Tuesday, September 6, 2022

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/6/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/6/22"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Latest Market Analysis, Updated 9/6/22
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
September 5th to 7th
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: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...

Jim Kunstler, "Labor Day Assessment"

"Labor Day Assessment"
Uncertainty rules at the top of our slide into the dark half of the year…
by Jim Kunstler

"There will be a Great Re-set, of course, but it’s not exactly the one that Western Civ is blabbering about - a mere shuffling of political and financial protocols. It’s happening with or without “Joe Biden,” the EU, and der Hoch Schwabenklaus, though the aggregate stupidity they represent is surely making the entry process worse. The Great Re-set is what happens when the business model goes bust for powering the world with oil and other fossil fuels - even if there is quite a bit of all that stuff left in the ground. Years ago, I called it The Long Emergency.

Everything emanates off of that, including the astonishing bouts of mischief made in attempts to work around it, assign the blame for it, grub money off it, and shift the effects of it from one group of people or one region of the world to another. Steve St. Angelo says it neatly: “Energy drives the economy; finance steers it.” That’s so. When the oil business model broke in 2008, industrial society lost its mojo and, after that, finance steered it into a ditch.

The Great Re-Set is an emergent phenomenon. It unspools naturally out of circumstances that reality presents. It goes its own way and we have to adapt to it, like it or not. Is our climate changing? Maybe. But so what? The climate has changed many times since the Bronze Age. If preventing that is actually out of the question, which it is, then what else are you going to do? The answer is: adapt intelligently to new conditions. When you clear away all the mental resistance to that - which amounts to a titanic struggle to keep things just the way they are - you’re going to have to make changes anyway.

America was, for a time, the greatest industrial society and now that appears to be over. The disorder in all the moving parts of it is probably too gross to arrest at this point. We shoved it into disorder by making some very bad choices, like getting rid of our factories and squandering our wealth on an absurd suburban living arrangement. Shale oil was a financial stunt to keep our set-up going a little longer. It was part of the colossal debt roll-up - the steering function of finance - that was used to compensate for our actual loss of mojo, and now that gambit has hit the wall. You can’t pretend to issue more debt when everyone knows it can never be paid back.

Europe, the old home-base of Western Civ, never got around to shale oil, and its financial structure was such - reckless bond issuance with no fiscal accountability whatsoever - that now it is collapsing faster and worse than America. Europe’s leadership is clearly insane and it will likely be overthrown before long. The foreign minister of Germany, the winsome Annalena Baerbock, promised last week to keep demonizing Russia to support Ukraine’s black hole of racketeering “no matter what my German voters think or how hard their life gets.” Stand by to see how that goes over.

The angst around these circumstances is expressing itself in a generalized political nervous breakdown featuring the sort of tragi-comic behavior previously confined in lunatic asylums. Have you ever seen anything more patently insane than the sexual confusion acted out in American schools? Drag Queen story hours? Litter boxes in the bathrooms for students who identify as “furries”?

That was the funny part. The Covid-19 event is no joke - rather a psychopathic mass murder. Obviously, it was no accident. We have a pretty good idea who made it, and set it loose into the world. And the “vaccine” response looks plainly malevolent at this point. Yet the Covid episode is shot through with mystery. How did all those sedulously trained doctors get so mind-f**ked as to persist in saying the “vaccines” were safe-and-effective, when the vaxxes were obviously killing and maiming people? They’re still stuck in that disgraceful posture, busy punishing their colleagues who demur, and dishonoring medicine - not to mention the thousands of public health officials still pushing vaxxes and boosters to this day. We can attribute that to mass formation psychosis, but even that reeks of mystery. Maybe, as the old American hymn goes, farther along we’ll understand why….

Anyway, and in the meantime, we’re obliged to see where all this is taking us and what we have to do about it. The survivors of this disorder will be living in a world of generalized contraction, facing much-reduced standards of living. All the giant enterprises will be gone, including probably the federal USA government as we know it, and all the supports it offered. We’ll be gravely disappointed by the failures of advanced technology to mitigate any of this, and much of that technology will disappear, including reliable electric service and the Internet. Whatever you do will have to be much more local and, in one way or another, these activities will revolve around growing food.

I called it a World Made by Hand in the cycle of four novels I churned out between 2008 and 2017. You can look there for a detailed, graphic description of how this new disposition of things might work. The society depicted is still recognizably an American culture, and the people still find joy, purpose, and meaning in being here on this planet, despite the reduction in comfort and convenience. In many ways, it is a world in recovery from the ravages of the super high velocity way-of-life we’re leaving behind, and because of that, it is shot through with grace. That is our destination.

Keep that in mind - if you still have a mind - as you witness the unravelings ahead. This is not the end of the world or the end of the human project in this world. Not everybody will be violent or insane and the number of reality-based people with their emotional equipment intact will, oddly, grow in proportion as the others depart this plane of existence. For some of us, this is a movie with a happy ending. Make some popcorn while there is still some corn, and some electricity to pop it with."

Monday, September 5, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "Wow... This is Alarming News"

Canadian Prepper, 9/5/22:
"Wow... This is Alarming News"
A new article documents in DETAIL 
the elites plans to survive the coming crisis.
Comments here:

"Chinese Lockdowns Trigger Panic Buying Frenzy Of Food Supplies As Shortages Emerge"

Full screen recommended.
"Chinese Lockdowns Trigger Panic Buying Frenzy
 Of Food Supplies As Shortages Emerge"
by Epic Economist

"Chaotic scenes of desperate people panic buying food and energy supplies are rapidly spreading all around the world – and the U.S. could be next. In several countries, supermarkets and local stores are quickly running out of everyday necessities as residents rush to stock up on crucial goods before shortages worsen. Simultaneously, the global energy crisis is driving the demand for alternative energy sources to stratospheric heights on a consumer and industrial level. Industry insiders exposed that even major manufacturers in global markets are panic buying raw materials and commodities in anticipation of further disruptions. Purchasing limits, rationing, and empty shelves are ahead, and the commotion we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

Even as the rest of the world emerged from the global pandemic, Chinese citizens are still facing strict stay-at-home mandates. This time, millions of residents in Chengdu city dipped into a snap lockdown which triggered widespread desperation among the population. The new measures sparked a panic buying frenzy of essential supplies that stripped store shelves bare in record time.

The residents were given less than six hours to stock up on critical supplies, which resulted in the mass hoarding of vegetables and fruits, seafood, and red meat by locals who were in an all-scrambling state. Some drivers were captured filling their cars to the brim with slabs of red meat and were even captured fastening dead chickens to the roofs of their vehicles. At this stage, the restrictions have no end date and they’re likely to cause a major economic fallout, particularly for the manufacturing and technology sectors. The new curbs prompted widespread alarm in global markets, with major manufacturers hurrying to ensure supplies of raw materials and commodities to keep operations running. During the Global Financial Derivatives meeting on Friday, the 2022 Economics Bulletin noted that tight supplies for critical materials “have driven global manufacturers and local investors to front-load their inventory requirements with panic buying as industrial activities slumped with weak supply chains and unavailability of raw materials.”

Meanwhile, the race to hoard energy supplies amid skyrocketing natural gas prices is leaving Europeans scrambling for alternative energy sources. In Germany, where households are facing a 720% rise in their gas bills, people are resorting to stockpiling firewood. However, suppliers of the raw material are unable to keep up with the growing demand, leading to a scarcity of firewood. To prevent the panic-buying wave from escalating any further, some sellers have been rationing supplies and limiting purchases to three boxes of wood at a time.

In the U.S., even the corporate-controlled media is admitting that “social media is getting swamped with pictures of empty grocery shelves”. The federal government promised to solve our supply chain problems, but in the past two years, they just kept getting worse. In some states, inventories have never recovered from the early shortages caused by the health crisis, which makes common delivery delays result in extensive product shortages.

Now more than ever, it’s important to make common sense preparations for the time when economic chaos starts rocking our nation. Sadly, most of our fellow citizens are completely and utterly unprepared for what is happening. But if you think that we’ve already seen the worst of these crises, just wait, because the truth is that what we have experienced so far is just the start."

Canadian Prepper, "This Video Will Lose Me Subs (I Upload Anyways)"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/5/22:
"This Video Will Lose Me Subs (I Upload Anyways)"
This is part two of the talk with Dr. Guy McPherson.
 Make sure you watch part 1 here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "We Meet Again"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "We Meet Again"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Bright clusters and nebulae abound in the ancient northern constellation of Auriga. The region includes the open star cluster M38, emission nebula IC 410 with Tadpoles, Auriga’s own Flaming Star Nebula IC 405, and this interesting pair IC 417 (lower left) and NGC 1931. An imaginative eye toward the expansive IC 417 and diminutive NGC 1931 suggests a cosmic spider and fly.
About 10,000 light-years distant, both represent young, open star clusters formed in interstellar clouds and still embedded in glowing hydrogen gas. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 is about 10 light-years across.”

“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”

“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
by 
Robert Fulghum

“In the summer of 1959, at the Feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. A resort environment. And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables. The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment. He and I do not get along. I think he’s a fascist who wants pleasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far. I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own. One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day. Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls. To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check.

I was outraged.

 On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00 P.M., and the night auditor had just come on duty. I went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.

That tears it. I quit! For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.

I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him. I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for God’s sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to the pigs. Something like that. I’m still mad about it.

I raved on this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here. You get the drift. My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs, and much profanity. A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.

As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes. Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman. He’s got good reason to look sorrowful. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin, coughed a lot. He liked being alone at the night job – gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to – all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted. To him, a feast. More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do. In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time. The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream. Our shifts overlap for an hour. And here I am again. A one-man war party at full cry.

“Fulchum, are you finished?”
“No. Why?”
Lissen, Fulchum. Lissen me, lissen me. You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”
“So what’s wrong with me?”

“Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.” In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.

Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with a truth so hard. Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant. There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.

For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks: “Fulchum. Problem or inconvenience?”

I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference. Good night, Sig.”

"So We All Ran Around..."

“So we all ran around in mad, mindless, meaningless circles, as if we were in a cotton-candy eating contest where the grand prize was getting kicked in the face. We were oblivious to everything around us that no truly sane person would ever tolerate. And we needed someone else to tell us to stop it.”
- Edward M. Wolfe

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Lead"

"Lead"

"Here is a story to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter the loons came to our harbor and died,
one by one, of nothing we could see.
A friend told me of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one just where that is.
The next morning this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world."

- Mary Oliver

The Daily "Near You?"

Tallahassee, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"He Cannot Help Doubting..."

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet ‘for sale’, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence – briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing – cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity.”
- Erich Fromm

"Even Amazon is Worried About the Economy - Prepare Now"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 9/5/22:
"Even Amazon is Worried About the Economy - Prepare Now"
"All the signs are in front of us. The global economy is not doing well. High energy prices are affecting everything from aluminum to steel production. Even Amazon is not going to complete dozens of fulfillment centers."
Comments here:

"12 Numbers That Show That We Are Getting Dangerously Close To An Economic Crash As The Fall Of 2022 Approaches"

"12 Numbers That Show That We Are Getting Dangerously
 Close To An Economic Crash As The Fall Of 2022 Approaches"
by Michael Snyder

"You have heard me say it over and over again. What we are witnessing right now reminds me so much of 2008, and we all remember what happened in the fall of 2008. That doesn’t mean that this new crisis will unfold exactly the same way that the last one did. Ultimately, every economic downturn is unique. But the fact that we are seeing so many parallels between what is transpiring now and what transpired 14 years ago should deeply alarm all of us. We appear to be on the precipice of another economic crash, and all of the “solutions” that our leaders give us just seem to make things even worse.

Hopefully someone out there can find a way to pull a miracle out of a hat and a worst case scenario can be averted. But I wouldn’t count on that happening. The following are 12 numbers that show that we are getting dangerously close to an economic crash as the fall of 2022 approaches…

#1 The government is telling us that the unemployment rate only went up to 3.7 percent in August.
#2 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the real rate of unemployment in the United States would be over 24 percent.
#3 About half of all U.S. companies say that they will be eliminating jobs within the next 12 months.
#4 The government is telling us that the inflation rate in the United States is only 8.5 percent.
#5 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real rate of inflation would be somewhere around 17 percent right now. That is worse than anything that we experienced during the Jimmy Carter era.
#6 At one company, the number of Americans taking out short-term loans for groceries has nearly doubled this year.
#7 One out of every five home sellers in the United States dropped their asking price last month. This is more evidence that home prices are starting to rapidly move in a downward direction.
#8 Sales of previously-owned homes were about 20 percent lower this July than they were last July.
#9 One recent survey found that 3.8 million Americans believe that they could be evicted from their homes within the next two months.
#10 According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, approximately 20 million U.S. households are currently behind on their utility bills.
#11 The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen for three weeks in a row. We also witnessed this sort of a gradual slide just prior to the big crash of 2008.
#12 In August, a whopping 2,150 corporate executives sold off shares in their companies. Are they trying to cash in while they still can?

Gustavo Arnal was one of the corporate executives that recently sold off large amounts of stock. Now he is dead…"The man who jumped to his death from the 18th floor of the famous ‘Jenga’ tower in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood Friday has been identified as a Bed Bath & Beyond executive.

Gustavo Arnal, 52, was the Chief Financial Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, a company that has been going through struggles of late due to high inflation and a sagging economy. The company announced plans to close 150 stores, of its roughly 900, and lay off 20 percent of staff just two days before Arnal’s death. He reportedly sold over 42,000 shares in the company, oft-identified as a ‘meme stock’, for $1million just over two weeks ago, according to MarketBeat.com."

It appears that Arnal was involved in a “pump and dump” scheme, and he may have decided that he didn’t want to spend much of the rest of his life locked away in prison…"The executive vice president and chief financial officer of Bed Bath & Beyond who plunged to his death from the 18th floor of a New York City skyscraper on Friday was the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging that he and majority shareholder, GameStop Chairman Ryan Cohen, had artificially inflated the company’s value in a “pump and dump” scheme. Gustavo Arnal, 52, and Cohen, are listed as defendants in the class-action lawsuit filed last month in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia."

Sadly, I think that we will see quite a few more people jumping off of buildings before this whole thing is over. Of course most Americans would never do such a thing. Most Americans will just suffer through whatever comes even as their standard of living is being systematically destroyed. For example, CNN recently interviewed one young mother that couldn’t even afford to buy a backpack for her preschooler…"As Sarah Longmore finished her back-to-school shopping, the mother of five looked at a $25 backpack for her preschooler. Soaring inflation had crunched the family’s budget, and she decided her daughter could make do with a hand-me-down. She put the backpack back."

Unfortunately, she is not alone. In fact, one recent poll found that only 36 percent of all parents will “be able to pay for everything their kids need this school year”…"Just 36% of parents said they would be able to pay for everything their kids need this school year, according to Morning Consult’s annual back-to-school shopping report. That’s down sharply from 52% in 2021, when inflation was lower and stimulus checks plus advance child tax credit payments helped some families."

Are things really this bad already? If so, what will conditions look like six months or a year from now? 2023 is less than four months away, and the stage has been set for an economic implosion of absolutely epic proportions. Do you remember the extreme pain that our nation went through in 2008 and 2009?

Many believe that what is ahead will be even worse. The greatest debt bubble in the history of the world is starting to burst, and central banks all over the globe are starting to panic. If you always wanted to live in “interesting” times, you are going to get your wish. But for most people, the times that we are moving into will not be fun at all."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Big Companies Are Predatory, Big Governments Do Dumb Things"

"Big Companies Are Predatory,
 Big Governments Do Dumb Things" 
by Bruce Wilds

"Mankind faces a toxic mix when it comes to protecting our freedom. Big companies are predatory, big governments are stupid. The thing they have in common is they both want more control and power. China is a good example of trying to combine both, this experiment however seems to be crumbling before our eyes. Yes, where the powerful forces of global companies and big governments meet is at the intersection of Globalization and the World Economic Forum's vision of the future.

The whole concept of people power or that the masses have at any time the ability to just say no is constructed around the rather utopian or optimistic view that people can agree on what is in their self-interest. In truth when you push away the emotional high garnered from the vision of a quick clean non-violent rebellion, we are the underdog in this ongoing struggle for control of our lives. History shows the so-called masses are seldom able to come together on anything.

Keeping us divided and docile is a tool used to prevent unrest from boiling over and those in charge use it well. When people do rise up, achieving reform is more difficult to accomplish than simply promising it. The head may change but it often inherits the same old body of government workers that are resistant to change. True improvement tends to flow from evolution rather than revelation. The reason rebellions fail is often because those rebelling generally replace one bad government with another.

The idea that a large government hanging above us to regulate our lives will solve our problems has proven to be a fallacy. It could be argued the larger governments become the less responsive they become. Government bureaucracies tend to get bogged down in their mission to serve the people. They also have a huge problem balancing their mission to serve with their natural inclination to extend control over just about everything including our lives. This is often done under the claim it is for the "greater good."

Mega global companies and big government are the two largest threats to our freedom. Throughout history, monopolies of any kind have demonstrated a natural propensity to abuse the people, and governments have exhibited the ability to do dumb things that benefit the few rather than the masses. We see this in their inclination to rush to war and how they rapidly include cronies in anything they do which corrupts the fruit of their efforts.
Big Companies Tend To Be Predatory

For years many economists have discounted how the greed of these companies has created and added to the many problems the world faces. For example, the main reason we have the military-industrial complex and companies rushing to make bombs is that by doing so, they gain power and add to their profits. This train of thought brings front and center the question of whether mega-global companies are working in the direction of taking over the world and even dominating governments and countries. This is in some ways an extension of the New World Order with CEOs pulling the strings. The power these companies wield is often masked behind the facade of a figurehead leader but it is very real.

Developments over the last several decades portend a shift in power from country to corporations. The argument can be made that corporations are well on their way to supplanting the state as the world's dominant organizational structure in the future. Knowledge is power and this means power is flowing to large conglomerates and internet companies. Those that are most prominent control the communication networks collecting and storing data on all of us. They are now in a position to manipulate us in every way.

Over the years, this has resulted in a blurring of the lines between business and state. It has also shaped the world as we know it. By weaponizing the data they have collected as propaganda in a battle for our hearts and minds technology companies may hold an advantage over national governments in persuading individuals to align with their interests. This translates into enormous persuasive power and could be the key to providing corporations with a path to ultimately control populations, governments, and even nations. As they have gained power it seems these powerful global entities often lead governments around by the nose placing and have taken to placing people in a position of servitude.
Biden's Recent Speech Was About Control

The idea that a world controlled by mega companies will be benevolent and kind ignores the greed and ambitions of those who control them and how little regard they can have for those ranked below them. In his novels, Orwell depicted how governments could take on a life of their own and criticized totalitarianism throughout his writings. Totalitarianism, the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism is a political concept that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.

As an added bonus for these behemoths they can hide behind the governments they control sucking the blood from them while remaining aloof and shielded from the evil they inflict. It is difficult to deny that in our modern world many large companies already have more power than most nations and their power continues to grow at an alarming rate. The bottom line here is the power of the people is at a strong disadvantage when it comes to reforming society. The reality of sustained "power to the people" is as rare as a unicorn in your backyard. When all is said and done, in their effort to control us, the ugly forces of monopolistic conglomerates and governments continue to turn people into pawns."
Related:

"Stocking Up The Pantry At Sam's Club! Stock Up Now! Prices Are Rising!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 9/5/22:
"Stocking Up The Pantry At Sam's Club! 
Stock Up Now! Prices Are Rising!"
"In today's vlog we are prepping our pantry with everything we buy from Sam's Club! Times are tough as we face more price increases on food, and other items. We take you with us as we show some long shelf life options, as well as explaining ways to save money."
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Enter Into The Danger Zone"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/5/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Enter Into The Danger Zone"
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Aftermath"

Brandon
"V For Vendetta"

"Aftermath"
What Biden's 'Us vs. Them' speech 
portends for the future of the republic.
by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "It is Labor Day in America. But here at Bonner Private Research headquarters in France, Argentina, England and Laramie, Wyoming, our labors continue uninterrupted.

Last week, it was announced that math scores for 9-year-olds had suffered their biggest drop in 30 years. Two decades’ worth of progress had been erased (presumably by lockdowns… statistically, the children were never at risk from the Covid anyway). White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre illustrated the problem: “We have created nearly ten thousand million jobs since President Biden took office, which is the fastest job growth in history."

Ten thousand million is, of course, ten billion, more than there are humans on planet earth. An amazing performance by the Biden Bunch. But now, even arithmetic is infected by claptrap. Activists claim that numeracy, or the way it is taught, is soaked in white supremacy and that the schools need to squeeze it out by aiming for ‘math equity,’ whatever that is.

Like language and money, math is a way of condensing and transmitting information. Our numbers came to us from the Arabs. Much of the early development work in mathematics and geometry was done in Egypt or Mesopotamia. And today, mathematicians from all over the world add and subtract in the same way; neither race, culture, height, gender, eye color nor any distinguishing birthmarks, matter. It is just as absurd to say that math is racist as to say that language is sexist, because it recognizes different genders, or that money is prejudiced in favor of snow, since so much of it ends up in Switzerland.

But such is the state of the world in 2022 that you can say any fool thing you want and half the world will agree with you. The other half will think you are a jackass.

Hee Haw: And so it came to pass, last week also, that Mr. Biden made the headlines. After so much venom directed at Mr. Trump, much of it justified, it was difficult to imagine how any subsequent president might be worse. And in 2020, the genial geriatric, Joe Biden, seemed to offer a safer, more agreeable alternative. But there he was, last Thursday, making what might have been the most divisive and uncivilized speech by a US president in history. In short, POTUS went off the deep end, practically declaring war. But not on some hapless foreign nation. Instead, he was declaring war on the half of the nation that didn’t support him.

Mr. Biden has a long history of plagiarism. He was almost kicked out of Syracuse law school for it. Instead, he was allowed to repeat his first year. And here he was rehearsing almost the exact ‘us vs. them’ themes made famous by dictators and scalawags throughout the centuries: "I will not stand by and watch the most fundamental freedom in this country, the freedom to vote… be taken from you."

"We are not powerless in the face of these threats… we are not bystanders… it’s within our power… to stop the assault on… democracy."

The MAGA faction – probably a third of the country – was “a threat… to the very soul of this country,” he claimed. Their “extremism… threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” and constitutes “dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail.”

The last time we heard such “fightin’ words” from a US president they came from the mouth of George W. Bush and led to waterboarding, droning, murdering, perhaps a million dead and 37 million refugees… along with $8 trillion down the drain. These fightin’ words of Joe Biden are likely to be even more costly. For, as we guessed 20 years ago, the words and weapons of the War on Terror are now being trained on “domestic terrorists,” (aka … the people who might defeat Mr. Biden and his bunch in the next election.)

So, throw away the US Constitution! Eight centuries of jurisprudence – going back to the Magna Carta – has been tossed out the window. As in the overseas, boondoggle wars, the ‘terrorist’ label excuses everything. People are arrested with no charges ever filed. They are tortured. Their property is taken away. And they are killed. Even American citizens were held in custody for years… and sometimes murdered. Why not give the same treatment to political enemies at home? The logic of it is irresistible.

Biden recalled the words of a federal judge, who said MAGA Republicans were a “clear and present danger.” This is a loaded phrase, reminding us of the feds’ power to override the First Amendment (free speech) if the threat is imminent. If Trump supporters really do represent a “clear and present danger,” the Biden Bunch has not only the right, but the duty, to lock them up as soon as possible. No trial necessary.

This was all so contrary to the spirit of civilized, consensual American democracy that we had a hard time believing it was true. We had to watch it ourselves; and it was almost more unbelievable than we imagined. There he was, the nation’s chief executive, in front of a red-lit background more appropriate to a “Tales from the Crypt” video than a presidential address, giving a speech that might be compared to Hitler’s famous “Nuremberg Speech” of 1936. Hitler’s target, the Bolsheviks, were a clear and present danger to Germany: “I cannot come to terms with [bolshevism]… It turns flourishing countrysides into sinister wastes of ruins.”

It was the old ‘us vs. them’: “…these antagonisms cannot be bridged. Here are really two worlds which do but grow further apart from each other and can never unite. Bolshevism has attacked the foundations of our whole human order, alike in State and society, the foundations of our conception of civilization, of our faith and of our morals: all alike are at stake. … [bolshevism]…intends to equip its army so that it may with violence, if necessary, open the gate to revolution amongst other peoples…”

Clearly, if the terrorists aren’t stopped…then Europe will sink into a sea of blood and mourning....

Fightin’ Words: Hitler’s ‘fightin’ words’ were greeted with wide approval and led to WWII. So too, after Biden’s call to action, many educated adults, who should have known better, immediately enlisted: “One of the most important [speeches] I’ve seen a president give,” said Hillary Clinton. “Biden’s core claim about the foundational threat posed by Trump and MAGA is undeniably correct,” wrote Greg Sargent. And here’s Dean Obeidallah: “It's long past time that MAGA be designated a domestic terrorist group. Period.”

Terrorists? MAGA forces have not set fire to the Capitol. They have not shot dead any archdukes…stormed no Bastilles nor put any heads on pikes. They have burned no shops… destroyed no newspaper offices… and hung no Jews, no communists, no homosexuals, no blacks, no Mexicans, no Washington Post columnists, no cross-dressers or self-mutilators, no virtue-signaling celebrities, no referees, no knee-taking sports heroes, no squeegee kids, no rap stars, no Green Energy hustlers, no Fed governors, no senators, no Baltimore mayors, no prison guards, no BATF agents, no IRS agents, no FBI agents, no TSA agents, no Indian agents, no PR agents and no travel agents. Neither Hillary Clinton nor her insufferable daughter have been molested. Hunter Biden is still a free man. And Paul Krugman still gets a check from the New York Times. All things considered, the MAGA aficionados have showed remarkable restraint… or incompetence.

Have they set up secret training camps in the Ozarks? Have they had secret meetings with key generals, admirals, CIA chiefs and Homeland Security bureaucrats? Have they assassinated key Biden supporters, politicians, and traitors to their cause? While lone wolf nut-cases howl at the moon and gun down people from time to time, not a single murder can be fairly attributed to organized Trump followers. Instead, the MAGA enthusiasts are typically middle aged, law-abiding, and simpleminded. They are not revolutionaries. And Donald Trump himself may be able to rouse the rabble; but organize a genuine threat to the republic? Not likely.

Even their unlawful entry (?) into the US Capitol was hardly an attack on democracy; every one of the trespassers thought he was there to fulfill the promise of the Constitution, not destroy it. They may not be terribly bright, but if MAGA Republicans are terrorists… they are the dullest and least threatening bomb throwers in world history. Extremists of the world, unite!

But it was left to the redoubtable Karine Jean-Pierre to make sense of it. Who are these extremists? She explained: “When you are not with where the majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.” Again, it was math that tripped her up. The majority may be as slim as 51%, with the swing vote swaying one way or another like a ‘for sale’ sign in a hurricane. That means that 49% – or about 125 million American adults, including us, and millions of people who voted for Biden but who are now fed up with his policies – are all ‘extremists.’ The feds are said to be naming Russia as a ‘terrorist state.’ Next, it will be Florida."
"There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. 

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent."
- "V For Vendetta"

Labor Day 2022

 

Have a happy Labor Day folks!

Sunday, September 4, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "You Won't Believe What Happened Today..."

Canadian Prepper, 9/4/22:
"You Won't Believe What Happened Today..."
"If you needed confirmation of how depraved 
the world has become look no further."
Comments here:

"Nearly Half The Nation Cuts Back Spending On Food: Prepare Yourself For Planned Starvation"

Full screen recommended.
"Nearly Half The Nation Cuts Back Spending On Food: 
Prepare Yourself For Planned Starvation"
by Epic Economist

"Massive lines are forming at food banks all around the country, the number of layoffs and job losses is going through the roof as hundreds of thousands of businesses are right on the brink of going under. At the same time, a housing crash that is set to be even worse than what we’ve witnessed during the previous bubble burst is officially here, but prices continue unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Consequently, large numbers of Americans are actually moving into sheds in a desperate attempt to save money. The cost of everything has climbed so high that about half of U.S. consumers are having to cut back on spending on food to be able to make ends meet. The current economic downturn is in the very early stages, but the economic suffering that is already emerging all over the nation is truly frightening. If people are struggling this much now, what will conditions be like six months down the road?

If you’re having to cut back spending on groceries and gasoline lately, you’re definitely not alone. A new survey conducted by Suffolk University in partnership with USA Today found that nearly 50% of Americans are in the same boat. The cost of essentials is rising much faster than official numbers show. For example, food prices jumped by 12.6% over the past 12 months, over 4 percentage points higher than the official inflation rate. Energy costs have also shot up, rising a shocking 41.6% in the last year, with gasoline prices leading the surge, going up 59.9%, the researchers reported.

Our standard of living is being eviscerated by inflation, and large swathes of the population are already deeply hurting. When people start to experience severe financial insecurity, they tend to become desperate. And desperate times lead to desperate measures. Authorities are reporting an alarming rise in shoplifting happening all around the country, and food and other essentials have become the main targets. In New York City, things are getting so out of hand that some stores are now putting canned goods and other ready-to-eat items in theft-proof cases.

Another very worrying sign is the extremely long lines that we are seeing again at food banks all around the U.S. A new ZeroHedge report exposed that at the moment, food banks from coast to coast are experiencing “record high demand and record low supply.” That’s why we really hope that you are getting prepared for the very difficult times that are ahead because there will be a limit to what charities are able to do for the overall population. The best option would be to stock dry and canned goods with a long shelf life now while they are still available at local supermarkets and prepare for the cold season when demand for food will soar even higher. Even those who are experiencing financial distress can utilize pantries to stock supplies for the months ahead if they plan carefully. In a few months, those same pantries may not exist anymore, so now is the time to act.

But of course, the rich and the political class continue to insist that everything is under control. Believe it or not, the definition of the word “recession” on Wikipedia was just changed to reflect the narrative of the federal government, and it has been locked to prevent any additional editing. They really want to convince us that the wild price fluctuations we’re seeing are not real, or at least, not such a big problem. But these silencing measures never work because people can tell when things are going south, and by now, the vast majority of Americans know we are in a recession. Sadly, the distortions we’ve seen so far are just a hint of the disaster that is coming."
Comments here:

"This Looks Like 2008 But Much Worse - Most Will Lose Everything; The Everything Bubble Has Burst"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 9/4/22:
"This Looks Like 2008 But Much Worse - 
Most Will Lose Everything; The Everything Bubble Has Burst"
Comments here:

"Evictions and Foreclosures are Going Full Steam Ahead"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 9/4/22:
"Evictions and Foreclosures are Going Full Steam Ahead"
"Evictions and foreclosures are growing. There are over 4 million evictions planned for the next 60 days. The foreclosures numbers are growing weekly."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Dance of Life"

Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland, "Dance of Life"
Fantasy music for relaxation and meditation. 

Absolutely beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy. 
NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Unlike other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is not presently known to have a massive central black hole.”

“Are People Really Stupid?”

“Are People Really Stupid?”
by Fred Russell

“On the face of things – judging from the general level of knowledge and understanding, not to mention the intellectual pursuits, of most of the human race – one is tempted to say that the overwhelming majority of mankind lacks the intellectual capacity, the intelligence, to contribute to human progress. And it is in fact a very small elite that has carried us beyond Neanderthal Man, without whom, if the truth be told, we might still be living in caves. It is, in a word, appalling to contemplate the level at which ordinary people use their minds – what they read, if at all, what they watch on TV, the movies they go out and see, and the ease with which they are seduced and manipulated by the technicians of the psyche, namely, politicians and advertisers. 

The impression one gets when contemplating these tens and hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens for the reality shows and sitcoms or fiddling with their smartphones from morning till night is of complete empty-headedness. This is not to say that such people cannot be shrewd, resourceful, or, for that matter, simply decent. It is to say that at the average level of intelligence displayed by the human race, the great intellectual achievements of mankind seem to be beyond the scope of the vast majority of men and women. But are people really stupid? And if they aren’t, who or what has held them back?

Now one may be inclined to place all the blame for our ignorance on the television producers and gadget makers, but the truth is that by the time they get to us the damage has already been done. All they really succeed in doing is dragging us down a little further. The problem starts in childhood. It starts in the schools with all those empty cells waiting to be filled and no one, not entire educational systems, really knowing how to fill them. In fact, the opposite result is achieved. By the time the child finishes elementary school, unless he is destined to join the intellectual or scientific or economic or political elite and is self-motivated, as the saying goes, he will have developed an aversion to the learning process that will persist for the rest of his life.

It is not hard to understand why. School bores him, and oppresses him. Its premise, fostered in the West by the Church – the virtually exclusive supplier of teachers until fairly recent times, historically speaking – is that as a consequence of Original Sin all men are born evil and must therefore be coerced into doing what is good. The result has been rigidly structured frameworks where teachers hammer away at the captive child until his head is ready to explode. Within just a few years, the public school system thus destroys the natural curiosity of the child and dooms him to a life of total ignorance, dependent, for whatever sense of the world he does have, on second rate journalists, who themselves lack the knowledge, understanding, discipline and integrity to be historians or even novelists and therefore shape his perception like the ignorant clerics of the Middle Ages, raining down on his head a disjointed and superficial body of information presented largely to produce effects, and even this is beyond his capacity to retain. 

The man in the street may thus be said to have a great many opinions but very little knowledge, mindlessly repeating the half-truths of “experts” and “analysts” who reflect his own biases and constructing out of them a “credo” of dogmatic views that remain embedded in his mind for an entire lifetime like bricks in a brick wall.

Does it matter? After all, we have all the scholars and scientists we need, and besides, a world where everyone became one would be a dull place indeed. It can even be argued that it is better for the race if progress is opposed, since, judging from its products, it mostly expresses itself materially and economically in an unholy alliance of greed and technology. However, progress of this kind cannot be fought if all that people have on their minds is to wire themselves into this technology, and that is what they will be doing until their minds are engaged in less frivolous pursuits. They are thus doubly victimized, first by the schools, whose methods are not attuned to the temperament and capacity of the average child, and then by the economic elites who control the technologies and consequently the flow of information and whose only interest in the man in the street is as a consumer of their products.

Unfortunately, there is very little hope that any of this will change. The wrong people control human society and will continue to do so, because they created the model and are the only ones who know how to operate it. The sad truth is that today’s man in the street is neither wiser nor more knowledgeable than a medieval peasant. Calling ourselves Homo sapiens, or even Homo sapiens sapiens, seemed like a good idea once but very few of us have lived up to the billing.”

"When You Are In Deep Trouble..."