Tuesday, January 25, 2022

The Poet: James Broughton, "Quit Your Addiction"

"Quit Your Addiction"

 "Quit your addiction
to sneer and complaint.
Try a little flaunt,
Call for comrades
who bolster your vim
and offer you risk.
Corral the crones,
Goose the nice nellies,
Hunt the bear that hugs
and the raven that quoths.
Stay up all night
to devise a new dawn..."

- James Broughton,
 "Little Sermons of the Big Joy"

"Where Your Gaze Lingers..."

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.

You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”
- Haruki Murakami

“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”
- Richelle E. Goodrich

"Don't Wonder..."

"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.
In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,
wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
- "Grey's Anatomy"

"Nothing is Real for This Economy or the Markets"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 1/25/22:
"Nothing is Real for This Economy or the Markets"
"You can’t make this up. Nothing is real right now. Everything with our Economy from the stock market, supply chain and the Fed raising interest rates."

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Insanity of the West Accelerates"

"The Insanity of the West Accelerates"
by Paul Craig Roberts

"The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. "
- C. S. Lewis

"The New York Times reports that Biden is going to forestall Russian aggression against Ukraine by deploying between 1,000 and 5,000 US troops on Russia’s border and is prepared to increase the number of troops tenfold to 10,000 to 50,000 soldiers. A Russian army would eat this small number for a snack in 5 minutes. Clearly the purpose of the deployment is not military. The purpose is to heighten the “Russian threat” in the minds of the people in advance of a false flag event that will be blamed on the Kremlin.

If Biden wants to deter Russia all he needs to do is to give Russia the security guarantee she says she needs. Why does Biden want Russia to be insecure? The cause of the problem is obvious. In 2014 the US in an attempt to deprive Russia of her Black Sea naval base overthrew a Russian-friendly and democratically elected Ukrainian government and installed a neo-Nazi regime that began war against the Russian inhabitants of the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, formerly parts of Russia that had been transferred during the Soviet era into the the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian province.

To stabilize the situation, Russia hammered out the Minsk Agreement but neither Ukraine nor the Western signatories kept the agreement. Russia does not want the broke and troublesome Ukraine. Russia just wants Ukraine not to become a place for US missile bases. It is a simple demand easy to accept in the interest of peace.

But peace is unprofitable and is the last thing the US military/security complex wants. Therefore Washington is responding to the Russian/US/NATO security talks by deploying troops on Russia’s borders. The stupid British are stirring the pot of “Russian aggression” by withdrawing the embassy staff from Kiev. 

We have been hearing from US/NATO about the “growing Russian threat” for a long time. What happens to credibility that is already damaged if there is no Russian invasion? It seems that Washington and its NATO puppets are so far out on the limb that they simply must provoke a Russian invasion.

The Russians are waiting in vain for Washington’s written response to their proposal for mutual security. Washington has answered with more accusations, more provocations.

Is the Kremlin having difficulty understanding: (1) that Trump was removed from office because he said he wanted to normalize relations with Russia, (2) that Russia is the necessary enemy for the power and profit of the US military/security complex, and (3) Russia is regarded as the obstacle to US hegemony? How can it be that in the face of all evidence to the contrary the Kremlin has the delusion that Washington is interested in Russians feeling secure.

While the Kremlin wastes time, weapons pour into Ukraine and the Western media prepare their people for “Russian aggression.” Russian protests of intentions attributed to her are pointless. The Western media knows the required narrative and is not interested in any facts. The question really is whether Russia can accept that she has an enemy."
Related, highly recommended:
"U.S. Betrays Its Heritage by Threatening
 World War III Against Russia and China" (Excerpt)
by Anton Chaitkin

"Americans who cherish our country’s legacy are horrified by our headlong rush to war. America at its best was the very motor of world progress, higher living standards and peace. That is our true national identity. We betray “the better angels of our nature” by making military threats against those who are advancing world powers, as we once were. We commit suicide when we dishonor historic agreements that keep the world safe from nuclear annihilation.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. promised Russian leaders that the U.S.-led military alliance known as NATO would not be extended eastward toward Russia. The transatlantic Globalist war-making faction broke this promise. NATO has moved eastward with eight new members, heavily armed and hostile to Russia. The U.S. installed a far-right anti-Russian regime in Ukraine on Russia’s border, and armed them for conflict.

China has been similarly ringed by threatening U.S. fleets and military bases. Russia and China have made it plain they find this intolerable, and cannot permit it to go further. The world is hurtling toward the unimaginable horror of nuclear war."
Gabbard: "Washington Elites Are In The 
Pockets Of The Military Industrial Complex"
"Putin: If Nukes Head Towards Russia We Are Going
 to Paradise But They Won't Have Time To Repent"

"Fourth Turning 2022: Bad Moon Rising" (Part 2) Excerpt

"Fourth Turning 2022: Bad Moon Rising" (Part 2)
Excerpt
by Jim Quinn

"In Part 1 of this article I laid out how the global elite have used this covid flu to manipulate the weak minded into a fear induced mass psychosis as a key element in their Great Reset plan to control the world and keep you technologically enslaved under lock and key. Now I will try to decipher how this mass hysteria might play out over the course of 2022 and beyond.

“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” 
- Strauss & Howe, "The Fourth Turning"

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny
 and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” 
- George Orwell

The American Dream, where all Americans, no matter the circumstances of their birth, had a legitimate opportunity to live a better life than their parents, based upon their own intelligence, work ethic, and good fortune, is an illusion in today’s world. The ruling elite have stolen the wealth of the nation and its citizens. This was not an accident, but a plan implemented over many decades, accelerating after Nixon closed the gold window and opened the door to unlimited amounts of debt being created out of thin air and backed by nothing.

One of the Fed’s only mandates was to maintain a stable currency. Since its inception in 1913 to 2020, the USD had lost 96% of its purchasing power. The USD has lost 7.5% of its purchasing power since 2020, as Powell and his cronies have lost control of inflation.

It is not a coincidence this Fourth Turning was launched due to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street bankers blowing the largest debt bubble in history (until now), issuing fraudulent mortgage loans to millions of willing and able dupes who could never pay them back, packaging the loans into toxic derivative debt time bombs, bullying and paying off the spineless rating agencies to rate these worthless derivatives AAA, and then selling them to oblivious pension plans and innocent little old ladies. But they eventually ran out of greater fools and clueless suckers. The entire control fraud blew sky high in September 2008, representing the debt catalyst for this Fourth Turning.

For the past thirteen years of this Crisis, the puppets at the Federal Reserve have done as instructed by the Wall Street cabal and globalist billionaire oligarchs. They have papered over an unpayable debt problem by creating $8 trillion more debt and shoveling the proceeds into the pockets of the ruling billionaire oligarchy. The billionaire oligarchs and Wall Street bankers aren’t on the hook for the $30 trillion national debt and the other $100 trillion of unfunded social welfare and pension liabilities.

You, your kids, your grandkids, and unborn generations of hard-working citizens are on the hook. Our standard of living had been in a gradual decline since the 1970s, but we have entered the suddenly stage referenced by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises – “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

The Fed’s balance sheet stood at $800 billion at the start of this Fourth Turning, and now is $8.8 trillion and rising every day. The Repo crisis in September 2019 revealed a systemic glitch in the Fed’s well-oiled machine to pump up stock markets and guarantee unlimited profits for Wall Street. Coincidentally, a pandemic that had been simulated (Event 201) in October by Gates and his WEF cronies, conveniently struck in March 2020, with its very own multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign, and fear propaganda spouted 24/7 from the Big Pharma captured corporate media.

After a faux crash in the markets, the Fed rode to the rescue and has proceeded to print $4.8 trillion in the last two years. Meanwhile, the national debt, which stood at $9 trillion at the start of this Fourth Turning, reached $23 trillion prior to the Covid pandemic, will reach $30 trillion in the next month.

The question that might come to mind for the average person is, “how did the Fed’s actions in the last two years benefit me?”. Well, if you are a billionaire, you did fantastic. The ten richest men in America more than doubled their net worth since the March 2020 launch of their plandemic. Do you think this was an accident? Gates made $36.5 billion off the most heavily marketed flu in history, and he was the lowest among the ten. While your local family-owned hardware store went out of business, Bezos and his Amazon empire got further enriched, with Jeff’s net worth soaring by $75 billion, as his Washington Post did their darndest pumping fear porn propaganda to the ignorant masses.

These ten men added roughly $1 billion per day to their net worth. Compare that to what you earn per day at your job. When ten people rake in $730 billion during a “health crisis”, in which millions of workers were forced out of work or fired, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses were bankrupted, you know the fix was in from the beginning. The Fed’s job was to protect and enhance the wealth of the richest people on earth, while 80-year-old grandmothers got 0.1% on the money market account if they weren’t murdered by a Democratic governor in their nursing home.

America, where a multi-millionaire can achieve the dream of becoming a billionaire by just letting the Fed do their job – pumping stocks. America created 116 new billionaires in less than two years during a “terrible pandemic”, a 19% increase. The American Dream achieved by knowing the right central bankers. Are you paying attention?"

Please view this complete article here:

"Massive Food Shortages At Meijer! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, AM 1/25/22:
"Massive Food Shortages At Meijer! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer with empty shelves everywhere! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a massive food shortage! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets: Make Or Break Not Over Yet"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/25/22:
"Markets: Make Or Break Not Over Yet"

"You Have Enemies?"

 

"10 Signs That Indicate That The U.S., The UK, Israel And NATO All Believe That We Are On The Precipice Of War With Russia"

"10 Signs That Indicate That The U.S., The UK, Israel And
 NATO All Believe That We Are On The Precipice Of War With Russia"
by Michael Snyder

"Are we about to stumble into a war that nobody wants? As I will explain below, it would be so easy to avoid a military conflict with Russia, but the people running our foreign policy have ruled out any easy solutions. Instead, they seem absolutely determined to have some sort of a macho showdown with Russia, and that is extremely dangerous. Sadly, these days most Americans can’t even identify our current Secretary of State, and the name “Jake Sullivan” means absolutely nothing to the vast majority of the population. But these are the guys that are telling the senile old guy in the Oval Office what to do about Russia.

What the Russians want is not complicated. They don’t want western missiles in Ukraine, and they don’t want Ukraine to join NATO. Those two requests are not unreasonable. Just imagine how we would feel if Canada joined a military alliance with Russia and all of a sudden there were Russian missiles stationed all along the U.S.-Canadian border. We wouldn’t like that very much, would we? Well, that is how the Russians feel about the situation in Ukraine.

The Russians have put their requests into two draft treaties, but those two draft treaties have been firmly rejected by the Biden administration… "Speaking to reporters following talks in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Friday, Blinken said that the American side had given a “firm and substantive” response to two draft treaties proposed by Moscow. “I made clear to Minister Lavrov that there are certain principles that the US, our partners and allies, are committed to defend. That includes those that would impede the sovereign right of the Ukrainian people to write their own future. There is no trade-space there – none,” he said."

If Blinken, Sullivan and the rest of Joe Biden’s national security team were actually competent, this crisis could be over by now. But instead they have made it clear that there will be absolutely no compromises. So where do we go from here?

The following are 10 signs that indicate that the U.S., the UK, Israel and NATO all believe that we are on the precipice of war with Russia…

#1 The U.S. State Department has issued a formal travel advisory warning that Americans should stay out of Ukraine.

#2 The U.S. and the UK are both reducing embassy staffing levels in Kyiv.

#3 Family members of U.S. embassy personnel in Kyiv are being evacuated.

#4 Israel is planning a “mass evacuation” of Jewish people from Ukraine.

#5 CNN is reporting that as many as “8,500 US troops have been put on heightened alert for a possible deployment to Eastern Europe”.

#6 The New York Times is reporting that the Biden administration is also considering sending “warships and aircraft” into the region.

#7 Other western European nations are also preparing to send forces to eastern Europe… Denmark is sending a frigate and deploying F-16 warplanes to Lithuania; Spain will send warships and could send fighter jets to Bulgaria; and France stands ready to send troops to Romania.

#8 A British news source is reporting that “hundreds of military trains packed with Russian troops” have been moving into Belarus.

#9 UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is alleging that the Russians are planning a “lightning war that could take out Kyiv”.

#10 The U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has announced that they have obtained information “suggesting that the Russian government is plotting to install a pro-Kremlin leader in Kyiv”.

Despite all of the hysteria, I personally do not believe that war will erupt immediately. But without a doubt, the stage is definitely being set for the sort of military conflict with Russia that I have been warning about for many years.

Meanwhile, the U.S. also continues to provoke China. This weekend, two U.S. aircraft carrier groups “began operations in the South China Sea”… "Two US aircraft carrier groups have entered the disputed South China Sea as Chinese Air Force planes continue to fly near Taiwan, which China also claims. The US Navy says two carrier strike groups, led by the USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln, began operations in the South China Sea on Saturday."

If you really want to piss off China, that is a great way to do it. In response, the Chinese sent large numbers of warplanes into Taiwanese airspace on Sunday and Monday… "On Monday, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense said 13 Chinese planes flew into the country’s Air Defense Identification Zone. Taiwan reported 39 Chinese Air Force planes in the protected air space on Sunday."

I know that the Russians are getting far more attention from the mainstream media right now, but we are also getting dangerously close to a military conflict with the Chinese. The national security team that Joe Biden has surrounded himself with are extremely incompetent, and they are also a bunch of warmongers. Needless to say, that is an exceedingly combustible combination.

It is the worst national security team in the history of the United States by a wide margin, and I am entirely convinced that they are going to spark a war. Hopefully it will not be next week or even next month, but without a doubt the clock is ticking. These warmongers are making colossal mistake after colossal mistake, and it won’t be too long before we all pay a great price for their ineptitude."

Monday, January 24, 2022

"I’m Afraid Supply Chain Collapse Is Just Getting Started"

Full screen recommended.
"I’m Afraid Supply Chain Collapse Is Just Getting Started"
Skip to 2:38 to avoid ad.
by Epic Economist

"The catastrophic collapse of the global supply chain is calling a lot of attention in recent weeks. Everyone seems to be worried about the breakdown of this complex system that allows goods to move around the world. From finding groceries at your local supermarket to buying a new car or domestic appliances, every good across the chain seems to be scarce. On top of that, deliveries are facing massive delays and consumers’ options are getting increasingly limited. Many people are still wondering why is all of this still happening. After almost two years of persistent disruptions, the government has vowed to fix our current supply chain issues. But up until this point, things have only gotten more entangled and the crisis has been severely aggravated. There are many reasons behind this complex problem, and in an analysis recently published by the economist and financial expert James Rickards, we can find a more detailed answer.

First, we have to consider that the supply chain is an extensive, interconnected and dynamic system, and when any complex system collapses, looking for a specific cause won’t take us anywhere. This sort of internal chain collapse happens because these systems are essentially too large and too reliant on one another, they also require an extraordinary amount of energy inputs to keep running. So any specific cause cited by government authorities and the so-called experts is more likely to be a symptom rather than a true cause. And although that may be frustrating, it’s not possible to solve a complex problem with a simple solution. But now, it has reached everything. And it’s not just grocery stores. As Rickards explains, it’s every supermarket, convenience store and retail outlet from coast to coast. And, of course, it’s not just cleaning products and paper goods. Your local store might have empty shelves for eggs, meat, canned goods, peanut butter, milk and many other staples.

Evidently, stockouts of certain goods happen from time to time, but the shortages we’re witnessing right now are far more widespread than they’ve ever been. In every store you enter, you can be sure that something will be missing and some of the shelves will be bare. And yet, the government and the mainstream media are still trying to push the narrative that this crisis is going to end soon, and that steps are being taken to alleviate shortages and backlogs and everything will be back to normal in a short while. They have been blaming the ongoing shortages on the new surge of virus cases and the number of workers currently sick. They argue that things will be calmer once the outbreak is put under control. But that’s the narrative, not the reality. There’s growing evidence that the supply chain crisis is just beginning, and it will stay with us for years and have some major economic consequences.

Supply chains are global, and given that everything is connected, everything is collapsing all at once. On the other side of the globe, conditions are pretty chaotic, too. China, the world’s leading manufacturer, is shutting down factories at a large scale due to newly confirmed vírus cases. The country has a zero-tolerance policy, in which even a single new infection case can trigger a lockdown.

This situation is considerably aggravating, and it will worsen even further as more as we move toward the Beijing Olympics and the Lunar New Year holidays in China. That’s to say, as the world’s largest producer is shutting down production for now and for many months to come, we will continue to feel the impacts of this here in America, and it’s safe to say that most people are not prepared for what’s coming next. These disruptions are likely to persist for years, and most investors are still not pricing all the risks it poses. It won’t be simple to solve it and it’s definitely not something that can be fixed quickly. Supply chain problems will be translated into higher costs, lower earnings, and ultimately lower stock prices in the market. And with indexes nearing or at all-time highs, now more than ever it is time to move away from vulnerable assets before the supply chain reality catches up with the stock market bubble – because when it does, things will be disastrous."

“Nothing Is Rational Anymore”

“Nothing Is Rational Anymore”
by Brian Maher

"The stairs up… and the elevator down. Here you have the stock market’s general rate of travel, depending upon its direction of travel. The stock market has lately made tremendous speed - downward. It has been imprisoned within a plunging elevator car, stark with terror, abandoned to the mercies of merciless gravity.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ascended the staircase to 36,952 by Jan. 5 - just prior to abandoning it for mechanical, accelerated transport. The doors proceeded to slam closed… a fraying cable relented… and the index began careening earthward. Under three weeks later, today, the Dow Jones goes at 34,354 - a 2,500-point joyless ride down the chute. It was careening nearly another 1,000 points today… until very late in the afternoon. The Dow Jones then began to rise and rise - as if under magical influence, as if by some occult magnetism, as if by conjury. It closed trading up a miraculous 99 points, at the aforesaid 34,354.

Mysterious Levitation: The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite have been jammed into the identical elevator, enduring identical horrors. The S&P quit the stairs on Jan. 4, at the level of 4,818. Into the elevator car it went... Today, it was down to 4,333 - a nearly 500-point plummeting to the lower floors. Yet the same wizardry that worked upon the Dow Jones late in the day pulled upon the S&P. The index scratched out a 12-point gain by closing whistle.

The Nasdaq plunged over 2,000 points across the same span. It has in fact gone freefalling into “correction” - defined officially as a 10% falling from recent peaks. But precisely like the other major indexes, the Nasdaq got a good hauling up today, and at the identical time. It closed trading with an 86-point gain.

What Happened? Explains CNBC: "Stocks mounted a dramatic comeback on Monday as investors stepped in to buy beaten-up tech shares… Investors began Monday’s session dumping technology shares as they have all month on fears the Federal Reserve would soon aggressively tighten policy. But those shares rebounded as the day went on with Facebook-parent Meta, Amazon and Microsoft closing higher…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 1,000 points, before coming back to close about 100 points higher. The S&P 500 was off by nearly 4% at its session low but managed to eke out a small gain. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.6% after falling as much as 4.9%."

The article cites “fears the Federal Reserve would soon aggressively tighten policy.” Once again, CNBC: "Though some areas of the market considered more expensive or speculative began to struggle in November, the broader market took a big step back during the first week of January following increasing hints from the Federal Reserve that the central bank will take aggressive action to slow down the jump in consumer prices…

The central bank has signaled that it plans to stop its asset purchases, hike rates and possibly reduce its balance sheet, starting in March. Government bond yields have surged in preparation for the rate increases, with the U.S. 10-year Treasury rising more than 40 basis points this year alone…"

Did Investors Simply “Buy the Dip”? Yet why did Meta, Amazon and Microsoft close higher after losing to gravity much of the day? Why the late jumps? Why the nearly 1,100-point swing of the Dow Jones? We have rarely witnessed such a violent market schizophrenia within such a tight stretch. Did the fears besieging markets for the past weeks scatter suddenly late this afternoon? We can discern little reason why they would.

Experts would have us believe investors simply bought “the dip” late this afternoon. JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic: "The recent pullback in risk assets appears overdone, and a combination of technical indicators approaching oversold territory and sentiment turning bearish suggest we could be in the final stages of this correction." Just so. Yet this lovely theory leaves us far from convinced.

A Possible Clue: Did investors discover the technical indicators only late in the day? We hazard markets were “oversold” throughout the morning and much of the afternoon. So then, what was the source of enchanting white magic? Why did stocks abruptly reverse today’s vicious plummet? Perhaps the algorithms initiated stock purchases once markets approached a particular floor.

Yet perhaps Mr. Kolanovic gives another clue, an unintentioned clue: "While the market struggles to digest the rotation forced on it by rising rates… in a worst-case scenario could see a return of the “Fed put.”

“Nothing Is Rational Anymore”: Perhaps markets decided the Federal Reserve will ride heroically to their rescue. It has proven a safe wager in the past. Perhaps, even, someone within the Federal Reserve whispered into someone’s ear that its asset purchases will continue - that it will repair the elevator before the plummets continue. We have no answer of course. Perhaps - unlikely though it is - the experts are correct. Markets are oversold and investors sniffed opportunity.

We extended a line to our colleague Dave Gonigam of The 5 Min. Forecast late this afternoon. Perhaps his spies had reported rumors, we wondered. They did not. Mr. Gonigam could only raise his arms up into the air… and sigh: “Nothing is rational anymore.” We have arrived at the identical conclusion. Nothing is rational anymore — nor has anything been rational for years and years.

Twisting the Signs on the Road to Price Discovery: For years the Federal Reserve twisted the road signs on the road to price discovery. East is west, west is east. North is south and south is north. Or is north west? Is west south? No one can say. The Federal Reserve has blocked off every southbound lane … and detoured all traffic into one single lane heading north.

The Fed’s Monster Dilemma: Or to return to our elevator analogy: The Federal Reserve has kept the elevator car ranging between the upper floors. Yet it now has a burgeoning inflation on its hands. It must tighten monetary policy in order to scotch it. Yet those trapped in the elevator car require monetary easiness. The one question then remains: Will the Federal Reserve let the elevator go crashing to the ground?"

"We Are Being Warned That A Horrifying STOCK MARKET CRASH Which Could Wipe Out Trillions Has Now Begun"

"We Are Being Warned That A Horrifying STOCK
 MARKET CRASH Which Could Wipe Out Trillions Has Now Begun"
by Michael Snyder

"What would our country look like if an epic market crash suddenly wiped out 35 trillion dollars in financial wealth? You may not want to think about something so horrible, but we are being warned that it could soon happen. Stock prices have been falling for three weeks in a row, and last week was the worst week for U.S. stocks in a really, really long time. The S&P 500 is now down more than 8 percent from the peak of the market, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is already in correction territory. At this point, the Nasdaq is off to its worst beginning to a year in decades, and many are extremely concerned about what is coming next. In fact, Bank of America is warning that all hell breaks loose if the Nasdaq closes below 14,000.

Hopefully that won’t happen this week. But it might.

Last week, one of the most respected names in the financial world made headlines all over the globe when he warned that the stock market crash which has now begun will end the “superbubble” that Wall Street has been enjoying for so many years… "Jeremy Grantham, the famed investor who for decades has been calling market bubbles, said the historic collapse in stocks he predicted a year ago is underway and even intervention by the Federal Reserve can’t prevent an eventual plunge of almost 50%.

In a note posted Thursday, Grantham, the co-founder of Boston asset manager GMO, describes U.S. stocks as being in a “super bubble,” only the fourth of the past century. And just as they did in the crash of 1929, the dot-com bust of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008, he’s certain this bubble will burst, sending indexes back to statistical norms and possibly further."

According to Grantham, there have been five other “superbubbles” and they have all ended badly… "He noted that US stocks have experienced two such “superbubbles” before: 1929, a market fall that led to the Great Depression, and again in 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst. He also said the US housing market was a “superbubble” in 2006 and that the 1989 Japanese stock and housing markets were both “superbubbles.” “All five of these superbubbles corrected all the way back to trend with much greater and longer pain than average,” Grantham wrote."

We should give some credit to the “geniuses” at the Federal Reserve for keeping the party going for as long as they have, but by inflating this bubble to such an absurd size they have set the stage for a meltdown that will be unparalleled in our entire history.

As I have warned so many times over the years, stock valuation ratios always return to their long-term averages eventually. If they were to fall just two-thirds of the way to historical norms, Grantham says that wealth losses in the U.S. “could total $35 trillion”… “For the first time in the U.S. we have simultaneous bubbles across all major asset classes,” said Grantham, co-founder of investment firm GMO, in a paper Thursday. He estimated wealth losses could total $35 trillion in the U.S. should valuations across major asset classes return two-thirds of the way to historical norms."

If this actually happens, it will result in an economic horror show that will be unlike anything we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history. And it was all set up by the Federal Reserve and our extremely irresponsible politicians in Washington.

But hopefully stock prices will bounce back up a bit this week and we will have some more time before the really big crash arrives. Because once it gets here, nothing will ever be the same again.

When the S&P 500 fell below its 200 day moving average last week, that freaked a lot of people out. To many investors, that was a clear sign that it was time to leave the party. Tech stocks were the poster children for the seemingly endless stock market rally, and now they are starting to lead the way down. In fact, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell more than 1 percent during every single trading session last week. The last time that happened was during the implosion of the “dotcom bubble”… "To wit, the Nasdaq 100 just did something it hasn’t done since the aftermath of the internet bubble: fall more than 1% in every session of a week. It doesn’t count as a superlative because Monday was a holiday. But for investors caught up in the selloff, it felt like something shifted."

A full week of big down days hasn’t happened since the dot-com bubble burst, first in April 2000 and then in September 2001. Back then, the Nasdaq went on to fall another 28% before the market bottomed roughly a year later. Thanks to disappointing subscriber numbers, Netflix was a tech stock that was hit particularly hard… "Netflix shares fell 21.8% Friday after the company quietly admitted in its fourth-quarter earnings that streaming competition is eating into its growth. It marks Netflix’s worst day since July 25, 2012, when shares fell 25%. It’s also its worst week since July 27, 2012, when the stock fell about 28%."

And Amazon was another tech stock that really got hammered… "Shares of Amazon fell 12% for the week, as a broader market sell-off pressured technology stocks. It marks Amazon’s worst one-week performance in four years, since Dec. 21, 2018, when the shares fell 13.4%." If you can believe it, Jeff Bezos actually saw the size of his fortune shrink by 20 billion dollars last week. Ouch. Could you imagine losing that much money in a single week?

Bitcoin investors are feeling a lot of pain right now as well. At this point, the price of Bitcoin is down more than 50 percent from the record high in November… Bitcoin extended its decline on Saturday, and has shed more than 50% from its record high in November while adding further momentum to the meltdown in cryptocurrencies.

But this isn’t the end of the party on Wall Street. This is just the beginning of the end. Unless there is some sort of an unexpected trigger event, I think that it is likely that we will get some sort of a bounce this week. Of course nobody should take a bounce as a sign that the pain is over. Ultimately, Grantham is quite correct that our “superbubble” is going to spectacularly burst. The only question is the timing.

Once the inevitable implosion takes place, things will start to change in this country at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking, and nothing will ever be the same again."

"Plunge Protections Team Saves Stock Market From Meltdown; Economy In Shambles; Manipulation Danger"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/24/22:
"Plunge Protections Team Saves Stock Market From Meltdown;
 Economy In Shambles; Manipulation Danger"

Gregory Mannarino, "Stock Market Bloodbath Leads To Massive Buying At The Low; Economy Continues To Crater

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/24/22:
"Stock Market Bloodbath Leads To Massive Buying At The Low;
 Economy Continues To Crater"

Musical Interlude: Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"

Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda (also known as M31), a mere 2.5 million light-years distant, is the closest large spiral to our own Milky Way. Andromeda is visible to the unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch, but because its surface brightness is so low, casual skygazers can't appreciate the galaxy's impressive extent in planet Earth's sky. 
This entertaining composite image compares the angular size of the nearby galaxy to a brighter, more familiar celestial sight. In it, a deep exposure of Andromeda, tracing beautiful blue star clusters in spiral arms far beyond the bright yellow core, is combined with a typical view of a nearly full Moon. Shown at the same angular scale, the Moon covers about 1/2 degree on the sky, while the galaxy is clearly several times that size. The deep Andromeda exposure also includes two bright satellite galaxies, M32 and M110 (below and right)."

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, “Mind and Heart”

“Mind and Heart”

“Unaccountably we are alone,
forever alone,
and it was meant to be
that way,
it was never meant
to be any other way -
and when the death struggle begins
the last thing I wish to see is
a ring of human faces
hovering over me -
better just my old friends,
the walls of my self,
let only them be there.

I have been alone but seldom lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well of my self
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and tonight, sitting,
staring into the dark
I now finally understand
the dark and the
light and everything
in between.

Peace of mind and heart arrives
when we accept what is:
having been born into this strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our days,
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of leaving it all behind.

Cry not for me.
Grieve not for me.
Read
what I’ve written
then forget it all.
Drink from the well
of your self and begin again.”

- Charles Bukowski

"I Do Not Think..."

"I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long."
- Arthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel"
And if they're really intelligent they'll take one 
look and turn around and go home...
Full screen recommended.

"We Are Very Much Afraid..."

"In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is. If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its way into our minds, there are plenty of things we can do to drive the intruder away. We can get the car out or go to a party or to the cinema or read a detective story or have a row with a district council or write a letter to the papers about the habits of the nightjar or Shakespeare's use of nautical metaphor. Thus we build up a defense mechanism against self-questioning because, to tell the truth, we are very much afraid of ourselves."
- Dorothy L. Sayers

Free Download: Paulo Coelho, "Like The River Flowing"

"A breathtaking collection of reflections from one of the world's best loved storytellers, Paulo Coelho. In this riveting collection of thoughts and stories, Paulo Coelho, the author of ‘The Alchemist’, offers his personal reflections on a wide range of subjects from archery and music to elegance, traveling and the nature of good and evil.

An old woman explains to her grandson how a mere pencil can show him the path to happiness…instructions on how to climb a mountain reveal the secret to making your dreams a reality…the story of Ghengis Khan and the Falcon that teaches about the folly of anger – and the art of friendship…a pianist who performs an example in fulfilling your destiny…the author learns three important lessons when he goes to the rescue of a man in the street – Paulo shows us how life has lessons for us in the greatest, smallest and most unusual of experiences.

‘Like the Flowing River’ includes jewel-like fables, packed with meaning and retold in Coelho's inimitable style. Sharing his thoughts on spirituality, life and ethics, Paulo touches you with his philosophy and invites you to go on an exciting journey of your own."

Freely download "Like The River Flowing", by Paulo Coelho, here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Invercargill, Southland, New Zealand.
Thanks for stopping by!

"If We Falter..."

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.
The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic
feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."
- John Stuart Mill

"Panic-like Selling Emerges Monday As Stock Market Tumbles and Dow Skids Over 1,000 Points"

"Panic-like Selling Emerges Monday As
 Stock Market Tumbles and Dow Skids Over 1,000 Points"
Last Updated: Jan. 24, 2022 at 12:32 p.m. ET

Market Data Center - Live Updates:
As the FED frantically buys everything in sight...

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
"What A Week. And What a Weekend!"
by Bill Bonner

"The Nasdaq is off to its worst start since 2008. Back then it fell 13.6% in the first 14 trading days of the year. By Friday’s close it was down over 11% year-to-date here in 2022. If things keep tracking this way, it will be the worst January since the inception of the index in 1971, according to Dow Jones Data.

Will Bitcoin save you? Maybe in the long-run. But in the short-run, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency is down 23.6% year-to-date and over 50% from its high near $70,000 last year. This kind of volatility is nothing new for speculative assets, although it IS unusual for an asset whose supporters claim it is also a store of value.

There is plenty of pain to go around. Look at the chart below, sent by our colleague Dan Denning over the weekend. Warren Buffett (the compounding tortoise) has caught up with Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood (the hare) and her racy Ark Innovation ETF (ARRK).
Click image for larger size.
Both Buffett and Wood are still up since the beginning of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. Both benefited from the Fed’s war against normalcy… with a huge expansion in the Fed’s balance sheet and much lower interest rates. The big question now is: what next?

If it’s a ‘super bubble,’ as Jeremy Grantham, the 83-year old founder of Grantham Mayer van Otterloo, says, the major indexes may fall by 50% or more. Grantham’s math is roughly the same as ours. About $35 trillion in ‘wealth’ will be wiped out.

In other words, the real bear market hasn’t even begun. Real bear markets last months and years, not days and hours. And by the time they’ve done their work, no one is trying to find the bottom any more. At the bottom of a bear market, no one wants to talk about innovation, NFTs, or decentralized finance."

"The Whole World is Crashing - Brace for Impact"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/24/22:
"The Whole World is Crashing - Brace for Impact"
"Name something that is not affected by the supply chain problems right now? We are seeing a worldwide problem with everything. Prices are going up around the globe on everything. Nothing is successful in being done to stop this."

"How It Really Is"

 

"A Real American Hero"

"A Real American Hero"
by Jim Kunstler

"Wonder much about the eerie blank demeanor of Erin Burnett, who delivers the 7:00 o’clock news on CNN? I sure do. It’s a creepy kind of fraught blankness, like what the Vietnam grunts used to call the thousand-mile stare, denoting their guilty involvement in a morally odious enterprise. Of course, one must follow CNN in order to discern what fresh bullsh*t the governing regime is serving up day-to-day from its steam-table of perfidy and bad faith. Does the lady hate her job that much? Or does that farbissiner face signify mere simmering contempt for the audience of deplorable elderly gorks receiving said bullsh*t over their pitiful TV trays of Ensure on Froot Loops? Or maybe a miniature Donald Trump lives in her head dressed in a little red devil suit with horns, stabbing her parietal lobes with his tiny pitchfork?

Seeing as how Ms. Burnett is the mouthpiece for the Progressive Woke news media in the primest evening slot, does that glowering visage represent the peculiar joylessness of the political Left, a movement steeped in a special kind of shame induced by the irritating failure of its ideas to comport with reality? This is the joylessness of people bunkered too deep in anomie to even find pleasure in their own sadism. Thus, the hint of bored indignation: how dare you not believe the bullsh*t I am delivering on behalf of your betters… who know what’s good for you?

Or maybe the girl is just on quaaludes.

Anyway, nothing serves as a better barometer of how things are going in the struggle over the fate of this tortured land than Erin Burnett’s scowling puss. And where is this country going? I will tell you: straight into a dark passage of the profoundest political discord, an epochal nightmare of loss and death brought on, it begins to seem, deliberately, by the folks in charge. They are being found out, and the fact that they remain in charge spells ever more obvious danger among all concerned as the truth of their crimes emerges.

Sunday, at the March Against Mandates in our nation’s capital, the resistance to Covid vaccine tyranny laid it out, none with plainer eloquence than Bobby Kennedy: "We love the United States Constitution. And we have witnessed over the past 20 months a coup d’etat against democracy and the demolition, the controlled demolition of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And starting with the censorship. James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson all said the same thing: we put freedom of speech in the first amendment because all of the other rights that we were trying to protect relied on that right. If you give government the license to silence its critics, you have given them the capacity to commit any atrocity they want, and to obliterate all the amendments and rights in the constitution."

The message is getting through and the tyrants are running scared. They are perhaps having bad dreams involving torches and pitchforks. Naturally CNN took the lead in attempting to defame Mr. Kennedy as an anti-Semite for mentioning the name of Anne Frank in alluding to the Nazi insanity of the last century and people’s desperate efforts to escape it. CNN said:

"The son of former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has a long history of spreading vaccine misinformation…. Sunday’s event, billed as a protest against vaccine mandates, featured speakers repeatedly spreading misinformation about vaccines and showcased several bigoted comparisons to the Holocaust. At least one man was seen displaying a yellow Star of David, which Jews were required by law to wear as an identifier in Nazi Germany."

So, wearing a Star of David now makes you an insurrectionist in the twisted logic of Wokery. How stupid and confused are they? Anyway, heroes emerge out of adversity. Let them pile it on, insulting history and reality. In fact, Bobby Kennedy stood in the cold at the Lincoln Memorial as a heroic figure for these times, giving a speech that carefully and succinctly denoted the stupendous criminality of the US public health bureaucracy and the corporate-government fascist partnership with Pharma Inc. that has poisoned hundreds of millions of Americans in a medical experiment that has only begun to kill possibly more people than the Nazis ever dreamed of murdering. There has not been a more important public utterance in this land than RFK Jr.’s since this century began.

Meanwhile, the Covid tyranny collapses across Western Civ. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK tossed his country’s entire Covid restriction program into the dumpster last week as the truth about vaccine failure and injuries became impossible to avoid. The Czech Republic and Ireland followed. France made noises about lifting her policies in February. For now, Germany and Austria remained locked-into their Teutonic obedience neurosis, but how much longer can that last? Or does it finally break up the EU? Large street protests rocked European cities Sunday, too. The vaccines have lost their credibility as sacred totems against the accelerating chaos in the advanced nations of the world, who stand to lose the very advancements in prosperity, comfort, and convenience they enjoyed in the centuries of energy super-abundance.

What awaits now is mayhem in the financial markets, the banking system, and national currencies - underway even as you read this. It’s not enough that the people of Western Civ have been battered by a contrived assault on their physical health; now they’ll watch themselves go broke and hungry. Maybe even the monsters of idiocy behind president “Joe Biden” can cook up a world-beating hypersonic war over a country we have next-to-zero national interest in just to make things perfect. I can’t wait to see the look on Erin Burnett’s face as the history of the future unspools."