"Whoever Does Not Respect the Penny is Not Worthy of the Dollar"

"Whoever Does Not Respect 

the Penny is Not Worthy of the Dollar"

by Nick Giambruno

"This definitive sign of a currency collapse is easy to see…It's when paper money becomes trash. Maybe you’ve seen images depicting hyperinflation in Germany after World War I. The German government had printed so much money that it became worthless confetti. Technically, German merchants still accepted the currency, but it was impractical. For example, it would have required wheelbarrows full of paper money to buy a loaf of bread. At the time, no one would bother to pick up money off the ground. It wasn’t worth any more than the other crumpled pieces of paper on the street.

Today, there's a similar situation in the US. When was the last time you saw someone pick up a penny off the street? A nickel? A dime? Nowadays, even bums often can't be bothered to pick up anything less than a quarter. The US dollar has become so debased that these coins are essentially pieces of rubbish. They have little to no practical value.

Refusing To Acknowledge the Truth: Up until 1982, the penny was 95% copper. Today, the melt value of these pre-1982 pennies is 2.1 cents - more than double their face value - as commodity prices have soared and the dollar's purchasing power has plummeted. That's why the US Mint no longer uses so much copper to make pennies. Modern pennies are only 2.5% copper, with cheaper zinc making up the remaining 97.5% of the coin. Further, even after using a cheaper metal to make the penny, it still costs the US Mint about 2.1 cents to make every penny. For nickels, it costs the US Mint 8.5 cents to make. Last year, the US government lost over $144 million making pennies and nickels.

So, why is it wasting taxpayer money making coins bums don’t even use? Because phasing out the penny and nickel would mean acknowledging currency debasement - governments never like to do that. It would reveal their incompetence and theft from savers.

This isn't new or unique to the US. For decades, governments worldwide have been reluctant to phase out worthless currency denominations. This helps them deny an inflation problem even exists. They refuse to issue currency in higher denominations for the same reason.

Consider this. The $100 bill is the largest in circulation. That wasn't always the case. At one point, the US had $500, $1,000, $5,000, and even $10,000 bills.

The government eliminated these large bills in 1969 under the pretext of fighting the War on (Some) Drugs. The $100 bill has been the largest ever since. But it has far less purchasing power than it did in 1969. Decades of rampant money printing have debased the dollar. Today, a $100 note buys less than $13 in 1969. Even though the Federal Reserve has devalued the dollar by over 87% since 1969, it still refuses to issue notes larger than $100.

Pennies and Nickels Under Hard Money: Consider what a penny and a nickel would be worth under a hard money system backed by gold. From 1792 to 1934, gold was around $20 per ounce. Under this system, it took about 2,000 pennies to make an ounce of gold. At today's gold price, a "hard money penny" would be worth about 85 modern pennies. A "hard money nickel" would be worth about $4.25. I don't pick up pennies off the sidewalk. But I would if pennies represented 1/2,000 an ounce of gold. If that were to happen, I doubt there would be many pennies on sidewalks.

Ron Paul said it best when he discussed this issue… "There is an old German saying that goes, ‘Whoever does not respect the penny is not worthy of the dollar.’ It expresses the sense that those who neglect or ignore the small things cannot be trusted with larger things, and fittingly describes the problems facing both the dollar and our nation today.

Unless Congress puts an end to the Fed’s loose monetary policy and returns to a sound and stable dollar, the issue of US coin composition will be revisited every few years until inflation finally forces coins out of circulation altogether and we are left with only worthless paper."

There’s an important lesson here. Politicians and bureaucrats are the biggest threats to your financial security. For years, they’ve been debasing the currency… and inviting a catastrophe that now could be imminent. Most people have no idea how bad things can get when a currency collapses… let alone how to prepare."

- internationalman.com

"Most people have no idea how bad things can get..." 

Oh, but they will...

"How It Really Is"

 

And so...

"None So Blind..."

"There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded

people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”

- John Heywood, 1546

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

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 7/20/22:

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

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

Gregory Mannarino, "World Bank Warns; Economy Crashing; Inflation Out Of Control"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/20/22:

"World Bank Warns; Economy Crashing; Inflation Out Of Control"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "2023 Will Be Year from Hell – Martin Armstrong"

"2023 Will Be Year from Hell – Martin Armstrong"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong says the time to prepare is now for what is coming in 2023. Armstrong’s Socrates computer program is predicting “2023 will be the year from Hell.” Armstrong explains, “Our computer is predicting a ‘war cycle’ that hits in 2023, but that is also civil unrest. So, you are looking at revolutions and etc. because of inflation. Our projection on oil is that it is going to go up dramatically into 2023. It’s going to be the same thing, I think, for gasoline prices. This is just not over yet. The euro looks like death warmed over. Our computer is projecting the continued decline of the euro and rising commodity prices. With these sanctions on Russia, you just had the leader of Hungary say Europe is committing suicide. The sanctions are hurting Europe more than they are hurting Russia. This is like a shot to the lung. They can’t even breathe at this stage.”

Armstrong says you are not going to have to wait until next year to see extreme stress in the financial system. Armstrong is seeing financial upheavals coming in the August and September time frame. So, the economic pain is already here and getting worse, especially in Europe. Armstrong says, “I think you are going to see this come to a head. It’s definitely tanking more anyway. What makes things even worse for the world is the dollar going up and not down. This is because you had all these emerging markets issue debt in dollars. They were borrowing in dollars because it was a cheaper interest rate, and they had no concept of the foreign exchange risk. This happened in Australia. The currency swings, and, now, suddenly you owe 20% more. You had the same thing with all these emerging markets. Now, the dollar is going up and you are seeing bank runs.”

Armstrong says not only is the euro dramatically declining, but the euro bonds are being shunned by U.S. banks. This is another bad financial sign for the EU. Armstrong says, “All these things are a real crisis. I can tell you that speaking to the top three banks in New York City, they refuse to accept any European sovereign debt as collateral - period. That is what started the whole repo crisis in 2019.”

So, we are entering into a debt crisis with the EU financial system in the crosshairs. Armstrong says, “This is why they are pushing for war. They think they can create a new monetary system, and to do so, they need war. They think they can keep it just conventional. Then the United Nations can emerge as the white knight and the peacemaker. Therefore, we get another Bretton Woods. You can redesign all the currencies, and when you do that, you wipe out all the debt. That is what is on the agenda. There is no way they can get out of this other than default. If they default, they are worried about millions of people storming the parliaments of Europe. This is really a tremendous financial crisis that we are facing. They have been borrowing year after year since WWII with zero intention of paying anything back.” There is much more in the nearly 40-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One 

with Martin Armstrong, cycle expert and author of the upcoming

 new book “Manufacturing World III.”

- https://rumble.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Unbelievable. This Changes Everything. Europe Just Got Cancelled"

Canadian Prepper, 7/19/22:

"Unbelievable. This Changes Everything. 

Europe Just Got Cancelled"

"They just moved their pieces on the chessboard,

 the question is what will the USA and it's allies do in response?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Invisible Hands Moving Fake Markets; Stop Looking At Your Phone; Housing Bubble Disaster"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/19/22:

"Invisible Hands Moving Fake Markets;

 Stop Looking At Your Phone; Housing Bubble Disaster"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "To The One Who Knows; You Only Live Once"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni,

"To The One Who Knows; You Only Live Once"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.

Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121211.html

The Poet: Edgar Allan Poe, "Alone"

Full screen recommended.

"Alone"

- by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Tom O' Bedlam

"What Keeps You Going..."

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'"

- Barbara Kingsolver

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”

- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

"Incompetent Western Nations Invoke "Doomsday" Retaliation From Russia"

"Incompetent Western Nations Invoke

 "Doomsday" Retaliation From Russia"

by Mike Adams

"As readers of this site know full well, the incompetent, suicidal leaders of the USA and NATO are following globalist orders and deliberately trying to provoke Russia to launch nuclear strikes against western cities. This will achieve the destruction of the USA and Western Civilization, allowing China and Russia to complete their quest for world domination while the United States collapses into a post-nuclear war hellzone.

The setup to accomplish this is simple: The USA hands Ukraine HIMARS missile systems. Already done. Next, the USA gives them long-range missiles that work with such systems. Ukraine then, as its military leaders are promising, uses those missiles to attack Russian military targets in Crimea, which Russia considers to be its own territory. In response, Russia launches a nuclear retaliation against western cities, knowing that western nations have zero defenses against Russia’s advanced nuclear weapons delivery systems such as the RS-24 YARS missiles, shown in the Brighteon video here:

In summary, western nations - run by socialist, suicidal idiots - are invoking a Russian nuclear retaliation on purpose. They seek the total destruction of the nations they claim to represent (USA, UK, Germany, France, etc.) and they find it easier to use Russian nuclear missiles to destroy their own nations compared to waging domestic wars on their own people.

In preparation for this nuclear war with Russia, the US embassy in Ukraine has ordered all Americans to evacuate Ukrainian soil as quickly as possible. In this official statement, the embassy, “urges U.S. citizens in Ukraine to depart now using privately available ground transportation options if it is safe to do so.”

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, has issued a stern warning to Ukraine and the USA, telling them to stop being foolish idiots by threatening to strike Russian territory with western weapons. As RT.com is now reporting: "The leadership of Ukraine would meet their maker should they attack Crimea, as Russia would retaliate with a massive strike, the country’s former president has warned.

“Some exalted bloody clowns that are periodically popping up over there with some statements, and are even trying to threaten us – I mean an attack on Crimea and so on,” should be aware that the consequences of such an action would be severe for them, the Russian official said. According to Medvedev, “in case something like that happens, the Day of Judgement will come to them all simultaneously – a swift and hard one.”

Western nations are fighting a PROPAGANDA war while Russia is fighting a KINETIC war: As I point out in today’s Situation Update podcast, below, while the USA and Ukraine are waging an information propaganda war, Russia is fighting an actual kinetic / physical war and winning at every step. While Ukraine’s corrupt, clownish president Zelensky thinks that you can win a war by floating fake stories like the “Ghost of Kiev” in propaganda media, Russia is rigorously pursuing an actual physical war where you win by taking and holding territory while eliminating enemy personnel along the way. In other words, Russia is winning in the 3D world, while the West is focused on winning the narrative.

Ultimately, the narrative means nothing, especially as one-third of Ukraine becomes Russian territory and the entire southern coastline of Ukraine is surrendered to Russian forces. Yet we are told that Ukraine is still “winning” by retreating from territory and losing more men. If this is the definition of winning, then yes, men can also get pregnant. (Think of the west’s propaganda as “military transgenderism.”)

The West is wholly incapable of fighting Russia in any sort of sustained manner. The entire British Army, for example, is barely capable of fielding a single battalion, and as analyst Scott Ritter explains, that battalion would last barely a week in a sustained war with Russia. The US military, meanwhile, is far more interested in gender identity indoctrination than teaching soldiers how to win wars. With US military equipment hopelessly outdated - the USA still has no effective anti-air defenses against Russia’s nuclear ICBMs - even the Pentagon is no doubt terrified of confronting Russia and parading America’s military failures on the world stage. Transgender training doesn’t win wars on the battlefield, it turns out, and America’s armed forces would be almost instantly obliterated in any real war with Russia.

Then again, America isn’t even trying to beat Russia. Its leaders are merely trying to get Russia to nuke the USA and Western Europe. Achieving that is a whole lot easier than defeating Russia in war, and it accomplishes the globalist goal of wiping out the United States of America which stands as the single biggest thorn in the side of the globalist agenda (thanks to the Second Amendment and the courage of the real Americans who still defend the Constitution)." I cover all these details and more in today’s Situation Update podcast here:

- https://www.brighteon.com/

"This Tragedy Was Entirely Avoidable"

"This Tragedy Was Entirely Avoidable"

by Jim Rickards

"The war in Ukraine will have huge ramifications for the international system in the coming years. Many will prove negative for the U.S. as sanctions backfire and the world moves more rapidly toward dollar alternatives. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine was totally avoidable. Had the U.S. pursued closer ties with Russia years ago, rather than antagonizing it and driving it into a deeper alliance with China, it’s highly unlikely the war would have taken place. But largely because of elites in the U.S. and Europe, hopes of a partnership with Russia were dashed. I’ve made the argument before, but sometimes we all need to be reminded of basic facts. We need to remember how we got here.

Three-Handed Poker: There's an old saying in poker: If you're in a three-way poker game and you don't know who the sucker is, you're the sucker. The idea is that in a three-handed game, two players will disadvantage the sucker by coordinating their betting and not raising each other. Eventually, the sucker is cleaned out and the two survivors can then turn on each other.

The world is in a three-handed poker game today. Russia, China and the U.S. are the only true superpowers and the only three countries that ultimately matter in geopolitics. That's not a slight against any other power. But all others are secondary powers (the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc.) or tertiary powers (Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.).

The U.S. Is the Sucker: This means that the ideal posture for the U.S. is to ally with Russia (to marginalize China) or ally with China (to marginalize Russia), depending on overall geopolitical conditions. The U.S. conducted this kind of triangulation successfully from the 1970s until the early 2000s.

One of the keys to U.S. foreign policy in the last 50 or 60 years has been to make sure that Russia and China never formed an alliance. Keeping them separated was key. In 1972, Nixon pivoted to China to put pressure on Russia. In 1991, the U.S. pivoted to Russia to put pressure on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Unfortunately, the U.S. has lost sight of this basic rule of international relations. It is now Russia and China that have formed a strong alliance, to the disadvantage of the United States. The war in Ukraine has only deepened their relationship.

Ultimately, this two-against-one strategic alignment of China and Russia against the U.S. is a strategic blunder by the U.S. The U.S. is the sucker in this three-way game of poker. The fact is Washington has squandered a major opportunity to turn it in America's favor.

A Historic Blunder: When future historians look back on the 2010s they will be baffled by the lost opportunity for the U.S. to mend fences with Russia, develop economic relations and create a win-win relationship between the world's greatest technology innovator and the world's greatest natural resources provider.

China is the greatest geopolitical threat to the U.S. because of its economic and technological advances and its ambition to push the U.S. out of the Western Pacific sphere of influence. Russia may be a threat to some of its neighbors (ask Ukraine), but it is far less of a threat to U.S. strategic interests. It's not the Soviet Union anymore. Therefore, a logical balance of power in the world would be for the U.S. and Russia to find common ground in the containment of China and to jointly pursue the reduction of Chinese power.

Of course, that didn’t happen. And we could be paying the price for years to come. Who's to blame for this U.S. strategic failure? You can start with the globalist elites…

Poking the Russian Bear: The U.S. and its allies, especially the U.K. under globalists like David Cameron, wanted to peel off Ukraine from the Russian orbit and make it part of the EU and eventually NATO. From Russia’s perspective, this was unacceptable. It may be true that most Americans cannot find Ukraine on a map, but a simple glance at a map reveals that much of Ukraine lies east of Moscow.

Putting Ukraine in a Western alliance such as NATO would create a crescent stretching from Luhansk in the east through Poland in the west and back around to Estonia in the north. There are almost no natural obstacles between that arc and Moscow; it’s mostly open steppe. Completion of this “NATO Crescent” would leave Moscow open to invasion in ways that Napoleon and Hitler could only dream. Of course, this situation was and is unacceptable to Moscow. Putin didn’t just wake up one day and decide it would be fun to invade Ukraine. It was years in the making.

The Orange Revolution: Prior to 2014, an uneasy truce existed between Washington and Moscow that allowed a pro-Russian president while at the same time permitting increasing contact with the EU. Then the U.S. and the U.K. overreached by allowing the CIA and MI6 to foment a “color revolution” in Kyiv called the “Euromaidan Revolution.” Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych resigned and fled to Moscow. Pro-EU protesters took over the government and signed an EU Association Agreement.

In response, Putin annexed Crimea and declared it part of Russia. He also infiltrated Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and helped establish de facto pro-Russian regional governments. The U.S. and the EU responded with harsh economic sanctions on Russia.

The U.S-induced fiasco in Ukraine not only upset U.S.-Russia relations; it derailed a cozy money-laundering operation involving Ukrainian oligarchs and Democratic politicians. The Obama administration flooded Ukraine with nonlethal financial assistance. Some of this money was used for intended purposes, some was skimmed by the oligarchs and the rest was recycled to Democratic politicians in the form of consulting contracts, advisory fees, director’s fees, contributions to foundations and NGOs and other channels.

Hunter Biden and the Clinton Foundation were major recipients of this corrupt recycling. Other beneficiaries included George Soros-backed “open society” organizations, which further directed the money to progressive left-wing groups in the U.S.

Trump Derails the Gravy Train: This cozy wheel of fortune was threatened when Donald Trump became president. Trump genuinely desired improved relations with Russia and was not on the receiving end of laundered aid to Ukraine. Trump was a threat to everything the globalists had constructed in the 2010s. The globalists wanted China and the U.S. to team up against Russia. Trump understood correctly that China was the main enemy and therefore a closer union between the U.S. and Russia was essential.

The elites’ efforts to derail Trump gave rise to the “Russia collusion” hoax. While no one disputes that Russia sought to sow confusion in the U.S. election in 2016, that’s something the Russians and their Soviet predecessors had been doing since 1917. By itself, little harm was done. Yet the elites seized on this to concoct a story of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The real collusion was among Democrats, Ukrainians and Russians to discredit Trump.

It took the Robert Mueller investigation two years finally to conclude there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians. By then, the damage was done. It was politically toxic for Trump to reach out to the Russians. That would be spun by the media as more evidence of "collusion."

Thanks, Globalists: Whatever you think of Trump personally, and he was far from perfect, the collusion story was always bogus. So Russia became public enemy No.1 because of politics. Ironically, the same people who were soft on the Soviet Union during the Cold War are often the biggest Russia hawks these days. And here we are today, fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It could still result in direct war with Russia, with the specter of nuclear war looming in the background. Again, it all could have been avoided. Nice job, globalists!"

- dailyreckoning.com

Gregory Mannarino, "Big Banks Preparing For A Severe Economic Downturn"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/19/22:

"Big Banks Preparing For A Severe Economic Downturn"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"De-dollarization In Full Swing"

The Daily "Near You?"

Bulverde, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It’s Now a Buyer's Market - Sellers Need to Get Realistic"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 7/19/22:

"It’s Now a Buyer's Market - Sellers Need to Get Realistic"

"It’s starting to happen. Canadian real estate is seeing people drop the price of their homes as much as $200,000. Builders are offering more and more incentives to get rid of the housing inventory. This includes price reductions and credits for upgrades. The mortgage industry is prepared to see massive layoffs as home mortgages spike."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "The Dim Brigade"

"The Dim Brigade"

As the Russia-Ukraine war wears on, 

what if we're all being kept in the dark?

by Bill Bonner

"Forward the Light Brigade

Was there a man dismayed

Not tho' the soldier knew

Some one had blunder'd."

 "The Charge of the Light Brigade", 

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Baltimore, Maryland - "The headlines have been relentless. Ever since the beginning of the war of the Donetsk Oblast began, Russia has failed miserably. Its generals have been killed off. Its tanks have been sitting ducks. Its convoys have been stopped. Its targets missed. Its offenses halted. For the Russians, the Ukraine has been the valley of death.

Newsweek, yesterday: "Ukraine Destroys Two Military Ammo Depots, Hurting Russian Morale." The Russian military was portrayed as ill-equipped, ill-trained, ill-disciplined and hopelessly incompetent. Not once have we heard of a Russian victory… a Ukrainian killed, or a Russian who was not. At this stage, based on US news reports, it is amazing that there is a Russian soldier left alive. But what if there were more to the story?

We saw yesterday that Russia is where doomed empires go to die. 1709, 1812, 1941… Charles X11, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler – none fully recovered their Russian losses. So, we wondered: will America’s sanctions war, using its Ukrainian allies to do the dying, turn out any different?

Drunk and Sober: We wonder not for geopolitical or ideological reasons. We have no Ukrainian flag on our walls. Nor a flag for the Russian Federation. Our only loyalty is to our own homeland… not someone else’s. Yes, ‘Maryland, My Maryland’ – land of ersters and ‘bacca’… loudmouths and dimwits… Nancy Pelosi and Roger B. Taney… drunk and sober. Even here, our sentimental attachments run no further north than the south bank of the South River. Beyond it… which is to say, from Annapolis to the Pennsylvania line… is foreign to us.

As for Maryland south of the South River, it is a shame. Once so delightfully backward, quiet and charming, it is now filled up with spillover from the greater Washington DC area… and thus culturally and economically dead. (One of the finest houses on the banks of the Chesapeake, once the home of an honest contraband smuggler… is now owned by a disgraceful military contractor.) That is a digression… almost a non sequitur. But not quite. For now, we are expected to stretch our patriotism far beyond the Patapsco… and the Potomac… all the way to the banks of Dnieper.

General de Caulaincourt begged Napoleon to stay out of Russia. Only a damned fool would want to fight there, especially in the wintertime, he said. Shouldn’t one of America’s brass-bedecked heroes have warned Joe Biden too? Yes, maybe he should. But winter will come soon enough. The gods of war will have their say. Russia may not prove the pushover Biden had hoped. And ‘General Winter’ – the victor in both 1812 and 1944 – may not stop at the Ukrainian border. German experts are warning that their economy could contract by more than 12% if Russia shuts off its gas. Nearly 6 million jobs would be lost. Germans would shiver. Germans would fret and grow restless. And Germany, the great industrial powerhouse of the West – would have to capitulate. But we are just speculating…

Quality vs. Quantity: To back up a bit, the US war industry needs enemies. But it needs certain kinds of enemies – those that are unpopular in the US… and can do us little real harm. Little, largely defenseless nations are best. They are low-risk, high-reward targets. Lots of money to the industry; little chance of getting its butt kicked.

In this respect, Russia is an outlier. It is a nuclear power. But it had been rendered unpopular by endless charges of ‘interference’ in US elections. No serious evidence was ever presented, but it didn’t matter; the charge itself – though absurd – helped create the atmosphere the industry needed.

Compared to the US, the Russian economy is tiny – roughly equivalent to Spain. But it is not the size of the Russian economy that poses a challenge, it is the quality of it. Over many years, the US economy has been pumped up by financialization, fake money, and faddish technology. The Russian economy has not. Nobody buys the latest Russian fashions. Nobody buys fine Russian wines. And the only electronic entertainment produced in Russia with widespread appeal is pornography. Russia sells necessities – food, fertilizer and fuel. Oh… and Russia is also a big producer of ‘industrial warfare’ ammunition, bullets and artillery shells, for example.

So, when we compare the two economies, what do we see?

Russia – wheat, barley, seafood, nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, oil, gas, metals and minerals… many of them essential to modern economies and standards of living.

USA – Facebook, Netflix, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, Tesla, Walmart, Apple.

A Tale of Two Economies: The US economy is much bigger. But how much is it fluffed up with things we mostly don’t really need? Entertainment. Distraction. Consumption. Do our most valuable US companies actually help us produce wealth? Or do they subtract it by wasting our most precious asset – our time? We don’t know. But we note that since the US became fully on-line – around about the beginning of this century – real GDP (goods and services) growth rates have declined; from 3% to 5% in the last half of the 20th century, they fell to 2%... down to… currently… less than zero!

How much of the US economy is just foam, created by the Fed’s money-printing and phony interest rates over the last 30 years? A week or so ago, we estimated the froth in household wealth at over $50 trillion. This is how much would vanish if the financialized economy were de-financialized… with stocks, bonds and real estate marked down to more ‘normal’ levels.

How would the two countries – Russia vs. USA – stack up then? Maybe a better question is this: when push comes to shove, how important is the quality of output, compared to the quantity of it? If Facebook, oops... Metaverse, shut down, people would be disappointed. But would it really matter? They don’t make bullets in the Metaverse; they make them in Russia. And they don’t deliver gas from Netflix. It comes from Russia, too. And if it were turned off; what would be the effect? It looks like we’re going to find out. More to come…"

Joel’s Note: "Germans have been “on edge,” according to the newswires, as Russia undertakes “routine maintenance” on the critical Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the main gas pipeline connecting the two countries. Some worried whether the scheduled work (due to end this Thursday) was a political maneuver by Mr. Putin, designed to test the German mettle. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know for sure…

But it does raise the question: What happens if Russia did decide to “flip the switch” on European gas supplies? The continent is suffering through a heatwave now, which is no doubt uncomfortable enough. But what happens when ‘General Winter’ marches onto the frontlines? When Germans are shivering and industry is halted?

The energy minister has already warned German citizens that there may be hot water rationing come Winter… that street lights will be dimmed… workers will be asked to stay home… office buildings will be allowed to freeze.

We spoke to Byron King about all this in our latest Fatal Conceits podcast. We talked about the war in the Ukraine and Russia’s real military reserves, plus what’s going on with international energy markets and what happens to global supply chains when Russian inputs are no longer so… “dependable.” Look out for Part I of that conversation later today. The Fatal Conceits podcasts are free for all Bonner Private Research readers/listeners."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"A Real Church Sign"

 

"The Future..."

"The future ain't what It used to be."

- Yogi Berra

"Everything Is Dying..."

"Everything Is Dying: We Are Witnessing Mass 

Extinctions On An Unprecedented Scale, 

But Most People Don’t Understand What Is Happening"

by Michael Snyder

"We were warned that if we stayed on the path that we were on that we would eventually see mass extinctions all over the globe. Unfortunately, nothing was done and now it is already happening. The creatures that inhabit our oceans are dying off. The insects are dying off. The birds are dying off. All around us there is death on a massive scale, but most people don’t understand what is taking place. We all stay in our own little protected bubbles, and we all keep listening to the corporate media tell us that everything is going to be just fine. But the truth is that everything is not going to be just fine, because we are literally destroying the Earth and everything in it.

I wish that I could get more people to understand. The food that we eat, the water that we drink and the air that we breathe have all become highly toxic. But you don’t see the microplastics, the pesticides or the trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs that you are constantly ingesting, and so you don’t think about them. And that is extremely unfortunate.

Our oceans are literally being filled up by billions upon billions upon billions of extremely small bits of plastic, and the damage that these “microplastics” are causing is truly cataclysmic. As a result of our rampant polluting, approximately 90 percent of all plankton has now “vanished”…"An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic. The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilizers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished."

If there is no plankton, there will be no food chains in our oceans. And without those food chains, most life in our oceans will perish. At this point we are being warned that “humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals”…"The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: “An environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”

But the vast majority of our food doesn’t come from the oceans. So we will be okay, right? I wouldn’t count on it, because our insects are rapidly disappearing as well. In fact, biologist Dave Goulson says that studies have shown that approximately 75 percent of all insects have been wiped out over the past 50 years…"Estimates vary and are imprecise, but it seems likely that insects have declined in abundance by 75% or more since I was five years old. The scientific evidence for this grows stronger every year, as studies are published describing the collapse of monarch butterfly populations in North America, the demise of woodland and grassland insects in Germany, or the seemingly inexorable contraction of the ranges of bumblebees and hoverflies in the UK."

We are dependent on insects in a multitude of various ways. For example, we need them to pollinate many of our most important crops…"Bees get a lot of the focus and the attention when it comes to pollination, but there’s a whole array of insects that provide that pollination service. In fact, three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants and about a third of the world’s food crops depend on pollinators at some stage. And so it’s not just bees …. Flies are huge pollinators. That includes the midges that pollinate the cocoa crop that chocolate comes from. And there are wasps as well. Wasps are major pollinators. Again, another insect that’s widely disliked but actually crucial for our environment." Scientists tell us that almost all of the insects will be gone by the end of this century. If that were to happen, would humanity be able to survive?

By the way, our birds are going extinct too. According to one study, 30 percent of all the birds in North America are already gone…"North America’s birds are dying. Declared a man-made epidemic by a report in Science, approximately 100 bird species are recognized as endangered or threatened, with some estimates stating that about 30 percent of North America’s bird population has disappeared over the past half century. This amounts to 3 billion birds total."

That is extremely alarming, but things are even worse in other parts of the globe. In fact, researchers are warning us that a “catastrophic decline of vulture populations” on the other side of the planet could cause disease to spread like never before…"A catastrophic decline of vulture populations in Africa and Asia is causing alarm among researchers, who fear that a “cascade” effect could lead to the spread of deadly old and new diseases, including plague, anthrax, and rabies. For thousands of years, the birds have been synonymous with death and gluttony. “Where the corpse is, vultures will gather,” Jesus is quoted as saying in Matthew 24. But in reality, the birds serve us in ways that we are only just beginning to understand – helping to keep ecosystems and pathogens in check."

All of the creatures that live around us matter. Even the vultures. Sadly, their numbers have already declined by up to 90 percent in some parts of Africa…"Because of the centuries of bad press, experts say that African vultures have never been a well-funded research area like elephants or rhinos. But work by a handful of naturalists in Kenya offers clues about the consequences of their decline. A paper published earlier this year found that, over the last 40 years, vulture numbers have fallen by 88 percent in Kenya, Some birds of prey – like the augur buzzard and long-crested eagle – also plummeted by more than 90 percent."

Of course we are systematically killing ourselves as well. One recent study discovered that more than 80 percent of children and adults in the U.S. have glyphosate in their urine…"More than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer, a finding scientists have called “disturbing” and “concerning”. The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of 2,310 urine samples, taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate. This is the active ingredient in herbicides sold around the world, including the widely used Roundup brand. Almost a third of the participants were children ranging from six to 18."

Each year, close to 300 million pounds of glyphosate is used in the United States. We know that it is being sprayed on the food that we eat, but most of us never think about it because we can’t see it. And so we keep feeding a substance that we know causes cancer to our children on a daily basis…"In 2019, a study by the Environmental Working Group revealed that the chemical was present in 17 of 21 oat-based cereal and snack products at levels considered unsafe for children. This was the same year when Sheppard co-authored a study linking glyphosate to higher rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; another 2019 study, this time by the University of Washington, found that glyphosate exposure greatly increases the risk of cancer. In addition, the World Health Organization also studied glyphosate and determined that it “probably” causes cancer."

Honestly, at this point we are probably too stupid to survive as a society for too much longer. We know that we are literally poisoning ourselves, but we just keep doing it. One of the overall major themes of my work is that time is running out for humanity. What I have covered in this article is just the tip of the iceberg. Sadly, most people don’t want to hear “doom and gloom” like this even though nobody can dispute that this is really happening. So if you don’t like this sort of “doom and gloom”, just go ahead and stick your head back in the sand. But no matter how much you may try to ignore reality, the mass extinctions that have begun are only going to intensify in the years ahead."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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"Requiem"

“The crucified planet Earth,

should it find a voice and a sense of irony,

might now well say of our abuse of it,

"Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."

The irony would be that we know what we are doing.

When the last living thing has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up perhaps

from the floor of the Grand Canyon,

"It is done. People did not like it here.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

"How It Really Is"

 

"Life's Funny..."

"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."

- Andrew Klavan

"Russian Military Given Formal Order To Target Ukraine's Long-Range Weapons From US"

"There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powder-kegs and little kids with matches are on the loose. I don’t know which of the fuses will be lit and which powder-keg will blow, but someone is bound to do something stupid, and then all hell will break loose. It could happen at any time. One military miscue. One assassination. One violent act that stirs the world. And the dominoes will topple, setting off fireworks not seen on this planet since 1939 – 1945. I can see it all very clearly."

- Jim Quinn 

○

"Russian Military Given Formal Order To Target 

Ukraine's Long-Range Weapons From US"

by Tyler Durden

"Russia's defense ministry has issued a formal order for Russian troops to target Ukraine's long-range weapons and artillery supplied by the West, specifically the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) provided by the United States.

In Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu publishing the order on Monday, the Kremlin is sending one of the most provocative messages to Washington thus far in the war, signaling the two powers continue stumbling toward direct confrontation. "Army General Sergey Shoigu... instructed the commander to use surgical strikes and crush the enemy’s long-range missile and artillery means," the Russian Defense Ministry said according to TASS.

HIMARS have allowed Ukrainian forces to target far beyond the Russian front lines, against things like command centers or supply lines, for the first time after five months of war. At this point an estimated at least eight of the systems are in Ukrainian hands with a total dozen expected within weeks.

Kiev officials have called the rockets, which have a reach of about 50 miles, a "game-changer" - but have still pressured the US to send longer-range versions. The Pentagon is capable of outfitting the HIMARS to reach longer ranges, but the administration has been reluctant on fears it could unnecessarily provoke Russia into wider escalation.

Russian military leaders, while themselves claiming to have taken out at least one of the systems in recent days, have charged that Ukraine has used its long-range weapons to attack residential areas of Donbas: "Last week, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces had used HIMARS to launch 30 strikes against Russian targets. Ukraine said the HIMARS were used to destroy two ammunition depots deep inside Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, while Russia said the strikes hit civilian infrastructure.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukraine has used long-range weapons "to shell the residential areas of Donbas and continue the intentional incineration of wheat fields and grain storage facilities." As Ukraine has been using the Western-provided arms, Russia has stepped up missile attacks across Ukraine."

Also likely behind the Kremlin's rationale for stepping up targeting against the HIMARS and other long-range munitions is the potential for missiles reaching deeper into Russian territory. On Saturday, for example, a Ukrainian intelligence official openly declared the military should begin striking at Russian facilities inside Crimea, going so far as naming the HIMARS as capable of that.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny says HIMARS missile systems have helped to stabilize the frontline. https://t.co/acuDoiqcIl

- Leonid ХВ Ragozin (@leonidragozin) July 19, 2022

As we detailed previously, in return the deputy chair of Russia’s security council and former president Dmitry Medvedev warned the following day that any attacks on Crimea would mean "doomsday" for Ukrainian leadership. "Should anything of the kind happen, they will be faced with a doomsday, very quick and tough, immediately. There will be no avoiding it. But they keep on provoking the general situation by such statements," Medvedev said."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

Related:

"Ukraine In The Time Of Covid"

○

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 7/19/22:

"Col. Douglas Macgregor, Russia Ukraine Latest"

"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