"Staring Into the Abyss"

"Staring Into the Abyss"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The global economy is perched on the edge of an abyss, and averting our gaze doesn't actually lessen the risk, it increases it because problems which aren't faced directly and addressed directly fester and rot the system from within. This is why we're collectively staring into the abyss: all the big problems have been dismissed, ignored or papered over with PR-happy-talk "solutions" that only make the problem worse. There are three basic techniques that our "leadership" (public and private) have used to avoid dealing directly with our pressing problems:

1. Appear to address the problems by doing more of what's failed spectacularly.

2. Propose magical-thinking happy-happy technological "solutions" that are appealing but impractical.

3. Keep the status quo glued together to maximize quick-buck gains for the elite while guaranteeing long-term catastrophe for the entire society / economy.

Doing more of what's failed spectacularly is one of the phrases you've seen here over the years. This generates an illusion of control because the tried-and-true Band-Aid makes it look like the problem is being addressed. Since doing more of what's failed spectacularly doesn't break the system immediately, everyone incorrectly assumes it's benign or actually helping.

The Federal Reserve's blowing of serial speculative credit-asset bubbles is a good example. With the bogus goal of generating a "wealth effect" that only rewards the already-rich, the Fed has exacerbated socially fatal neofeudal inequality and created guaranteed-to-pop bubbles that each collapsed with devastating consequences for the credulous who believed the Fed's poisonous assurances that a) this isn't a bubble and b) bubbles never pop.

The Fed's "solution" - blowing an even bigger bubble to paper over the catastrophic losses when the previous bubble popped - has finally reached the endgame: three bubbles and you're out (2000, 2008-09 and 2021-22). Sorry to disappoint the beneficiaries of the three Fed bubbles, but there won't be a fourth bubble. Bubbles don't inflate at the bottom of the abyss.

Magical thinking abounds in finance, energy and and economic policy. Examples include substituting nuclear power for hydrocarbons, conveniently sidestepping the reality that we'd need to build a new reactor a week for years to make a difference, and the really inconvenient reality that the U.S. has built a grand total of two new reactors in the past 25 years and the world has a few dozen under construction - a scale roughly 1/100th of what's needed.

In finance, magical thinking appears across the entire spectrum from the fanciful delusions of Modern Monetary Theory (we can't go broke because we can always print more money - uh, sure, that will work just fine, guaranteed) to the Fed's "if we just make the already-rich even richer while bankrupting the bottom 90%, everything will work out just peachy." Peachy for whom? That question is never answered because the billionaires are so charmingly bashful.

The New Nobility elites reckon that if they can keep the crumbling cliff edge from collapsing for a few more years, they can maximize their private gains and then escape to their New Zealand bunkers when the consequences of their plunder send the global economy into the abyss. The elites are in effect selling seats in the Titanic's lifeboats to the highest bidders. The ship is doomed and they see this tragedy as a terrifically profitable opportunity.

Another analogy is polluting your nation and people so a handful of industrialists and party hacks can get super-rich. The land, water and air are all poisoned and the people sick and dying, but who cares once you're secure in your fortified villa?

None of humanity's most pressing problems have been addressed by any elite, any where. So sorry, but "you'll own nothing and be miserable - oops, we mean happy, yes, deliriously happy" doesn't count as a solution. Every elite is pursuing the same self-serving agenda of maximizing their private plunder and hoping - perhaps vainly - to escape the consequences of their obsession with short-term gains at the expense of the planet and its people.

Watch your step while peering into the abyss. The cliff edge is crumbling faster than we realize."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

"We Got Big Trouble - Stock Market Crushed Today; Party Is Over; Bank Collapse; Economy Unraveling"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/22/22:

"We Got Big Trouble - Stock Market Crushed Today;

 Party Is Over; Bank Collapse; Economy Unraveling"

"Oh No... A New Phase Has Begun"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, "Oh No... A New Phase Has Begun"

"Sleeper cells are activating, the food is burning down, Russia targeting NATO, the markets are crashing, and the elites are running for their bunkers, Taiwan accidentally scares the hell out of its population, everything is falling apart... If you see something on a shelf... buy it now."

"Rent Price Bubble Trigger Housing Crash As Mortgage Rate Hikes Push Prices To Explode"

Full screen recommended.

"Rent Price Bubble Trigger Housing Crash 

As Mortgage Rate Hikes Push Prices To Explode"

by Epic Economist

"An impending housing market crash is leaving economists, real estate experts, and policymakers increasingly worried as home price appreciation continues to balloon at unforeseen levels and mortgage rates continue to soar. Millions of homeowners are waking up to the fact that their monthly housing payments are getting significantly more expensive. At the same time, millions of potential buyers are getting entirely priced out of the market. For that reason, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported many signs indicating a “brewing U.S. housing bubble," and researchers concluded that as affordability worsens and impacts people’s purchasing power, home prices are set to collapse as they finally readjust to our economic reality.

Last month, when rates went above the 4% mark, the number of buyers applying for mortgages dropped considerably. Home prices have already jumped by a staggering 19.2% nationally. In some markets, that increase was well above the 30% mark, and according to new estimates released by the National Association of Realtors, in March alone, at least 9 million more buyers were priced out of the market.

The breath-taking pace of home price appreciation has started to raise fears that a real estate bubble could be setting the stage for another burst, which led economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to publish a note warning about the consequences of the growing U.S. housing bubble, and explain that even though today’s fundamentals are different than the ones that led to the previous bubble, the risks are still very real.

As market conditions remain volatile, Americans are feeling increasingly pessimistic about the future of their own housing options. A recent article shared by The Hill showed that more and more Americans are losing confidence they will ever own a home. A new survey by the Federal Reserve of New York uncovered that only 43.4% of renters believe they’ll ever own a home, the first reading below 50% in the survey's history. Compared with last February, the drop amounted to a decline of 10 percentage points.

The latest increase in rates means that buyers all around the nation are paying nearly 42% more in their monthly mortgage payments for the same house today than they did a year ago. The combination of rising home prices and escalating mortgage rates has added hundreds, in some cases thousands, of dollars a month to those mortgage bills.

And that’s coming on top of what all of those potential buyers are spending on everything else. With inflation running at 8.5%, and gas prices soaring 40%, millions of people out there are completely tapped out. This is not what a healthy market looks like. Considering the many supply and demand imbalances, the growing inequality gap in net household wealth, and worsening work conditions in today’s labor market, most buyers don’t have enough cushion to stay afloat when the real estate market breaks.

With wages failing to keep pace with the rise in house prices and mortgage rates, a meaningful decline cannot be ruled out. And if even those who swore up and down that there was nothing wrong going on in the market over the past two years are now admitting that there are serious risks of a bubble burst, we should start bracing for another disaster in the months ahead."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"Empathy Triggers"

"Empathy Triggers"

by John Robb

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

- E.O. Wilson

"Empathy triggers are used to mobilize network swarms, which is, as we have seen with the response to the invasion of Ukraine, a key element of network warfare. Let’s figure out how they work. What does an “empathy trigger” look like?

Here’s a widely shared picture that shows a pregnant Ukrainian woman on a stretcher in front of a building shattered by a Russian bombardment (both she and her baby died).

Pictures with descriptions like this are something we have seen in traditional media (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.) for a century, and although they have an impact on us, that impact is muted. It feels slightly removed due to the nature of the medium.

However, everything changes when that picture and description of a victim are in a social media post. Due to the nature of the medium, instead of simply evoking sympathy or sadness, it can often trigger a strong empathic reaction. For example:

Empathy triggers like these, distributed to tens of millions of people online, can mobilize millions into action for protest or war. An excellent example of this is the smartphone video of George Floyd:

Social networking has rewired us. “Empathy triggers” work so well because social networking and smartphones have fundamentally changed how our brains process news. It has rewired us. Here’s how:

Scan. We can’t read all the news we receive, there’s too much of it, and it would be impossible to make sense of it all even if we did. Instead of reading it, we scan it, looking for novelty and patterns.

Social cue. We don’t simply read the news and form opinions in isolation anymore. Online, the news is packaged as a social cue that lets us figure out what other people are thinking.

Addiction. The news isn’t just a one-way flow of information anymore. Online, it’s interactive, with social feedback loops and induced hormone release (cortisol in fear of getting it wrong and dopamine for getting it right) that make it addictive.

Addictively scanning our news feed for social cues doesn’t just make us more vulnerable to empathy triggers; it encourages us to seek them out.

Another contributing factor is that empathy isn’t simply sympathy; it’s a powerful pre-verbal form of communication. A form of communication that humanity has only recently learned to mitigate with reason in large group settings. Here’s how empathic communication works: "Empathic communication is an involuntary process if you are not actively resisting it. As a result, this form of communication is usually limited to children (it’s critical for socialization) and for intimate groups (family).

In empathic communication, we build an internal model of the other person's feelings based on cues (face, body, screams, etc.). We feel what the victim feels: their fear, anger, and pain. Our faces grimace in pain like the victim, and we can feel the knee on our necks (George Floyd). We connect at a deep level. When we empathize with victims, they are no longer strangers; we form a fictive kinship with them. They are now part of our tribe, and they are being threatened. When we combine these elements - addictive social cue scanning and involuntary connections that produce fictive kinship - we get a powerful tool for mobilizing a networked swarm."

- WigginSessions@email.5minforecast.com

"An Explosion Is Coming"

"An Explosion Is Coming"

by Jeffrey Tucker

“You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've 

been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.” 

- Gore Vidal.

"Did you catch the absolute frenzy about Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter? Employees at Twitter were falling on their fainting couches repeatedly. The Washington Post warned of the grave danger to democracy. Now think about this. This is a highly censored platform. They ban you for raising questions about vaccines. You are dinged for wondering a bit about Zelenskyy’s war drums. They body-bag you if you say that the virus is not what they claim it is. Not so democratic, is it? It’s certainly not in the democratic spirit.

Imagine dialing back the censorship just a bit. Imagine a hole the size of a nail in a major dam. This is precisely what “they” do not want. It would expose the strangest fact about our world today, namely that the oppressions and wreckages all around us are the products of just a few hundred people around the world. Forget the 1%. It’s more like the 0.0001%. It’s a small group with wildly outsized influence. It feels wrong. It is undemocratic. Plus they have proven their incompetence on every subject from economics to monetary finance to virus control. They are effectively discredited. Now there is one goal: Keep the masses from rising up.

What Is Forgivable? Social science and psychology have produced a large and very interesting literature about what the human mind can forgive and get over, versus that which people can remember for a lifetime or many generations. Some things are bad but one moves on. The death of a parent is painful but we recover. Stock market losses are bad luck but we wait it out. Even job loss, as bad as it is, eventually recedes in our memory once we have a new job that makes us happy. Relationships can go wrong but the next good relationship heals the pain.

What is the most salient, pressing, burning and possibly permanent form of hurt? Things that harm our children. Actions that steal our patrimony (as Machiavelli said) and external forms of intervention that rob us of our social status. Those things we do not forgive. Instead, we seethe. In any case, this is what the literature has explained and it seems right.

Now consider the last two years. Perhaps half the country thinks that the president found his way to power through illicit means of some sort. Forget the ballot-counting issues. It’s all about the manipulation of democratic process via mail-in ballots and so on. I tend to be rather moderate on such questions but I’m an outlier here: Multitudes believe the election to have been outright stolen.

An Unfair Race: So much for credibility at the top. Now consider what has happened to children over two years. Many in the middle class have faced the grim reality that their kids learned next to nothing online. They are massively behind. Meanwhile, the rich kids in private schools are far ahead of them. Keep in mind: These are schools for which people pay with VERY high property taxes. The unions and the germophobes shut them down for two years! Did people get refunds? Nope. They were robbed.

Also millions of people over two years were denied access to funerals and even hospital visits for loved ones like parents and grandparents. We can deal with death. We cannot deal with politicians and bureaucrats who barred us from providing comfort to the dying and then grieving ourselves.

This is utterly unforgivable.

Now consider vaccine mandates. Most people never wanted their skin to be stuck with a needle and have their bodies pumped full of some untested substance, generated by tax-funded medical labs, operating without liability. Those who went along are still furious to this day. This anger will last a lifetime. And to top it off, none of these goofy and truly evil strategies achieved anything in terms of disease mitigation, much less in cushioning the economic blow of the lockdowns.

Inflation: The most remarkable form of robbery came in the form of the seemingly wonderful stimulus checks. Wow, the government is giving me something… and then the government took it away in the form of inflation.

And let’s talk about inflation and public fury. Some people in some countries get used to it. Americans are not that way. We’ve been through 40 years of relatively tolerable levels. The Fed assured us that it had it all under control. For a year now, all of the top experts said that prices would settle back and everything would be fine. Of course, it wasn’t true.

Now people feel it very intensely: Their standard of living is falling. Fast. There is nowhere where money makes money. Nothing feels safe. We are being secretly robbed at every turn. We seek explanations. They blame Putin. They blame business. They blame you and me. They blame everyone but themselves. This is unbearably obvious.

The pace of increase has cooled a bit for now, down from 13.5% to 12%, according to real-time measurements. That’s still very high. Plus, there is plenty of room for these numbers to get out of control very quickly as we approach the end of the summer months and into fall.

The Explosion: In 2016, I gave a speech in which I said that people who hate Trump should feel gratitude for him. Compared with the real mood in the country, Trump really did represent a moderating force. That was six years ago, and long before lockdowns, inflation, a sketchy election and vast social and economic wreckage.

The administrative state is right now as angry at us as we are at them. There is a peaceful solution here but it doesn’t seem to be on the table. Will governments have learned their lessons? Look around! We live in a world burdened by extremely stupid public agencies that have lost public trust.

If I’ve learned anything new over the last two years, it’s about the strange way in which the ruling class is impervious to the will of the people, even when it shows up in devastating polls. They seem not to regard this as a corrective but a challenge. Are the elites right to fear a world of free speech? They certainly are. In a digital age with the potential for mass communication and action, a genuine platform that allows people to actually share information and say what they really think could be truly revolutionary.

This sounds exciting and like something we should welcome. Maybe. My actual worry is deeper, namely that we have traveled too far down the path for this to end in peace and tranquility. The powder keg is growing more combustible by the day. Now consider the present situation and add recession/depression on top of it all. There is no precedent in our lifetimes for what this could mean. Hang in there, my friends! An explosion is coming."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Yet Now..."

“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”

- Arthur C. Clarke, “Glide Path”

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Deep Space, Ambient Meditation and Sleep Music from Soothing Relaxation"

Full screen recommended.

Peder B. Helland, "Deep Space, Ambient Meditation

and Sleep Music from Soothing Relaxation"

Be kind to yourself, relax and enjoy this beautiful video...

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.

Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080512.html

"Reflect On What Happens..."

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age breakdown. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a secular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.”

– Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

"Humanity On The Brink: 'Everyone Will Be Dead' If Both Sides Continue To Escalate World War 3"

"Humanity On The Brink: 'Everyone Will Be Dead'

If Both Sides Continue To Escalate World War 3"

by Michael Snyder

"In all of modern history, the world has never had a worse group of leaders than it does right now, and the fate of civilization is literally in their hands. If both sides continue to escalate matters, the proxy war in Ukraine will eventually become a shooting war between the United States and Russia. And once a shooting war between the United States and Russia starts, it will only be a matter of time before it goes nuclear. It is often said that there are no winners in a nuclear war, and that is certainly true. But if a nuclear war becomes inevitable, you definitely want to be on the side that strikes first. Because a devastating surprise first strike may not enable you to “win” a nuclear war, but it will certainly give you the best chance of surviving one.

Donald Trump can see where things are heading. This week, he penned the most ominous statement that he has ever issued… “It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement. If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage. This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now - not later - when everyone will be DEAD!”

Like Trump, I am desperately hoping that a negotiated agreement can be reached somehow, because if a full-blown nuclear war erupts billions of people will die. We must not allow that to happen.

Unfortunately, officials in the U.S. are not taking this threat seriously. In fact, I have been seeing talking heads all over cable news downplaying the threat of nuclear war. These experts assure us that Russia “would never use nuclear weapons”, but meanwhile Russia continues to feverishly prepare for a potential nuclear war with the United States.

In fact, the Russians just conducted a test of the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile… "Russia has test launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile, raising fears of a further escalation of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. The Russian leader said the Sarmat missile, also known as Satan-2, will provide ‘food for thought for those who try to threaten Russia’ and will make his enemies ‘think twice’."

It is being reported that the Sarmat has a range of 11,000 miles and can hit any target on the entire planet. It can carry up to 15 independently targetable warheads, and the Russians are bragging that the collective power of those warheads could destroy an area the size of Texas or France. Remember, this is just one missile that we are talking about. Ultimately, the Russians are planning to put vast numbers of these missiles into service.

According to Vladimir Putin, nobody in the world has anything like these new missiles… “The new complex has the highest tactical and technical characteristics and is capable of overcoming all modern means of anti-missile defense. It has no analogues in the world and won’t have for a long time to come,” Putin said. “This truly unique weapon will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure Russia’s security from external threats and provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country.”

Sadly, he is right. The U.S. doesn’t have anything even close. Minuteman III missiles that went into service in the 1970s are still the backbone of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal, and they are not scheduled to be replaced by something new until about 2030.

Needless to say, the test of the new Sarmat missile was intended as a message to anyone that is attempting to aid the Ukrainians… "Russia notified the US of the ICBM test launch in accordance with the New Start treaty, but its rhetoric and choice to go ahead with the treaty stands in stark contrast to the US, which had canceled an ICBM test-launch in March not long after Russia began its war on Ukraine. Putin and his aides have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons in what experts believe to be a ploy to warn powerful countries like the UK, Germany and the US from coming to Ukraine’s aid."

This missile test represents yet another escalation by the Russians, and that is extremely alarming. But U.S. officials are escalating matters as well. On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced another round of sanctions against Russia… "The United States on Wednesday unveiled its latest round of sanctions going after Russia over its war on Ukraine, this time targeting a key commercial bank and “a global network of more than 40 individuals and entities led by U.S.-designated Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev.”

In a news release, the US Treasury Department said it was also targeting “companies operating in Russia’s virtual currency mining industry, reportedly the third largest in the world,” noting it was the first time it has “designated a virtual currency mining company.”

And the Biden administration is also telling us that another “military aid package” will soon be sent to Ukraine… "The Biden administration is preparing to announce another substantial military aid package for Ukraine this week, five U.S officials tell NBC News. Three officials said the package is expected to be similar in size to the $800 million one the administration announced last week. Two officials said the package is expected to include more artillery and tens of thousands more artillery rounds, which will likely be critical to the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region."

At this point, we are providing most of the weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainian military, we are constantly providing them with battlefield intelligence, and we are even training their troops on our own soil.

Yes, that last part is actually true. As I have discussed previously, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has publicly admitted that Ukrainian troops are actually being flown to the United States to be trained how to fight the Russians… “This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ukrainian troops training in the U.S. who are returning home to Ukraine today. Their bravery and skill are amazing. I made clear the U.S. will continue to provide them with the assistance they need.”

Like I said at the beginning of this article, this is a proxy war between the United States and Russia. If the American people truly understood the implications of what our leaders are doing, there would be massive protests in the streets of every U.S. city right now. So when will everyone finally wake up? Hopefully it will be before we get to the “everyone is dead” part of the story."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com

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Related, must read:

"USA Targeting of Moskva Ship is Russia's "Pearl Harbor"...

 Retaliation is Next"

"Oh S#!%... "SATAN" Nuclear Missile is Being Prepared"

"The Test..."

 

Gregory Mannarino, "STOCKS DIVE! War, Inflation, Recession Fears, Crisis Economy, Bank Warnings, Shortages, Is It Over?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/22/22:

"STOCKS DIVE! War, Inflation, Recession Fears, 

 Economy, Bank Warnings, Shortages, Is It Over?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Gerald Celente, Gregory Mannarino: "Crisis Economics, Prepare for the Worst"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, Gregory Mannarino:

 "Crisis Economics, Prepare for the Worst"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Argyle, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Dow Undergoing Catastrophic Decline, The Dow Is Now Down 1,003+ Points, Storm Coming!"

April 22, 2022 3:58 PM EST: "Dow Undergoing Catastrophic Decline, The Dow Is Now Down 1,003+ Points. The Average Stock Is Now -40% Off 52 Week Highs. Storm Coming!"

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data

Presented without comment, you should be aware of this

 and further developments, and consider the consequences.

"Food Production Is Going To Be Substantially Lower Than Anticipated All Over The Globe In 2022"

"Food Production Is Going To Be Substantially Lower 

Than Anticipated All Over The Globe In 2022"

by Michael Snyder

I don’t think that people realize how severe this crisis will eventually become. Never before in modern history have we seen global food production being hit by so many major problems all at once. It truly is a “perfect storm”, and hundreds of millions of people are going to deeply suffer as a result. I would very much encourage you to share this article with as many people as you can, because everyone needs this information. As I discussed previously, things may be somewhat bad right now, but conditions will eventually get much worse as the months roll along.

I am going to share a lot of statistics in this article, and each number is important. But ultimately it is the collective impact of all of these factors together that is really going to hammer us.

Let me start by talking about rice. According to Bloomberg, the global fertilizer crisis is going to result in a loss of production worldwide that is the equivalent of enough food to feed “500 million people”… "From India to Vietnam and the Philippines, prices of crop nutrients crucial to boosting food production have doubled or tripled in the past year alone. Lower fertilizer use may mean a smaller crop. The International Rice Research Institute predicts that yields could drop 10% in the next season, translating to a loss of 36 million tons of rice, or the equivalent of feeding 500 million people."

We don’t eat that much rice in the western world, but in Asia it is a core staple of their diets. How will all of that food be replaced?

Well, they could eat more wheat, but there is going to be a lot less wheat produced in 2022 as well. In fact, one agricultural commodity expert is warning that the war in Ukraine alone could mean that “between 19 million and 34 million tons of export production could disappear this year”… "Globally, there are six breadbaskets that together supply roughly 60 to 70 percent of global agricultural commodities. The Ukraine–Russia region is responsible for roughly 30 percent of global exports of wheat and 65 percent of sunflower, in a context where those markets are increasingly tight and interconnected - so a slight disruption in supply creates some impact on price."

Of course, we don’t know what the length and scale of this conflict will be. We ran some scenarios, and from our perspective, between 19 million and 34 million tons of export production could disappear this year. If we fast-forward to 2023, the figure could be between ten million and 43 million tons. To translate, that represents caloric intake for 60 million to 150 million people.

I don’t know about you, but I regularly eat a lot of things that contain wheat, and so do hundreds of millions of others. So this is going to be a huge issue. And we are already seeing wheat prices go completely insane. From early March to early April, the price of wheat jumped almost 20 percent… "Global food prices rose to their highest-ever level in March, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported April 8, with wheat prices up nearly 20% from a month earlier."

Unfortunately, the outlook for the months ahead is very troubling due to bizarre weather patterns all over the planet. Here in the United States, much of our winter wheat has been devastated by persistent drought… "According to the USDA, 69 percent of total U.S. winter-wheat production is in an area experiencing drought, including hard-red winter, soft-red winter and soft white. That includes 82 percent of the production area in Kansas, 82 percent in Colorado, 99 percent in Texas and 99 percent in Montana."

On the other side of the globe, parts of northern Africa are experiencing their “worst drought in decades”… "Morocco’s agriculture minister said the North African country would likely lose 53 percent of its cereals harvest after experiencing the worst drought in decades. Rainfall was 41 percent less than average this season."

So how will all of that food be replaced? Well, I suppose that we could all eat more corn, but the outlook for corn is not good either. Russia and Ukraine are normally two of the largest global exporters of corn, but now the war has changed everything, and there have been very serious planting delays here in the United States… "Chicago corn was largely unchanged on Wednesday and near a decade-high scaled in the previous session, as traders fretted over planting delays in the United States and a lack of supplies from war-torn Ukraine."

On top of everything else, there will be a lot less eggs produced this year, there will be a lot less chicken meat produced this year and there will be a lot less turkey meat produced this year because of the nightmarish bird flu pandemic which just keeps getting worse. According to NPR, the total death toll has now risen to “more than 28 million”… "More than 28 million poultry birds, like chickens and turkeys, have been lost in the U.S. because of a new bird flu. The virus either made the birds sick or they were culled to prevent its spread. Unlike previous bird flus, this one is also affecting a lot of wild birds. As NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce explains, that could keep the virus in circulation for a long time."

The vast majority of the time, most of us never even think about where our food comes from. But that needs to change, because food production systems are collapsing all over the world. For years, we have been warned that a global food crisis was coming, and now it has officially arrived. And with each passing day, more things are happening which threaten to make it even worse.

For now we are still eating food that has already been produced. The real problem will come in the months ahead when total global production of food drops well below total global demand for food."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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Not for long...

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Related:

- https://www.breitbart.com/tag/food-security/

"The Fierce Urgency Of Now..."

 

"Things Are Bad Now, But You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 4/22/22:

"Things Are Bad Now, But You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet"

"Things are bad in the economy and they’re about to get much worse. The FED is talking about inflation slowing in place and down by raising interest rates a month from now. How will this help global inflation?"

"Our Dilemma..."

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;

what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better."

- Sydney J. Harris

Jim Kunstler, "Daddies in Mommie-land"

"Daddies in Mommie-land"

by Jim Kunstler

"Welcome to the season of everything losing ground, at least for Western Civ. Sore-beset with idiots and scoundrels running things, the West stumbles backwards into neo-medieval darkness and superstition, hurling garlic bombs of objurgation against the supposedly wicked Putin along the way.

Your “trusted news sources” in our corner of the world will not tell you this, but the mythologized golem of the West’s collective sick mind, The Putin, mounted Operation Z in Ukraine at our country’s foolish behest. It was a twisted variation of the old head-trip Let’s You and Him Fight - described so well in psychologist Eric Berne’s classic book "Games People Play." It’s a game instigated generally by women. The West detests the actual Mr. Putin for systemically and doggedly having to correct the mischief that the USA set in motion there in 2014 - putting out a dumpster fire we kept feeding for eight years.

Mainly we hate the Russian president for doing what he said he would do, acting like a man, literally having to set boundaries for the unruly children, like Daddy used to do. America hates daddies. To America, all daddies are monsters (rapists!). That’s why America wants to turn all daddies into mommies. Anyway, we barely remember what daddies used to do. The context for daddies - the family - has been obliterated in America by every agency and institution in the land. The only role available these days is the chimerical creature known as a “baby daddy,” which is as much a baby as a daddy, developmentally speaking. Real daddies are men, which is to say: not babies. Mr. Putin acts like a man, especially having to do a dirty job that needs doing, without complaint. America can’t stand that.

If the USA and its NATO allies actually cared about Ukraine, we would have just left the place alone to slowly settle into the de-industrialized agricultural backwater it was becoming. And if we wanted to prevent widespread devastation once Operation Z got underway, we would have promoted peace talks, with an emphasis on our previous declaration that Ukraine would not be a candidate to join NATO. Instead, we set up Ukraine as a launching pad for annoying Russia (while also using Ukraine as a money laundromat for public officials and arms-makers).

America is a drama queen, like the Queen Bee in one of those Real Housewives shows on cable TV, whose entire purpose in life is creating colorful conflicts within her circle of sisters. Daddy is not needed around that house, except offstage maybe as the wide-receiver for a multi-million-dollar paycheck courtesy of the NFL (a rival entertainment). When one of America’s drama queen stunts goes wrong, the Queen Bee melts into a puddle of tears - boo hoo - tripping the empathy toggle.The sisters cluster around her, beating their wings. Somebody, please, help her feel better… fetch her a glass of pino grigio or a Xanax!

Drama Queen Bee America does not like how the Ukraine drama is playing out. The mean old Daddy Putin is rocking the joint, cleaning out the place like Gary Cooper in some Long Branch Saloon of the Eurasian steppe - heaving all those Azov Nazis through the swinging doors out into the dusty street. The other sisters in the NATO circle were induced to acting as cheerleaders for the Azov boys, and now Mr. Putin has gone and turned off Europe’s gas. Western Civ is about to be sent to bed without dinner - the ultimate daddy trick. Now the sisters are all going boo hoo. Nothing is working for the sisterhood.

America’s president, “Joe Biden,” suits the current national script perfectly. He’s a mere prop for the drama queens. No one mistakes him for “Daddy.” He’s the old, impotent, intemperate, often confused “Grampy,” a figure of bathos and derision, a shell of a man who, in his prime, lived just to work his official positions for millions in grift. How, otherwise, do you account for his fortune? The Ukraine money laundromat was one of his favorite stops, managed carefully by cheerleaders Victoria Nuland, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and NSC official Fiona Hill, America’s foreign policy establishment there back in the day.

But who, exactly, is managing Grampy now backstage in the White House? My guess would be Susan Rice because you never hear anything about Susan Rice or her role there: Director of the Domestic Policy Council of the United States. Wow! Sounds weighty. When was the last time you saw her name in The New York Times or cable TV news? You’d think they’d be interested in her doings. Yet I doubt that one-in-a-hundred US citizens could tell you who Susan Rice is and what she does. (Was that her the other day in a bunny suit at the White House Easter Egg Roll, assisting a confused Grampy offstage?)

Somewhere in the White House there must be phone logs that record how many times a day Ms. Rice makes and receives phone calls across town to and from the Kalorama neighborhood of DC. Does that make Barack Obama America’s secret daddy? Or is he playing a somewhat different role… like, head of a cartel?"

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 4/22/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 4/22/22"

"Russia/Ukraine Intensifies; 

Germany Tanking; Food, Inflation and Drought"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"There are zero reported peace talks going on to settle the war in Ukraine. This can mean only one thing, and that is this conflict will intensify. Could we get to the nuclear war stage? The answer is the global leaders are so corrupt, reckless and out of touch, anything is possible, and yes, that includes a nuclear exchange. The only question is who will launch first?

German food prices have risen 20% to 50% in a short period of time. They are not coming down anytime soon. Fuel prices are rising, and Germany is threatening to cut off all oil from Russia by the end of the year. Germany is the economic engine that drives the EU, and it is tanking. Germany and the rest of the EU better hope Russia does not beat them to the punch and cut them off now. The EU is in deep financial trouble, and their leaders will not stop destroying the economy with stupid sanctions that only hurt their own people. You can say the same for the Obama/Biden Administration.

To add insult to injury, the Western U.S. is in a 1,200-year mega drought in most places. Now, Lake Powell is at record lows, and water is going to be rationed. If this is not a sign food prices are heading higher, nothing is. Oh, and don’t forget that fertilizer out of Russia is being sanctioned, and fertilizer is in short supply all over the world. This will mean less fertilizer will be used either because of cost or supply problems, and that will translate into much lower yields and less food overall."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 

these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 4/22/22:

- https://rumble.com/

"Food Shortages And Empty Shelves Are Growing Across The Country! What Now?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 4/22/22:

"Food Shortages And Empty Shelves Are 

Growing Across The Country! What Now?"

"In today's vlog we are noticing massive food shortages all across the country! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

○

Gregory Mannarino, "Out Of Control! People Are Dumping Dollars As Inflation Rages"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/22/22:

"Out Of Control! People Are Dumping Dollars As Inflation Rages"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Panic At Sea: Nearly 2,000 Ships Stuck Outside Ports As Container Shortage Intensify"

Full screen recommended.

"Panic At Sea: Nearly 2,000 Ships Stuck 

Outside Ports As Container Shortage Intensify"

by Epic Economist

"The already stressed global supply chain is all set to face a fresh wave of backlogs, congestion, and shortages as new shockwaves emerge in almost every link of the system. Conditions continue to worsen by the day as Chinese ports operate at bare minimum capacity due to virus-related restrictions imposed by the government. The disruption in the flow of goods in and out of the country is expected to reach alarming proportions and cause serious distortions in the market in the weeks ahead. The problem is particularly worrying between the US and China - the world’s busiest shipping route - but the restrictions will have a cascading impact all across the globe. Experts say that the disruption faced last year will be insignificant compared to what is coming. On top of all that, the US is facing a critical shortage of workers that is threatening to result in more delivery delays, empty shelves, and widespread chaos at key container ports.

Authorities have effectively neutered Shanghai, not only a city of 25 million people but also the world’s largest seaport for container traffic. They have also enforced full or partial lockdowns in 23 cities, impacting more than a fifth of the Chinese economy. According to Reuters estimates, at least 373 million people - in cities that represent roughly 40% of China’s gross domestic product - have been affected by the most recent round of lockdowns across the country.

The American consumer is going to be particularly affected given the fact that the U.S. imported more goods from China than anywhere else in the world over the past decade. Last year alone, we imported over $435 billion worth of goods from Chinese cities and sent another $125 billion to the country in exports, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. And when stay-at-home mandates end, the shipping nightmare begins. Jon Monroe, an ocean shipping and supply-chain expert said that an overwhelming movement of goods will drown shipping lines and ports once the lockdowns are lifted. “It’s probably worse than Wuhan. You’re going to have a lot of pent-up orders,” he explained.

Right now, 477 bulk cargo ships are stranded at sea aff Chinese ports waiting for a berth to dock and deliver resources from metal ore to grain into the country. All in all, the number of container vessels waiting outside of Chinese ports today is 195% of what it was in February. In America, after signs of progress that the backlogs of containerships stacked up outside ports were easing, it now appears that the trend is reversing itself. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are facing another cargo surge as earlier-than-usual back-to-school and peak season imports collide with the massive backlog of freight from mainland China.

“Higher gasoline prices are affecting labor availability in the warehouse sector. Some workers in the hourly wage category feel they cannot afford current gasoline prices, so they are simply not showing up to work. For anyone who’s earning about $15 an hour, the price of gas is a big hit,” Weiss highlighted.

Conditions have been pretty dire for dockworkers, too. Now, a confrontation between workers and employers at some of the most critical ports on Earth is looming and it threatens to halt operations along the West Coast. Dockworkers have been handling massive amounts of cargo for exceedingly long hours every day. They’re asking for better pay and more regulation to prevent companies from forcing workers to do overtime after already long shifts. A labor impasse could worsen the traffic jams that are already keeping dozens of ships waiting in the Pacific. It also can aggravate shortages and send already high prices for consumer goods soaring.

All of these factors are making disruption a permanent part of the commercial landscape of the United States. Our economic growth is being dampened by prolonged inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, volatility in energy markets, and investor uncertainty - and the convergence of all of these problems going to create catastrophic consequences for everyone in this country."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Gerald Celente, “Trends In The News”

Full screen recommended.

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 4/21/22: “Trends In The News”

“Inflation Nightmare, Sanctions Making It Worse”

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"Information Off The Internet"

 

All these posts! I know, I know, it's a lot.

 Complicated times, folks, so much happening so fast.

Bear with me, we're all in the same boat...

You can handle the truth, given the chance...

- CP

Musical Interlude: The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time", "Eye In The Sky"

 

The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

○

Full screen!

The Alan Parsons Project, "Eye In The Sky"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.

The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”

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

○

"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

"The Notion..."

"Stocks Drop After Fed. Banks To Write Off BILLIONS In Russian Assets"

    

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/21/22:

"Stocks Drop After Fed. Banks To Write 

Off BILLIONS In Russian Assets"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"My Bank Is Closed Today?! Fantasyland Ride Is Over; Relatives Ask For Money; Homebuilders Carnage"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/21/22:

"My Bank Is Closed Today?! Fantasyland Ride Is Over;

 Relatives Ask For Money; Homebuilders Carnage"

"The Gods of War"

Antique statue of Greek god of war Ares (Mars in Roman mythology). 

 In Summer Garden in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"The Gods of War"

by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "One of the nice things about two countries going to war… when you are not one of them… is that you get to watch. And learn. But you can’t trust the mainstream media to report the facts honestly. America’s press has taken sides. So its ‘news’ is more like propaganda than real intelligence. For example, the media tells us – with unconcealed glee – that the Russians are “bogged down.” They are “taking heavy casualties,” including “many generals.” They are running out of food and ammunition, etc. etc. Apparently, the Ruskies are getting whipped. Here’s The Guardian:

Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going according to plan. The sinking of the Moskva – the flagship of the Black Sea fleet – is the latest major military setback. In the course of almost two months, Russia has lost six major generals and between 15,000-20,000 troops, all the while failing to secure any appreciable gains.

Reports of low morale and defection, coupled with sightings of mercenaries deployed by the Kremlin, hint at recruitment problems. This, along with Russia’s apparent inability to replenish lost military equipment – a consequence of western sanctions – has led some observers to wonder whether the Russian war machine is running out of road."

The real facts on the ground may not be so one-sided. Both sides are losing men and materiel. Both must be making mistakes.

A Changing of the Guard: But one thing must be troubling Pentagon observers – the loss of heavy tanks and the Russian ship, the Moskva. Retired Army colonel David Johnson comments: "Is the value of the tank in modern warfare zilch? That’s the lesson many observers are taking from a flood of images depicting Russian tanks mired in the mud, their turrets blown off, having been ambushed and destroyed by Ukrainian forces armed with cheap anti-tank weapons. These images are often pointed to alongside feeds from Turkish-produced drones destroying tanks, seemingly with ease. After the recent Nagorno-Karabakh war, in which Russian-produced tanks were destroyed by the same model of drones, this is heady stuff for those ready to proclaim the death of the tank."

We already see comparisons of armor advocates to the battleship admirals before World War II, who refused to see the importance of carrier aviation, or Maj. Gen. John Herr, the last U.S. Army chief of cavalry, who continued to insist on the relevance of the horse on the battlefield even after the Nazi blitzkriegs against Poland and France. Army chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall used his executive-order authority, given after Pearl Harbor, to get rid of all the horses in the Army - and Herr. The question before us now is whether the tank is the modern equivalent of the…horse.

We will pose a different question: is this how the empire dies? By our reckoning, the US empire peaked out in the 1960s. It diddle daddled until the late ‘90s… and then, with the ‘war against terror,’ began a serious dive to the downside. Since then, by almost every measure you can think of, the US has sunk.

But empires do not go gracefully into that good night. They rage… and make things worse for themselves. That is what we have seen thrice this century – in the response to the terrorist threat (whatever it was)… in the attempt to prevent a correction on Wall Street in 2008-2009 and more than a decade of negative interest rates, (in which the Fed tried to stimulate growth back to pre-decline levels)… and in the Covid Panic, with its trillions in gimmie/stimmie schemes, again, trying to make up for real lost output with ‘printed-up’ dollars.

The American people understood better than their leaders what was going on. Given a chance, they voted to “Make America Great Again” in 2016. But the slippage got worse, not better. And the only solution the elite could think of was to spend more money. But where could they get the cash? They had to print it. This is what led to today’s inflation. And left unchecked, it will lead to civil disorder, war, recession, economic chaos and poverty.

Costly Errors: The end of one empire is usually marked by the rise of another… and often accompanied by a decisive battle, in which the gods of war switch sides and the dying empire loses. America has a huge, very costly military with a gilded officer class. It was hard to imagine how it might be humbled on the field of battle. But now, even the New York Times is able to read the writing on the wall: "The sinking of the Moskva on Thursday was a grave blow to the Russian fleet and a dramatic demonstration of the current era of warfare in which missiles fired from shore can destroy even the biggest, most powerful ships…" The sinking of the Moskva is a clear sign that the future has arrived.

“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” said Donald Rumsfeld, who wisely went to war with an enemy that had, in comparison, no army at all.

The problem with going to war with today’s US armed forces is now on display. Too much money begets too many old, slow-moving armies with too much brass and too much bureaucracy. The US has more tanks and ships than anyone else. But these WWII-era armaments are extremely vulnerable to new, faster, smarter, cheaper weapons. We will be going to war with thoroughbreds, in other words.

In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban had no navy… no air force… no military pensions… no veterans’ hospitals… no military bands… no tanks… no armored troop carriers… and no phalanx of lobbyists to angle for more money. The amounts it spent would scarcely be enough to finance the Pentagon’s officers’ lounge. But over 20 years its fighters persisted… and won.

And the trouble, beyond the obvious ones, with going to war with horses today, is that your tactics must be those of cavalry officers. The US is loaded up with cumbersome, complex, sophisticated weapons. Its battlefield tactics are built around its equipment. And its equipment is what you get when you have a lot of money and an invincible corps of lobbyists to push for bigger and more costly weapons systems. But if its tanks and ships can be put out of service quickly… and cheaply… the US will be defeated.

Whether that will actually happen… or not… we don’t know. But the gods of war wouldn’t be especially surprised if it did."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com