Birmingham, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
"Doomsday..."
"Doomsday is quite within our reach,
if we will only stretch for it.”
- Loudon Wainwright III
"This Is What Will Happen To The U.S. Economy When We Go To War With China"
"This Is What Will Happen To The U.S. Economy
When We Go To War With China"
by Michael Snyder
"Nancy Pelosi knows exactly what she is doing. She knows that going to Taiwan without China’s permission will create a major international incident, but she is doing it anyway. It is being reported that Pelosi will arrive in Taiwan on Tuesday, spend the night in downtown Taipei on Tuesday night, and then potentially meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday. If she does meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, that will infuriate the Chinese even more. Pelosi is directly challenging China’s sovereignty over the island, and that is something that the Chinese will simply not tolerate.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is on the verge of a third term in office, and so he cannot afford to show any weakness right now. The following comes from Bloomberg…"Her travels come before China’s leadership usually heads to the seaside town of Beidaihe for an annual summer gathering. President Xi Jinping is just months away from a twice-a-decade Communist Party leadership reshuffle where he’s expected to secure a third term in office, increasing the political stakes." The timing means Xi can’t afford to look weak in response to what Beijing views as foreign interference in its affairs. China held live-fire military drills over the weekend off the coast of Fujian province, which is opposite Taiwan.
In recent days Chinese authorities have been warning us over and over again that China will respond very strongly if Pelosi goes ahead with her visit. On Monday, yet another very ominous warning was issued…“We would like to tell the US once again that China is standing by, and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will never sit idly by. China will take resolute responses and strong countermeasures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters, when asked about the fallout from Pelosi leading a congressional delegation to Taipei. “As for what measures, if she dares to go, then let’s wait and see,” Zhao added.
This is a threat that isn’t veiled at all. The Chinese are openly telling us that the People’s Liberation Army will take action if Pelosi goes through with her visit. And a video was just released on social media which definitely appears to have been intended to send a message…"A video by the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, which showed scenes of military exercises and preparations and was posted on state media sites on Monday evening, urged troops to “stand by in battle formation, be ready to fight upon command, bury all incoming enemies.” If you have not seen it yet, you can find the video right here. If you have an understanding of Chinese culture, then you know that things like this are never done lightly.
Here in the United States, we are being told to disregard such “propaganda” and the “empty threats” that the Chinese are supposedly making. But are they really “empty threats”? What if they aren’t? What if the Chinese really mean what they say?
I think that something that Caitlin Johnstone tweeted sums things up quite well…"Russia: Don’t cross our red lines in Ukraine or we’ll take action. US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines. *Russia invades.* China: Don’t cross our red lines in Taiwan or we’ll take action. US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines."
Ultimately, the Chinese were probably planning to invade Taiwan fairly soon anyway, but Pelosi’s visit certainly has the potential to greatly accelerate matters. And even though Taiwanese officials are welcoming Pelosi’s visit, they are also preparing for war at the same time…"Taiwanese defense officials have canceled the leave of some soldiers and officers “to immediately prepare” for the chance of war in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Asia this week, according to local reports."
Sadly, war with China is coming. It is just a matter of time. So what would such a conflict do to the U.S. economy? Well, for one thing it would absolutely devastate the pharmaceutical industry…"Consider that Chinese firms are said to supply more than 90 percent of US antibiotics, 70 percent of acetaminophen (that’s Tylenol), and almost half of the anti-coagulant heparin. “Are said to” because we struggle even to gather information on this because of the opacity of the Chinese market and state-dominated record keeping. Some studies suggest up to 80 percent of the basic ingredients in US drugs come from the PRC. China is also the second largest exporter of biologics and the prime source of medical devices per the FDA. In some cases, it appears that India is a prime source of a key import – generics, for example – but that masks the fact that India sources up to 75 percent of its own pharma ingredients from China."
The food industry would also be turned upside down. In fact, it is being reported that “it is almost impossible to have a diet with foods that were not produced in China”…"According to CNN.com, experts believe that it is almost impossible to have a diet with foods that were not produced in China. Products such as chips and garlic are produced in China. Spices and herbs such as ginger and garlic are grown in China and exported to foreign markets. Chinese factories make vegetarian meat products. Many canned foods on market shelves were manufactured in China."
Our ability to produce our own food would also be greatly affected, because China produces so much of our farm machinery…"Farm machinery such as tractors, egg incubators and harvesters are manufactured in China. Chain saws, wood chippers and shredders are also produced in the country. Elevators and bulldozers are also assembled in China."
Are you starting to get the picture? We should have never become so dependent on Chinese production, because it really is a major national security threat.
Of course the Chinese also produce a lot of our clothes…"Chinese factories manufacture winter coats, gloves, mittens and hats for consumers around the world. These factories also produce maternity clothes and infant clothes as well as wedding dresses and tuxedos. Underwear, T-shirts and slips are among the items exported from China to consumers around the world. Sports caps are also produced in China as are belts and bras."
And it turns out that 70 percent of our shoes come from China too…"The United States sources 99 percent of shoes sold from overseas, with 70 percent of those coming from the PRC. Same with 72 percent of smartphones. The artificial sweeteners in Diet Coke. Toys, furniture, sports equipment … what you buy every time you go to Target."
The moment we go to war with them, the flow of cheap goods from China completely stops. In addition, once the Chinese invade Taiwan there will be an absolutely excruciating computer chip shortage. It was recently being projected that chipmakers in Taiwan would have a 66 percent share of the total global market by the end of 2023…"Taiwan’s contract chipmakers will expand their global market share to 66% by revenue this year, cementing the island’s dominant position in the chip supply chain, a new industry forecast shows."
As I have discussed previously, just about every industry in the United States relies on equipment that contains computer chips. If the flow of chips from Taiwan is eliminated, the entire global economy would come to a crashing halt. I am not just talking about a recession or a depression. I am talking about an economic collapse on a scale that most people would not be able to comprehend right now.
This is why I am so horrified by what Nancy Pelosi is doing. In a book that I published two years ago, I specifically warned that war with China would be coming. Now Nancy Pelosi has us right on the brink of such a conflict. I don’t even have the words to describe how reckless our leaders are being. Let us hope that cooler heads will prevail, because once war with China starts nothing in this country will ever be the same again."
Don't forget Russia, who absolutely will get involved...
Gregory Mannarino, "UN Warns Of "Nuclear Annihilation'; China Threatens To Strike US Assets/Targets"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/2/22:
"UN Warns Of "Nuclear Annihilation';
China Threatens To Strike US Assets/Targets"
- https://traderschoice.net/
Comments here:
"It’s Worse Than Anyone Wants to Admit"
"It’s Worse Than Anyone Wants to Admit"
Jeffrey A. Tucker
"The news on July 28 was entirely consumed in the throes of another definition change. What everyone understood is that what it means to be in a recession has been suddenly changed by government edict. It’s not a recession, they say. Everything is going just great, they say, unless you are among the troglodytes who desire plentiful and low-priced energy, food, housing, and overall human thriving. Once you understand the beautiful world on the other side of the “transition” - to use the favorite word of the White House - you would see this suffering as actually beneficial in the long run. These broken eggs are making omelets.
We can argue all day about the definition of recession, but it doesn’t take us to the intellectual place we need to be. The bottom line is that what we are experiencing now includes anomalies from previous downturns precisely because it is much worse. Only a few months ago, many worried that we were going back to the 1970s. That box has been checked. Then, we worried we were going back to the 1930s. My fear is that we might wish that were true.
The White House talks about the low technical rate of unemployment without referencing the falling labor participation rates that never recovered from lockdowns because so many people just left the workforce. Millions of previously employed Americans are living off legacy largesse from families or tapping plentiful unemployment benefits just to get by month to month. Real wages and salaries have been slammed, savings rates are sinking, and credit card debt is exploding.
It’s all hard to put in a picture but we can try, nowhere more saliently expressed than the change in real wages and savings, versus savings as a percent of personal income. The stable public data here go back to 1960 and here we see just how shocking these times truly are. Personal savings is half what it typically was from the 1960s through the 1990s, and even as recently as 2012. Real disposable personal income is falling dramatically. You get a picture of a once-thriving nation being pummeled by pillaging public managers.
What is especially striking is how the hard times were preceded just before by one of history’s most duplicitous head fakes. Just after lockdowns, government flooded the frozen economy with trillions of dollars, pumped right into bank accounts around the country. It seemed like magic. We were never more prosperous, and we got that way doing nothing.
Here, we have one of the great lies in human history. Wise people among us always knew it couldn’t be true. You can’t close an economy up and cause everyone to be richer than ever. Plus it didn’t last that long. After less than a year, the astonishing bill came due. Inflation has taken a 9.1 percent bite out of savings, wages, and sages. It shattered business investment. It killed the long-term outlook of both producers and consumers. Now, nearly everyone is struggling against all odds to preserve the illusion of prosperity that is dying the death.
We were fed the biggest lie in economic history. Even now, many people believe it. More profoundly, the fake prosperity of 2020–2021 instilled a widespread public cynicism. It seemed for a time like the whole system is a racket. There are no limits to what Congress can spend and what the Federal Reserve can print. Money is just paper and there is an infinite supply. Why not go whole hog and spread it as far and wide as prosperity? Who needs work? Who needs savings? Who needs investment?
The devil himself couldn’t have constructed a better game to shatter all normal senses of reality, befuddle the population, and devastate the settled values of countless generations. The great head fake of 2020 took away our intuitive sense of cause and effect in the economic, social, and cultural realms. The whole system today has the feel of scammery, because that’s what it is.
The great economist Frédéric Bastiat in the 19th century emphasized that the real costs of policy-inspired destruction aren’t what you see but what you don’t see. It’s the investment that did not take place, the income we did not make, the savings we otherwise would have socked away but did not, the technologies that might have come into being, the jobs that would otherwise have been created, the art and music that never saw the light of day, the progress that would have defined our times that we never saw.
Bastiat called this the difference between what is visible and what is invisible. It takes some sense of abstraction, some perception that lives within the imagination, to gain a full sense of the cost of such devastation. We will never know the fullness of it but we know it is there. The invisible exists if only in unrealized hopes and dreams. The real economists, Bastiat said, must see what is unseen.
Just one quick example: whereas the Woodstock music festival took place during the 1968–1969 pandemic, most arts venues were brutally shut down during this one, some for as long as two years. Tanglewood, one of our nation’s most revered arts institutions, just shut down as if art and music didn’t matter. This vast enterprise worth hundreds of millions suddenly saw itself as unnecessary. Talk about a lack of confidence in culture!
In this case, it was just governments that did this to Tanglewood. The institution itself internalized its own worthlessness and kept itself closed for far longer than was even necessary. They imagined that they were being virtuous in keeping everyone safe. They only ended up betraying their benefactors and customers, to say nothing of the artists who depended on them to stay open even in hard times.
So it went for institutions all over the country. Small businesses, civic associations, churches, workers, savers and investors, and just about everybody but public health bureaucrats, were all made to feel worthless at best and toxic disease spreaders at worst.
In short, if this were merely a conventional recession, we would be very fortunate. What’s happening in the trendlines of every important metric is shocking. But the real devastation is in the realm of the invisible: the progress and freedom of which we were robbed. We know who did this to us. It’s the very people who made the desolation and now call it transition."
"What Will the Next Black Swan Event Be?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 8/2/22:
"What Will the Next Black Swan Event Be?"
"What will the next black swan event be? Will it be real estate? Will it be health related? Will it be food related? Will it be banking? The stock market is always a hot one and it’s just a matter of time until the next one happens."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "All About the Money"
"All About the Money"
Jobs and housing are in trouble as the two legs of
American middle class wealth begin to wobble.
by Bill Bonner
“When someone says, ‘it’s not about the money,’ it’s all about the money.”
~ Giants Manager, George Young
Baltimore, Maryland - "As we guessed last week, the two legs of American middle class wealth, income and houses, are both buckling. It’s still very early… but both seem to have begun downtrends. These are not isolated phenomena. Instead, they are among the many ‘dots’ that, when connected, look for all the world like Ursa Major… as in, a major bear market.
Yesterday, we explored the ‘primary trend.’ Once underway, it tends to last for decades. You can ignore it; you can fight it; you can deny it. But you can’t stop it. Stocks were in a primary downtrend from 1966 to 1982. Before that, the primary trend was up, from the bottom of the Great Depression until the mid-‘60s. The most recent bull market primary trend began in August of 1982 and continued until December of 2021. If a new, bear market primary trend has begun, we’ll see real values for stocks go down for many years. Few baby boomers will ever again see equities so richly priced as they were at the close of 2021.
Primary trends in the bond market are even longer. Bonds appear to have hit a major top in the summer of 2020, with the yield on the US 10-year bond down to 0.55%. The previous top occurred – get this – back in the late 1940s, 70 years ago.
A Relentless Trend: Markets move up and down all the time. Day to day… week to week… month to month. Often, there are countertrends that last for years. As we saw yesterday, it took four years of wiggling and waggling after 1980, before the primary trend – towards lower interest rates and higher stock prices – was clearly established.
But a primary trend is relentless. And now, after 4 decades of rising stocks and falling interest rates, have we just witnessed the beginning of a new one? Probably. Because, it’s about the money. The trend of the last 42 years was sustained by borrowing at lower and lower interest rates…with dramatic ‘saves’ by the Fed whenever a correction threatened. But those rescues are no longer possible.
Let’s look first at jobs and housing for a minute: Initial jobless claims have been rising since March and are now at a new high for the year. Shopify, 7-11, Tesla, Vimeo, Rivian, GoPuff, Remax, Redfin, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley – all have announced layoffs. The job market was never as great as advertised. The index of total hours worked in the US economy is now at 119… exactly where it was in March 2020, which means there has been no growth for the last two years. If there are more jobs, it just means that income is being divided among more workers. And hourly wages meanwhile just suffered their biggest decline in 15 years – with a 3.9% inflation-adjusted drop.
Home Sales Plummet: As for housing, the ‘affordability index’ is back down to levels that haven’t been seen in 14 years. It’s the combination of wages, prices and mortgage rates that determine how affordable a house is. And after spectacular increases in both prices and mortgage rates, houses are now as un-affordable as they were just before the last housing crisis – in 2007. Once again, the typical family cannot afford the typical house.
And now, the “dots” – showing a downturn in the real estate market – are coming together. NAHB’s ‘Housing Market Index’ just fell to a 2-year low. Builders say they are reducing prices to “limit cancellations.” Builders are becoming reluctant to put up new houses, with Housing Starts at a 14-month low in June (down 6% year-over-year). And new home sales are down 43% from their 2020 high. Existing houses, too, are no longer flying off the lots. Sales are at their lowest levels since June 2020.
Prices are still near record highs, up 40% since 2020. But the most recent reports tell us that they are beginning to sag. The median price of new houses dropped by 12% over the last two months. And it looks like a truce has been declared in the bidding wars. In January, nearly 7 out of 10 houses drew competing bids. In June, less than 50% did.
When jobs and housing give way, households need to crack open their piggy banks… borrow… or cut back. The evidence suggests they are doing all of the above. Savings rates are down. Debt is up. And inventories of unsold merchandise are piling up at Walmart. That is what happens in a recession. But what suggests to us that this is a primary trend, rather than a noisy, short-term feint, is this: for the first time in 30 years, the Fed can’t do anything about it.
Monetary Boosters: Since the switch to a pure paper dollar, in 1971, the Fed controls the money. And for the first time since Alan Greenspan came to Wall Street’s succor in 1987, the Fed is no longer able to salve investors’ hurts with easier credit. After the Crash of ’87, Greenspan cut rates. Not fast enough, according to then-president George H.W. Bush, who said the sluggish economy cost him the White House. Greenspan wouldn’t make that mistake again.
In the downturn of the early ‘90s, Greenspan got out his machete and hacked off 500 bps (500 basis points = 5%) from the Fed funds rate. Then, by the time the Nasdaq bubble collapsed, he was good at it. Between 2000 and 2002, he lopped off another 550 bps.
The next correction came on Ben Bernanke’s watch when the mortgage finance crisis hit. Bernanke knew how to play the game too; 525 bps were trimmed in 3 years. But then, Bernanke went further, with Quantitative Easing… then “Operation Twist.”
And when it was Jerome Powell’s turn, his response to the Covid Panic was almost automatic. Rates were cut down to zero. And the Federal government used its ‘printing press money’ as though it had been dropped from a helicopter. Stimmies, Payroll Protection, unemployment ‘boosters’ – it was great fun while it lasted. But then, consumer prices rose… and all of a sudden, it was a whole new ballgame. The Fed’s key lending rate was already near zero; how could it be cut further? And with inflation edging up towards the double digits, what kind of a fool would dare to cut interest rates now? That is what we wait to find out."
"More Empty Shelves At Meijer! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 8/2/22:
"More Empty Shelves At Meijer! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are shopping at Meijer only to find lots of empty shelves! Items are missing everywhere! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products. I have never seen Dollar Tree so empty!"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "The Next New Crisis Is Now Upon Us; FED Warns On The Economy"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/2/22:
"The Next New Crisis Is Now Upon Us;
FED Warns On The Economy"
Comments here:
Monday, August 1, 2022
Canadian Prepper, “Warning: My Most Important Video, The Stores Will Be Emptied”
Canadian Prepper, 8/1/22:
“Warning: My Most Important Video, The Stores Will Be Emptied”
“If this happens the stores will be EMPTY in a week.”
Comments here:
Chuck Barone, "Misery Index at 12.7! But Will Get Much Worse!"
Chuck Barone, 8/1/22:
"Misery Index at 12.7! But Will Get Much Worse!"
"A wrap-up on today’s markets and a review of the crazy month of July. Also, predictions for the month of August with comments on the housing market, mortgage rates, cost of living, and the possible return of the 'Misery Index.'”
Comments here:
"Many U.S. Cities Are Resembling Post-Apocalyptic Cesspools As America’s Collapse Accelerates"
Full screen recommended.
"Many U.S. Cities Are Resembling Post-Apocalyptic
Cesspools As America’s Collapse Accelerates"
by Epic Economist
"From coast to coast, many cities all across America are resembling post-apocalyptic cesspools as the collapse of our nation continues to accelerate. Urban centers are seeing a massive surge in the number of people living on the streets, becoming drug addicts, and engaging in serious criminal activities. The landscape of some of our most beautiful metropolitan areas is being ruined by endless piles of human and animal waste, trash and homeless encampments as more and more people face the dark side of the cost of living crisis that has been plaguing the U.S. No wonder why so many Americans are feeling unsafe and moving away from core urban regions.
LA was once considered one of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet, but things have drastically changed. Since the start of the year, LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is being bombarded with complaints from local residents and store owners who are absolutely disgusted with the fact that politicians are bluntly ignoring the problems ravaging their neighborhood. Further north, in San Francisco, officials are confronting the worst wave of substance abuse ever recorded. One of the main consequences of having large numbers of addicts in a particular city is that criminality rates tend to increase accordingly. Dependents are always looking for ways to make more money for their next dose, and oftentimes, they resort to shoplifting.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, officers in the Atlanta area have started operating under new rules that restrict them from chasing offenders. “Given everything that's been going on here, it's getting worse and worse and worse,” one resident said in an interview with told Fox News. “The lack of leadership and the fact that nothing changing means that the insanity continues, that’s why we're demanding emergency hearings on our cityhood bills,” he continued. Up north, in New York City, filth is rapidly spreading everywhere. The Big Apple hasn’t seen this much degradation since the dirty days of the 1970s. A Daily News article uncovered that the city’s subway system is filled with trash, including cases of feces, vomit, and blood. An increase in used syringes is also being found amid growing drug use in the subway system, the report highlights.
Given that our major cities are degenerating into cesspools of addiction, delinquencies, and filth, millions of citizens are fleeing for greener pastures. In fact, North American Van Lines released a report which shows that the huge wave of migration over the past couple of years has been fueled by people’s desire to escape the chaos of urban centers. The rapid degradation of some of the wealthiest cities in the United States is a clear demonstration that our nation is falling apart. Our urban areas used to be a display of our economic prosperity, but now that things are going from worse to catastrophic in our country, they've become a reflection of our broken system. The post-apocalyptic scenario of some of our core urban areas will look gloomier and gloomier in the months ahead. A major economic downturn has already begun, and conditions will only get rockier from now on."
"Americans Depend On The Dollar Store To Survive; Mortgage Crisis Coming"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/1/22:
"Americans Depend On The Dollar Store To Survive;
Mortgage Crisis Coming"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.
"Life Is Difficult..."
“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”
- M. Scott Peck
"Navigating the Fourth Turning"
"Navigating the Fourth Turning"
by Jeff Thomas
"'These are the times that try men’s souls.' So, Thomas Paine wrote in 1775 in his publication of "The American Crisis." Not so well-remembered today are the words that followed that famous quote: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
At that time, Colonial America was passing through the early stages of a "Fourth Turning," an historical time of crisis that occurs roughly every eighty years. As a point of reference, a First Turning is a period of renewal; one in which a historical crisis has ended. The populace has risen to the occasion, thrown off tyranny and conquered social, political and economic tribulation. Having done so, they now create a renewal, based on hard work, personal responsibility and moral integrity.
A Second Turning occurs a generation later, when the rewards of a First Turning have resulted in prosperity and stability. Those new adults who have grown up during a First Turning will be well-off and will seek to pursue high-mindedness and social concerns. Along the way, they will also pursue self-indulgence. (A deterioration begins.)
In a Third Turning, again a generation later, complacency sets in. Politically, those individuals who are sociopathic (a clinical aberration, estimated at about 4% of any society at any given time) tend to rise in political spheres, replacing the older generation of responsible people. They tend to raise taxes, increase social welfare programmes and increase government spending in every way – really, any excuse to seize increased power over the populace.
Then, in a Fourth Turning, again a generation later, power having been seized, the sociopaths seek total power – the elimination of all freedoms, to be replaced by totalitarian rule.
Historically, in a Third Turning, a complacent people make it possible for sociopaths to take power. In a Fourth Turning, the sociopaths exert that power. It matters little whether the excuses put forward by political leaders are climate control, racial equity, CBDCs, cancel culture, owning nothing, digital IDs, transhumanism, vaccine mandates or a Green New Deal, the objective is singular: total dominance of the ruling class over the subservient class. Any excuse will do, if it has totalitarian rule as its outcome.
In any Fourth Turning, those who are more thoughtful and forward-thinking will begin to make sense of the ruse, but find themselves being heavily criticized by all and sundry. The media will do all within their power to slap down those who denounce the ruling class. But more to the point, the greater proportion of the populace will remain in their slumber and resist the awakening strenuously.
It is at such a time that the few who have figured out the ruse experience their greatest challenge – whether to speak out or whether to just go along. This group must struggle in the darkness to a great degree, as the majority of the population fight against an awakening, as it disturbs their complacency and is too horrendous to contemplate.
The latter half of a Fourth Turning becomes a chaotic and confusing period – one in which many people desperately hope to just get along, whilst those who are more visionary become increasingly aware that their freedoms are being flushed away on a wholesale basis. And, whilst it is the smaller, more visionary group that creates the spark of change, it is, historically, a different and unlikely group that actually creates substantive change in the latter half.
The group that turns the tide is the group that I often (unflatteringly) refer to as the hoi polloi – the average guy. At some point, the average guy, who simply wanted to be allowed to get on with his life – go to work, mow the lawn, sit on the couch with a six-pack and watch the game – has had his life so disrupted by the ruling sociopaths and their increasingly manic oppression that he accepts that he must turn off the TV and do "something." He is not a leader, but he is a joiner.
When, in Ottawa, Canada, a few truckers staged a small demonstration, and the average guy saw it on the news, he got in his truck and joined. He may have had no real idea of how events might develop; he simply added what weight he had to the effort. But the very fact that he is the average guy – that the bulk of the population is made up of average guys, makes their collective weight greater than those who may have been more inspired thinkers, and – more importantly – greater than the weight of the oppressors.
As simplistic as a convoy of Canadian truckers may be, their numbers become their strength. More to the point, they carry with them the sympathies of other average people, who come out to cheer them on, bring them food and donate money. Not surprisingly, their achievement is brief, as it’s so simplistic, but they do succeed in bringing about temporary change, setting Government back on its heels. Then, a few farmers in the Netherlands hear about the Canadians and decside to drive their tractors into the city, and it happens again.
And it keeps happening. Throughout history, it’s been the same. In 1775, when Paul Revere rode into Lexington and Concord, it’s quite unlikely that he shouted courageously, "To arms! To arms!" That would have been treason and treason was one of only three capital offenses at that time.
More likely, he went to a few back doors and spread the word quietly. After all, the people of America were at that time British. The hoi polloi of the day – especially those of middle age or older - were relatively successful and had a lot to lose. They did not approve of revolt and were willing to pay the small stamp tax that had triggered it. They argued vociferously in the House of Burgesses to "just get along." But a few firebrands kept up their challenge and, eventually, they were joined by farmers and shopkeepers who, like the truckers, had had enough and decided to do "something."
For those of us who saw the warning signs early – decades ago – the first half of the Fourth Turning has been extraordinarily distressing. The Globalists have been thorough in their planning and have successfully executed the removal of freedoms with great stealth that we assumed any "thinking" person should have seen coming. But most people are not thinkers. Most people "go along." They continue to go along, right until the moment that…. they don’t.
Thomas Paine was correct. "These are the times that try men’s souls." Paine was a visionary who, through his writing, attempted to bring about an awakening. An awakening happens only gradually, but the point arrives when the common man has had about enough. He may not be intellectually inspired, but his collective weight is, and throughout history, has been the turning point. We are now on that cusp."
Gregory Mannarino, "Proof! Its Literally The End Game - Just Follow The Money! Economy Free-Falls Even Faster"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/1/22:
"Proof! Its Literally The End Game -
Just Follow The Money! Economy Free-Falls Even Faster"
Comments here:
"The Worst Of Them All..."
"Science may have found a cure for most evils,
but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -
the apathy of human beings."
- Author Unknown
"He Is Under A Spell..."
“The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. “
"Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb. 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945) was a Protestant Lutheran Pastor, theologian, and active in the German resistance to the policies of Hitler and Nazism. Due to his opposition to the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed by hanging at the Flossian concentration camp, during the last month of the war."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”
Bill Bonner, "The R-Word"
"The R-Word"
Call it what you like, if it looks like a duck,
waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck...
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "Last week, we heard from America’s two most hoary financial authorities: “I do not think the U.S. is currently in a recession and the reason is there are too many areas of the economy that are performing too well,” said Jerome Powell, jefe of the Fed. “This is not an economy that’s in recession,” added Janet Yellen, former Fed chief and now US Treasury Secretary.
The good news hung in the air like the perfume of a passing transvestite – fraudulent but not unpleasant. But scarcely 18 hours later, over the wires came word the US economy really is in recession. Last quarter showed negative growth of 0.9%. Combine that with the 1st quarter and you have annualized growth of about MINUS 1.25% so far this year. Those are the feds’ own numbers. They show a recession underway. Curiously, the press was eager to reframe the ‘recession’ story in a way that made it less threatening to the Biden Administration. That is, reporters aimed to distract readers and help them to miss the point.
Quack, Quack, Quack! This is a new form of journalism, better suited to the propaganda industry the US press has become. For example, we were told by both the New York Times and the Washington Post (they must have collaborated to get their story straight) that the latest figures risk “fueling recession fears.” It is like reporting that “the flames from the second story windows caused firemen to worry that the building might be a fire hazard.”
Fearing a recession is a psychological phenomenon. Experiencing one is a whole different thing. And if fear were the real risk, the recession itself must be of no importance. It also echoes FDR’s famous line, that ‘all we have to fear is fear itself,’ leaving readers to believe that it must be a little unpatriotic even to imagine such a thing.
You can see how easy and useful this new journalism can be. When the stock market is crashing, reporters could chortle: “Wall Street values greatly increased yesterday.” Likewise, the technique might be useful for Baltimore’s overworked crime reporters: “A mass shooting today on the corner of North and Charles has left citizens worrying about whether they have adequate life insurance.”
But as they say in the legal trade, if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck… well, it is a duck. And it looks like a recession to us. Stocks have fallen. Bonds have fallen. Real estate is beginning to fall. And now, the economy is actually shrinking. Quack, quack, quack…
No More Pussyfooting: The message has gone out, despite the media’s attempt to kill the story. But, it’s summer and a lot of people aren’t checking their email. So far, there are no shrieks of panic. Investors were buying stocks last week, betting that we’ve seen the worst of the stock market sell-off. The Fed is still lending far below the level of consumer price inflation. Congress is still spending money it doesn’t have on projects that make no sense. And the federal deficit is still over $1 trillion. But major turns take time. Sometimes years.
In 1980, Paul Volcker made it very clear what he was going to do. And then he did it. No pussyfooting around; he raised the Fed Funds rate nearly 700 basis points (7%) above consumer price inflation. (For reference, that would be a Federal Funds rate of 12% today, rather than the 2.5% we have.)
But investors didn’t know what to make of it… and frequently guessed wrong. The ‘primary trend’ was up for both stocks and bonds. But investors weren’t convinced. From May of ’83 to July of ’84, bond prices went down. It was four years after the primary trend had begun before it was clear. Then, it just kept on truckin’ – with periodic backing up – until July 2020, 39 years after it began.
The Primary Trend: Likewise, in the summer of 1982, the Dow took off on what was to be its biggest joy ride ever. It should have been obvious, as early as January of 1980, that stocks were going up. If Volcker tamed inflation, as he promised, interest rates would come down. Stocks would be more valuable. But in January 1980 the Dow was only at 878. And instead of shooting up, the Dow wandered aimlessly. Two and a half years later, it had actually lost value, and was down to 808. And yet, there too… the cards had been dealt. And it was a winning hand for stock market investors. After 1982, stocks continued to go up, with occasional breaks, for the next 39 years. The Dow didn’t finally top out until December 2021. Then, it was over 36,000, for a gain of 44 times investors’ money. That is the power of the ‘primary trend.’ Alas, like a bad marriage, it is only clearly visible in retrospect. At the time, it is noisy, chaotic – full of passion and confusion.
Which takes us back to our question… how can we be so categoric; how come it’s ‘inflate or die?’ Why not something in between? Can’t you just have a little bit of inflation to help the medicine of a correction go down? Can’t the most egregious investments pass away, but otherwise leave the economy intact? Or to put it another way, are investors who ‘buy the dip’ necessarily making a mistake? More to come…"
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Related:
by Martin Armstrong
"Inflation is Being Used as an Ideal Cover to Overcharge All of Us"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 8/1/22:
"Inflation is Being Used as an Ideal Cover to Overcharge All of Us"
"Experts have talked about inflation and that it will be with us for years to come. The only problem is that people are using this inflation scenario to charge for things that have not gone up in price. We’re being told that everything is taking longer to deliver and it’s because of the supply chain and inflation."
Comments here:
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Related:
"How It Really Is"
“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”
- Carl Bernstein
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"You need to get to go and need to be able to get
where you need to go to do the work and get home."
- Future President Kamala Harris
Jim Kunstler, "Atonement"
"Atonement"
by Jim Kunstler
"Boston, Massachusetts, may be even more Woked-up than the Pacific Coast cities. By “Woked-up” I mean susceptible to a quasi-religious frenzy that compels the performance of moral atonement scripts with an emphasis on obeisance to “experts” (credentialed hierophants) - such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Dr. Klaus Schwab, and the various distinguished authors of Critical Race Theory. But it was still a bit of a shock last week to see the Boston Red Sox playing in sky blue and yellow uniforms in solidarity with the neo-Nazi failing state, Ukraine. I’d be surprised if Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers could find Ukraine on a map.
News flash to Boston: Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine is all over except the shouting. Plus, nobody in the USA cares about it anymore, and if they do, probably for the wrong reasons. The right reason to care is that the “Joe Biden” regime’s insane campaign to destroy Russia has only brought Western Europe to the brink of collapse and ruin, thereby threatening the continuation of Western Civilization altogether.
You don’t hear much chatter about this emanating from, say, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Public Administration because, apparently, they’re all-in on the demolition of Western Civ. It is the ultimate act of atonement, and atonement for the sins of culture and politics is the currency for personal status in Woke Elitedom. America’s elites are secretly disgusted with themselves, especially about the wealth they have been able to grift out of all the racketeering that has replaced honest work in our country - and nowhere is the racketeering more grotesque, or more pretentiously caparisoned, than in the Ivy League universities. Status drives Wokery because Woke Elitedom has more money than it knows what to do with, so just having a lot of money means less than it used to - just ask Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Don’t worry. Soon they will have a lot less money. Or rather, first they will have a lot of money that’s worthless and then they will have no money, like everybody else. The demoralizing inflation underway leads to the destruction of credit and when enough credit is destroyed, there will be no money, since our money is based on credit. When that happens, see what your self-proclaimed moral purity will buy you.
The credit-driven money system is a metaphor representing the expectation that we will always have more of everything. That was surely the consensus in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was born. 1913 was the last year of the Belle Epoch, the beautiful era preceding the First World War. It was also the coming-of-age of economies based on oil. In that moment, Western Civ stood in amazement at its achievements and in thrall to its glittering future. The slaughter in the trenches of WWI shattered that confidence, nowhere more deeply than in Germany, which afterwards lurched from the degeneracy of the Weimar Republic to the depravity of Hitler’s Third Reich, and from there back to ruin in the Second World War.
Today’s Woke Elitedom of Europe, led by Germany, is deliberately driving the EU nations into a ditch without bothering to go to war. They certainly don’t have the military mojo to prosecute a war with Russia - which is what they would be doing if NATO intervened actively in Ukraine (ain’t gonna happen). Instead, they have torn-up reams of trade agreements and imploded a richly-constructed supply network of basic operating resources like oil, natgas, minerals, and grains in an absurd act of atonement, in obeisance to the experts at the World Economic Forum and the fiends behind “Joe Biden.” And lately, they are bent on destroying their food supply with cockamamie campaigns against their farmers, in line with WEF hallucinations about climate change.
As in the USA, the governments of Euroland have declared war on their own people. Germans are scuttling around collecting firewood now, with natgas looking scarce and unaffordable going into winter at the dark upper latitudes. I would bet that there are close to zero wood-stoves available at this point, and how many cold seasons will it take before they cut down all the forests of Europe? Meanwhile, Europe’s industries and businesses disintegrate. The Great Re-set at hand won’t be der Schwabenklaus’s transhuman nirvana but rather a return trip to the 12th century.
All this does not even include the forthcoming attrition among the vaccinated. We have succeeded in disabling and destroying the immune systems of many millions of people with mRNA shots. They are going to get sick from all sorts of things. A lot of activities will stop working, including the medical industry, so many of the injured and dying will not receive care. In this late summer interim, American pharma says it’s ready to bring forth new-and-improved mRNA shots supposedly keyed to the latest emerging variants of the C-19 coronavirus. Pharma and its enablers in the NIH-CDC matrix actually have no idea what variants are coming - nowhere is nature more of a trickster than in disease organisms - and you can be sure that their new vaccines will be more shuck-and-jive.
Anyway, nobody believes them anymore. Few are lining up for the boosters and fewer parents are dragging their kids and babies to the shotmeisters. What remains to happen, and probably will by summer’s end, is a massive uprising of the non-Woke against the Woke Elites and the end of their insane depredations. They can atone all they want at their trials and executions."
"Economic Market Snapshot 8/1/22"
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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"Economic Market Snapshot 8/1/22"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
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Latest Market Analysis, Updated 8/1/22
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
July 29th to August 1st
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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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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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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...
"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Dollar Tree! Grab It Before It's Gone!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 8/1/22:
"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Dollar Tree!
Grab It Before It's Gone!"
"In today's vlog we are shopping at Dollar Tree only to find lots of empty shelves! Items are missing everywhere! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products. I have never seen Dollar Tree so empty!"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "SHockER! Fed. Admits Inflation Will Persist!"
Gregory Mannarino, 8/1/22:
"SHockER! Fed. Admits Inflation Will Persist!"
Comments here:
Sunday, July 31, 2022
"20 Facts That This Shipping Crisis Is Creating A Supply Chain Collapse"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Facts That This Shipping Crisis Is
Creating A Supply Chain Collapse"
by Epic Economist
"The global supply chain crisis has entered an ominous new chapter. Massive disruptions, congestion, capacity shortages, and skyrocketing shipping and freight rates have challenged shippers, ports, carriers, and logistics providers in the past couple of years. The price to ship a 40-foot container from Asia to the U.S. West Coast shot up by a shocking 400% last year, but soaring prices do not mean that supply chain reliability and resilience have improved. In fact, across both coasts, U.S. ports continue to struggle with bottlenecks, and delivery delays while shippers scramble with a shortage of containers and rising operational costs. That's to say, the supply chain crunch of 2020 and 2021 was just a small demonstration of the crisis we're facing this year and will continue to face in the years ahead. Executives, business owners, and experts do not expect a light at the end of the tunnel any time soon.
Furthermore, a report commissioned by DP World, produced in partnership with Economist Impact, noted that supply shortages will keep increasing inflationary pressure despite the recent rise in interest rates. At this point, about a third of companies expect increasing transport costs to limit export-led growth, contributing to higher inflation. About the same rate, or 31%, companies that export are concerned about the risk of rising inflation due to supply chain disruption, the report found. DP World Group Chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said that: “the report is evidence that rising freight rates, and low production levels, coupled with a volatile social-economic situation in the US and Europe, will keep inflation high in 2022 as companies navigate a risky trading environment.”
The CEO of Sea-Intelligence, Alan Murphy, is warning about a record backlog of containerships during this year’s peak shipping season. During a press release, Murphy revealed that there will be a 60% increase in the number of vessels on the Asia-North America East Coast trade lane in the coming months, which means that both coasts will be dealing with a record flow of imports at the same time, heightening the risk for disruptions. Experts at the TPM22 and TPMTech Conference warned that shippers should expect no relief for the rest of 2022 as many structural issues in ocean transportation have yet to be solved. "We don’t see the tide turn in 2022," said Thorsten Meincke, board member for the ocean and air freight at DB Schenker. Meincke said infrastructure problems, labor constraints, high demand, and reduced capacity will continue to trouble the market in the foreseeable future.
At grocery stores, empty shelves can be seen everywhere, a reflection of the fact that our global supply chain had become far too linear and vulnerable to the unexpected. With all that said, Americans should brace for an era of constant price increases and persistent shortages. As problems compound, inflationary pressures will get worse and worse, and this year's peak shipping season is on track to be the most chaotic on record. Of course, many other things can still go wrong in the short-term, which will only result in more disruptions, delays and imbalances between supply and demand. Once broken, it might take years before supply chains are restored once again. Until then, the nightmare will continue for businesses, logistics companies, workers, and, of course, millions of consumers out there. Thus, in today's video, we brought a compilation of facts that indicate just how much worse conditions are going to get in the months ahead."
Canadian Prepper, "Preparing For the 'Great Reset'"
Canadian Prepper, 7/31/22:
"Preparing For the 'Great Reset'"
A freeform chat about everything...
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