"Toto, I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore"

"Toto, I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore"

by Jeff Thomas

"Recently, an American colleague commented to me, “We no longer live in a democracy but a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.” Is he correct? Well, a dictatorship may be defined as “a form of government in which absolute authority is exercised by a dictator.” The US today is not be ruled by dictatorship (although, to some, it may well feel that way.) But, if that’s the case, what form of rule does exist in the US?

At its formation, the founding fathers argued over whether the United States should be a republic or a democracy. Those founders who later formed the Federalist Party felt that it should be a democracy – rule by representatives elected by the people. Thomas Jefferson, who created the Democratic Republican Party, argued that it should be a republic – a state in which the method of governance is democracy, but the principle of governance is that the rights of the individual are paramount. He argued that, “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty one percent can vote away the rights of the other forty nine.”

At that time, Benjamin Franklin has been credited as saying, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” Very well stated.

As Americans still legally vote, and it may well be that the voting is not altogether rigged, the US could be regarded as a democracy. Of course, to be accurate, it could also be defined as a bureaucracy – rule by officialdom, and/or a plutocracy – rule by the very rich. Both of these descriptions are undeniably accurate.

Another question that’s hotly debated is what sort of “ism” the US is living under. There’s a visible trend in new candidates to openly promote socialism. Historically, socialism has always been an excellent way to gain votes, as the socialist promises largesse to the average man that government will provide by robbing the rich. Not surprisingly, the average voter would find this prospect very attractive.

Socialist candidates in the US today base their argument for socialism on the premise that “capitalism has failed,” and that premise is providing them with great headway. They claim that prosperity for the American people is almost non-existent; that the middle class is shrinking and the small upper class is growing ever-richer.

These claims are undeniably true… but not because capitalism has failed. Vladimir Lenin stated that “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” He was quite correct. Fascism is a slow cancer that eats away at an economy. It transfers wealth to the largest, most politically influential corporations. Yet, the concept of fascism is greatly misunderstood today. Most anyone who decries fascism will describe symptoms such as jackboots and swastikas, but fail to offer an actual definition.

For a definition, we might ask Benito Mussolini, the father of national fascism. He stated, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” By defining the term, we can conclude that the US is no longer a capitalist country and hasn't been one for a long time. The US began its slide into fascism in a major way around the time that income tax and the Federal Reserve were created – in 1913. These measures were the brainchild of the largest bankers of the day and the Fed still remains under the power of the major banks.

Over the last century, the Deep State, which is corporatist in origin, has grown and has done a first rate job of introducing a combination of socialism and fascism, a bit at a time. This has slowly destroyed the economy, education and the national moral compass, not to mention achieving the utter corruption of the political system. By contrast, capitalism is a free-market system, in which the economy, unfettered by the interference of governments, finds its own level at any given time. It fluctuates naturally, based upon supply and demand, each correcting the other with regularity.

But government edicts operate with force and permanence, constricting the natural flow of money, goods and services. Over time, regulations pile on top of regulations until the system becomes dysfunctional. Socialism, by its very nature, is a central restrictive force on the free market. Its logical conclusion is very visible in Venezuela today, where government regulation has produced such a stranglehold on the economy that it’s broken down in every way, resulting in dire poverty and even starvation.

But, as stated above, in the US, the Deep State has been thorough in its presentation of the US economy as a capitalist economy. In doing so, they’ve provided the encouragement of full socialism in the political realm. In the near future, the economy will begin to collapse under the weight of growing fascism and socialism. However, the blame will be laid at the feet of capitalism.

In my belief, the majority of Americans will be fooled into thinking that capitalism is the problem and that socialism will save the day. During the coming financial crisis, they'll dive in with both feet. Voters, even many of those who are moderate, will support socialist candidates. The first national election that occurs after the crisis has begun will result in an overwhelming victory for socialist and other leftist candidates. The next president will provide a plethora of socialist “solutions” to counter “the damage done by capitalism.”

But such a prediction does not require a crystal ball. This has happened many times before. The Athenian Republic ran into the same problem. The Roman Republic also deteriorated in this manner. As stated by Aristotle, “Republics decline into democracies and democracies decline into despotisms.” Quite so. It’s a natural progression.

And so, it shouldn’t be surprising if the more imaginative American were to observe, worriedly, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” He would most certainly be correct. Like the flag in the image above, the founding principles have been turned upside down and the rights of Americans have been shredded. “America,” as a concept, no longer exists in the USA. Its vestiges remain, but soon, they too will be on the way out.

Liberty always exists somewhere in the world, but it does tend to change location from time to time. Perhaps a final quote from late eighteenth century America would be of benefit – one from Thomas Paine. “My country is wherever liberty lives."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Related:

"‘We the People’ Are the New, Permanent Underclass in America"

"Bravery..."

“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”

- Veronica Roth, "Allegiant"

Free Download: Nevil Shute, “On The Beach”

“On The Beach”

by Nevil Shute

“Nevil Shute’s 1959 novel “On the Beach” is set in what was then the near future (1963, approximately a year following World War III). The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all animal life. While the nuclear bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America.

From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious and incomprehensible Morse code radio signal originating from the United States. With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, the USS Scorpion, placed by its captain under Australian naval command, is ordered to sail north from its port of refuge in Melbourne (Australia’s southernmost major mainland city) to try to contact whoever is sending the signal. In preparation for this long journey the submarine first makes a shorter trip to some port cities in northern Australia including Cairns, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory, finding no survivors.

The Australian government makes arrangements to provide its citizens with free suicide pills and injections, so that they will be able to avoid prolonged suffering from radiation sickness. One of the novel’s poignant dilemmas is that of Australian naval officer Peter Holmes, who has a baby daughter and a naive and childish wife, Mary, who is in denial about the impending disaster. Because he has been assigned to travel north with the Americans, Peter must try to explain to Mary how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the pill should he be killed on the ocean voyage.

The characters make their best efforts to enjoy what time and pleasures remain to them before dying from radiation poisoning, speaking of small pleasures and continuing their customary activities, allowing their awareness of the coming end to impinge on their minds only long enough to plan ahead for their final hours. The Holmeses plant a garden that they will never see; Moira takes classes in typing and shorthand; scientist John Osborne and others organize a dangerous motor race that results in the violent deaths of several participants. In the end, Captain Towers chooses not to remain with Moira but rather to lead his crew on a final mission to scuttle their submarine beyond the twelve-mile (22 km) limit, so that she will not rattle about, unsecured, in a foreign port, refusing to allow his coming demise to turn him aside from his duty and acting as a pillar of strength to his crew.

Typically for a Shute novel, the characters avoid the expression of intense emotions and do not mope or indulge in self-pity. They do not, for the most part, flee southward as refugees but rather accept their fate once the lethal radiation levels reach the latitudes at which they live. Finally, most of the Australians do opt for the government-promoted alternative of suicide when the symptoms of radiation-sickness appear.”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

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Freely download “On the Beach”, by Nevil Shute, here:

- https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20131214

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"On The Beach", full movie:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HusewgIe_1k

Full screen recommended.

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Welcome to Fadedpage.com!

"Faded Page is an archive of eBooks that are provided completely free to everyone. The books are produced by volunteers all over the world, and we believe they are amongst the highest quality eBooks anywhere. Every one has been scanned, run through OCR software, proofed, formatted and assembled extremely carefully, using hundreds of volunteer hours. These books are public domain in Canada (because we follow the Canadian copyright laws), but if you are in another country, you should satisfy yourself that you are not breaking the copyright laws of your own country by downloading them. You are free to do whatever you like with these books, but we hope that mainly...you will enjoy reading them. FP now includes 6963 eBooks in its collection."

- https://www.fadedpage.com/index.php

"The Empire Of Lies, Operation Z, & The New Global Chessboard"

"The Empire Of Lies, Operation Z, & 

The New Global Chessboard"

by Pepe Escobar

"Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies. What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat.

This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.

Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

Patrushev goes Triple-X unplugged: Let’s start with President Putin’s speech to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg celebrating the Day of Russian Parliamentarism. Putin demonstrated how a hardly new “geopolitical weapon” relying on “Russophobia and neo-Nazis”, coupled with efforts of “economic strangulation”, not only failed to smother Russia, but impregnated in the collective unconscious the feeling this an existential conflict: a “Second Great Patriotic War”.

With off the charts hysteria across the spectrum, a message for an Empire that still refuses to listen, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”, had to be inevitable: “I would like to emphasize once again that if someone intends to interfere in the events taking place from the outside and creates threats of a strategic nature unacceptable to Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning fast. We have all the tools for this. Such as no one can boast of now. And we won’t brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know about it – we have made all the decisions on this matter.”

Translation: non-stop provocations may lead Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat to be forced to present their business cards in select Western latitudes, even without an official invitation.

Arguably for the first time since the start of Operation Z, Putin made a distinction between military operations in Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. This directly relates to the integration in progress of Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov, and implies the Russian Armed Forces will keep going and going, establishing sovereignty not only in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics but also over Kherson, Zaporozhye, and further on down the road from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, all the way to establishing full control of Nikolaev and Odessa. The formula is crystal clear: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.”

Now let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged. The key take away may be here: “The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.”

Patrushev shows how “tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.” The U.S. goes no holds barred “to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.”

Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine: “The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”

And that mirrors the psyche of American elites: “You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”

Previously, in an interview with the delightfully named The Great Game show on Russian TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had once again detailed how the Americans “no longer insist on the implementation of international law, but on respect for the ‘rules-based world order’. These ‘rules’ are not deciphered in any way. They say that now there are few rules. For us, they don’t exist at all. There is international law. We respect it, as does the UN Charter. The key provision, the main principle is the sovereign equality of states. The U.S. flagrantly violates its obligations under the UN Charter when it promotes its ‘rules’”.

Lavrov had to stress, once again, that the current incandescent situation may be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis: “In those years, there was a channel of communication that both leaders trusted. Now there is no such channel. No one is trying to create it.” The Empire of Lies, in its current state, does not do diplomacy.

The pace of the game in the new chessboard: In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev, as the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union explained in our recent interview, Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard: “Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”

That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.

Earlier in the week, in his meeting with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Putin went as far as stating that he’d be more than willing to negotiate – with only a few conditions: Ukrainian neutrality and autonomy status for Donbass. Yet now everyone knows it’s too late. For a Washington in Totalen Krieg mode negotiation is anathema – and that has been the case since the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine meeting in Istanbul in late March.

So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.

That includes desperate gambits such as the one uncovered by SVR – Russian foreign intel, which very rarely makes mistakes. SVR found out that the Empire of Lies/War Inc. axis is pushing not only for a de facto Polish invasion to annex Western Ukraine, under the banner of “historical reunification”, but also for a joint Romanian/Ukrainian invasion of Moldova/Transnistria, with Romanian “peacekeepers” already piling up near the Moldova border.

Washington, as the SVR maintains, has been plotting the Polish gambit for over a month now. It would “lead from behind” (remember Libya?), “encouraging” a “group of countries” to occupy Western Ukraine. So partition is already on the cards. Were that ever to materialize, it will be fascinating to bet on which locations Mr. Sarmat would be inclined to distribute his business card."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Mr. Sarmat...

Click image for larger size.

"Vladimir Putin sent a chilling warning to the West by test-launching his fearsome ‘Satan II’ missile. Capable of striking a target 11,200 miles away, the nuclear-capable Sarmat RS-28 is said to be the world’s longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile. Russia has claimed its most powerful nuclear missile, the 16,000 mph hypersonic ‘Satan-2’, could destroy the UK. Sarmat has 16 550 kiloton warheads. One missile can destroy an area the size of France. Putin described the launch as a ‘big, significant event’ for Russia’s military and claimed the weapon can overcome all modern defense systems."

- https://whatsnew2day.com/

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Related:

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

Retaliation is Next"

"The Moskva Riddle"

"The Foreclosures Have Begun - High Interest Rates Have Killed Real Estate"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 4/30/22:

"The Foreclosures Have Begun - 

High Interest Rates Have Killed Real Estate"

"The real estate market is starting to crash. The foreclosures have begun even in the higher end communities. The adjustable rate mortgages are going to ravage the real estate market next. Talking about fact that people don’t want to admit that they can’t afford the properties that they actually live in."

"A Scary Theory About What's Coming..."

Canadian Prepper, 4/30/22:

"A Scary Theory About What's Coming..."

"A theory about the coming global conflict."

"Scariest Market I Have Seen; Lose Your Job, Lose Your House"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/30/22:

"Scariest Market I Have Seen; 

Lose Your Job, Lose Your House"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "The Calling"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "The Calling"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?

Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150426.html

The Poet: Robert Frost, "Acceptance "

"Acceptance"

 "When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud

And goes down burning into the gulf below,

No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud

At what has happened.

Birds, at least must know

It is the change to darkness in the sky.

Murmuring something quiet in her breast,

One bird begins to close a faded eye;

Or overtaken too far from his nest,

Hurrying low above the grove, some waif

Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.

At most he thinks or twitters softly, safe!

Now let the night be dark for all of me.

Let the night be too dark for me to see

Into the future. Let what will be, be."

- Robert Frost

Chet Raymo, “What Not to Believe”

“What Not to Believe”

by Chet Raymo

“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.

Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."

Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.

And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"The Hand We're Dealt..."

“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”

- Mia Sheridan

"A Long March Through The Night..."

"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair."

- Bertrand Russell

"Time to Worry"

"Time to Worry"

by Brian Maher

“If we get a recession in 2022 or 2023,” The Wall Street Journal informs us, “it’ll be a mild one.” Just so. And if RMS Titanic strikes a North Atlantic berg en route to New York… it will only be a tiny one. The United States Department of Commerce reports that first-quarter gross domestic product contracted 1.4%. The shrinking was “unexpected” - at least by the experts among us. A Dow Jones survey of economists had divined a 1% quarterly gain.

What evils account for the 1.4% receding? Reports CNBC: "Rising COVID Omicron infections to start the year hampered activity across the board, while inflation surging at a level not seen since the early 1980s and the Russian invasion of Ukraine also contributed to the economic stasis."

Can They Ever Get It Right? Were Dow Jones’ surveyed economists unaware of rising Omicron infections? Of inflation at a level not seen since the early 1980s? Of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? We are reminded of an inept physician who perpetually misreads the vital signs. Some might label him a “quack.” In the interest of decorum, we will not. Yet he somehow retains his prestige, despite his multiple botchings.

These same experts insist that first-quarter returns are something of an aberration - that the contractionary forces will soon clear out. “This is noise; not signal,” insists Mr. Ian Shepherdson - chief economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics - “the economy is not falling into recession.”

Is It Actually Signal, Not Noise? Yet Simona Mocuta, chief economist with State Street Global Advisors, gives the alternate prognosis: "In retrospect, this could be seen as a pivotal report. It reminds us of the reality that… things are changing and they won’t be that great going forward."

Deutsche Bank - incidentally - forecasts a “significant recession” late next year. Its crackerjacks hazard the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates frantically to cage the inflationary menace presently running at large. We incline toward the Deutsche Bank position.

We note that the 10-year Treasury yield scaled 2.88% today… the highest level since 2018. Rising “growth stocks” such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Netflix have elevated the overall stock market. Yet growth stocks are exquisitely sensitive to rising interest rates. And the same growth stocks that can push… can also pull.

Growth Stocks Giveth, Growth Stocks Taketh Away: Explains Mr Peter Tchir of Academy Securities: "Companies relying on future cash flow growth experience much greater risk as rates rise, and that has been the part of the market that has really driven returns in the stock market. That is why some parts of the market, like the Nasdaq-100, which is heavy in technology stocks, is getting hit much more than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has [fewer] companies expecting outsized growth.

Perhaps we should not be surprised then that the stock market endured another hemorrhaging Friday. The Dow Jones gushed 939 crimson points. The S&P 500 shed 155… while the Nasdaq Composite bled 536 points of its own - a 4.17% devastation.

Growth stock Amazon initiated the bloodspill. Reports CNBC: "U.S. stocks fell Friday with the Nasdaq Composite on pace for the worst month since 2008, as Amazon became the latest victim in the technology-led sell-off… Amazon on Friday sunk about 14% - its biggest drop since 2006 - after the e-commerce giant reported a surprise loss and issued weak revenue guidance for the second quarter…"

The Nasdaq is down around 12%, on pace for its worst monthly performance since October 2008 in the throngs of the financial crisis. The S&P 500 is down more than 7%, its worst month since March 2020 at the onset of the COVID pandemic. The Dow is off by nearly 4% for the month. And so we wonder: Will interest rates march higher and higher?

Is the 40-Year Cycle Ending? Mr. Michael Hartnett is Bank of America’s chief investment strategist. The cycle is reversing, he claims. Both inflation and interest rates are heading the other way. Writes Business Insider: "The lower inflation of the last 40 years that sent interest rates down and stock market valuations higher has reached a turning point… “We believe we are at a secular turning point for both inflation & interest rates,” Hartnett and a team of BofA strategists said in a note Thursday."

But why? Hartnett and his team continue: We believe 2020 likely marked a secular low point for inflation and interest rates due to a reversal of deflationary secular factors, fiscal excess and an explosive cyclical reopening of the global economy creating excess demand for goods, services and labor."

What does the foregoing suggest for the stock market? Markets have witnessed eight major cycles dating to 1871. Investors hauled in the greatest gains - nearly all of them - in four cycles of the eight. Investors handed over their gains in the remaining four cycles. The silent thief of inflation robbed them. Importantly: The bulking majority of market gains across these cycles were harvested during disinflationary cycles - not inflationary cycles.

A Decade of Losses: What if Mr. Hartnett is correct? What if the 40-year cycle of declining inflation and declining interest rates is ending? What if both are streaking higher? It would suggest hard sledding for stocks during the coming years… as the cycle swings from disinflation… to inflation.

At present valuations, stocks could potentially plummet some 50% or more. And by some estimates, your odds of losing money in the stock market approach 100% - odds that would make the bravest fellow quail. So much for the following decade. What if we train our binoculars on the farthest horizon… 20 years out?

20 Years of Losses? Mr. Michael Carr instructs technical analysis at New York Institute of Finance. Says he: “Starting from this level, stocks are likely to disappoint over the next 20 years.” Twenty years? That is correct: "When the P/E ratio is near all-time highs, as it is now, the S&P 500 delivers annual returns averaging about 5% over the next 20 years. When the P/E ratio is near all-time lows, returns are about three times higher, averaging 15.4% a year over the next 20 years."

Yet as we are fond to say: Climate is what you can expect. Weather is what you actually get. Even the harshest bear market has its joys, as even the harshest winter has its thaws. And the Horae - the Greek goddesses of the seasons - are fickle and capricious beings. Their plans are not known to us. Yet we hazard the overall forecast is poor. Are you outfitted for heavy weather?"

- dailyreckoning.com

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Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to feedback@dailyreckoning.com.

"Stagflation!"

"Stagflation!"

Rising inflation and economic contraction... 

you ain't seen nothing yet!

by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Is it just that Elon Musk is an immigrant from a poor country, or is it because he’s African American that has got the woke mob’s unisex panties in such a bunch? We’ll “circle back” to all things Twitter/Musk related in tomorrow’s Sunday Sesh. For now, let’s concentrate on what’s in front of us... a stock market meltdown, a (synchronized?) fiat currency “race to the bottom” and a curious phenomenon that Austrian School economists call “stagflation.”

Where to begin? “The Generals,” as Dan Denning has been referring to them (that is, mega cap S&P 500 stocks like Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla, Alphabet etc.) were in full, disorderly retreat on Friday. Here’s ol’ mate Denning with the wrap..."Well, that was ugly... On the back of a disappointing earnings announcement from Amazon, the Nasdaq lost over four percent on the day. It was down over 13% in April (the worst month since October of 2008) and is now down over 20% for the year (bear market territory).

The Dow Jones Industrials rallied late to avoid a thousand-point loss on the day. A thousand points doesn’t mean anything technically. But it’s a big number and makes for big headlines. And more fear. Meanwhile the S&P 500 fell over three and a half percent. The minus 13.37% start to the year is the third-worst start ever, and the worst in 83 years. It started down 17.3% in 1939 and 28.2% in 1932."

Now, your weekend editor is no quant trader...but them there numbers sure do look bad! Meanwhile, economists were “surprised” to discover the economy shrank by 1.4% during the first quarter. They had been expecting 1% growth. Oopsie! It’s a good thing these wonks aren’t working as civil engineers... or pilots... or oncologists... Can you imagine?

“So, we made our calculations, using the decolonized 2+2=5 math equations, and the structure looked stable...” “It appears the pilot had been expecting the tarmac to be in the opposite direction...” “Right, well... the thing is, ‘remission’ can mean different things to different people...”

And here comes murmurings of that dusty old Econ. 101 term, scarcely heard in the US since 1974, when it was all the rage: “stagflation.” For those who had better things to do in college, stagflation is characterized by negative growth coupled with persistently high inflation (not “transitory,” mind you... persistently).

High unemployment is another hallmark of stagflation and, although at 3.6% unemployment is “officially” low, the fact that workers real wages (that is, adjusted for inflation) are falling like a rock does not help the situation. In the ‘74 recession, job losses lagged inflation and economic contraction by some months. All told, some 2.3 million Americans lost their jobs during the 16-month recession.

With the consumer price inflation gauge boiling over at a 40 year high and this week’s “shock” news that the economy is actually contracting, it might be time to whip out the old bell bottoms and platform shoes. One gets the feeling that, as Bachman-Turner Overdrive sang in the summer of ‘74, “B-b-b-baaaaby, you ain’t seen nu-nu-nu-nothing yet!”

Of course, President Joe “The Buck Stops With Me” Biden was on hand to claim full responsibility for the economic mess his administration hath wrought. From his official Whitehouse Statement... "While last quarter’s growth estimate was affected by technical factors, the United States confronts the challenges of COVID-19 around the world, Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and global inflation from a position of strength."

And here we invite any reader, thus far unconvinced of the president’s “position of strength,” to witness the man in full flight...

https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1519698983513432065

Just remember, it was only a couple of years before we went from “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” to Kansas’s Point of No Return album... thereafter, it was all dust in the wind..."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

Jim Rickards, "1 Little Chart And The End of America: The Crisis Unfolding"

"1 Little Chart And The End of America:

 The Crisis Unfolding"

by Jim Rickards

"Jim Rickards here. A month ago, I went live from Washington DC and warned America of an impending financial crisis. And it’s ALL being covered up or underreported. For starters… I bet you’ve seen the inflation story that the media is sharing. You’ve seen high prices at your local gas station, and I’m sure you’re frustrated. More important, still, I bet you’ve seen your investments wither away here in 2022. The market has been a bloodbath… and many American investors have lost more than 10% of their net worth in the first 4 months. (More if you’re in tech or crypto).

This is a confusing and tumultuous time for all Americans. And it’s about to get much, much worse. You see, the topics that you’ll see on your local news or mainstream financial press only scratch the surface of what’s really going on. Fact is, there’s something much more historic happening under the surface. (Something dating all the way back to 1919.)

Things like inflation, the war in Ukraine, and huge market volatility and investment pain are all just symptoms of a much larger problem at play. It’s the supervolcano that’s been brewing underneath the global financial system. And once it blows, just days from now, it could take down the entire U.S. economy, and financial system with it. You see, in less than a week from now, an announcement from a major agency with deep ties to the U.S. government is going to change your life, and the lives of millions of Americans practically overnight. That’s because this announcement has the power to:

• Set off a massive wave of defaults across the U.S. banking system (You’ve already seen what’s happening with banks in Canada and the Ukraine. Imagine something of that magnitude happening here)

• Send the Dow plummeting by more than 80% in just a matter of weeks (And it is not just me saying that. As I’ll show you later this week it’s people like Michael Burry, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, Billionaire investors Ray Dalio and Jeremy Grantham, and more).

• And ruin the lives of millions of Americans at or near retirement (If you thought 2008 was bad, this could be 10 times worse).

And because the mainstream media is distracted with geopolitics, most Americans have no idea what is about to happen.

Now, for those of you that follow my work, you know this isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this. In fact, on June 20th of 2016, I broadcasted live from London and said that the United Kingdom would vote to leave the European Union. At the time most people couldn’t imagine that I was right, and probably thought I was a fool for putting it all on the line and making that prediction. But just three days later the votes came in…And I was right.

Then again, on November 4th of that same year, the night before one of the most polarizing elections in history…I stood in front of the Trump tower and told the world that Donald Trump was going to win this election. And even though 99% of the polls said I was wrong, I turned out to be exactly right.

I even went live just a few months ago to warn everyone about the coming crisis in Ukraine, saying that it was a 90% certainty it was going to happen. And though very few people listened to me at the time, we all know how that situation has turned out.

But what I’m going to reveal on May 2nd at 2 p.m. ET is much bigger than any of those predictions… It’s by far the biggest prediction of my career. And it's one of my most certain. That’s why I’ll be recording an urgent Zoom with my publisher Matt Insley to break down the situation.

It all has to do with a small pattern…one that’s NOT a traditional market-based indicator, but one that’s appeared before every financial crash in history, with only two possible exceptions in history. And once this announcement is made by this quasi-government agency, the next step in this pattern will be set in motion. At that point the crash is virtually guaranteed.

Again it’s not just me saying that. People like Michael Burry:

“This will be the mother of all crashes…

the losses will approach the size of countries.”

- Big Short Investor Michael Burry

Charlie Munger:

“This must end badly”

- Charlie Munger, Warren Buffets right hand man.

And even Ray Dalio:

“We are in a worse position than 2008”

- Ray Dalio

They are all warning of the same thing. And your wealth, your livelihood, and even your happiness are all at stake. But what you may not yet know is why. Why am I so certain that the U.S. stock market is about to suffer a major collapse? Instead of telling you why, I’m going to show you. Take a look at this:

This pattern has appeared before nearly every major market crash in recorded history. It appeared before the 1987 stock market crash, when the Dow plunged 23% in a single day, and trillions of dollars of wealth evaporated overnight.

It appeared before the dot.com bubble 2000, just before the NASDAQ dropped 75%, and didn’t recover for nearly 15 years. And it appeared in 2006, before the stock market lost more than half of its value, as millions of investors around the country watched in horror as their dreams of an early retirement went up in flames.

And the next step of this pattern is set to appear just a few days from now. And once it does, the stock market's fate, as well as the financial futures of millions of Americans, will become sealed…"

- https://paradigm.press/publications/cdc/

- customerservice@email.paradigm-press.net

"Halt and Catch Fire..."

"There's a great phrase, 'Halt and Catch Fire', which means, basically, you know sh&t's going to hit the fan, so you stop, accept it and move the [another expletive we'd prefer not to write] on. 'Halt and Catch Fire'is an early machine command that sent the machine into a race condition, forcing all conditions to compete for superiority at once." 

- Addison Wiggin

“Don’t Worry, It’s Just Temporary”

“Don’t Worry, It’s Just Temporary”

by Jeffrey Tucker

"What is it with these pundits and government people? No matter how bad the news is, we are always given the same message. Don’t panic, it’s only temporary! It’s been this way for two years. It was “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Then it was “transitory inflation.”

This week, it’s the same. The GDP shrank 1.4% annualized and what do they tell us? That this is noise, not a signal. It’s only a flesh wound. The economy will soon bounce back. Just give it time! Sure, but how much time? How deep can the recession/depression get? No one knows for sure. We know by now that the experts are happy to lie about their intuitions, if only to keep the public calm.

Truth is that based on the existing data, we are very deep into the formation of the real thing: an inflationary recession. It’s also called stagflation. Yes, that very thing that decades ago economists said would be impossible. It happened anyway in the 1970s. And it’s happening now. The only question that remains is just how bad this can get.

Making a Recession: To be sure, the GDP as a statistical measure of economic growth is a hot mess. When government spends money, it counts as growth. When businesses sustained by subsidies flop, it counts as shrinkage, even though that frees up resources. Even trade deficits that count into the mix of GDP, such as exports are good and imports are bad.

Still, it’s worth paying attention because no matter how bad the calculations are they are at least consistent quarter to quarter. So this last-quarter shrinkage comes as a bit of a shock. And let’s say we take it at face value.

It’s exceedingly difficult to bring about economic shrinkage following a forced closure of economic life two years ago, one that lasted for 20 months in many places. All a government has to do under these conditions is take its hand off the controls. We should have been in a huge period of massive economic growth by now. We are talking late-19th-century levels. There’s no excuse. But of course, that’s not what happened.

The Biden administration has been brutal in its tax plans, regulatory impositions, and daily threats against fossil fuel, crypto, and just about everyone. And then there’s the war - the US government is doing its best to make it last and last - and its further wrecking of supply chains. The result should not surprise us.

Another factor relates to market psychology. Fact is that governments all over the country fundamentally attacked property rights and free enterprise. That sends a signal to all would-be investors: no one’s businesses are wholly safe in the long term. This explains why so much investment that is taking place right now is not based on long-term commitment, but rather on a short-term hope to make a buck and move on. Inflation only intensifies that problem.

But let’s be clear. There is no such thing as sustainable property without long-term security in capital ownership. Without that, we are on a slow trajectory toward Haiti, a place where everyone works hard but wealth somehow never manages to accumulate and become mighty.

The Labor Shortage Mystery: One major factor that makes this inflationary recession different from any we’ve seen before is the weird labor shortage. Ask anyone why it is happening. No regular person seems to have an answer. Where are the workers? Some three millions are just missing. Businesses don’t understand it and the media isn’t even curious. The Chamber of Commerce has produced a remarkable analysis of this that has received very little or no attention at all. “There’s not just one reason that workers are sitting out,” the Chamber writes “but several factors have come together to cause the ongoing shortage.”

What’s Going On? Here’s a reason we are not hearing about this: the explanation falls along gendered lines. One third of non-employed women said that during the pandemic lockdowns, they had to leave the workforce to care for children or other family members. They left and did not come back. As for men, a quarter said that their industry was suffering and good jobs just didn’t make coming back worth it.

Drill down a bit more and you find that unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, and shifted financial priorities have meant that people have been able to live off the largess. People moved in with mom and dad. They curbed their ambitions. The $4 trillion added to US savings accounts over two years mean that people have just decided to get by. Two thirds of workers who aren’t working report that they can earn more from unemployment than from wages.

What about the future? Most men will eventually come back to work. Not so for women: one third have said they are better off tending to home matters, rather than fighting in the rat race of modern employment, especially with school and childcare so sketchy.

Retirement: Finally, we have early retirement. Many people in their late 50s just decided to take their pension and go. And get this: Additionally, women are participating in the labor force at the lowest rates since the 1970s. In the spring of 2020, 3.5 million mothers left their job, driving the labor force participation rate for working moms from around 70% to 55%. This number is improving - but it has not fully rebounded.

Now, do you see why we haven’t heard about this? Incredibly, the pandemic response wiped out 50 years of what “feminists” used to call “gains for women!” We are back to the point that fewer than half of married women with children are in the workforce. That there is zero mention of this astonishing fact in the public press is absolutely remarkable. It’s an indication of just how much is being covered up.

Lower labor force participation is certain to have an effect on GDP numbers. Supply chain snarls add to it. Rising interest rates threaten many industries. I’m completely at a loss to understand how anyone thinks that all things will improve in the next reporting quarter. And remember that the National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as two consecutive declines in GDP. Well, we’re already halfway there."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Societal Collapse "

"Societal Collapse"

by Hardscrabble Farmer

"Anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of human history must first and foremost understand the cycles of Nature and the nature of living things. There exists a balance in every closed system; creation and dissolution, growth and decay, life and death. There is no escape from this dynamic, no means by which one can exist without the other. Sometimes societies ascend, but eventually, over time, they collapse.

For a very long time America has benefited from exploiting the reserves of other nations  their labor, their resources, and their environments in a form of cultural strip mining. It has given the appearance of a sustainable system that required no effort to store surpluses or to build reserves for the future. There has been a perpetual live for the moment feel to our experience that was based on such illusory systems as credit and fiat.

These things are not real. They are manifest realities, things that exist only because a critical mass of people agree to believe in them rather than what is reflected by actuality. When such time occurs that a large enough number of people abandon their participation in that system, reality rushes in to the void left behind.

A large part of what we are seeing - as described to us by experts or media -is occult in nature, hidden not by design or subterfuge, but due to the ignorance or stupidity of the mass of men. They no longer recognize that a large part of what is taking place on the streets of cities like Portland and Minneapolis is simply a mating ritual for a generation that was so atomized and dissolute that they had no opportunity to make real life connections with the opposite sex except through electronic devices. Living beings cannot - despite the assurances of the Musks and Weils - exist by proxy.

They must eat, sleep, perform some activity during their waking hours, seek companionship, etc. These drives can be sublimated or suppressed either by societal controls or chemical dependencies, but they cannot be removed from our core drive. This is what happens when humans are thwarted from fulfilling their animal destinies, the drives of their particular species. If you eliminate the family, you do not stop fornication. If you eradicate healthy foods and a connection to its production, you do not eliminate hunger. Thus the dramatic rise in obesity and the ubiquity of pornography.

Everything exists in context, there is no way to eliminate the void left behind in a fatherless home without a corresponding flow of the feminine. A mind that has no reason will seek to replace it with an equal measure of emotion.

The Western Cultural experience that gained prominence and near global hegemony over the past several centuries is in terminal decline, accelerated by the opportunistic interference of competing cultural spheres, but predominantly by its own senescence. We are, in short, spent. What we are seeing is not a political or ideological struggle - again, manifest realities - but the natural process of a cultural expiration. The West is dying and with it all of the ideals and symbols that were attached to its rise.

Just as an elderly family member in their last days makes a point to give away their possessions, America is passing its treasures on; freedom of speech, the iconic symbols of Manifest Destiny like the statues of its heroes, even its own birthright to the rising of a new cultural expression, one that is less concerned with things like honor, nobility, truth and justice. None of those things exist in Nature, but rather are created and used like iron tools to achieve an end. Now that its energy is spent they serve no purpose, especially to the multitudes of others who share a far more dynamic and exuberant expression of collective identity.

This is a natural event, no different from a forest fire, but one which applies to the human species specifically. This is how we clear the ground for whatever is to replace us and we will serve as its fertilizer."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Not The 1970s Or The 1920s: We're In Uncharted Territory"

"Not The 1970s Or The 1920s: We're In Uncharted Territory"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The awakening of inflation after decades of slumber has triggered a flurry of comparisons to the 1970s accompanied by a chorus of projections for 1970s-type stagflation, defined as inflation plus economic stagnation - limited or negative growth and high unemployment. A less popular comparison is with the 1920s: a massive expansion of debt, an equally massive speculative bubble in assets and extreme wealth-income inequality, all against a backdrop of slowing growth and debt saturation. Each of these eras shares certain characteristics with the present, but beneath the surface there are consequential systemic differences. Let's start with the 1970s.

The oil shock that fueled inflation had two sources: 1) the oil-exporting nations took control of their hydrocarbon resources and repriced them in the context of 2) declining reserves and production in the West, particularly the U.S., which had been the Saudi Arabia of the world through the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

A second, much less understood dynamic was the immense investment required to clean up the U.S. industrial base. Pollution in the U.S. was out of control by the early 1970s, with toxic rivers catching fire and high levels of air pollution. The oil shock prompted federal regulations on pollution and improvements in the basic efficiency of appliances, vehicles, etc.

This was a major sea change for the entire industrial sector, and it required immense investments of capital and a painful learning curve. This diversion of capital depressed profits and acted as an economy-wide tax on the system. In today's money, the overall cost of this transition was in the trillions of dollars.

The debt levels in the 1970s were by today's standards absurdly modest. The cultural values of frugality and avoidance of debt still held, and there was resistance to heavy public-private borrowing that has completely vanished.

The demographics of the 1970s was also completely different from today. The 65-million strong Baby Boom generation was entering the workforce and starting families and enterprises. The demographic double-whammy was the mass entry of women into the workforce as opportunities and ambitions expanded.

Meanwhile, the energy picture was brightening under the radar as the development of newly discovered super-giant oil fields in Alaska, the North Sea and Africa began. It took many years to bring these new hydrocarbon sources online, but by the mid 1980s, the price of oil had fallen to lows that slashed the income of oil exporting nations, including the Soviet Union.

None of these conditions are present today. Much of America's domestic production was offshored in the past 20 years, the demographics are no longer as favorable (soaring population of elderly and flatlined workforce) and the production from the super-giant fields brought online in the 1970s is declining. There are no new super-giant fields in the global pipeline to replace those in the depletion phase of declining production.

As for the 1920s: the parallels are debt saturation and speculative excess against a backdrop of an economy that feasted on debt-fueled spending and speculation while absorbing new technologies. The differences are the U.S. still had immense natural resources and relatively limited infrastructure in the 1920a. While private debt was through the roof - $100 in a stock market account leveraged $900 in stock purchases due to the 10% cash margin requirement -federal debt was still modest compared to modern levels. This set the stage for massive expansions of federal debt in World War II that funded sustained investments in infrastructure through the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

In the present, we have all the fragilities of the 1920s and few of the strengths. We have all the debt saturation and speculative bubble excesses but our resources have been heavily tapped and every sector of the economy is heavily indebted. All of these similarities and differences are setting up a sea-change revaluation of capital, resources and labor that will be on the same scale as the tumultuous transformations of the 1920s and 1970s. We're in uncharted territory. More on these revaluations next week."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Massive Shrinkflation At Dollar Tree! This is Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 4/30/22:

"Massive Shrinkflation At Dollar Tree! This is Crazy!"

"In today's vlog we are Dollar Tree, and are noticing massive food products that have shrunk in size! 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!"

"How It Really Is"

 

"War..."

"Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace (Beer 1981: 20).] An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...&c.'" The lower figure is more plausible but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War

○

"OMG..."They Will Declare WW3 Within Days"- UK Defense Secretary"

Full screen recommended.

"OMG..."They Will Declare WW3 Within Days"- UK Defense Secretary"

by Canadian Prepper

“Putin will declare WW3 in days” says UK defense secretary; Britain sending troops, major NATO exercises planned; Moldova front ready to flare up; Worst heatwave in Pakistan and Indias recorded history will lead to crop failures; coal shortages; bird flu human case in Colorado; unprecedented water shortages in California will increase food shortages; all hell is breaking loose - head on a swivel..."