Jim Kunstler, "The Tool of Tools"

James A. Baker

The Tool of Tools"

by Jim Kunstler

“The DNC and Biden Team knew they had friends at Twitter who would do their bidding during the election. And Twitter lied to the FEC about that influence… But that’s just at the surface…” - TechnoFog on Substack

"At what point in his arduous take-over of Twitter did Elon Musk realize that the package came with a joker in the deck: James A. Baker, formerly general counsel of the FBI? Did he wonder: what is this guy doing here? Were there any conversations between the two? Or did Mr. Musk just quietly observe his presence at a remove in nervous wonder, as one might, say, upon discovering a scorpion in the corner of his hotel room?

Mr. Baker, you understand, was notoriously at the center of the FBI’s FISA court f**kery that got the ball rolling in the Crossfire Hurricane operation, Act One of RussiaGate, as well as the Alpha Bank caper concocted by Hillary Clinton (disclosed this year by special counsel John Durham), and probably every other sedition pie the FBI cooked in its oven in those years, considering Mr. Baker’s position as chief legal advisor to Director Chris Wray. When the alt-news media caught onto Mr. Baker’s nefarious activities, he became inconvenient to the agency, was re-assigned to some nebulous task (polishing Mr. Wray’s cuff links?), and quit in May, 2018. He landed temporarily - or was he, rather, parked out-of-sight? - at the shadowy R Street Institute, an Intel Community cut-out, one of its countless PR channels in the DC Swamp.

But then, mysteriously, Mr. Baker got hired by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in June of 2020 - the heat of a presidential election - to work under Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s general counsel (and chief of “legal, policy, and trust” [ha!]), where he remained until just the other day. Is it a stretch to imagine Mr. Baker’s former employer, the FBI - which, let’s face it, operates as a sort of blood-brotherhood - purposely installed Mr. Baker in that sensitive job at Twitter to help “moderate” the national conversation in the central forum that public debate had moved to in our time?

If so, he apparently did a crackerjack job, and just at the right time, too, after the FBI discovered, in emails they ripped off Rudolf Giuliani’s purloined cloud account, that Donald Trump’s attorney possessed of a copy of the laptop hard-drive of one Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden - said computer (the FBI knew full-well by then) being stuffed not just with pornographic photos of crack orgies and other personal infelicities, but also a trove of emails and deal memos laying out a bribery and money-laundering scheme that the younger Biden was running all over Eurasia as a family business.

Of course, the FBI had that selfsame computer in its possession for the better part of a year when The New York Post broke the news of its existence days before the election of 2020. In fact, the Bureau had had possession at the very time that Mr. Trump was busy getting impeached for daring to suggest to the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, that the Bidens were involved in some shady business worth investigating with the Kiev-based Burisma gas company. Evidence of that and much much more - including way-bigger shady deals with CCP cut-outs - lay moldering in the laptop the FBI just silently sat on. Isn’t it a little strange that during the dragged-out impeachment ordeal neither Attorney General William Barr nor FBI chief Chris Wray volunteered to Mr. Trump’s legal defense that they held exculpatory evidence on that laptop for the very thing he was impeached on?

That was January, 2020, many months before The New York Post took the laptop’s existence public. And whaddaya know… by June of that year, James A. Baker was in place at Twitter, ready to serve! As election day approached, he apparently succeeded in stifling transmission of the Post’s laptop story plus any-and-all conversation about it in the Twitterverse, and was careful not to leave a memo trail of his heroic interventions. Do you suppose he might have had some conversations about all that with his old colleagues at the FBI? At the same time, you understand, the FBI was leaning successfully on that other social network giant, Facebook, to likewise smother the laptop story. And Google, too, having become an Intel Community tool, was avid to tailor its search algorithms to steer the curious away from Hunter’s laptop. And so was fortune’s fool Joe Biden inserted into history…

Amazingly, after all that huggermugger, James A. Baker still remained in place last week at Twitter - even as his putative boss, censor-in-chief Vijaya Gadde got drop-kicked out the door - just as Elon Musk prepared to release a trove of information detailing Twitter’s censorship activities of recent years. Yes! And, evidently, Mr. Baker functioned as a sort of one-man clearing house for all the documents getting shoveled to independent reporter Matt Taibbi, whom Mr. Musk had designated to be the news conduit for these awaited revelations. And, yes, there is every reason to suspect that Mr. Baker censored, or perhaps even tried to destroy, the very documents that Mr. Musk ordered released.

Was that not like leaving a wolverine in Twitter’s henhouse? How could Mr. Musk not know how absurd it was for Mr. Baker to moderate that release? Well, the chatter is that Mr. Musk was seeking a way to encourage Mr. Baker to inculpate himself, so as to foreclose any lawsuits he might think to bring against Twitter for wrongful termination. I have to say, Mr. Musk would be an idiot if he did not have copies of the server that James Baker had access to and had the opportunity to delete stuff from. I guess we’ll find out.

But there is one other matter that has been left out of all the sound and fury about the Twitter doc release: the meta story of the US government’s rogue agencies’ greater war against the public interest. Not just the Intel Community but all the public health agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services: the FDA, CDC, NIAID, NIH, and more.

Consider that James A. Baker — formerly the FBI’s consiglieri - was in that job at Twitter most of the time that Covid-19 was raging across the land. How much did he have to say about censoring the life-and-death information surrounding the pandemic? Did he stifle debate about the early treatment medications - ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, etc. - that could have saved many thousands of lives otherwise sacrificed to the medical establishment’s Moloch of intubation-and-remdesivir?

Did he advise the blackballing, silencing, and cancellation of doctors who opposed Dr. Fauci’s regime of lockdowns, masks, and “vaccines”? Did he prevent the public from learning how ineffective and harmful the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots are? Did he help promote every government-sponsored untruth about Covid-19, meaning just about everything public officials have uttered about it for three years? Did he, in sum, in his machinations at Twitter, so pervert the national conversation through an epic crisis that he has contributed to the collapsing US economy and a genocide-like campaign against the people of this country. I think he probably did. That’s how serious this matter is."

- https://kunstler.com/

Gonzalo Lira ,"Unconditional Surrender Is Now Russia's Goal"

Gonzalo Lira, 12/9/22:

"Unconditional Surrender Is Now Russia's Goal"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Oaxaca De Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. Thanks for stopping by!

"Something Like Reverence..."

"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair." 

- Blaise Pascal

Ahh, but it does...

○

“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”

- Scott Russell Sanders

Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is rapidly approaching.

God help us, God help us all...

"The Long Dark"

"The Long Dark"

by Chris Floyd

"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.

We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.

We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.

We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.

These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”

So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.

And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?

What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.

Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."

- http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/

ͦ

Full screen recommended.

Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"

by Chris Floyd

"I think we are living in a world of lies: lies that don't even know they are lies, because they are the children and grandchildren of lies. One of the hardest things to accept is that the reality of our world is buried under so many layers of official deception and well-cultivated public ignorance about our history and our political system. Even if you break through somehow, momentarily, and hold up a fragment of the truth, most people have no context for dealing with it. It's like a bolt from the blue, they can't process the information. And so the sea of lies closes over us again, and again, and again. And yet the reality of our future appears on the horizon, denial be damned, an irresistible tsunami of destruction, changing all our lives forever.

These are the facts, and they can't be altered. But how to respond to this catastrophe? Shall we weep, moan, rend our garments, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ashes? Shall we sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of republics? Shall we cower in the shadows and sing glamorous dirges for the Lost Cause, for vanished glories and broken dreams?

Or shall we come out fighting, unbowed, heads high, laughing fools to scorn, rejecting at every turn the moral authority of murderers and thieves to rule our lives, determine our reality, act in our name? Let's dispense with lamentation - give not a single moment to that emotional indulgence - and get right back to work, more determined than ever to bear down harder, dig deeper and excavate the radioactive nuggets of truth still glowing beneath the slag-heap of ruin.

Let's fight, let's reject, let's resist - without violence, the weapon of the stupid, the hormonal secretion of evolutionary backsliders in thrall to the chemical soup in their heads, dull primitives dressing up their ape-lust for power with scraps of religion, philosophy and cant. Let's fight these pathetic, malfunctioning wretches who lay their hands on our world and rape it like beasts in a mindless rut. Fight them with the truths we find, exposing their crimes and deadly hypocrisies to the people they've suckered, perverted and betrayed.

This is not an insurmountable task, no matter how impervious the Machine - that monstrous conglomeration of judicial bagmen, Congressional rubber stamps, psychopathic media moguls, dopehead radio ranters, sex-crazed theocrats, war profiteers, think-tank bleaters, Wall Street sharks, oilmen, Moonies, and woman-haters - might appear at the moment.

I don't know what else we can do, except to keep on telling as much of the truth as we can find, to anyone who will listen: reclaiming reality, fragment by fragment, one person at a time. It's an endless task- maybe a hopeless task- but the alternative is a surrender to the worst elements in our society- and in ourselves. It's worth the fight. Let's take it on. In the words of the old spiritual, let us be in no ways tired. The road back to sanity starts now."

- http://chris-floyd.com/

Bill Bonner, "A Sea of Lies"

"A Sea of Lies"

Mistruths, whoppers, pretenses and delusions...

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "We float on a “sea of lies,” says Harvard professor Jeffrey Sachs. “Most of them come from the government,” he says. Remember how Donald Trump claimed he had created ‘the best economy ever?’ It was a lie. The economy was getting worse and worse – especially after ‘The Donald’ pumped an extra $5 trillion into the economy to offset the effects of his Covid Lockdown policies.

And then, along came Joe Biden. “The U.S. is in a better economic position than almost any other country,” says the big spender. But the US economy is an abstraction…what really matters is how the people in it are doing. And here’s the latest from CNBC: The share of retirement savers who withdrew money from a 401(k) plan to cover a financial hardship hit a record high in October, according to data from Vanguard Group.

That dynamic - when coupled with other factors like fast-rising credit card balances and a declining personal savings rate - suggests households are having a tougher time making ends meet amid persistently high inflation and need ready cash, according to financial experts. Nearly 0.5% of workers participating in a 401(k) plan took a new "hardship distribution" in October, according to Vanguard, which tracks 5 million savers. That's the largest share since Vanguard began tracking the data in 2004.

Fleeced by the Feds: Staggered by falling real wages. Walloped by rising real prices. America’s middle class families are raiding retirement accounts just to keep up. But here comes the left hook. Markets Insider: "A recession is imminent but central banks won't be able to support markets this time by loosening policy…"Recession is foretold as central banks race to try to tame inflation. It's the opposite of past recessions," BlackRock strategists said."

What? Nobody told you that Fed bailouts just lead to more debt…and more problems, down the road? And didn’t someone tell you…that the feds’ stimmies…giveaways…and unemployment boosters would have to be paid for somehow?

And how about all this help we’re giving the Ukrainians? Who was supposed to pay for that? Nobody mentioned that the middle class would pick up the bill? Must have slipped through a crack in the news cycle. Because, surely, the feds wouldn’t lie to us. They’re “public servants,” doing their level best for the benefit of “The People,” right? Wrong. Sachs is right. We live with so many lies, we wouldn’t know what to do without them. Covid…the Ukraine…terrorism…the economy – every subject is so fattened on lies it can barely move.

Intended Consequences: What these lies all have in common is that they are a nuisance to the common man. All the lies are designed to support ‘policies.’ All the policies cost money. And the poor middle class, salt-of-the-earth citizens must pay for them.

Should the Donbass be governed by Ukrainians? Or by Russians? Or by the Donbassians themselves? The typical American could care less. But the ‘defense’ industry grows richer and richer by throwing its weight around…and he pays for it.

Was there really any reason to shut down the whole economy to stop the covid virus? Did it make sense to flood the economy with money so that ‘The People’ didn’t mind being locked up in their own houses? No, it didn’t. And now, the middle class is paying the price for those policies too.

And what does the average US citizen gain by cutting off the flow of Russia’s energy to Europe? The Europeans still need energy. And when they buy America’s gas, it just raises the price of fuel for Americans.

Professors of political science talk about ‘man’s relationship with the state (government),’ but that is the biggest lie of all. The ‘government’ or ‘the state’ is just another abstraction. What counts are our relationships with other people – such as the people who run the government. Yes, there are the governors…and the governed. Nowhere, except maybe in the smallest township, do ‘the people’ rule. Instead, the people are ruled by a bullying elite. And when these public servants become the masters…with too many laws, programs, policies and lies… the middle classes pay dearly."

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"More Houses Are Upside Down"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 12/9/22:

"More Houses Are Upside Down"

"Over 450,000 houses are worth less than what’s owed on them right now. This is officially worse than it was in 2009. This is growing in the wrong direction each month."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

ͦ

Related:

"The Mother of All Economic Crises"

"Hundreds Of Thousands Of U.S. Homeowners Are Now Underwater On Their Mortgages As The Housing Crash Accelerates"

"Hundreds Of Thousands Of U.S. Homeowners Are Now 

Underwater On Their Mortgages As The Housing Crash Accelerates"

by Michael Snyder

"Here we go again. When the housing market crashed in 2008 and 2009, large numbers of U.S. homeowners ended up owing more on their mortgages than their homes were worth. When the Federal Reserve started to aggressively hike interest rates earlier this year, I warned that it would happen again, and now that day has officially arrived. During the third quarter alone, U.S. homeowners lost an all-time record 1.3 trillion dollars in equity as home values plummeted, and a new analysis conducted by Black Knight has found that approximately 450,000 of those homeowners are now underwater on their mortgages…

As the housing market continues to implode – marking a record drop in pending home sales last month amid canceled deals and price cuts, there are around 450,000 homebuyers who owe more than their house is worth as of the end of the third quarter, according to a new analysis from Black Knight. Of those, around 60%, or 270,000, bought their homes in the first nine months of 2022. In total, around 8% of mortgages taken out in 2022 are now marginally underwater, with another 20% having a low equity position.

As I have stated in previous articles, I feel so sorry for those that purchased homes at or near the peak of the market. If the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates, it won’t be too long before millions of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, and that would truly be a nightmare scenario. When you owe much more than your home is currently worth, that makes it exceedingly difficult to sell it. Ultimately, many homeowners that were underwater on their mortgages in 2008 and 2009 simply defaulted and walked away, and that created enormous headaches for Wall Street.

Right now, we are already in a “housing recession”, and the Federal Reserve is threatening to turn it into a “housing depression”. Earlier today, we got yet another number that indicates that the housing market is in incredibly bad shape at this moment…"This has been a year of watershed moments in real estate, and not the good kind.

The Housing Market Index, a closely watched industry metric that gauges the outlook for home sales, declined to 33 in November on a hundred-point scale, its lowest level in a decade, save for the first dystopian month of the pandemic. Anything under 50 spells trouble. 14 years after the last housing crash started, another one has arrived.

Interestingly, the housing crash that began in 2008 also began 14 years after the previous one. In the brand new book that I just released, I have an entire chapter about how the housing crashes have been following a very odd pattern. And just like 2008, layoffs are starting to surge all over America…

Layoffs are picking up, just in time for the holidays. At first it was the job-slashing in tech that gobbled up all the attention. From Twitter to Amazon, tech firms have cut more than 146,000 jobs in 2022 after years of seemingly unlimited hiring, according to tracker Layoffs.fyi. Yet with each passing day, the unemployment gloom spreads. It’s reached Wall Street, real estate, crypto, and even the food and beverage industry.

We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and one industry that is being hit particularly hard is the media…"In an environment where legacy media is collapsing — in the past week, CNN has started a massive round of layoffs, NPR is responding to a $20 million shortage in corporate grift with a hiring freeze, the Washington Post has folded its magazine and is contemplating widespread layoffs, and the New York Times newsroom will go out on strike on December 8, and we all know how well a strike works when you’re overpaid and have a skill set that can be replaced by sending a van to the Texas-Mexico border — this would be a wake-up call."

I can’t say that I am sad to see these establishment media companies fall on hard times. They have been relentlessly feeding the public disinformation for years, and the American people are fed up with them. But I do feel very badly for all of the hard working Americans out there that are suddenly losing their jobs during this holiday season.

On Thursday, we learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits were up last week, and we also learned that continuing claims have shot up to the highest level in 10 months…"Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show initial claims for the week ended Dec. 3 rose to 230,000 from the upwardly revised 226,000 recorded a week earlier. That is above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims. Continuing claims, filed by Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment benefits, rose to 1.671 million for the week ended Nov. 26, up by 62,000 from the previous week’s revised level."

The fact that continuing claims have now reached such an alarming level prompted one economist to declare that the “recession sky is darkening”…"An economist is warning that, under Joe Biden’s economic leadership, the “recession sky is darkening.” That’s according to Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds, who commented after reports that continuing unemployment claims at the end of November rose by 62,000 to 1.7 million."

Sadly, he is quite correct. Economic conditions are going to continue to deteriorate in the months ahead, and this comes at a time when so many U.S. consumers are already living on the edge of financial disaster…"The savings rate is now near an all-time low whilst credit card debt is at an all-time high. Clearly, U.S. consumers are, in aggregate, flying very close to the sun."

I know that I have covered a lot of information very rapidly in this article. But I want to keep my regular readers updated on what is really going on out there. In so many ways, what we are witnessing right now is a repeat of what we experienced in 2008 and 2009. It certainly appears that 2023 is going to be an exceedingly painful year for the U.S. economy, and the U.S. population is not at all prepared to handle any sort of a severe economic downturn."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Sound Money Isn’t Enough"

"Sound Money Isn’t Enough"

by Brian Maher

Annapolis, Maryland - "We note the following: the United States Department of Defense has failed its annual audit for the fifth consecutive year. It has - in fact - failed each and every audit since the business began in 2018. Has Congress seized the red pencil… and threatened to run it through the defense budget until the Pentagon can square the ledgers? No it has not. Congress’ latest proposal would spend an additional 8% over last year’s allocations… in fact.

The Private Sector vs. Government: Imagine the scene at a private concern, Company X you may name it. For five consecutive years its “management” has failed the audits. Yet instead of demanding a square accounting, ownership showers this mismanagement team with even greater resources to squander. A private concern is jealous of its capital and guards it with great ferocity. Yet the government runs to a different accounting.

Literally Burning Fuel: Would an airline park its planes on a tarmac, idle, with the engines going? It is very nearly inconceivable. Fuel is costly. Yet the United States Air Force has done it. It has deliberately wasted fuel by running the engines on parked planes. Why? Because the end of the fiscal year was nearing. And if the Air Force did not burn through all the fuel allotted it in this year’s budget, it could not justify requests for additional fuel the following year. The solution of course is to run the engines on inert airplanes - to literally burn fuel.

Can you imagine it? But here you have the “logic” of government appropriations. We cite but one example. Many others exist - be assured. Yet today we recognize a distressing possibility: Sound money does not ensure sound government. Sound money alone will not restrain it.

Sound Money Is the Money of a Free People: The Daily Reckoning has for years beat its tom-toms for sound money. That is, for private, decentralized money. That is because we believe private, decentralized money is the money of a free people. And we are heart and soul for freedom - our freedom, your freedom, the fellow’s freedom one house across the street - the fellow’s freedom 3,000 miles across the country.

That is one reason we embrace gold. It curbs, checks and limits the natural rascalities of government. It is a money suited for a free people. Unlike today’s money - which is disguised debt - government cannot fabricate gold into existence at a stroke. Human labor must haul it out of the ground. Often, at great expense. Yet men would not do it if they did not find it profitable.

Washington’s Warning: And as we have argued before: Paper (fiat) money fuels government in the manner oxygen fuels fire. And as Washington long ago warned: “Like fire [government] is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Meantime, gold is a sound money. It is therefore an honest money. An honest, sound money is a disciplined money. It chains government down in thick, imprisoning fetters. Would the Air Force get away with burning fuel if the government truly had to watch its money? Perhaps it would not. Yet a government in charge of money is a fox in charge of a henhouse.

Immoral, Dangerous and Imprisoning: “Austrian” school economist Ryan McMaken: "State-controlled money is immoral, dangerous and impoverishing. It paves the way for government theft of private wealth through the inflation tax, and thus allows the state to do more of what it does best: wage wars, kill, imprison, steal and enrich the friends of the regime at the expense of everyone else. Privatizing the monetary system and imposing a “separation of money and state” would help limit these activities."

Today many cryptocurrency drummers believe these digital currencies are 21st-century gold. They are private creations of the free market. Governments cannot monkey them. Utopianists even believe cryptocurrencies can murder the state altogether, consigning it forevermore to history’s hell box.

Sound Money Won’t Fix the World: We have argued our piece for sound money. Yet does private, decentralized money - sound money - necessarily equal restrained government? Alas, the answer is no. McMaken: "It’s also important to not overstate the benefits of taking money out of the hands of the state. The temptation to push the “fix the world” idea to utopian levels is often seen among cryptocurrency maximalists, and among some gold promoters as well…"

The idea that changing to different money will somehow end theft, poverty or even war is the sort of messianic thinking that would have given old-school Marxists a run for their money. Gold of course predated the state. Yet gold did not box in the state, the ambitious, avaricious and mischievous state. The state grew and grew regardless… as the tick grows and grows under constant intake of blood.

The State’s Ambitions Are Boundless: Again, McMaken: "States long predate the money monopolies they now enjoy. During the 16th and 17th centuries - without the benefit of fiat currencies - states created enormous standing armies for the first time. They established mercantilist economies. Many rulers managed to assemble large bureaucracies to serve absolutist states. States were centralized to a degree that had not been seen in Western Europe since the Romans. It was a period of enormous gains in state building for princes and their agents."

More: Yet these states could not “print money” nor enjoy the benefits of fiat money except in very short-lived and limited cases. Indeed, this period of immense state growth was also a period of “concurrent” and “parallel” currencies during which a wide variety of gold and silver coins - most of them foreign - competed within the borders of a single state. Many efforts by regimes to issue questionable, debased money failed because there were so many alternatives. But this didn’t stop, say, Louis XIV from hammering together a powerful state.

Experience Teaches a Hard Lesson: Here is McMaken’s frowning and spirit-stealing conclusion: So when we ask ourselves the question “Can states survive without fiat currency?” the answer is clearly, “All experience points to yes.” Alas… all experience does point to yes. The state does not require a monopoly on money to conduct its business, this fellow notes. What does it require? It merely requires a monopoly on coercive power - the coercive power of taxation in particular. Taxation forms the living and vital bloodstream of the state. So long as taxes flow in, the heart is busy… and the blood flows freely.

One Piece of a Much Larger Puzzle: Thus McMaken moans that: "Taking the control of money out of the hands of politicians and bureaucrats is clearly a good thing, and ought to be done quickly and thoroughly. But it won’t “fix the world.” It’s only a piece of a much larger puzzle."

One piece of a much larger puzzle… indeed. We must conclude: Sound money - in this fallen world of sin and vice - cannot constrain sinful and viceful men determined not to be constrained Alas: The ability to constrain sinful and viceful men is the puzzle piece that has always eluded us…likely always will be."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

"How It Really Is"

"The Greatest Crash Ever, Avoid Debt And Get Liquid ASAP; Massive Economic Pain Coming"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/8/22:

"The Greatest Crash Ever, Avoid Debt And Get Liquid ASAP;

 Massive Economic Pain Coming"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "A Shocking Warning From Nuclear Expert"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 12/8/22:

"A Shocking Warning From Nuclear Expert"

"The co-author of the most comprehensive Nuclear War Survival Guide talks about radiation and preparedness. The foremost authority on surviving nuclear war joins us again!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Check out part 1 here:

- https://youtu.be/CqSNwtqvbmc

"Equities, Economies And Civilization Are Ready To Crash. The Facts Are Clear"

Full screen recommended.

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal, 12/8/22:

"Equities, Economies And Civilization Are Ready To Crash. 

The Facts Are Clear"

"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."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Walmart CEO Warns Of Store Closings As US Enters A Deep Dark Winter"

Full screen recommended.

"Walmart CEO Warns Of Store Closings

 As US Enters A Deep Dark Winter"

by Epic Economist

"Walmart is the largest retail chain on the entire planet, the indisputable industry leader, and a very well-established consumer favorite - but none of these attributes have kept the company from having a particularly difficult year in 2022, and it seems like more bad news just emerged. Since January, sales have been slipping, and the brick-and-mortar retailer has been struggling to compete with online retailers such as Amazon, which continues to seize an even larger share of the market. But those aren’t the only signs of trouble for Walmart. From inflation to overstock to over-hiring, the world's largest employer has been falling behind in recent months after taking a huge profit hit and seeing its shares rapidly plummeting. Now, CEO Doug McMillion is warning that even higher prices and more store closures could be on the horizon for the retailer as it faces painful inventory losses due to an ominous reason.

McMillion stressed that theft has become a major issue for the chain in recent months, and the rapid increase in the number of cases is leaving a dent in the company’s profit margins and causing distressing inventory losses. Even though the executive preferred not to point out which stores were being particularly affected by the problem, he noted that soft local policies have contributed to the surge in these types of offenses and that the lenient approach needed to be “corrected.” “If that's not corrected, prices will be higher and our stores will close,” he warned.

Just one month ago, the chief financial officer of one of Walmart’s biggest competitors, Target, also revealed that shoplifting at its stores had increased more than 50% year on year, leading to more than $600 million in losses in 2022 alone. Although Walmart executives have been notoriously secretive about how much of an issue shoplifting is for the company, in 2016, Bloomberg estimated that the superstore chain loses approximately $7 billion a year due to shoplifting, which represents about 2.5% of its annual profits.

This new wave of larceny couldn’t come at a worse time for the retailer. In its latest earnings report released on October 31, Walmart reported a net income loss of 15.36% compared to the same period a year prior, at $28.7 billion. Moreover, the chain reported an operating income of $2.7 billion in the past quarter, down 53% from $5.8 billion in the same period of 2021.

Walmart, though known as a discounter, is getting too expensive for millions of shoppers feeling the pinch of rising consumer prices. With inflation at a 40-year high, consumers are more aware of the rising food and fuel costs and they’ve been spending increasingly less, the company’s CEO noted analysts in a recent call.

Believe it or not, the finances of the world’s biggest retailer are being squeezed, too. And now the company is imploring suppliers not to rise prices and asking for discounts, according to The Wall Street Journal. The report notes that rivals like Target and Amazon are taking a similar tactic. All of them have also been canceling orders and seeking new ways to cut expenses. The strength of the industry leader is really being shaken by a list of problems that never seems to stop growing. 2023 may be a dark year for Walmart, and considering the pace at which things are turning sour for the retailer, customers may see many of its beloved local Walmart stores going dark soon."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Musical Interlude: Yanni, “For All Seasons”

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, “For All Seasons”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic skyscape are one such group, Hickson 44, about 100 million light-years distant toward the constellation Leo. The two spiral galaxies in the center of the image are edge-on NGC 3190 with its distinctive, warped dust lanes, and S-shaped NGC 3187. Along with the bright elliptical, NGC 3193 at the right, they are also known as Arp 316. 

The spiral in the upper left corner is NGC 3185, the 4th member of the Hickson group. Like other galaxies in Hickson groups, these show signs of distortion and enhanced star formation, evidence of a gravitational tug of war that will eventually result in galaxy mergers on a cosmic timescale. The merger process is now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. For scale, NGC 3190 is about 75,000 light-years across at the estimated distance of Hickson 44.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110829.html

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “I Worried”

“I Worried”

“ I worried a lot. Will the garden grow,

will the rivers flow in the right direction,

will the earth turn as it was taught,

and if not how shall I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well, hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning, and sang.”

- Mary Oliver

Judge Napolitano, "Ukraine-Russia War, Latest w/Col. Douglas Macgregor"

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 12/8/22:

"Ukraine-Russia War, Latest w/Col. Douglas Macgregor"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

ͦ

"Humanity is the spirit of the Supreme Being on earth, and that humanity is standing amidst ruins, hiding its nakedness behind tattered rags, shedding tears upon hollow cheeks, and calling for its children with pitiful voice. But the children are busy singing their clan's anthem; they are busy sharpening the swords and cannot hear the cry of their mothers."

- Kahlil Gibran

"The Bubble Economy's Credit-Asset Death Spiral"

"The Bubble Economy's Credit-Asset Death Spiral"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Central banks seem to have perfected the ideal financial perpetual motion machine: as credit expands, money pours into risk assets, which shoot higher under the pressure of expanding demand for assets that yield either hefty returns (junk bonds) or hefty capital gains as the soaring assets suck in more capital chasing returns.

As assets soar in value, they serve as collateral for more credit. Higher valuations = more collateral to borrow against. This open spigot of additional credit sluices capital right back into the assets that are climbing in value, pushing them higher - which then creates even more collateral to support even more credit.

This self-reinforcing feedback of expanding credit feeding expanding valuations feeding expanding collateral which then feeds expanding credit has no apparent end. Modest houses once worth $100,000 are now worth $1,000,000, and nobody's complaining except those priced out of the infinite spiral of prices and credit.

For those priced out of traditional assets, there's NFTs, meme stocks and short-duration options. The credit-asset bubble-economy casino has a gaming table for everyone's budget and desire to "make it big" via speculation, since the traditional ladders to middle-class security have all been splintered.

This financial perpetual motion machine distorts traditional incentives. Why bother renting a house bought for speculative gains? Renters are problematic, better to just let it sit empty and rack up huge capital gains. Count the lighted windows at night in all those new condo high-rises. Are even 20% occupied? Probably not.

This is how you get a "housing shortage": investors would rather keep units clean and off the market rather than risk renting units. When credit and asset valuations are both feeding an infinite expansion, all that matters is leveraging capital to acquire as many assets as possible to maximize the gains from this self-reinforcing wealth-creation machine.

This machine also incentivizes fraud. To really maximize gains, why not borrow clients' capital? Indeed, why not? But unbeknownst to the central bank sorcerers and the greed-crazed participants, all systems have limits and all consequences have their own consequences, i.e. second-order effects. There are many such dynamics which are eroding the apparently unbreakable financial perpetual motion machine.

One is debt saturation. Even low rates of interest eventually pile up consequential debt-service obligations, and any weakening in revenues, cash flow or income exposes the borrower to a cash crunch which can only be resolved by selling assets.

Another is the widening disconnect between financially sound valuations and "market" valuations set by rapidly expanding credit and collateral. Based on rental income or cash flow, Asset B is worth $200,000, but it's currently valued at $1 million, and still rising. Obviously, traditional methods of valuation no longer apply.

But weirdly enough, they do. Debt service doesn't matter when your collateral is expanding so fast you can borrow mountains of capital at "low, low prices" and not even consider debt service. But once collateral stops rising and interest rates start rising, suddenly all those absurd obsessions with cash flow start making sense.

But too late, too late: bubbles, regardless of how rock-solid the sorcery, tend to manifest symmetry: they fall at roughly the same rate and magnitude as they rose. As collateral declines, loans slide underwater as the asset is not longer worth more than the outstanding loan. Credit dries up and so does buying as greed-crazed buyers start worrying that perhaps the asset they're about to buy might actually be worth less next month (gasp).

Liquidity and the credit impulse aren't sorcery, they're herd behaviors. When the madness of the herd switches from greed to panic, buyers disappear and thus so does liquidity - the ability of sellers to find a Greater Fool to buy the depreciating asset. Greater Fools are soon wiped out and then there's nobody left who's dumb enough to buy assets that are in freefall and still far above any financially prudent valuation. The magic circle reverses, and as valuations fall, collateral shrinks and credit collapses. Lenders who greedily reckoned valuations and thus collateral would rise forever are stuck with life-changing losses - along with all the punters who built shanties of credit and leverage they mistakenly viewed as permanent palaces.

In making the economy dependent on the financial sorcery of self-reinforcing credit-asset bubbles, central banks and all the greed-crazed punters who participated have guaranteed a self-reinforcing death spiral as the "virtuous" self-reinforcing wealth-creation machine reverses into a self-reinforcing wealth-destruction machine.

Who believed that central banks' financial perpetual motion machine was anything more than trickery designed to generate phantom wealth? Once the death spiral reaches its devastating end-game, the true believers will have fallen silent."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Commencement Speech, Stanford University, 2005

- Steve Jobs, 

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true...

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called "The Whole Earth Catalog", which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of "The Whole Earth Catalog", and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

"Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe.

Otherwise why even be here?"

- Steve Jobs

"We Are Mortals All..."

"We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel."

- Gary Kowalski

The Daily "Near You?"

Marana, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"We Owe That To Ourselves..."

“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile - and the rest of us are f****d until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”

- Hunter S. Thompson, “The Great Shark Hunt”

"Thought..."

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."

- Bertrand Russell

"Five percent of the people think; 

ten percent of the people think they think; 

and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."

 - Thomas A. Edison.

"Is Your Bank Safe?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 12/8/22:

"Is Your Bank Safe?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"Can You Guess What Percentage Of Americans Are Having Trouble Paying Their Grocery Bills?"

"Can You Guess What Percentage Of Americans

 Are Having Trouble Paying Their Grocery Bills?"

by Michael Snyder

"For the first time in decades, the cost of food has become a major issue in America. If rapidly rising food prices are not a problem for you, then you should be very thankful, because most of the country is really hurting right now. The cost of food has been going up much faster than our paychecks have throughout 2022, and this week Walmart CEO Doug McMillion publicly admitted that double-digit price increases for packaged foods “are going to be with us for a while”. This is a crisis that isn’t going away, and as you will see below, it appears that things will get even worse in 2023.

But even though I am constantly writing about our deteriorating economic conditions, even I was absolutely stunned by the results of a new survey that was just released…"More than two-thirds of Americans are having a hard time affording groceries as food costs continue to soar, according to new data. Retail technology platform Swiftly reported Wednesday that 69% of shoppers say they are struggling to pay their grocery bills after months of persistently sky-high inflation, and 83% currently rely on some form of coupons or loyalty program to put food on the table, according to its True Cost of a Grocery Shop survey."

If this poll is accurate, that means that almost 70 percent of all Americans are having trouble paying their grocery bills right now. That is crazy!

Unfortunately, food prices are only going to go higher because global food supplies just keep getting tighter and tighter. For example, the USDA is projecting that the upcoming orange harvest in Florida will be the smallest since 1943…"Orange juice futures squeezed to a near-record high ahead of another US Department of Agriculture’s crop report on Friday that will likely show tight global supplies will persist well into the new year.

USDA’s next report will provide an estimate for Florida’s 2022-23 harvest. Figures will add to October’s downbeat report, which showed that Florida would only produce 28 million boxes (each box is 90 pounds) for the current season, down 32% from the prior year. This season is expected to be the lowest harvest since 1943."

Meanwhile, Fox Business is reporting that our endless national baby formula shortage “keeps getting worse”…"The baby formula shortage keeps getting worse. One parent from Keystone, Florida, said it’s been “crazy” – especially for parents in need of a popular hypoallergenic and lactose-free formula. “We have been getting less powder, Nutramigen. So, whatever I have, I’m kind of like, can I just feed him less? But then it’s like, you can’t feed a child less because that’s not fair to them,” mother Ellie Johnston told FOX Business."

On my website, The Economic Collapse Blog, I have been documenting countless other reasons why global food supplies will keep getting tighter in the months ahead. Make sure to bookmark the site and check it several times a week for the latest updates.

As Americans on the bottom levels of the economic pyramid become increasingly desperate, we are seeing a very alarming spike in retail theft. During a recent appearance on CNBC, Walmart CEO Doug McMillion was asked about what his stores are seeing…"Walmart stores across the U.S. are grappling with an uptick in shoplifting that could lead to higher prices and closed stores if the problem persists, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Tuesday. “Theft is an issue. It’s higher than what it has historically been,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“We’ve got safety measures, security measures that we’ve put in place by store location. I think local law enforcement being staffed and being a good partner is part of that equation, and that’s normally how we approach it,” McMillon said."

That certainly doesn’t sound good. And McMillion went on to say that some Walmart stores could eventually be closed if high levels of retail theft persist… “If that’s not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close,” McMillon said.

I have bad news for him. This isn’t going to be corrected. In fact, things are only going to get worse in this country. For years, I have been warning that food would become such a target for thieves that armed guards would be needed.Unfortunately, that time has now arrived…

"A Philadelphia gas station owner fed up with incessant crime threatening his employees and customers hired heavily armed security guards to watch over his business. Neil Patel, operator of a Karco gas station at Broad and Clearfield streets in North Philadelphia, recruited Pennsylvania S.I.T.E Agents clad with Kevlar vest and AR-15s or shotguns.

In many parts of Philadelphia, the criminals are the ones that are in control, and so that is why this gas station owner feels compelled to hire his own private security force…“They are forcing us to hire the security, high-level security, state level,” Patel told FOX 29. “We are tired of this nonsense; robbery, drug trafficking, hanging around, gangs.” The final straw for Patel came after he said his business was vandalized by young people and an ATM machine was stolen. His car was also a casualty of crime around the area."

Of course this sort of environment can now be found in major urban areas all over the nation. Organized retail crime has become a multi-billion dollar business, and if it is far worse this year than it was last year. In an article that he just posted, Mike Adams did a great job of summarizing where things currently stand…"The key phrase in all this is organized retail crime. This isn’t merely spontaneous, simple shoplifting, it’s a whole new type of large-scale theft where teams of thieves are prepped and coordinated to hit a retail establishment and clean out its most valuable items in seconds. The stolen goods are then sold on Ebay, Amazon and other online marketplaces, or delivered to local buyers in exchange for cash. According to the National Retail Federation, organized retail crime has skyrocketed by 26.5% in 2022, year over year. It now costs retailers over $100 billion per year in losses."

Our country is starting to come apart at the seams all around us. I am sorry if that statement offends you, but it is true. Crime is out of control, predators are roaming the streets, and the population is becoming increasingly desperate as the cost of living spirals out of control. Sadly, things are only going to get worse during the months that are ahead of us."

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/