"Why Are Walmart And Other Major US Retailers Canceling Billions Of Dollars In Orders As Summer Comes To An End?"

"Why Are Walmart And Other Major US Retailers Canceling 

Billions Of Dollars In Orders As Summer Comes To An End?"

by Michael Snyder

"Do they know something that they aren’t telling us? As you will see below, Walmart, Target and other major U.S. retailers are literally canceling billions of dollars in orders ahead of the coming holiday season. I have never heard of such a thing happening before, and under normal conditions it wouldn’t make any sense at all. The holiday season is typically the busiest time of the year for retailers, and at this time in 2021 there was actually a great deal of concern that there wouldn’t be enough inventory due to global supply chain problems. But now everything has changed. All of a sudden major retailers are feverishly canceling orders, and this would only make sense if a severe economic downturn was imminent.

For example, Walmart is admitting that it has canceled “billions of dollars in orders” as we approach the upcoming holiday season…"John David Rainey, Walmart’s EVP and CFO, said it had cleared most summer inventory, was reducing exposure in electronics, home and sporting goods, and canceled “billions of dollars in orders” to realign inventories. He said, “Our actions in Q3 will allow us to make significant progress toward rationalizing absolute levels and mix, which will enable our stores to be well positioned ahead of the holiday season.”

It is extremely odd that Walmart would decide to do such a thing. Recently I had an opportunity to stroll through a Walmart, and there were plenty of inventory holes. So what would make them suddenly cancel “billions of dollars” in orders that they thought that they were going to need for the holiday season? Perhaps some enterprising reporter will be willing to ask them such a question.

Meanwhile, we just learned that Target has also canceled “more than $1.5 billion” in orders…"Target said it had reduced its “inventory exposure in discretionary categories” throughout Q2 by canceling more than $1.5 billion of orders in these categories and marking down products." Target is much smaller than Walmart is, and so for Target to cancel so many orders is a really big deal.

And it turns out that Kohl’s and Under Armour have also been canceling large numbers of orders as well…"Kohl’s has also pulled back on order receipts and increased promotions to get through an inventory glut. “We have taken action to address inventory, including increasing promotions, being aggressive on clearing excess inventory and pulling back on receipts,” said Kohl’s CFO Jill Timm in a call with investors."

Under Armour also said it made some proactive cancellations due to supply chain constraints to ensure that “the right inventory was coming in at the right time,” said interim president and CEO Colin Browne in a call with investors.

These retailers are obviously scared that they will end up stuck with massive amounts of inventory that they cannot sell. Do they believe that economic activity during the months ahead will be much lower than they originally anticipated?

One corporate executive that is actually publicly admitting that he believes that a recession is coming is FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam…"FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday that he believes a recession is impending for the global economy. “I think so. But you know, these numbers, they don’t portend very well,” Subramaniam said in response to Cramer’s question of whether the economy is “going into a worldwide recession.” The CEO’s pessimism came after FedEx missed estimates on revenue and earnings in its first quarter. The company also withdrew its full year guidance. Sadly, he is right on target.

For months, I have been warning that the economic numbers were telling us that big trouble was on the way, and now everyone can see it. But unlike the “Great Recession” of 2008 and 2009, this time we are also going to have to deal with raging inflation even as economic activity slows down all around us.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal is ominously warning that U.S. consumers “are set to pay even more this winter” as heating costs continue to soar to absolutely ridiculous levels…"U.S. utility customers, faced with some of their largest bills in years, are set to pay even more this winter as natural-gas prices continue to climb. Natural-gas prices have more than doubled this year because of a global supply shortage made worse by the war in Ukraine, and they are expected to remain elevated for months as fuel is needed to light and heat homes during the winter. The supply crunch has made it substantially more expensive for utilities to purchase or produce power, and those costs are being passed on to customers."

The cost of living has been rising much faster than our paychecks have for quite some time now, and a lot more pain is on the horizon. I really like how Brandon Smith recently summarized the current state of the U.S. economy…"A common refrain from people who are critical of alternative economists is that we have been predicting crisis for so long that “eventually we will be right.” These are generally people who don’t understand the nature of economic decline – It’s like an avalanche that builds over time, then breaks and quickly escalates as it flows down the mountain. What they don’t grasp is that they are in the middle of an economic collapse RIGHT NOW, and they just can’t see it because they have been acclimated to the presence of the snow and cold.

Economic decline is a process that takes many years, and while you might get an event like the market crash of 1929 or the crash of 2008, these moments of panic are nothing more than the wreckage left behind by the great wave of tumbling ice that everyone should have seen coming far in advance, but they refused."

That is so true. We are already in the midst of a raging economic crisis, but things will get so much worse during the months and years to come. Walmart, Target and other major retailers are working really hard to get prepared for what is coming. Are you? I hope so, because at this point it should be glaringly obvious to everyone that exceedingly challenging times are on the way."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Related:

"Here's Why This Winter Is Predicted To Be Challenging"

"What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here"

"What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here"

by John Wilder

"What are we here for? It’s a big question, and one we have to ask now. Sadly, I think the answer for many people would be, “inexpensive Chinese-made throw pillows, new Marvel® movies, and the next iPhone®.”

For most of my life, it was a clear question that didn’t involve any of those things, except maybe affordable throw pillows, because they wear out so very quickly. At some point though, I figured it out. What was it? The meaning of life, or at least the abridged version. The existence of my generation, of any generation, was for two reasons:

First, to create the next generation. It’s the toughest and most fun work in the world. A family, working together, would do the best job possible at creating the best children possible. Why do we need those children? Why do they need to be better?

The “why” is the essence of the second reason. There are more challenges, literally an infinite set of challenges, that are before us. There are more horizons for us to conquer – we may have been to the Moon, but we don’t live there. We have sent robots to Mars, but we haven’t visited. Humanity has a job, and it has always been clear to me that our job was not yet done, at least not until we have developed a reliable way to make the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ drive (LINK).

Both of those answers rely on optimism. I think that optimism is justly earned. Even though humans have created unimaginable horrors, they have created, time and time again, amazing wonders. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted: "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"

What I see today, however, isn’t the wonder of man, it’s the crisis we face with apprehension. It consists of multiple fronts.

Energy: Even though we are up against physical limits on the energy systems that we use, the idiocy of the Green Energy™ movement feels more like a mutual suicide pact. The use of energy, primarily since the Industrial Revolution has created the greatest amount of prosperity and well-being the world has ever seen. It is an absolute certainty that if the Leftists have their way, the amount of misery around the world will make World War II seem like a carnival ride. I mean, not a good carnival ride, but at least it would have Patton.

Family: One of the primary reasons for civilization in the first place is that it creates the basis for making itself better, and that basis is the family. Children are not easy to raise. Any single parent working by themselves would have been my victim. It took both Pa Wilder and Ma Wilder (along with my brother, John Wilder) to make me a better person than Feral John Wilder would have become. Family is important, and you can’t make good and strong children without one.

Morality: Morality is crucial. We have moved away from the moral basics that have created Western Civilization, and inverted them. We used to celebrate the beautiful, and now celebrate the ugly. And Pride Festivals®? Pride was a sin. And it still is. Unless it involves lions.

Who are the enemies? The Globalist Left: This is a big bunch, but they come in two flavors.

The Globalist Left - The Antifa Gang: These are people, who, generally despise themselves. They revel in ugliness, because they feel that they’re ugly inside. They look at society and hate it. They want to watch it all burn. They hate themselves, and want to make the world outside as horrifying as the world they hold inside themselves. This probably describes everyone that works at CNN®.

The Globalist Left – The Elite: They always seem to exist. They were there at the fall of Rome, they were there when the Library of Alexandria was sacked, when Russia became a killing ground, and when China killed uncountable millions. They appear to be the parasites that are jealous of real achievement and seek to game society so that they can come to power. They also appear to gravitate to power for the sake of power, and delight in the destruction of anything as long as it brings them wealth and comfort, even if it kills the host society.

Technology: I could go on all day, but there are two that jump out – they are the two most destabilizing technologies that exist today. Technology is difficult, because now it moves so quickly, but humans don’t adapt to it very quickly at all. I mean, VCRs existed and no one ever figured out how to stop the blinking 12:00.

Technology Itself – The Pill: To a certain extent, one of the big foes of humanity right now is our state of technological advancement itself. Multiple technological advances have created stresses that have never been seen before in human history. The first of these, The Pill, was a disaster. Some of the oldest rules to make society stable were about marriage and reproduction. Why? The stability of the family structure was ripped apart by The Pill, and the divorces started not long afterward.

Technology Itself – Social Media: When the printing press was originally invented, it opened a world where the knowledge of the entire history of mankind could be shared. When the Internet developed, all of that knowledge could be shared freely. Instead, the Internet has become a dopamine factory that is one of the most insidious narcissism trap in the history of humanity. What could have united us has, instead, created zombies of people who sit in restaurants staring at their phones rather than talking to each other and having authentic conversations. This has created a world with artificial closeness between people who have no connection, and artificial barriers between those who should be close.

Obviously, I could keep going. The enemies of that which is Right, True, and Good are legion. The methods they use are diverse. If I were writing a screenplay, I’d be wondering how I write myself out of this predicament. Thankfully, the answer is that I don’t have to. Western Civilization has defeated enemies just like these for thousands of years. We have been at the breaking point again and again. It is true, we won’t be the same after this crisis. There’s no guarantee that the crisis won’t last for decades. And I promise it really will be the most difficult thing that any of us live through. I mean, those of us that make it.

So, what are we here for? We’re here to carry the torch forward. To have wonderful children that exceed us in our capacity, because there are tough horizons, and more work to be done. We are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future, despite the obstacles and enemies of humanity. And we’ll win. We always have."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

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Click image for larger size.

"How It Really Is"

"It’s Time to Pay Up"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 9/19/22:

"It’s Time to Pay Up"

"There is a day of reckoning coming to everyone financially.

 People don’t want to admit this, but the day is here. It’s time to pay up."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/19/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/19/22"

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

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

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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Latest Market Analysis, Updated 9/19/22

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

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

September 16th to 19th

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Financial Stress Index

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

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

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And now... The End Game...

Gregory Mannarino, "The Sell-Off Continues, Liquidity Crisis Ahead - Get Ready"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/19/22:

"The Sell-Off Continues, Liquidity Crisis Ahead - Get Ready"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"Banks Are Preparing For Massive

 Bail-ins While Restricting Withdrawals"

Jim Kunstler, "A Walk on the Wild Side"

"A Walk on the Wild Side"

by Jim Kunstler

"The Leftist system is not meant to produce political stability or prosperity, and feels a lot like it is entering a death spiral. Getting the lunatics out of power, before they crash the entire West with no survivors, is the most urgent problem we face." - Eugyppius at Substack

"Do you doubt anymore that the USA, indeed most of Western Civ, is in the grip of demonic possession? You can’t quite medicalize the problem by calling it a group psychosis because the people demolishing social boundaries know exactly what they’re doing and are shoving it in your face maliciously for the purpose of goading you into humiliation and punishment — which is predicably what will happen if you object to being mind-fucked.

Case in point: a shop teacher styling himself as “Kayla” Lemieux, comes to work wearing a grotesquely outsized fake boob costume. You are meant to say that this is okay because, hey, it is just a form of “gender expression” - so said the Halton District school board in Ontario, Canada. Of course, you know it’s not okay. The School Board only pretends that it’s okay, because this nonsense is supported by the Canadian federal government under the Woke-Marxist Justin Trudeau, which holds the levers of law and can crush you, subject you to its courts, bankrupt you, ruin you, if you don’t play along.

…and don’t you dare look at my boobs!

Who knew that the glorious George Jetson future would tip into a neo-medieval religious frenzy and, more to the point, one deriving its dark energy from the demonic and Satanic? You are asked to swallow ever-greater absurdities, destroying your self-respect because you know that you are a coward for not standing up to this host of degenerates.

The USA’s Democratic Party of Chaos is behind all of this lunacy. It has gotten so bad that many no longer even follow the news of serial outrages by the regime led (nominally) by the empty vessel called “Joe Biden.” Millions of border-jumpers have crossed into Texas and Arizona the past two years. The New York Times / CNN axis of news doesn’t cover it because they want it to continue. Apart from the economic refugees coming across there are substantial numbers of demonically murderous people, many of them not Mexican, but from all quarters of the world, including places with a grudge against our country. Not a few of them are identified as international terrorists. Yet, in they come. The welcome mat is out for them — while our joke of a president rails against “white supremacist domestic terrorists” (another lie you’re supposed to swallow).

The open border issue only came back to the country’s attention when Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida gifted Martha’s Vineyard with a plane-load of fifty illegal immigrants. Martha’s Vineyard did not accept them graciously. The Island’s leaders arranged post-haste for Massachusetts’s governor, Charlie Baker, to call in the state’s national guard and hustle the unwelcome newcomers to a military base on Cape Cod. Nobody with half-a-brain left failed to notice what this said about the wealthy intellectuals who populate Martha’s Vineyard (including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton): You can change the demographics in Jefferson County, Arkansas, all day long, but don’t you dare change the social arrangements on our precious, special Island… not one itty-bitty bit. So much for all their lip-service to diversity and inclusion. They follow the maxim of the late Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, famous for saying “Include me out!”

What is the answer when faced with a large-scale religious disturbance in society, especially one displaying all the earmarks of overt, archetypal evil? You call in an exorcist. That has been Donald Trump’s true role in this millenarian mega-crisis. He is seeking to cast out evil spirits afflicting this sore-beset national community and the evil spirits are frantic to stop his ministrations by any means.

He is, of course, a most untoward avatar in this war of good against evil. He came out of the infernal circle of New York real estate development. The assumption all along is that he must be tainted by dirty dealing with the mobs who ran the construction unions, but after six years of relentless investigation by the Southern District of New York and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, the legions of hell came up with… nothing. How was this possible? Well, they tried their darndest, and now they’re trying again with some double-jeopardy maneuvers. The law, to these degenerates, is just an instrument of their own will-to-power.

Chugging toward the 2022 mid-term elections, Mr. Trump is out there giving moral support and focus to so-called “domestic terrorists” seeking to crush the Woke demonic religious persecution. He leads the substantial demographic of Americans who are determined to not play along with Woke absurdities, and they love him for it. Mr. Trump may or may not be the Republican nominee in 2024, but he is helping the country with a literal House-cleaning in advance of that, and it will open the door to a deluge of corrective truth-telling about what has gone on the past several years, in everything from the Covid 19 scam to the Green New Deal aimed at wrecking what’s left of Western Civ’s economies.

Americans, except for the very old, are not disposed to attending church, meaning they are not reminded at regular intervals, and formal rituals, that good and evil exists in all of us, and that we have a duty to our sacred consciousness to tend to the right side, to “the better angels of our nature,” Lincoln put it. Ultimately, the Left will choke to death on its many crimes and we can return to being a people who confidently know the difference between right and wrong."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Will You Survive The Biggest Crash Ever? Prepare For 3rd World Conditions; Economic Avalance"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 9/18/22:

"Will You Survive The Biggest Crash Ever? 

Prepare For 3rd World Conditions; Economic Avalance"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Now Cyber Attacks Are Hitting Real Estate"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 9/18/22:

"Now Cyber Attacks Are Hitting Real Estate"

"This is unbelievable. The county of Suffolk county New York has been hit with a cyber attack and all of the county business has ceased to operate. Most importantly they cannot conduct any real estate business at all. They cannot do title searches or close escrow."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Even Now"

2002, "Even Now"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.

Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130825.html

The Daily "Near You?"

Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Violence In California Reaches "Epidemic" Levels As Our Society Rapidly Deteriorates All Around Us"

"Violence In California Reaches "Epidemic" Levels 

As Our Society Rapidly Deteriorates All Around Us"

by Michael Snyder

"I can’t understand why anyone would still want to live in California. Yes, there are lots of high paying jobs and the weather is very nice, but crime is completely and utterly out of control. As you will see below, a new report that has just been issued is warning that violence in the state has now reached “epidemic” levels. The police are doing what they can to try to contain the violence, but at this point they are vastly outnumbered by the predators. Sadly, this is the end result of literally decades of cultural rot, and what is happening in California is going to happen to the rest of the nation if we do not take urgent action to turn things around.

Originally, I was going to write about something else today. Tens of thousands of rail and port workers were threatening to go on strike, and this could definitely cause some substantial economic disruptions…"America is bracing for chaos as tens of thousands of railway, port, and hospital workers look set to strike over the winter – plunging the country into further disruption.

As many as 60,000 railway workers, 15,000 nurses, and 22,000 West Coast port workers are plotting mass walkouts as they seek better working conditions Several US freight railroads said they were preparing for widespread strike and service interruptions Friday, a deadline set by two holdout labor groups in protracted talks with railroad carriers about better benefits. But even though these strikes could cause severe short-term problems, they will eventually be resolved." [ZH: And were resolved right before the strike was set to take place]. So in the greater scheme of things, they really aren’t a major concern.

On the other hand, our cultural decay is a massive ongoing crisis that isn’t going to go away. As I mentioned earlier, a brand new report that was just released is warning that violence in the state of California has risen to “epidemic” levels…"The Golden State is losing its luster. A troubling new report labels physical and sexual violence in pandemic-era California a statewide “epidemic.” To put it simply, violence is on an alarming rise.

According to the new annual report from the California Study on Violence Experiences across the Lifespan (CalVEX), violence statistics have seen a significant increase since COVID-19 emerged. The report, conducted by scientists at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, reports more than one in six Californians (18%) experienced either physical or sexual violence in just the past year."

If you live in one of the biggest cities in California, this isn’t news to you. Once upon a time, the state was a place of great beauty and great tranquility, but now it has been transformed into a crime-infested hellhole.

I was particularly alarmed by the numbers on sexual violence in this new report…"While more than 1.5 million adults in California admit to committing acts of sexual violence in the past year, men were more than two times as likely as women to report that they perpetrated sexual violence and intimate partner violence. Women also showed greater mental health impacts and life disruptions due to violent experiences, with 82 percent of women reporting anxiety or depression as a result of physically aggressive, coercive or forced sexual behavior."

Of course much of this violence is being fueled by illegal mind-altering drugs.Some of these drugs are so immensely powerful that they literally put people into catatonic states for an extended period of time…

Can anyone explain to me why Democrat voters enjoy seeing this so much they just keep voting for more? 

pic.twitter.com/hq4unJn0S8

- 🗽🐷Piglosi's Peaks🗻🐘 (@StokingFreedom) September 13, 2022

I will never understand why people would willingly do that to themselves. Today, we are facing the biggest drug crisis that we have ever seen in American history, and addicts will often do whatever it takes to get another fix.

Sadly, this is one of the factors that is contributing to skyrocketing rates of shoplifting all over the nation…"We are all painfully aware of the huge rise in shoplifting and even violent robberies of stores. We watch the videos of thugs brazenly raiding stores, and read about the organized crime rings that have sprung up to profit from the trend. Shoplifting has become a big, if criminal business. Chances are that if you use eBay to purchase a wide range of products at reduced prices you have unwittingly purchased stolen goods. No good way for eBay to stop the practice."

One homeless man that originally came from Alabama recently admitted that he regularly shoplifts in order to fund his heroin use…"People say high rent causes homelessness but Ben, who has been homeless in San Francisco for 7 years, says the “vast majority” are homeless due to addiction. Just 6-7% are from SF. Ben says he "boosts" (shoplifts) and breaks into cars to pay for his $60/day heroin habit." 

pic.twitter.com/uewKTtBuOS

- Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) February 6, 2022

There have been homeless addicts in the streets of San Francisco for years, but now we have reached a point where they are seemingly everywhere. The following is what one reporter witnessed during a recent journey through the city…"I saw complete hopelessness in the eyes of haunted souls dragging themselves down the street looking for their next fix. I saw men and women of all ages hunched over on the sidewalks with open wounds all over their bodies. I saw the filthy tent cities stinking with human excrement and strewn with needles and pipes. I saw children staring in horror at people dying right in front of them."

At one time, such activity was limited to the bad portions of the city. But now addicts that have been drugged out of their minds are pulling down their pants and crapping in the streets right in front of some of the most expensive real estate in San Francisco. This has made the wealthy people really angry, and Mayor Breed says that she is finally going to “get serious” about this crisis. Of course “getting serious” doesn’t mean arresting a bunch of people and throwing them into prison. That just wouldn’t be very “progressive”.

Instead, authorities in San Francisco are getting ready to launch a “soft-touch” program that will seek to “interrupt” drug trafficking…"City supervisors released a resolution for a vague ‘soft-touch’ initiative called ‘San Francisco Recovers.’" And here’s the catch, and it’s a doozy: the plan is being touted as, ‘a way that nobody’s going to jail but we’re doing an effective job of interrupting the drug market and drug scenes.’

Is this a sick joke? Yes, it certainly sounds like a sick joke to me. Good luck with all that.

If major cities such as San Francisco actually want to have a chance of turning things around, they need to send the police out to round up all the drug dealers. Unfortunately, police forces in many of our biggest cities are rapidly getting smaller. In fact, a whopping 122 officers have left the Seattle Police Department in 2022 alone…"The liberal city of Seattle is losing police officers amid a major spike in crime, 770 KTTH reported. “We’re screwed,” former King County Sheriff John Urqhart said, according to 770 KTTH. In total, 122 officers have left the Seattle Police Department in 2022, including six that left in August, 770 KTTH reported, citing a police source. Since the city council voted to defund the police department in 2020, nearly 500 police officers have left the force."

I wouldn’t want to be a police officer in a major west coast city at this point either. They are underpaid, the politicians treat them with tremendous disdain, and they are often hindered by absolutely ridiculous regulations which keep them from doing their jobs effectively.

We like to think that we are so “advanced”, but the truth is that if you compare video footage from major cities on the west coast from decades ago to video footage from today there is absolutely no comparison. Our society is melting down right in front of our eyes, and if we stay on the path that we are currently on there is no future for our country. But the politicians insist that people like me have it all wrong. They continue to tell us that things are better than ever and that a glorious future for our nation is dead ahead.

You can believe that if you want, but the truth of what is really happening to our society is on display for the whole world to see. America is dying, and we are quickly running out of time to turn things around."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Escalation: Recent Events Suggest Mounting Economic Danger"

"Escalation: Recent Events 

Suggest Mounting Economic Danger"

by Brandon Smith

"A common refrain from people who are critical of alternative economists is that we have been predicting crisis for so long that “eventually we will be right.” These are generally people who don’t understand the nature of economic decline – It’s like an avalanche that builds over time, then breaks and quickly escalates as it flows down the mountain. What they don’t grasp is that they are in the middle of an economic collapse RIGHT NOW, and they just can’t see it because they have been acclimated to the presence of the snow and cold.

Economic decline is a process that takes many years, and while you might get an event like the market crash of 1929 or the crash of 2008, these moments of panic are nothing more than the wreckage left behind by the great wave of tumbling ice that everyone should have seen coming far in advance, but they refused.

In 2022 the job of warning people is far easier than it used to be because we are well past the midpoint of the process of decline. But, believe it or not, I still get people today who claim that we analysts are “doom mongers.” The power of willful ignorance is truly amazing. It’s enough to make a person blind to stagflationary crisis, supply chain disruptions, quickly inflating prices, stock market carnage, bond market instability, record consumer debt, and international conflict.

At this point, I think if a person can’t see the dangers ahead they are probably a waste of time and space and are destined to be buried in the ice; there’s nothing that can be done for them. Yes, there are some people out there that don’t get exposed to the information and we have to take them into account, but my priority will be people that are awake and aware and try to give them a sense of what point in the collapse process we find ourselves.

In the past month there has been a considerable uptick in economic and geopolitical activity that suggests we are entering a new phase, and not surprisingly it’s all accumulating right before we hit October. Here are the events that I find most concerning:

The European Energy Crisis: This is an event that I have been predicting since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and now it is upon us. I wrote about it extensively in my recent article ‘Europe Is Facing Energy Disaster And It’s Going To Bleed Over Into The US’ so I won’t rehash all that information here. What I do want to point out is the complete lack of planning on the part of European officials to deal with the threat. It is as if they WANT a full spectrum disaster.

Russia has now completely cut off natural gas supplies to Europe, which represent around 40% of all EU energy resources. Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices spiked by 28% a week ago, on top of already existing inflation. Oil supplies are also in steep decline for Europe and the EU government has pledged to cut what’s left of Russian oil imports by sea at the end of the year. Sadly, they have offered very little in the way of solutions to the supply-side problem.

There has been talk of increasing imports of alternative resources from other nations, but the EU is already buying up around 75% of all liquid natural gas from the US. OPEC oil producers have indicated they will not be attempting to increase production anytime soon (probably because they can’t due to inflation in operation costs). There is NO backup energy resource for Europe; it doesn’t exist right now.

They will try to buy up whatever coal, oil and gas they can find on the market while driving up prices even more for other countries. They will still come up short, which means people are going to freeze this winter. Best case scenario is that there are mostly mild temps and people barely scrape buy with minimum heating. But EU industry is going to suffer and many manufacturers are going to cut production (which mean more stress on the global supply chain).

Core Inflation Is Still Rising: As I warned last week in my article ‘It’s A Fact That Needs Repeating: The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber,’ inflation is continuing to rise despite the Fed’s continued interest rate hikes, giving the central bank even more ammunition to justify higher rates into extreme economic weakness.

The latest CPI print showed an increase to 8.3% and was a shock to markets which universally expected a drop. This is the nature of stagflation – even with falling demand prices continue to climb or remain high for extended periods. The stagflation event of the 1970s lasted for a decade until the Fed jacked rates to 21% and then employment crumbled in the early 1980s.

This doesn’t mean that rates will go to 21% this time; they don’t need to. All it would take is a Federal Funds Rate of around 4% – 5% to crash our current QE addicted system. A 75 bps rate hike is now widely expected at the next Fed meeting this month, with some predicting a 100 bps hike. This would put us close to crash territory for markets and for employment, though I think we still have well into 2023 before unemployment really starts to spike.

Putin’s Meeting With Xi: As I write this, Vladimir Putin is set to meet with China’s Xi Jinping and the nature of the conference is not clear. There are the obvious points of agreement such as China’s continued purchases of Russian oil and other commodities, as well as the ongoing plan to build a pipeline to China by 2025. There is also strategic cooperation which is evident in the recent naval exercises between the two nations around Japan and Taiwan.

The timing of the meeting is concerning to me, because the prime season for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan is fast approaching (October is the best month for naval movements to avoid typhoons). China would not necessarily need to commit to a ground invasion, either. They could simply cut off all import/export trade from any source other than China and starve Taiwan until they accept unification.

There is also the issue of Ukraine and arms sales. With the amount of propaganda coming from Ukrainian Intelligence and NATO, it’s hard to say what is actually happening, but I suspect Russia is changing strategies and repositioning to deploy missile and artillery bombardment of infrastructure, including power grids and water. This is a tactic that Russia has avoided for months (until this week), which is surprising because one of the first measures usually taken by the US during an invasion is to eliminate most key infrastructure (as we did in Iraq). You would think Russia would have done the same, but perhaps they were saving that scenario for winter when it is harder for Ukraine to cope.

This would make Ukraine essentially unlivable in the coming winter for most of the population. Putin may be seeking to ensure China remains a steady economic partner should geopolitical pressures increase. They may even be making a deal of mutual support: China takes Taiwan while Russia makes Ukraine a resource wasteland and they each support the other economically when NATO counties try to impose sanctions on China. We probably won’t know until October, but the timing of the meeting should raise eyebrows.

If the manure is about to hit the fan in Taiwan along with Ukraine, then diplomatic and economic ties will be severed and western access to China’s manufacturing will be cut. This is a problem for China’s economy, certainly, which may be why they have continued their mass covid lockdowns well after every other government has abandoned them. Could this be practice for civil controls in an impending war environment?

China’s global dominance in imports/exports gives them considerable economic leverage in trade, however. Many nations would not support sanctions against them. Also, their vast holdings of US dollars and Treasuries could be used as a weapon to damage or destroy the dollar’s world reserve status. If China invades Taiwan this year, then all bets are off – The economic decline will move swiftly from that point on.

There are many other trends which factor into the crash environment but the above factors are the most recent and hold the biggest potential for causing a domino effect globally. The question that always arises is “what can we do about it?” Not much in terms of prevention. What we can do, though, is prepare locally to weather the storm. This means stocking necessities before they rise even further in price or become non-existent. Become a producer and learn a valuable skill for survival in a depleted economy. Organize with people locally who are on the same page to create security and alternative trade opportunities.

Hopefully, the aware citizenry will rise to the challenge and organization will be extensive, because the worst case scenario would be great masses of completely isolated people all vying against each other rather than working towards mutual security. Even in a slow collapse scenario this is a problem in terms of rising crime; so plan on working with others if you want to avoid inevitable third world conditions."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

- https://alt-market.us

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead"

Gregory Mannarino, 9/18/22:

"Markets, A Look Ahead"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Creating the Worst Socioeconomic & Geopolitical Crisis in History"

"Creating the Worst Socioeconomic &

 Geopolitical Crisis in History"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Renowned trends researcher and publisher of “The Trends Journal,” Gerald Celente, contends the world is going into a very dark period. Celente explains, “We are facing the worst socioeconomic and geopolitical crisis in modern history. The Covid war, this happened and that happened because of the pandemic. There was no pandemic. This happened because of politicians, little pieces of scum crap, one after another said close down your business, don’t go outside, don’t go to the beach, close down the swings and don’t let kids go and play. You have a socioeconomic crisis, the likes of which are unprecedented, and the damage caused by the Covid war is incalculable. (The CV19 Vax is part of Covid War.) 

Office occupancy rates are at about 45% tops. So, all the businesses that depended on commuters are gone. 30% of dry cleaners are out of business. No more happy hours. In New York City, there are about 1,300 less people that clean office buildings now. This is real. People forget that in 2019, Germany was going into a recession. There were protests and demonstrations going on all over the world. People were taking to the streets and protesting a lack of basic living standards, government corruption, crime and violence. It was one of our top trends. This is before the Covid war. They artificially propped up the governments. It was the Federal Reserve and the central banksters. They artificially pumped up the economies. There is almost $8 trillion pumped into the U.S. economy by the government to artificially prop it up. 

When you look at the Covid war, the draconian, demonic mandates and lockdowns that they imposed on businesses, when you look at the Ukraine war, the sanctions and the stupid things they are doing, they are creating the worst socioeconomic and geopolitical crisis in modern history.” Celente points out, “Nobody is talking about peace, and don’t you dare talk about peace. We are being driven to war by mentally ill people. All they want is control.”

Celente says the number one investment trend is physical gold. Celente explains, “I don’t give financial advice, but to me, gold is the number one safe haven asset. Gold keeps going down because interest rates are going up and bullion does not pay interest. It’s true, but gold is a safe haven asset in times of socioeconomic and geopolitical despair, which we are in now. That’s when you need to have it as I see it. Can gold go down further? Yep. It could go down a little bit more. Then only reason the dollar is strong is because all the other currencies are so weak. Sales are down, and when you put inflation into it, they are really down. So, to me, gold is the one, and I am only speaking for myself, and on Friday, I bought more gold.”

In closing, Celente says, “At The Trends Journal, we see things the way they are, not the way we want them to be.” There is much more in the 55-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with the top trends researcher on the planet, Gerald Celente, publisher of “The Trends Journal”:

- https://rumble.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the below panoramic image taken last Friday are the faint lights of small towns glowing across a dark foreground landscape of Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand, as well as the numerous stars glowing across a dark background starscape. Also visible are the planet Venus and a band of zodiacal light on the image left.

Unusual events are also captured, however. First, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while usually a common site, appears here to hover surreally above the ground. Next, a fortuitous streak of a meteor was captured on the image right. Perhaps the most unusual component is the bright spot just to the left of the meteor. That spot is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket, launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French Guiana. How lucky was the astrophotographer to capture the rocket launch in his image? Not lucky at all- the image was timed to capture the rocket. What was lucky was how photogenic- and perhaps surreal- the rest of the sky turned out to be.”

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

"For This Is What We Do..."

Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

- Samwise Gamgee, "The Lord of the Rings

○

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

- Barbara Kingsolver

○

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

- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light"

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light:

Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

- by Maria Popova

“Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing, 

when the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.”

“It’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention,” the Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand (April 11, 1934–November 29, 2014) observed in contemplating the artist’s task to bear witness to the universe. And yet this universe in which we live is predicated on impermanence, and the lucky accident of our existence is crowned with the certitude of its end from the start. Why, then, are we always so shocked by the finitude of all we hold dear and, above all, by our own mortality? Few are those who can say with sincerity, like Rilke did an exquisite 1923 letter, that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” Instead, we spend our lives shuddering at any reminder of our inevitable end, unsalved by the miracle of having lived at all.

Montaigne articulated the central paradox of being perfectly in 16th-century meditation on death and the art of living: “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.” Still, lament we do, and some of our greatest art gives voice to that lamentation.

That paradox is what Strand explores with transcendent courage and curiosity in his poem “The End,” found in his "Collected Poems" (public library) - the trove of truth and beauty that gave us Strand’s love letter to dreams.

In this hauntingly beautiful recording, courtesy of The New York Public Library, an aged Strand reads his poignant poem shortly before he repaid his own debt to mortality:

"The End"

by Mark Strand

"Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end."

Complement with the lyrical "Duck, Death and the Tulip", Marcus Aurelius on mortality and the key to living fully, and the great Zen master Seung Sahn Soen-sa’s explanation of death and the life-force to a child, then revisit Strand’s celebration of clouds and everything they mean."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"A Sad Fact..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."

- Richard Ford

"When Will It End? New Money Coming"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 9/17/22:

"When Will It End? New Money Coming"

"I’m in San Clemente, California at the cars and coffee auto show. There is continue chaos with our money, banking and the inflationary nightmare that we are living through."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Pensacola, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!