Monday, October 10, 2022

"The Sky is Falling"

"The Sky is Falling"
by Jeff Thomas

"Governments are in the flimflam business. Pared down to the bare essentials, governments can be very useful in passing and enforcing a small number of very basic laws. These laws should be limited to policing those who would seek to aggress against others, or their property. Governments may also have a value in providing protection from invasion – organizing an army of able-bodied people to address this collective problem, if and when it occurs.

And that’s about it. Beyond that, the private sector can, and almost always does, do a better job at virtually everything else. Therefore, a government should be small, cost very little to run and do as little as possible. But since a government already exists, why not have it do more? Why not assign to it some of those tasks that tend not to attract businessmen?

Well, the simple, but almost universally little-understood, reason is that governments do not actually produce anything. They are, in fact, a parasitical construct that consumes money but creates nothing of worth. Unlike businesses, they don’t operate on a profit basis. In fact, few politicians or civil servants have any grasp of the concept that prosperity is only created when someone invests his money in a venture, creates a profit and saves or re-invests the difference.

Although this may seem like a harsh criticism, it’s borne out by the fact that all governments consume money and are more wasteful than any business would be. Worse, politicians and civil servants typically fail entirely to understand that this is a fundamental problem. And, yet, like all people, people in governments wish to personally advance, both in position and financial worth. And here is where the perennial bugbear of governments appears.

Since governments, by rights, should never expand unless absolutely necessary, and since this is never enough for those who people any government, they must somehow con the public into believing that government expansion is "for the good of the people." Ergo, even the smallest of governments, in the smallest of jurisdictions, will learn to cajole the public. As the government grows, the con-game grows and duplicity, trickery and skullduggery become the lifeblood of the government – any government. The con-game becomes, "Vote for me and I’ll provide you with something at the expense of someone else."

It is the primary business of any government to grow its own power and wealth at the expense of its people. At some point, all governments figure out that the greatest way to expand their own power and personal wealth is through fear. If a people can be made afraid, the government can bypass reason and appeal to emotion – always an easier sell.

For millennia, governments (like organized religions and for the same reason) have peddled the fear of a demon – usually in the form of an aggressive opponent from outside the jurisdiction who can be regarded as wishing to aggress against the country. In modern times, however, the spin doctors have done this concept one better – they’ve learned to peddle, not an individual, country or army as the demon, but a concept.

As the reader will know, in recent decades, all any government has needed to do is claim that something that they oppose is related somehow to terrorism and they will be given carte blanche to crush it, however implausible the given reasoning may be.

Another highly successful demon is Climate Change. The Climate Change concept was invented out of whole fabric by the Club of Rome, which was created in 1968 by David Rockefeller. It was originally called "Global Cooling," as, at that time, the earth was passing through one of its cyclic cooling periods. However, that period soon came to an end and the earth entered a global warming period. So, the same "science" that was used for Global Cooling was then attributed without any change whatever to the new "Global Warming."

When that cycle ended and the proponents of Global Warming again had egg on their faces for pushing warming during a new periodic cooling cycle, the proponents finally got clever and renamed it "Climate Change." From that day forward, any flood, drought, hurricane, tornado or variation in the ice caps has immediately been blamed on "increased Climate Change," even though such occurrences have been with us forever and will be with us forever.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly polled scientists as to whether they agree that climate change exists, and the IPCC states that over 97% agree. What is not asked is whether Climate Change is a direct result of man’s intervention. Asked if climate changes from time to time, the answer is, of course, "yes." In fact, 100% of scientists should agree, based upon the wording of the question. But, of course, this is not science at all, but deception. Always phrase the question in such a way that you will receive the desired answer.

So, the outcome is that the great majority of people are sold on the idea that Climate Change is due to man’s creation of CO2 and that mankind has to be controlled, or he will destroy the planet with CO2 emissions. Since "scientists" are represented as agreeing on this, people tend not to question the logic. The fact that all plants breathe CO2 and would die without it and that, if all plant life were to expire, all animal life would then expire, does not occur to the listener. His government has spoken and he needs to be afraid.

Since the mid-1970s, politicians have periodically claimed that life on earth will come to an end in a decade or so if emissions are not eliminated globally. Whenever one of these deadlines passes, the presenters simply move up the date another decade or so, maintaining the fear, but never actually reaching the end of the world. Of course, the Great Lie should be exposed, due to the fact that governments do not actually pass laws to eliminate CO2 emissions; they merely create taxation and fines for those manufacturers who create CO2. So, apparently, it’s all right to end the world, if you pay a hefty tax, instead of cutting CO2.

"The Jews will destroy Germany"… "The Iranians will destroy the world if they can make a nuclear bomb"… "Your car will destroy the earth"… but Air Force One, which creates 336 times the CO2 of a car, will not. With government propaganda, the sky is always falling.

All the best propaganda appeals at a gut level. If people can be made to abandon reason and accept government-created fear, they can be controlled. This doesn’t mean that governments can’t ever be trusted, but it means that they shouldn’t ever be trusted. They should always be questioned, not only as their propaganda is so often false, but as they are, inherently, in the flimflam business."

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Musical Interlude: Prelude, "After the Goldrush"

Prelude, "After the Goldrush" (Studio version)

Prelude, "After the Goldrush" (Live version)
Prelude comprise Irene Hume, Brian Hume, Ian Vardy.

'A Look to the Heavens"

“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?
Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”

"We Were There..."

"Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be."
- Orson Scott Card

"Now the voices and the sound of movement were gone, and the stream could be heard running quietly under its banks. The air was full of the scent of water and of flowers. She walked, quiet, while the house began to reverberate: a band had started up. She walked beside the river while the music thudded, feeling herself as a heavy, impervious, insensitive lump that, like a planet doomed always to be dark on one side, had vision in front only, a myopic searchlight blind except for the tiny three-dimensional path open immediately before her eyes in which the outline of a tree, a rose, emerged then submerged in dark. She thought, with the dove's voices of her solitude. Where? But where. How? Who? No, but where, where… Then silence and the birth of a repetition. Where? Here. Here? Here, where else, you fool, you poor fool, where else has it been, ever…?"
- Doris Lessing

The Poet: John O'Donohue, "For The Time Of Necessary Decision"

"For The Time Of Necessary Decision"

 "The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring,
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it's time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul,
Or the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.
We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching our soul's desire."

- John O'Donohue, 
"To Bless the Space Between Us"

"The Hand We're Dealt..."

“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan

Bill Bonner, "Gilty Finking"

"Gilty Finking"
by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Yes, dear reader, it’s a YODO world now. Investors are realizing that when they are dead, they are dead forever. No Fed voodoo to raise them from the grave. And it’s the first time for most of them. No chance to practice. No opportunity to learn.

And so, the mood was glum at the end of last week. The jobs report on Thursday showed a stronger employment market than expected. Investors figured the odds of a Fed U-turn had gone down. They sold stocks. MarketWatch: "While markets have not yet morphed into an actual state of alarm, an increasingly dark sentiment is starting to brew behind the scenes.

Nikko Asset Management’s John Vail said a “short but scary” global recession is likely to be ahead. Ben Emons of Medley Global Advisors said Wednesday’s decision by major oil producers to cut production, starting next month, has the potential to turn into a prolonged stretch of higher inflation and big market swings. And volatility expert Harley Bassman said stocks could drop as much as 20% from where they are now - a magnitude similar to the single-day decline that took place during 1987’s “Black Monday” scare.

As the Fed raises rates, they become more ‘normal’ than they’ve been for many years. But ‘normal’ terrifies investors. It makes them realize how weird things have gotten and that they may have to back up before they can go forward. That is, they may have to give up their Bubble Era profits and admit that much of what they believed was either a lie or a delusion."

Disorderly Fashion: You don’t get real money from a printing press. Credit from the central bank is not the same as money that has been earned and saved. And there are limits to what assets are worth… and how much debt you can support. And prices go down as well as up. And fake interest rates – zero! – do far more harm than good. And a group of hacks at the Fed can’t really improve a $24 trillion economy.

That would be normal. But when you’ve been living in a dreamworld, a return to normal can be brutal. So far, the decline in stocks and bonds has been orderly. There has been selling, but no panic selling. Today, we wonder when it will become disorderly.

All over the world, from the largest institutions – such as Larry Fink’s BlackRock – to the smallest minimum-wage household, normal interest rates squeeze the space between income and outgo. For many, the space disappears completely… and then outgo exceeds income. And as our old friend Sid Taylor, a defense budget analyst, used to say: “When your outflow exceeds your income your upkeep is your downfall.”

The Bank of England ‘pivoted’ when it realized what ‘normal’ would do to the gilt (UK government bond) market. These are, by the way, the safest investments in the UK. They’re not NFTs or cryptos. England is not going to default. Gilts are not going to disappear. But you can still lose a lot of money in government bonds. And that’s what Britain’s pension and insurance giants were doing when the BoE (Bank of England) saved them.

Lessons Unlearned: Imagine that you are running a giant pension company. You have billions in assets. But you have billions in liabilities too. People are going to retire; you have to make sure they have the money they were promised. You invest safely, prudently… careful not to lose money. This is money that absolutely, positively has to be there when it is needed.

Trouble is, you based your projections on “normal’ interest rates. At 4% interest, you had it made. Your assets would earn enough to cover upcoming payouts. But at zero interest rates? You had to innovate. Along comes Larry Fink. He tells you not to worry. You can use his “liability-driven investing” strategy (LDI). In the last major market hoop-de-doo, in 2008, Larry lost $100 million for First Boston in mortgage backed securities. But now, he’s learned his lesson, or so he says.

You don’t want to gamble with pension savings. But what else can you do? And Larry makes it sound… well… almost scientific. He shows you some neat charts and graphs. The idea is simple enough. If you need 4% interest, and your investments are only earning 1%... you borrow 3 times your assets in order to end up with 4 times as much yield. Larry wears a nice suit. He says he cares deeply about the environment, social justice and enlightened corporate governance. And he makes it sound so easy.

And soon, your pension fund has borrowed billions of dollars and Larry’s LDI funds have more than $1 trillion in assets. But wouldn’t you know it? Just when you thought things might work out, UK bond yields went up (bond prices went down). Gilts were the collateral behind the billions the funds had borrowed. When they went down, pension funds got margin calls and had to sell their gilts to make payments to their creditors – further impairing the value of their collateral.

Panic Early, Beat the Rush: That was the situation on the 29th of September. The bond market was becoming disorderly. Larry Fink’s LDI empire of debt was tottering. If it toppled over… it could bring down the whole system. Such is the wacky world created by the ultra-low interest rates. Nothing is safe. Stocks are down. Bonds are down. Even gold, though flat for the year, is down $300 since March. When asset prices go down, lenders and investors – and all their tricked-up speculations – get into trouble. Because the assets of the latter are the collateral of the former. So, it was that the UK approached its moment of clarity and normalcy… and wanted nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, over on this side of the Atlantic… Larry Fink has his headquarters in New York. US pension funds have made similar bets, trying to make up for a lack of yield by taking bigger gambles. Corporations, meanwhile, borrowed more than at any time in history, in order to disguise weak earnings and bid up their share prices. And even the federal government begins to teeter under the weight of $31 trillion in debt. It soon faces interest payments of $1 trillion per year. Something’s gonna give. Then investors, standing in line patiently now, will begin to push and shove… and rush the exits."

The Daily "Near You?"

Billings, Montana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Only Final Sin..."

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is
getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."
- Hunter S. Thompson

"Russia Launches Large-Scale Strikes On Some 20 Ukrainian Cities In Response To 'Terrorist' Crimea Bridge Blast"

"Russia Launches Large-Scale Strikes On Some 20 
Ukrainian Cities In Response To 'Terrorist' Crimea Bridge Blast"
by Tyler Durden

"A series of major explosions rocked Kyiv and several locations across Ukraine on Monday, following Russian President Vladimir Putin blaming Ukrainian special services for the "terrorist" blast which partially disabled the Crimean bridge that links Russia to the peninsula. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the fresh missile attacks in a statement posted to Telegram, saying that the new "missiles hitting" are part of the Kremlin trying to "wipe us off the face of the Earth," and that: "Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded."
Image of widespread destruction in Kiev & 
other cities are widely circulating on social media.
At least 100 strikes were carried out, with many cruise missiles launched from Russian warships in the Black Sea. Putin in a televised announcement said he ordered attacks on military, energy, and communications targets specifically in response to the Crimea bridge attack.

"If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks continue, Russia's response will be severe and at the level of the threats facing it. Nobody should be in any doubt," Putin warned. He threatened that more might follow: "If attempts to commit terrorist acts on our territory continue, the responses from Russia will be harsh and their scale will correspond to the level of threat to Russia," he added, addressing a meeting of his Security Council. "No one should have any doubts."

Russia's defense ministry also affirmed it hit "all the assigned targets" - which in some cases appear to have been civilian infrastructure in the Ukrainian capital. Regional sources are listing that over 15 significant cities were targeted and suffered severe damage, including Kiev, Rovno, Lvov, Ternopol, Ivano-Frankovsk, Khmelnitsky, Zhitomir, Kremenchug, Kropivnitsky, Krivoy-Rog, Odessa, Zaporozhie, Dnieper, Poltava, Kharkov. Additional smaller cities and towns were hit as well.

"Over 50+ missile strikes have been reported in Ukrainian cities. Misty cruise missiles such as Kh-101 and Kalibr. Chaos ensues and woman can be heard screaming in the background." pic.twitter.com/BWUpKbS33m
- LogKa (@LogKa11) October 10, 2022

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency's office said "many cities" came under Russian attack. "Ukraine is under missile attack. There is information about strikes in many cities of our country." He further warned the population to "stay in shelters."

Russians are trying to make it "bridge for bridge"?
- Ukrainska Pravda in English (@pravda_eng) October 10, 2022

"The capital is under Russian terrorists' attack!" Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said in describing strikes on the city center. "If there is no urgent need, it is better not to go to the city today. I am also asking the residents of the suburbs about this - do not go to the capital today." Importantly, there are reports the building housing the German consulate in Kyiv was rocked by a missile, according to BILD newspaper. These are the first strikes on the Ukrainian capital since June.

"People seen sheltering in underground metro stations amid ongoing air raid sirens... Metro station in Kyiv where I am with my son now. Very crowded, lots of kids. People are calm, no panic."
- Inna Sovsun (@InnaSovsun) October 10, 2022

In an initial response EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said he is "Deeply shocked by Russia’s attacks on civilians in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine. Such acts have no place in 21st century," and condemned them "in the strongest possible terms."

However, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said this is only the beginning of the response, saying according to a state media translation: "The first episode is over. There will be others... I will express my personal position. The Ukrainian state in its current configuration with the Nazi political regime will pose a constant, direct and clear threat to Russia. Therefore, in addition to protecting our people and protecting the country's borders, the goal of our future actions should be a complete dismantling of the political regime of Ukraine," Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel."

Kyiv. Also reports that Iranian drones coming from Belarus. 
- Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) October 10, 2022

Many pundits have pointed out that Russia has been "holding back" up to this point. With the war now more than seven months in, there hasn't been the kind of "shock and awe" attacks against major Ukrainian centers like some predicted initially.

2003: Operation "Shock and Awe" over Iraq's capital city, 31 countries from the "free world" took part. Understand this, Putin is holding back in Kiev #Kyiv 
- Syrian Girl 🇸🇾🎗 (@Partisangirl) October 10, 2022

Independent geopolitical analyst Tom Fowdy described, "I honestly don't know what Ukraine and their supporters were expecting when they decided to attack a bridge Russia could not have made more clear was a massive, massive red line. They're forcing Putin's hand even when he has been massively lethargic to play it."

From a friend in Kyiv this morning. 
- ed mac (@echomadman) October 10, 2022

Map of Monday's strikes:
Likely reports of casualty figures will continue rising throughout the day as damage is assessed. "At least five civilian deaths were reported and 12 people were wounded in Kyiv on Monday as at least 83 missiles were fired on the country," The Hill reports based on local sources. Ukraine’s armed forces said that air defenses succeeded in downing 43 missiles."

Jim Kunstler, "You Can Always Dream"

"You Can Always Dream"
by Jim Kunstler

"Last night I had a dream… Everyone that I knew… And everyone that you know was in my dream… I saw a vampire… I saw a ghost… Everybody scared me but you sacred me the most… In the dream I had last night…" - Randy Newman

"Last night I had a dream. In the dream I woke up to the banner headline: BIDEN ARRESTED. It was only a dream, but was most satisfying, as it made vivid and emphatic what must happen to correct the dreadful tendings of the criminally psychopathic enterprise that our government has become.

The gang behind the shabby and absurd pretend-president - a figure as comically macabre as the plastic effigies of the undead who crowd American front yards this time of year - is not content with running the country into a ditch. Lately these rogues and degenerates are making noises about blowing up the world.

The autumn days dwindle down to signal events that will overturn this wicked enterprise. The yellow-and-blue flag of Ukraine can’t compete on the lawn with tableaux vivants of werewolves, skeletons hung with rotting flesh, radioactive burn victims, hooded demons from hell escaping their graves, and tortured souls shrieking from the various zones between this world and perdition. America is expressing itself with stunning verisimilitude to the onrush of reality: maybe we’ve had enough of romancing death.

That’s the developing lesson of our fiasco in Ukraine. The past three weeks, the US and its vacillating NATO cohorts issued a set of challenging insults aimed at Russia, the designated “villain” in the concocted Ukraine melodrama produced-and-directed by the Party of Chaos as a diversion from our own acute problems at home.

First, the sabotage of Nord Streams One and Two. Maybe a US op, maybe UK, maybe Poland in the mix somewhere. Obviously not Russia, despite all the clumsy propaganda on CNN. What was the idea there, exactly? To deprive Russia of a natgas export market? Guess what? The destruction of the Nord Streams leaves plenty of natgas for the other 70-percent of the world that’s not Europe. And plenty of natgas for Russia itself to develop industries in an import-replacement program to offset the idiotic economic sanctions recklessly imposed on it by “Joe Biden” & Company.

Not such a good outcome for Germany and the EU, though. They will, first, freeze through the winter with idle furnaces and, second, starve in 2023-24 from a lack of fertilizer (made from natgas in the Haber-Bosch process). Oh, and no more industry for you, Euroland. It’s back to the jolly rigors of the Twelfth Century, planting barley and peasecods with pointed sticks while wolves roam the streets of your depopulated cities.

Next, days ago, the attempted destruction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait in the Black Sea, connecting the Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia. Nice try. Didn’t work. Both the railroad lanes and the motor lanes are operational again. Who did it? We’ll know soon enough.

Note also: the ongoing shelling and bombing of Ukraine’s giant nuclear power generation plant at Zaporizhzhia - admitted by US officials to be a Ukraine operation in a September 13 New York Times report. Yes, that was the bright idea of America’s advisors to NATO and Ukraine: lob explosives into the biggest nuke plant in Europe. See what happens….

Note also that the main human object of all this US, NATO, and Ukraine mischief is the leader of Russia. That’d be Vladimir Putin. One must admire Mr. Putin’s prudence and fortitude in the face of such provocative effrontery. So far anyway. Now, it appears that he has had enough of these shenanigans. For seven months, the strategy behind Russia’s Special Military Operation has puzzled the West. Why so tentative? Why not just use Russia’s manifest superiority, air power especially, to go in and bust the whole joint up? Do what the US has done in places like Libya and Syria?

Forgive me for repeating what I’ve written more than once before: Russia will not benefit from having a broken, failed state on its doorstep. Such a situation would clearly just invite more international hugger-mugger. Rather, Russia will benefit hugely from having a neutral, functioning Ukraine next door, a state with ample agricultural resources that could plausibly feed its people and live in peace, perhaps even enjoy special trade privileges with its bigger neighbor to the east… a Ukraine that would be a geographical buffer between Russia and what is apt to be a very disorderly and distressed Western Europe on the other side.

The Ukrainian leader, Mr. Zelenskyy, capped off the weeks of sabotage by appealing to the US and NATO to conduct “preemptive nuclear strikes” against Russia proper. That’ll work in Ukraine’s favor, I’m sure. He promised to call German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and make the pitch for NATO jumping into the action on the ground. (And with whose army would that be?) Such cheek from this desperado! Going mad-dog is probably not a sign of confidence.

As of Monday, October 10, Russia began delivering some disciplinary actions against Mr. Zelenskyy’s insolent regime. Russia sent missiles into at least 10 Ukrainian cities, targeting electric power generation, water, central heating, and other “key services” in Kiev and elsewhere. Message: if you think we’re f*cking around, consider this an attitude adjustment opportunity.
Full screen recommended.
And the gloves come off...
Full screen recommended. 
The action is an overture to a strategic shift. Russia aims to speed up the game clock, consolidate its ownership of the Donbas provinces, destroy Ukraine’s remaining military capability, bust up enough stuff to perhaps prompt the Ukrainian people to ask whether continuing to follow Mr. Zelenskyy’s gang is a good idea, and leave no alternative to talks that will leave Ukraine neutralized. Mr. Putin is calling “Joe Biden’s” bluff. All of this could have been avoided, of course, if the maniacs of America’s deep state had simply abided by the promise made thirty years ago to not expand NATO. What part of that deal didn’t we understand? Apparently, all of it. On purpose. Because we have acted with conscious and arrogant dishonor.

Of course, our “president” could commence that nuclear war he affects to be so avid for. It would be a fitting career-capper for the Ol’ Dawg. The show-runner behind all this needless mayhem, former President Barack Obama, reminded us a while back: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up.” Roger that, BHO! Which gets back to that dream I had of the headline: BIDEN ARRESTED. It was good, but not enough. How about : BIDEN, OBAMA, AND 639 FEDERAL OFFICIALS IN NINE AGENCIES ARRESTED. What a strange moment in our long and steadfast history as an orderly Republic that would be. And yet, what a perfect ending to these years of perfidy and travail."

"They Have No Cash!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 10/10/22:
"They Have No Cash!"
"This is getting worse and worse for the real estate industry. There are mortgage lenders that are canceling loan applications because they do not have money to lend out. They are out of cash. What does the world look like when they are canceling loans like this? "
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "The Global Financial System Is Coming Apart Faster... And Its About To Get Much Worse"

Gregory Mannarino, 10/10/22:
"The Global Financial System Is Coming Apart Faster...
 And Its About To Get Much Worse"
Comments here:

"Price Increases At Target! This Is Getting Crazy! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 10/10/22:
"Price Increases At Target!
 This Is Getting Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we visit Target and are noticing ridiculously high prices. Prices on groceries continue to rise, as we are also witnessing more empty shelves everywhere! It's getting rough out here as stores are struggling to get in products."
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 10/10/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 10/10/22"
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 10/10/22
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
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
And now... The End Game...

"How It Really Is"

Good luck!

"Maybe You Go To Hell..."

"Maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go 
to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish."
- Chuck Palahniuk

"China Stockpiling Food Supplies For The Coming Famine While The US Faces Massive Food Shortages"

Full screen recommended.
"China Stockpiling Food Supplies For The Coming
 Famine While The US Faces Massive Food Shortages"
by Epic Economist

"China is massively stockpiling food supplies ahead of the coming global famine. Bloomberg says that Chinese authorities are in panic mode, and so far this year, they have snapped up more than half of the world’s grain supplies. At the same time, the U.S. is struggling to find alternative suppliers on the global market, and consumers are still experiencing shortages of a wide range of everyday necessities while prices continue to reach stratospheric new highs. Even more worryingly, a new report says that America’s food system could collapse like the 2008 banks, and the scenario for the next months looks absolutely terrifying right now.

The Chinese government’s massive food panic buying spree, which started in January, hasn’t slowed in recent months, and now the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that China owns 69% of the world's corn reserves, 60% of its rice, and 51% of its wheat. Even though the country claims it’s only doing that to ensure it has enough food on hand to feed its large population – something the country has struggled with historically – the data indicates otherwise.

James O'Brien, head of the US State Department's Office of Sanctions Coordination, informed that 40 percent of grain shipment from Ukraine in April has gone to China alone. Similarly, Gordon Chang also pointed out that many developed nations that never faced difficulties to ensure international supplies before will be "struggling with each other to ensure their food supply."

While the Eastern nation continues to seize a larger share of food products from international suppliers, the U.S. is left scrambling to find alternative solutions, and new data shows that it is falling behind. For example, China just made the largest corn purchase since May 2021 last month, totaling 1.084 million tons, a 50% rise from a year ago. That number of corn imports dwarfs those of the United States, which were estimated at a mere 57.8 million tonnes.

The U.S. is now experiencing extensive corn shortages, and consumers are already being impacted. Arizona farmer Jon Post is warning that the entire U.S. food supply chain is being affected given that corn is used in the production of fertilizers, animal feed, and a series of food staples we buy and consume regularly. “Prices will rise from 10-20% this year, and we expect the corn shortage to continue throughout 2023,” the farmer forecasts.

In the meantime, shoppers are still seeing empty shelves and prolonged shortages of everyday necessities. From tomatoes to tampons, product stockouts in grocery stores are threatening to upend the holiday season as Americans scramble to prepare before things get worse.

Even more concerningly, a recent report by The Guardian warns that America’s failing food system could collapse as the banks did in 2008.“The food industry is becoming tightly coupled to the financial sector, increasing what scientists call the “network density” of the system, making it more susceptible to cascading failure,” George Monbiot, the author of the article, says.

The scarcity of supplies we’re witnessing is being caused by internal and external shocks to our fragile food system. If it collapses like the 2008 bank crisis, where are we going to shop? If beef becomes the next baby formula, are you confident you’ll have enough or that you’ll be able to find it in stores?

With all things considered, it is clear that conditions are set to deteriorate even further. Throughout history, food shortages have triggered popular unrest. They served as a contributing factor to uprisings that brought down entire societies. And as we face food uncertainties due to factors such as our deteriorating relations with other major economic superpowers, the risk of disaster is real, and the consequences are going to be catastrophic for all of us."

Free Download: Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy”

Free Download: Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy”

“The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse".

The work was originally simply titled Commedìa and was later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio. The first printed edition to add the word divina to the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce, published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari."

Free  direct download links:
Dante Alighieri’s "Divine Comedy – Inferno" (6.57MB)
Dante Alighieri’s "Divine Comedy – Purgatorio" (3.74MB)
Dante Alighieri’s "Divine Comedy – Paradiso" (1.89MB)

“Thucydides in the Underworld”

“Master, what gnaws at them so hideously their lamentation stuns the very air?” 
“They have no hope of death,” he answered me…” 
- Dante Alighieri, “The Inferno”

“Thucydides in the Underworld”
by J. R. Nyquist

“The shade of Thucydides, formerly an Athenian general and historian, languished in Hades for 24 centuries; and having intercourse with other spirits, was perturbed by an influx into the underworld of self-described historians professing to admire his History of the Peloponnesian War. They burdened him with their writings, priding themselves on the imitation of his method, tracing the various patterns of human nature in politics and war. He was, they said, the greatest historian; and his approval of their works held the promise that their purgatory was no prologue to oblivion.

As the centuries rolled on, the flow of historians into Hades became a torrent. The later historians were no longer imitators, but most were admirers. It seemed to Thucydides that these were a miserable crowd, unable to discern between the significant and the trivial, being obsessed with tedious doctrines. Unembarrassed by their inward poverty, they ascribed an opposite meaning to things: thinking themselves more “evolved” than the spirits of antiquity. Some even imagined that the universe was creating God. They supposed that the “most evolved” among men would assume God’s office; and further, that they themselves were among the “most evolved.”

Thucydides longed for the peace of his grave, which posthumous fame had deprived him. As with many souls at rest, he took no further interest in history. He had passed through existence and was done. He had seen everything. What was bound to follow, he knew, would be more of the same; but after more than 23 centuries of growing enthusiasm for his work, there occurred a sudden falling off. Of the newly deceased, fewer broke in upon him. Quite clearly, something had happened. He began to realize that the character of man had changed because of the rottenness of modern ideas. Among the worst of these, for Thucydides, was that barbarians and civilized peoples were considered equal; that art could transmit sacrilege; that paper could be money; that sexual and cultural differences were of no account; that meanness was rated noble, and nobility mean.

Awakened from the sleep of death, Thucydides remembered what he had written about his own time. The watchwords then, as now, were “revolution” and “democracy.” There had been upheaval on all sides. “As the result of these revolutions,” he had written, “there was a general deterioration of character throughout the Greek world. The simple way of looking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist. Society had become divided into two ideologically hostile camps, and each side viewed the other with suspicion.”

Thucydides saw that democracy, once again, imagined itself victorious. Once again traditions were questioned as men became enamored of their own prowess. It was no wonder they were deluded. They landed men on the moon. They had harnessed the power of the atom. It was no wonder that the arrogance of man had grown so monstrous, that expectations of the future were so unrealistic. Deluded by recent successes, they could not see that dangers were multiplying in plain view. Men built new engines of war, capable of wiping out entire cities, but few took this danger seriously. Why were men so determined to build such weapons? The leading country, of course, was willing to put its weapons aside. Other countries pretended to put their weapons aside. Still others said they weren’t building weapons at all, even though they were.

Would the new engines of destruction be used? Would cities and nations be wiped off the face of the earth? Thucydides knew the answer. In his own day, during an interval of unstable peace, the Athenians had exterminated the male population of the island of Melos. Before doing this the Athenian commanders had came to Melos and said, “We on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done us – a great mass of words that nobody would believe.” The Athenians demanded the submission of Melos, without regard to right or wrong. As the Athenian representative explained, “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.” 

The Melians were shocked by this brazen admission. They could not believe that anyone would dare to destroy them without just cause. In the first place, the Melians threatened no one. In the second place, they imagined that the world would be shocked and would avenge any atrocity committed against them. And so the Melians told the Athenians: “in our view it is useful that you should not destroy a principle that is to the general good of all men – namely, that in the case of all who fall into danger there should be such a thing as fair play and just dealing. And this is a principle which affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example to the world.”

The Athenians were not moved by the argument of Melos; for they knew that the Spartans generally treated defeated foes with magnanimity. “Even assuming that our empire does come to an end,” the Athenians chuckled, “we are not despondent about what would happen next. One is not so much frightened of being conquered by a power like Sparta.” And so the Athenians destroyed Melos, believing themselves safe – which they were. The Melians refused to submit, praying for the protection of gods and men. But these availed them nothing, neither immediate relief nor future vengeance. The Melians were wiped off the earth. They were not the first or the last to die in this manner.

There was one more trend that Thucydides noted. In every free and prosperous country he found a parade of monsters: human beings with oversized egos, with ambitions out of proportion to their ability, whose ideas rather belied their understanding than affirmed it. Whereas, there was one Alcibiades in his own day, there were now hundreds of the like: self-serving, cunning and profane; only they did not possess the skills, or the mental acuity, or beauty of Alcibiades. Instead of being exiled, they pushed men of good sense from the center of affairs. Instead of being right about strategy and tactics, they were always wrong. And they were weak, he thought, because they had learned to be bad by the example of others. There was nothing novel about them, although they believed themselves to be original in all things.

Thucydides reflected that human beings are subject to certain behavioral patterns. Again and again they repeat the same actions, unable to stop themselves. Society is slowly built up, then wars come and put all to ruin. Those who promise a solution to this are charlatans, only adding to the destruction, because the only solution to man is the eradication of man. In the final analysis the philanthropist and the misanthrope are two sides of the same coin. While man exists he follows his nature. Thucydides taught this truth, and went to his grave. His history was written, as he said, “for all time.” And it is a kind of law of history that the generations most like his own are bound to ignore the significance of what he wrote; for otherwise they would not re-enact the history of Thucydides. But as they become ignorant of his teaching, they fall into disaster spontaneously and without thinking. Seeing that time was short, and realizing that a massive number of new souls would soon be entering the underworld, the shade of Thucydides fell back to rest.”

Canadian Prepper, “Another Country Enters WW3; Troops Along Border”

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/9/22:
“Another Country Enters WW3; Troops Along Border”
“Massive troop build ups continue as more bridges have been taken out in a new front that may soon open up as another major country enters the conflict. The BBC have speculated an alternative explanation for the Crimean bridge blast.”
Comments here:

Sunday, October 9, 2022

"Carmax Lot Flooded With Used Cars, No Buyers; Car Market Recession"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/9/22:
"Carmax Lot Flooded With Used Cars, No Buyers; 
Car Market Recession"
Comments here:

"Experts Predict That Real Estate Could Drop 30%"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 10/9/22:
"Experts Predict That Real Estate Could Drop 30%"
"Many experts are predicting that real estate could drop. Some are saying 10%, some say 15% now we’re getting predictions that real estate could drop as much as 30%. There are over 210 overvalued markets in the United States alone."
Comments here:

"Nuclear War Threatens Earth"

Full screen recommended.
"Nuclear War Threatens Earth"
"If an incident between the U.S. and Russia were to escalate, 
both countries have a huge stockpile of nuclear missiles.
 What would happen if a nuclear war broke out today?"
Comments here:
Full screen recommended.
“What If A Nuclear Bomb Hits New York Tomorrow”
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Flying" (Full Album)

Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland, "Flying" (Full Album)
Please do read the comments here:

Be kind to yourself, turn down the lights, sit comfortably, breathe deeply 
several times and relax, close your eyes and savor this magnificent music...