore

where the lighthouse was abandoned

and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees,

and see the stars flaring out, one by one,

like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,

but let me inscribe my name

in the book of waves,

and then stare into the dome

of a sky that never ends,

and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

"How It Really Is"

 

"Roadside Slaughter and Railway Robbery"

"Roadside Slaughter and Railway Robbery"

by Bill Bonner

                                         "And as for fortune, and as for fame

I never invited them in

Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions

They're not the solutions they promised to be."

~ "Don’t Cry for Me Argentina" by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Paris, France -  "Twenty years ago we predicted America’s long trajectory ahead: “Tokyo… then Buenos Aires.” We might have been holding the map upside down. But today, we return to our travel planning. Where are we headed? How should we pack?

In 1999, we figured that the dot.com bubble was bound to pop and that the US economy would likely turn into a Japan-like slump. Stocks would go down, we thought. The economy would sink. It would take many years to ‘fix’ the problem… we imagined. And it would only be done in the worst possible way – by inflating, a la Argentina.

In the event, the dot.com bubble did pop and the economy did sink. In the first two decades of the 21st century, per-capita GDP growth rates were only half of those of the previous century. And stocks did try to follow in Japan’s footsteps. Not once, but three times – the dot.com crash itself in 2000… then again, in the mortgage finance crisis of 2008-2009… and finally, in the Covid Crisis of 2020.

Each time the feds came to Wall Street’s rescue with more money – so much so that two decades into the 21st century the Fed has added $8 trillion to its balance sheet (a rough measure of money supply footings) and the US ‘national’ debt has increased by $23 trillion.

Wall Street’s gamblers and high rollers rejoice. The Dow rose from 11,000 in 1999 to 36,000 in 2021. And the rich – the top 10% who own more than 80% of America’s stocks and bonds – got much richer. They gratefully returned the favor, generously providing funds for political campaigns and lobbying outfits.

But Main Street slumped… manufacturing, a main source of high-wage jobs, continued to move overseas… real investment per capita (essential for real economic growth) fell… and flyover America grew surly and restless.

Thieving Hordes: In 2008, a new president promised “Change.” But no change of direction was forthcoming. And then, in 2016, another new president promised to Make America Great Again. But he turned out to be more in the bogus Latin American strongman tradition than a genuine reformer. And now, the Japan visit, as imperfect as it was, is over. Buenos Aires, here we come!

A news item a few months ago caught our eye. A truck was carrying beef cattle through a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires, on its way to the abattoir. The local people stopped the truck, unloaded a cow… and slaughtered it right on the street. Last week, from California, came news that hordes of thieves had broken into boxcars and stolen whatever they could find. From Bloomberg: "CBS footage shows lines of packages from carriers including UPS and Amazon.com Inc., many of which arrived from Asia through the nation’s largest ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, stretching along the railways. The looters raided packages that contained all sorts of consumer goods, while abandoning those seen as not valuable enough, including Covid-19 tests and EpiPens, devices used in emergencies to treat severe allergic reactions."

People are growing desperate, lawless, and dependent. They no longer count on decent jobs where they can earn money. Instead, they look for opportunities for larceny, grift, and welfare. ‘Transfer payments’… money that the government takes from the people who earn it in order to hand it over to the people who didn’t… were only 5% of GDP in 1970. Today, they’re more than 20%. And while the lower classes commit petty crimes, the upper classes go for grand larceny.

Also in the news last week, Fed governor Richard Clarida resigned. He is the third resignation in recent months, as it comes to light that Fed honchos have been front-running their own decisions for years.

The Pampas Playbook: But even their millions are small change compared to the trillions skimmed by the elite over the last 20 years. Were it not for the conniving and fiddling by the Fed, their stock market fortunes – now about $48 trillion – would probably be worth less than half as much as they are today.

Along with the corruption – paying for things you don’t need with money you don’t have – has come inflation. At the official rate, US inflation is now at 7%... the largest 12-month increase since 1982. But wait, in the 1990s, the feds changed the way they calculate inflation. If it were toted up the way they did in 1982, today’s rate would be above 15%. Even at its peak in the 1970s, US inflation never got that high. To get today’s inflation you have to go back 96 years – to 1917 – when the rate rose over 17%.

And lies! In Argentina, inflation has always been blamed on big business, capitalism, the US…you name it. And now in the US, the Biden team, along with demagogues such as Elizabeth Warren, are following the Pampas Playbook, trying to shift the blame away from their own malign policies. As Lincoln put it, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time – and, as the Argentine government has proven over the last 70 years, that’s plenty!

To be continued, tomorrow..."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"A Deep Attentiveness..."

"When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”

- Scott Russell Sanders

"Experts Are Warning That Empty Shelves And Food Shortages Are Going To Continue For Many Weeks To Come"

"Experts Are Warning That Empty Shelves And Food

Shortages Are Going To Continue For Many Weeks To Come"

by Michael Snyder

"The term “return to normal” is being thrown around a lot these days, but will things ever truly return to the way that they were before the pandemic came along? I don’t think so. From an economic standpoint, an extraordinary amount of lasting damage has been done over the past two years. A seemingly endless list of major problems has thrown thousands upon thousands of critical supply chains into a complete and utter state of chaos, and this has resulted in some very painful shortages. For quite a while, the mainstream media kept insisting that the shortages would soon be gone, but now they are being forced to admit the truth. If you can believe it, NPR has even published a major story about the growing shortages in this country…

No, you’re not imagining it. Some grocery store shelves are bare again, conjuring bad memories of spring 2020 for many. Social media is rife with images of empty supermarket aisles and signs explaining the lack of available food and other items. Stores such as Aldi have apologized to customers for the shortages. Nobody in the mainstream media ever imagined that the shortages would last this long.

For certain items such as computer chips, the duration of the shortages is now approaching two full years. Of course fear of Omicron has made things even worse, and one expert interviewed by NPR suggested that supermarkets in the U.S. are now facing a “perfect storm”… “We’re really seeing the perfect storm,” Phil Lempert, editor of the website SupermarketGuru.com, told NPR."

Isn’t it strange how that term just seems to keep popping up all over the place? One of the major issues that supermarkets on the east coast are currently facing is greatly increased shipping costs.

Many Americans don’t realize this, but much of the fresh produce that we enjoy is actually grown in a handful of western states. In fact, “99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots” grown in the United States come from the state of California. To get all of that produce to stores in the east has always been a major production, but today it has also become exceedingly expensive…

Growers of perishable produce across the West Coast are paying nearly triple pre-pandemic trucking rates to ship things like lettuce and berries before they spoil. Shay Myers, CEO of Owyhee Produce, which grows onions, watermelons and asparagus along the border of Idaho and Oregon, said he has been holding off shipping onions to retail distributors until freight costs go down.

Myers said transportation disruptions in the last three weeks, caused by a lack of truck drivers and recent highway-blocking storms, have led to a doubling of freight costs for fruit and vegetable producers, on top of already-elevated pandemic prices. “We typically will ship, East Coast to West Coast – we used to do it for about $7,000,” he said. “Today it’s somewhere between $18,000 and $22,000.”

Unfortunately, the issues that are plaguing the industry are not going to be cleared up any time soon. According to the CEO of Conagra Brands, supply chain issues will continue to be a huge headache for his company for at least the next month… "Birds Eye frozen vegetables maker Conagra Brands’ CEO Sean Connolly told investors last week that supplies from its U.S. plants could be constrained for at least the next month due to Omicron-related absences."

And the CEO of Albertson’s is anticipating continued supply chain woes “over the next four to six weeks”… "Vivek Sankaran, CEO of the grocery store chain Albertson’s, said in an earnings call that the company had been hoping to recover from recent supply issues but omicron “put a dent in that.” “There are more supply challenges, and we would expect more supply challenges over the next four to six weeks,” Sankaran said on Tuesday."

Of course these corporate leaders are anticipating that the Omicron wave will eventually fade and operations will start getting back to normal as warmer weather comes along. But in order to do that, they are going to have to find a lot more workers from somewhere. According to another industry expert, the consumer-packaged goods industry in the United States “is missing around 120,000 workers” right now… "The situation is not expected to abate for at least a few more weeks, Katie Denis, vice president of communications and research at the Consumer Brands Association said, blaming the shortages on a scarcity of labor.

The consumer-packaged goods industry is missing around 120,000 workers out of which only 1,500 jobs were added last month, she said, while the National Grocer’s Association said that many of its grocery store members were operating with less than 50% of their workforce capacity."

So where are they going to find enough people to restore service to normal levels? They can’t exactly resurrect those that have died over the past year. Now that millions of workers have seemingly “disappeared” from the system, companies all over America are fiercely competing with one another for anyone that still has a pulse and is available.

So if the food industry wants to hire thousands upon thousands of new workers, they are going to have to radically raise wages. And if they do that, we will be paying even more to fill up our carts at the grocery store. Today, a full shopping cart full of food can run more than 300 dollars in many areas. Will that figure soon reach 400 or 500 dollars?

And what happens if our supply chain problems persist for many months to come like analysts at Deutsche Bank are now projecting… ‘For 2022, we expect supply pressures to likely linger for longer, perhaps until the second half of next year before gradually unwinding,’ Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a note last Tuesday.

But just like everyone else, the analysts at Deutsche Bank are also assuming that conditions will “return to normal” eventually. It would be really nice if that actually happened, but as Wolf Richter has pointed out, grocery stores have desperately been trying to “return to normal” for 20 months… "Grocery stores have been trying to stock up for 20 months now, to fill the holes and catch up with this historic surge in demand, but every time they make a little headway, new constraints and problems emerge, and they still don’t have enough inventory on hand to get over the hump, and they temporarily and sporadically run out of some items."

The elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about is the fact that our supply chains will never fully return to the way they were in 2019. Too much has changed. Yes, there will be a lot of ups and downs, but I actually believe that many of the problems that we are facing today will actually grow over time.

It took decades of incredibly bad decisions to get us to this point, and the gross incompetence being displayed by our leaders in Washington does not give me confidence that things will turn around any time soon. The years ahead are not going to be pretty, and I would advise you to prepare accordingly."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"Beware: It’s Getting Worse!"

Full screen recommended.

Get Ready Stay Ready, AM 1/18/22:

"Beware: It’s Getting Worse!"

"Shortages in food and labor are getting worse."

"Your City Could Look Just Like Los Angeles Soon - Economic Nightmare"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly AM 1/18/22:

"Your City Could Look Just Like Los Angeles Soon - 

Economic Nightmare"

"Los Angeles is coming to a city near you. This place gets worse every time I visit. There is so much retail closures and homelessness. The Los Angeles economy is getting destroyed."

Gregory Mannarino, "Risk In The Market Rising; Stocks Set To Fall At The Open. Crude Ripping Higher"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/18/22:

"Risk In The Market Rising; 

Stocks Set To Fall At The Open. Crude Ripping Higher"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Walmart Warning Sign More Shortages; Food Prices Surging; Hard Times Are Here"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/17/22:

"Walmart Warning Sign More Shortages; 

Food Prices Surging; Hard Times Are Here"

"Stores Not Being Restocked! No Deliveries"

Full screen recommended.

Tommy Bites Homestead, PM 1/17/22:

"Stores Not Being Restocked! No Deliveries"

"Michael Burry: Greatest Stock Market Crash Of Our Time Is Coming!"

Full screen recommended.

"Michael Burry: Greatest Stock Market 

Crash Of Our Time Is Coming!"

by Epic Economist

"Experts and insiders are getting really spooked about the imminent threats on Wall Street and have been bracing for a devastating stock market crash as financial and economic conditions dramatically worsen. Several veteran investors are warning that the rampant speculation fueled by the US government and the Federal Reserve can not sustain asset prices forever, and a significant pullback is right ahead.

Amongst them, Scion Asset Management CEO and Big Short investor, Michael Burry, seems to be right about an impending financial disaster once again. The hedge fund manager, who famously bet against the country’s housing market in 2008, highlighted in a recent statement that the bond and stock markets are in a particularly vulnerable position given that they need the constant support of the corrupt US central bank. “Bond & stock markets depend on a Fed stripped of all credibility,” he said.

Burry, had warned at the end of 2020 that the central bank’s policies would spark inflation as we’ve never seen before. "Prepare for inflation," he tweeted back then. He even noted that we were heading to an environment of hyperinflation similar to what occurred in Germany in the 1920s, outlining that during that time everyone was playing the market and trading volumes were skyrocketing. "Sound familiar?" he asked. Well, if it didn’t in 2020, it certainly does now. That’s to say, with inflation rising almost 7%, the outlook is particularly concerning for volatile stocks such as tech.

That’s why the investor revealed that he had bet against Elon Musk's Tesla and Cathie Wood's Ark Invest, two investor favorites leading the tech bubble. It turns out that both of them have faced sizable crashes at the end of December and earlier this month as the tech bubble finally burst. One more hit for Burry’s count. The Scion boss revealed it held bearish put options on about 1.1 million Tesla shares. It also disclosed puts on Cathie Wood's Ark Innovation ETF, a key Tesla supporter. The experts rang the alarm again in a series of tweets: “Can $TSLA fall 80, 90%? After 2000, many high flyers did," he wrote.

Tesla has already lost billions after CEO Elon Musk started dumping shares of his own company to allegedly ‘pay for taxes,’ which according to Burry, is just a strategy to cash in money before a steeper decline in share prices. He said Musk was selling shares because he knew the electric-vehicle stock was extremely overvalued. But at the end of the day, "he doesn't need cash. He just wants to sell $TSLA," Burry added.

The market veteran has reiterated his previous warning that the market is in a “speculative bubble,” and a historic stock market crash is near. He pointed to today’s soaring prices and ballooning margin debt, and also compared the hype around Bitcoin, electric cars, software-as-a-service companies, and meme stocks to the dot-com and housing bubbles. He alerted that most assets had been "driven by speculative fervor to insane heights from which the fall will be dramatic and painful."

In Burry’s view, today’s overvaluation is much more worrying than what investors experienced in the 1990s, and that speculation is much higher now than in the 1920s. The investor argues that another troubling factor for financial markets is the rising geopolitical tension around the world. He fears that “we are fast moving towards an economic calamity, and government regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve are taking no action to prevent it”.

All things considered, it’s no wonder why he slashed his US portfolio from more than 20 holdings to only six, cutting its total value from almost $140 million to only $42 million. The founder of r/Burryology, a subreddit for Burry's close followers, told in a recent interview that the sales were a huge red flag that signaled Burry was preparing for “the mother of all crashes.” Of course, he is far from alone. Many other billionaire investors such are also getting ready for the meltdown that’s coming and have been sharing their forecasts with clients and online followers in recent weeks.

What makes the situation so alarming is that high valuations are putting the market in the most vulnerable position it’s ever been at a time when strong growth is in question, and liquidity is drying up. In short, this all means that this gigantic stock market bubble is on the verge of a gigantic crash. And those who saw the signs before are seeing them again right now."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Land of Forever”

 

2002, “Land of Forever”

"A Look to the Heavens"

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

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

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

"Three Things..."

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

- Jim Valvano