"This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Listen to this when you need a strong burst of intense focus to concentrate and study things like advanced mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any other complex mental activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Use this session in the morning, afternoon or early evening, to train your brain for better cognition, focus and thought processing. You can either sit somewhere quiet and comfortable with your eyes closed and give your brain a nice workout, or you can also listen to this while doing an activity that requires a boost in concentration.
Headphones are NOT REQUIRED for this video.
Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.
Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel."
This is a brainwave entrainment audio session using isochronic tones combined with music. The isochronic tones are the repetitive beats you can hear on top of the music throughout the track. If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here:
Listen folks, we're out of time! Whether you want to know it or not we're literally in the fight of our lives, for our lives right now, and it's going to get much, much worse. Some of you reading this will not survive, and I may not either, so I'll take any edge I can get, and you should too... This works for me. Prepare yourself, brace for impact...
“I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears
as soon as there is an excess of things.”
- Albert Camus, "Lyrical and Critical Essays"
"Let me tell you a story about a haunted house and all the thoughts it evoked in me. Do we believe we can save ourselves by saving things? Or do our saved possessions come to possess their saviors? Do those who save many things or hoard believe that there are pockets in shrouds? Or do they collect things as a magical protection against the shroud?
These are questions that have preoccupied me for weeks as my wife and I have spent long and exhausting days cleaning out a friend’s house. Many huge truckloads of possessions have been carted off to the dump. Thousands of documents have been shredded and thousands more taken to our house for further sorting. Other things have been donated to charity. This is what happens to people’s things; they disappear, never to be seen again, just as we do, eventually.
Tolstoy wrote a story – “How Much Land Does A Man Need’’ – that ends with the answer: a piece six feet long, enough for your grave. As in this story, the devil always has the last laugh when your covetousness gets the best of you. Yet so many people continue to collect in the vain hope that they are exceptions. Ask almost anyone and they will reluctantly admit that they hoard to some degree.
In capitalist consumer societies, getting and spending and hoarding not only lays waste our powers, but it is done on the backs of the poor and destitute around the world. It is a system built to inflame the worst human tendencies of acquisitiveness and indifference since it teaches that one never has enough of everything.
It denies the primal sympathy of human care for all humans as it teaches that if you surround yourself with enough things – have ten pair of shoes, twenty shirts, an attic filled with things in reserve – you will be safe from the fate of the majority of the world’s poor who have next to nothing. It is an insidious form of soul murder wherein one pulls the shades on the prison-house, counts one’s possessions, and shakes hands with the Devil. And it is sadly common.
From attic to cellar to garage, every little cubbyhole, closet, and drawer in this relative’s house was filled with “saved” items. Nothing was ever thrown away. If you walked in the front door, you would never know that the occupants were compulsive keepers. While there were plenty of knick-knacks in evidence like so many houses where the fear of emptiness rules (the emptiness that is the source of freedom and creativity), once you opened a drawer or closet, a secreted lunacy spilled out seriatim like circus clowns from a small car.
Like all clown shows, it was funny but far more frightening, as though all the saved objects were tinged with the fear of death and dissolution, were futile efforts to stop the flow of time and life by sticking a finger in a dike.
Let me begin with the bags. Hidden in every corner and closet, there were bags stuffed in bags. Big bags and little bags, hundreds if not thousands, used and unused, plastic, paper, cloth bags with price tags still on them. The same was true for boxes, especially empty jewelry boxes. Cardboard boxes that once held a little something, wooden boxes, cigar boxes, large cartons, boxes from every device ever purchased – all seemingly being saved for some future use that would never come.
But the bags and boxes filled each other so that no emptiness could survive, although desolation seemed to cry out from within: “You can’t suffocate me.”
Tens of thousands of photographs and slides were squirreled into cabinets, closets, and their own file cabinets, each neatly marked with the date and place of their taking. Time in a “bottle” from which one would never drink again – possessing the past in a vain attempt to stop time. These photos were kept in places where their taker would never see them again but could find a weird comfort that they were saved somewhere in this vast collection. Cold comfort by embalming time.
It so happens that while emptying the house, I was rereading the wonderful novel, Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis. There is a passage in it where a woman has died, and while her corpse lies in her house, the villagers descend on her possessions like shrieking vultures on a carcass.
Old women, men, children went rushing through the doors, jumped through the open windows, over the fences and off the balcony, each carrying whatever he had been able to snatch – sauce pans, frying pans, mattresses, rabbits... Some of them had taken doors or windows off their hinges and had put them on their backs. Mimiko had seized the two court shoes, tied on a piece of string and hung them round his neck – it looked as though Dame Hortense were going off astraddle on his shoulders and only her shoes were visible….
The avidity for things drives many people mad, to get and to keep stuff, to build walls around life so as to protect themselves from death. To consume so as not to be consumed. Kazantzakis brilliantly makes this clear in the book. "Zorba, the Greek" physical laborer and wild man, is different, for he knows that salvation lies in dispossession.
"One day he encounters five little children begging in a village. Their father has just been murdered. “I don’t know why, divine inspiration I suppose, but I went up to them.” He gives the children his basket of food and all his money. He tells his interlocutor, a writer whom he calls “Boss,” a man whom Zorba accuses of not being able to cut the string that ties him to a life of living-death, that that was how he was rescued.
Rescued from my country, from priests, and from money. I began sifting things, sifting more and more things out. I lighten my burden that way. I – how shall I put it? – I find my own deliverance, I become a man."
In the jam-packed attic where there is little room to move with boxes and objects piled on top of each other, I found a large metal four-drawer file cabinet packed with files. In one file folder there was a small purse filled with the following: four very old unmarked keys, six paper clips, two old unworkable watches, a bobby pin, a circular case that contained what looked like a piece of a human bone, a few old medallions, tweezers, four buttons, an eye screw, a safety pin, a nail, a screw, two ancient tiny photos, and a lock of human hair.
Similar objects were stored throughout the house in various containers, bags, boxes, the pockets of clothes, in old ancient furniture in the basement, on shelves, in cigar boxes, in desks, etc.
Old receipts for purchases made forty years ago, airline baggage tags, ticket stubs, school papers, jewelry hidden everywhere, old foreign and domestic coins, perhaps twenty-five old unworkable watches, clocks, radios, clothes and more clothes, more than anyone could ever have worn, scores of old pens and pencils, hand-written notes with no dates or any semblance of order or meaning, chaos and obsessive account-keeping hiding everywhere in contradictory forms shared by two people: one the neat freak and the other disorganized.
One dead and the other forced by fate to let her stuff go, to stand naked in the wind.
How does it help a person to record that they bought a toaster for $6.98 in 1957 or a bracelet for $20 in 1970 or that they called so-and-so some undated time in the past? What good does it do to save vast correspondences documenting your complaints, bitterness, and quarrels? Or boxes upon boxes of Christmas cards received thirty years ago? Or brochures and receipts from a trip taken long ago? Old sports medals? Scrapbooks?
Photos of long dead relatives no one wants? Fashion designer shoes and coats and handbags hidden in a dusty attic where you don’t even know they are there. An immigrant mother’s ancient sewing machine weighing seventy-five pounds and gathering dust in the cellar?
Nothing I could tell you can come close to picturing what we saw in this house. It was overwhelming, horrifying, and weirdly fascinating. And aside from the useful things that were donated to charity and some that were taken to the woman’s next dwelling, ninety percent was dumped in a landfill, soon to be buried.
In his brilliant novel "Underworld", Don DeLillo writes about a guy named Brian who goes to visit a collector of old baseball paraphernalia – bats, balls, an old scoreboard, tapes of games, etc. – in a house where “a mood of mausoleum gloom” fills the air. The man tells Brian: "There’s men in the coming years they’ll pay fortunes for these objects. Because this is desperation speaking. Men come here to see my collection. They come and they don’t want to leave. The phone rings, it’s the family – where is he? This is the fraternity of missing men."
Men and women hoarders, collectors, and keepers are lost children, trying desperately to secure themselves from death while losing themselves in the process. In my friend’s house I found huge amounts of string and rope waiting to tie something up neatly someday. That day never came.
Zorba tells the Boss, who insists he’s free, the following: "No, you’re not free. The string you’re tied to is perhaps no longer than other people’s. That’s all. You’re on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go and think you’re free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don’t cut that string...
It’s difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do that; folly, d’you see? You have to risk everything! But you’ve got such a strong head, it’ll always get the better of you. A man’s head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts. I’ve paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much!
The head’s a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string. Ah, no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! But if a man doesn’t break the string, tell me what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea! Nothing like rum – that makes you see life inside out."
On the way out the door on our final day cleaning the house, I found a beautiful boxed fountain pen on a windowsill. I love pens since I am a writer. This one shone brightly and seemed to speak to me: think of what you could write with me, it said so seductively. I was sorely tempted, but knowing that I didn’t need another pen, I left it there, thinking that perhaps the next occupants of this house would write a different story and embrace Camus’ advice about an excess of things.
Look around you, see all the fine possessions you have, how proud you are of it all. Then ask yourself how many of them you will take back into eternity when your time comes. None. No, you will take out exactly what you brought in... nothing, "and all your money won't another minute buy." Fill a bowl with water, and place your hand in it, then take it out. The hole left in the water is how long you'll be remembered. You are, as we all are, "dust in the wind..."
Kansas, "Dust In The Wind"
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Hat tip to "The Burning Platform" for this material.
"If you listen only to the lying legacy media (LLM) you would think the 2022 Midterm Election was a huge loss for President Donald Trump. Trump won big despite the cheating, glitches ballot drops (for losing Dems) and the huge psyop that carried on after election day. If you question the cheating, which few do on the LLM, you are an “election denier.” How dare anyone question or object to the massive cheating that has been taken to a well-oiled art form. The “Swamp” or “Uni-party” consisting of Communist Democrats and RINO Republicans work together for a common goal. The two parties just take turns ripping us off.
Trump won because he crisscrossed the country on his own dime backing candidates in the House and the Senate that would try to “Make America Great Again.” Yes, MAGA! To the elite like Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi and the rest of the treasonous political weasels that attack “We the People,” that is crazy talk. Trump’s election record of backing candidates in the 2022 election is a lopsided 219 Wins to only 16 Losses, and it’s hard to tell if the losses were only because of the massive cheating campaign that even LLM dog FOX News will not mention. The Republicans owe Donald Trump a huge thank you for winning back the House and the Senate!!! Let’s hope the Uni-party doesn’t pull another mysterious ballot dump and “win” by cheating again.
Inflation cooled, according to the latest government numbers, to 7.7%. The markets rocked higher, and everyone is once again talking about a Fed pivot to stop the rate hikes and continue the easy money for a few more years. Don’t count on the party to last this time. Layoffs are rocking the country, and mortgage applications just hit an all-time low. The real economy is still sinking, and the numbers don’t lie." There is much more in the 55-minute news cast.
"Over the past 24 hours both Taiwan and the U.S. say China is closing in on an invasion. Why is the U.S. actively trying to provoke a war with China? Col. Douglas MacGregor joins us to discuss. Also new data on excess deaths is troubling. We'll look at the latest data from the U.S. and U.K."
“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html • "When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."
"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."
"The housing market is cratering and the latest numbers reveal some really disturbing trends. With mortgage rates reaching 20-year-highs, owning a home in America has never been so expensive. Potential home buyers have been completely tapped out by now. That’s why over the past eight months, home sales have been consistently dropping and sellers are being forced to slash prices as demand cools down. At the same time, renters are having to cope with an even heavier financial burden. But the situation of homeowners isn’t any better – they’ve already lost $1.3 trillion in home equity since the crash began, and the number of borrowers at risk of going underwater more than doubled at this point. This is going to be worse than 2008, folks. This is a disaster in the making, and economists say we should all buckle in because a wild ride is ahead. In today’s video, we compiled the fresh numbers that you need to know about the ongoing housing crash, as well as the analyses of real estate industry experts who say that “no market will be immune” and that “housing is in free-fall”:
Homeowners are at serious risk as surging mortgage rates scare away buyers and accelerate the housing slump, analysts warn. The signs of distress can be seen everywhere. The latest numbers show that home sales plunged for the eighth consecutive month - the longest slide since 2007 - falling by 25% in October. Homebuilding starts also declined, and the number of new home listings went down by 22%.
Fueling the deterioration of the housing market, the Federal Reserve just pushed mortgage rates to 20-year-highs to 7.23%, which has “significantly weakened demand, particularly for first-time and first-generation prospective home buyers,” explains NAHB Chairman Jerry Konter. “This situation is unhealthy and unsustainable. Policymakers must address this worsening housing affordability crisis,” he stressed.
Every rate hike pushes on average an additional 9 million potential buyers out of the market, according to estimates released by Redfin. The growing concerns about the recession are also prompting buyers to back off, as some of them can feel that a repeat of 2008 may be happening again.
This means sellers will be forced to cut prices even further to readjust to an environment where buyers’ purchasing power is significantly lower than it was just a couple of years ago. "Buckle in,” warns chief economist at Moody's Analytics, Mark Zandi. Given that the housing market is “the most interest-rate-sensitive sector of the economy. It's on the front lines of the fallout from the Fed's efforts to bring down inflation. There's going to be a coast-to-coast downturn in the housing market. It's going to be brutal. No part of the market is immune," he emphasized.
The alarm bells are also being sounded by Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Shepherdson says the steep drop in home sales has just begun, and even buyers who set their sights lower to cheaper houses will still face bigger mortgage payments."In short, housing is in free fall. So far, most of the hit is in sales volumes, but prices are now falling too, and they have a long way to go."
No matter what happens, the struggle to find affordable housing will only intensify. Americans are overwhelmed and hopeless. And if all of this sounds too familiar to you is because we’ve seen it happen before. But the proportions the current crisis will reach in the coming months will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen."
"It makes no difference where you live. We are feeling the effects of this economy. FedEx is not flying their normal fleet and deliveries are not being made by trucking companies. Core inflation was down a bit and everyone is rejoicing. Ridiculous."
The ghosts of America's past weigh in on the state of the Union...
by Bill Bonner And Joel Bowman
Baltimore, Maryland: "The local Ford dealership turned out to be a good place to find out what the deplorables are thinking. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even bother to vote yesterday,” said a wiry man with slicked-back wavy hair. He wore a shiny black jacket advertising his participation in the Vietnam War… and sunglasses that might have been used there during the Tet Offensive. “I figure it doan make any difference." “You’re right,” said another, a stout man, nearly bald, with a hunting jacket on. “I’m losing faith in them all. Trump was my man. But he seems more interested in himself than in anything else. He should have stayed out of it.” “You can’t trust none of them. Say one thing. Do another.”
We sat in the waiting room as our truck was being serviced, listening to the conversation around us. Almost all the people in the waiting room were retired factory or construction workers. This was East Baltimore, hon, and all the denizens have pick-ups, notably America’s most popular model – the F150. And with the midterm elections winding up in the usual mix of comedy and disgrace, ‘The People’ try to make sense of it.
Nonsense Politics: Predictably, The New York Times worried about diversity: “How Diverse Are the Candidates in the Midterm Elections?” What the Times is really concerned about is that the voters and the candidates all share the delusions and prejudices of today’s elite – including ‘diversity.’ Yesterday’s elite might have had very different ideas, but who cares about them? They don’t buy newspapers… or vote!
Pennsylvania was the focus of press coverage. The key race featured a tattooed, billy-goateed candidate with recent brain damage… up against a muslim doctor who served in Turkey’s army to maintain his Turkish citizenship and later went on to TV stardom in America. A local political operative explained that Pennsylvania was a “diverse and welcoming community.” He meant that the voters did not shy away from choosing misfits and weirdos.
But the voters in Pennsylvania’s 32nd district took diversity to a whole new level. Green Party challenger, Zarah Livingston, must have been the weakest candidate ever to mount a soapbox. She was overwhelmingly trounced by a corpse. Here’s Business Insider: "Pennsylvania state lawmaker won big in the midterm elections despite being dead. Rep. Tony DeLuca, who died at the age of 85 on October 9 from lymphoma, crushed Green Party challenger Zarah Livingston in Tuesday's midterm elections."
Yes, the voters wisely preferred a dead Tony to a live Zarah. And had we been a voter in the district, we would have voted for DeLuca too. Voters there proved they were the most open minded in the nation. They elected a man to represent the most dissed, ignored and despised group in the country – the shades. Their books are banned. Their monuments are torn down. Their heroes are shamed. The corpses must chuckle to themselves: ‘Damned jackasses!’"
Status and Dissatisfaction: But The Old Gray Lady need not fret. The guys in the waiting room explained: “I’m sick of them all. You know what George Wallace said about the Democrats and the Republicans? He said ‘there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.’ He was right."
“You know what really gets me. I remember back in the old days, I was working down at Sparrows Point [steel mill]. But the politicians would all come and try to get us to vote for them. There were a lot of us there… and over at GM [General Motors also had a nearby assembly plant]. At least they would pretend to care about us. Now, nothing. They get their money from Wall Street. I guess they don’t need us.”
“No, they don’t need us anymore. They certainly don’t.” No, they don’t need the common man. Or dead men. They’ve got each other. Right here. Right now.
CovertAction: Two former CIA officers, Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin, won reelection on Tuesday night…"Spanberger, a Democrat, defeated her Republican challenger Yesli Vega with 51.9 percent of the vote in Virginia’s 7th district, while Slotkin, also a Democrat, defeated Tom Barrett, a former army pilot, with 50.8 percent of the vote in Michigan’s 7th district."
America’s wealth… and, indirectly, its status as well as the satisfaction of its people…comes from its Main Street economy, which was largely built by people who are now dead. But few of the candidates have had anything to do with real work or the real people who do it – past or present. One might now represent gay men. Another might be a stand-up for Asian-American cripples. One is in the pocket of the trial lawyers. Another was bought by the ‘defense’ industry. But where are the steelworkers? The longshoremen? The auto repairmen? The philosophers, bakers, and Thai masseuses? Where are the captains of industry…and the hewers of wood?
Nope. These candidates were almost all ‘government men’ …and eager to make government even bigger. They don’t represent ‘The People;’ neither those of the past nor of the present. They represent the people who rip ‘The People’ off. "
Joel’s Note: "When Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a member of the crowd gathered there supposedly shouted out to him, “What have we got, doctor… a monarchy or a republic?” To which the Founding Father famously replied, “A republic… if you can keep it.”
That’s the story, anyway… now an indelible part of American folklore. We wonder what Messrs. Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, et al. would have thought after witnessing yesterday’s midterm election circus… As usual, there was plenty of gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands following (and during) the counts… accompanied, of course, with the now-expected charges of fraud, farce and fanaticism emanating from both sides.
The constitutional idea, of course, was to establish a government of laws, not of men. But look around… what do you see? In place of hallowed institutions… spineless candidates. In place of tradition… “progress.” In place of common sense and equality for all... “diversity,” “inclusion” and “equity.” And in place of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness… strife, insecurity and a breathtaking sense of entitlement.
Could it have been otherwise? Might our better angels have protected us from the tyranny of the majority? Might those checks and balances have secured us against the whims and caprices of mere men? The world watches the great American experiment with intense interest… as though we masses huddled on foreign shores were peering into our own future.
But no empire lasts forever… no currency stands eternal… just as no one here gets out alive. Four score and ten years after Mr. Franklin emerged from Independence Hall, dreams of a republic dancing in his head, the writing was already on the wall.
Lysander Spooner, in his classic pamphlet "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority," sensed already the rot within the system: But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
Holiday Season Because Many Of Them Are Already Tapped Out"
by Michael Snyder
"This holiday season is certainly going to be far less jolly for millions of Americans. Yesterday, I detailed 11 signs that economic activity in the U.S. is rapidly declining. Well, today we have gotten even more bad news. Thanks to deteriorating economic conditions, Americans plan to buy a lot less stuff this holiday season. In fact, one survey that was just released has discovered that approximately half the country plans to “buy fewer things” this year…
"Inflation is weighing heavily on the holidays this year. Roughly half of shoppers will buy fewer things due to higher prices, and more than one-third said they will rely on coupons to cut down on the cost, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 adults by RetailMeNot."
Normally, if cash is tight Americans will just load up their credit cards during the holiday season. But for many people that simply won’t be possible this year. Millions upon millions of us are already completely tapped out, and credit card balances have surged to a brand new record high…"Credit card and personal loan balances have reached record highs in recent months as an increasing number of consumers lean on such means to combat growing financial pressures caused by sky-high inflation.
According to TransUnion’s Quarterly Credit Industry Insights Report (CIIR), bankcard balances rose 19% during the third quarter from a year ago, reaching a record $866 billion. This was driven heavily by a growth in Gen Z and Millennial borrowers whose balances increased 72% and 32%, respectively, according to the report."
A lot of Americans have already been heavily leaning on their credit cards just to survive from month to month in this harsh economic environment. Now that balances are so high, there simply is not a lot of room for additional spending.
Women usually do a great deal of the holiday shopping, and another recent survey discovered that they are even more concerned about inflation than men are…"Rising prices are taking a toll on everyone right now, but a new study shows women are feeling the pain more than men – and it is the primary money woe keeping ladies up at night. Research from Fidelity Investments found that inflation is currently the top financial concern for U.S. women, with upwards of 70% citing it as their main worry. Respondents listed the costs of essentials as the second-biggest stressor (65%), and another 58% expressed worries about not having enough saved for emergencies."
The cost of living has become extremely oppressive, and this has greatly reduced the amount of money that Americans have available for discretionary spending. As a result, businesses all over the nation are struggling. The NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index just dropped again, and inflation continues to rank as the number one concern…"According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 33% of small business owners cited inflation as their most important problem in October. That number is three points higher than was reported in September. The NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index dropped 0.8% to 91.3 in October, marking 10 consecutive months it has remained under the 49-year average of 98."
As I discussed yesterday, 37 percent of all small business owners in the entire country were not able to pay rent last month. That is a disastrous number. Of course many large businesses are experiencing major problems as well.
Just look at Carvana. Just a couple of years ago Carvana was really flying high, but now it is literally on the verge of collapse…"In total, Carvana’s shares have plummeted 96% this year after hitting an all-time intraday high of $376.83 per share in August 2021. According to CNBC, the stock’s all-time low of $8.14 per share occurred less than a week after it started trading publicly on April 28, 2017. The company’s previous worst day of trading was a 26.4% decline on March 18, 2020.
As a result, Morgan Stanley pulled its rating on Carvana, saying its stock could be worth as little as $1 to $40. Analyst Adam Jonas blamed the decrease in used car sales and an uncertain funding environment for the change. “While the company is continuing to pursue cost-cutting actions, we believe a deterioration in the used car market combined with a volatile interest rate adds material risk to the outlook,” he said via CNBC. These factors contribute to a wide range of positive and negative outcomes."
One of the biggest factors that is depressing sales for the auto industry right now is rapidly rising interest rates…"The average interest rate for a new-vehicle loan climbed to 5.2% in the third quarter, while the average rate for a used vehicle loan hit 9.7%, according to TransUnion. Both are up more than one percentage point compared with the year-earlier period."
The Federal Reserve should not be aggressively hiking rates just as we are entering a major economic slowdown. It is an incredibly foolish thing to do. The Fed’s policies have been absolutely eviscerating the housing industry, and now it has become clear that the same thing is starting to happen to the auto industry. But they are going to keep raising rates anyway.
As Americans went to the polls on Tuesday, the economy was the number one issue on their minds, and that does not appear to be good news for the Democrats…"A report released Friday outlined the problem for Washington’s current ruling party. The University of Michigan, which releases a closely watched sentiment survey each month, asked respondents who they trusted more when it came to the economy and which would better for personal finances. The result: overwhelmingly Republican.
The survey of 1,201 respondents saw Republicans with a 37%-21% edge on the question of which party is better for the economy. While that left a wide swath - 37% - of consumers who don’t think it makes a difference, the disparity of those with a preference is huge."
At this moment, Joe Biden’s approval rating with independents is the lowest that it has ever been. All of the numbers seem to indicate that the election results will go a certain way. But will that be what the “final results” actually show? We will just have to wait and see…"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing that they are having a huge sale on holiday baking items this month! We are stocking up, and showing the best deals as we take you shopping with us. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"On November 10, 2022, U.S. Marines around the globe will celebrate 247 years of success on the battlefield and a legacy defined by honor, courage and commitment. This year, the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David H. Berger and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Troy E. Black reiterate to the force that Marines are warfighters first and foremost, in any clime and place. Drawing on the strength and service of those who wore the Eagle, Globe and Anchor in years past, Marines today are standing ready to fight and win."
"Inside The Battle for Taiwan and China's Looming War Threat"
"What’s playing out in Taiwan right now could shape the world for decades. As China threatens to bring the country back under its control by any means necessary, its people are pleading with the West to stand up to the communist superpower. NOW on #60Mins, the fear is that World War III could begin there."
"At least nine people have been detained in the Kherson region on charges of attempted terrorist attacks. These men were part of the Ukrainian SBU, a known terrorist organization, according to the U.S. State Department. Is this normal warfare or something darker? We speak to independent journalist George Eliason about it."
“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
"Never perceive anything as being inevitable or predestined.
The only absolute is uncertainty."
- Lionel Suggs
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"Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us."
"Top retailers are announcing mass layoffs and hiring freezes as cracks in the US economy continue to grow. Just like we witnessed during the last recession, retail chains are closing stores, reporting declining sales, and facing massive inventory woes. The entire sector is facing one of the toughest stretches that we have seen since 2020, but analysts are saying that this is just the beginning. Even retail giant Walmart and e-commerce leader Amazon are being forced to slash their headcounts as consumers tighten their belts and spend less to cope with the soaring cost of living.
Recent numbers are telling us that this crisis is really starting to accelerate, and things will get even rockier as the new recession gets rolling. A tidal wave of job cuts will sweep through the country in the final quarter of 2022, and extend well into 2023. If even the most powerful brands are struggling right now, this means smaller competitors are about to get crushed.
Right now, labor is top of mind for many companies, with inflation, inventory imbalances, and declining sales forcing them to rethink their workforces to get through the recession. Many have already signaled that a painful period is ahead, pointing to shortages, rising operational costs, and shifting consumer demand as some of the reasons why their profits have been shrinking. Shoppers are cutting back on discretionary spending amid rising living expenses, meaning that brands that count on their discretionary sales to prop up their balance sheets are going to suffer the most.
Research released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that the number of retail layoffs is climbing at the fastest pace since 2016. In September and October, roughly 12,785 employees lost their jobs in the retail industry – a whopping 92 percent spike compared to the same time last year when retailers were feverishly preparing for the 2021 holiday season, and only 1,023 retail workers were laid-off.
Very few companies have been able to avoid this downsizing trend. At this point, even the largest retailer in America has begun quietly laying off workers. According to Business Insider, Walmart is cutting 1,700 jobs by December 2. It will start by cutting 200 corporate jobs, and approximately 1,500 warehouse jobs. Workers started receiving notifications at the end of August.
Amazon, is also facing its fair share of difficulties. In fact, Amazon has abandoned multiple projects this year in an effort to reduce costs, which resulted in nearly 560 layoffs in the first quarter. At least another 300 jobs are on the line, and may be cut by early 2023 as Amazon finishes its initial downsizing plan that eliminates 99,000 people from its workforce, CNBC reports. FedEx, which competes with Amazon for delivering packages to customers, said last month that it was freezing hiring, closing stores, and parking planes as demand dropped faster than it expected. Twitter is laying off 50% of its workforce. CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company is losing over $4 million a day. Peloton, who saw its shares soaring 73% in the second quarter of 2021, has laid off thousands of workers as its stocks crashed by 94% in September.
Considering that hundreds of retailers are barely clinging to life, their chances of surviving this economic meltdown are very small. By now, pretty much everyone agrees that in the months ahead, the economic scenario will look even grimmer. Consequently, more retail workers are going to get laid off, more stores are going to close, and “retail apocalypse” stories will start making the headlines again."
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”
“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?
The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.
In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:
“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays
The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives:
Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom
This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.
Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.
This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”
"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"Diesel is in short supply right now. Regionally there are supply problems. It’s just a matter of time until they stop refining gasoline, and we have a shortage. Diesel will be the main fuel supply. Bob Kudla joins us as well today."
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