So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, July 15, 2022
"Nine Meals from Anarchy"
"Nine Meals from Anarchy"
by Jeff Thomas
"In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky. The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport or even walking, if necessary.
But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. If we were to see our neighbor with a loaf of bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbor and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”
But surely, there’s no need to speculate on this concern yet. There’s nothing on the evening news yet to suggest that such a problem might be on the horizon. So, let’s have a closer look at the actual food distribution industry, compare it to the present direction of the economy, and see whether there might be reason for concern.
The food industry typically operates on very small margins – often below 2%. Traditionally, wholesalers and retailers have relied on a two-week turnaround of supply and anywhere up to a 30-day payment plan. But an increasing tightening of the economic system for the last eight years has resulted in a turnaround time of just three days for both supply and payment for many in the industry. This a system that’s still fully operative, but with no further wiggle room, should it take a significant further hit.
If there were a month where significant inflation took place (The Feds lie say 9.1%; really now at least 17%), all profits would be lost for the month for both suppliers and retailers, but goods could still be replaced and sold for a higher price next month. But, if there were three or more consecutive months of inflation, the industry would be unable to bridge the gap, even if better conditions were expected to develop in future months. A failure to pay in full for several months would mean smaller orders by those who could not pay. That would mean fewer goods on the shelves. The longer the inflationary trend continued, the more quickly prices would rise to hopefully offset the inflation. And ever-fewer items on the shelves.
From Germany in 1922, to Argentina in 2000, and to Venezuela in 2016, this has been the pattern whenever inflation has become systemic, rather than sporadic. Each month, some stores close, beginning with those that are the most poorly capitalized.
In good economic times, this would mean more business for those stores that were still solvent, but in an inflationary situation, they would be in no position to take on more unprofitable business. The result is that the volume of food on offer at retailers would decrease at a pace with the severity of the inflation.
However, the demand for food would not decrease by a single loaf of bread. Store closings would be felt most immediately in inner cities, when one closing would send customers to the next neighborhood seeking food. The real danger would come when that store also closes and both neighborhoods descended on a third store in yet another neighborhood. That’s when one loaf of bread for every three potential purchasers would become worth killing over. Virtually no one would long tolerate seeing his children go without food because others had “invaded” his local supermarket.
In addition to retailers, the entire industry would be impacted and, as retailers disappeared, so would suppliers, and so on, up the food chain. This would not occur in an orderly fashion, or in one specific area. The problem would be a national one. Closures would be all over the map, seemingly at random, affecting all areas. Food riots would take place, first in the inner cities then spread to other communities. Buyers, fearful of shortages, would clean out the shelves.
Importantly, it’s the very unpredictability of food delivery that increases fear, creating panic and violence. And, again, none of the above is speculation; it’s a historical pattern – a reaction based upon human nature whenever systemic inflation occurs.
Then… unfortunately… the cavalry arrives. At that point, it would be very likely that the central government would step in and issue controls to the food industry that served political needs rather than business needs, greatly exacerbating the problem. Suppliers would be ordered to deliver to those neighborhoods where the riots are the worst, even if those retailers are unable to pay. This would increase the number of closings of suppliers.
Along the way, truckers would begin to refuse to enter troubled neighborhoods, and the military might well be brought in to force deliveries to take place. (If truckers could afford $5.75 a gallon diesel fuel.)
So, what would it take for the above to occur? Well, historically, it has always begun with excessive debt. We know that the debt level is now the highest it has ever been in world history. (US debt as of July 2022: $30.5 trillion; World debt as of Feb. 2022: $303 trillion.) In addition, the stock and bond markets are in bubbles of historic proportions. They will most certainly pop.
With a crash in the markets, deflation always follows as people try to unload assets to cover for their losses. The Federal Reserve (and other central banks) has stated that it will unquestionably print as much money as it takes to counter deflation. Unfortunately, inflation has a far greater effect on the price of commodities than assets. Therefore, the prices of commodities will rise dramatically, further squeezing the purchasing power of the consumer, thereby decreasing the likelihood that he will buy assets, even if they’re bargain priced. Therefore, asset holders will drop their prices repeatedly as they become more desperate. The Fed then prints more to counter the deeper deflation and we enter a period when deflation and inflation are increasing concurrently.
Historically, when this point has been reached, no government has ever done the right thing. They have, instead, done the very opposite – keep printing. A by-product of this conundrum is reflected in the photo above. Food still exists, but retailers shut down because they cannot pay for goods. Suppliers shut down because they’re not receiving payments from retailers. Producers cut production because sales are plummeting.
In every country that has passed through such a period, the government has eventually gotten out of the way and the free market has prevailed, re-energizing the industry and creating a return to normal. The question is not whether civilization will come to an end. (It will not.) The question is the liveability of a society that is experiencing a food crisis, as even the best of people are likely to panic and become a potential threat to anyone who is known to store a case of soup in his cellar.
Fear of starvation is fundamentally different from other fears of shortages. Even good people panic. In such times, it’s advantageous to be living in a rural setting, as far from the centre of panic as possible. It’s also advantageous to store food in advance that will last for several months, if necessary. However, even these measures are no guarantee, as, today, modern highways and efficient cars make it easy for anyone to travel quickly to where the goods are. The ideal is to be prepared to sit out the crisis in a country that will be less likely to be impacted by dramatic inflation – where the likelihood of a food crisis is low and basic safety is more assured."
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Thursday, July 14, 2022
Canadian Prepper, "'All Hell Will Break Loose' World Leaders Warning"
Canadian Prepper, 7/14/22:
"'All Hell Will Break Loose' World Leaders Warning"
"'All Hell will break loose' according to Serbian president... get ready."
Comments here:
"If You're Scared You Should Be; FED Printing Press Overheating; Credit Crisis; Food Banks Panic"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/14/22:
"If You're Scared You Should Be;
FED Printing Press Overheating; Credit Crisis; Food Banks Panic"
Comments here:
"America’s Summer Exodus: Thousands Flee The Cities Every Day Because They Don’t Feel Safe"
Full screen recommended.
"America’s Summer Exodus: Thousands Flee
The Cities Every Day Because They Don’t Feel Safe"
by Epic Economist
"A sudden mass exodus away from our major cities has become the greatest migration event in modern American history. Millions are moving to smaller, suburban communities despite soaring housing prices simply because they don’t feel safe in our core urban areas anymore. The relocating patterns are making home prices crash in some markets while others are seeing housing costs reach absolutely insane levels. The trend, however, highlights that the wealthy are snatching the most desirable properties, consequently pushing the price of otherwise affordable homes to skyrocket, and leaving middle-class families priced out of most markets while working-class families are having to live in poverty-stricken regions.
We used to have some of the most beautiful cities in the world, and we still do, but for many, the beauty doesn’t compensate for the collapsing infrastructure, rising rates of offenses, social decay, and the slowdown of local economies. In fact, historian Victor Davis Hanson is using the word “apocalyptic” to describe some of them. According to a recent article published by the New York Times, hundreds of thousands of people have already left the Big Apple. After losing so many residents, some were expecting that the mass exodus would be slowing down, but that does not appear to be happening.
In fact, new tax data shows that over the past couple of years the City has faced a steep population loss. Approximately 500,000 people fled New York - 330,000 of them in 2020 alone, in an exodus described by officials as a once-in-a-century shock to the city’s population. In other words, 8.5% of the city’s residents have moved away looking for better living conditions. Of course, all of those people need to have somewhere to go, and the most popular destinations have been Florida, Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee, a U-Haul survey found. As a result, those places have actually seen some of the highest housing prices in the entire nation.
Zillow economist Nicole Bachaud argues that the relocation of affluent Americans to upper-middle-class neighborhoods is pricing out middle-class families as the competition for a shrinking pool of available homes oftentimes leads to bidding wars. Right now, we have very few homes and a lot of people trying to buy them, she said. Nationally, only 49% of American families living in metropolitan areas can say that their neighborhood income level is within 25% of the regional median. A generation ago, 62% of families lived in these middle-income neighborhoods.
This trend highlights that wealthy families can see that things in the U.S. are about to take an apocalyptic turn and that the big cities will not be a safe place when the next economic recession hits, and rioting, looting, civil unrest, and the rate of delinquencies all start spiraling out of control. The top 1% plans to ride out the coming American apocalypse in style while the world above them is literally going insane. Sadly, a big share of the general population continues to be completely oblivious to what is about to happen to them, and so the events that are coming will close upon them suddenly like a trap and there will be no escape. Meanwhile, countless other Americans also seem to be deeply alarmed about the near future, because we have never seen a mass exodus of this magnitude in modern American history."
Gerald Celente, "Dragflation Alert! Economic Calamity On The Near Horizon"
Full screen recommended.
Strong Language Alert!
Gerald Celente, 7/14/22:
"Dragflation Alert! Economic Calamity On The Near Horizon"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
Full screen recommended.
Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
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“Reality is what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is what we believe.
What we believe is based upon our perceptions.
What we perceive depends upon what we look for.
What we look for depends upon what we think.
What we think depends upon what we perceive.
What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is our reality.”
- Gary Zukav
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Finally It's here the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the universe to date: Webb's First Deep Field. The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.
This first image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared, have appeared in Webb's view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arms length by someone on the ground."
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Full screen recommended.
"NASA Reveals More James Webb Space Telescope Images"
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Full screen recommended.
"NASA's James Webb Space Telescope LIVE Tracking View"
"Where Your Gaze Lingers..."
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.
You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”
- Haruki Murakami
“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”
- Richelle E. Goodrich
"Are Americans Ready to 'Storm the Bastille'?"
"Are Americans Ready to 'Storm the Bastille'?"
by Brian Maher
"Today is July 14 - Bastille Day - Fête Nationale as the French style it. That is when the Paris rabble besieged the Bastille fortress-prison… in quest of arms against King Louis XVI. Why did furious revolutionary tantrums seize France in 1789? And do they afford us a possible glimpse of the American future? Today we glance backward… in hope of looking forward.
We commence with our co-founder Bill Bonner: "By the 18th century, France had become the greatest power in Europe, the richest and most populous country in the Western world and the clear leader in art, science, philosophy, education, cuisine, fashion, architecture… and, of course, viticulture. It had the richest people in the world, the prettiest women and the best booze. It also had the most enlightened economists - the physiocrats - from whom Adam Smith was boosting some of his best ideas.
A poll taken in the early 1780s might have shown the French to be extremely optimistic and confident. And why shouldn't they be? The last major financial crisis - caused by John Law's Mississippi Bubble - blew up over 60 years before. And had the world ever seen anything approaching the splendor of Versailles?
Then came 1789 and its revolutionary deliriums: But in 1789, Paris mobs came to the crossroads of history and veered left. They replaced an absolute monarch who had very limited power with a people's republic restrained neither by common sense nor common decency."
Adds Austrian political scientist and journalist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999): "Much of what may appear positive to us today - liberality, intellectuality, humanitarianism - had all been already brought to us by the liberal, courtly absolutism, while the French Revolution which used all these words in reality did nothing more than brutally extinguish them."
Revolutionary Sparks: What spark - or sparks - set the revolutionary fires raging? Let us first issue an advisory: You do not hold a history book in your hands. You hold what passes as a financial newsletter… and a disreputable one at that. Its editor is not a historian at a lectern. He is instead a popinjay in an armchair. He is given to the simplifications, half-truths, errors and pomposities of the type. We nonetheless proceed in the spirit of scholarly inquiry...
First, there was the Estates System: a feudal hierarchy, a social pyramid. At the pinnacle was the First Estate - the church and its officiating clergy. Wedged in the middle, in the Second Estate, was the nobility. Below the nobility squatted the remaining 98% of France, the massive base of the pyramid - the Third Estate - merchants, tradesmen, lawyers, peasants, etc.
The government squeezed the majority of its tax revenues from this Third Estate. That is, the lower 98% hauled the bulk of the freight. The 98% kept the 2% bouncing along in a sort of opulence. Naturally the 98% bristled and bridled under the burden. But they had been accustomed to the business for generations. Why finally raise a rumpus in 1789?
The Hungry Times: An army marches on its stomach, it has been said. A people too marches on its stomach. And in the 1780s, the people of France were falling out of formation. France was the most populous nation in Europe. Thus it required the most foodstuffs.
A fantastic volcanic eruption in 1783 - in present Iceland - threw out so much soot it screened the sun. Winter was grim. And the 1784 harvest yielded lean, lean pickings. The following summers witnessed drought, botched harvests… and famine. 1787 and 1788 brought more hungry times. Accompanying them, inflation. That is because slender harvests raised the price of flour - hence, the price of bread.
Hunger plus inflation is a dreadful combination (as the pitiful residents of Sri Lanka can presently attest). A shrinking belly twinned with a shrinking currency equals an expanding crisis. It means a heart filling with resentment - and often a head filling with ideas. It meant, in this instance, revolution. It meant the slaughter of civilization. It meant rivers, lakes, seas of blood. It meant war… ultimately.
It meant two centuries of ideological mischief of one sort or other. Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and other 20th-century hellcats took their examples from the French revolutionists and their catastrophic theories.
The Alan Greenspan of the 18th Century: But we have neglected the crucial role of a critical actor, “the Alan Greenspan of the 18th century” - Monsieur Jacques Necker - to whom we now turn. As Mr. Bonner explains: "None of this might have happened, however, except for the efforts of the Alan Greenspan of the late 18th century - Jacques Necker. It was Necker who replaced laissez-faire economist Jacques Turgot as French finance minister in 1776.
Turgot's free-trade policies had the fatal flaw of all sensible rules - they benefited everybody to the advantage of nobody in particular. Turgot dissolved the guild system, eliminated the corvée (the forced labor of the peasants), imposed a simple property tax and opposed all forms of economic privilege at the expense of the common good. He even set himself against Marie Antoinette, by refusing to grant favors to her cronies. Since everybody in France in the 18th century as well as every American in the 21st wanted the privilege of picking someone else's pocket, Turgot eventually made enemies of nearly every class. Louis XVI, though responsible for the well-being of the entire nation, had not the strength to stand up to the special interests.
Turgot even had a prophetic intuition and a view of history similar to our own. Periods of civilized progress are followed, he noted, by periods of barbarism and madness…Necker made enemies of no one. His program was the opposite of Turgot's; he favored particular privileges at the expense of everybody else. Rather than tax people to pay for state expenses, Necker borrowed - taking short-term, high-interest loans that brought the government close to bankruptcy. Then Necker turned to accounting tricks to show that the government was actually running a surplus! The patsies loved it.
Pushed out for the first time in 1781, Necker was called back on the eve of revolution in 1788 for another dose of his financial magic. But it was too late. The old miracle elixirs - heavier debt and cooked books - wouldn't work any longer; bankruptcy was unavoidable. The aristocrats got rid of him again - on July 14, 1789. The mob, which still had faith, was so disappointed… it headed for the Bastille."
History Doesn’t Repeat, but It Rhymes: History does not repeat. But it does rhyme, as said the great scalawag Mark Twain. No volcanic eruption menaces crop production in 2022. Yet a geopolitical eruption does. Ukraine is referred to, widely, as the world’s “breadbasket.” Yet the basket is largely empty due to the war raging therein. Mass hunger - possibly global famine - lies in prospect.
Inflation is amok. The United States inflation rate runs to 9.1%, officially. Yet the true inflation rate likely approaches twice the official rate. Meantime, citizens of even the most “advanced” nations fume and rage against a corrupt, cancerous and cancel-cultured elite. Many believe they are languishing at the base of the economic pyramid while the pyramid’s tip lives grandly - almost royally. If you seek a present-day Necker you will find him in the chairman of the Federal Reserve - a post presently held by Jerome H. Powell.
Will Americans head for their own Bastille? Perhaps they already have in one sense... Substitute July 14, 1789, for Jan. 6, 2021. Substitute the Bastille for the United States Capitol. Here you may have yourself a rhyme. The cadence is a bit off, of course.
The only blood at the Capitol came spilling out of a 35-year-old Air Force veteran’s neck, shot through by a Capitol policeman. No heads went up on spikes at the Capitol - feet merely went up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. And the marauders walked out not long after they walked in… and went home. Nor were they famished. By the appearance of many, rather the opposite.
The Church is punchless, American nobility is a contradiction, no king beleaguers us. In brief, 2021 and 2022 America is not 1789 France. Yet certain rhymes are echoing.
Rhymes: Are Americans prepared to truly storm the Bastille in the manner of 1789? Perhaps not yet. Too much faith in the institutions remains, too much faith in America remains. It will take a good deal more privation, a good deal more disillusionment, to shake the faith. But are we ready for the man upon the white horse? Many Americans believe, rightly or wrongly, that a man with white hair was fraudulently elected over a man with orange hair in 2020.
You likewise have a frustrated population sat upon by elites. Many wallow economically and believe the financial system is arrayed against them. Many have lost faith in the democratic process itself. Now set an inflationary fire into the bargain… And history’s rhyme might just be an awful clang.
A prediction? No, of course not. Merely a possibility. And perhaps an unlikely one at that. Yet as history demonstrates amply, the impossible may become the possible… and the possible may become the inevitable…"
Bill Bonner, "Heads on Pikes"
"Heads on Pikes"
The difference between illegal insurrections and glorious revolutions.
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "Bastille Day. What is the difference between an illegal insurrection – such as the alleged one being investigated on Capitol Hill – and a glorious revolution, such as the one that began on this day 233 years ago? That question may or may not have occurred to Bernard-Rene de Launay. As commander of the Bastille, his job was to keep it under his control. That meant, he had to stop the group of hotheads from taking over his fortress. And had he succeeded, the story might have had a very different ending. The elite of the First Estate might have retained power. And they might have convened their own investigation into who was responsible for the insurrection. Instead, de Launay’s head – rather than resting comfortably on his own shoulders – was soon mounted on a pike, and the rioters were triumphant.
How might the Jan 6. riot have turned out differently if Nancy Pelosi’s or Mike Pence’s head had been mounted on a pike? We don’t know. But the rioters were woefully unprepared; there were no pikes among them. And America’s first estate is still in charge. Not so, the French. The rioters went from wickedness to debauchery. Killing, robbing, raping, destroying – they made a wretched wreck of France. But they gave it a new government. Instead of being bossed around by incompetent aristocrats, the French were now bossed around by ideologues and technocrats.
Three empires, three insurrections, and five republics later, France has a government much like that of the US. That is, it is incompetent, corrupt, and delusional.
Disinfecting Sunlight: Yesterday, we left you with the fleeting thought that the deeper meaning of today’s financial woes might be political as well as economic; our western democracies could be in trouble. Presidential approval rates are down – from Malibu to Minsk. The more light the 24/7 media shines on our leaders, the more we despise them. Capital values are falling too… as the value of the reserve currency itself – the dollar – falls at the fastest rate in 41 years. Today’s Wall Street Journal headline story: "Inflation Hurtles to Highest Since ‘81."
A 9.1% price rise adds pressure on the Fed as more investors expect a bigger rate boost in July. One of the major themes of the financial press is sympathy for the Fed. One article laments that the “Fed is under increasing pressure.” Another tells us that “it won’t be easy for the Fed.” Still another worries that the “Fed faces its toughest challenge in decades.”
The mainstream press wants us to feel the pain of the orphan who killed his parents. The Fed, more than anyone, created this mess. And anyone who still thinks central banks can make people richer is either a moron or an economist. But here we are. And here we have a corollary to our explanations for ‘what’s happening now.’ In short, we could be looking – somewhere up ahead – at our Bastille moment, and the end of the line for modern, post-French Revolution, welfare state democracy.
Exposed and Punished: Democracy works tolerably well, but only in small settings. In a New England town, for example… or in a club… All the participants know more or less the same set of facts… and all have equal power. People can be persuaded by the most forceful and most eloquent members of the group, but decisions rarely fall too far from the tree of practical alternatives available.
Not only do all the participants share the same information… they also share the same culture and language… and the same codes and rules. More importantly, they also know they have to bear the costs of whatever mischief their decisions cause. In small groups, as in families, mistakes are exposed and punished… so, people tend to make fewer of them.
But in large settings… the feedback loops get tangled or cut. People are busy with their own lives… and way too far from the ‘facts’ to have useful opinions. They can’t be expected to master epidemiology one day and the history of the steppes the next. Should the Donetsk People’s Republic be free from the Ukraine? How would they know?
As for his elected ‘representatives’… they are quickly captured by pressure groups… political donors… think tanks… and the Deep State. In practice, the government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’ is none of those things. It is a government of the elite, run by insiders, for the benefit of chiselers and busybodies.
In 1789, Louis XVI ran out of time, ran out of money, and ran out of luck. The ‘system’ no longer worked. Could something similar be happening in today’s western democracies? Is it Jerome Powell’s head that should grace the pike this time? Stay tuned..."
"Joel’s Note: It may seem odd, even somewhat uncouth, to quote Mr. John Maynard Keynes in these pages… but after yesterday’s 9.1% CPI print, the following lines, from the father of Keynesian economics himself, seem disturbingly appropriate…"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.
The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth… as the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into gambling and lottery. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner in which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
One is left to wonder. Is the system being destroyed by fools… or by villains? Hanlon’s razor cautions us never to attribute to malice that which might adequately be explained by stupidity. So where does that leave us?"
Must Watch! Gregory Mannarino, "Prepare For Impact! A Global Economic Meltdown Of Untold Proportions!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/14/22"
"Prepare For Impact!
A Global Economic Meltdown Of Untold Proportions!"
Comments here:
"Economy Melting Down - Global Banking Crisis"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 7/14/22:
"Economy Melting Down - Global Banking Crisis"
"With the Red Hot Inflation Report we hear that Canada is raising their
prime lending rate 1%. The US will follow next. Everything will cost more."
Comments here:
"Russia and China Haven’t Even Started To Ratchet Up The Pain Dial"
"Russia and China Haven’t Even
Started To Ratchet Up The Pain Dial"
by Pepe Escobar
"The Suicide Spectacular Summer Show, currently on screen across Europe, proceeds in full regalia, much to the astonishment of virtually the whole Global South: a trashy, woke Gotterdammerung remake, with Wagnerian grandeur replaced by twerking. Decadent Roman Emperors at least exhibited some degree of pathos. Here we’re just faced by a toxic mix of hubris, abhorrent mediocrity, delusion, crude ideological sheep-think and outright irrationality wallowing in white man’s burden racist/supremacist slush – all symptoms of a profound sickness of the soul.
To call it the Biden-Leyen-Blinken West or so would be too reductionist: after all these are puny politico/functionaries merely parroting orders. This is a historical process: physical, psychic and moral cognitive degeneration embedded in NATOstan’s manifest desperation in trying to contain Eurasia, allowing occasional tragicomic sketches such as a NATO summit proclaiming Woke War against virtually the whole non-West.
So when President Putin addresses the collective West in front of Duma leaders and heads of political parties, it does feel like a comet striking an inert planet. It’s not even a case of “lost in translation”. “They” simply aren’t equipped to get it.
The “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” part was at least formulated to be understood even by simpletons: “Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield, well, what can I say, let them try. We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian – this is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. But it looks like it’s all coming to this. But everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t really started anything yet.”
Fact. On Operation Z, Russia is using a fraction of its military potential, resources and state of the art weapons. Then we come to the most probable path ahead in the war theater: “We do not refuse peace negotiations, but those who refuse should know that the longer it drags, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us.”
As in the pain dial will be ratcheted up, slowly but surely, on all fronts. Yet the meat of the matter had been delivered earlier in the speech: “ratcheting up the pain dial” applies in fact to dismantling the whole “rules-based international order” edifice. The geopolitical world has changed. Forever.
Here’s the arguably key passage: “They should have understood that they have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation, because its beginning means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the World Order in the American way. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world – a world based not on selfish rules invented by someone for themselves, behind which there is nothing but the desire for hegemony, not on hypocritical double-standards, but on international law, on the true sovereignty of peoples and civilizations, on their will to live their historical destiny, their values and traditions and build cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality. And we must understand that this process can no longer be stopped.”
Meet the trifecta: A case can be made that Putin and Russia’s Security Council are implementing a tactical trifecta that has reduced the collective West to an amorphous bunch of bio headless chickens. The trifecta mixes the promise of negotiations – but only when considering Russia’s steady advances on the ground in Novorossiya; the fact that Russia’s global “isolation” has been proved in practice to be nonsense; and tweaking the most visible pain dial of them all: Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.
The main reason for the graphic, thundering failure of the G20 Foreign Ministers summit in Bali is that the G7 – or NATOstan plus American colony Japan – could not force the BRICS plus major Global South players to isolate, sanction and/or demonize Russia. On the contrary: multiple interpolations outside of the G20 spell out even more Eurasia-wide integration. Here are a few examples.
The first transit of Russian products to India via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is now in effect, crisscrossing Eurasia from Mumbai to the Baltic via Iranian ports (Chabahar or Bandar Abbas), the Caspian Sea, and Southern and Central Russia. Crucially, the route is shorter and cheaper than going through the Suez Canal.
In parallel, the head of the Iranian Central Bank, Ali Salehabadi, confirmed that a memorandum of interbank cooperation was signed between Tehran and Moscow. That means a viable alternative to SWIFT, and a direct consequence of Iran’s application to become a full BRICS member, announced at the recent summit in Beijing. The BRICS, since 2014, when the New Development Bank (NDB) was founded, have been busy building their own financial infrastructure, including the near future creation of a single reserve currency. As part of the process, the harmonization of Russian and Iranian banking systems is inevitable. Iran is also about to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September.
In parallel, Russia and Kazakhstan are solidifying their strategic partnership: Kazakhstan is a key member of BRI, EAEU and SCO. India gets even closer to Russia across the whole spectrum of trade – including energy. And next Tuesday, Tehran will be the stage for a crucial face-to-face meeting between Putin and Erdogan.
Isolation? Really? On the energy front, it’s only summer, but demented paranoia is already raging across multiple EU latitudes, especially Germany. Comic relief is provided by the fact that Gazprom can always point out to Berlin that eventual supplying problems on Nord Stream 1 – after the cliffhanger return of that notorious repaired turbine from Canada – can always be solved by implementing Nord Stream 2.
As the whole European Suicide Spectacular Summer Show is nothing but a tawdry self-inflicted torture ordered by His Master’s Voice, the only serious question is which pain dial level will force Berlin to actually sit down and negotiate on behalf of legitimate German industrial and social interests.
Rough and tumble will be the norm. Foreign Minister Lavrov summed it all up when commenting on the Declining Collective West Ministers striking poses like infantile brats in Bali to avoid being seen with him: that was up to “their understanding of the protocols and politeness.” That’s diplo-talk for “bunch of jerks”. Or worse: cultural barbarians, as they were even unable to respect the hyper-polite Indonesian hosts, who abhor confrontation.
Lavrov preferred to extol the “joint strategic and constructive” Russian-Chinese work when faced with a very aggressive West. And that brings us to the prime masterpiece of shadowplay in Bali – complete with several layers of geopolitical fog.
Chinese media, always flirting with the opaque, tried to put its bravest face ever depicting the over 5-hour meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary Blinken as “constructive”. What’s fascinating here is that the Chinese ended up letting something crucial out of the bag to slip into the final draft of their report – obviously approved by the powers that be.
Lu Xiang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences went through previous readouts – especially of “Yoda” Yang Jiechi routinely turning Jake Sullivan into roasted duck – and stressed that this time Wang’s “warnings” to the Americans were “the sternest one in wording”. That’s diplo-code for “You Better Watch Out”: Wang telling Little Blinkie, “just look at what the Russians did when they lost their patience with your antics.”
The expression ”dead end” was recurrent during the Wang-Blinken meeting. So in the end the Global Times had to tell it like it really is: “The two sides are close to a showdown.” “Showdown” is what End of Days fanatic and Tony Soprano wannabe Mike Pompeo is fervently preaching from his hate pulpit, while the combo behind the senile “leader of the free world” who literally reads teleprompters actively work for the crashing of the EU – in more ways than one.
The combo in power in Washington actually “supports” the unification of Britain, Poland, Ukraine and The Three Baltic Midgets as a separate alliance from NATO/EU – aiming at “strengthening the defense potential.” That’s the official position of US Ambassador to NATO Julian Smith. So the real imperial aim is to split the already shattering EU into mini-union pieces, all of them quite fragile and evidently more “manageable”, as Brussels Eurocrats, blinded by boundless mediocrity, obviously can’t see it coming.
What the Global South is buying: Putin always makes it very clear that the decision to launch Operation Z – as a sort of pre-emptive “combined arms and police operation”, as defined by Andrei Martyanov – was carefully calculated, considering an array of material and socio-psychological vectors.
Anglo-American strategy, for its part, lasers on a single obsession: damn any possible reframing of the current “rules-based international order”. No holds are barred to ensure the perpetuity of this order. This is in fact Totalen Krieg – featuring several hybrid layers, and quite worrying, with only a few seconds to midnight. And there’s the rub. Desolation Row is fast becoming Desperation Row, as the whole Russophobic matrix is shown to be naked, devoid of any extra ideological – and even financial – firepower to “win”, apart from shipping a collection of HIMARS to a black hole.
Geopolitically and geoeconomically, Russia and China are in the process of eating NATOstan alive – in more ways than one. Here, for instance, is a synthetic road map of how Beijing will address the next stage of high-quality development via capital-driven industrial upgrading, focused on optimization of supply chains, import substitution of hard technologies, and “invisible champions” of industry.
If the collective West is blinded by Russophobia, the governing success of the Chinese Communist Party – which in a matter of a few decades improved the lives of more people than anyone, anytime in History – drives it completely nuts.
All along the Russia-China watchtower, it’s been not such a long time coming. BRI was launched by Xi Jinping in 2013. After Maidan in 2014, Putin launched the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015. Crucially, in May 2015, a Russia-China joint statement sealed the cooperation between BRI and EAEU, with a significant role assigned to the SCO.
Closer integration advanced via the St. Petersburg forum in 2016 and the BRI forum in 2017. The overall target: to create a new order in Asia, and across Eurasia, according to international law while maintaining the individual development strategies of each concerned country and respecting their national sovereignty.
That, in essence, is what most of the Global South is buying. It’s as if there’s a cross-border instinctual understanding that Russia-China, against serious odds and facing serious challenges, proceeding by trial and error, are at the vanguard of the Shock of the New, while the collective West, naked, dazed and confused, their masses completely zombified, is sucked into the maelstrom of psychological, moral and material disintegration. No question the pain dial will be ratcheted up, in more ways than one."
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Related:
"Russian State TV Warns War Will Expand
to Poland if US Continues to Arm Ukraine"
Excerpt: "A Russian state TV host warned Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine could expand to Poland if the US continued to arm Kyiv’s forces. On a broadcast of Russia Channel 1’s “60 minutes,” TV host Olga Skabeyeva made the veiled warning saying that if the West continued to send aid to Ukraine the conflict could intensify, Newsweek reported. “If, God forbid, Americans deliver missiles that can travel 186 miles then we simply can’t stop,” the TV host said. “We’ll go all the way to Warsaw.”
Complete article here:
"Always Stand Up..."
"Always stand up for what you believe in…
even if it means standing alone."
- Kim Hanks
"Something Like Reverence...
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
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In the movie "The Lion in Winter ", when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:
Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of us! Don't let him see you beg! Take it like a man!"
Geoffrey: "You chivalric fool! As if the way one falls down matters!"
Richard: "Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal."
"Intense Cognitive Workout, Enter a Highly Focused Mental State - Isochronic Tones"
Full screen recommended.
Headphones are NOT REQUIRED for this video/track.
Jason Lewis - Mind Amend,
"Intense Cognitive Workout,
Enter a Highly Focused Mental State - Isochronic Tones"
"This an extended version of my "Peak Focus For Complex Tasks" session. Listen to this when you need a strong burst of intense focus to concentrate and study things like advanced mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any other complex mental activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on.
This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Use this video to increase focus and concentration while studying, working and doing any mentally taxing activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.
Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel."
I strongly suggest you read Comments here:
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"Isochronic Tones –
How They Work, the Benefits and the Research"
This is a brainwave entrainment audio session using isochronic tones combined with music. The isochronic tones are the repetitive beats you can hear on top of the music throughout the track. If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here:
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Listen folks, we're out of time! Whether you want to know it or not we're literally in the fight of our lives, for our lives right now, and it's going to get much, much worse. Some of you reading this will not survive, and I may not either, so I'll take any edge I can get, and you should too... This works for me. Prepare yourself, brace for impact...
- CP
MUST WATCH! Gregory Mannarino, "Prepare Immediately For A Worst Case Scenario - It's Over"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/14/22"
"Prepare Immediately For A Worst Case Scenario - It's Over"
Comments here:
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MarketWatch Live Updates:
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Related:
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! What's Next!? What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 7/14/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger!
What's Next!? What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"The Inflation Monster That Our Leaders Have Created Is Voraciously Eating Away Our Standard Of Living"
"The Inflation Monster That Our Leaders Have Created
Is Voraciously Eating Away Our Standard Of Living"
by Michael Snyder
"The purchasing power of the dollar is not nearly as strong as it once was, and as a result our standard of living is rapidly going down. The overall rate of inflation has been rising faster than our paychecks have been for quite a while, and this is causing a tremendous amount of pain for millions of U.S. consumers. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to change any time soon. The inflation monster that our leaders have created will continue to rage even as our economy plunges into a severe recession. I relentlessly warned that the trillions of dollars that our leaders were pumping into the system would cause enormous problems down the road, and now we are trapped in an economic nightmare with no easy way out.
On Wednesday, we learned that the rate of inflation in the United States jumped even higher last month…"Shoppers paid sharply higher prices for a variety of goods in June as inflation kept its hold on a slowing U.S. economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The consumer price index, a broad measure of everyday goods and services related to the cost of living, soared 9.1% from a year ago, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate. That marked the fastest pace for inflation going back to November 1981."
Of course the way that inflation is calculated today is much different from the way that it was calculated back in the 1980s. If the way that inflation was calculated had not been changed, the official inflation rate would be much higher right now. But even if you want to take the 9.1 percent figure at face value, it is still extremely high, and last month energy and food prices were two of the main reasons why we witnessed such a dramatic surge…
• Gas: 59.9%
• Electricity: 13.7%
• Food at home: 12.2%
• New vehicles: 11.4%
• Food away from home: 7.7%
• Used cars and trucks: 7.1%
• Shelter: 5.6%
• Apparel: 5.2%
Let’s focus on that “food at home” category for a moment. Every single one of us needs to eat, and so this is something that is deeply affecting all of us. And right now we are seeing rapid price increases in almost aisle of the grocery store…
• Cereals and cereal products: +15.1%
• Beef and veal: +4.1%
• Pork: +9.0%
• Poultry: +17.3%
• Fish and seafood: +11.0%
• Eggs: +33.1%
• Dairy and related products: +13.5%
• Fresh fruits: +7.3%
• Fresh vegetables: +6.5%
• Juices and nonalcoholic drinks: +11.6%
• Coffee: 15.8%
• Fats and oils: 19.5%
• Baby food: 14.0%
Has your paycheck gone up by a similar amount over the past year? If not, you are losing ground and your standard of living is declining. Overall, real wages in the United States have now fallen for 15 months in a row. In all the years I have been writing, I have never seen anything quite like this.
According to one expert that was interviewed by the Daily Caller, “American families are being crushed” by the inflation tsunami that we are witnessing right now…"Under the Biden administration, skyrocketing fuel costs and exploding inflation are hurting everyday Americans the most, according to an economist at the Heritage Foundation. “Energy prices are trickling down into everything and American families are being crushed,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow for regional economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation."
Antoni also says that the average worker in the United States has “lost the equivalent of almost $3,400 in annual income” due to declining purchasing power since Joe Biden entered the White House…“The average worker has lost the equivalent of almost $3,400 in annual income since Biden took office,” Antoni explained.
Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.6% from June 2021 to June 2022, according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9% in the average workweek resulted in a 4.4% decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period. “This is catastrophic, $3,400 is some people’s food budgets for a year,” Antoni continued."
The good news, if that is what you want to call it, is that the inflation rate will probably subside just a bit during the next few months. I have to admit that I agree with Jay Hatfield’s assessment of the situation…"Jay Hatfield, CEO at Infrastructure Capital Advisors, says this may signal the peak. “We forecast that this print will mark the peak of inflation as the Fed’s 15% shrinkage of the monetary base, which is the fastest decline since the great depression, will curb inflation as the QT has caused the dollar to appreciate by over 12% this year which has caused commodities to plummet by over 20% since the measurement period for June CPI.”
We are starting to see the size of the Fed’s balance sheet go down, and the Fed is likely to continue to aggressively raise interest rates in the months ahead. Both of those moves are likely to add significant momentum to our economic slowdown, and demand will be suppressed. Meanwhile, economic conditions will rapidly deteriorate as we plunge into an excruciatingly painful recession. Won’t that be fun?
Unfortunately, even a deep recession will not be enough to tame the inflation monster, because our Congress critters continue to spend money like drunken sailors. And I am entirely convinced that global supply problems will continue to escalate for a variety of reasons. So even though demand will be suppressed, inflation is not going away.
I would encourage you to get prepared for the very painful years that are ahead of us while you still can. You may think that economic conditions are bad now, but the truth is that we haven’t seen anything yet. The entire system is starting to crumble, and our clueless leaders seem to be all out of answers at this point."
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Musical Interlude: Yanni, “Standing in Motion”
Full screen recommended.
Yanni, “Standing in Motion”,
Live At The Acropolis, 25th Anniversary!
"A Look to the Heavens"
"To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place. Cataloged as IC 2944, the Running Chicken Nebula spans about 100 light years and lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus).
The featured image, shown in scientifically assigned colors, was captured recently in a 12-hour exposure. The star cluster Collinder 249 is visible embedded in the nebula's glowing gas. Although difficult to discern here, several dark molecular clouds with distinct shapes can be found inside the nebula."
"Panic Sweeps Across China As Bank Runs Intensify And Cash Shortage Leaves Millions With No Money"
Full screen recommended.
"Panic Sweeps Across China As Bank Runs Intensify
And Cash Shortage Leaves Millions With No Money"
by Epic Economist
"Bank runs continue to spark immense chaos all across China – and this time, things are getting heated. Since last week, thousands of people took the streets of major Chinese cities to ask banks to unfreeze their deposit accounts only to be dispersed by heavy-handed security personnel and remain at risk of losing all of their savings. Four big Chinese banks have frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits in April, telling customers they were upgrading their internal systems. But by now, the population has lost their trust in the institutions and the government. According to economists and experts, the country’s huge $54 trillion financial system, which is more than double the size of assets across U.S. commercial banks, is collapsing. China is on the precipice of a serious debt crisis, and the implosion of the nation’s real estate market and the ongoing bank runs are only symptoms of a much bigger problem.
Civil disorder is sweeping across China as infuriated citizens demand four major rural-based banks to unblock their assets after months of having their accounts frozen with no reasonable explanation. Over the weekend, a large crowd of angry customers gathered in the streets of major Chinese cities to express their growing frustration, but many ended up injured or taken away by local authorities.
Local media outlets estimate that the total amount of frozen deposit across the various banks could be worth up to $1.5 billion. For its part, the Chinese government said it is conducting a thorough investigation in the bank’s balance sheets.
For several months, the institutions have only been serving a limited number of customers per day, with some of them limiting how much each client can withdraw – oftentimes, no more than 1,000 yuan (or about $149). Meanwhile, others closed their branches altogether. Citizens say that even ATMs are empty, which is making it impossible for many of them to pay their monthly bills.
Reuters reported that the peaceful demonstration was interrupted by local authorities who announced from a vehicle with a megaphone that the gathering was an illegal assembly and demonstrators would be detained and fined if they didn’t leave. Some of the officials were out of their uniforms and wearing white T-shirts to blend in with the crowd and start dismantling the protest from within.
A number of experts highlighted in a recent interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation that the recent bank runs and the country’s collapsing real estate market are merely symptoms of a much more serious issue. China’s unacknowledged debt crisis is actually causing cash shortages and ensuing bank runs, noted Gordon G. Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China”.
The country’s real estate market crash has dramatically contributed to its impending debt crisis, “which is the ultimate cause of the nation’s widespread bank runs,” pointed out Jennifer Zeng, a human rights activist and the host of the YouTube show “Inconvenient Truths”. “The collapse of the real estate market will bring double problems for the banks. Both the developers and home buyers will have problems paying back the loans or mortgages. That’s why the banks are having problems with their funds,” Zeng emphasized.
If things in America start to unfold in the same way that’s happening in China, soon we could be the ones experiencing a cash shortage and witnessing widespread bank runs. At the same time, the whole world could be in danger of facing another financial catastrophe as both of the globe’s leading economies collapse into chaos. Needless to say, we've been warned time and time again that taking on more and more debt was a slippery slope. The consequences are clear. A reckoning has begun, and if I were you, I would start figuring out ways to take my assets out of the system while it's still possible."
Comments here:
"We Got Huge Trouble; People Knocking At Your Door For Food And Money; Banks Don't Have Your Cash"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/13/22:
"We Got Huge Trouble; People Knocking At Your
Door For Food And Money; Banks Don't Have Your Cash"
Comments here:
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