"Our Time’s 1989 Moment, Maybe?"

"Our Time’s 1989 Moment, Maybe?"

by Eric Peters

"The good news is the wheels are finally coming off. It was the only way the runaway truck of Sickness Psychosis could ever be stopped. The Biden Thing’s heavy-handed attempt to force-medicate the entire country has been stymied by the courts – again! – which should make it much harder for the corporations to force-medicate employees. They now have both firmer ground to stand on as regards refusing to go along with it as well as the far more important pressure-relief valve of an alternative to it.

Without a government mandate, applicable everywhere, there will always be employers who don’t insist that employment is contingent upon being medicated. This makes it much more difficult for employers who do insist on it to continue so insisting. People can just quit – and go to work someplace sane. Leaving the insane other place without workers. It’s hard to get things done without them.

It’s kind of like having fifty different states,with some states having low (or even no) state income taxes and a more live-and-let-live culture. When there is a freedom option, most people will take it. And even if they don’t, the fact that they could applies a salutary pressure upon those who would take it away. Which is why the underlying theme of the Cult of Sickness Abiding was always and above all to take it away, everywhere. From “masks” to Jabs, the same for all – and everywhere.

Luckily for us, we do have fifty different states – including states like Florida, which provided not only an alternative but also an example. People there were not only free to show their faces, the fact that they did showed that not showing them wasn’t the magical talisman against sickness and death asserted by the Cult. It is certain that Florida’s example undermined the bogeyman assertions made by the Faucists, that failing to abide by the “guidelines” urged by them would guarantee death and doom.

When it didn’t, the Faucists began to look not merely like ridiculous hysterics but something more sinister. The apoplectic fury directed at Florida and especially at Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, makes no sense unless it is prompted by something other than “concern” for what is styled “public health” – an odd turn of phrase given there’s no such thing, except as a vague rhetorical abstraction. People are healthy or not. There is no such thing as collective (i.e., “public”) health.

By letting people breathe – and live – DeSantis established it was not necessary to force them to breathe through a “mask” – nor turn their lives upside down in order to continue living. Florida proved that normalcy is healthy. You’d think – if “concern” over people’s “health” were the driving motive – that the Faucists would have thanked DeSantis for proving them wrong. Perhaps even apologized for getting it wrong. Assuming they were well-intended. But admitting that DeSantis was right makes it harder to continue selling – imposing – what is wrong. What is evil.

People began to see the emperor’s new clothes. Rather, they began to see that the emperor was prancing around naked, his gray-haired man boobs flopping around in the breeze. The sight wasn’t – isn’t – pretty.

Now it looks like a whole country, Great Britain is going to follow Florida’s example. It will soon be legal for people in Great Britain to practice normalcy again, too. The whole show – all the Sickness Kabuki “practices” – is about to be shelved as far as being mandatory. No more “masking” – unless you want to. No more having to present paperwork documenting you’ve had your rabies shots to get a cup of coffee or shop, either.

This is going to make it harder for other European countries to continue practicing abnormalcy – for the same reason that Florida’s example is making it hard for other states in America to continue practicing it. Even in states where it is still technically expected – such as California – it is becoming harder to insist on it. This writer has family in Oceanside, CA – which is part of California, one of the states most firmly in thrall to the Cult of Sickness Abiding. And yet, even there, the rituals are losing their puissance because the mechanisms of the state aren’t insisting upon them. The city government says it is not going to enforce the state government’s decree that people “mask” in order to shop. And so, many don’t.

The more who don’t, the more who won’t. Sanity re-asserts itself. People see it’s ok to show their faces. More faces show. Color and life returns. This could be our time’s 1989 Moment – the reference being to the fall of the old Soviet Union and the coming down of the wall between East and West Berlin. As long as there was a West Berlin as a counterpoint to East Berlin, people wanted to get out of East Berlin. As long as there is something other than the Soviet Union, people will know that living in a Soviet Union isn’t the only way to live. With Florida leading the way, here – we may be on our way back to America, too."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Apple Saves Stock Market Today; Economic Depression On Deck; FED Still Buying Assets"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/28/22:

"Apple Saves Stock Market Today; Economic Depression On Deck;

FED Still Buying Assets"

"Chaos At Ports: Cargo Theft Soars 356% As Container Crisis Worsens In California"

Full screen recommended.

"Chaos At Ports: Cargo Theft Soars 356% 

As Container Crisis Worsens In California"

by Epic Economist

"Thieves have been raiding cargo containers every day and taking thousands of products that belong to consumers from all over the country. Shocking new images and footage published by CBS LA this week show debris ‘as far as the eye can see’ laying outside ports and across rail yards as massive package theft accelerates due to a record backlog of containers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Cargo is being stolen at ports way before dockworkers have a chance to unload the containers. And in rail yards, when trains stop in the downtown section of Union Pacific tracks to unload their wares, often staying overnight, thieves target them and take away all valuable merchandise they can find in the hauls. Giant piles of opened packages and torn cardboard boxes can be seen tossed along the train tracks and right off the twin California ports. And it’s more than just a pain – it’s costing a lot of money for everyone in the supply chain, including end consumers.

Many companies have reportedly lost millions of packages, in particular retail giants who ship high volumes of cargo on a daily basis. “Doesn’t matter what time it is. It could be broad daylight and they just don’t care,” Union Pacific subcontractor Louis Barosas said of the thieves while crews were working at the site of the derailment. CargoNet, a company that tracks cargo theft across the country for retailers and insurance companies, explains that this is happening partly because of the historic shift to e-commerce and the extraordinary uptick in consumer demand over the past few years. Ports have never handled such a high volume of cargo, and with a shortage of labor plaguing the supply chain sector, it’s never been harder to move all of those goods around the nation until they get to the stores.

Union Pacific data suggests that cargo theft has soared 160% in Los Angeles since December 2020, and that on average, more than 90 containers are compromised every day. In several months of 2021, the increase from the previous year surpassed 200%, according to the company. For the month of January 2022, the increase is estimated to surpass 356% compared to the year before. In a recent letter sent by companies to L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, retailers urged action to deal with “the spiraling crisis of organized and opportunistic rail theft.”

“Organized retail theft is one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the world due to the dramatic growth of business-to-consumer online sales, which rose from $4.2 trillion in 2019 to $5.3 trillion in 2020 due to [the health crisis],” explained Matt Albence, a spokesperson for United to Safeguard America from Illegal Trade, also known as USA-IT. Albence’s organization is a private-public partnership created to fight against the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods. “The looting of packages from trains like those seen in Los Angeles County are tied to the same networks connected to the ‘smash and grabs’ happening across the country – and for good reason: it is a low-risk, high-reward offense,” he highlighted.

The biggest issue is the lack of space to process all of the incoming cargo. Crowded container yards prevent ships from unloading efficiently, which gives the offenders numerous targets to choose from. On the other hand, the rising level of cargo theft means that it is consumers who will ultimately feel the impact, with theft now being added to a myriad of other supply chain problems and weighting as an inflationary factor. "Any time you have a theft you're going to have a shortage of certain items," Cornell said. "There will be even fewer things on the shelves when you go out to shop.”

At least 150 container ships are loitering within 40 miles from the ports, plus another 95 slow speed steaming outside the Safety and Air Quality Area. Port congestion is actually worse now than during the holiday season, given that many foreign shippers have sent their goods too late last year. At this point, Americans’ expectations of rising prices are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. And slower production, slower shipping, and massive cargo theft are only going to make shortages worse. That’s to say, a lot more turbulence is coming for us, and we should definitely start getting ready for the worst because this crisis is far from over."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"The Backlash Is Here"

"The Backlash Is Here"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"The national press barely covered the anti-mandate, anti-lockdown rally in D.C. last Sunday, and when they did, they mostly described it as an “anti-vaccine rally.” That’s a ridiculous thing to say about an event involving some 10K-plus people who have had enough of the coercive impositions of the last nearly two years. To be there, they braved the cold, the cruelties of today’s plane travel, the D.C. vaccination and mask mandates, the prospect of being doxxed from facial recognition technology, plus the financial strains that have hit so many families due to business closures and inflation.

All differences of opinion aside, the main message was that everyone has a right to freedom. Let’s get back to the progress we were experiencing in our lives before this great disruption. Why did it take so long for Americans finally to hit the streets in protest? For one thing, it was mostly illegal to do so from March 13, 2020, onward. States imposed stay-at-home orders and limited gatherings to 10 people. People couldn’t meet for civic clubs, church, family reunions, much less anything vaguely political. They forcibly separated people for many months. When the George Floyd protests began, they got the green light but that light later turned red again.

The Backlash Is Here: Today there is massive pent-up frustration out there, alongside depression, ill health, financial hardship and generalized shock to discover that we live in a country where freedom can no longer be taken for granted. We know now that at any moment, they can close our businesses and our churches and take away our right to travel or even to show a smile. On any pretext. Absolutely astonishing.

Is a backlash coming? It is here. It is a bit quiet for now but it will not stay that way. The ruling class absolutely overplayed its hand this time. In the coming few years, they will rediscover that rulers in every society must acquiesce to the consent of the governed over the long term. When that consent is withdrawn, the results can be wildly unpredictable, but they generally mitigate against the rulers and in favor of a new way of doing things. How can I be confident about this? It comes down to three different ways to view the course of history.

Is There a Direction to History? One, history is on one long trajectory headed toward one great culminating moment. Every moment in history points toward that end state. That is Hegel and Marx and a slew of crazy ideologues who think in that millenarian tradition. Also, some apocalyptic religions’ traditions hold that view. This worldview – the perception of inevitability somehow baked into the stream of events – has made a great deal of mischief over time.

Two, history is just one thing after another with no particular rhyme or reason. Anyone who tries to make sense of it is inventing mirages of meaning that do not exist in reality. That view was generally held by English philosopher David Hume (but it’s a crude summary). There is something to this idea, but it doesn’t quite take account of certain observable ebbs and flows.

Three, history is cyclical, with overlapping rounds of error and truth, good and evil, liberty and power, progress and reaction, bull and bear markets, recession and recovery, centralization and decentralization, and these cycles are powered by the ebb and flow of forces within the population that shape them.

From my description, you can probably tell that this is the view I hold. It strikes me as realistic and fits most known facts about the shape of history. In light of this idea, please permit me some wild speculations about the bigger picture here.

Reality Check: The last two years have been defined by a theme: centralization of power. It’s happened in technology. It’s affected politics. It’s taken place within financial markets. To some extent it is even true in media culture, despite the rise of the internet. This centralization has overwhelmed all of us: We previously believed that there was some integral relationship between private life and political life, such that the aspirations of the ruled (due to democracy and so on) were somehow impactful on the rulers, until suddenly we were shown that this is not the case

We previously believed that our social-media and digital spaces were our own, until we were taught that they are not

We previously believed that the Bill of Rights protected us, that our court systems more or less worked, that there were certain things that simply could not happen to us due to law and tradition, and then suddenly there were no limits to power.

Why did all of this happen when it did? Precisely because all these old-world institutions have been on the ropes for the previous 10–20 years. The internet has been a massive force for decentralization in every area of life: technology, media, government and even money.

Goodbye to the Old Order: We’ve seen over the last decade or perhaps two a gradual melting away of the old order and the emergence of a new one with a great deal of promise for empowering individuals and all social classes in new ways we had not previously seen. Think what this means for the old order. It means a massive loss of power and profit. It means the transformation of the relationship between the individual and the state, plus what media we consume, what money we use, what rules we obey, how our children are educated, what businesses with which we trade and so on.

In other words, the ruling class - a big term but it describes something very real - faced the biggest and most disruptive threat in generations or perhaps in many centuries. This was the state of the world in 2019. It wasn’t just about Trump but he symbolized the possibility of dramatic change even at the highest levels. The main point is that he was never one of “them”; in fact, he hated “them.” Of all people, he was not supposed to be president and yet there he was, tweeting and disregarding protocol and generally behaving like a loose cannon. And his presidency coincided with a growing restlessness in the population.

“Shut up and Obey!” Something had to be done. Something big. Something had to happen to remind the unruly masses who precisely is in charge. Therefore, the most powerful interest groups set to lose in the newly decentralized order of the future decided to act. They would reassert their power in ways that would inspire shock and awe. They had to convince the president to go along and they finally did.

The result was what we’ve lived through for 22 months. It has been nothing less than a display of power and control. We have all been traumatized in ways we’ve never imagined possible. Our workplaces have been disrupted or shut. They managed to end religious freedom for a time. The freedoms we all believe we had and which were growing by the day came to a dramatic and stunning halt. We “went medieval” exactly as The New York Times called for on Feb. 28, 2020.

Who is in charge? In the spring of 2020, the entire ruling class shouted in unison, not just here, but all over the world: “We are!” I do not mean that there was a “plot” in some crude sense. I do not believe there was one. There was a coming together of interests, and this was born of fear and frustration that the world was changing too quickly and the wrong people were going to land on top.

The Reactionary Impulse: In retrospect, it seems obvious that the great decentralization would not be a soft landing from the old order. There would be, shall we say, bumps along the road. That is precisely what they created and what happened to us. Lockdowns and mandates ultimately stemmed from reactionary impulses, the same ones we saw in history when royals and religious establishments set out unsuccessfully to crush the rise of liberalism. But there’s just one major problem with the whole thing: It did not actually achieve its aims.

Let me explain that. If you think of the aim as “take back our power,” it did accomplish that, however temporarily. But that’s not how they pitched it. They said they would stop and crush a virus and that all your sacrifice would be worth it because otherwise you would die or have your life wrecked. That agenda, that propaganda, has been a tremendous flop. In other words, the whole thing is being exposed as a massive error at best, and a complete lie at worst.

Elites Have Earned Our Distrust: Lying has consequences. When you are discovered, people do not believe you in the future. This is the situation currently faced by Big Tech, Big Media, Big Government, Big Pharma and big everything. They display their power but they do not display their intelligence and they have not earned our trust. Quite the opposite.

This is why the seeds of revolt have been so deeply planted and why they are growing so mightily now. The driving goal here will be to restart the engine of progress back to what it was only two years ago, back to the push for the decentralist paradigm. The technology that was pushing that paradigm is not only still with us but it has been tested and dramatically advanced during lockdowns and mandates. We have more tools than ever before to confront and finally defeat the ruling class that seized so much power over two years.

So yes, we’ve lived through an enormous setback, pushed by reactionary elements among the ruling class, but it is likely a prequel to what comes next: a backlash against reaction and toward a new stage of progress. Cycles within cycles. Forces of centralization have had a field day, and a good run of it, but the forces of decentralization are fighting back again with good odds of regaining the narrative again. It’s real progress. But the battle is far from over."

- dailyreckoning.com

The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

Full screen recommended.

The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Magnificent island universe NGC 2403 stands within the boundaries of the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis. Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by the telltale reddish glow of atomic hydrogen gas. The giant HII regions are energized by clusters of hot, massive stars that explode as bright supernovae at the end of their short and furious lives.

A member of the M81 group of galaxies, NGC 2403 closely resembles another galaxy with an abundance of star forming regions that lies within our own local galaxy group, M33 the Triangulum Galaxy. Spiky in appearance, bright stars in this colorful galaxy portrait of NGC 2403 lie in the foreground, within our own Milky Way.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150327.html

"Be That Thing..."

“In Rome just as America, in the forum just as on Facebook, there was the temptation to replace action with argument. To philosophize instead of living philosophically. Today, in a society obsessed with content, outrage, and drama, it’s even easier to get lost in the echo chamber of the debate of what’s “better.” We can have endless discussions about what’s right and wrong. What should we do in this hypothetical situation or that one? How can we encourage other people to be better? (We can even debate the meaning of the above line: “What’s a man? What’s the definition of good? Why doesn’t it mention women?”) Of course, this is all a distraction. If you want to try to make the world a slightly better place, there’s a lot you can do. But only one thing guarantees an impact. Step away from the argument. Dig yourself out of the rubble. Stop wasting time with how things should be, would be, could be. Be that thing.”

- Ryan Holiday

"How Easy It Seems..."

“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”

- George R.R. Martin

"Empty Shelves; Supply Chain In Crisis or Not?; Food Shortage"

Full screen recommended.

"Empty Shelves; Supply Chain In Crisis or Not?; Food Shortage"

by "Tommy Bites Homestead - Prepping"

"Inflation is Already Here, Why They Didn't See It Coming?"

Full screen recommended.

"Inflation is Already Here, Why They Didn't See It Coming?"

by The Atlantis Report

"I saw inflation coming the second they locked down the world .Especially after all the bailouts during 2020. Infinite QE, money printing, bond buying, Increased spending, printing billions, running up debt... Eventually the FED was going to run out of bullets.

Nah! Who could see inflation coming? The biggest economies in the world were paying people not to produce goods and services (or just boarding them into their homes in China) yet no idea why this inflation fell out of the sky. People often don’t see what they don’t want to see. Because people were so blindly taking handouts.

Because 99% of people trusted their government and their fake consumer price index. Because political pressure to keep the false economy afloat is significantly more important than a solid currency that doesn't rob the middle and lower class via cost of living. Hell, make them more dependent on the government while you're at it - more votes!

Because they have to print. If they stop, the house of cards falls. They literally can’t stop printing now. It’s too late. And it’s been too late for a while. But Biden just said inflation is an asset . This is what dumbing down a population looks like. The ending of the destabilization phase and entering the chaos phase. It’s called how to communize a nation through central banking. The Fed created the word "Transitory" then removed it from existence.

Who? Who didn't see this coming? Who is responsible? Who benefits? Only those doing as they were told and following orders wouldn't have "seen it coming". They're still wearing the masks which have been effective as both a muzzle and blinders. Doesn't really matter whether they saw it or not as they have chosen to keep the poor poorer and the rich richer by keeping rates at 0%. I would not be surprised if the federal reserve pushes back on interest rate rises tomorrow and blames it on the economy while carrying on printing trillions.

Treason has infested our republic as government laughs behind our backs! They are all GUILTY! The classic definition of inflation “ increasing money supply “ has been hijacked also to mean rising prices… we knew inflation (classic) happened and were simply waiting for it to affect prices.

They saw it coming. Their aim is to collapse the currency. This is intentional. We are being moved into a CBDC slave system. Anytime they print trillions of counterfeit dollars, we're going to have huge inflation!!! Anybody with two brain cells to rub together who wasn't blinded by mainstream media garbage saw inflation coming.

The most laughable part of this whole ordeal is that the Fed literally set a policy to pursue inflation. Jerome Powell said they would begin seeking a multi year average CPI that is 2%, instead of an annual CPI of 2%. He was quite clear that this policy would result in inflation that was substantially higher than 2% for a period of time.

Only War will save the Feds from having to raise interest rates. This inflation is not transitory. This is here as long as rates are low and money is printed. Largest debtor in the world is the US government and they will not let rates go up that much, and Wall Street survives on that printed dollars. So guess who get screwed? Middle-class and poor. Like always.

Inflation hidden is a tax and a way to punt responsibility. So convenient that when the war talk is kicking up right when We are discounting all the dollars that have been created out of thin air through deficit spending, and all those coming down the pork barrel pipe. As depression sets in, asset classes will deflate because people can’t service the debt, consumable commodities like food and clothing are only going to skyrocket.

They saw it coming and they didn't care. It gives them the chance to steal everyone else's property and money. Inflation is taxation without representation, legalized stealing by the government. Pretty soon no one will own their own home in this country, we will be a nation of renters, beholden to the government. for every part of our lives, in other words, Tax Slaves."

- https://www.youtube.com

Gregory Mannarino, "Stock Market Crash! Or Normal Correction? You Decide"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/28/22:

"Stock Market Crash! Or Normal Correction? You Decide"

- https://traderschoice.net/

The Daily "Near You?"

Sherman, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"To Really Ask..."

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world – few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

- Anne Rice, “The Vampire Lestat”

"Things Are Much Worse Than They Appear - Heed The Warnings"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, 1/28/22:

"Things Are Much Worse Than They Appear -

 Heed The Warnings"

"There are so many professionals coming out with Market Warnings. They all can not be right and they are not all wrong. Heed the warnings. Things are much worse than they appear."

"Young Dr. Frankensteins"

"Young Dr. Frankensteins"

by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "The tendency of an inconvertible paper money is to create fictitious wealth, bubbles, which by their bursting produce inconvenience." ~ Lord Liverpool

Cool, schmool. Fair, schmair. What really makes the world a better place? A ‘New Deal?’ A Republican? A Democrat? A master race? Stimulus spending? An Inquisition? Fair Trade? The Rights of Man? Vax mandates? Slavery? Prohibition? Low interest rates? A cheap currency? Diversity? Price controls? Defending Ukraine from the Russians? Or Russia from the Ukrainians?

Blah, blah, blah… what really makes the world a better place is a stable currency and an honest profit. This week, we laughed at the super rich who wish to trade their dollars for cool. We mocked Larry Fink for pushing his own anti-carbon agenda. We ridiculed Abigail Disney for wanting to give more money to a corrupt and wasteful government.

A Mischievous Insight: If they were serious about making things better for others, they’d put their talents, energy and money to work… to earn more money! Because, as far as we know, money is the only measure of how much time, energy (human… and carbon-based) and resources go into a product. Profits are the only measure of whether what comes out is worth the effort. Each dollar earned honestly is a sign that someone else’s life has been improved by at least $1.

That was the un-cool, contrarian, and mischievous insight we left you with yesterday – that making honest profits, rather than cool pronunciamientos, moral awakenings, or ‘The Science’, was really the only way for a company to do any good. Thus, completely out-of-step with the do-gooders, we stumble forward.

In the real sciences, new experiments allow us to probe deeper and deeper into the way the world works. Electrons, photons, interplanetary space – we know more each year. But real scientists also know that they never know the whole story. If only politicians and central bankers were as modest. Instead, they think they have the final word on how things work… and run the same experiments, over and over, to prove it.

We know from many painful trial runs, for example, that price controls don’t work. But get ready for more proof! The Fed has been controlling, indirectly, the most important price in capitalism – the price of capital itself – for the last two decades. It’s created a nightmare economy, hooked on zero cost (free!) money. Now, it can’t ‘normalize’ interest rates… or half the country will go broke.

Meanwhile, French president Emmanuel Macron says he’s going to control the price of energy. In Argentina, as we noted, they’ve been controlling the price of energy for decades – with the all-too-predictable result: shortages.

And here’s the New York Times, urging another experiment in the US; what else – price controls! "America’s recent inflation spike has prompted renewed interest in an idea that many economists and policy experts thought they had long ago left behind for good: price controls."

The NYT, voice of the Elite Establishment is desperate to rehabilitate a disgraced idea: Few economists today defend the Nixon price controls. But some argue that it is unfair to consider their failure a definitive rebuttal of all price caps.

Hey, let’s run the experiment again! Argentina is practically a constant lab experiment. Control prices. Currency and capital controls. Protect key industries from foreign competition. Print more and more money, with an inflation rate currently around 50%. Of course, all of these things have been tried before. The results are hardly a surprise to anyone. But, bless their hearts, the gauchos keep heating up their beakers and letting their hair grow, until their concoctions blow up in their faces.

The biggest and most costly experiment in modern history took place in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1991. For more than 70 years the lab rats kept at it… even though the result was a foregone conclusion. Central planning – with its thorough price, capital, wage, job, rationing and supply chain controls, from top to bottom – was never going to work. And the Soviets proved it.

Modern Monetary Turkeys: But the experiments go on. Now, Turkey is conducting a goofy test to see if it can become an export powerhouse simply by devaluing its currency. The Turks’ lira lost about half of its value last year. Sure enough, the orders are coming in. Too bad Turkish companies are going broke before they can fill them. Their costs rise… they go out of business.

In this jackassery, Turkey is being advised by none other than Warren Mosler himself, one of the mad Mengeles behind ‘Modern Monetary Theory.’ As the Turks’ economy goes down, Mosler advises the central bank to do the exact opposite of what common sense and experience suggests. He told them to cut their policy rate to zero.

Wow. That ought to help. Already at 50% inflation… Mosler wants the central bank to lower rates… not raise them. Another experiment! How will that work out? We suspect it will go the way of all such experiments and end a bit like Wernher von Braun’s 1977 obituary in the Economist: “He aimed for the stars…and hit London.”

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"How It Really Should Have Been"

"Old Man, Look at Your Life…"

"Old Man, Look at Your Life…"

by Jim Kunstler

"Rock’n’roller Neil Young’s conniption over having to share the Spotify platform with Joe Rogan affords a glimpse into the glutenous mire that is a mind bethinking itself “progressive” these drear days of American unraveling. For those of you not tuned in: Joe Rogan is a comedian and martial arts maven who runs the most popular podcast in the world, renowned for long-form interviews (three hours sometimes!) often with high-powered intellectuals. A month ago, he interviewed the mRNA developer Dr. Robert Malone, who has become an outspoken opponent of the Covid-19 mRNA “vaccines,” and of the US-led world pandemic policy in general under Dr. Anthony Fauci, going as far as to call for an immediate end to the world-wide vaxxing program because, Dr. Malone says, the vaxxes don’t work and they kill and disable people. Hearing that, Mr. Young called for Joe Rogan to be cancelled for spreading “misinformation.”

It’s worth paying attention to just how disordered Mr. Young’s thinking is because it summarizes everything that has gone awry on the political Left: He is wrong two ways: 1) morally, and 2) on the facts of the matter = which is as wrong as you can be. Like virtually everyone on the Democratic Party/Woke/Progressive axis, he is obviously in favor of suppressing free speech. Since when did that become okay for old hippies?

If I remember correctly (cuz I was there) the youth movement of the 1960s was all about freedom to say pretty much anything, except yell “fire” in a crowded theater - based on the idea that ordinary people were equipped to sort out the truth. During the War in Vietnam, we hippies were especially averse to the official lying that emanated from the Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House under both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. We founded “alternative” newspapers in defiance of the establishment’s propaganda. We applauded Daniel Ellsberg’s purloined Pentagon Papers, revealing the mendacity of the war effort. Altogether, this activity made it more difficult for the government to prosecute that war, and to defend the strategy behind it.

Today the Left is not only all-in on speech suppression, but also censorship of print and broadcasting, and is especially avid for the diverse punishments of cancellation - ruining careers, reputations, livelihoods, and families of anyone who opposes Woke right-think. Alternate views are not tolerated, labeled “unacceptable” (Mr. Young put it exactly that way), and flagged as “misinformation” (ditto Mr. Young). It’s gotten to the point where the word misinformation has acquired a distinct odor that signals bad faith in everyone who flogs it. These days, the charge of misinformation is deliberate misinformation.

Today, the Left is all-in for FBI home invasions, DOJ malicious prosecutions, CIA manipulations of public opinion, a fake president fronting for an unseen cabal, and a news media that wouldn’t know the actual shape and substance of reality if it jumped up and bit Jim Acosta on the lips. Ideas and principles don’t really matter to the Left; they’re just window-dressing for their sole interest, which is pushing other people around, in a word: coercion. That is the moral quagmire the Left is in and, having captured so many institutional transmitters of our polity, that is the nature of the evil they represent.

On the facts of Dr. Malone’s public statements about Covid-19 public health policy and the “vaccines,” Neil Young doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just dead wrong, uninformed, possibly ignorant. The vaxxes have been a disaster from the start and the damage gets worse every week that the insane policy of coercing more vaxxes goes on. The vaxxes are a false magic talisman for a psychotic cargo cult of disordered minds who cannot face the actual quandaries in this momentous Fourth Turning of our foundering civilization - namely, our dwindling energy resources, the economics based on them, the malfunctioning operations of money, our over-investments in techno-complexity, and the out-of-scale dynamics of just about everything in daily life.

Fortunately, enough Americans now see through this matrix of bad faith and mendacity that the opposition is poised to wipe up the floor with the Left in next November’s election. The Left has screwed things up so completely that the end of Covid will expose every broken thing on the landscape - and now it’s up to others to try to repair it all, if possible. One thing is certain to happen a little less than a year from now, the day a new Congress is sworn in: “Joe Biden,” if he is still alive, and still in office, will be impeached. And unlike his several predecessors - Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump - “Joe Biden” will be convicted in the Senate, too, and of serious crimes against his country, not just trivialities because the evidence is there. He’ll be convicted of the very things spelled out in the constitution: treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

The laptop computer belonging to the Biden family bag-man, Hunter Biden, is not only still in the negligent possession of the FBI, but many faithful copies of its hard-drive were mindfully distributed to safe hands outside the agency. The email, contracts, and memoranda on it contain a clear record of bribery from foreign nations and money laundering to conceal the trail of all that grift. “Joe Biden’s” deliberate open border policy, and the purposeful transport of unvetted illegal aliens from scores of foreign countries to cities all over the USA, certainly represents an arrant and treasonous failure to uphold the law. It remains to be seen what kind of fiasco his misadventures in Ukraine may foment, but we’ll know presently."

- https://kunstler.com/

Must Watch! "Why America Is HURTLING Toward Economic Collapse"

"Why America Is HURTLING Toward Economic Collapse"

by BlazeTV

"Thanks to FOIA requests, we now know the 2008-2010 bank bailout didn't cost us $5 trillion, as we've been told. The real number is closer to $29 TRILLION (at 27:00), and it didn't just go to American banks. Gee, I wonder why we're talking about inflation.

When Biden was given the keys to the Oval Office in January 2021, gas was $2.50 a gallon and the inflation rate was 1.4%. Today gas is at $3.32 a gallon and the inflation rate is at 7%, and still rising. These are just 12 months of numbers, but we’re clearly in a worrying decline. While the economy has opened up more post-COVID, it’s not just getting worse - we’re going in reverse.

Glenn heads to the chalkboard (and the very top of his studio ceiling) to explain what’s happening to inflation and why it’s so hard for your family to afford basic goods and groceries. It’s not “corporate greed,” as Democrats have been telling you. The Biden administration wants to continue to spend trillions of dollars to “reinvent capitalism,” but that’s in addition to the trillions that are being pumped out in the shadows. Glenn exposes what the Fed has been doing behind closed doors and shows us the tidal wave that’s about to hit. He’s looked at the numbers, and they're frightening. Carol Roth, former Wall Street investment banker and author of “The War on Small Business,” gives advice to Americans who want to protect their checking and savings accounts before it’s too late."

- https://theblaze.com/

○

"$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the 

Fed’s Bailout by Funding Facility and Recipient"

"There have been a number of estimates of the total amount of funding provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out the financial system. For example, Bloomberg recently claimed that the cumulative commitment by the Fed (this includes asset purchases plus lending) was $7.77 trillion. As part of the Ford Foundation project “A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis,” Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed’s bailout of the financial system - the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date. This working paper is the first in a series that will report the results of this investigation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive account of the Fed’s extraordinary response to the recent financial crisis. It begins with a brief summary of the methodology, then outlines the unconventional facilities and programs aimed at stabilizing the existing financial structure. The paper concludes with a summary of the scope and magnitude of the Fed’s crisis response. The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion."

Download: Working Paper No. 698

- https://www.levyinstitute.org/

Gregory Mannarino, "Inflation Continues To Surge; Economy Cratering; Be Ready For Anything"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/28/22:

"Inflation Continues To Surge; Economy Cratering; 

Be Ready For Anything"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

"Kraft-Heinz Again Raises Prices On Dozens Of Products As Inflation Continues To Bite"

"Kraft-Heinz Again Raises Prices On Dozens

 Of Products As Inflation Continues To Bite"

by Tyler Durden

"As some on Wall Street warn that the Fed remains dangerously behind the inflation curve (a fear that was given voice yesterday when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's comments on inflation during the post-FOMC press conference appeared to send stocks spiraling lower), one of America's biggest makers of food and consumer goods has warned that more price hikes are coming.

To wit, Kraft-Heinz (in which Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns a big stake) said in a letter to customers that it will raise prices in March on dozens of its most popular products. The hikes will affect brands including Oscar Mayer cold cuts, hot dogs, sausages, bacon, Velveeta cheese, Maxwell House coffee, TGIF frozen chicken wings, Kool-Aid and Capri Sun, CNN reported. Increases range from 6.6% on 12oz packs of Velveeta to a whopping 30% hike on a package of Oscar-Mayer turkey bacon. Most cold cuts and beef hot dogs will go up around 10% and coffee around 5%. Some Kool-Aid and Capri Sun drink packs will increase by about 20%.

"As we enter 2022, inflation continues to dramatically impact the economy," Kraft Heinz said in a letter dated January 24 to at least one of its wholesale customers that was viewed by CNN Business. The wholesaler shared the letter on the condition of anonymity to protect the company's relationship with its suppliers.

Kraft Heinz is just the latest consumer manufacturer to announce plans to boost prices early in the year. Last week, P&G said that it would raise prices on Tide and Gain laundry detergents, Downy fabric softener and Bounce dryer sheets by an average of about 8% in February. Conagra, which makes such brands as Slim Jim, Marie Callender's and Birds Eye, has said it plans to raise prices later this year.

The question now is how much of these price hikes will retailers pass on to customers? Given the thin margins that grocery stores operate on, it's likely that most, if not all, of the hike will be incorporated into prices on the shelf. For Kraft-Heinz, this isn't the first time prices have been raised since the start of the latest "transitory" inflation wave. The brand just announced a 9% price hike on its beef, lean beef, hot dogs and some other products back in November.

Headline consumer prices surged 7% in December according to the most recent CPI data release, which was the strongest level in nearly 40 years. Food prices alone rose 0.5% MoM. Beyond the US, global food prices have soared to levels unseen in a decade led by surging demand for wheat and dairy products following a year of severe drought and other environmental factors limiting production.

The question now is how many more times will K-H and its competitors hike prices before inflationary pressures finally ease?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/

"Stock Market Crumbles Today; Robinhood Slammed; FED Will Not Rescue Market; Prepare"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/27/22:

"Stock Market Crumbles Today; Robinhood Slammed; 

FED Will Not Rescue Market; Prepare"

Gerald Celente, "Canadien Truckers Protest: A Mega Trend For Freedom"

Gerald Celente, PM 1/27/22:

"Canadien Truckers Protest: A Mega Trend For Freedom"

"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/

"Two Shortages That Threaten To Absolutely Eviscerate The Global Economy In 2022"

Full screen recommended.

"Two Shortages That Threaten To Absolutely 

Eviscerate The Global Economy In 2022"

by Epic Economist

"We were promised that things would be getting back to normal at this point. But of course, those promises were empty. And here we are at the end of January 2022, realizing that our problems have only gotten worse. As we move forward into February and beyond, we should keep a close eye on two key global shortages that are threatening to disrupt the American status quo. The first is the rapidly spreading fertilizer shortage. It seems that all over the globe, agricultural fertilizing supplies are getting increasingly tighter. The situation is escalating so quickly that even our biased mainstream media is already reporting alarming updates about this shortage. A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal ominously warned that “high fertilizer prices are weighing on farmers all across the world”.

The article highlighted that from South America’s avocado, corn and coffee farms to Southeast Asia’s plantations of coconuts and oil palms, skyrocketing fertilizer prices are impacting farmers in every corner of the planet, making it much more expensive to cultivate and forcing many to cut back on production. As a consequence, that means our grocery bills will go up even more in the coming months, following a year in which global food prices have already risen by over 30 percent. And this relentless rise in the cost of food is going to exacerbate hunger crises and food insecurity. In America, at least 24 million people still need aid to have enough to eat. Even more concerning, in Africa, surging fertilizer prices can cause an acute decline in agricultural output, “equivalent to the food needs of 100 million people”, according to the International Fertilizer Development Center.

That’s a very big deal, and if global leaders don’t act to prevent that from happening, we might witness a tragic humanitarian crisis this year. Unfortunately, if we do get to this point, governments and corporations are likely to prioritize profits over human lives, given that consumer demand for food is at all-time highs. We can only hope that doesn’t happen. At the same time, here in the United States, fertilizer shortages and rising prices are also already affecting millions of farmers in the nation. In a recent opinion piece authored by U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, he argued that by now it is no secret that this crisis is having a major impact on domestic food production.

“Prices for phosphorus-based and potassium-based fertilizers have more than doubled in Kansas while Nitrogen-based fertilizers have more than quadrupled. Fertilizer is vital to feeding not only the country but the world. It contains essential nutrients for plant life, and without it, American agricultural yields will quickly suffer as well as food prices in local grocery stores,” Marshall stressed. “If we want to help people in need the best play is to get inflation under control and to encourage economic growth – not stifle it. The unfortunate reality is this is only the beginning. And the effects felt by fertilizer prices at the farm will also be felt at the fork,” he warned.

Moreover, the other shortage that we all need to pay attention to is the worsening computer chip shortage. A new report released by the Department of Commerce revealed that U.S. chip inventories “have become dangerously thin”. Today, the semiconductors needed to produce automobiles and medical devices to meet our national demand are in such short supply that our industries are losing several billion that could be used to generate more jobs and boost economic growth. According to the Washington Post, industry insiders aren’t very optimistic about the near-term outlook for chip production. They say that although federal funding could help build up the long-term supply of chips, it wouldn’t help in the short term because chip factories cannot be built overnight.

Every single industry requires semiconductors to make their machinery, and in some cases, their products operate properly. The vast majority of chip consumers surveyed by the department estimated that shortages will not go away in this year, and some suggested it could take another year until production is normalized. Over the past decade, we’ve become perilously dependent on chips sourced from Asia, and more specifically, from Taiwan.

That’s why, it is “both an economic and national security imperative to solve this crisis," Raimondo says. If the trade conflict between China and Taiwan escalates to an aggressive confrontation, it means that our computer chip supply chain will be completely cut off. Needless to say, things are looking very scary. We should start thinking about all of these issues and the possible outcomes because what was once “unimaginable” can become very real in 2022."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"The Truth About Today’s Blowout GDP Number"

"The Truth About Today’s Blowout GDP Number"

by Brian Maher

"Today the United States Department of Commerce informs us: Fourth-quarter gross domestic product expanded at an annualized 6.9%. 6.9% is plenty handsome - especially in consideration of Omicron’s omnipresence - and ongoing supply chain delinkages. Third-quarter GDP came in at a far less fulsome 2.3%. And Bloomberg’s survey of economic Wrong Way Charlies had projected a 5.5% Q4 expansion. But numbers can conceal more than they reveal. They can spin wondrous tales and tell fantastic lies. What then can we glean from today’s gaudy numbers?

Eternal Optimism: Today’s gaudy numbers reveal wondrous truths and fantastic facts, argues Reuters: "The U.S. economy notched its strongest growth in nearly four decades in 2021 after the government pumped trillions of dollars in COVID-19 relief, and is seen forging ahead despite headwinds from the pandemic, strained supply chains as well as inflation."

Next is the sun-soaked judgment of Mr. Jim Baird, chief investment officer with Plante Moran Financial Advisors: "The strength of the economy last year stood in stark contrast to the collapse in activity in early 2020, but also speaks to the success of both the public and private sector in quickly adapting to the unprecedented challenges created by the pandemic."

Adds a certain Mike Reynolds, he being vice president of investment strategy at Glenmede:
"The Q4 GDP report was a nice upside surprise in a string of recently underwhelming economic data points."

Just so. Yet we are not entirely persuaded that today’s numbers give a true signal of economic dynamism. As said Matthew Sherwood, global economist with the Economist Intelligence Unit: “The result flatters to deceive.”

The Facts About GDP: Assume the government pays a fellow to shovel out a hole. Assume further it pays him to shovel it back in. In the official telling, you have just witnessed an increase to the gross domestic product. Have you? Or have you merely witnessed a derangement, the fruitless birth and death of a hole? Or if the government adds one cup of inflationary water to one cup of milk… do you have two cups of whole milk? Government statistics may infer that you do. Yet two cups of watered milk do not equal two cups of whole milk.

Now return to today’s 6.9% Q4 GDP expansion… Scratch the paint from the dazzling surface. Lift the lid. Peer within. Seize the numbers by the scruff and haul them in for interrogation.

Today’s Numbers, Explained: What do we find? What accounts for the screaming headline number? Inventories… largely. Government number-manglers heap inventories into the column of business investment. Thus in the official telling, inventory piles add figures to the gross domestic product. Inventory values skyshot a preposterous $240 billion in 2021’s fourth quarter. MarketWatch affirms that: "GDP got a big lift at the end of last year from frantic efforts by businesses to restock barren shelves and warehouses in time for the holiday season. The economy grew a lot more slowly if the inventory buildup is set aside…"

The value of inventories soared by $240 billion - one of the biggest increases in decades - as companies ramped up production to try to meet demand. Spending on inventories is a boost to GDP, and was an especially big boost in the fourth quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis informs us piling inventories contributed a bulking 4.9 percentage points to the headline figure.

Less Than Meets the Eye: Rinse out their additions… and what do you find? You find fourth-quarter GDP expanded at a 2% annualized rate - not 6.9%. A 2% expansion is an expansion. Yet it is far from a blossoming. Adds MarketWatch: "Investment in housing declined for the third quarter in a row. Shortages and higher prices made companies more cautious about investment spending."

Meantime, real incomes - inflation-adjusted incomes, that is - declined at a 5.8% annual rate in quarter four. That is largely because quarter four’s annualized inflation rate was an income-devouring 6.5%. In all, 2021 consumer prices galloped along at the fastest gait since 1982. Yet rejoice - Q4 GDP vastly trounced all reasonable expectations. Look away from the flames tearing through your dollars.

Cold Water: But perhaps this quarter’s gross domestic product can get a good push from last quarter’s gross domestic product, you say. Perhaps the momentum will add economic velocity to the first quarter… then to the second quarter… and beyond.

Have another guess, argues Daily Reckoning affiliate Wolf Richter. Here he empties frigid water upon Pollyanna’s lovely head: "Rising inventories, which are considered an investment and add to GDP, are eventually followed by a decline in inventories when companies whittle them down again, and there is a price to pay for it… Companies that sit on that inventory and have trouble selling it will at some point cut their orders to reduce their inventories. When this happens, sales drop all the way up the supply chain… when businesses whittle down their inventories by ordering less, it ripples through the economy, lowers GDP growth…"

MarketWatch gives Pollyanna an additional soaking: "The economy won’t get a similar lift from restocking in the first quarter, however, and inventories might even be a negative. Early data point to the U.S. growing at a less than 2% annual clip in the first three months of the year…"

Concludes Cassandra - Ms. Megan Greene, senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School: "Any growth we have from inventories now is sort of at the price of destocking later. Inventories aren’t a strategy for driving growth forward." We must agree. They are not.

Bad News for Wall Street: We believe only true productivity gains will drive growth forward. The Keynesian “multiplier” - the magic of water into wine, of debt into growth - has taken up division. At today’s grievous debt-to-GDP ratio, the borrowed dollar yields no additional growth. It merely yields ashes, ashes in the mouth. What about the stock market? Today’s “good” news landed upon Wall Street with a thud. Here is the reason, as we see it: The Federal Reserve will consider Q4’s superficially gaudy growth added justification for rate hikes. And tighter money is a tightening noose about Wall Street’s neck. Once again, the three major indexes closed trading in red numbers. Also again, the rate-sensitive Nasdaq absorbed the greatest slating, shedding another 189 points. Rates will rise, support will dwindle. We hazard Mr. Powell will once again yield to Wall Street – but only when it is too late."

- dailyreckoning.com

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Sound of Invisible Waters"

 

Deuter, "Sound of Invisible Waters"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.

The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160728.html

"Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake"

"Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake"

by James Rickards

"One of my favorites is what I call ‘the avalanche and the snowflake’. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works, but I should be clear: it’s not just a metaphor. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.

Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. It’s windswept… it’s unstable… and if you’re an expert, you know it’s going to collapse and kill skiers and wipe out the village below. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lie there. Then, the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.

Question: What do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t the one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before, or the one after, or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was the problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the ‘snowflake’ that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter.

A snowflake that falls harmlessly – the vast majority of all snowflakes - technically fails to start a chain reaction. Once a chain reaction begins, it expands exponentially, can ‘go critical’ (as in an atomic bomb) and release enough energy to destroy a city. However, most neutrons do not start nuclear chain reactions, just as most snowflakes do not start avalanches.

In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons. It’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibiity of a chain reaction or an avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale, but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens on a minute scale relative to the system. This is why some people refer to these snowflakes as ‘black swans’, because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.

It’s a metaphor, but really the mathematics behind it are the same. Financial markets today are huge, unstable mountains of snow waiting to collapse. You see it in the gross notional value of derivatives. There is $700 trillion worth of swaps. ($2.5 Quadrillion by other reputable estimates. - CP) These are derivatives off balance sheet, hidden liabilities in the banking system of the world. These numbers are not made up. Just go to the IS annual report and it’s right there in the footnote.

Well, how do you put $700 trillion into perspective? It’s ten times global GDP. Take all the goods and services in the entire world for an entire year. That’s about $70 trillion when you add it all up. Well, take ten times that, and that’s how big the snow pile is. And that’s the avalanche that’s waiting to come down."

- https://caperebel.com/blogs/

"Feeling Overwhelmed: Breathing into Order"

"Feeling Overwhelmed: Breathing into Order"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Always know, the Universe works in perfect order and you are never given more thank you can handle. Sometimes we may feel like there is just too much we need to do. Feeling overwhelmed may make it seem like the universe is picking on us, but the opposite is true: we are only given what we can handle. Difficult situations are opportunities to be our best selves, hone our skills and rise to the occasion.

The best place to start is to take a deep breath. As you do, remind yourself that the universe works in perfect order and therefore you can get everything done that needs to get done. As you exhale, release all the details that you have no control over. The universe with it‘s infinite organizing power will orchestrate the right outcome. Anytime stress begins to creep up, remember to breathe through it with these thoughts. Then, make a list of everything you need to do. Note what needs to be done first, and mark the things others may be able to do for you or with you. Though we often think no one else can do it correctly or well, there are times when it is worth it to exhale, let go of our control, and ask for help from professionals or friends. With the remaining things that feel you must do yourself, take another breath and determine their true importance.

Sometimes they are things we’d like to do, but aren’t really necessary. After taking these quick steps, you will find you have a plan laid out, freeing you from frenzied thoughts circling in your head. With calming deep breaths, you are now free to focus more fully on our priorities. Herbal teas or flower remedies along with wise choices about caffeine and food can help keep us from becoming frantic too. But with nothing further from us than our breath, we can breathe in our best intentions and let the rest go with an exhale. Keeping ourselves centered and breathing into and through life’s challenges helps us learn what we are truly capable of doing, and we will find we have the ability to rise to any occasion. Remember you aren’t being picked on, and you are never alone."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Return”

“The Return”

“Suddenly the window will open

and Mother will call,

it's time to come in.

The wall will part,

I will enter heaven in muddy shoes.

I will come to the table

and answer questions rudely.

I am all right, leave me

alone. Head in hand I

sit and sit. How can I tell them

about that long

and tangled way?

Here in heaven mothers

knit green scarves;

flies buzz.

Father dozes by the stove

after six days' labor.

No - surely I can't tell them

that people are at each

other's throats.”

- Theodore Roethke