Sunday, March 13, 2022

"3 Ways The Ukraine Crisis Could Destroy The Economy"

Full screen recommended.
"3 Ways The Ukraine Crisis Could Destroy The Economy"
by Epic Economist, 3/13/22:

"The ongoing crisis in Ukraine continues to wreak havoc on global financial markets, including the U.S. stock market, and it is threatening to spark a financial meltdown of catastrophic proportions. Even before the conflict started, a massive sell-off of tech and other risky assets was already driving stock markets significantly lower amid an imminent Fed interest rate hike. Now, the second wave of the sell-off is coming from the “destabilization of Eastern Europe by Putin’s advance into Ukraine," explained Mark Grywacheski, a financial advisor with the Quad Cities Investment Group, "This crisis will impact the US economy, but to what extent is highly dependent on Putin. Is Ukraine the final objective?” the expert asks.

The current outlook indicates that a lot more volatility is ahead. With commodity and oil prices rising to stratospheric levels, the stage is set for a financial disaster. Manufacturing costs are also going through the roof, as well as shipping and transportation costs, which, ultimately, will be passed along to the U.S. consumer in the form of higher retail prices. At this point, most investors can see that things will get much worse than they already are. In essence, there are still many other ways this confrontation could get worse than it already is. And every single one of them seems absolutely terrifying.

One thing is certain, this is just the beginning of the financial turbulence, as warned the financial and geopolitical analyst and writer Mikhail Klimentyev. From now on, things are going to get much more chaotic. Today, one of the biggest economies on the entire planet, and one of the largest exporters of energy supplies, and commodities, is being completely isolated from the global economy, sending prices to all-time highs and worsening shortages of a wide range of commodities. That means that the rest of the world will have to figure out ways to keep on running without Russian energy, grain, and raw materials. The same goes for Russia. The Kremlin will have to find alternatives to survive without western capital, technology, and expertise.

In a recent article for the Telegraph, the expert exposed three ways the Ukraine crisis could crash the financial system. While domestic stock markets will continue to plunge week after week, a global stock sell-off is still gaining force as the worsening confrontation and rising crude oil prices shift investors’ sentiment.

Investors have been cutting their positions as they worry about the possibility of a prolonged crisis in Ukraine and its impact on the U.S. economy. “The growing concern surrounding the deteriorating Ukraine crisis has pushed the stock markets into correction mode. The near 20 percent decline from the peak in NASDAQ is a clear indication of the correction that has set in,” said V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.To make things worse, in a recent note to clients, the head of Matterhorn Asset Management and precious metal specialist at Gold Switzerland, Egon von Greyerz, has warned that the crisis between Russia and Ukraine could lead the world to an apocalyptic turning point.

“The dynamite of a global commodity crisis and shortages thrown into the already catastrophic debt and global monetary fire will create an inferno of nuclear proportions,” von Greyerz emphasized. “If a miracle doesn’t stop this [conflict] very quickly, the world will soon be entering a hyperinflationary commodity explosion combined with a cataclysmic deflationary asset implosion,” he cautioned.

Right now, the impacts of this crisis are still rippling through the global economy, and even though we haven’t seen a crash yet, it is already looming on the horizon - the only question left is how bad the downfall will be. "

"Bank Closures Will Have Us Take Our Money Elsewhere"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/13/22:
"Bank Closures Will Have Us Take Our Money Elsewhere"
"The Banking Crisis is happening internationally. 2021 start a record number of bank closures around the world. 2022 looks like it will be no different. We need to be protected from bank balance, banks shutting down and bank robbery."

Musical Interlude: Foy Vance, Ed Sheeran, "Make it Rain"

Foy Vance, "Make it Rain"
The original, Ed Sheeran's version is the cover.
Ed Sheeran, "Make it Rain"
"I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist 
as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin."
- Leonard Cohen

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait. Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral.
NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."

"A Lemon..."

"When life hands you a lemon, say
"Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"
- Henry Rollins

Chet Raymo, “Seeing”

“Seeing”
by Chet Raymo

“There was a moment yesterday evening when the 
elements conspired to evoke these few lines, spoken by Macbeth:

“Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse.
The fading light. The crows gliding down the fields to the trees in Ballybeg:
Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse.”

It’s all there, in those few lines – the mysterious power of poetry to infuse the world with meaning, to anoint the world with a transforming grace. One could spend an hour picking those lines apart, syntax and sound, sense and alliteration. The t’s of light thickening, tongue against the teeth. The alar w’s making wing. The owl eyes of the double o’s. The d’s nodding into slumber - day, droop, drowse.

The poet Howard Nemerov says of poetry that it “works on the very surface of the eye, that thin, unyielding wall of liquid between mind and world, where somehow, mysteriously, the patterns formed by electrical storms assaulting the retina become things and the thought of things and the names of things and the relations supposed between thing.” It works too in the mouth, in the physical act of speech - tongue, teeth, those d’s gliding deeper into the darkness of the throat.

I stand in the gloaming garden and the black birds glide, down, down to Ballybeg, and I marvel that with so few syllables Shakespeare can - across the centuries - teach me how to see.”

"Alas..."

“Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come, nor care beyond today.”
- Thomas Gray,
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than
sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The Trick..."

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
- Carlos Castaneda

"Economic Recovery Died, You Are On Your Own; Real Inflation Trauma; System Meltdown; Money Printing"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/13/22:
"Economic Recovery Died, You Are On Your Own; 
Real Inflation Trauma; System Meltdown; Money Printing"

The Daily "Near You?"

Lindsborg, Kansas, USA.
Thanks for stopping by!

"Gas Prices In Beverly Hills Are Skyrocketing"

"Gas Prices In Beverly Hills Are Skyrocketing"
By Emily Van de Riet

"With gas prices hitting new records, one area of California is seeing some eye-bugging numbers. Gas prices in Beverly Hills are above $7 per gallon. One Mobil gas station showed prices of $7.35 for regular unleaded, $7.65 for special, and $7.95 for super. The national average for a gallon of gas set a record for a third straight day Thursday, hitting $4.32 a gallon. A survey by AAA revealed that with the cost of gas at least $4 a gallon nationwide, 60% of people say they will change their driving and lifestyle habits."
Watch and see...oh, you'll see... soon.
BTO, "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"

"Let Them Drive Teslas!"

"Let Them Drive Teslas!"
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Attention, Dear Reader, your country wants YOU...
to pay higher prices for gasoline.

As you no doubt noticed, the learned elites were out in force this past week, embarking on a special kind of media blitzkrieg, conscripting all deplorable ordinary systematically racist patriotic Americans to do their part in defeating the great evil of our time: Saddam Hussein... Toxic Masculinity... White Lives... The Covid... (Wait, wait... it’s in here somewhere...) Putin’s Price Hikes (PPH)!

The nation’s Commander-in-Chief appeared earlier in the week, graciously sharing the credit for a job poorly done. His words, quoted here in the New York Post: “Today’s inflation report is a reminder that Americans’ budgets are being stretched by price increases and families are starting to feel the impacts of Putin’s price hike [...] “A large contributor to inflation this month was an increase in gas and energy prices as markets reacted to Putin’s aggressive actions,” Biden’s statement went on.

“As I have said from the start, there will be costs at home as we impose crippling sanctions in response to Putin’s unprovoked war, but Americans can know this: the costs we are imposing on Putin and his cronies are far more devastating than the costs we are facing.”

Seems a curious pivot from a man who ran on “taking responsibility,” no? Remember this one?

Joe Biden @JoeBiden
"Here’s my promise to you: If I’m elected president, I will always choose to unite rather than divide. I’ll take responsibility instead of blaming others. I’ll never forget that the job isn’t about me it’s about you." August 16th 2020, 31,906 Retweets, 235,422 Likes

Never mind that, under Biden’s deft stewardship, inflation in the US was already at a 40-year high before Mr. Putin ordered a single shot fired... What could have fueled this once-in-a-generation uptick in prices, you ask? We found a nifty little cartoon on the web to help explain. It’s so simple, in fact, we’d bet even a Nobel Prize winning economist/Enron consultant like Paul Krugman could understand it. Behold, the picture worth a few trillion dollars...
Nota Bene: If you dial the year in that first frame back to 2019, you get closer to “90% of all dollars in existence.” Might that have something to do with prices rising at their fastest pace, 7.9 percent, since January of 1982? Hmm...

This is a strange form of Pyrrhic victory, the likes of which we haven’t seen before, where one side shoots itself in the foot repeatedly, hoping the enemy will eventually give in. “Putin may be disrupting world markets and driving up energy prices,” Mr. Biden might have declared, “but there’s no harm he can inflict upon us that we can’t better inflict upon ourselves!”

Indeed, as our colleague Dan Denning reminds us, the national average for gasoline prices was up more than 50% before Mr. Putin even got out of bed on the morning he had circled as Ukraine Invasion Day. Yes, it’s up another 18% since. “That's what happens when you take 4-5 million barrels per day off the markets,” writes Dan. All in, “crude is up 124% since Uncle Joe was sworn in.”

What gives? Let’s see, trillions more dollars chasing the same or fewer goods... Hmm... Misty-eyed readers will recall the Keystone pipeline, for example, the one that brought a not unhelpful 900,000 barrels per day down from America’s friendly, NATO neighbor to the north. Well, Team Biden didn’t sit around like lame ducks, waiting for Putin’s missiles to take out that critical piece of strategic infrastructure. No siree-Bob! Uncle Joe’s cabinet got to work immediately, canceling the cross-border permit for Keystone XL on their very first day in office. “Now that’s how you take out a pipeline, Mr. Putin!”

And the Build Back Better squad didn’t stop unbuilding there, either. Summoning the spirit of St. Greta Thunberg, the mentally unstable teenage girl from whom enlightened western nations derive their all-important energy policies, the administration promptly banned all new leases on federal land, too.

Bam! Take that, Mr. Putin! (And by “that” we mean much higher prices for Russia’s key export, the one Mr. Putin sells to the West in order to buy all those “peacekeeping” tanks currently peacekeeping the sh*t out of cities across Ukraine. History students will here note that it was during past crude rallies when Mr. Putin felt emboldened to march into Georgia - 2008, oil: $180/bbl - and the Crimea - 2014, oil: $125/bbl. A pattern, maybe?)

Facing (totally unpredictable... but nonetheless mounting) shortages, Team Biden wasted no time before raiding the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR); once for 40 million barrels worth last fall and now again, according to Press Secretary Jen Psaki, for a “coordinated release of what will be 90 million barrels [...] this fiscal year.”

Gee, that sure sounds like a lot... at least, it probably does if you’re United States Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, who was unable to answer a direct question regarding how many barrels of oil per day the US actually uses. (Seems like a fairly important number, eh? For the record, the average daily use for 2021 was 19.78 million... but Madam Energy Secretary could have received partial credit for anything close to 20 million.) Here she was, back in November...

Reporter: "How many barrels of oil does the U.S. consume per day?"
Biden's energy secretary: "I don't have that number in front of me."

For the mathematically-inclined reader, that means the entire 130 million barrels released from the SPR would last for, oh... (carry the six, divide by pie, find the hypotenuse, sin cos tan...) less than a week, or roughly the time between these Sunday Seshes. Then we’re back, hat in hand as Biden is presently, asking Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro (who also happens to be BFFs with Mr. Putin), to plug the hole left by the dormant Keystone plumbing. That, and making trips to butter up past and future enemies in the Middle East...

But never mind all that jazz. America’s favorite Jens (Psaki and Granholm), along with Transport Secretary, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, just back from maternity leave, have a better plan for proles peasants useful idiots workers who might be feeling the pain of rising prices at the pump.

Yes, Dear Reader, if you’re feeling the pinch of $5... $6... even $7+ per gallon gasoline (as is the case for these Beverly Hillbillies), the solution is a cinch: Just head on down to your local electric car dealership, whip out your credit card, and begin your journey toward smug, carbon-neutral* self righteousness today! And it’s a bargain, too. According to the Kelley Blue Book, the average transaction price for an electric vehicle is a mere $56,437, or just over $21,000 more than the average cost of a gasoline-powered four-door sedan, at $35,000.

Here’s Granholm again, flashing the kind of condescending smirk working class Americans just love seeing wrapped around their multi-millionaire, Dear Leaders’ faces...

Biden’s Energy Secretary in May: “If you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you.”

The rain may fall on the just and the unjust alike, but higher prices disproportionately impact those clinging to the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Pete and the Jens won’t be walking to work or riding the bus anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean you have to either, if you simply heed their sensible, totally-in-touch-with-reality advice: Let Them Drive Teslas!

That Vlad’s Russia is a key supplier of the world’s nickel - a critical component used in the lithium-ion batteries powering those electric vehicles - and that the metal went limit-up in trading in London earlier this week after crossing the $100,000 per ton mark for the first time ever... well, they’re just problems for some other Jens...

And that’s all from us for another week. As always, likes, shares and comments below are always welcome. In the meantime, tune in again tomorrow, when Bill returns with his regular missives. And enjoy your weekend!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Expanding War; Surging Commodity Prices; Shortages"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/13/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Expanding War;
 Surging Commodity Prices; Shortages"

Greg Hunter, "Going to Get Bad, Really Bad"

"Going to Get Bad, Really Bad"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Last year about this time, precious metals expert and financial writer David Morgan was warning about massive money printing and the so-called “everything bubble” popping. Inflation is the pin, and it found the bloated debt bubble. Now get ready for some pain as Morgan explains, “It’s going to get bad, and I mean really bad. There is already mass starvation at the lower end of the economic scale in third world countries. Prices are going to be untenable for many people, especially those in the middle class. When you get gasoline going up to the $5, $6, $7 range and you’ve got food going up to the level it’s gone up to and continues to go up to, it’s going to be bad. I am focusing on real stuff, not the bond market or what the price of gold is going to do. I am talking about day-to-day living. When gasoline goes from $3.50 per gallon to $5.50 per gallon and you start doing the math on how much it takes to fill up your car and drive it back and forth to work every day, all of a sudden you’ve got diminishing returns. Then factor in what your heating bills and what your grocery bill is going to be. So, there is going to be a lot of people at the margin, and the margin keeps moving up. It’s a few percent of the population. Then it’s 10% and then 20% and so on. When food gets to be 50% of your budget, then there are food riots. That’s the trend, and I think we will get there. We know the ‘Arab Spring’ was not about politics. It was about food. We are going to see ‘Arab Springs’ spring up all over the place because of food costs and availability. You can have a lot of money and not be able to get food too.”

It’s not just physical assets that are going to be affected, but the financial system too. Morgan says, “What is all this going to do to the financial system? It’s breaking, but it’s been broken for a long time. We just have not seen the end result - yet. I don’t think the bankers really thought this through all the way. If you look at the way Russia is, they are a hardened people. They are used to suffering. They are used to standing in line for bread and potatoes. They are not like other nations. This is going to get uglier and uglier and harder and harder. I do not think this is going to get resolved anytime soon.”

What does Morgan see coming? Morgan says, “There are going to be cyber-attacks, and they are going on right now. There is going to be communication breakdown. Number three, there are going to be consequences that nobody can see at this point. And to reiterate, it’s a mess, and it’s going to get messier, and it’s not going to be resolved quickly.”

Morgan sees gold at $2,300 by the end of this year and silver near $40 per ounce. In 2023, all bets are off, and Morgan contends you could see both metals way higher than they are now. Morgan says, “Silver will outperform gold in the long run on a percentage basis. Silver will outperform gold four to one.” Morgan also says, “Demand for the metals from pensions funds and other big money managers is a “trend that is just getting started.” Morgan also talks about the importance of cash and what the signal will be to get out of the U.S. dollar."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One
 with David Morgan, publisher of “The Morgan Report”.

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

Deuter, "Endless Horizon"
Full screen recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Northern winter constellations and a long arc of the Milky Way are setting in this night skyscape looking toward the Pacific Ocean from Point Reyes on planet Earth's California coast. Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major, is prominent below the starry arc toward the left. Orion's yellowish Betelgeuse, Aldebaran in Taurus, and the blue tinted Pleiades star cluster also find themselves between Milky Way and northwestern horizon near the center of the scene. 
The nebulae visible in the series of exposures used to construct this panoramic view were captured in early March, but are just too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. On that northern night their expansive glow includes the reddish semi-circle of Barnard's Loop in Orion and NGC 1499 above and right of the Pleiades, also known as the California Nebula."

"And Sometimes..."

 

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Lead"

"Lead"

"Here is a story to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter the loons came to our harbor and died,
 one by one, of nothing we could see.
A friend told me of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one just where that is.
The next morning this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world."

- Mary Oliver

The Monstrous Thing..."

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."
- Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”

"Well, It's Not So Easy..."

“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”
- Woody Allen
Joe South, "Walk A Mile In My Shoes"

The Daily "Near You?"

Hadley, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Must Watch! “The Economic Abyss Will Crush You, Will You Survive The Crash? People Can’t Afford To Live”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 3/11/22:
“The Economic Abyss Will Crush You, 
Will You Survive The Crash? People Can’t Afford To Live”

Shocking truth...

"What is Normal Anyway? $200 Oil, Food Shortages and High Interest Rates"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/12/22:
"What is Normal Anyway? 
$200 Oil, Food Shortages and High Interest Rates"
"When do we get back to normal? We live in a world with extreme inflation, rising gas prices and an upcoming food shortage. People should not wait for things to get back to a certain way that they remember. We need to work from here."

"That's Why..."

"That's why crazy people are so dangerous.
You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage."
- Michael Buckley

"Truth..."

"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity.
Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities.
Outlawed by all governments everywhere.
Possession is normally punishable by death."
- John Gilmore

A comment: According to statistics compiled by the UN, by the time the sun rises tomorrow morning 30,000 children world wide will have died overnight from malnutrition, disease, lack of potable water, and lack of basic medical care. That's every night, all year long, 30,000 children dying because no one cared. Trillions of dollars wasted on insane wars, economies destroyed by psychopathic greed, the environment dying in front of our eyes, and no one cares. No wonder Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described humanity as, "Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." The "instincts of beasts" is evident for all to see... sometimes all this wears me down, and I look around, hoping to see the "aspirations of angels," hoping desperately that we can somehow awaken from the madness crushing us all, that together we can still rise above the despair and hopelessness and make a better world, where no child dies from hunger, where wars are a distant memory, where everyone can live full, dignified and honorable lives in peace. An impossible, hopeless struggle? Perhaps, but how dare we call ourselves "Human" if we don't try to make that vision real, in any way we can, no matter the price? A dream, you say? Yes, that's all it is... but without those dreams, those aspirations, all that's left is the "instincts of beasts", and we all see very clearly what those have brought this world to... 
- CP

"The Truth Virus: The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"

"The Truth Virus:
The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"
by Dog Poet

"I’ve got a virus. It doesn’t have a common name because it isn’t a common virus. It’s difficult to catch this virus because there are only so many ways for it to enter your system. You can catch it as a result of extreme trauma which results in all of your defenses being shut down. This includes all subconscious resistance and all systemic defenses. You can catch it as a result of long term abuse. This includes abuse visited upon you or abuse you visit on yourself. Often this abuse comes about because the virus is already looking for a foothold and it will attract one of these two kinds of abuse. You can catch it through diligent and repeated efforts to catch it, in an environment of quietude, created by a relentless persistence of the mind to cease from the production of thought. There are a few other ways.

Once you’ve got this virus there’s no cure for it. Every cell in your body is going to be replaced and the world will gradually- and sometimes not so gradually- take on the appearance of an insane asylum, while also becoming remarkably predictable. People think insanity is unpredictable but that’s just one of the illusions that are part of the ordinary mindset of the collectively insane.

People who have this virus can understand one another without having to say anything at all and if they should speak they are also understood by people who are vulnerable to this virus. This is one of the ways that the virus spreads. The impact of the virus speaking induces trauma that naturally moves toward the extreme. People who do not have the virus- and who are not susceptible to catching it- will not understand a single word being said. It will make them uncomfortable and sometimes it will make them angry but at no time will it be understood.

There’s a lot of news, noise and argument about Howdy Doody’s comprehensive health plan for the Teletubbies. Most people think that some permutation of universal health care is going to be a major step up for American society. They seem to think that having it is somehow going to lead to a more general state of well being among the population. There are several reasons why this isn’t going to make the slightest difference no matter what kind of a program finally gets decided on.

It doesn’t really matter whether you can see a doctor of your choice or not and have some amount of it paid for. It isn’t going to have any positive effect on your health. Health is the result of a few basic things and one of them is youth. The other things are diet and ones mental and emotional state. An awareness of ones relationship to all of these leads to making the right decisions about how one lives their life. A conscious awareness of diet has a profound effect on one’s well being. One’s mental and emotional states also play significant roles. One needs only to study how many stress-related diseases there are to understand this. If you factor bad diet into unbalanced mental and emotional states you’ve got a problem no doctor can deal with, especially if your medical system is of the allopathic variety.

The people who decide what doctors can and cannot do and what doctors can and cannot tell you are permanent bed-partners with various corporations for whom good health is a bad thing. These are the pharmaceutical concerns; the AMA, the hospital equipment industry and related suppliers of related products. These corporations have another relationship with the various food industries in the sense that they will not write or permit policy that impinges on major enterprises that bring you processed foods, fast foods, mystery meats, candy and soft drinks and whatever else hides under that umbrella. What this means is that, according to the capitalist mentality that rules this society, it is possible; it has to be possible and it damn well will be possible to eat anything you want, avoid exercise and generally break any and every rule of intelligent behavior and if there’s a problem they will either cut it out of you or suppress the symptoms until they have to cut it out of you.

Because the will of corporations is the rule of the land, there will be no change in the profit line for participating corporations. What will change will be the language that the non-change is presented in. To see into the black heart of the system in charge of American life you have only to look into the prison industry where 5% of the American public and 25% of the world’s prison population are incarcerated in American prisons. Why is this? It’s a business. Is it coincidence that America uses 60% of the world’s resources as well?

The unstated objective of American society is that a small percentage of its members shall possess the greatest amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else and will then be lauded for their efforts to assist the less fortunate where no such efforts exist. Such a system cannot survive and will not survive and is presently at the state where a number of shell games are being used to give the impression that the system is doing fine and going to get better as it approaches the lip of a high cliff. As things begin to fall from the cliff, you will see charts and graphs appear that indicate the true state and direction of the culture and economy but they will probably be holding these charts and graphs upside down.

I see these things and many other things because I have this virus. Others have this virus too and many more are on the verge of infection. The biggest concern of the TPTB is the proliferation of this virus. Their concern about all other viruses, which they manufactured to begin with, is just Slim Shady dining at the Red Herring Restaurant.

With this virus I can see that the appetites and desires being milked by corporations in order to promote and sell their products leads directly to aberrant behavior which leads to the prison industry for those who are not making the laws that route the unfortunate toward the prison or the grave with that long interlude of enslavement at the looping track of life where they chase the uncatchable dream rabbit that is already steaming in the pot of their betters.

With this virus I can look directly at the lies of politicians and religious leaders and hear the truth that spotlights the pies around the corner and their relationship to the pies in the sky which are moving on conveyor belts behind unbreakable Plexiglas. I can see that there are no pies because the pies are only video projections of pies bounced off of a series of mirrors. I can see the people who do no have the virus and I can see the world they are looking at and it turns out that this world is also just a projection bouncing off of mirrors and one of those mirrors is their minds. These projections then activate the furnace in the visceral brain which causes those without the virus to dance like millions of chickens on a hot griddle that somehow got the impression that they are auditioning for American Idol.

It is not possible to create a society, based on the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about, when corporations are the ruling authority of the land, because the intent of a corporation is diametrically opposed to the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about. You can’t make Beef Stroganoff out of pork rinds and Velveeta but you can convince people that that is what they are eating and that is the point.

There’s a debate that has been going around since Cain brained Abel and that debate centers on whether it is better to have this virus or some form of all the other viruses. The awareness that comes with having this virus can lead to the rack, the auto da fe and other less pleasant locations. Having the other viruses can lead to being a hamster or some part of a compost pile and a fire burns there as well. They can lead to being cannon fodder and the merciless hands of those who practice a form of medicine that has little to do with the stated intentions of the art. The hands of these practitioners are often more dangerous than the problem that brought you there.

Most people spend more than ninety percent of everything they have saved in their lives in the last year of their life on an industry whose purpose is exactly for that reason.

This virus of mine- and perhaps you have it too- is not an easy burden to bear. You can never pull the covers over your head again. You know there’s no monster in the closet but you also know where the real monsters dwell. You are doomed to an unending quarantine even as you move among your fellows. One thing you do acquire as a result of this virus is compassion and, as Lao Tzu said long ago, “Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead.” Realization may not be all the things we imagine it to be, but it is preferable to the restless sleep of nightmares wielded by the whip hand of psychopaths."
Full screen recommended.
"They Live," "Sunglasses"
If you know, you know...

"How It Really Is"

 

"Streets of Philadelphia, March 12, 2022"

Full screen recommended.
kimgary, "Streets of Philadelphia, March 12, 2022"
"Violent crime and drug abuse in Philadelphia as a whole is a major problem. The city’s violent crime rate is higher than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas.1 Also alarming is Philadelphia’s drug overdose rate. The number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50% from 2013 to 2015, with more than twice as many deaths from drug overdoses as deaths from homicides in 2015.2 A big part of Philadelphia’s problems stem from the crime rate and drug abuse in Kensington. 

Because of the high number of drugs in Kensington, the neighborhood has a drug crime rate of 3.57, the third-highest rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia.3 Like a lot of the country, a big part of this issue is a result of the opioid epidemic. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed over the last two decades in the United States and Philadelphia is no exception.  Along with having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% percent of Philadelphia’s overdose deaths involved opioids2 and Kensington is a big contributor to this number. This Philly neighborhood is purportedly the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast with many neighboring residents flocking to the area for heroin and other opioids.4 With such a high number of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have zoned in on this area to try and tackle Philadelphia’s problem."
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
- Oscar Wilde
“So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember
 all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and 
brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! 
There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is - other people!”
- Jean-Paul Sartre, "No Exit"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/11/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/11/22"
Globalists Want War, Ukraine Lies & Propaganda, Economy Tanking
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Even though Russia and Ukraine have been talking, zero agreement has been reached in stopping the three-week-old war between the two countries. There is no good faith effort to end it, and it appears the Deep State globalists want this conflict to continue. The only conclusion you can come to is, ultimately, this leads to war, and that’s what they want. Be prepared for this conflict and escalating sanctions to continue for some time to come. Maybe this is why Martin Armstrong sees a big war cycle coming in 2023.

It’s been difficult reporting on Ukraine because of the lies and propaganda. For the past few weeks, the Biden/Obama Administration has been denying there are U.S. bio-weapons labs in Ukraine. They called it conspiracy theories and “fake news.” They should have told that to State Department Under Secretary Victoria Nuland because in Senate testimony under oath, she basically confirmed the U.S. did indeed have bio-weapons labs in Ukraine. Nuland said she was worried about the labs falling into the hands of the Russians, and she was not talking about the Russians finding out about a cure for cancer. This breaks a 1992 agreement by the U.S. and Russia on bio-weapons. Another example of propaganda in Ukraine is many of the videos you are seeing contain old video from other battles and even video game footage that simulate war. A big percentage are fake or total misrepresentations of what is going on in Ukraine. It’s all used to sway public opinion against Russia and for NATO. Even globalist George Soros is shilling for Ukraine, and that alone is a huge red flag.

As the sanctions on Russia increase, the economy continues to tank. The big issue is supply of goods and commodities causing spiking inflation. Just look at wheat prices. Last fall, when winter wheat was planted, the grain was around $5.50 per bushel. Today, thanks to sanctions on Russia, it is averaging more than $11.00 per bushel. Expect the free bread at Outback and every other restaurant to not be so free in the future. All indications are the tanking of the global economy will keep going because the Russia/Ukraine conflict has no end in sight. and that’s what the Deep State globalists want."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/11/22.

Tucker Carlson, "This Could Very Easily Get Worse"

Tucker Carlson,  3/11/22:
"This Could Very Easily Get Worse"

Friday, March 11, 2022

"Panic Buying Frenzy Intensifies As Fears Of Global Supply Chain Breakdown Continues To Rise"

Full screen recommended.
"Panic Buying Frenzy Intensifies As Fears Of Global
 Supply Chain Breakdown Continues To Rise"
by Epic Economist

"A massive wave of panic buying and hoarding continues to spread all across the world as people and governments desperately attempt to hoard food and energy supplies before a total supply chain breakdown. In the U.S., drivers are risking their lives to stockpile gasoline in every container they possibly can find amid a sharp increase in prices. In the UK, authorities are warning that panic buying is going to make food and drink prices significantly higher. In some European countries, consumers are massively purchasing medicine as fears of nuclear strife intensify.

Families are facing an extremely critical situation in Ukraine, with many on the brink of starvation. That’s why food staples are flying off supermarket shelves, leading food retailers to reimpose purchase limits. Meanwhile, as the neighboring country collapses into chaos, Russians are panic-buying unusual products to resell for a profit. At the same time, governments across the globe are hoarding grains, vegetable oils, and fuel to prevent the emergence of food and energy crises in their respective countries. It seems like everyone is afraid of a supply chain disaster, and people are doing everything they can to stockpile before a global catastrophe occurs

Big names such as Shell and BP have already confirmed they will stop purchasing Russian oil following the aggression in Ukraine. This means that oil from other suppliers is also becoming significantly more expensive, and U.S. consumers are already feeling the impact at the pump. Reports of panic buying at the pumps continue to make the headlines. In St. Charles, Missouri, gas hoarders were spotted filling up dozens of plastic containers. In a video shared online by a local woman, drivers were first filling up their cars, then gas containers, and after that, they’ve started to pour gas straight into plastic bottles.

Similarly, one insider at a UK trade association is telling politicians that a panic buying frenzy is making a comeback at the country’s stations as drivers fear further surges in fuel prices. Some stations in the UK are reporting that hundreds of cars are forming huge lines as drivers rush to purchase fuel. Others are running out of a month’s worth supply of gas in a matter of days, and being forced to temporarily close. In Ukraine, too, gas stations are swamped by drivers planning to flee with their families. Local reports also highlight the dire conditions at supermarkets. Shipping companies are unable to deliver goods in the country since operations on the Black Sea coast have been halted. That’s preventing food retailers to restock supermarket inventories, and leaving millions of families in a state of utter desperation.

Meanwhile, Russians confessed that they’re buying all the supplies they can find to resell for a profit later on. That includes Starbucks drinks and Coca-Cola, and also goes from Victoria’s Secret lingerie to designer clothes, Rolexes, iPhones, Apple Watches, and other imported electronics. While consumers scramble to stockpile, governments around the world are also hoarding food and energy supplies as chaos reigned in the global commodity market. Food and energy security and self-sufficiency are becoming top priorities for global leaders, given that the worsening conflict between Russia and Ukraine is having a major impact on grain exports and global oil supplies.

The truth is that they can tell that a global supply chain breakdown is looming. Yesterday, Goldman warned that the world is on the verge of the worst energy crunch in history, while the UN issued an alert on a global food crisis. Consumers can also tell that things are rapidly changing and that more shortages and disruptions are about to occur. It is safe to say that this is just the beginning. A lot more unrest is going to erupt in the weeks ahead as our systems start to fall apart and the world plunges into chaos."

"Another Bank Closed Today, Doors Locked, Cash Unavailable; Americans Are Broke, Credit Card Rates Soar"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 3/11/22:
"Another Bank Closed Today, Doors Locked, Cash Unavailable; 
Americans Are Broke, Credit Card Rates Soar"

"The Worst Thing Russia Ever Did to America"

"The Worst Thing Russia Ever Did to America"
by Brian Maher

"In 1991 Russian political scientist Georgi Arbatov sneered to Americans: "We are going to do the worst thing we can do to you." Which was what precisely? "We are going to take your enemy away from you." We fear he was correct. As we have written previously: "A superpower needs an enemy as the policeman needs criminals… as the head shrinker needs madmen… as the bishop needs the devil. Absent an enemy a behemoth flounders - adrift, aimless and rudderless."

Between world wars, berserker Winston Churchill lamented "the bland skies of peace" that stretched above Earth. Those same bland skies of peace overhung Earth following the Cold War's conclusion. The American Colossus bestrode the world itself, pole to pole, horizon to horizon. American capitalism, American democracy represented civilization's apex. Its zenith. Its perfection. It was the very end of history.

Yet history has a ferocious will. And Churchill’s "bland skies of peace" have long since cleared on out. Heavy weather has barreled on through. And today Mr. Putin's squalls are giving the world a lovely soaking.

Some 30 years after high glory, the American Colossus features structural cracking… tarnishing… corroding. Before the pandemic its economy appeared plenty healthy from the overhead view. But if you scratched the surfacing paint and peered within, you would find: Gutted industries, stagnating growth, flat wages and a stock market captive to the central bank.

The entire system, meantime, has rotten through with unpayable debt — over $80 trillion and running. The business is not sustainable. When did the American economy go wrong? And why? Our own Charles Hugh Smith gives his answer: "In broad-brush, the post-World War II era ended around 1970. The legitimate prosperity of 1946–1970 was based on cheap oil controlled by the U.S. and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Everything else was merely decoration.

The Original Sin to hard-money advocates was America’s abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, but this was the only way to maintain hegemony. Maintaining the reserve currency is tricky, as the nation issuing the reserve currency has to supply the global economy with enough of the currency to grease commerce and stock central bank reserves around the world. As the global economy expanded, the only way the U.S. could send enough dollars overseas was to run trade deficits, which in a gold standard meant the gold reserves would go to zero as trading partners holding dollars would exchange the currency for gold.

So the choice was: Give up the reserve currency and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar by jacking up the dollar’s value so high that imports would collapse, or accept that hegemony was no longer compatible with the gold standard. It wasn’t a difficult decision: Who would give up global hegemony, and for what?…

The elites have cannibalized the system so thoroughly that there’s nothing left to steal, exploit or cannibalize. The hyper-centralized global money control has run out of rope as the cheap oil is gone, debts have ballooned to the point there is no way they’ll ever be paid down and the only thing staving off collapse is money printing, which holds the seeds of its own demise."

Charles tracks the course of an extended, fatal malaise. Yet we believe there is good, hard sense in it. We believe it is a competent autopsy. "Empires have a logic of their own," Bill Bonner and our own Addison Wiggin wrote in "Empire of Debt," concluding: "That they will end in grief is a foregone conclusion." We fear they are correct. Yet take heart: At least the American empire has its enemy back…

Below, Jeffrey Tucker shows you how several “decades of glory” have ended. Read on for Jeffrey’s own autopsy."
"Decades of Glory Have Ended"
By Jeffrey Tucker

"The new inflation number is out. It’s 8% or so they say. Not even that is believable. It’s already double-digit. Let’s look at the bigger picture. But first, a frightening anecdote that concerns information restriction. It provides a telling symbol of our times.

Russia Today America, with its expansive offices in D.C. and mostly American staff, has been shut down completely. By whom, and the exact circumstances, I still do not know. It was a hugely popular station. Very high quality. You can say, “Oh, it was Putin propaganda,” but I never experienced that. I appeared often, and have for years, on Boom Bust along with some very good reporters and commentators, including my friends Ben Swann and Rachel Blevins.

It was one of the few independent journalistic outlets that offered alternative points of view. I was never censored, not once. Some shows offered extended discussions that allowed me to debate and speak for 20 minutes or more, which is basically unheard of in American media. Boom Bust in particular reported on subjects that others don’t cover, like the crypto industry and the real status of inflation and other subjects.

Did they get government funding? Yes, and so does the BBC, PBS, NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Every country has a state-funded media outlet. Oddly, they are often more independent than the ostensibly private media sources. A FOIA request also just revealed that all the major media outlets in the U.S. received billions in funding from the Biden administration to promote government virus propaganda. So there’s that.

Many outstanding U.S. citizens found this station to be a refuge from censorship. They worked hard and strived for accuracy. They tell me that they never experienced censorship either. Now it is gone. With it goes a powerful and valuable alternative source of information. I enjoyed going on the station because it always struck me as a sign of peace between two nations that were at war for so long. It was a symbol of a better, more prosperous and peaceful world.

Now here we are today: The U.S. is in a de facto but undeclared war with Russia. No one calls it that, but when the U.S. provides armaments through intermediaries to the forces that Russia is battling on its border. The dangers right now are intense, on all fronts.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military-industrial complex has been searching for a reliable enemy that the U.S. population could hate, as a way to distract from the misdeeds of the political elite at home. After decades of cycling through them, it appears that the old enemy was the best enemy. And with a small turn of a dial, vast swaths of high-end opinion are exclusively focussed on the plight of Ukraine. Even Orwell blushes.

Meanwhile, gas prices are at an all-time high. Inflation is now arguably higher than in a century. The U.S. president blames it all on Putin, even though the Biden administration itself has worked since taking office to curb U.S. fossil fuel production. Today, the same administration is blaming the U.S. oil industry for not producing enough! The whole thing is rather mind-blowing.

I promised the big picture. Here it is. The prosperity and relatively low inflation plus economic growth - never as great as it could have been but not entirely shabby - of the last 40 years has come to an end. It seems more obvious in retrospect what happened here, even if it wasn’t entirely visible until now.

Here are the important dates…

1947: The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was agreed to as the main structure for bringing about global free trade. It was never fully free, but the long-run trajectory was toward ever lower tariffs and barriers and ever more internationalization. This became a major contributing factor to building prosperity. It was in line with Adam Smith: The more extensive the division of labor, the more gains to efficiency and wealth.

Decade after decade, the system produced fabulous prosperity, even in the midst of the Cold War. The nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Russia, mostly mediated through diplomacy, paradoxically forestalled World War III and assured that most conflicts were regional. The secular trend in the U.S. was toward rising stocks and rising wealth.

1989: Unexpectedly, the Soviet Union completely fell apart. The Berlin Wall fell. Eastern Europe threw off the yoke. New nations were created out of old ones. At the same time, China had made enormous progress in opening up economically. This combination of events introduced billions of people to the world economy, drove up production, stabilized wages and led to a new era of astonishing growth.

1990s: The web browser was invented and the digital age began. The world was connected. New opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation were everywhere. Competition intensified. Markets for everything exploded. The dollar was the king of the world. The Fed had new opportunities to expand money printing because the markets were everywhere and expanding. We avoided inflation generally. Americans and the world benefited enormously. It felt like there would be no end to the progress.

2018: Donald Trump embarked on his long-promised protectionist campaign, slapping tariffs on everything, pulling out of trade treaties, inveighing against any government with whom the U.S. carried a trade deficit, creating a digital iron curtain with China and generally violating every precept of the postwar consensus. He did a lot of good, to be sure, but his personal and wild fixation on economic nationalism was his undoing. It didn’t work either. It only increased prices for goods and services in the U.S. and goaded no country in the world toward better behavior. It also led to a target being put on his head. This was the beginning of the end.

2020: I don’t need to recount the grisly and grim details of this horror-filled year. It was shocking, with hundreds of thousands of businesses being destroyed. The Federal Reserve accommodated congressional spending like never before, guaranteeing a future of inflation. That should be unbearably obvious now but, truly, it was denied back then that this would be the outcome.

Here we are today in a de facto war with Russia. What poetry! What madness! The progress of 70 years has been fully reversed in a mere four years. The dangers are hugely present all around us today. We don’t really know how the public is going to respond to living amidst the dramatic weakening of the currency and the end of the American empire.

I asked a historian last night how previous empires dealt with decline, speaking in particular of Spain and England. He said that it is never obvious in the generation that most directly experiences the new chapter in history. Everyone pretends that the glory is still there and that nothing has really changed. It can take a century or more before the realization sets in that the empire and the good-old days are fully gone.

We truly did not know how good we had it. The history I just summarized pretty much covers the life of most all Americans alive. The world we are entering now is unlike anything we’ve previously experienced. Maybe two years ago, there was a chance to dig our way out of this pit of hell but that seems ever less likely with each passing day."

Gregory Mannarino, "Hyper-Alert! Be Ready For A Major False Flag Event To Occur At Any Moment!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/11/22:
"Hyper-Alert! Be Ready For A Major 
False Flag Event To Occur At Any Moment!"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Children in Time"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Children in Time"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Where do the dark streams of dust in the Orion Nebula originate? This part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, M43, is the often imaged but rarely mentioned neighbor of the more famous M42. M42, seen in part to the upper right, includes many bright stars from the Trapezium star cluster.
M43 is itself a star forming region that displays intricately-laced streams of dark dust - although it is really composed mostly of glowing hydrogen gas. The entire Orion field is located about 1600 light years away. Opaque to visible light, the picturesque dark dust is created in the outer atmosphere of massive cool stars and expelled by strong outer winds of protons and electrons."
"The eternal silence of infinite spaces frightens me. Why now rather than then? Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time have been ascribed to me? We travel in a vast sphere, always drifting in the uncertain, pulled from one side to another. Whenever we find a fixed point to attach and to fasten ourselves, it shifts and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desires to find solid ground and an ultimate and solid foundation for building a tower reaching to the Infinite. But always these bases crack, and the earth obstinately opens up into abysses. We are infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, since the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from us in an encapsulated secret; we are equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which we were made, and the Infinite in which we are swallowed up."
- Blaise Pascal