"We Are About To Experience An Absolutely Epic Housing Crash The Likes Of Which America Has Never Seen Before"

"We Are About To Experience An Absolutely Epic Housing

 Crash The Likes Of Which America Has Never Seen Before"

by Michael Snyder

"You may not want to buy a house right now. What goes up must eventually come down, and we have just entered the “down” side of that equation. Over the past two years, home prices in the United States have gone up nearly 40 percent. Now mortgage rates are rising at a pace that is truly frightening, and they are likely to go even higher in the months ahead as the Federal Reserve continues to fight a relentless war against inflation. Needless to say, higher mortgage rates mean higher potential mortgage payments for prospective home buyers, and so millions of Americans are being priced out of the marketplace right now. The only thing that is going to bring those buyers back into the marketplace is for home prices to go down, and that is already starting to happen in some areas of the nation.

We were already in a historic housing bubble heading into 2020, and over the past two years we have witnessed another housing bubble develop on top of the previous housing bubble. Overall, home prices in the U.S. rose 37 percent between March 2020 and March 2022. That is insane.

Of course our incomes have not been going up as fast as home prices have. In fact, it is being reported that “home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes” over the past year…"Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put the real estate industry on edge this spring after they published a paper titled Real-Time Market Monitoring Finds Signs of Brewing U.S. Housing Bubble. Why the renewed concern? Over the past year alone, home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes. Simple economic theory, which dictates that neither home prices nor incomes can outgrow the other for very long, tells us that isn’t sustainable."

There is no way that this could continue for long, and we have reached a point where home prices in the United States are “overvalued” by almost 25 percent…"The analysis conducted by Moody’s Analytics aimed to find out whether economic fundamentals, including local income levels, could support local home prices. On a national level, Moody’s Analytics finds U.S. home prices are “overvalued” by 24.7%. In other words, U.S. home prices are 24.7% higher than they would historically trade at given current income levels."

Does this mean that home prices will come down by 25 percent? Well, it all depends on what the Federal Reserve chooses to do. If the Fed decides to stop raising interest rates by the end of this year, the damage could potentially be minimized. But if the Fed continues to raise interest rates throughout 2023, we are likely to see carnage that is unlike anything we have ever seen before.

Personally, I have been stunned by how rapidly mortgage rates have risen. According to Peter Schiff, the last time that average 30 year mortgage rates crossed the 6 percent threshold was just before the last housing crash…"Average 30-year mortgage rates have pushed to nearly 6.4%. The last time we saw mortgage rates over 6% was right before the housing crash of 2008. Until mid-April, mortgage rates were in the 4% to 5% range. Just one month ago, rates were 5.49%." Lower-income homebuyers have already been priced out of the market by spiking mortgage rates. The houses that are selling tend to be in higher price ranges.

Officials at the Federal Reserve can see what is happening, but they consider taming inflation to be a much higher priority right now. So the housing bubble will inevitably continue to implode, and the numbers for the industry will just get even uglier. Here is more from Peter Schiff…"Air is hissing out of the housing bubble faster and faster every week. Pending sales plunged in June and the inventory of homes on the market jumped as mortgage rates continue to rapidly rise. Pending home sales plunged by 16% year-over-year in June. This follows on the heels of a 12% drop in May and a 9% dip in April. June marked the 10th straight month of year-on-year declines in pending sales."

Some of the hottest markets in the country have started to cool off really fast. For example, just look at what is happening in California…"The pace of California home sales plunged 21% in June from a year earlier as soaring mortgage rates took a bite out of buyer interest, the state Realtors group reported Monday."

And what we are witnessing in Boise is really alarming. Boise was once one of the hottest markets in the entire nation, but now sales are dropping faster than Joe Biden’s approval rating…"Before governors relaxed stay-at-home orders two years ago, white-collar professionals were already fleeing their exorbitantly priced apartments in cities like San Francisco and Seattle. The biggest beneficiary of that WFH homebuying wave was undoubtedly Boise—where home prices skyrocketed 53%. You could even call it the poster child of the pandemic housing boom.

But that Boise honeymoon is over. While spiking mortgage rates have pushed the overall U.S. housing market into a slowdown, it has delivered a particularly hard blow to the Boise housing market. That has seen both Boise home sales plummet - down 28% on a year-over-year basis - and inventory levels surge - up 161% this year. It’s also chipping away at home values. According to Zillow, the median Boise home sales price fell 3.5% in June."

This downturn is going to have enormous implications for home builders as well. Sales are falling, and a key measure of home builder confidence just declined for the seventh month in a row…"The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which measures the pulse of the single-family housing market, fell for the seventh consecutive month to 55, the lowest level since May 2020. It is the second-biggest, one-month decline in the survey’s 37-year history."

The only time that the index has fallen more in a single month was during the very early stages of the COVID pandemic. National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard fears that things will continue to get worse in the months ahead, and he is warning that “we’re going to go into a recession” unless something dramatic happens…“For the last seven straight months it has been going down and this is a huge drop - and I think all it says is, ‘Somebody do something or we’re going to go into a recession,’” Howard said."

I am sorry to tell you this Jerry, but we are already in a recession right now, and it is going to get really bad. Our leaders have been making decisions that have been mind-numbingly bad for a long time, and now we are all going to suffer the consequences. If you are searching for an easy way out of this mess, you can stop looking, because there isn’t one.

What we are heading for is going to make 2008 and 2009 look like a Sunday picnic, and it will shake our nation to the core."

- collapseblog.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Bank Of America Warns Again On The Economy; China Dumping US Debt"

Gregory Mannarino, 7/19/22:

"Bank Of America Warns Again On The Economy; 

China Dumping US Debt"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Prices Continue To Skyrocket At Meijer! This Is Frustrating!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 7/19/22:

"Prices Continue To Skyrocket At Meijer! This Is Frustrating!"

"In today's vlog we are at Meijer, 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:

- https://www.youtube.com/

“Broken Hearted People Staring At Me; Middle Class Now The Working Poor; Economic Refugees Helpless”

Jeremiah Babe, 7/18/22:

“Broken Hearted People Staring At Me;

 Middle Class Now The Working Poor; Economic Refugees Helpless”

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"20 Signs That The Collapse Of Society Has Begun"

Full screen recommended.

"20 Signs That The Collapse Of Society Has Begun"

by Epic Economist

"If you still haven’t noticed how the foundations of America have been steadily crumbling over the past few decades, then you’re not paying attention. In recent years, our major cities and institutions have been decaying at a pace that's unlike anything this country has ever seen. We are being destroyed in thousands of different ways, and yet very few people seem alarmed about this.

The downfall of the family unit is accelerating in the U.S. For centuries untold, families have served as the dominant formative force of the character of the next generation. In a healthy society, each family unit is informed and directed by general cultural trends. But in a degenerate society, family units can break away and subsist on their own devices. No wonder why divorce rates are rising everywhere in the country. At this point, our population can't agree on right and wrong anymore. Lifeway Research exposed that more than 6 in 10 of those older than 45 say right and wrong do not change. For those 35 and younger, fewer than 4 in 10 make that claim. "That’s a huge shift between generations," notes Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. "Older Americans grew up at a time when ideas about morality were more stable," he argues. "That’s no longer true for younger Americans. We are shifting very fast from a world where right and wrong didn’t change to a world where right and wrong are relative,” McConnell said. “We are not all on the same page when it comes to morality. And we haven’t reckoned with what that means.”

Meanwhile, Democracy is at risk in America. This year, the International IDEA thinktank has added the United States to its annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, pointing to a “visible deterioration” it said began in 2019. The report says the trend towards democratic erosion has “become more acute and worrying” since the start of the health crisis. The organization’s secretary general, Kevin Casas-Zamora, underlined that “the visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing political disputes, the efforts to suppress free speech, and the runaway polarization are some of the most concerning developments in recent years”.

Corruption is also a rampant issue in our society. Wikipedia has chronologically organized a list of all political scandals that ever occurred in America. As you scroll down toward the more recent administrations, you can’t help but notice how the number gets larger and larger — clearly indicating a growing trend in corruption. Now, corporate greed is the new norm. Pew Research data also shows that since 1978, CEO pay has risen by over 940%. On the other hand, average worker salaries have only increased 12% during the same period. No wonder why most people in America are pessimistic about the country's long-term future. A Pew Research Center survey showed that most Americans think the United States will be struggling with skyrocketing levels of debt, a wider gap between the rich and the poor, and a workforce threatened by automation over the next 20 years. 

On top of that, 66% of respondents believe "the economy will be weaker, health care will be less affordable, the condition of the environment will be worse and older Americans will have a harder time making ends meet than they do now." We can ignore all the symptoms we want, but the end result is still coming. Our nation is falling apart right before our eyes, and if we stay on this road, there is only one result that will be possible. That's why today, we compiled several factors that are driving our country to its demise."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Cancel Your Plans. They're Really Gonna Do It!"

Canadian Prepper, 7/18/22:

"Cancel Your Plans. They're Really Gonna Do It!"

"No title or thumbnail can illustrate how bad this situation will get."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Ocarina, "Song Of Ocarina"

Full screen recommended.

Ocarina, "Song Of Ocarina"

"Song of Ocarina is the name of a 1991 song recorded by the musicians Jean-Philippe Audin and Diego Modena. It is entirely instrumental and is played on ocarina by Modena and cello by Audin. Released as first single from the album Ocarina, it achieved a huge success in France, topping the chart, and becoming in this country the first instrumental number-one hit."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.

NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

Paulo Coelho, "The Bird And The Cage"

"The Bird And The Cage"

by Paulo Coelho

"Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird. But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird.

And she thought: “I’m going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again.” The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage. She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: “Now you have everything you could possibly want.”

However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds. If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. “Why have you come?” she asked Death. “So that you can fly once more with him across the sky,” Death replied. “If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him ever more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again.”

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"It Simply Means..."

“Never be ashamed of a scar.

It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.”

- Unknown

"Falling From Grace"

"Falling From Grace"

by Jeff Thomas

"Years ago, Doug Casey mentioned in a correspondence to me, "Empires fall from grace with alarming speed." Every now and then, you receive a comment that, although it may have been stated casually, has a lasting effect, as it offers uncommon insight. For me, this was one of those and it’s one that I’ve kept handy at my desk since that time, as a reminder.

I’m from a British family, one that left the UK just as the British Empire was about to begin its decline. They expatriated to the "New World" to seek promise for the future. As I’ve spent most of my life centered in a British colony – the Cayman Islands – I’ve had the opportunity to observe many British contract professionals who left the UK seeking advancement, which they almost invariably find in Cayman. Curiously, though, most returned to the UK after a contract or two, in the belief that the UK would bounce back from its decline, and they wanted to be on board when Britain "came back."

This, of course, never happened. The US replaced the UK as the world’s foremost empire, and although the UK has had its ups and downs over the ensuing decades, it hasn’t returned to its former glory. And it never will.

If we observe the empires of the world that have existed over the millennia, we see a consistent history of collapse without renewal. Whether we’re looking at the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, or any other that’s existed at one time, history is remarkably consistent: The decline and fall of any empire never reverses itself; nor does the empire return, once it’s fallen.

But of what importance is this to us today? Well, today, the US is the world’s undisputed leading empire and most Americans would agree that, whilst it’s going through a bad patch, it will bounce back and might even be better than ever. Not so, I’m afraid. All empires follow the same cycle. They begin with a population that has a strong work ethic and is self-reliant. Those people organize to form a nation of great strength, based upon high productivity.

This leads to expansion, generally based upon world trade. At some point, this gives rise to leaders who seek, not to work in partnership with other nations, but to dominate them, and of course, this is when a great nation becomes an empire. The US began this stage under the flamboyant and aggressive Teddy Roosevelt.

The twentieth century was the American century and the US went from victory to victory, expanding its power. But the decline began in the 1960s, when the US started to pursue unwinnable wars, began the destruction of its currency and began to expand its government into an all-powerful body. Still, this process tends to be protracted and the overall decline often takes decades.

So, how does that square with the quote, "Empires fall from grace with alarming speed"? Well, the preparation for the fall can often be seen for a generation or more, but the actual fall tends to occur quite rapidly.

What happens is very similar to what happens with a schoolyard bully. The bully has a slow rise, based upon his strength and aggressive tendency. After a number of successful fights, he becomes first revered, then feared. He then takes on several toadies who lack his abilities but want some of the spoils, so they do his bidding, acting in a threatening manner to other schoolboys. The bully then becomes hated. No one tells him so, but the other kids secretly dream of his defeat, hopefully in a shameful manner.

Then, at some point, some boy who has a measure of strength and the requisite determination has had enough and takes on the bully. If he defeats him, a curious thing happens. The toadies suddenly realize that the jig is up and they head for the hills, knowing that their source of power is gone. Also, once the defeated bully is down, all the anger, fear and hatred that his schoolmates felt for him come out, and they take great pleasure in his defeat. And this, in a nutshell, is what happens with empires.

A nation that comes to the rescue in times of genuine need (such as the two World Wars) is revered. But once that nation morphs into a bully that uses any excuse to invade countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria, its allies may continue to bow to it but secretly fear it and wish that it could be taken down a peg.

When the empire then starts looking around for other nations to bully, such as Iran and Venezuela, its allies again say nothing but react with fear when they see the John Boltons and Mike Pompeos beating the war drums and making reckless comments. At present, the US is focusing primarily on economic warfare, but if this fails to get the world to bend to its dominance, the US has repeatedly warned, regarding possible military aggression, that "no option is off the table."

The US has reached the classic stage when it has become a reckless bully, and its support structure of allies has begun to de-couple as a result. At the same time that allies begin to pull back and make other plans for their future, those citizens within the empire who tend to be the creators of prosperity also begin to seek greener pastures.

History has seen this happen countless times. The "brain drain" occurs, in which the best and most productive begin to look elsewhere for their future. Just as the most productive Europeans crossed the Pond to colonize the US when it was a new, promising country, their present-day counterparts have begun moving offshore.

The US is presently in a state of suspended animation. It still appears to be a major force, but its buttresses are quietly disappearing. At some point in the near future, it’s likely that the US government will overplay its hand and aggress against a foe that either is stronger or has alliances that, collectively, make it stronger.

The US will be entering into warfare at a time when it’s broke, and this will become apparent suddenly and dramatically. The final decline will occur with alarming speed. When this happens, the majority of Americans will hope in vain for a reverse of events. They’ll be inclined to hope that, if they collectively say, "Whoops, we goofed," the world will be forgiving, returning them to their former glory.

But historically, this never occurs. Empires fall with alarming speed, because the support systems that made them possible have decamped and have become reinvigorated elsewhere. Rather than mourn the loss of empire that’s on the horizon, we’d be better served if we focus instead on those parts of the world that are likely to benefit from this inevitability."

- internationalman.com

"The Only Time..."

“Go without a coat when it’s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it’s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you’re made of and what you’re capable of. If you’re never tested, you’ll never define your character.”

- Henry Rollins

Gregory Mannarino, "The Economy Is In Collapse. Service Sector Activity Goes Negative"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/18/22:

"The Economy Is In Collapse. 

Service Sector Activity Goes Negative"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "History Repeating"

"History Repeating"

The war drums beat louder as nations 

rush to ignore the lessons of the past.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Hasn’t anyone ever read de Caulaincourt? David Petraeus was on the TV this morning – hustling for more taxpayers’ money. The disgraced general (he gave national security secrets to his mistress, who put them in a book) was drumming up support for The Ukraine… or more specifically, for buying more weapons from US military suppliers to send their way. Mr. Petraeus is one of many spokesmen and shills for the war sector, one of America’s biggest and most profitable industries.

For decades, the war mongers have kept the pot boiling, always looking for enemies – foreign and domestic. And this past February, 2022, they finally succeeded in goading Russia into war. The long, sorry history of government in the Ukraine is beyond the scope of this blog. So, too, is it beyond the interest of Americans, generally. There couldn’t be more than a few dozen people in the whole US who care whether the Donetsk People’s Republic is controlled by the Ukrainians, by the Russians, or by the people themselves.

One of the goals of the war industry has been to make Russia the “them” that “us” has to fight. Though, in 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker had promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would “not advance one inch to the East,” by 2022, it had pushed Putin’s back to the wall. NATO’s missiles in the Ukraine were as unacceptable to Vladimir Putin in 2022 as Soviet missiles in Cuba were to John Kennedy in 1962. And when the Biden Administration brushed off his concerns, Putin took action.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who knows. But today, people all over Europe and America are flying Ukrainian flags, listening to David Petraeus, and treating Volodymyr Zelenskyy like a war hero. Even from the pulpit, we were advised to pray for Ukrainians, but not for Russians.

Unremarkable Allegiance: None of this is especially remarkable. In baseball and war, people take sides. Usually, they take whatever side is sold to them most successfully. In WWI, for example, Americans could choose to take the side of France and Britain or of Germany. But England had cut the cable from Berlin to New York. All the news coming from the war was filtered through the British propaganda service. And it wasn’t long before Americans were stoning Dachshunds in the street and shooting foreigners in the mistaken belief that they were German nationals.

Also not remarkable is that the world’s leading empire is going after Russia. There must be something about Russia; like a chorus girl on the make for a rich, old man, she seems to attract degenerate empires.

Charles XII of Sweden attacked Russia in 1708. He was an early proponent of the blitzkrieg – striking hard and moving fast with his cavalry. The Russians retreated, destroying all farm animals and food stocks as they went. Then, as they continued to pursue the Russians, the Swedes ran out of supplies. And in the final battle, at Poltava, the Swedes were decisively defeated. Only 543 Swedes escaped – including Charles XII himself – out of an original force of 40,000.

A century later, Napoleon repeated the adventure, but with 10 times as many men. Similarly, the Russians retreated… using their same scorched earth tactic. And then, reaching Moscow, but achieving no decisive victory, the French were forced to retreat – in the winter – across the vast steppes. The Russians counterattacked. The Cossacks harassed the fleeing French. ‘General Winter’ did his part. And by the time the survivors reached safety, approximately 380,000 French and allied troops had died.

Then, in 1941, Hitler couldn’t resist. Again, he upped the ante, committing 10 times the number of troops used by Napoleon – 3.8 million soldiers. Same story, more or less. And the same outcome. He retreated, leaving about 1 million dead. It was in his defeat that the amusing story was told.

Lessons Unlearned: Armand-Augustin-Louis de Caulaincourt was a general in Napoleon’s army. He had previously been sent as a diplomat to Moscow and knew the country well. When Bonaparte announced his plan to conquer Russia, de Caulaincourt begged him not to do it. He described the distances, the poor roads, the savage, long-suffering people, and the unbearable weather. Still Napoleon was determined to attack and took de Caulaincourt with him. Of course, all of the miseries de Caulaincourt warned about – and more – soon became apparent to the French and the general later recounted them in a delicious memoire, “With Napoleon in Russia.”

In 1944, German troops were rediscovering the hell that de Caulaincourt warned about. A group of German prisoners sat on the hard ground as Soviet troops prepared to interrogate them. A Soviet officer with a sense of humor approached them. “What’s the matter with you people? Didn’t any of you read de Caulaincourt?” Curiously, at least one German general actually did have a copy of de Caulaincourt’s book, in his pocket, when he was captured at Stalingrad.

And now… Joe Biden and his allies have begun a ‘sanctions war’ against Russia, as well as a real shooting war, using the Ukrainians as proxies. What could go wrong? Have they read de Caulaincourt? More tomorrow…"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

○

Freely download

"With Napoleon In Russia: The Memoirs Of General De Caulaincourt" here:

- https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.58850

Must Watch! "What Happens When Economic Bubbles Burst?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 7/18/22:

"What Happens When Economic Bubbles Burst?"

"We are seeing business issues from around the world that are affecting the economy globally. What happens when a bubble bursts in the economy? There are hundreds of construction companies that have gone out of business in Australia. This affects everyone from the buyers of the real estate, the employees and the subcontractors involved in these projects."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Janesville, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Jim Kunstler, "The Last Days of 'Joe Biden'”

"The Last Days of 'Joe Biden'”

Whose idea was it to send the wind-up 

doll president called “Joe Biden” to Saudi Arabia?

by Jim Kunstler

"It’s like our country is trapped on one of those swirling carnival rides beloved of the county fairs… only, the felonious mutt who runs the ride has nodded off in a fentanyl delirium with the motor running at maximum speed… and the children-of-all-ages locked in the pods of this infernal machine shriek and vomit with each sickening rotation… as the half-century-old swing arms groan and wobble from metal fatigue on their squealing pivots… and suddenly comes a deafening crunch of gnashed gears, the smell of burning oil, and the pathetic whimpering of nearly dead.

That’s us. Some terrible midsummer accident-of-state has befallen the USA Carnival, and most are too dazed to know it. Whose idea was it to send the wind-up doll president called “Joe Biden” to Saudi Arabia? I can just imagine what went on in the chamber in private with “JB” and MBS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), virtual autocrat of the oil-soaked desert land. The American visitor muttered something about wanting an ice-cream cone before dropping into a catatonic thousand-yard stare.

“How does this thing work?” MBS asks his chief vizier, the foreign minister (in Arabic, of course), gesticulating disdainfully at the ghostly figure sunk in the plush camel-hair armchair yards away. “Joe Biden” sits motionless. Someone has forgotten to rewind him, some “aide” who carries the president’s Adderall. Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud tells the boss, “We’ll make up some camel-dung for release to CNN and friends. They’ll fall for anything.”

It’s like a crime scene where the forensic experts have entered. The Saudi leader and his entourage only hang around the room for three minutes until the US State Department shoots enough photos to prove that “JB” was there and not stuffed in the basement of his Delaware beach house for the weekend, as usual. The American news media gets briefed: Saudi Arabia graciously agrees to bump up its oil production somewhere in the 2025-2027 time-frame - a triumph for US diplomacy, the networks are informed. Air Force One wings home through clouds of despair. The White House team members spend the flight updating their resumés.

I think we have witnessed “Joe Biden’s” final appearance at any world-stage event. He can do no more for the Party of Chaos. It has done what it can to wreck the joint with him as the pretend head-of-state. The Ukraine gambit is a bust, a foolish miscalculation that was obvious from the start. All it accomplished was to reveal the pitiful dependence of our European allies on Russian oil and gas, leaving their economies good and truly scuppered without it. The Russians end up with control of the Black Sea and probably the Ukraine bread-basket as well. So, now, Europe will starve and freeze.

Did they really want to commit suicide like that? Do the populations of Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the rest just aim to roll into oblivion? Probably not. Rather, we are entering the season of upended governments. The Schwabenklausian stooges implanted everywhere will be overthrown, NATO and the Euro Union will dissolve in impotent ignominy, and the various countries involved will have to renegotiate their destinies, forgoing US advice and coercion. They might even become adversaries of the USA, not allies. Did you forget we fought two wars against Germany not so long ago? And all those countries have been fighting each other since the Bronze Age, too.

History never stops reminding us what a prankster it is. A strange and terrible inversion has occurred in this Fourth Turning. Somehow, Mr. Putin’s Russia is left to represent what remains of international rule-of-law while the western democracies sink deeper into a morass of deranged despotism. Anyway, they are too busy conducting war against their own people to even pretend to assist their Ukrainian proxies. “Joe Biden” crammed nearly $60-billion into the Ukraine money laundering machine since February, which will just spew hallucinated capital back out into increasingly disordered financial markets. Look: the indexes are up world-wide this morning. Why? Because global business is so good? I don’t think so.

Moving toward autumn, what we have to look forward to is the blatant desperation of the claque behind “Joe Biden.” Their propaganda machine is going all-out on climate change and renewed Covid hysteria. There are always heat-waves in midsummer. CNN acts shocked that it’s over 100-degrees in Texas. Really? Never seen that before? Meanwhile, behind the news about emerging Omicron sub-variants, the vaccine injuries and deaths mount and the CDC pretends not to notice. They are just lying as usual. You’re used to it. You pretend it’s to be expected. You’ve forgotten that it wasn’t always so. Soon, it will matter."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Know What's Weird?"

"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,

but pretty soon... everything's different."

- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"

"Food Lines Get Depressingly Long In The U.S. Again As Crops Fail All Over The Globe"

"Food Lines Get Depressingly Long In The U.S. 

Again As Crops Fail All Over The Globe"

by Michael Snyder

"It is happening again. Lines at food banks all across the country are getting extremely long, and this is happening even though we are still only in the very early stages of the next major economic downturn. If the lines are this long already, what will they look like six months or a year from now? Since the beginning of 2022, I have been relentlessly warning my readers about the rapidly emerging food crisis that we are witnessing all over the globe. Food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter, and now insane weather patters are causing crops to fail throughout the northern hemisphere. We really are moving into unprecedented territory, but this hasn’t really hit home with the general population yet.

Personally, I didn’t expect to see a huge surge in demand at food banks around the nation until the summer was over. But according to ABC News, the surge that so many of us have been anticipating is already here…"Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families. With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot."

It is certainly true that the cost of living is quickly eating away at our standard of living. A single shopping cart full of food can now easily cost $250 or $300 dollars at this point, and as a result more struggling families are turning to food banks for some assistance.In Phoenix, one food bank recently reported a 78 percent increase in demand compared to the same time last year…"The Phoenix food bank’s main distribution center doled out food packages to 4,271 families during the third week in June, a 78% increase over the 2,396 families served during the same week last year, said St. Mary’s spokesman Jerry Brown." I was extremely alarmed when I first read that. Have things really gotten this bad already?

One woman that was interviewed said that she was willing to wait in such a long line because “It’s really impossible to get by now without some help”…"Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work. “But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.”

Unfortunately, things are only going to get worse in the months ahead. Extreme weather is absolutely scorching crops all over the northern hemisphere, and there is no relief in sight. Over in Europe, we are seeing temperatures that we have never seen before. In fact, UK authorities are expecting all-time record highs all across the country on Monday and Tuesday…"Britain’s national weather agency, known as the U.K. Met Office, issued its first-ever red extreme heat warning Friday. The warnings, in place for Monday and Tuesday, cover much of southern England, where temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius – or about 104 degrees. “Nobody alive has seen a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius in the U.K.” weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman pointed out. “That would be a hot day this time of year in Dallas or Houston, much less London.”

Of course temperatures are far higher elsewhere. At one point, a record high temperature of 117 degrees was recorded in Portugal, and so far there have been more than 1,000 deaths from the heat throughout all of Europe…"At least 1,000 deaths have been attributed to the heatwave in Portugal and Spain so far, according to the country’s weather agencies, which are reporting 1,027 at this time. Around 440 deaths were recorded on Thursday alone, when temperatures exceeded 40C (104F) in several regions and 47C (117F) at a meteorological station in the district of Vizeu in the center of the country."

Here in the U.S., an endless drought in the Southwest has been playing havoc with crops for a long time, and now a “heat dome” is forming which will bring extreme temperatures to the region for at least “several more weeks”…"The heat will be prolonged, with computer models projecting several more weeks of unusually high temperatures as a heat dome shifts west with time, setting up hot and dry conditions from Colorado to California."

When things are this hot and this dry for an extended period of time, it is inevitable that crops will fail. And at this point, we are being told that crops are failing in much of the northern hemisphere. The following comes from Zero Hedge…"Infrared satellite imagery designed to measure moisture levels and the health of farmlands suggests that staple crops such as wheat are in poor condition and in sharp decline among major exporters including the Ukraine, the US and India. Two countries do have bumper crops so far though; namely Russia and China."

It is hard to say which governments and institutions monitor this data, but a few months ago a multitude of political leaders and global banks issued simultaneous warnings of a “global food shortage” and an impending crisis. Such institutions included the IMF, World Bank, the BIS and even the White House. So far, a perfect storm of stagflation, supply chain disruptions and poor weather conditions have combined to disrupt food production around the world.

Read those two paragraphs again. This is beyond serious. And I wouldn’t be anticipating a good harvest from Russia either, because right now millions upon millions of locusts are voraciously devouring crops in the agricultural heartland of that nation. In all of my years, I have never seen anything quite like this.

Here in the U.S., our food supply continues to get hit by more very strange accidents. They are happening so frequently now that it is really hard to keep up with them all.

All over the world supplies of food are getting tighter and tighter, and the stage is being set for the sort of historic global food crisis that I have long warned about. The UN has already told us that we are heading into an “unprecedented” global food crisis, but most people aren’t taking such warnings seriously. But perhaps when they are finally forced to get in the food lines themselves they will finally wake up."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

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Related:

"60,000 Tons Of Frozen Food Destroyed Due To Suspicious Multiple 

Freezer Failures In Billings And Laurel Montana; Sam's Club/Costco/Walmart: 

There's No Back Stock Available To Replenish Whatsoever"

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"Has Anyone Seen Research For The Past 

10-20 Years For These Types Of 'Events'?"

View larger image with URLs here:

Absolutely shocking...

- https://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/

Note the comments...

"Economic Market Snapshot 7/18/22"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"Economic Market Snapshot 7/18/22"

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

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

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Latest Market Analysis, Updated 7/18/22

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

July 15th to July 18th

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

Gregory Mannarino, "Central Banks Are Willing To DESTROY The Economy Just To Prop Up The Stock Market"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/18/22:

"Central Banks Are Willing To DESTROY 

The Economy Just To Prop Up The Stock Market"

https://traderschoice.net

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 7/18/22:

"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! This Is Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Sam's Club, 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:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"In These Downbeat Times..."

"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each others throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation - and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."

- Cornel West

"Are You Not Entertained?"

"Are You Not Entertained?"

by Mark Manson

"In David Foster Wallace’s classic novel, "Infinite Jest", there’s a movie that is so entertaining that anyone who views even a small portion of it will give up all desire to do anything else in life in order to keep watching. Throughout the book, characters who see it give up family, friends, careers, even eating and sleeping, just to continue watching the film.

The overarching theme of "Infinite Jest" is that it’s possible, both as an individual and as a society, to be too entertained. And much of the book’s 1000+ pages are about the absurdity of such a society. Wallace wrote Infinite Jest in the early 1990s, a time when televisions were just starting to get dozens of channels, news was being broadcast 24 hours per day, video games were taking over the minds of young kids, and blockbuster movies were earning unheard of amounts of cash at the box office each summer.

At the time, Wallace had just gone through a recovery program for alcohol and drug abuse. Yet, despite getting clean for the first time in his adult life, he noticed something strange: he couldn’t stop watching television.

Wallace seemed to understand that as media multiplies, so does competition for attention. And as competition for our attention multiplies, content is no longer optimized for beauty or art or even enjoyment - but rather for its addictive qualities. When there are two TV channels, the channel doesn’t really have to worry about you clicking away, they just make the best show they can. But when there are 200 channels, suddenly that channel must do everything it can to keep you watching as long as possible. Wallace saw this problem coming decades in advance, and with his personal understanding of addiction based on his recovery experience, he seemed to grasp the addict culture we’d all soon be a part of.

Today, we regularly mistake this addictive media for entertainment. There’s some psychological function deep in our brains that tells us, “Well, I just spent six hours watching this show, I must like it a lot.” When, no, its script is actually a mediocre piece of hot trash and you’re being manipulated by cliffhangers and bad writing for hours on end to keep watching. The same way you get hijacked into scrolling through social media way more than you’d actually like to, your brain gets hijacked to watch “just one more episode” to find out if so-and-so really died or not.

In social media, this “it’s addictive, but I also kinda don’t like it” phenomenon has been recognized and discussed to death. But in other areas of media and entertainment, we haven’t caught on yet.

Streaming services and Hollywood are the obvious culprits here. How many more mediocre Marvel Universe movies do we need to prove this point? How many more bad Star Wars spin-offs? How many bad Netflix shows with every episode ending in a cliffhanger? Everyone complains about how Hollywood doesn’t have any new ideas anymore. Well, there’s a reason nothing new is getting made: endlessly adding content to the same well-worn storylines keeps people hooked. Constantly playing to people’s sense of nostalgia and remixing classic genres is a risk-free way of guaranteeing viewership.

Music is in a similar place. For a while now, market research on music streaming services has found that people spend more time listening to old music instead of new music and the trend on this is in the wrong direction. Music lovers are voting with their mouse buttons and those mouse buttons are going back in time, not forward.

Veteran music producer Rick Beato has made a number of videos lately talking about how popular music the past few years has gotten simplified to the point where it’s one or two chords and a single melody, repeated over and over for two or three minutes. No chorus. No bridge. No variation. No build-up or release. Just an endless hodgepodge of catchy sounds repeated, one after another.

Part of this is because the economics of music streaming is such that artists have incentive to not create the best songs or albums possible, but rather to create as many small, simple songs that prevent you from clicking away as possible. It’s created an artistic environment where it’s better to have 200 decent, listenable songs rather than 20 brilliant songs.

A similar problem plagues YouTube, where the biggest creators rack up millions of views doing inane things like opening a thousand Amazon boxes or giving away cars to their friends, over and over and over again. On the one hand, it’s not that interesting. On the other, you find yourself mindlessly clicking on the next video, and the next, and the next, and the next.

When everything is measured in terms of engagement, content will be optimized for addictiveness. Not entertainment or artistic merit. Not intellectual substance or creativity. Pure, plain addictiveness. That means we, the consumers, get a higher quantity of more predictable, less innovative, less interesting art in our lives.

In the realm of art and music and film and television, this is really annoying and frustrating. It requires each of us to sift longer and harder to find something new and great. But where this optimization for addictiveness gets dangerous is another part of culture that I want to talk about… *takes a deep breath*... politics.

I’ve written before about how most people in the United States agree about most things, yet somehow our political parties and government continually find ways to do things most people don’t like. Many pundits have attributed this inconsistency between the public’s desires and the government’s actions with theories about the primary system or entrenched special interests or polarizing social media.

But what about this? Politicians - like Hollywood executives, pop stars, and YouTube creators - are incentivized to generate more engagement. Not great results. Just more engagement, all the time. Therefore, their actions are not optimized to produce smart policy or common sense bills or a shrewd compromise, but instead to grab and hold our attention as long as humanly possible.

David Foster Wallace saw this coming too. The president of the United States in "Infinite Jest" is a former pop singer who obsesses over his television ratings, thinks policy discussions are too boring and considers war with Canada based on how good his photo ops would be in military camo fatigues. In the book, terrorist groups run rampant, as the battlefield is not for territory or resources, but for eyeballs and headlines.

Ultimately, nobody can manage our attention but ourselves. We can get mad at Netflix or Spotify or the Senate. But ultimately, these systems are loose reflections of our own attention habits shining back at us. Change our attention, change the systems. There’s an old saying that people “vote with their feet.” Well, today you need to vote with your eyeballs and mouse clicks. Don’t watch the next episode of that poorly written piece of garbage that keeps teasing you with characters almost dying. Don’t listen to the next half-assed album with 27 different two-minute tracks. Don’t click on clickbait. Don’t mindlessly scroll through TikTok and YouTube, rewarding people for attention-grabbing stunts. And don’t watch or respond to politicians and pundits who try to blather on and on about pet issues but never actually get anything done.

In the chaotic, entertaining mess of "Infinite Jest", there is the story of Don Gately, a recovered alcoholic who would literally rather die than relapse into his substance abuse. When I first read the book years ago, Gately’s storyline seemed out of place. Amid all this futuristic mayhem of short attention spans and insanely addictive entertainment and neurotic teenagers, Gately’s narrative seemed like an oddly conventional story of personal triumph over one’s demons and an ability to sacrifice oneself for others.

What I realize now is that Wallace wrote the character of Don Gately as an example of what we would all need to aspire to become: recovered addicts. People who can cut themselves off cold turkey, who can turn off the drug. People who can manage their own attention and not fall victim to endless streams of mindless engagement. People who can step above the fray of political addiction and demand substance over bluster. And not just for our own sake. For everyone else’s as well."

- https://markmanson.net/

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Deeply concerned Americans, always fully and truthfully informed by their never-lying government and Main Stream Media about current economic, political and social issues, react as expected...

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Full text of "Infinite Jest", by David Foster Wallace

- https://archive.org/

"How It Really Is"

Canadian Prepper, "Breaking News: Embassy Emptying; Radiological Event Feared"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 7/17/22:

"Breaking News: Embassy Emptying; 

Radiological Event Feared"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/