"American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny"

"American Civil War:

Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny"

by John Wilder

"Again, this is a repost from back in 2020, partially because I'm going to add it on the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report page, and partially because it seemed a good fit as we keep sliding down. I was driving around and one of the videos that was in my suggested list was about “America’s Cold Civil War.” This isn’t a review of the video, but it brought up some interesting points. The one I want to make clear to every single person that loves freedom in the United States is: if you’ve ever seen a movie about that rag-tag elements of a group fighting a foe that has nearly utterly defeated them, it’s us. We are the Wolverines.

I don’t mean to say that to create a feeling of defeat – far from it. But the first step in dealing with a situation is understanding reality. And reality is very simple today. At a minimum, the Left has coopted the following elements of culture in the United States – they have been, over time, “converged” into Leftism:

• The K-12 educational system.

• Colleges and Universities.

• Most Protestant religious organizations.

• Most Catholic organizations.

• The psychological establishment.

• The American Medical Association.

• All mainstream news media.

• All mainstream entertainment media.

• Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.

• The general officer corps of the armed services.

• The courts.

• Silicon Valley tech companies.

• Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

This isn’t an accident, it’s entirely by plan. And not only by plan, it’s by a plan that was entirely shared. From Verified Communist Traitor® Herbert Marcuse, in his book "Counterrevolution and Revolt" (bold added): "To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others."

I could prove all of the above Institutions have been converged through the Long March Through the Institutions and will probably discuss a few of these in the future, because I could do a post on each one. Heck, maybe it would be a great book, but only if I could figure out how to pair hot chicks and communist propaganda.

But if you doubt me, you have Google® (itself converged) and you can easily verify list above even through the Leftist-bias that’s now on that search engine. I’ll leave you with one more question: why else would Fortune© 500® corporations sign a manifesto saying profits were less important than social goals if Leftists weren’t in control? Because there were extra doughnuts in the breakroom and they were feeling generous?

In almost any context, these organizations reflect the values of the Left, not of the Right. I specifically don’t use the label conservative here – the conservative movement has utterly failed in the United States (to quote absolutely everyone) to conserve anything. We live a country where adults telling four year old boys that being a girl is okie-dokie (and vice-versa) aren’t thrown directly in prison for a decade or more (after a trial, of course) for child abuse. The goals of the above organizations would be cause for mass revolt if they had been publicized in 1990, but now, despite no vote, no public acceptance, each point of the Left has been accepted as the new normal. And telling a boy that he’s a girl? Oh, wait, that’s brave. Sorry.

Despite all of that, this is not a post about giving up. Screw that. Each day makes me more independent, not less, more wanting to tell the truth. And if you’re reading this, no one is done here. Freedom is always the underdog. I really wish we’d just stop waiting until 2:00 in the fourth quarter to start playing.

I remember seeing a film in Social Studies in High School about the Korean War. In the black and white film, almost all of Korea had been lost. The film ended right at what is known as the Pusan Perimeter, right where the North Korean Army was about to kick freedom off of the Korean peninsula, forever. It was tough watching that film. But then we learned what happened next: MacArthur led the naval invasion of Inchon and turned the tide of battle, leading a combined United Nations® force that cut off the North Koreans. This turned the course of the war, and in the process helped to create the free country of South Korea that is a world leader in technology, bad music videos, and wealth creation today.

Our Pusan Perimeter is now. I had a great boss once upon a time, he would continually remind me, “John, start with the end in mind,” which is #2 of Covey’s "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."  As I look at the state of the Right back in 2016, we were at the Pusan Perimeter. As we as a nation blindly stumble toward Civil War II, I can’t predict the outcome, but I can see the full range of outcomes. We’ll go from best case to worst case for people who love freedom. Although there are variations, I think I’ve captured all of the big picture end games below.

Operation Aesop: Total victory.

What it is: The Right wins. Traditional society is restored. Mothers and fathers in committed relationships are again honored. A Constitutional republic of limited government replaces the democracy of unlimited power. The United States is unified. Think of it as a return to the 1950’s, but with color TV and microwaves.

What it takes: Oh, not much more than the bloodiest war in the history of the country. The only way this results in victory is as Von Clausewitz wrote about in On War: [Accomplishing...] “three broad objectives, which between them cover everything: destroying the enemy’s armed forces; occupying his country; and breaking his will to continue the struggle.”

That’s what happened in the first Civil War. That’s what happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II. The concept of continuing was even more horrific than the concept of trying to continue to fight. It’s total capitulation. This is actual war until the enemy is not capable of continuing. Not talking heads on a television show. Not voting. Not discussion. Not a “mission accomplished” after five weeks moving across Iraq where the “will to continue the struggle” is still clearly intact.

Outcomes: Some freedoms we see now would be curtailed. Political discourse would be constrained. But teenagers would be pretty polite, again. And you wouldn’t really have to worry about the border.

Operation Founding Fathers: 50 Independent States.

What it is: A return to base principles. Originally, the United States was conceived as just that, independent free States. The majority of decisions to be made were to be made at the state, and not the Federal level. Each state was to be free to make decisions. Texas could be Texas. California could be Venezuela. Vermont could be stoned. The free decisions of free States was allowed. The free movement of free peoples was likewise allowed. This is returning to that state.

What it takes: Leftist thought is built around the universal adoption of their principles. Individuals in society cannot be left to make decisions, so this is a hateful outcome to the Left. I recall discussing politics with a Leftist when I was younger. The Leftist thought I was on the Right. That, at least they could deal with. When I identified as a Libertarian®? The look of disgust was clear – the Left hated Libertarians™ more than they hated the Right. The Right was merely amused and not threatened by Libertarians©. Maybe it was the Star Wars® shirts and poorly trimmed beards?

That taught me one thing: the thing the Left hates the most is freedom. Liberty. In many ways the Left would rather lose a shooting war and be subjugated to the views of the Right than to be allowed to turn Seattle into the Siberia of the PacNorthwest.

The only way this can take place outside of warfare is a Second Constitutional Convention. I think that alone would lead to a shooting war from the Left and a complete revolt from all of the Leftist institutions shown above. But we can dream that the Second Constitutional Convention would turn out well. If we did it, oh, in the next year. The clock is ticking on this being a viable outcome. It’s probably time to do it now. As in, well, now. Conservatives (not the Right) seem to feel that everything is going to come out fine, so until the wolf is at the door, I don’t think they’ll move an inch.

The problem is that Conservatives (again, not the Right) seem to think that the Left likes the Constitution. Since the Left gained the institutions I’ve listed above, the Left doesn’t care about the Constitution – the Left cares about power. Pure, unadulterated, 18 year old with a 12 pack of Coors Light™ behind the wheel of a 1969 Camero® power.

Outcomes: In many ways this is the best outcome, but in my opinion the most unlikely. This is the only outcome where we can still have the full freedom of political discourse and the full Bill of Rights. I’d love to turn over freedom to choose to a California that can choke itself to death on Leftist feelgoodism while a Rightist Arizona can deny admission to every illegal and return them via a trebuchet if they want to.

Operation Fort Sumter: Going our separate ways.

What it is: Secession. Splitting up. It’s not you, it’s me Oregon. The problem is that unlike in 1860, the dividing lines aren’t so clear. Then there was a line which, if everyone agreed, would have been fine for a split. The North could be the North, the South could be the South. Oops. Now it would be a county by county fight.

What it takes: Just like a psycho ex-girlfriend, if the Right tried to succeed in Texas, the Left wouldn’t accept it, and would demand tanks on the banks of the Red River by morning, which would be hilarious because tanks don’t float. Unless the secession were overwhelming in number of states, numbers of the armed forces, and nearly immediate, I see only a small path to a peaceful secession. For secession to stick, the Left and Right would have to feel that conquering the other side was more costly than trying to forge a peace.

Outcomes: If secession happened and was maintained, the United States would be irrevocably broken, unless it was re-stitched by a Caesar sequentially conquering the Balkanized United States. Maybe Caesar Pugsley Wilder the First?

Operation Gulag in The Dakotas:

What it is: This is the darkest timeline not only for our nation but for our world. And, amazingly, the only timeline (outside of a Second Constitutional Convention) that we can vote ourselves into. It is the Leftist takeover of everything. Although it is sold as a Denmark, in reality Denmark is capitalist with stronger social institutions because Denmark is, well, Danish and I think they put mayo on their fries. In the United States it will look much more like the U.S.S.R. – but not the basketcase 1988 U.S.S.R., but more like the 1932 “starve to death millions of citizens that Stalin doesn’t like” (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) U.S.S.R.

What it takes: Nothing. We keep going as it is. In less than 20 years, we will be in complete tyranny. The erosion of rights we have seen won’t continue in a linear fashion. It will accelerate.

Outcomes: 1984.

Now we know the stakes."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

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“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

- Sun Tzu

Freely download "The Art of War", by Sun Tzu, here:

- https://sites.ualberta.ca/

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Freely download "Counterrevolution and Revolt," 

by Herbert Marcuse, here:

- https://monoskop.org/

"Fading Smile Of A Dying Empire", Excerpt

"Fading Smile Of A Dying Empire"

by Jim Quinn

“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”

 - Edward Gibbon

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay;

 the worst is death and death will have his day.” 

-  William Shakespeare, Richard II

Excerpt: "We moved to our corner of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania twenty-seven years ago. We raised our three boys here. We spent hundreds of hours on local baseball fields, in hockey rinks, in school gyms for basketball games, concerts, plays and donuts-with-dads. It’s still a nice place to live, with virtually no crime, decent roads, and reasonable property tax rates. But I would have to say there has been a degradation in the overall quality of life in my community, which is consistent with the downward spiral of our society in general. When we planted our roots in this community it was still more farm-like than suburban. Family farms and open space were more prevalent than housing tracts, strip malls, fast food joints and cookie cutter commercial buildings. A beautiful farmhouse a few miles from our home, freshly painted white, proudly displayed the iconic yellow smiley face. It symbolized good times.

We’ve been driving on this road for twenty-seven years on the way to baseball games, hockey practices, the car dealer for service, and lately to our gym, as we try to fend off father time. Driving by that barn in the early days would always brighten your day. A bright yellow smiley face against a white background represented a positive, happy view of the world.

We moved to this area in 1995 while Clinton was president, unemployment was 5.6%, CPI was 2.8%, GDP growth was 2.7%, the annual deficit was $164 billion, the national debt was $4.9 trillion, the Fed balance sheet was $500 billion, the U.S. population was 263 million, total household debt was $4 trillion, you earned 5.5% on your money market fund, the U.S. bailed out Mexico, the Oklahoma City bombing happened, and OJ Simpson was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife. The military industrial complex was being starved by lack of wars and the stock market soared by 33% as the beginning of irrational exuberance began under the reign of Greenspan and his Put.

A lot has happened over the last twenty-seven years and the faded, barely visible smiley face, on a now mold ridden decaying barn, is truly representative of a society, culture and economic system dying a slow torturous death, as apathy, technological distraction, myopic indolence, and the greed of powerful elites combine to ensure the eventual collapse of the short-lived American Empire. Much of this quarter century of decline is borne out in the change in economic numbers noted above.

The unemployment rate is reported as 3.5% today with 158 million out of 264 million working age adults employed. That leaves 106 million not employed, or 40% of working age adults not working. Back in 1995, 125 million out of 199 million working age adults were employed, leaving 74 million not working. Over a quarter century we’ve added 65 million people to our population, but only 33 million to the employment rolls. Either we’ve devolved into a nation of freeloaders on welfare/disability, or the BLS is lying about the 3.5% unemployment rate, or both.

The BLS currently tries to convince the ignorant masses inflation is only 8.5%, up tremendously from the 2.8% in 1995. Since the Fed/Wall Street induced financial crash of 2008, the government had been reporting inflation of between 0% to 3%, when in reality, as measured the way it was measured in 1980, it had been between 7% to 10%. Today’s actual inflation rate is 17% in case you were wondering. Revealing the true cost of living to the peasants might induce a revolting outcome for our overlords. The government prefers to treat the math challenged masses like mushrooms, by keeping them in the dark."

View this complete, most highly recommended, article here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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Highly informative Comments here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"The Rise of Alternatives as the US-Led Global Order Falters"

"The Rise of Alternatives as the US-Led Global Order Falters"

by International Man

"International Man: Since the invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen the US and its European allies institute unprecedented sanctions on Russia. In a bold move, the US government also froze the US dollar reserves of the Russian central bank. In response, Russia demanded payment in rubles in exchange for its energy. What’s your take on this new phase of economic warfare?

Doug Casey: It’s a massively stupid and destructive move on the part of the US. There’s no upside to what the US is doing in fighting this economic war against Russia - or, for that matter, in backing the Zelensky regime in the Ukraine - but huge downside from every point of view.

Essentially the US and Western powers have confiscated hundreds of billions of dollars of assets from the Russian government, as well as individual Russians. It’s theft, pure and simple. It acts as a warning shot to everybody in the world: Your assets are not safe in Western countries. It’s a reason to get out of the US dollar and use something else.

It’s backfired on the US. It’s helping devastate Western economies by cutting off the flow of Russian oil, and especially natural gas, to Europe. Further, the Russians now demand payment in rubles. The ruble is now a much stronger currency because, in order to pay the Russians, the world has to buy rubles. The Russians have taken a page from the US playbook. Decades ago, the Saudis said they would only accept US dollars in payment for oil. And so, people had to buy dollars if they wanted Saudi oil.

The US is acting to destroy confidence in its currency, as well as the stability and perceived honesty of the dollar-based system. That’s extremely dangerous for a currency that rests on nothing but confidence. Something like this can cause confidence to blow away like a pile of feathers in a hurricane. The issuer of the dollar, the bankrupt US Government (or its facilitator, the Fed), will give you nothing specific in exchange for them. But they can issue unlimited numbers of them. The dollar has been an IOU nothing for many years. But the charade is approaching an end. The US Government is now like a poker player “on tilt.”

International Man: Recently, Vladimir Putin traveled to Iran. As a result, Iran’s National Oil Company announced a $40 billion energy deal with Russia’s Gazprom. It’s safe to say they won’t be using the US dollar in their transactions. What does this mean for future geopolitical alliances and economic dealings that undermine US dominance?

Doug Casey: The US is in serious decline - financially, economically, and sociologically - and the world knows it. Only a fool wants to hold the unsecured liability of a bankrupt government, especially one that’s so arrogant as to believe it can confiscate assets arbitrarily.

The major export of the US now, as it’s been for the last 40 years, is US dollars. We don’t really produce that much anymore. We ship people dollars. In return, they ship us vast amounts of material goods. Ships arrive in US ports full of products; they “dead head” on the return trip, mostly empty. The US has transformed itself from a nation of producers and creditors into a nation of consumers and debtors.

Our major export is dollars, not wheat and Boeings. Meanwhile, the US government is creating more dollars by the trillions in order to prop up the domestic economy. This is going to end very badly for the dollar’s use in international transactions.

Even though domestic prices are rising at something like 15%, the dollar has been quite strong in recent months against other currencies. The reason for that paradox is debt. Almost all of the world’s debt is denominated in dollars. And in order to service those debts, especially with interest rates now headed up, people need dollars. So there’s been a scramble for dollars to service all the debt. It’s really rather perverse.

International Man: Russia and China recently announced their interest in developing a new reserve currency with other BRICS countries. What would this mean if there was a serious rival to the US-led system?

Doug Casey: It’s been in the cards for years. Countries that are our adversaries - like Russia and China - use the US dollar to trade between each other. Why? It’s quite strange, since those hot potato dollars all have to clear through New York. The reason is that the Russians don’t really trust the Chinese yuan, and the Chinese don’t trust the Russian ruble. They’re both fiat currencies, of little value outside the borders of the countries that issued them. It’s the same with the Indians, the Iranians, the Brazilians, the South Africans, and everybody else -they can’t use each other’s currencies. They’ve basically used dollars since the end of WW2.

All of the world’s currencies - every single one - are “fiat” units, essentially political footballs, whose numbers and values can fluctuate radically and randomly. The dollar is just the biggest and best of the bunch. It won’t be replaced easily, because the whole world has gotten so used to using it. Nobody wants to use a unit controlled by Washington, but what’s the realistic alternative? Flakey Third World governments run by sociopaths are incapable of putting together a new super fiat currency - that just adds another layer of risk and complexity. They can all see that even the euro, an artificial Esperanto currency, is on the edge of imploding. None of these governments have the same interests, and they certainly don’t trust each other.

What’s going to happen? They’ll default to gold for settling accounts among each other. I’m not saying they’ll allow their subjects to save in and trade in gold - that’s most unlikely. But I think it’s inevitable for settlements between governments. The only alternative is barter - ”I’ll trade you a thousand tonnes of cocoa for two used tanks, 500 cows, and 100 tonnes of wool.” A flea market transaction that’s not very likely in a complicated industrial world… That’s why money was invented.

The world is going back to gold. Not because any government or economist wants to - rather just the opposite. But it’s not likely to happen except at much higher prices of gold unless there’s a credit collapse and scores of trillions of dollars of stocks, bonds, bank deposits, and other debt are wiped out. On the bright side, the approximately 6 billion ounces of gold that now exist will still be here.

Current events are leading to the end of the US dollar system. And when the US dollar is not needed or wanted for international trade, everybody will dump it. All those dollars will flood back to the US, where they must be accepted by law. Nobody’s going to want them abroad. Or not much more than they desire the Indian rupee, the Colombian peso, or the Ukrainian hryvnia. They’re going to come back to the US to buy US real estate, US shares, and US businesses.

All those dollars that we’ve been exporting for decades have held down domestic inflation because they’ve been floating around abroad, driving up foreigner’s prices. They’ll come back to the US. Domestic prices will skyrocket upwards at the same time the dollar collapses, and the title to US assets are transferred to foreign citizens.

All those dollars being exported for decades resulted in an artificially high standard of living for Americans. When they come back - and they will come back as the world stops choosing dollars - the standard of living in the US will drop substantially.

International Man: The US dollar, the euro, the Russian ruble, the Chinese yuan, and the rest of them are all fiat currencies. That being said, what advantages do countries with valuable commodities have over others as all fiat currencies continue to lose value?

Doug Casey: It’s great to have valuable commodities, but you can’t use oil for money. If that’s all there was to it, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, and Kazakhstan would be among the world’s richest countries. The same is true for every other country with valuable commodities. In fact, the countries with the most mineral wealth tend to be the poorest and most unstable. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Money is not wealth in itself. But it represents wealth. It represents an excess of production over consumption. A good money has got to have certain characteristics. It has to be durable; that’s why we don’t use wheat as money. It has to be divisible; that’s why you don’t use artwork as money. It has to be convenient; that’s why you don’t use lead as money. It has to be consistent; that’s why you can’t use real estate as money. And it has to have some type of use value in itself; that’s why you can’t use paper as money.

That’s why the world is going to go back to gold. There’s a case that can be made for silver and a case that can be made for Bitcoin. And that’s about it. We’ll see how things sort out in the chaotic world we’re facing. And here is a statement to shock the average reader: Government should have no involvement with money. Money - like banking, interest rates, the markets, and the economy - should be totally divorced from politics. That’s why gold, not paper, is real money.

Where is the price of gold going? Relative to bushels of wheat, or pounds of coffee, or pounds of copper, my guess is that it’s about right at the moment. In fact, I’ve been saying for several years that gold is reasonably priced, at an equilibrium, relative to dollars. It’s not at giveaway levels like it was in 1971 at $35 or in 2001 at $260.

If the dollar is going to survive, it should be redeemable with a fixed amount of gold. They say the US owns 265 million ounces of gold. But how many dollars are there? Like the dollar itself, that number is something of a floating abstraction. Guesses vary. Especially because there are many definitions of what money is - not to mention near-money and credit. Numbers are bounced around from $6 trillion to $80 trillion. The number is probably academic and possibly unknowable.

Divide 265 million into any of the figures “economists” conjure, and you come up with a very large number. Just to finance a typical approximate annual US trade deficit of about $500 billion, the entire gold horde would immediately disappear even if gold were priced at $2,000. Maybe the price of gold should be $20,000 or more.

So what’s going to happen? I think the answer is chaos. The world’s going back to gold because we’re headed for a chaotic financial situation, and gold is the only financial asset that’s not simultaneously somebody else’s liability. And it’s an understatement to say none of these governments trust each other or each other’s paper currencies.

International Man: How do you see the world’s geopolitical chessboard changing in the coming years? What are the investment implications?

Doug Casey: If you look at various times in history - the world’s map changed tremendously from, say, 1910, when everything was mellow and prosperous, to 1920, when most everything was unrecognizable. The world looked one way in 1940 and totally different in 1950. My guess is that the world of 2020, which has already changed immensely, will be hugely different by 2030, 8 years from now.

Beyond 2030 we’re looking at a science fiction reality. There’s a good chance we’ll have something like a civil war in the US. And/or serious secession movements. It’s even more likely that Canada will break up. The same thing is going to happen to Mexico and Brazil. All of Africa will restructure. Many European countries are likely to break up - Spain and areas of France. Italy only became a country 170 years ago. Germany only unified 150 years ago. Russia is likely to break up into smaller ethnic countries for sure.

Like it or not, people will migrate from Africa and the Middle East to Europe by the scores of millions. Millions of Chinese will migrate from China to Africa, and the Africans won’t much like it. People from everywhere, not just Latin America, will flow into the US and Canada. The colors of the map on the wall are going to be running in the years to come. That’s going to have profound social implications. Among them, a lot of currencies are going to dry up and blow away. It’s going to start happening in this decade. So buckle up."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"What Will You Say When Millions Of People Starve To Death?"

Full screen recommended.

"What Will You Say When Millions Of People Starve To Death?"

by Epic Economist

"What are you going to do when millions of people start to get victimized by starvation? Are you prepared to see famines emerging all across the globe? The skeptics that claimed that we would find a way to muddle through the global food crisis somehow are just realizing that this is a much bigger problem we all imagined. Unpredictable extreme weather events are having an enormous impact on this year’s food production. In 2023, there won’t be enough food supplies for everyone on the planet, which means that hunger crises, shortages, and food insecurity will hit large parts of the global population, and bring about unprecedented pain and despair to countless families around the world. And those issues are not exclusive to poorer nations. In today’s video, we’re going to expose that some of the same disasters that collapsed agricultural production in developing countries are also happening in the United States right now.

While Americans worry about empty shelves, the World Health Organization is warning that millions of people in East Africa are under threat of starvation as drought, climate change, rising prices and an ongoing civil conflict in northern Ethiopia are all contributing to worsening food insecurity. In Somalia, authorities are projecting that vegetable and grain production will decline by about 80% this year due to the abnormally dry weather. “This meteorological drought has resulted in a loss of soil moisture, caused waterways to dry up, and led to the death of millions of livestock,” UN researchers noted. “Forecasts suggest that the September to December rainy season could also fail. This would set the stage for an unprecedented five-season drought.”

Even though authorities here in the U.S. don’t seem all too concerned about what going on in Africa right now, they probably should because conditions are starting to change here too. And American farmers and ranchers are also coping with the worst drought in the millennium, dwindling water supplies, inflation, and the liquidation of beef cow herds. Sizzling temperatures are forcing ranchers to make an agonizing decision: Sell their cattle early for less money than they planned on or hold on to their herds, pray for rain and risk losing everything.

At this point, the rate at which cattle are being sold in the U.S. is simply unprecedented. According to The Hill, over the past couple of weeks, the national cattle sale rate jumped to 120 percent above 2021 levels, an average that conceals even higher frenzies of sales in some markets. Unless rain comes along, farmers will have to continue to abandon or destroy their crops in the months ahead.

In California, the situation is creating a tomato shortage, with farmers abandoning fields as crops turn to dust amid a water crisis. The news came as Idaho farmers revealed that the next food insecurity problem that may impact Americans’ eating habits could be an emerging potato shortage. "We desperately need rain and are getting to a point where we don't have inventory left to keep fulfilling the market demand," Mike Montna, head of the California Tomato Growers Association, told Bloomberg.

Of course, these issues are just the tip of the iceberg. All around the planet, agricultural production is going to be way down this year, and we will be facing the repercussions of that decline in 2023. We really are in the cusp of a devastating global crisis right, and the coming months are going to be filled with despair."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"Used Cars Pile Up At Carmax, RV Lots Full Of Inventory; Huge Credit Losses Coming; Fast Food Danger"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 8/21/22:

"Used Cars Pile Up At Carmax, RV Lots Full Of Inventory;

 Huge Credit Losses Coming; Fast Food Danger"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alexander Bidenton’s Standing IRS Army"

"Alexander Bidenton’s Standing IRS Army"

by Thomas DiLorenzo

"The Biden administration’s “Inflation Reduction Act” will increase inflation with hundreds of billions in additional government spending and money creation by the Fed while making supply chain problems even worse with onerous new corporate taxes, especially on energy, and myriad new “Green New Deal” environmental regulations. Increased government spending and reduced production will cause higher prices, not lower.

To collect all the new taxes for this latest election-year spending binge the administration is proposing to spend some $80 billion to more than double the number of IRS agents, hiring 87,000 new ones, 70,000 of which are reported to be armed. The Democrat party wants a standing army of armed tax collectors to enforce its will.

Americans once fought a revolution over such acts of tyranny. Among the abuses by King George III listed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence were that he “sent hither Swarms of Officers [i.e., armed tax collectors/enforcers] to harass our people, and eat out their substance” and “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, standing armies . . .” That is how King George III collected the notorious stamp tax. He sent armed soldiers into the homes of the colonists to demand that they prove they had paid the stamp taxes on all of their documents, a stamp being essentially the receipt for taxes paid. And that was just for the stamp tax. They also confiscated firearms and deprived the colonists of civil liberties. It is little wonder that the founding fathers adamantly opposed a standing army in peacetime, only allowing for two years of funding for the army in the original Constitution. “A standing army is one of the greatest mischiefs that can possibly happen,” declared James Madison. It is “the bane of liberty,” said Elbridge Gerry. History proves that standing armies have caused “havoc, desolation, and destruction” wrote George Mason.

Jefferson’s nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, may have been a war hero but after the war, as America’s first treasury secretary, he tried to resurrect an American version of King George’s standing army of tax collectors. In the early 1790s Western Pennsylvania farmers protested the first federal tax on a commodity, a distilled spirits tax known as the whiskey tax. The farmers distilled much of their grain into alcohol and even used whiskey as a medium of exchange. They felt discriminated against since there was no similar tax on tobacco, rice, etc. and so they refused to collect and pay the tax, even tarring and feathering federal tax collectors when they showed up.

Since the whiskey tax was his idea, Hamilton talked President George Washington into getting the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to provide some 13,000 conscripts to ride into Western Pennsylvania to enforce the whiskey tax. A large standing army of tax collectors, in other words, larger than the army that defeated the British at Yorktown. George Washington himself led the army of tax collectors into Western Pennsylvania but the protesters had all but vanished when they got there. About twenty of the leaders of the tax rebellion - some of whom were elderly Revolutionary War veterans - were rounded up and “run through the snow in chains,” wrote William Hogeland in The Whiskey Rebellion. Washington apparently got bored by the whole affair and went home, leaving Hamilton in charge.

Hamilton ordered local judges to render guilty verdicts against all the men who were eventually imprisoned and, if Hamilton had his way, would have been hanged. Only two out of twenty were convicted, however, and President Washington pardoned them both, putting an end to America’s first British-style imposition of a standing army of armed tax collectors. (James Madison mocked Hamilton’s agenda of “the glories of a United States woven together by a system of tax collectors”). Most American historians - or should I say “court historians” -celebrate the whiskey tax saga, claiming that it proved for the first time that the young American state was willing to use violence to collect taxes.

With the election of Thomas Jefferson as president and the destruction of Hamilton’s Federalist Party the idea of an army of armed tax collectors was forgotten in America for more than the next half century until it was resurrected by Abraham Lincoln. One of the last official acts of Lincoln’s predecessor, President James Buchanan, was to sign into law the Morrill Tariff, which more than doubled the average tariff rate on imports at a time when more than 90 percent of all federal tax revenue came from tariffs. Knowing that South Carolina had nearly seceded thirty years earlier over the “Tariff of Abominations” which also more than doubled the average tariff rate, Lincoln threw down the gauntlet two days later in his inaugural address. He promised “invasion” and “bloodshed” (his exact words) to the citizens of any state who by seceding refused to collect the newly-doubled federal tax and send all of the money to Washington, D.C. 

Just a few weeks earlier he told a Pittsburgh audience that nothing was more important than raising the tariff rates. He kept his promise in a war that killed one fourth of the entire adult male population of the Southern states and maimed more than double that amount, physically and psychologically. The latest research suggests that the total death toll might have been as high as 850,000 which is itself probably an underestimate. As Edgar Lee Masters, author of "Lincoln the Man" wrote, Lincoln was the “political son” of Alexander Hamilton, and never more so than when he sent a standing army of tax collectors into the Southern states. His party continued to plunder the South with extortionate property taxes and massive confiscation of land (when impoverished southerners could not afford to pay the taxes) for a dozen more years during “reconstruction” which mostly reconstructed the bank accounts of Republican party ruling class elitists. The South was ruled by a Republican party military dictatorship during that time, with such characters as political huckster Henry Clay Warmouth spending a couple of years as the non-elected Louisiana governor and retiring with some $8 million in his bank account.

The federal internal revenue bureaucracy was created during the Lincoln regime. Since it exhibited such brutality during the war there was no longer a need for armed tax collectors. Everyone knew that Hamilton’s dream had come true - Americans knew that the state would stop at nothing - nothing - to collect its tax revenues. Perhaps that is why there is a gigantic statue of Hamilton in front of the Treasury/IRS building in Washington, D.C.. After the 1913 adoption of the income tax the IRS did create a criminal division with armed agents, but no standing army of thousands of armed tax collectors.

Until today, that is, with the Biden administration’s arming of tens of thousands of IRS agents with millions of dollars of guns and ammo, under the guise of an “inflation reduction” bill. The Biden administration is apparently hellbent on cementing into place Hamilton’s dream, as James Madison described it, of a United States woven together by a system of tax collectors.

Moreover, it is entirely possible that this “army” will also be used to try to implement a “kill shot” to the First Amendment by threatening audits, fines, and other punishments of ordinary, working-class Americans who dare to publicly criticize the Democrat party. A couple of widely-publicized imprisonments can intimidate millions.

Federal tax evasion is a felony, and felons cannot legally own firearms, nor can they vote in at least a dozen states. Biden’s standing army of tax collectors can therefore, in theory, kill three or four “deplorable birds” with one stone, so to speak. One wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and James Madison think of this? And what would they do about it?"

- https://www.lewrockwell.com/

Musical Interlude: Yanni, “One Man’s Dream”

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, “One Man’s Dream” ("Live At The Acropolis", 1993)

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon. 

Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html

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"The eternal silence of infinite spaces frightens me. Why now rather than then? Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time have been ascribed to me? We travel in a vast sphere, always drifting in the uncertain, pulled from one side to another. Whenever we find a fixed point to attach and to fasten ourselves, it shifts and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desires to find solid ground and an ultimate and solid foundation for building a tower reaching to the Infinite. But always these bases crack, and the earth obstinately opens up into abysses. We are infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, since the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from us in an encapsulated secret; we are equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which we were made, and the Infinite in which we are swallowed up."

- Blaise Pascal

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"All the Contents of the Universe, in One Graphic"

"The Story Behind the Iconic Photo of the Man Who Defied Hitler And the Nazis by Refusing to Salute"

"The Story Behind the Iconic Photo of the Man 

Who Defied Hitler And the Nazis by Refusing to Salute"

by Jay Syrmopoulos

"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency ask the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But, conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."  - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"In what can only be described as one of the most iconic photos of World War II, a lone man, August Landmesser, is seen refusing to be caught up in the nationalistic Nazi fervor, as he stands with his arms crossed, stone faced, as the rest of the crowd engages in the mandatory “seig heil” salute. The salute, meaning hail victory, was an exhibition of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, and was mandatory for all German citizens.

The photo was taken in Hamburg, Germany on June 13, 1936 at the launch of a naval training vessel. Landmesser can be seen as the lone man pictured refusing to demonstrate his loyalty by saluting. Although the photo itself has become an internet sensation, as it represents those very few people who are willing to think outside of the box into which they have been indoctrinated, few people are aware of the story behind the iconic picture.

Landmesser joined the ranks of the Nazi party in 1931 with anticipation of it creating employment opportunities for him, as the climate in Germany was such that if one wanted to find gainful employment being a party member could be very advantageous. Eventually he was expelled from the party in 1935, after becoming engaged to a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler. The couple was engaged to marry, but enactment of the Nuremberg Laws would prevent that from taking place. The couple’s first daughter was born on October 29, 1935. This series of events fully explains the lack of respect shown by Landmesser, to the Nazi regime, as displayed by his refusal to salute in the iconic photo. But what happened after the picture was taken?

With Eckler pregnant again, the couple decided to flee Nazi Germany for Denmark in 1937, but were caught by the Nazis. Landmesser was subsequently charged with”dishonoring the race” under Nazi race laws. The couple claimed that neither of them were aware that Eckler was fully Jewish, with the couple being acquitted for lack of evidence, but with a warning that any subsequent violations would result in prison time. Even under threat of prison Landmesser and Eckler’s love reigned supreme, with the couple publicly continuing their relationship.

In July of 1938, Landmesser was arrested again, this time being sentenced to two and a half years in the Börgermoor concentration camp. Eckler was taken by the Gestapo to Fuhlsbüttel prison, where she gave birth to her and Landmesser’s second child. Eckler was sent to numerous different concentration camps, with a few letters being received from Irma Eckler until roughly January 1942. It’s believed that she was taken to the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the more than 14,000 killed. Landmesser was released from custody in January 1941, working as a foreman. He was eventually drafted into a penal battalion in February of 1944 and was reportedly killed while fighting in Croatia in October of that year."

- http://thefreethoughtproject.com/

"Animals"

"Animals"

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they
are so placid and self contain’d;
I stand and look at them long and long,
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied — not one is demented with
the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that
lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth."

- Walt Whitman

"17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"

"17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"

by Jerry Clark

“I remember several years back I heard something that changed my life forever. Up until that point I had been struggling through life – doing everything the hard way. I couldn’t figure out why my life wasn’t going the way I felt it should be. I saw some people going through life effortlessly and seemingly with less tension and frustration while I was wondering if I could ever straighten out the mess my life had turned out to be. I was behind on my dreams, my promises, and my bills. Then one day I was listening to a tape and the lady was talking about the power of having dreams and goals and all of the other stuff that those motivational speakers talk about. By that point I had listened to hundreds of such tapes, but it seemed as if nothing worked for me.

Probably the only reason I was listening to that one was because I had developed a habit of listening to cassette tapes while driving my car. The statement the lady said was simple and I think I had even heard it somewhere before but this time a light bulb went on in my head. I remember stopping the tape and rewinding it over and over again to hear the 17 words she said. I couldn’t believe it was so basic and simple. I was looking for something sophisticated and complicated. I thought I had to attend a $10,000 seminar. I didn’t know I could find it on a $10 tape program.

I’m taking the time to tell you all of this preliminary information because when I tell you the 17 words, I really want you to get it and get it NOW! Because if you get it NOW, your life will never be the same. You will be using the same principle that all who have became wealthy before you have used. Even those who became wealthy and can’t tell you how they did use this same principle without even being aware of what they are doing. Well, are you ready for the 17 words that made a powerful and positive impact on my life and on the life of tens of thousands of individuals who have achieved unimaginable success? Of course you are… Well, here they are…

For things to change, 

you must get a picture of what you want them to change to. 

Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds and as easy as it seems… Don’t try to make it any complicated than this because it will only frustrate you.

You must know exactly what you want and the more specific and clear you can get, the better. This is important because Human Beings are Teleological in nature… In other words, we move towards the pictures we constantly hold in our minds. Let me give you an example… Suppose you went to the store and bought a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle but it didn’t have a picture on the box of what the end result should look like.

Would you have a much harder time putting the picture together? Of course. You may eventually figure it out; however, the person who has a clear picture of what the end result should look like will be more than 100 times ahead of you. The question is are they 100 times ahead of you because their IQ is 100 times greater? Is it because they are 100 times better looking than you? Maybe it’s because they live 100 times closer to the person who created the puzzle? Ohh, I know – they were one of the first students to take the Evelyn Woods mind-expanding speed-reading and comprehension course right? If none of this is true then what is?

Yes, the person who had the clear and specific picture of what the outcome was supposed to be was simply operating in accordance to how our brain works. It moves towards the pictures we hold in our mind. It’s interesting because once you know exactly what it is you are moving towards, you seem to automatically know the steps to take or the necessary steps will soon become noticeable.

Your brain's subconscious mind, operating similar to a magnet, will start to attract in your direction the conditions, people, and circumstances that will help you move closer to the mental picture you maintain in your mind and it will repel all of those things that do not correlate to the picture you have in your mind. Therefore, the people who are clear and specific about what they want are using the powers of the Universe to assist them. This is, indeed, an awesome power. A person who knows how and uses this awesome power of the Universe to his or her advantage is a person who is working smart. A person who struggles every day trying to move closer to the success that they have no idea how it’s supposed to look is a person who is working hard.

Based on your observations over the years, do you think that most people are working hard or working smart? People who just work hard day in and day out without a clear picture of what they are moving towards are about as exciting as a tulip. Even though they may seem to be willing to work hard and put in the hours, they don’t seem to have much life in them. And people want to follow people who seem to have some life in them. If they want to find people who don’t seem to have much life in them, all they have to do is go to their job. People will follow people who look like they know where they are going and look like they are excited about the journey.

You must understand that your strength comes from knowing what you want. This will ignite the fire inside of you and enable you to borrow from the promise of the future so you can engage in the activities today that will move you closer and closer to what you want. It will enable you to go through the trials and tribulations that may be necessary so you can arrive at your destination. But remember the journey will be more important than the destination because in the journey you will become the person you require to become to finally arrive at your destination. So when you reach your destination, look at the person you have become and set a new destination so you can continue to grow and develop.

Whatever you do, just always remember that for things to change, you must get a picture of what you want them to change to. These are the "17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"… why not allow them to change yours too?”

- http://prorev.com

"How the Brain Stops Time"

"How the Brain Stops Time"

by Jeff Wise

"One of the strangest side-effects of intense fear is time dilation, the apparent slowing-down of time. It's a common trope in movies and TV shows, like the memorable scene from "The Matrix" in which time slows down so dramatically that bullets fired at the hero seem to move at a walking pace. In real life, our perceptions aren't keyed up quite that dramatically, but survivors of life-and-death situations often report that things seem to take longer to happen, objects fall more slowly, and they're capable of complex thoughts in what would normally be the blink of an eye.

Now a research team from Israel reports that not only does time slow down, but that it slows down more for some than for others. Anxious people, they found, experience greater time dilation in response to the same threat stimuli. An intriguing result, and one that raises a more fundamental question: how, exactly, does the brain carry out this remarkable feat?

Researcher David Eagleman has tackled his very issue in a very clever way. He reasoned that when time seems to slow down in real life, our senses and cognition must somehow speed up-either that, or time dilation is merely an illusion. This is the riddle he set out to solve. "Does the experience of slow motion really happen," Eagleman says, "or does it only seem to have happened in retrospect?" To find out, he first needed a way to generate fear of sufficient intensity in his experimental subjects. Instead of skydiving, he found a thrill ride near the university campus called Suspended Catch Air Device, an open-air tower from which participants are dropped, upside down, into a net 150 feet below. There are no harnesses, no safety lines. Subject plummet in free fall for three seconds, then hit the net at 70 miles per hour.

Was it scary enough to generate a sense of time dilation? To see, Eagleman asked subjects who'd already taken the plunge to estimate how long it took them to fall, using a stopwatch to tick off what they felt to be an equivalent amount of time. Then he asked them to watch someone else fall and then estimate the elapsed time for their plunge in the same way. On average, participants felt that their own experience had taken 36 percent longer. Time dilation was in effect.

Next, Eagleman outfitted his test subjects with a special device that he and his students had constructed. They called it the perceptual chronometer. It's a simple numeric display that straps to a user's wrist, with a knob on the side let the researchers adjust the rate at which the numbers flash. The idea was to dial up the speed of the flashing until it was just a bit too quick for the subject to read while looking at it in a non-stressed mental state. Eagleman reasoned that, if fear really does speed up our rate of perception, then once his subjects were in the terror of freefall, they should be able to make out the numbers on the display. As it turned out, they couldn't. That means that fear does not actually speed up our rate of perception or mental processing. Instead, it allows us to remember what we do experience in greater detail. Since our perception of time is based on the number of things we remember, fearful experiences thus seem to unfold more slowly.

Eagleman's findings are important not just for understanding the experience of fear, but for the very nature of consciousness. After all, the test subjects who fell from the SCAD tower certainly believed, as they accelerated through freefall, that they knew what the experience was like at that very moment. They thought that it seemed to be moving slowly. Yet Eaglemen's findings suggest that that sensation could only have been superimposed after the fact. The implication is that we don't really have a direct experience of what we're feeling ‘right now,' but only a memory - an unreliable memory - of what we thought it felt like some seconds or milliseconds ago. The vivid present tense we all think we inhabit might itself be a retroactive illusion."

- http://www.psychologytoday.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Wimberley, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Addicted! Internet Dependency Alters the Human Brain"

"Addicted! Internet Dependency Alters the Human Brain" 

by Jeremy Laurance

"Internet addiction has for the first time been linked with changes in the brain similar to those seen in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. In a groundbreaking study, researchers used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains of adolescents who spent many hours on the internet, to the detriment of their social and personal lives. The finding could throw light on other behavioral problems and lead to the development of new approaches to treatment, researchers said. An estimated 5 to 10 per cent of internet users are thought to be addicted - meaning they are unable to control their use. The majority are games players who become so absorbed in the activity they go without food or drink for long periods and their education, work and relationships suffer.

Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, who runs Britain's only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, said: "The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers - people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game."

Although most of the population was spending longer online, that was not evidence of addiction, she said. "It is different. We are doing it because modern life requires us to link up over the net in regard to jobs, professional and social connections - but not in an obsessive way. When someone comes to you and says they did not sleep last night because they spent 14 hours playing games, and it was the same the previous night, and they tried to stop but they couldn't - you know they have a problem. It does tend to be the gaming that catches people out."

Researchers in China scanned the brains of 17 adolescents diagnosed with "internet addiction disorder" who had been referred to the Shanghai Mental Health Centre, and compared the results with scans from 16 of their peers. The results showed impairment of white matter fibres in the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision making and cognitive control. Similar changes to the white matter have been observed in other forms of addiction to substances such as alcohol and cocaine. "The findings suggest that white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target in internet addiction disorder," they say in the online journal Public Library of Science One. The authors acknowledge that they cannot tell whether the brain changes are the cause or the consequence of the internet addiction. It could be that young people with the brain changes observed are more prone to becoming addicted.

Professor Michael Farrell, director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia, said: "The limitations [of this study] are that it is not controlled, and it's possible that illicit drugs, alcohol or other caffeine-based stimulants might account for the changes. The specificity of 'internet addiction disorder' is also questionable."

Case studies: Caught in the web:

Xbox addict killed by blood clot after 12-hour sessions: Chris Staniforth, 20, died of a blood clot after spending up to 12 hours at a time playing on his Xbox. Despite having no history of ill health, he developed deep vein thrombosis - commonly associated with long-haul flight passengers. Mr Staniforth, from Sheffield, had been offered a place to study game design at the University of Leicester. But he collapsed while telling a friend he'd been having pains in his chest.

Toddler starved to death while mother played online: A mother was jailed for 25 years after her daughter starved to death while she played an online game for hours at a time. Rebecca Colleen Christie, 28, from New Mexico in the US, played the fantasy game World of Warcraft while her three-year-old daughter, Brandi, starved. The toddler weighed just 23lbs when she was finally rushed to hospital after her mother found her limp and unconscious.

Woman jailed after gamble fails to pay off: A woman who stole £76,000 from a company to fund her internet gambling addiction was jailed this week. Lucienne Mainey, 41, from Cambridgeshire, was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Ipswich Crown Court after admitting fraud. The court heard she secretly paid herself by changing old invoices. Mainey turned to internet bingo following the breakdown of her marriage."

- http://www.sott.net/

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Wow, scared me for a second there... "internet addiction", oh my, that does sound scary. So happy I'm not addicted, nothing wrong with spending all kinds of hours reading and posting articles on a blog, right? All kinds of hours... hmm, a lot of hours, way too many actually. Oh no! lol - CP

"Sometime In Your Life..."

"Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even."

- Daniel Berrigan

"What's in a Number?"

"What's in a Number?"

by Joel Bowman

"It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it."

~ George W. Bush

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "And there you have it, dear reader. The experts have convened. A consensus was reached. The results, after much commotion, conjecture and confusion, are finally in. The economy either is, or is not, in a recession. There. We said it.

Yes, yes... we know. You’re not supposed to use the “R-word.” This is 2022, after all. It’s considered impolite. Politically incorrect. Triggering to the emotionally ill-equipped. Racist (probably). A word of its time and all that... on par with “woman” and “fat” and “homeless.” (“Uh, you mean ‘body positive menstruator currently experiencing houselessness,’ thank you very much!”)

Indeed, so dangerous is the “business cycle contraction which shall not be named,” a recent New York Times columnist even suggested so much as thinking we were in a recession prolonged economic downturn could, in fact, lead us into one. From the Old Gray Lady/Senior, Silver-haired Newspaper Identifying as a Female (she/her): "What people expect can soon end up happening, and right now, with worsening data, many people’s expectations have come together to expect a recession. And those expectations could very well lead to one."

It’s the vibes, you see. Reality is merely a state of mind, dear reader, an inconvenient social construct. It’s our attitudes that manifest our destiny, mmm-kay. If only we could all just think prosperous, multi-millionaire thoughts, beaming our positive cosmic feelz into the great collective consciousness, we’d be fine. Or... not.

That the article in question was actually titled “The Vibes in the Economy Are … Weird. Really Weird.” just goes to show how utterly impeded obstructed hampered... oh fine, we’ll just go ahead and say it, retarded public discourse on the subject has become.

Linguistic Contortionism: Of course, adults living in the real world know a recession when they see one, regardless of what their self-serving, fact-“checking”, language-mutilating, insider-trading, money-printing overlords choose to call it. And they know exactly what it feels like, too. It’s pain at the pump. It’s hard decisions at the grocery store and overdue bills in the mailbox. It’s family vacations to Paris... Texas, Athens... Georgia, and Geneva... Illinois. It’s that stomach-churning moment when choosing between wants and needs transitions to choosing between needs and going without.

For the past seven-plus decades, going all the way back to the year Perry Como sang “Some Enchanted Everything” (1949), a recession meant two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. At least, that’s according to the wonks at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who used their official R-Word stamp every single time – all ten of them – the economy logged two consecutive negative quarters... that is, right up until this unique and altogether special year.

We first addressed this a couple of weeks back, in a column titled: What’s in a Word? (Trigger warning: The R-word is used, and liberally.) And so today, we sidestep the semantic sphere for a spell and examine instead the even darker, murkier realm of numbers. As if linguistic contortionism was not enough for poor Homo Credulus to contend with, he must also anticipate a barrage of lies, damned lies and governmental statistics emanating from the numerical domain, too!

Which brings us to that oft-used but seldom examined academic concoction known as gross domestic product (GDP)...

According to our trusty Encyclopedia Britannica, gross domestic product (GDP) is defined as the “total market value of the goods and services produced by a country’s economy during a specified period of time.” Ordinarily, we hear GDP expressed as a percentage, that is, a rate of growth, either positive or negative. Ask any man on the street and he will quote the latest figure to back up his bullish or bearish sentiment (see “vibes,” above), to help him decide whether to buy or sell, to take a holiday or look for a second job.

The feds, meanwhile, cite the very same figure to help justify their own course of action; whether the economy needs to be “stimulated” or “cooled;” whether to slash or hike rates; to “inflate or die.”

A lot rides on this magic number, in other words, even as it’s predicted, prognosticated, conjectured, aggregated, tortured, averaged, announced, revised and re-revised ad nauseum each and every quarter. Even so, most people tend to think of GDP as some kind of definitive reading, spat out of a complex, high-powered machine, which testifies reliably, irrefutable, quantitatively as to the overall health and vitality of something called “the economy.”

But what, exactly, is this thing we are measuring, this “economy”? As Frank Shostak, adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute, put it, “The GDP framework gives the impression that it is not the activities of individuals that produce goods and services, but something else outside these activities called the ‘economy.’ However, at no stage does the so-called ‘economy’ have a life of its own independent of individuals. The so-called economy is a metaphor - it doesn't exist.”

We’ll come back to the metaphor... ahem, the “economy”... in just a second. First, let us consider briefly the computation of the GDP measurement itself. There are three primary methodologies used to calculate GDP:

1) The expenditure method.

2) The income method and.

3) The value added method.

The Cost of Government: Theoretically, all three methods should produce the same result although, in practice, this almost never happens. For instance, when there is a large surge in public spending, such as the never-ending Niagara of pandemic relief packages, stimmie programs, loan and grant hustles, payment protection schemes, climate boondoggles, equity subsidies and assorted other free-for-all lolly scrambles, one would expect significant GDP “growth” to register in the expenditure method.

Roughly speaking, this method calculates the “size” of an economy by totaling its expenditures, minus imports. The equation looks like this:

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports). Or, GDP = C + I + G + (X − M).

The adroit reader will notice immediately the legerdemain afoot, that “government spending” is counted as a net positive, a “+.” Here’s how the Commerce Dept.’s Bureau of Economic Analysis explains it..."Gross domestic product (GDP), or value added, is the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production." 

So far, so good..."GDP is also equal to the sum of personal consumption expenditures, gross private domestic investment, net exports of goods and services, and government consumption expenditures and gross investment." [Emphasis ours. SOURCE]

Hence the very careful wording of, to take the most recent example, the Inflation Reduction Act. Here’s how the The New York Times celebrated its passage last week: "The bill, signed into law by President Biden on Tuesday, makes $369 billion in climate and energy investments - by far the largest such investment in American history."

Not a $369 billion gamble, dear reader, a greasy-palmed giveaway, a great solar and wind piñata... rather, an investment in our future and (need we add, tearily) our children’s future. Surely you’re not one of those anti-future children haters, are you? And yet, as Bill Bonner pointed out during the week, “If it were such a good ‘investment,’ why do the feds have to force people to make it?”

Of course, the IRA is but a drop in the ocean when it comes to total government expenditure. Between federal, state and local governments, total government spending for fiscal year 2022 is projected to be north of $9.3 trillion dollars, give or take a few hundred billion. [SOURCE] What of all those “investments”?

Not only are the vast majority of these programs unsustainable, mendacious and distortive scams, measuring them as a “+” under the expenditure GDP calculation separates further the reality individuals experience in their workaday lives from the GDP fantasy their governments serve up to them.

For one thing, this methodology ignores the fact that government spending is not true production at all because it is debt financed. (Imagine maxing out your credit cards to load up on meme stocks and counting your “investment” as a net positive in your Gross Household Product (GHP)). Government spending, therefore, should really only be government spending, LESS government borrowing.

Austrian Alternatives: Murray Rothbard, a key figure in the Austrian School of Economics, sought to address this “oversight” when he proposed his twin alternative measures: Gross Private Product (GPP) and Private Product Remaining (PPR).

Rothbard defined the former as “gross national product less income originating in government and government enterprises.” PPR is GPP less the higher of government expenditures and tax revenues plus interest received. Rothbard argued that because government output is “financed coercively” (i.e., by taxation), it is therefore unclear what - if any - market value may be ascribed to the end product. Simply put, both Rothbard’s measures place government “production” where it belongs: in the “opportunity cost” pile.

If free market participants did not deem it worth their while to buy something in the first place, why should it be considered a net positive when the government confiscates their money (and/or that of their unborn children) to purchase it on their behalf? The case may be brought against practically every government expenditure which, even if it was allocated to something everyone agreed they wanted (decent roads, for example), nevertheless crowds out competition from private enterprises to provide that very same good or service.

In the end, GDP as a measurement can no more calculate the health of an economy than it can tell you the time or give you a back massage. However it is measured, true economic progress is forged not in the crucibles of debt or coercion, but from the honest toil of individuals seeking to better their own lot, unhindered by the government’s long, strangulating reach. And if a positive GDP figure factors in a massive expansion in government expenditure, the only thing ultimately being measured is the rate at which the country is going to rack and ruin.

But hey, at least then we won’t have to worry about the feds clandestinely redefining the word “recession.” They’ll surely have moved on to “depression” by then, if they haven’t already." 

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

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"Wanted to get this Sunday Session to you before we head out for lunch. Speaking of which, we’re off to enjoy one of Argentina’s great gifts to mankind… the carnivorous extravaganza known simply as the asado. That means giant steaks, slow cooked over wood and coal. Bife de lomo… ojo de bife… bife de chorizo… morcilla… choripan… mollejas… and not a blasted bug - or plant based- burger in sight. All washed down with a glass or three of rich Bonarda, first planted by the Etruscans some 3,000 years ago and now a feature of the Argentine carta de vinos.

Bill will be back with his usual missives tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy what’s left of your own weekend. Until next time…"

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: If The Debt Market Instability Continues, It's Over"

Gregory Mannarino, 8/21/22:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: 

If The Debt Market Instability Continues, It's Over"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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